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The broken truce

International Solidarity Movement | January 21, 2013

Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestine – A ceasefire was announced on 21st November, ending eight days of horrific bloodshed in Gaza. Has the delicate truce held over the past two months? It depends who you ask. Israelis or Gazans, each going about their daily lives on opposite sides of a border fence.

There has not been a single report of a rocket fired out of Gaza since 21st November. In contrast, four Palestinians have lost their lives and over 80 have been injured by Israeli forces since then. Yet these violations have received little or no coverage in the mainstream media. Palestinian civilians, whose only crime is to live in the border areas, are terrorized on a daily basis by the Israeli army. This is what everyday life under the ceasefire has meant for them.

Beit Lahiya, in the far north of the Gaza Strip is one such place. A week ago it saw the brutal murder of 20 year-old Mustafa Abu Jarad. Today, it was the site of another Israeli violation. Abdullah Marouf, 18, was in the west of Beit Lahiya, near the coast, when he was shot in the right leg by Israeli forces, fracturing both his tibia and fibula.

Abdullah Marouf in hospital. (Photo by Desde Palestina) Abdullah Marouf in hospital. (Photo by Desde Palestina)

At about 9.00 on the morning of 21st January, Abdullah was in an area approximately 250 metres from the border fence, catching birds with his two brothers. A group of five or six Palestinians they were unaquainted with were also in the vicinity, closer to the fence than they were. Abdullah had been under the impression that he would be safe, however he noticed an Israeli soldier in a watchtower on the border and others on the ground. The soldiers began firing live ammunition towards them and Abdullah was shot.

Two local farmers brought him to Kamal Adwan hospital where surgeons performed percutaneous pinning of his lower leg which had sustained damage from an entry wound and a significantly larger exit wound. He requires subsequent surgery in a couple of months to fit internal wires. His recovery is estimated to take at least 12 months.

Abdullah, who is engaged to be married, had been working with his two brothers selling scrap metal. Now they will have to support a family of nine without his help. It is unsurprising that he expressed a lack of faith in the ceasefire agreement.

One can only expect that the Palestinian resistance has also lost faith and is fast losing patience. If a response is provoked it will appear to be in a vacuum – despite this being far from the case – due to the shameful silence maintained by the international community throughout the ongoing Israeli atrocities. It is for people of conscience to protest this injustice and prevent a further escalation of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

January 24, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New U.S. Counterterrorism Playbook to Exclude Pakistan from Drone “Kill” Rules

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 23, 2013

The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) drone campaign in Pakistan will not be bound by new counterterrorism rules that the Obama administration is finalizing.

The rules, referred to as the “playbook” by officials, are supposed to establish parameters for killing overseas threats. Once completed, the playbook will detail how names are added to assassination lists, which legal principles justify the killing of U.S. citizens, and what offices must sign off before drone strikes are carried out.

But the CIA will be exempted from the rules for at least a year. Agency leaders objected to being bound by the playbook, citing the pressing need to continue bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan before the U.S. withdraws from neighboring Afghanistan, where the drones are based.

Greg Miller of The Washington Post wrote that the drafting of “the playbook was nearly derailed late last year by disagreements among the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon on the criteria for lethal strikes and other issues. Granting the CIA a temporary exemption for its Pakistan operations was described as a compromise that allowed officials to move forward with other parts of the playbook.”

Critics of the government assassination program view the playbook as indicative of the institutionalization of the U.S. killing policy. It is “a step in exactly the wrong direction,” Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s National Security Project, told the Post. She called it “a further bureaucratization of the CIA’s paramilitary killing program.”

January 23, 2013 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Teenager dies following shooting in Bethlehem

International Solidarity Movement | January 23, 2013

Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine – On Friday January 18th at approximately 3.20 pm, fifteen year old Saleh Elamareen was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. Today Wednesday 23 January he was pronounced dead.

Salah Elamareen was outside the Lajee Refugee Centre when he was shot through the left forehead. The Centre lies some distance from the wall itself. At the time of the shooting eyewitnesses have said that protests were not happening, and that the people of Aida were simply watching the soldiers from afar. This is supported by video documentation of the incident, which shows a group of youth carrying Elamareen after he was shot.

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Two of the doctors who treated Elamareen did not rule out previous rumours that he was shot with a dumdum bullet, due to the fragmentation of the bullet within his head. Another doctor has claimed it was definitely a dumdum bullet in his opinion.

Dumdum bullets expand after impact and are designed to cause maximum damage and pain. Due to the brutality of these bullets they are illegal under international law. Article 8 at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala made the use of expanding bullets in non-international armed conflict a war crime. The Hague Convention also prohibits there use in international warfare. If the doctors are correct and a dumdum bullet was in-fact used, this would be another serious violation of international laws and standards by Israel.

The head of the department under which he was treated at the government hospital said he was hit with the bullet in the left frontal section of the head, around the eye, causing large intracranial hemorrhaging. A number of doctors who looked at the patient concluded that the bullet exploded in the brain. The CT scan shows the shrapnel inside his skull. The entry wound shows significant impact to the skull, and there is no exit wound.

January 23, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces kill woman near Hebron

Ma’an – 23/01/2013

HEBRON – Israeli forces shot and killed one person and injured another in the Hebron district on Wednesday, medics said.

Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli soldiers traveling in a civilian car opened fire at a group of people at the entrance to al-Arrub refugee camp south of Bethlehem.

Lubna Munir Hanash, 22, was shot in the head and died from her injuries, medics said.

Suad Yusuf Jaara was shot in the hand and transported to Ahli hospital in Hebron.

Witnesses told Ma’an that after the shooting Israeli soldiers prevented an ambulance from arriving at the scene for around 10 minutes.

Locals said there were no clashes in the area at the time.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said that “soldiers were attacked by Palestinians who hurled multiple firebombs at them while they were traveling near al-Arrub. Soldiers returned fire and the circumstances of the incident are currently being reviewed.”

Israeli soldiers searched the area and found several firebombs ready for use, she said, adding that no soldiers were injured in the incident.

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January 23, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Does Guatemala Include “Extrajudicial Executions” in its Calculation of National Murder Rates?

By Sara Kozameh | CEPR The Americas Blog | January 18, 2013

On January 14th, a day marking the one-year anniversary of his administration, Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina presented his first annual report on the state of the country. In his speech, Pérez Molina, a former general, graduate of the School of the Americas and accused of being  a war criminal implicated in the systematic use of torture and acts of genocide, hailed a “historic 10 percent reduction in violent crime” and “an almost five point drop in the homicide rate per every 100,000 inhabitants” from the previous year. Guatemala currently has one of the highest murder rates in the world (41 murders per every 100,000 inhabitants); it had a total of 5,122 murders in 2012. Ironically, while President Pérez Molina was reporting back to the nation on crime statistics and murder rates that morning, the mayor of the town of Jutiapa had just been shot down, dying almost immediately of sixteen bullet wounds.

In the 1980s, the “scorched-earth” campaign of the Guatemalan military tortured, slaughtered and massacred entire villages, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 people. Under the dictatorship of General Efraín Ríos Montt from 1982-83 state violence in Guatemala has been said to have been the most brutal. A year ago, after years of attempts by human rights defenders to put him on trial, Ríos Montt was charged with genocide in Guatemalan courts. He has since filed two petitions to acquire amnesty from the law, the second of which is still awaiting a ruling. Last month Pérez Molina, who himself served under General Ríos Montt during the 1980s, issued and then suspended a decree stating that it would stop adhering to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on cases of crimes against humanity and genocide that occurred before 1987,  which human rights defenders say could be an attempt to prevent legal challenges from taking place.

In 2011, when presidential elections were held, Guatemalan and international human rights organizations warned of the danger in electing a former general implicated in “scorched earth” campaigns and extrajudicial executions, pointing out that militarization and repression would likely escalate if Pérez Molina were to win.

On October 4th 2012, those fears were realized as military forces once again attacked, shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of peaceful protesters in the Mayan K’iché community of Totonicapán, and effectively carrying out a massacre. When the ordeal was over, at least six protestors had been killed and another 34 wounded in the first military massacre since the 1996 peace accords were signed. The 3,000 unarmed indigenous protestors had blocked a section of the Inter-American Highway in order to protest rising energy prices, a new educational reform and to negotiate a constitutional reform.

Seven days later, an investigation by the Public Ministry and the National Institute of Forensic Sciences confirmed that the 5.56 caliber bullets that killed and wounded protestors had come from the Galil rifles used by the military. Until then, Pérez Molina had steadfastly denied that his soldiers had been armed or had fired, and attempted to misrepresent details of the incident, finally insisting that soldiers had only fired into the air, and attributing the first shot fired at protestors to a private security guard.

After Pérez Molina was forced to retract his denials about the incident, the officer in charge, Coronel Chiroy, and eight of his soldiers were arrested and charged with “extrajudicial execution”.

In response to international criticism about the incident days after its occurrence, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Harold Caballeros dismissed the murder of the indigenous protestors, stating that: “With sadness, I recognize that in some parts of the world eight deaths is a very big deal, but, although it sounds bad to say this, … every day we have double that number of deaths [from violence]. So, it’s not something that we should make a big deal about.”

At a time when militarization in the region is on the rise and violent repression of dissent has returned, a president accused of war crimes who denies that genocide ever took place in his country, and who has attempted to cover up an obvious massacre, it is difficult to take with much optimism the news that 526 less homicides were reported in 2012 than in 2011. And it begs the question; does the Guatemalan government include its own murders in that calculation? Or does the massacre at Totonicapán actually put the 2012 total at 5,128?

January 22, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zero Dark Thirty: Selling Extra Judicial Killings

By Deepa Kumar | Empire Bytes | January 13, 2013

The film Zero Dark Thirty has sparked debate on its justification of torture, its misuse of facts, and its pro-CIA agenda. The main focus of the debate so far has been on whether torture was necessary to track Osama bin Laden and whether the film is pro or anti torture.

Criticism of the film has come from the highest levels of the political establishment. In a letter to the CIA, Diane Feinstein, Karl Levin and John McCain, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, fault the film for showing that the CIA obtained through torture the key lead that helped track down Osama bin Laden. The letter further blasts former CIA leaders for spreading such falsehoods in public statements.

Film director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who worked with the CIA in the making of this film, likely did not expect such push back since they seem to have got a green light from the White House.

In the face of these attacks, some have risen to the film makers’ defense such as Mark Bowden, the author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Writing in the Atlantic, he argues that the film is not pro-torture because the first scene shows that torture could not stop an attack in Saudi Arabia, instead it was cleverness and cunning that produced results.

Far more commentators, however, in a range of mainstream media from the New York Times, to CNN and the Daily Beast, have stated that the film lied about torture. Taking their lead from Feinstein et al. numerous voices have condemned the film and insisted that bin Laden’s whereabouts were obtained through means other than torture.

It’s hard to say who is correct. The CIA clearly has an interest in promoting its version in order to win public support for its clandestine activities. The Democrats have an interest in distancing themselves from torture so as to separate themselves from the worst of the Bush era policies.

While much of the air is being sucked up by this debate, scant attention has been paid to the larger, and in my view, more significant message of this film: that extra judicial killing is good. The film teaches us that brown men can and should be targeted and killed with impunity, in violation of international law, and that we should trust the CIA to act with all due diligence.

At a time when the key strategy in the “war on terror” has shifted from conventional warfare to extra judicial killing, here comes a film that normalizes and justifies this strategy. The controversy around this film will no doubt increase its box office success, but don’t expect mainstream debate on extra judicial killing. On this, there is bipartisan consent. Therefore the real scandal behind this Oscar nominated film—its shameless propaganda for extra judicial murder—will remain largely hidden.

Rebranding the Killing Machine

Zero Dark Thirty has very clear-cut “good guys” and “bad guys.” The CIA characters, in particular Maya and Dan, are the heroes and brown men, be they Arab or South Asian, are the villains.

The first brown man we encounter, Omar, is brutally tortured by Dan as Maya the protagonist (played by Jessica Chastain) watches with discomfort and anxiety. We soon learn, however, that Omar and his brethren wanted “to kill all Americans” thereby dispelling our doubts, justifying torture, and establishing his villainy.

In an interesting reversal (first established by the TV show 24) torture, a characteristic normally associated with villains, is now associated with heroes. This shift is acceptable because all the brown men tortured in the film are guilty and therefore worthy of such treatment. Maya soon learns to overcome her hesitation as she becomes a willing participant in the use of torture. In the process, audiences are invited to advance with her from discomfort to acceptance.

A clear “us” versus “them” mentality is established where “they” are portrayed as murderous villains while “we” do what we need to in order to keep the world safe. One scene in particular captures “their” irrational rage against all Americans. This is the scene when Maya is attacked by a barrage of machine gun fire as she exits a safe house in her car. We are then told that her identity as a CIA agent is not public and that, in fact, all Americans are the targets of such murderous rage and brutal attacks in Pakistan.

Pakistan, the country in which the majority of the film is set, is presented as a hell hole. In one of the early scenes, Maya, as a CIA freshman new to the area, is asked by a colleague what she thinks of Pakistan. She replies: “it’s kind of fucked up.”

Other than being the target of bombing attacks in her car and at a hotel, a part of what seems to make Pakistan “fucked up” is Islam. In one scene she is disturbed late at night by the Muslim call to prayer sounding loud enough that it wakes her from her sleep. Disgusted by this, she grunts “oh God” and rolls back to sleep. Maya also uses the term “mullah crackadollah” to express her contempt for Muslim religious leaders (I have never heard this term before and hope that I transcribed it correctly. I certainly do not wish to waste another $14 to watch the film again, and will wait till the film is out on DVD to confirm this term).

What does not need reviewing to confirm is the routine and constant use of the term “Paks” to refer to Pakistani people, a term that is similar to other racist epithets like “gooks” and “japs.” The film rests on the wholesale demonization of the Pakistani people. If we doubt that the “Paks” are a devious lot that can’t be trusted, the film has a scene where Maya’s colleague and friend is ambushed and blown to bits by a suicide bomber whom she expected to interrogate.

Even ordinary men standing by the road or at markets are suspicious characters who whip out cell phones to inform on, and plot against, the CIA. It is no wonder, then. that when Pakistanis organize a protest outside the US embassy we see them with contempt and through the eyes of Maya, who is standing inside the embassy, and whose point of view we are asked to identify with.

For a film maker of Bigelow’s talent it is shocking to see such unambiguous “good guys” and “bad guys.” The only way to be brown and not to be a villain in her narrative is to be unflinchingly loyal to the Americans, as the translator working for the CIA is. The “good Muslim” does not question, he simply acts to pave the way for American interests.

Against the backdrop of this racist dehumanization of brown men, Maya and her colleagues routinely use the word “kill” without it seeming odd or out of place. After Maya has come to terms with the anguish of losing her friend in the suicide attack she states: “I’m going to smoke everybody involved in this operation and then I’m going to kill Osama bin Laden.” When talking about a doctor who might be useful in getting to bin Laden, she says if he “doesn’t give up the big man” then “we kill him.”

At the start of the film Maya refuses a disguise when she re-enters the cell in which Omar is being held. She asks Dan if the man will ever get out and thereby reveal her identity to which he replies “never,” suggesting that Omar will either be held indefinitely or killed.

A top CIA official blasting a group of agents for not making more progress in the hunt for bin Laden sums up the role of the CIA as a killing machine in the following manner, he says “do your fucking jobs and bring me people to kill.” By this point in the film, the demonization of brown men is so complete that this statement is neither surprising nor extraordinary.

It is a clever and strategic choice that the resolution of film’s narrative arc is the execution of Osama bin Laden. After all, who could possibly object to the murder of this heinous person other than the “do good” lawyers who are chastised in the film for providing legal representation for terrorists.

Here then is the key message of the film: the law, due process, and the idea of presenting evidence before a jury, should be dispensed with in favor of extra judicial killings. Further, such killings can take place without public oversight. The film not only uses the moral unambiguity of assassinating bin Laden to sell us on the rightness and righteousness of extra judicial killing, it also takes pains to show that this can be done in secret because of the checks and balances involved before a targeted assassination is carried out.

Maya is seen battling a male dominated bureaucracy that constantly pushes her to provide evidence before it can order the strike. We feel her frustration at this process and we identify with her when she says that she is 100% sure that bin Laden is where she says he is. Yet, a system of checks and balances that involves scrupulous CIA heads, and a president who is “smart” and wants the facts, means that due diligence will not be compromised even when we know we are right.

This, in my view, is the key propaganda accomplishment of the film: the selling of secret extra judicial killing at a time when this has been designated the key strategy in the “war on terror” for the upcoming decade.

The Disposition Matrix

As I have argued in my book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, the Obama administration has drawn the conclusion, after the failed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, that conventional warfare should be ditched in favor of drone strikes, black operations, and other such methods of extra judicial killing.

The New York Times expose on Obama’s “kill list,” revealed that this strategy is one presided over by the president himself. John Brennen, his top counter-terrorism adviser, is one of its key authors and architects. Brennen’s nomination to head the CIA is a clear indication that this strategy will not only continue but that the spy agency will more openly become a paramilitary force that carries out assassinations through drone attacks and other means, with little or no public oversight.

Greg Miller’s piece in the Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration has been working on a “blueprint for pursuing terrorists” based on the creation of database known as the “disposition matrix.” The matrix developed by the National Counterterrorism Center brings together the separate but overlapping kill lists from the CIA and the Joint Operations Special Command into a master grid and allocates resources for “disposition.” The resources that will be used to “dispose” those on the list include capture operations, extradition, and drone strikes.

Miller notes that Brennen has played a key role in this process of “codify[ing] the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists.” Based on extensive interviews with top Obama administration officials, Miller states that such extra judicial killing is “likely to be extended at least another decade.” Brennan’s nomination to the CIA directorship no doubt will ensure such a result.

In short, at the exact point that a strategic shift has been made in the war on terror from conventional warfare to targeted killing, there comes a film that justifies this practice and asks us to trust the CIA with such incredible power.

No doubt the film had to remake the CIA brand dispelling other competing Hollywood images of the institution as a clandestine and shady outfit. The reality, however, is that unlike the film’s morally upright characters Brennan is a liar and an unabashed torture advocate (except for waterboarding).

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Brennen has “spouted complete though highly influential falsehoods to the world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including claiming that bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with Navy SEALS and had “used his wife as a human shield”.”

Zero Dark Thirty, nominated for the “best picture of year” Oscar award, is a harbinger of things to come. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by Obama earlier this month includes an amendment, passed in the House last May, that legalizes the dissemination of propaganda to US citizens. Journalist Naomi Klein argues that the propaganda “amendment legalizes something that has been illegal for decades: the direct funding of pro-government or pro-military messaging in media, without disclosure, aimed at American citizens.”

We can therefore expect not only more such films, but also more misinformation on our TV screens, in our newspapers, on our radio stations and in social media websites. What used to be an informal arrangement whereby the State Department and the Pentagon manipulated the media has now been codified into law. Be ready to be propagandized to all the time, everywhere.

We live in an Orwellian world: the government has sought and won the power to indefinitely detain and to kill US citizens, all wrapped in a cloud of secrecy, and to lie to us without any legal constraints.

The NDAA allows for indefinite detention, and a judge ruled that the Obama administration need not provide legal justification for extra judicial killings based on US law thereby granting carte blanche authority to the president to kill whoever he pleases with no legal or public oversight.

Such a system requires an equally powerful system of propaganda to convince the citizenry that they need not be alarmed, they need not speak out, they need not think critically; in fact, they need not even participate in the deliberative process except to pull a lever every couple of years in an elaborate charade of democracy. We are being asked, quite literally, to amuse ourselves to death.

~

Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Empire Abroad and at Home and Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the Ups Strike. She can be reached at: deepa_k276@yahoo.com.

January 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers violently break into two houses in Nablus, Kidnapping one person

International Solidarity Movement | January 15, 2013

Occupied Palestine – Last night more than forty Israeli soldiers invaded the city of Nablus and raided two homes looking for two young men. One of them was arrested Emad’s Motherduring the raid and the other one avoided arrest as he was working at the time of the raid.

At 2.30 am, dozens of Israeli soldiers with several dogs broke into Mead Nijad’s house breaking the door with a hammer and violently interrupting the family’s sleep. As the soldiers entered the house, they ordered everyone to have their hands up; they asked for Emad, blindfolded, handcuffed and arrested him. Immediately after, they took the ID’s of all family members and locked them outside the house on a cold winters night. In the meantime, the soldiers ransacked the whole house causing widespread destruction. They also took with them the young boy’s working tools. As Emad’s mother explains, “if they come with dogs, why do they have to destroy everything? If there is something in the house, the dogs would find it”. Furthermore, no reasons for why they arrested Emad were given; the commander just said “your son has caused problems to the Israelis, if you want to know where your son is, come to Huwwara”. The family still does not know the fate of their son.

In the case of Moaz Darduk (19), dozens of only Hebrew speaking soldiers arrived in his house at 3 am while he was at work and woke his parents up. As they asked for him and his father told the soldiers he was not at home but working, they locked his mother in a room and took his father to his other son’s house just in the next building. The commander, who was the only one speaking Arabic, kept saying to his father “do you know who I am? I am Haroun and I came here to kill your son”. When the commander went back to Moaz’s house he told to his parents “I want you to remember who I am, I am Haroun and I am here to kill your son. If you do not bring your son to Huwwara tomorrow morning at 9.30, we will kill him and return him to you in a coffin”.

Night raids and home searching are common tools used by the Israeli Occupation Forces to arrest Palestinian youth for no reason and as a collective punishment to scare Palestinian families.

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January 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli army kills Palestinian teenager

Al-Akhbar | January 15, 2013

A Palestinian teenager was shot and killed after Israeli soldiers stormed a high school in the West Bank, according to activists.

The victim, 17-year-old Samir Awad was from Budrus, a village close to the Israeli apartheid wall, Ma’an news agency reported.

According to the village council head Mohammad Morar, a clash erupted between Israeli forces and teenagers attending the Budrus high school.

Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli troops stormed into the school, causing students to throw rocks at them. Israeli soldiers then fired five bullets at the students.

Awad was shot four times in the head, chest and legs. He was taken to Ramallah for medical treatment, but succumbed to his wounds there.

The spokesman’s office of the Israeli Armed Forces claimed that Awad had tried to breach the Budrus security fence, ignoring warning shots fired in the air, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Late on Monday, 21-year-old Palestinian Mustafa Abu Jarad died in Gaza after being shot in the head by Israeli forces. A military spokesman later denied that the incident was related to the Israeli army.

January 15, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán

Weekly News Update on the Americas | January 13, 2013

Two campesinos were shot dead on Jan. 11 in the Lower Aguán Valley in the northern Honduran department of Colón as they were walking out of an estate which they and other campesinos had been occupying for two months. A long-standing conflict between campesino groups and large landowners in the area has resulted in the deaths of some 80 campesinos since the groups began occupying estates in December 2009 to dramatize their demands for land [see Update #1154]. According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, spokesperson for the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán, the victims were José Luis Reyes and Antonio Manuel Pérez. He said unidentified people shot them at close range from a moving automobile.

The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of the main campesino groups in the region, identified the campesinos as Luis Antonio Ramos Reyes, originally from the Tepusteca de Olanchito Yoro community, and Manuel Antonio Pérez, originally from Remolino on the Aguán river’s left bank. MUCA said the two men were members of another group, the Campesino Movement for the Recovery of the Aguán (MOCRA), whose 600 families began occupying estates on July 20, 2012. According to Paz, the campesinos had been occupying land claimed by the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH); MUCA said the land was owned by UNAH’s Atlantic Coast Regional University Center (CURLA), which had abandoned it. (AFP 1/12/13 via Terra.com; Anncol (Colombia) 1/13/13 via Rebelión (Spain))

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January 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

West Bank: Aid agencies tread gingerly in Area C

IRIN | January 11, 2013

As night descends in the Jordan Valley in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), a family in the village of Ras Al-Ahmar lights a small paraffin lamp in the tent they call home.

There is no electricity here and the nearby Palestinian villages are enveloped in darkness. The only visible cluster of light is from a nearby Israeli settlement.

Humanitarian agencies are well aware of the needs in this part of the West Bank but they face a challenge: play by the rules established by Israel or face the risk of having projects demolished.

Despite being outside the state of Israel, 90 percent of the Jordan Valley is under full Israeli civil and military control as part of Area C, a zone that covers 60 percent of the West Bank.

Palestinian communities here, among the poorest and most vulnerable in oPt, desperately need access to water, electricity, sanitation and other basic infrastructure.

But despite the needs, development organizations that try to improve living conditions in Area C say they find their ability to make any lasting impact hampered by Israeli restrictions and bureaucracy.

Like Palestinians, organizations that want to build basic service infrastructure such as houses, schools or water systems are required to submit an application for a permit to the Israeli authorities.

Often, these permits are not granted. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), between January 2000 and September 2007, over 94 percent of applications submitted by Palestinians to the Israeli authorities for building permits in Area C were denied.

“The permit regime is very confusing. There is no clarity about the status of an application, whether paperwork has been received, if it is complete,” Willow Heske, media lead for Oxfam in oPt, told IRIN. “Agencies have sometimes waited for two years only to get a rejection that comes without any explanation.”

“A few years ago we put in plans to build a water reservoir in Al-Jiftlik, to provide half of Al-Jiftlik with running water,” said Heske.

“The reservoir was considered a `building’ and we didn’t get the permit. So we moved to a plan B which still involved setting up a reservoir and piping system but above rather than below ground. This too was not accepted. So as a last resort we had to go back to distributing water tanks. And of course people were frustrated and disappointed.”

Challenging the Occupation

Some NGOs, among them Palestinian organizations like Ma’an Development Centre (MDC), believe that adhering to the permit regime helps legitimize the occupation, and choose to ignore the rules altogether.

“If you’re playing within the rules of the occupation then you are legitimizing it. We don’t seek permits from the Israelis. If we put in a permit request we would likely get denied,” MDC project manager Chris Keeler told IRIN. “And also because of a moral stance. We don’t think that a Palestinian NGO should be seeking permission from Israel to be building on Palestinian lands.”

For international organizations, it’s not only the possibility of having a permit denied that affects their work, but also the multiple ways in which the Israeli state bureaucracy hinders their work by issuing “stop work” orders to existing projects, refusing to issue work visas, or refusing to renew existing work permits for foreign staff.

Even MDC finds that it must sometimes work within existing framework restrictions.

“There are houses all over the Jordan Valley that need renovations,” said Keeler. “If we do a project in some of the communities in the north, it would likely get destroyed. So we work a lot in Al-Jiftlik and Al-Fasayil. We need permits in those places too, but because they are more established communities, there is less risk that they will get destroyed. A lot of donors want reassurance that structures we build will not be torn down.”

IRIN was unable to get a response from the Israeli government despite repeated attempts, but in the past the Israeli government spokesperson has said Israeli policy is shaped by security concerns.

EU Move

In May 2012, the European Union (EU) Council of Foreign Affairs called on Israel to meet its obligations to communities in Area C, “including by accelerated approval of Palestinian master plans, halting forced transfer of population and demolition of Palestinian housing and infrastructure… and addressing humanitarian needs.”

The Council stated that the “social and economic developments in Area C are of critical importance for the viability of a future Palestinian state.”

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the recommendations, saying they were “based on a partial, biased and one-sided depiction of realities on the ground” and that they “do not contribute to advancing the peace process”.

The Ministry said 119 projects were authorized in Area C in 2011 and that they ensured that “planned projects” were “coordinated and in conformity… with the law”.

Oxfam’s Heske believes the recent EU recommendations are bold and courageous, even though it is still not clear how they will play out on the ground. “These conclusions mean that there is now a full political commitment to work on development in Area C,” she said. “How it will play out, we don’t know, if it happens with or without permits. But we don’t want to see just one token water network here and there.”

Since 2011, the Palestinian Authority’s ministry for local government and local Palestinian councils have submitted 32 master plans for development in Area C to the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). Each master plan includes infrastructure development, health care, primary education, water provision, electricity and the development of agricultural land, and requires approval by the ICA through a lengthy process of negotiation.

However, according to Azzam Hjouj, acting general director for urban and regional planning in the Palestinian ministry of local government, even if master plans are approved by the ICA, it is expected that the Israeli authorities may issue demolition and “stop work” orders for some plans, particularly in areas like Al-Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley, and that political pressure will be required to ensure implementation.

Bedouin Villages

As for the more isolated Bedouin villages in the valley, the new master plans will not cover their areas.

“It’s difficult to make a master plan for these herding communities, because they are dispersed over large areas. They move around a lot and we don’t want to urbanize these areas, it’s their way of life,” Hjouj said. “And even if we made master plans, it would just give the ICA an excuse to congregate the herding communities into one area and take the remaining land.”

The Israeli Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT – a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense that engages in coordinating civilian issues between the government of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces, international organizations, diplomats, and the Palestinian Authority) said that many of the construction projects in Area C are “illegal and poorly planned”.

A report compiled by COGAT relating to projects in Area C states that “illegal construction projects that ignore master plans undermine the possibility for future expansions and create problems for electrical, sewage and water systems.”

More Advocacy?

As with the wider crisis, there are no easy solutions for humanitarian agencies seeking to provide aid in Area C, and finding the line between purely humanitarian work, and political engagement is tough.

For economist Shir Hever, author of The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation, Western governments and NGOs need to be more active in opposing the occupation of West Bank areas.

“Instead, donors put 99 percent of their work in doing what is allowed and 1 percent in protesting conditions,” he said.

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January 14, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

The hardest thing: Palestinian parents speak of their children killed by Israeli bombings

By Eva Bartlett | In Gaza | January 12, 2013

reham2    Nader Abu Mghaseeb1

During the Nov 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza, 182 Palestinians were killed, according to the World Health Organization’s Dec 2012 report, among whom 47 were children, including 16 under 5 years old. Another 1399 Palestinians were injured, most of them with multiple injuries.

It is only four years after Israel’s last major assault on Gaza, which killed over 1450 including those who died of their injuries, and injured over 5000.  Then there are the random Israeli attacks throughout the years, leaving injured suffering even years later.

And there were the under-reported attacks in the week preceding the Nov 14 attacks: the Nov 8 killing of 13 year old Ahmed Abu Daqqa as he played football, the Nov 10 killing of Mohammed Harara (16) and Ahmed Harara (17) as they played football, the subsequent killings of Ahmed Al- Dirdissawi (18) and Matar Abu al-‘Ata (19) when they rushed to the scene of the Harara killings (source: PCHR).

Every December and January, I remember the victims of the 2008-2009 massacre, particularly some of the harder incidents of burning to death from white phosphorous bombing, or point blank shootings of loved ones. All ages suffered, although we tend to pick up on the children. Somehow their murders, their maimings, their imprisonment strikes us more.

Two cases from the November 2012 attacks struck me and stay with me: the killing of 4 year old Reham as she stood a few metres from the door of her Nusseirat camp home, outside of which an Israeli  bomb exploded…and the murder of Nader, 14, killed by a precision drone missile as he walked to get food for his siblings… just two hours before the ceasefire.

Below are follow-up photos, the families and loved ones of Reham and Nader.  Allah yerhamhum (Allah, God, bless them).

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Mourning area for Reham Nabaheen, killed by an Israeli bombing outside her Nusseirat camp home.

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Abu Reham looks to where the Israeli bomb struck, the shrapnel of which blasted into his home and struck his daughter in the temple, killing her.

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Um Reham sits with other women, mourning her daughter.

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Fatoum, Reham’s neighbour and close friend, stopped speaking after her friend’s killing. Also four years old, she is in shock from knowing her friend is dead. Abu Reham: “I love her like I loved my daughter.”

Roa'a, Reham's infant cousin. Reham used to play with her and bring her treats.

Roa’a, Reham’s infant cousin. Reham used to play with her and bring her treats.

In the days following Reham’s murder, we visit the family in the simple Nusseirat home. Beside a mourning room set up to receive family and friends, a portrait of the girl I’d only until then seen dead in the morgue.

The home is barebones simple, the old Palestinian style of home and courtyard reconstructed with refugee camp means: cheap cement, toxic asbestos roof, chipped paint, thin walls and doors, sparse decor…no frills. A single olive tree grows in one side of the courtyard.

Um Reham sits amongst female relatives and although her daughter was killed only a few days earlier, is strong and tells me of the day. We’d seen her at al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah on Nov 21, after the shelling. Further back from where the explosion hit, Um Reham was still wounded in her face by flying shrapnel. Her other two sons suffered only minor injuries.

“We’d gone to my sister’s home in Bureij, at the beginning of the attacks. There was so much bombing in Nusseirat, we were afraid to stay here, our kids were terrified.  On the last day, we heard there would soon be a cease-fire and wanted to come home. I wanted to do laundry, to change my kids clothing. My sister told me to leave Reham with her, but I said no, I couldn’t leave my daughter behind.

After we’d returned to Nusseirat, we realized the bombing was still very heavy here. We were going to return to Bureij…“

Abu Reham, who we’d seen at the hospital morgue leaning over his daughter’s lifeless body, sobbing and kissing her, stoically continues explaining what happened that day.

Although Nusseirat was still being hammered, at the moment of the Israeli shelling which killed his daughter, it was relatively calm, he says.

“There was no visible danger, our neighbour across street was sitting on a chair by his doorway just minutes before the bombing. He left to go see something at a neighbour’s home…if he had not left, he would have been killed.“

He points out the two narrow courtyard doors to the street where a pocket in the asphalt speaks to the earlier bombing.

“It was around 4pm, one of the doors was closed, we were getting the kids ready to go back to Bureij. I’d brought out some cookies, and Reham went to get them out of the bag. She was reaching into the bag when the bomb struck. She was near the door, the shrapnel went right into her head. She died soon after, there was blood all over.

The sound of drones was insane then, it could’ve been a drone strike.”

“Tank,” his brother says, “it was a tank shell.”

The brother holds a girl.

“This is my daughter, Roa’a, she’s a year and a half old. Reham used to play with her every afternoon, she’d bring Roa’a chips and snacks… Reham used to always take care of her.”

A neighbour daughter comes over with his daughter, Fatoum (Fatema), 4 years old as Reham was. She is chubby cheeked and lovely, but unsmiling and won’t say a word.

“She came to play with Reham every day. A four year old shouldn’t have to know what death is, that her friend has been killed. She said to me, ‘my friend is dead, my friend died.’“

Abu Reham, whose daughter is just days dead, is worried about Fatoum who fell ill after learning Reham was dead.

“I love her like a daughter. Every child who loved my daughter, I love them like my own child (breaks down crying). I went to the cemetery, saw children from the area there, they had brought flowers and were tending Reham’s grave. They told me ‘we will visit her, even if your family moves, we’ll continue to visit her.’“

nader

Nader Abu Mghaseeb, 14, killed by precision Israeli drone bombing as he went to get food for his siblings.

Abu Nader tells how his son was killed by an Israeli bombing

Abu Nader tells how his son was killed by an Israeli bombing

When Nader's siblings awoke the morning after his murder, they asked for him, only to learn he'd been killed.

When Nader’s siblings awoke the morning after his murder, they asked for him, only to learn he’d been killed.

Abu Nader points to the hole in the road where the Israeli bomb which killed his son struck.

Abu Nader points to the hole in the road where the Israeli bomb which killed his son struck.

Shrapnel markings from the Israeli bombing which killed his son.

Shrapnel markings from the Israeli bombing which killed his son.

Light of the small shop to which Nader was headed when murdered by the Israeli bombing.

Light of the small shop to which Nader was headed when murdered by the Israeli bombing.

When killed, Nader was en route to the store to buy food for his siblings.

When killed, Nader was en route to the store to buy food for his siblings.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Pieces of the Israeli precision drone bomb which targeted Nader.

Nader's watch and the memory chip from his cell phone, which he had with him when targeted by the Israeli bomb.

Nader’s watch and the memory chip from his cell phone, which he had with him when targeted by the Israeli bomb.

On the eastern outskirts of Deir al Balah, central Gaza, we go to the home of the 14 year old whose mutilated body set me sobbing when I saw it in al-Aqsa hospital on Nov 21.  The family has a number of olive trees, from which they exist. Their simple home, just over a kilometre from the border and surrounded by trees on a small plot of land, is a little oasis in the over-crowded Strip.  But for Abu Nader, it is now hell.

“I look at his jeans, I remember him. I look at the house, I remember him. I look there, look there, wherever I look, I’m reminded of Nader.

I hate this house, this area. I hate life now. I started to hate life when my son was killed.

You don’t stay in a place if your dear one is no longer there.”

We’re sitting in the small, nylon-walled tent behind his home, drinking bitter coffee and listening as Abu Nader tells us how his son  was killed. Nader’s six younger siblings, for whom he’d been going to get food when killed, sit beside their father. When we walked into the tent, Abu Nader ran to one corner to grab a small vial of cologne, which he rolled onto the backs of our hands. Nader’s favourite.

“I had lit a fire and we were sitting like this. Sitting like this exactly. Nader asked if I had money, said he wanted to go to the shop to get food for dinner. I didn’t want him to go, but he said the ceasefire would start in a couple of hours, he’d be okay.

There was nothing to eat in the house. These kids need to eat, we’d had nothing in the house for 5 days.

Nader told me to warm the bread over the fire. He said he’d get some yogurt, some canned meat, anything so that all the kids could eat. One of his younger brothers went with Nader, but halfway there Nader told his brother to go back home. His brother kept saying he wanted to go with Nader, but Nader insisted he go back home, told him to wait for him at home.

His brother came back here and said to me, ‘Dad, Nader told me to come back here. He wouldn’t let me go with him to the store’. While he was telling me this, we heard a loud explosion.

My wife said that the explosion was very close to here. She told me to call Nader’s cellphone to see where he was. I called Nader but he cellphone was off. I kept trying to call him, and I ran to the street to try to find Nader.

I kept running until I reached the mosque. From the mosque I saw the light of the store.

And it was night, dark, about fifteen minutes after the evening prayer.

I was looking at the store and waiting for my son to come out of it, and didn’t see that my son was on the ground near me. There was blood all over the street. I thought it was water.

They fired a missile right at him.

When I saw him, I knelt down and grabbed him. There was no one around. I tried to pick him up but couldn’t. He was dead weight, heavy, I couldn’t pick him up on my own. And his legs were shredded, falling apart.

I started screaming, for anyone to hear and help me pick up my son and take him to the hospital.

No one heard me.

I left Nader and screamed to the houses around me, then came back to Nader, but no one heard me.

I sat next to him for a minute, panicking, didn’t know what to do.

I ran to another house to yell for help, but no one heard me.

I came back and wrapped my arms around him, put my head on his head. And I woke up in the hospital.

They killed him in a horrible way. They shot the missile right at him.

In the morning, one of Nader’s brothers came to me and said, ‘Nader’s bed is empty. Where is Nader?’

I told him, the Israeli army killed him.

We are all traumatized.

I’m not angry because Allah chose to take Nader.  Allah gives and Allah takes. The hardest thing is that I saw how Nader died. In pieces. How can I live seeing my son cut into pieces? He was a child. He went to get food for his siblings.”

Abu Nader, a wiry frame and the weathered face of a farmer, repeatedly breaks into sobs as he re-tells the story of Nader’s killing.

He takes out a bag of the shrapnel bits he collected from the bomb which killed Nader, a collection of circular, square and jagged pieces, some with serial numbers inscribed, some with the wiring and chips of a precisely-fired missile. He also shows us Nader’s wristwatch, something I’d honed in on at the hospital, looking away from Nader’s shredded legs and noting the watch, a bright plastic stopwatch the kind most teens love.

We walk through the darkness of the unlit village, the only lights being the mosque near which Nader was killed and the shop to which he’d been headed. Abu Nader shows us the hole in the road where the missile hit, points out shrapnel marks… The same tormented pointing out of details that Abu Reham performed.

He points out the mosque, which Nader prayed at devoutly. Nader’s mother later reiterates, “he was such a good boy, didn’t talk back to his parents, was excellent in school.”

At the small shop Nader never made it to that day, the shop owner shakes his head in regret, echoes the words of Nader’s parents about the boy’s character. Abu Nader pulls hummus, processed meat and yogurt from the fridge, waving it at us… this is why Nader was killed, because he’d wanted to bring these things to his family.

Two children, of 47 in the Nov 2012 Israeli attacks alone, killed in brutal ways their parents can never forget, on the afternoon of the impending cease-fire. Zionist aggressors know no bounds.

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January 12, 2013 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Night Terror in El Salvador

U.S.-Funded Fight against ‘Gangs’

By ALEXANDRA EARLY | CounterPunch | January 11, 2013

San Salvador – On December 12, 2012, 12 young people were arrested  in the poor community of El Progreso 3, in the northeastern part of San Salvador. Dressed all in black with their faces covered, police from the much-feared Anti-Gang Unit stormed the community in the middle of night, going home to home trampling down doors and pulling young people from a community center. The police claimed that the goal of the raid was to arrest suspected gang members, but several young community leaders were also apprehended, while their terrified families and neighbors looked on. The students were taken directly to jail, charged with illicit association, and thrown into crowded cells already filled with accused criminals awaiting trial.

Now, nearly a month after the raid, neighbors and members of the Movement of Popular Resistance-October 12 (the MPR-12), a national alliance of community organizations and unions, are demanding that the six youth leaders arrested be released from the overcrowded temporary jail where they are being held in inhumane conditions. Community members gathered in front of the downtown office of the Ombudsman of Human Right to show support for these falsely accused youth leaders and demand that the national police and specialized anti-gang units stop terrorizing the communities in and around the areas where the students were arrested.

About 50 people, including family members and neighbors of the arrested youth, addressed the Salvadoran press and held signs declaring, “Organizing to Improve our Communities is not a Crime” and, “Stop the Criminalization of Protest.” Ana Gladis Rivera, spoke about her twenty-five -year old son, Emerson Rivera, who, along with a friend and fellow youth organizer, Giovanni Aguirre, has been in hiding since the raid, fearing that to turn himself over to the authorities would land him in another overcrowded jail cell.

Like the others, Emerson’s mother was indignant at the charges of illicit association brought against her son, who has organized popular education schools, soccer tournaments and health campaigns in the community, and has worked with his neighbors on infrastructure projects in which the municipal government declined to invest. The MPR-12 alliance awarded Emerson and Giovanni scholarships in recognition of their local and national youth organizing work, and the two were expecting to start their university studies this month.  Rivera believes that her son and fellow youth organizers are being targeted because of their involvement with the leftist FMLN party and their outspoken criticism of the administration of Mayor Norman Quijano of the right-wing ARENA party. Quijano, who is also ARENA’s candidate for the 2014 presidential elections, has been widely criticized for his disregard for the poorer sectors of San Salvador. In November, Quijano ordered the violent eviction of thousands of street vendors, the majority of whom are single mothers with no other source of income.

Since the young men are charged with being tied to gang or organized crime, their cases are part of a specialized court system made up of police judges trained by the U.S. run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA). Under this specialized system, it seems that the police need very little, or even no, evidence to charge suspects with illicit association. In their first hearing in December, neither the youths nor their lawyers were able to present evidence in their defense. In 2007, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) reported on the increase in instances of police violence against young people and activists since the opening of the ILEA in 2005. These and other reports about the valuable lessons being imparted at the ILEA seem to contradict its stated goal of creating “a regional community of law enforcement professionals capable of effectively and efficiently fighting transnational crime, through the use of modern techniques and tools, with the utmost respect for human rights and the well-being of the people.” The terrorized residents of urban communities like El Progreso 3 would certainly question that description of their local police force. One of the El Progreso 3  residents told the staff of the Human Rights Office that a police officer stole $2000 from her neighbor during the December 12th raid and threatened to kill him if he reported the crime.

Community members from El Progreso 3 have been struggling under the dual pressures of police harassment and the violence of street gangs for some years. Carlos Vasquez, who works with the Catholic Church on violence prevention efforts in El Progreso 3 and surrounding communities complained that the police didn’t even investigate the murders of community members killed by gang members in past years.  Their only activity was to , enter the community to collect the dead bodies. Instead of working on violence prevention, Vasquez says the police have ramped up their harassment of youth in the community, monitoring and photographing their organizing activities and movements. Residents fear that the anti-gang police will raid the community again using this information and they worry who will be taken next.

In the meantime, Emerson Rivera and his friend Giovanni Aguirre remain in hiding. Their fellow youth organizers are stuck inside an overcrowded jail and are only allowed to see their mothers once a week for three minutes when they come to deliver food. The youths were thus unable to participate in a soccer tournament they had organized and could not celebrate the holidays with their families. They are waiting for the slow process of justice to continue, since their next court hearing may not be for three or four months. Ana Gladis Rivera and her neighbors and friends, however, will continue organizing for the release of the young leaders, hoping that with the support of Salvadoran and international human rights organizations Emerson, Giovanni and the others might be able to get back to their important work of improving their community and fighting for a more just and fair El Salvador.

Alexandra Early works in El Salvador as a Coordinator for U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities (elsalvadorsolidarity.org). She can be reached at elsalvador.solidarity@gmail.com.

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January 12, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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