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Israeli occupation authority demolished 20 Palestinian homes in West Bank last week

Palestine Information Center – 25/03/2012

RAMALLAH — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has demolished 20 Palestinian homes in the West Bank over the past week, a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian land said on Sunday.

The report said that the demolition streak took place in the Jordan Valley and displaced 60 people including 26 children.

It said that IOA bulldozers damaged 100 dunums in Salfit’s Kufr Al-Deek village and uprooted 100 olive saplings in Beit Dajan village in Nablus at the pretext they were planted in a military area.

OCHA pointed out that 29 Palestinians were wounded in Israeli occupation forces’ crackdown on a peaceful demonstration in Kufr Qadum to the north of Qalqilia last week.

The report also said that a 14-year-old boy was badly injured when Israeli army ordnance exploded near him in the Jordan Valley.

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March 26, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Boycotts UN Rights Council over Settlement Investigation Decision

Al-Manar | March 26, 2012

Israel decided on Monday to cut contact with the United Nations Human Rights Council after last week’s decision to establish an international investigative committee on the settlements that the occupation is building in the West Bank, Haaretz reported Monday.

According to the Zionist website, “the Israeli foreign ministry ordered the Israeli ambassador to Geneva to cut off contact immediately, instructing him to ignore phone calls from the commissioner.”

Quoting an un-named official, Haaretz pointed out that this step would enable the Zionist entity to “bar any fact-finding team dispatched by the council from entering Israel and the West Bank to investigate settlement construction.”

“We will not permit members of the human rights council to visit Israel and our ambassador has been instructed to not even answer phone calls,” the official said.

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March 26, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

South Sudan and Israel discuss bilateral cooperation

Sudan Tribune | March 24, 2012

JUBA – South Sudan and Israel on Friday discussed bilateral cooperation and diplomatic relations.

South Sudan said it will establish an embassy in Jerusalem, the Holy city, rather than the political capital, Tel Aviv, following the recent visit of the South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir.

On Friday the visiting Israeli ambassador, Dan Shaham, met with the vice president of South Sudan, Riek Machar, and discussed issues pertaining to the bilateral cooperation between the two states.

The issues included the support the Israeli government will provide to the new state as well as the status of some 1,500 South Sudanese currently residing in Israel.

Shaham gave assurances that South Sudanese refugees in Israel will be trained in various skills so they can contribute to the young nation upon repatriation.

Machar stressed the importance of establishing a Hebrew language school in the South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

They also discussed the plans for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by South Sudanese Christian leaders.

The Vice President and the Israeli diplomat also discussed the ongoing disarmament of civil populations in Jonglei state. They also touched on the situation in the Middle East, particularly with the current violent events in Syria.

With the independence of the South Sudan in July 2011, Israel announced on 31 January that South Sudanese are no longer considered refugees and have to leave the Jewish state before the first of April of face forced deportation.

The UN refugee agency, HCR, said only some 60 South Sudanese agreed to return voluntarily to their new nation before April 1. The Israeli Interior ministry recently said no South Sudanese have appealed the decision to deport them or applied for refugee status since January.

Following its decision to send South Sudanese to their country, the Israeli authorities agreed, upon the request of the HCR, to give them the possibility to petition to stay in Israel. The official statics estimate that there are some 3000 South Sudanese in Israel.

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March 25, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Warns Against Global March to Jerusalem

Israel forgets the fact that the United Nations declared Jerusalem to be an “International City” not owned by any one nation in 1947 due to its cultural importance to Christians, Jews, and Muslims. – Window Into Palestine

23 March 2012 / PNN

Israel issued a warning to the nearby Arab states if they allowed the global march to take place next Friday 30th March. Israel also stated that if anyone neared their borders, they would be accused of trespassing.

It claimed that the march is organized by “anti-Israeli parties” and said that this march won’t be allowed to reach Israel’s borders.

Political sources said that the Israeli government sent warning letters to governments including; Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Hamas’ in the West Bank and to the Palestinian authority, asking them to put a stop to the possible escalation of tension as a result of these marches.

Israeli military authorities put a “security plan” in place, to face the risk of the flow of protesters to the borders. The plan will be presented in a meeting of the Israeli government on Sunday, 25th March to implement it.

According to the Israeli correspondent of the Israeli official TV, this plan contains strategies to suppress the masses, which the Israeli military units in the Army and border guards have trained for.

Two months ago, the international committee of the Global March to Jerusalem began organizing the global march under the logo “Freedom for Jerusalem, No Occupation, No Ethnic Cleansing and Segregation, No for Judaising of Palestine, its land and holy sites.”

The committee chose 30th March to coincide with the anniversary of Palestinian “land day”; Palestine Land Day is a day celebrated by Palestinians on 30th March each year. The event marks the events of March, 1976, following the Israeli authority’s confiscation of thousands of dunums of private and public land in the majority of Palestinian areas, especially the Galilee. Following these events the Arab masses inside Palestine declared a general strike, confronting the Israeli authorities for the first time since the occupation of Palestine in 1948. The Israeli response was militant and violent, as the Israeli troops, backed up by tanks, entered Palestinian villages and re-occupied them, causing a number of martyrs and many wounded and detainees among the civilians.

The march will unite the efforts of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all citizens of conscience in the world to put an end to Israel’s disregard for international law through the continuing occupation of Jerusalem and Palestinian land.

Massive marches will be organized in Palestine, as well as from Asia, Africa and Europe to and in neighbouring countries to Palestine (Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon) and towards Jerusalem or to the nearest point possible according to the circumstances of each country and through the coordination between all groups and institutions of civil society taking part in the march, in coordination with the official and national bodies concerned.
Mass protests will also be organized in front of Israeli embassies in the capitals of different countries and in the main public squares in the big cities of the world, including the Arab and Muslim capitals and large cities.

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March 25, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Foundation warns of plan to turn Islamic cemetery into Talmudic park


Photo credit – Ma’an Images/HO
Palestine Information Center – March 25, 2012

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage (AFEH) has condemned the Jewish settlers’ desecration of Bab El-Rahma cemetery in occupied Jerusalem on Saturday and plans to turn part of it into Talmudic park.

It said in a statement on Sunday that Zionist fanatic groups in cooperation with the Israeli “higher court of justice” were launching steps on the ground toward that end.

AFEH also said that a group of 20 Jewish settlers offered Talmudic rituals inside the graveyard, which is adjacent to the Aqsa mosque, and danced over the graves leading to the destruction of two headstones.

AFEH quoted one of the guards of the cemetery as saying that he shouted at the settlers, telling them they should leave the cemetery but they refused and insulted him. They continued in their dancing that destroyed the headstones, he said.

The guard said that he summoned the police, adding that two border policemen and a female conscript came to the scene and were content with watching the settlers and did not even bother to talk to them.

Bab El-Rahma is a 1400-year-old cemetery and is near to Bab El-Rahma gate of the Aqsa mosque. AFEH said that any attack on the graveyard is an attack on the holy Aqsa mosque.

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March 25, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Checkpoint

By | March 20, 2012

A Short film by Porter Speakman, Jr. (@porterspeakman) for the “Christ at the Checkpoint Conference 2012”. “The Checkpoint” looks at the system of Israeli checkpoints in the West Banks and the daily routine Palestinians must face going through the Bethlehem Checkpoint.

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March 21, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pakistan parties warn against reopening of NATO supply lines

Press TV – March 21, 2012

Pakistan’s main religious parties, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Difa-e-Pakistani Council (DPC), have warned the country against reopening NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, Press TV reports.

Addressing a large crowd in the Bat Khela area of the Malakand division in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, JI Chief Amir Syed Munawar Hassan said the members of the party along with Pakistani people would close all the routes if the parliament decided to reopen the passageways.

“The leaders and government are following a US agenda,” he said.

Meanwhile, DPC Chairman Maulana Samiul Haq said reopening the routes was unacceptable.

“Democratic tactics would be used for blockade of supply to NATO forces in Afghanistan,” he added.

Samiul Haq announced that a related protest rally would be held in front of Pakistan’s parliament on March 27.

The gathering comes days after a meeting between high-ranking Pakistani officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, Amy Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani along with his senior ministers.

The meeting was held to discuss channels to normalize the relations with the US-led forces in Afghanistan and restore the supply routes.

In November 2011, Islamabad closed the routes to the supplies headed for the US-led foreign forces deployed in Afghanistan in reaction to the Western military alliance of NATO’s airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border earlier in that month.

The relations between Pakistan and the US have also significantly soured in the past year over the unsanctioned US drone strikes against the former’s northwestern tribal belt.

There have been large-scale protests in Pakistan against the drone strikes, which might force Islamabad to condition the reopening of the supply lines to the halting of the attacks.

March 21, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Obama and Sarkozy: How Imperialists Deal With Defeat

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | March 21, 2012

Fifty years ago this week, the French admitted defeat in their war against Algerian independence, by signing a formal ceasefire. The government of Nicholas Sarkozy said it would hold no formal ceremonies, because to mark the anniversary would reopen “deep wounds of a painful page in the recent history of France.” It’s all about the French, you see – their pain at being defeated by a people they had subjugated and treated as lesser forms of life for 132 years; their loss of face as a great imperial power, not the Algerian’s pain at the loss of one million men, women and children in the final struggle for nationhood.

This week also marks the 9th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Americans have, of course, never admitted defeat in that war – although defeat is the only reason U.S. troops are no longer in Iraq. President Barack Obama very reluctantly carried out the troop withdrawal agreement that President George Bush was forced by the Iraqis to sign in November of 2008, after it had become clear that America’s unprovoked war of aggression was lost.

Obama was even less gracious in defeat than French President Sarkozy, who at least had the manners to keep personally silent. In proclaiming March 19th “A National Day of Honor,” Obama praised the “unshakeable fortitude and unwavering commitment” of U.S. troops who fought “block by block to help the Iraqi people to seize the chance for a better future.” Other obscenities and damnable lies flowed from Obama’s mouth, as the president embraced George Bush’s great crimes against global peace and his holocaust against the Iraqi people. “The war left wounds not always seen, but forever felt,” said Obama – speaking, of course, only about the wounds suffered by Americans, just as Sarkozy spoke only of the pain of the French. The anniversary of a U.S. invasion of another people’s country, is all about the Americans, you see – the 4500 American dead, to whom, Obama said, “we owe a debt that can never be fully repaid.” No mention of the blood debt that is owed to the more than one million dead Iraqi men, women and children whose country, once the most advanced in the Arab world, was utterly destroyed by the United States, and who hope to never see an American in uniform again.

What are a million Algerians worth to the French? The same as one million Iraqis are worth to the United States. They are not even worth mentioning.

There is no word that can describe the absolute moral turpitude of imperialists, the casualness of their genocides, their infinite capacity for narcissism, and their whining self-pity when confronted with minimal casualties to themselves in the course of their global depredations.

The Americans and western Europeans regret nothing but their own setbacks in the 500-year war they have waged against the darker peoples of the Earth. They have annihilated and enslaved whole continents, and dare to call it civilization. Their only remorse is for their loss, in recent times, of total dominance over the human species, of which they still consider themselves the superior fraction. It is during weeks such as this, when the French and American governments note the historical markers of their national depravity, that affirm the inseparability of racism and imperialism, and the necessity to defeat them once and for all.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

March 21, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Jewish settlers stealing Palestinian water springs: UN

Al Akhbar | March 19, 2012

Illegal Israeli settlers have taken over dozens of natural springs in the West Bank, preventing Palestinian access to much-needed water sources, a United Nations report said on Monday.

The report produced by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 30 springs across the West Bank had been completely taken over by settlers, with Palestinians unable to access them at all.

In most instances, the report said, “Palestinians have been deterred from accessing the springs by acts of intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers.”

The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.

“Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock” for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.

“The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops.”

The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring.

“Such works were carried out without building permits,” the report said.

Israel maintains an economic blockade of Gaza and control over the economy of the West Bank through checkpoints and sanctions.

The country has continued to endorse the growth of Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestine, which are illegal under international law, despite condemnation from the international community.

The OCHA report added that settler actions including “trespass, intimidation and physical assault, stealing of private property, and construction without a building permit,” are also violations of Israeli law.

“Yet, the Israel authorities have systematically failed to enforce the law on those responsible for these acts and to provide Palestinians with any effective remedy,” it said.

OCHA called on Israel to stop the expansion of settlements, “restore Palestinian access to the water springs taken over by settlers,” and to “conduct effective investigations into cases of settler violence and trespass.”

Israel’s Civil Administration, the Israeli military body that administers parts of the West Bank, rejected the OCHA report.

“The report is distorted, biased and full of inaccuracies,” spokesman Guy Inbar told AFP.

“As a general rule, it has been made clear that everyone has the right to access the local natural springs in the public spaces,” he said.

“In case there is a complaint that any party is preventing, threatening or interfering with access to such sites, it must be reported to the nearest police station.”

Israel rarely convicts Jewish settlers for crimes against the indigenous Palestinian population.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

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March 19, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

How Israel really treats Christians

By Fida Jiryis | Ma’an | March 15, 2012

In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,” Ambassador Michael Oren presents Israel as a tolerant, dove-like, and peaceful democracy. This is belied by the facts.

I am one of those Palestinian Christians living inside Israel to whom Oren refers. At no time in my life have I ever felt the “respect and appreciation” of the Jewish state, which Oren so glowingly references.

Israel’s Christian minority is marginalized in much the same manner as its Muslim one or, at best, quietly tolerated. We suffer the same discrimination when we try to find a job, when we go to hospitals, when we apply for bank loans, and when we get on the bus — in the same way as Palestinian Muslims.

Israel’s fundamental basis is as a racist state built for Jews only, and the majority of the Jewish population doesn’t really care what religion we are if we’re not Jewish. In my daily dealings with the State, all I have felt is rudeness and overt contempt.

Oren’s statement that “The extinction of the Middle East’s Christian communities is an injustice of historic magnitude” is outright shocking to anyone familiar with even the basic history of how Israel was founded.

I would like to remind Oren and others that this founding expelled thousands of Palestinian Christians from their homes in 1948 and displaced them, either forcing them to flee across the border or making them internal refugees. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that comprised the founding of Israel is, too, an injustice of historic magnitude. A man living in a glass house — or a house stolen from Palestinians — should think very carefully before tossing stones.

My cousin’s husband, Maher, is from Iqrith, a village a few miles from mine in the Galilee. His family, and all of Iqrith’s inhabitants, were expelled from their village in 1948 and Iqrith was razed to the ground by Israeli forces on Christmas eve, 1950, in a special “Christmas gift” to its people. The timing of this destruction leaves one to wonder at the intended message.

Maher was born years after his family took shelter in Rama, a village nearby in the Galilee. Today, he struggles with finding a place to build a house to live in with his wife and children. Israeli policies that severely restrict the building zones in Arab towns and villages result in land shortages impeding the population’s natural expansion. Limiting land to residents of the same town or village means that internal Palestinian refugees face severe housing discrimination.

The return of people like Maher has been made impossible by Israel, which refuses to negotiate on the right of refugees to return to their homeland. If Oren is so concerned for Palestinian Christians, would he kindly give the green light for the return of Christian refugees from Iqrith, Birim, Tarshiha, Suhmata, Haifa, Jaffa, and tens of other Palestinian towns and villages that they were expelled from in 1948?

The answer, I assure you, is no. Many of these refugees are living in refugee camps in nearby countries, where Israel and Oren are happy to leave them.

The terrorists referred to in Oren’s statement that “Israel, in spite of its need to safeguard its borders from terrorists, allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians from both the West Bank and Gaza,” are in fact Palestinian Christians living on the land that Israel has occupied — in flagrant opposition to all human rights charters — and from which it is refusing to withdraw its soldiers and illegal settlers.

To applaud Israel for giving people permits to travel across what by law is their own country is the height of hubris.

His claim that “In Jerusalem, the number of Arabs — among them Christians — has tripled since the city’s reunification by Israel in 1967” fails to mention Israel’s relentless policies of cracking down on Jerusalem: building unending settlements; building a separation wall that slices right through the city, severing its families, neighborhoods and businesses and hitting hard at its Arab economy; seizing Arab lands and expelling families that have lived on them for generations; and revoking the citizenship of any Palestinian resident who travels abroad for too long.

Imagine the outcry if an American citizen traveled abroad for two years and upon return discovered that his citizenship was revoked and that he had lost his American ID and passport.

Israeli officials don’t care whether the Palestinians they discriminate against are Christian or Muslim. It is true that inter-religious strife is on the rise in a region long tormented by poor living conditions, for which the West bears significant responsibility having aided the region’s many dictators.

Oren’s faux tolerance and crocodile tears over the plight of Christians fool no one. Were he serious, I would urge him to have a close look at Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination.

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer from the Arab village of Fassuta in the Galilee. She is the author of the forthcoming book, My Return to Galilee, which chronicles her return from the Diaspora to Israel.

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March 15, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

“Diamonds Crafted in Israel Should be Banned”

Al-Manar | March 15, 2012

The International diamond-regulatory system, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, set up to end the trade in blood diamonds is under pressure to ban diamonds from Israel because human rights activists state they are funding the Israeli military, which stands accused of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by the UN Human Rights Council.

A statement issued by a coalition of human rights groups including Jews for “Boycotting Israel Goods,” the Alternative Information Centre – a Bethlehem-based Israeli/Palestinian group – and a number of Palestine solidarity groups from Ireland and Britain calls on the new KPSC chair, US Ambassador, Gillian Milovanovic and members of the KPSC to ban the export of diamonds crafted in the Zionist entity.

The groups expressed “great concern about the recent escalation of military attacks by Israeli forces against the defenseless, besieged residents of the Gaza strip which have killed at least 23 Palestinians, including two children.”

“Scores of people have been injured, while thousands more have been terrorized and traumatized. With this horrific backdrop, we believe the time for action is now.  The jewellery industry is facilitating Israeli war crimes by allowing the trade in diamonds from Israel which generates around $1 billion per annum in funding for the Israeli military [1]. The international community must act in a meaningful manner to end Israeli violations of international law; banning the export of Israeli diamonds would be a very important step in that direction,” the Kimberley’s statement read.

The statement calls on jewelers “not to sell diamonds from Israel which should be regarded as blood diamonds and to end the false and grossly misleading practice of claiming that diamonds which fund gross human rights violations by government forces are ‘conflict free’.”

It also called for support for this initiative from other organizations: “We ask human rights groups worldwide to pressure the diamond industry to isolate diamonds processed in Israel and not to allow the legitimate diamond market to be used as an economic shield to fund Israeli apartheid, occupation and war crimes,” the statement concluded.

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March 15, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Study: Israeli ‘state land’ illegally taken from West Bank

Ma’an – March 14, 2012

BETHLEHEM – Israel has designated some 900,000 dunams of the occupied West Bank as Israeli state land, using procedures that break local and international laws, an Israeli human rights group said Wednesday.

“Large swaths of land have been classified state land and designated for use by settlements, despite the fact that they belong to Palestinian individuals or communities,” according to a new report by B’Tselem.

The study says Palestinian land “was taken from their lawful owners by legal manipulation and in breach of local law and international law alike.”

After an Israeli court ruled the state could not build settlements on private Palestinian land in 1979, Israel’s state attorney office redefined the requirements for designating land state-owned, the study says.

The report reviews Israeli policies in light of relevant laws in the West Bank before it was occupied by Israel in 1967.

B’Tselem says Israel disregarded community rights to land used for grazing, redefined what was classified as ‘cultivated land’ and extended the requirement for continuous cultivation of the land.

Israel’s legal stance increased state land in the West Bank from 527,000 dunums prior to Israel’s occupation, to more than 1.427 million dunams, an expansion of more than 170 percent, the report says.

Under international law, state land does not belong to Israel, and should be used to benefit Palestinians while the West Bank is under military occupation, B’Tselem adds.

“Despite this obligation, the percentage of state land that Israel has designated for Palestinians is negligible. Virtually all state land has been designated for exclusive use by the settlements,” the report notes.

The Israeli rights group says a recent deal to move a settler outpost to state land is thus illegal, calling on the Israeli government to revoke the agreement.

After months of negotiations, on Sunday the government agreed with Migron settlers that they relocate a few kilometers away, to meet a high court ruling that ordered the outpost be removed by by March 31, 2012 as it lies on land with demonstrated Palestinian-ownership.

The families are relocating to another already-established West Bank settlement a few kilometers away.

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March 14, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

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