Up to 80,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem without running water for three months
MEMO | May 29, 2014
Israeli water utility company Hagihon has stopped the regular supply of running water to a number of Palestinian neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, according to a statement issued by Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
The affected neighbourhoods are the Shu’fat Refugee Camp, Ras Khamis, Ras Sh’hadeh and Dahiyat As-Salam. They have all been isolated from the rest of Jerusalem by the Separation Wall.
B’Tselem stated that: “Some homes in these neighbourhoods have been completely cut off from the water supply; others receive water intermittently; and as for the rest, the water pressure in the pipes is so low that the water does not reach the faucets.”
The result, B’Tselem said, is that “an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Palestinians – mostly permanent residents of Israel – have been left without a regular water supply.”
Trying to solve their problem, the residents spent three weeks applying to Hagihon and to the Jerusalem Municipality, seeking to have running water restored.
However, B’Tselem pointed out that the applications of the affected residents were ignored. Therefore, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) petitioned the High Court of Justice on 25 March 2014 seeking to have the water supply renewed without delay.
“On 2 April 2014, the Court instructed the State of Israel to respond to ACRI’s petition within 60 days, setting the deadline for the first week of June,” B’Tselem said.
In the meantime, the residents of these neighbourhoods have had no regular running water. B’Tselem reported residents walking at least one kilometre to get the needed daily supplies of water from relatives’ houses, sometimes repeating this journey several times a day.
Israelis seize 4 schoolgirls in south Hebron hills
Ma’an – 28/05/2014
BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces on Tuesday detained four Palestinian girls in the south Hebron hills after a settler accused them of stealing cherries, human rights group B’Tselem said.
The girls, aged 11 to 15, were on their way home from school with an Israeli army escort when Israeli police arrested them. They were taken to an Israeli police station in Hebron with no adult accompaniment and held for four hours until being handed over to Palestinian police and released.
“The absurdity and injustice of holding four girls on suspicion of such a minor offense is disgraceful and outrageous, especially given that the authorities systematically refrain from enforcing the law on settlers who attack these girls and their families,” B’Tselem said.
International volunteers from Operation Dove filmed the incident.
Why Boycotting Israel is So Important and Necessary
DePaul students don’t want their tuition dollars invested in weapons manufacturers who supply the Israeli government, army and prison services
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | May 26, 2014
Nothing, it seems, is too ridiculous for Nick Clegg, UK Deputy Prime Minister, to contemplate. See him in this painful video ‘Nick Clegg welcomes the Jewish Manifesto‘ aimed at EU election candidates and voters.
Fortunately Clegg received a bloody nose yesterday in the EU elections. His infatuation with the EU and all its rotten works caused his party (the Liberal Democrats) to be almost wiped out at the polls. His days as leader are probably numbered.
If you’re wondering what the Jewish community’s EU Manifesto says, you can read it here. This propaganda effort is a prime example of the ‘hasbara’ scribbler’s art. It tries to shrug off Israel’s sickening human rights abuses and unending dispossession and oppression of its Palestinian neighbours and urges Members of the European Parliament to side with the apartheid regime.
“We urge MEPs and prospective MEPs to resist calls for boycotts of Israel. By their very nature, such measures attribute blame to only one side of the conflict, and through this stigmatisation they perpetuate a one-sided narrative. This in turn prompts intransigence from both sides.”
It also whinges about the European Commission’s guidelines that exclude Israeli settlements from EU funding programmes, accusing the EU of trying to dictate Israel’s borders. As most people know by now, Israel refuses to declare its borders because it hasn’t finished expanding them. The EU’s action, it says, is hurting the peace process “by perpetuating intransigence on the Palestinian side and could cause the Palestinian leadership to become less likely to make concessions”. The Palestinians have been robbed of everything, including their freedom. Why should they be asked to make more “concessions” to the thief?
The document also prods MEPs to oppose EU funding to Non Governmental Organisations who support boycott campaigns.
Campus ‘lies’?
So, after Clegg’s spineless capitulation, it was heartening to read today that students at DePaul University in Chicago have voted in favour of a referendum calling for divestment from companies “that profit from Israel’s discriminatory practices and human rights violations” and help “violate people’s rights to life, movement, healthcare, education and freedom.”
They are calling on the university to divest its funds from “corporations that manufacture weapons and provide surveillance technology to the Israeli government, army and prison services”, including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar.
Students say the vote was won despite a massive counter-campaign of intimidation and disinformation by pro-Israel lobbyist group StandWithUs and the Israeli consulate general in Chicago. “It is clear that DePaul students do not wish to have their tuition dollars invested in weapons manufacturers,” said a student organizer.
Following the DePaul vote, StandWithUs announced on their website: “We have seen divestment create this toxic campus environment wherever it rears its ugly head, as it has on several American campuses. Divestment advocates bring lies about Israel to campus, and display extreme ignorance about the complexities of the Middle East conflict, about Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas, about the anti-Semitic incitement in Palestinian society, and about Israel’s repeated efforts to make peace. This movement singles out Israel and targets and intimidates pro-Israel and Jewish students, and resonates with anti-Semitism.” The words sound like they are scripted by the Lie Machine in Tel Aviv.
The ‘world’s most moral army’ and its war on students
DePaul students are to be congratulated for not flinching under Zio-pressure. Other Western students, and indeed students and academics all round the world, who face the same bully-boy tactics when debating the question of boycott and disinvestment against Israel, need only remember what the Israelis do to Palestinian students.
The last thing Israel wants is masses of bright and clever young Palestinians next-door in the shredded remains of the Occupied Territories. But that’s exactly what Palestinian youngsters are… bright and clever, given half a chance. So they need repressing. They need humiliating constantly. They need to be discouraged. They need to have their education disrupted big-time, so that they become a broken, dispirited, docile mass without ambition, easily controlled and utterly dependent (as they are now) on a few crumbs of comfort from Western taxpayers.
So the Israeli authorities make spiteful war on students especially, as well as women and children generally. To get to Bethlehem University, or any other, many students have to run the gauntlet of Israeli checkpoints. “Sometimes they take our ID cards and they spend ages writing down all the details, just to make us late,” said one. Students are often made to remove shoes, belt and bags. “It’s like an airport. Many times we are kept waiting outside for up to an hour, rain or shine, they don’t care.” The soldiers attempt to forcibly remove students’ clothes or they swear and shout sexual slurs at female students.
Some tell how they are sexually harassed and spend the rest of the day worrying what the Israelis will do to them on their way home.
This daily abuse undermines student motivation and concentration. Many other obstacles are put in their way by the Occupation. Here are just three cases, about which I have written before, that illustrate why it is so vitally important for the Palestinians to achieve independence and security.
Merna
Merna was an honours student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.
Next the Israelis arrested her eldest brother, a 22 year-old artist, and imprisoned him for 4 years. Then they came back for Merna’s 18-year-old brother. Not content with that the military came again, this time to take her youngest brother – the ‘baby’ of the family – just 16. These were the circumstances under which Merna had to study.
Israeli military law treats Palestinians as adults as soon as they reach 16, a flagrant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israeli youngsters, on the other hand, are not regarded as adults until 18. Palestinians are dealt with by Israeli military courts, even when it’s a civil matter. These courts ignore international laws and conventions, so there’s no legal protection for individuals under Israeli military occupation.
As detention is based on secret information, which neither the detainee nor his lawyer is allowed to see, it is impossible to mount a proper defence. Besides, the Security Service always finds a bogus excuse to keep detainees locked up “in the greater interest of the security of Israel”. Although detainees have the right to review and appeal, they are unable to challenge the evidence and check facts as all information presented to the Court is classified.
Under huge mental stress Merna nevertheless determined to carry on with her studies. The “most moral army in the world”, as the Israelis call their uniformed thugs, may have robbed her brothers of an education, but she would still fight for hers. Sleepless and tearful, Merna went to university next day as usual.
A fellow student recalled that when chatting to Merna online in the evenings, she often had to leave the computer because the military had barged into her home. But even if she’d been up all night while Israeli soldiers trashed her house and questioned her family, she always came to school the next day. “Coming to school is a way of getting away from what is happening in the refugee camp,” said Merna. “It’s like an oasis here for me.” But her thoughts were never far from her cousin and brothers. “I only wish they were allowed this opportunity.”
She became a senior member of the Bethlehem University Student Ambassadors Programme and an example to fellow classmates. Young minds like Merna’s continue to persevere against the odds. Though greatly distracted by the cruel fate of her close family, the ordeal forged a steely resolve. The purposeful way she lived her university life, say the Brothers at Bethlehem Uni, gave her added strength and confidence. Merna managed to turn the tables on adversity. Her loss was actually her gain.
Berlanty
This Christian girl, a 4th year Business Administration student, was originally from Gaza but lived in the West Bank after receiving a travel permit from the military to cross from Gaza to the West Bank. She was snatched by the Israeli military while returning from a job interview in Ramallah. The 21 year-old, due to graduate in a few weeks’ time, was suddenly deported to Gaza “for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University”. She was about to be robbed of her degree at the last minute.
The “most moral army in the world” blindfolded and handcuffed her, loaded her into a military jeep and drove her from Bethlehem to Gaza, despite assurances by the Israeli Military Legal Advisor’s office that she would not be deported before an attorney from Gisha (an Israeli NGO working to protect Palestinians’ freedom of movement) had the opportunity to petition the Israeli court for her return to classes in Bethlehem.
When they’d crossed the border the world’s most moral army dumped Berlanty in the darkness late at night and told her: “You are in Gaza.”
“I had refrained from visiting my family in Gaza for fear that I would not be permitted to return to my studies in the West Bank,” she told Gisha on her mobile phone before the soldiers confiscated it. “Now, just two months before graduation, I was arrested and taken to Gaza in the middle of the night, with no way to finish my degree.”
The Israeli embassy in London, when asked for an explanation, said that Berlanty held a permit that had expired and she’d been living in the West Bank illegally. “As you probably know, every Gaza resident who stays in the West Bank requires a permit, failing to do so is a breach of the law.” If she wished to complete her studies at Bethlehem, she should apply for a permit to the relevant authorities. However, Bethlehem University told me that of the 12 students from Gaza who had applied to attend the University NOT ONE had received permission from the Israeli authorities.
Her appeal, handled by Gisha, was turned down. It was a classic example of how Israel’s administrative ‘laws’ are framed to ride rough-shod over citizens’ rights enshrined in international law. For example, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. The state of Israel also has an obligation under the Oslo Agreements to “respect and preserve without obstacles, normal and smooth movement of people, vehicles and goods within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip”.
While Israel’s embassy here in London pronounced the ruling on Berlanty’s fate, their Ambassador was whining about a warrant issued in London for the arrest of ex-foreign minister Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes. Livni had overseen the murderous assault on Gaza the previous December/January, which killed 1400, including a large number of women and children, maimed thousands more and left countless families homeless.
If Berlanty, who had committed no crime, could not come and go as she pleased in her own country — the Holy Land – what made Israel’s Ambassador think that the blood soaked Livni, and others like her, should be allowed to come and go as they pleased in the UK? But that’s another shameful story.
Samer
A few months before he was due to graduate the Israeli military arrested Samer and threw him in jail… for 6 long years. Then, at 27, he returned to campus to finish what he started. “I feel like a regular student again,” he said with a wide grin. “I have a university notebook and textbooks. I can ask and answer questions freely. I can communicate openly with students, professors, and staff. It’s a real life, an authentic life.”
When imprisoned he was denied access to a lawyer for 55 days, then moved from one Israeli jail to another for more than six years. He was tortured on numerous occasions, he says, and regularly interrogated eight hours a day for four to five days, in just a T-shirt, squatting on the cold ground with his hands tied and an air conditioner blowing on his back. He was held in solitary confinement for more than a year.
Membership of a student group in Palestine is outlawed under Israeli military law, and students who engage in campus politics risk arrest by Israel’s uniformed gangs who barge into Palestinian society and academic life to abduct them. Many Western leaders began their political careers making a name for themselves at the Oxford Union and similar student debating groups or taking part in demos. How would they have reacted to being clapped in irons for it?
A good many of them, to their everlasting shame, are now signed-up Friends of Apartheid Israel. Members of the Israeli cabinet went to university too, presumably. Are we to believe that they never engaged in student politics?
Samer’s experience is similar to that of hundreds of Palestinian students who find themselves political prisoners. Many are left to rot in jail indefinitely, denied due process, a fair trial and legal representation. Some wait up to two years to be charged. Others are charged under Israeli military law, which falls a long way short of the justice standards required under international law.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society reckoned that seven Bethlehem University students were at that time in Israeli prisons for taking part in ‘student activities’. In Samer’s case, he was abducted for joining Fatah’s resistance movement after the 2000 Intifada (uprising). It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to resist an illegal occupier.
Coming back to university after prison is no easy thing. Samer suffered the cruel effects of six years’ incarceration and was often tired, depressed, stressed and jumpy. But he knew that the University was his anchor, the main hope in his young life.
So there you have it…. the evil of Israel’s ‘snatch squads’ that prey on Palestine’s young people, and the regime’s cruel disregard for their well being and education while in its clutches. The apartheid regime, after 66 years, still hasn’t emerged from the swamp.
Plain clothed Israeli forces kidnap 3 young men, wife of prisoner detained in court
Palestine Information Center – 24/05/2014
RAMALLAH — Israeli undercover soldiers kidnapped three Palestinian young men in down el-Bireh on Friday night.
Sources in the city said that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and soldiers in plain clothes were heavily deployed in the city before kidnapping the three young men.
Meanwhile, the wife of a Jerusalemite prisoner was arrested during her presence in court to attend the trial hearing of her son.
Wadi Hilwe information center said that the wife of the Jerusalemite prisoner Ahmed Obaid, who is serving a life sentence, was in court on Friday to attend the hearing of her son Anas, who was arrested at Qalandiya roadblock on Thursday.
It said that the intelligence officer in court asked her to head to the interrogation section to clarify certain things, but she was then told that she was under arrest.
IOF soldiers detained Mohammed the eldest son of Ahmed Obaid a few days ago.
Florida man cooked to death in scalding shower as punishment by prison guards
Police State USA | May 21, 2014
MIAMI, FL — A torturous “punishment” session turned fatal for a mentally-ill prisoner, when prison guards forced him to stand in a tiny shower stall while being blasted by scalding hot water until his skin began to shrivel away from his body and he died. Fellow inmates say he begged for his life before collapsing in the shower.
* * * * *
Darren Rainey, 50, died while incarcerated a the Dade Correctional Institution. He was serving a 2-year sentence for a victimless crime; possession of cocaine. At the time of his death, he had only one month to go before his release.
Rainey, who suffered from mental illness, was accused of defecating in his cell without cleaning it up. The Florida’s Department of Corrections often comes up with cruel and imaginative punishments for prisoners — allegedly ranging from starvation diets to forcing prisoners to fight so the guards could place bets.
Rainey’s punishment was to stand confined in a narrow chamber, being blasted with hot water and steam, and left to suffer there for over one hour.
“I can’t take it no more, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,’’ Rainey screamed over and over, the Miami Herald discovered from a fellow inmate’s grievance complaint.
The Miami Herald reports that it was DOC Officer Roland Clarke who was on video placing Rainey in the shower at 7:38 p.m on June 23, 2012. He was found dead at 9:30 p.m.
When Rainey’s body was found, his skin was cooked to the point where it was coming loose from his body, a condition known as slippage.
The facility then did its best to cover up the death. Sources say that it was alleged that Rainey had a heart attack, yet DOC refused to perform an autopsy. The official cause of death has never been announced.
Conveniently, the camera outside the shower “malfunctioned” right after Rainey was forced in.
The Rainey investigation has remained open since 2012, with no explanation about why it has taken so long. No one has been charged with the death of Darren Rainey.
“Two years is a very long time to wait to find out why your brother was found dead in a shower,” said Rainey’s brother, Andre Chapman.
When a fellow inmate tried to provide information to police and the media about the Rainey case, he was threatened with punishments of his own. Numerous other inmate complaints paint a disturbing picture of what justice looks like in Florida’s prisons.
Justice seems to be a fleeting concept in a society where people are imprisoned for non-violent, victimless offenses, and housed by sadistic torturers who themselves belong in a cage.
Israeli FM rejects “hypocritical” calls to investigate Palestinian teen killings
Al-Akhbar | May 21, 2014
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday rejected as “hypocritical” world criticism and demands for an investigation into the killings of two Palestinian teenagers by occupation forces last week.
“I reject any demand” for an international investigation, he told reporters on a tour of the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel.
“Such an incident will be investigated regardless of any demand,” he remarked, denouncing world criticism of the incident as “hypocrisy.”
His remarks came a day after calls by Washington and a top UN official for an immediate investigation into the circumstances of the two killings after video footage emerged showing the unprovoked shootings.
The closed-circuit footage, released on Monday by the NGOs Defence For Children International and B’Tselem, appeared to show separate incidents in which two youngsters were shot as they walked down the same street near Ramallah as Palestinians marked the 66th anniversary of the Nakba.
Although protests were taking place in the area on that day, there is no visible evidence of clashes in the footage.
Watch the footage:
The Palestinian leadership accused Israel of their “deliberate execution.”
But the Israeli army dismissed the footage as having been “edited,” and said it was investigating the incident.
Late on Wednesday, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington expected the Israeli government “to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation to determine the facts surrounding this incident.”
And Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, called for an “independent and transparent” probe.
He said it was “of serious concern that initial information appears to indicate that the two Palestinians killed were both unarmed and appeared to pose no direct threat.”
But Lieberman brushed off such calls.
“We don’t need an American demand” to launch an investigation, he said.
“We will do it as part our commitment to the Israeli army’s moral code.”
Israel had claimed that its occupation forces fired rubber bullets try to put down the protest, and denies using live bullets.
The the youths, identified as 16-year-old Mohammed Odeh Abu al-Thaher and 17-year-old Nadim Siyam Nawara.
In a separate development, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Wednesday published figures showing “a sharp increase” in the number of Palestinian refugees killed and injured by Israeli forces since the beginning of 2013.
According to UNRWA, there has also been a big increase in the numbers of those injured by live ammunition in 2014, with 43 wounded this year compared with 10 in the same period in 2013.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Britain’s MI5 accused of complicity in torture
Press TV – May 20, 2014
Britain’s domestic spying apparatus MI5 has been accused of complicity in torture.
A Dutch man of Somali origin, Ahmed Diini, accused the British spy agency of questioning him while he was being tortured in an Egyptian prison earlier this year.
Diini said during his eight-month imprisonment in Cairo that he was shackled, hooded, repeatedly beaten, and threatened that his wife would be raped.
The former British resident, who is also a grandson of the deposed Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, claimed that the alleged MI5 agents worked closely with Egyptian security forces, promising him his freedom if he agreed to work for the British intelligence service.
The Dutch man was imprisoned for unknown reasons following the ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
The claim comes as the head of MI5 told lawmakers in November that his officers would never participate in or condone torture, or take part in operations where a suspect is being illegally detained by a foreign state.
This is while the Constitution Project report last year slammed Britain for violating human rights through colluding with the US in the torture and rendition of terror suspects.
The dossier also claims MI5 agents under the last Labour government knew that prisoners were ill-treated at the hands of their captors
For years, Labour ministers denied involvement in rendition. But the report pointed out that the UK had paid out around £10 million to more than a dozen detainees after they were illegally rendered and tortured.
Unlawful killing of two Palestinian teens outside Ofer
Al-Akhbar | May 20, 2014
Video footage obtained by a human rights group Monday showed the chilling shooting deaths of two Palestinian children by Israeli occupation forces last Thursday.
Israeli soldiers shot dead teenagers Mohammed Odeh Abu al-Thaher and Nadim Siyam Nawara during a protest coinciding with the 66th anniversary of the Nakba outside Israel’s Ofer prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel had claimed it fired rubber bullets during the May 15 protest to disperse the protesters.
But footage released by the Defence for Children International (DCI) captured from a security camera at a nearby house shows the youths, believed to be aged 16 and 17, being shot dead as they calmly walked.
The video shows the first victim walking in the opposite direction of the occupation forces before he is struck by a bullet in the back. Onlookers immediately rushed to his aid.
The second victim is shot in the chest in the same location as he walked slowly. He falls to the ground and struggles to get back up as others assist him and signal for the occupation forces to cease fire.
Both children were unarmed.
“Israeli forces continue to use excessive force and recklessly fire live ammunition and rubber-coated metal bullets on unarmed protesters, including children, killing them with impunity,” Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine, said in a statement.
The report said a third, 15-year-old victim was shot in the back and left lung during the protest and is recovering at a Ramallah hospital.
International human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Israel’s use of deadly force against Palestinian protesters and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Kiev liable for crisis in eastern Ukraine: Analyst
Press TV – May 20, 2014
The Kiev government is actually responsible for the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine, a political analyst tells Press TV.
“We can blame the military operation launched by Kiev and this is not just a military operation. It’s not just used military forces of the Ukrainian army; it has also used militias, irregular troops, terrorist units, simple violent hooligans,” Manuel Ochsenreiter, chief editor of news magazine, Zuerst, said in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
He held the Kiev government and not Donetsk and Lugansk or even Moscow accountable for the ongoing crisis.
The acting Kiev government has been staging military operations in the eastern and southern regions since mid-April in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.
Nearly 130 people have so far been killed during clashes and operations by Ukrainian troops in the east and the south, according to figures from the United Nations.
The commentator further emphasized that the recent referendum in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk is not responsible for the humanitarian situation as it did not take the social services from the country.
He added that an election or referendum has never changed the direct humanitarian situation of the people on the ground in any time of history, noting that Kiev and the West are likely to use it as an excuse.
“It’s a very cynical interpretation of the situation to say, well, you wanted to be independent, now take starve, don’t find a doctor, now don’t get medicine,” the analyst pointed out.
On May 12, Ukraine’s two eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence following local referendums in which the regions’ residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Kiev.
~~~
Ukrainian Police Find Traces of Chloroform at Site of Odessa Fire
RIA Novosti – 19/05/2014
KIEV – Ukrainian investigators have discovered traces of chloroform in garbage and ashes removed from the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, the site of a fire where dozens of activists died on May 2, acting Ukrainian Deputy Interior Minister Vitaliy Sakal said Monday.
“There is an expert conclusion that in the garbage and ashes, where there were already around 30 investigations held on the premises; a like substance of chloroform was discovered. It is used during surgeries, but how it ended up in the Professional Union Building is currently being investigated,” Sakal said during a press conference.
He said that inhaling large amounts of the substance leads to respiratory arrest, which is what happened during the fire, in which 32 people died from an unknown substance, not extreme temperatures.
Clashes in Odessa broke out on May 2, between pro-federalization activists on one side and fans of the Odessa and Kharkiv football teams on the other, joined by Euromaidan activists.
Pro-Kiev radicals joined by Right Sector militia blocked the anti-government protesters in the House of Trade Unions and set the building on fire by hurling Molotov cocktails inside. Those trapped inside had little chance of extinguishing the blaze, as fire hoses in the building were out of order.
Six died of bullet wounds, 32 suffocated, and 10 fell to their death by jumping through the windows of the burning building. Another 214 were injured. According to some information, another 48 are reported to be missing.
No plausible explanation has been offered for the fact that many of those who died did not try to take refuge on upper floors or the roof, prompting rumors that they were poisoned by an unknown chemical.
In Jewish religious ritual, settlers torch private Palestinian olive grove
Ma’an – 18/05/2014
HEBRON – Israeli settlers set fire to a private Palestinian field in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday night as part of a celebration for the Jewish holiday of Lag BaOmer.
Settlers circled around the field and watched as the fire burned olive trees, in a field that locals said belongs to the Iqneibi family.
Some of the settlers reportedly assaulted a cameraman who works for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz as he tried to take film the fire.
Lag BaOmer marks the the death of a 2nd century sage associated with Jewish mysticism, and is traditionally marked with bonfires.
Activist and co-founder of the Hebron activist group Youth against Settlements Issa Amro told Ma’an that Israeli settlers have recently been harassing and assaulting the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida in an attempt to scare them and get them to leave their houses and lands.
Hebron is a frequent site of tensions due to the presence of around 500 Israeli settlers in the Old City, many of whom have illegally occupied Palestinian houses and forcibly removed the original inhabitants.
Tel Rumeida hosts one of the most militant Jewish settlements in the city, and locals complain of near daily harassment and attacks by the groups, who are under heavy Israeli military protection.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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