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Israeli occupation forces seize two farm tractors used to supply Bedouins with water

Palestine Information Center – 31/07/2012

JORDAN VALLEY — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Tuesday morning confiscated two farm tractors used to transport water supplies to Bedouin hamlets near Khirbet Al-Mita village in the northern Jordan Valley region.

Head of the municipal council of these Bedouin areas Aref Daraghmeh said the IOF took the tractor in order to punish the Bedouin communities for their steadfastness against Israel’s attempt to evacuate them from their native land.

Daraghmeh stated that Israeli troops stormed Khirbet Al-Mita village and seized two tractors less than 24 hours after they ordered the Bedouin shepherds to stop erecting tents and demolish their homes and structures in the area.

He affirmed that the act was aimed at forcing the Bedouin communities to leave the area.

For his part, Hasan Makhamra, a Bedouin native, said this Israeli campaign started two months ago during which the IOF confiscated dozens of water containers used for drinking supplies.

Makhamra asserted that the Bedouin families direly need these containers to supply themselves with water after Israel appropriated water springs, wells and resources.

He pointed out that Israel extends its control over 98 percent of water resources in the Jordan Valley including the Jordan river and the dead sea for the benefit of about 7,000 Jewish settlers living in settlement outposts near the Bedouin areas.

In a separate incident, the IOF closed two roads used by Palestinian farmers in the vicinity of Deir Estia village in Salfit city, thus raising the number of agricultural roads closed in the village to six.

This Israeli measure is aimed to enable the Jewish settlers to tighten their control over the area near Qana Valley.

Head of Deir Estia municipal council Nadmi Salman said an Israeli bulldozer escorted by troops closed the roads of Abu Naser and Qattan Al-Jamea with soil barriers and huge boulders.

He added that the closure of these two roads prevented the Palestinian farmers from reaching their agricultural lands.

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July 31, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tuesday Raids Follow Monday Killing

By Craig Harrington | IMEMC & Agencies | July 31, 2012

On Tuesday the Israeli military raided several refugee camps south of Hebron and detained two residents. Five more Palestinians were arrested simultaneously around the West Bank.

The arrests of seven Palestinians on Tuesday morning as part of strategic Israeli raids into refugee areas continued what has already been a violent week in the West Bank. A series of raids into Palestinian homes and villages led to the arrest of two Palestinians near Hebron and five others around the West Bank, according to Ma’an News. The Israeli military has released no charges for the detainees or any cause for the raids.

The violence on Tuesday followed shocking news from Monday in which three Palestinians were shot at an Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank capital of Ramallah and occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli military released no reason for the shooting but sources did confirm that 40-year old Akram Dair was killed, reports Al Jazeera.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has blamed the Israeli military for the checkpoint killing, reports Ma’an News. The Israeli military has released no comment on what it simply referred to as ‘the incident’.

News of killings is often followed by other news of arrests in the immediate area or elsewhere in the Occupied Territories. Some have argued that the summary harassment and arrest of Palestinians is a tactic where raids are used as a means to stamp out local resentment for Israeli killings. The raids on Tuesday are not necessarily linked directly to Monday’s killing, but it is further evidence of Israeli occupation strategy.

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July 31, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Nablus: night raids and arrests

30 July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement

Five Palestinian men were arrested by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in a night raid inside the old city of Nablus on Saturday, July 28. Tear gas and sound bombs were used against families and civilians protesting the arrests. 19 young men suffered asphyxiation and were taken to hospital. Israeli soldiers remained inside the city until 6 a.m. terrorizing residents.

A Palestinian woman walks through the destroyed home of the Kharuf family | Team Palestina & Free Gaza

Military incursions in Nablus, which is located in Area A and therefore under Palestinian military jurisdiction, are breaches of the Oslo Agreement, but nonetheless occur regularly. As always in occupied Palestine, human rights and agreements take the back seat to Israel’s political desires.

Among the families who were particularly afflicted by the night raid was the al-Kharuf family. At 2 a.m. their home was attacked by Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas at the 9 inhabitants, 5 of whom are children under 12 years old. The children were terrified by the attack and have now been sent to stay with relatives outside the city. An elderly woman had to go to the hospital after suffocating from the tear gas.

The IOF entered the house, where they seized Walid Kharuf. He was questioned on the whereabouts of his brother Omar and was severely beaten. When Walid claimed he did not know where his brother was, he was threatened by the commanding officer, “if you are lying and I find you brother here, I will destroy the house.”

The Kharuf home was turned upside down in the search for Omar, who was eventually found. After arresting the 23 year old young man, Israeli soldiers ordered everyone outside while they applied a bomb to one of the walls in the house. The blast that followed tore a hole in the house and devastated the room in which it was placed.


A Palestinian man looks into a wardrobe of the home of the Kharuf family after Israeli forces carried out a raid and bombed a wall of the home | Team Palestina & Free Gaza

All of Saturday the Kharuf family was busy clearing their home of rubble and broken furniture scattered throughout the house.

“So now we are homeless,” Walid solemnly noted, surveying the damage to his home.

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July 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian voice from Susiya, a Palestinian village that existed before the establishment of the State of Israel

By Eva Bartlett | In Gaza | July 30, 2012

Five years ago, I met Nasser Nawaja and his family, and the community of Palestinian Susiya (not to be confused with the illegal Zionist colony of Susiya, in the same south of Hebron, West Bank area, whose colonists regularly viciously attack and aggress  Susiya Palestinians, including elderly, children and women).

When in 2007 I met Nasser, his parents, his wife, brothers and extended family, they had been enduring for years, almost two decades, aggressions by the Israeli army and by Zionist colonists. They had been forcibly moved from their very functional, cool in summer, and innovative cave homes to arid dessert land on which, periodically, the Israeli occupation army would invade and destroy the ramshackle homes these displaced families had constructed.

The layers of injustice inflicted on these peaceable, innovative people are countless, and in the many months I spent with them in 2007, I and other justice activists I joined, attempted to document both the injustices heaped upon these Palestinians and the beauty of their sustainably-living lives–when not attacked by the IOF and Zionist colonists (see Susiya Palestinians suffer).

*Khalil Nawaja, 2007, his leg broken by Zionist colonists in 2006

    

*photo of 2008 Zionist attack on Imran Nawaja, Khalil, and his wife Manam, and other family members, courtesy B’Tselem “shooting back”  documentation project–photo and video footage taken by Khalil Nawaja’s neice

Nasser has in the past few years–and against all odds, while providing for his wife and children and documenting the injustices inflicted on his community (at the expense of his own personal safety, many times attacked and beaten by Zionist colonists and for no reason except Occupation arrested by the IOF)–studiously expanded his knowledge of human rights law and the English language, to the point that he is able to now write poignant articles in well-read alternative press.

Please see his op-ed “Palestinian from Area C on a life in constant need of rebuilding” –wherein he describes Susiya life and how his village, surrounded by illegal Zionist colonies and outposts, was called “an illegal outpost” with the ultimatum of demolition, below:

I am Nasser Nawaj’ah. I am 30 years old. My mother gave birth to me in a cave in Susya El-Kadis. You know of Susya as a Jewish settlement in the South Hebron Hills, but Susya is first of all a Palestinian village that existed before the establishment of the State of Israel.

I was named after my grandfather, who was still alive at the time. In 1948, he was displaced from his village near Arad, now in southern Israel. When they were expelled, my father was just a little boy and my grandfather carried him in his arms until they reached their family in Susya El Kadis. They hoped one day to return to their village, but my grandfather died without ever seeing it again.

Nasser Nawaj’ah (L) and Salam Fayyad (Courtesy of B’Tselem)

A year after I was born, in 1983, the settlement of Susya was established. In 1986, after Israeli archaeologists found remnants of a synagogue in our village, we were expelled again. I was 4 years old. My father took me in his arms while bulldozers destroyed our homes and blocked the caves that we lived in. We scattered in our agricultural lands around the village. The grown-ups hoped that we would one day return to our caves, but a fence was built around the village and it was turned into an archaeological site. Today we still live on our agricultural land and I can see the place where I was born, but cannot go there. Israelis and foreigners from all over the world enter the site, but I cannot.

After 1990, the expulsion attempts started up again. Despite the fact that we have documents proving that the land belongs to us, the caves we lived in and our water wells were destroyed. But each time, we returned and built anew. At the same time, the Israeli settlement of Susya continued to flourish and grow. In 2001, after the murder of Yair Har Sinai, settlers arrived with the army and again destroyed the caves and the wells and uprooted our trees. It was only after 10 days and an interim decision by the Israeli High Court that we were able to return to our homes.

Today we live in tents – and even these were threatened with demolition orders forcing us to obtain permits for them. This is the life of a Palestinian in Area C of the West Bank. We are denied building permits, and are disinherited and banished from our land. Each time we request permits from the Israeli army, we are denied. The water pipes of Israel’s Mekorot water company pass several meters away from our village – they bring water to illegal outposts around us but we can’t get water from them. We don’t have access to the water that flows in those pipes, even though this is our water, water that Israel pumps from the West Bank.

We are forced to live off of rain water that we collect in our wells. The water situation in the South Hebron Hills is dire, and we are always forced to supplement by buying water brought in tankers to sustain ourselves through the summer. We pay NIS 35 for a cubic meter of water – about four times as much as you pay for water inside Israel.

Four months ago, the Regavim organization filed a petition to the High Court demanding that our village, Susya, be destroyed. They refer to it as an “illegal outpost” and claim that our village presents a security threat. Last week there was a hearing in the Israeli High Court. They call my village an illegal Palestinian outpost. But these have been our lands since before the establishment of the State of Israel. My father is older than your state and I am not legal on my own land? I ask you: where is the justice in that? In your court there is a difference between a Palestinian and a settler. You call it illegal construction but what we’re talking about is an underground cave that is hundreds of years old.

Illegal Israeli settlement outposts are all around us in the Susya area, and there are many buildings inside settlements with pending demolition orders – but they have everything. The government provides them with infrastructure for water and electricity despite the fact that according to Israeli law they are illegal, and nothing happens to them. And now you want to displace the old man from his home? To expel us from land that belongs to us, that we have lived on generation after generation, that is all that we know.

Resources:

My Susiya notes, 2007

2007 video on Susiya Palestinians

2005 video on Susiya Palestinians

Civil Administration threatens to demolish most of Susiya village

Settlers beat Jamal a-Nawaj’a and throw stones at his mother and wife, in Susiya, March 2006

Settlers assault Palestinian shepherds sleeping in tents in the southern Hebron hills, 26 March 2006

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July 29, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ultimate goal of Israeli policies in Hebron: ethnic cleansing

28 July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement

Just below the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba, situated on the the eastern outskirts of Al Khalil (Hebron) is the Palestinian area of ar-Ras.

A quick online search of the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba provides general knowledge on the founding history and how it has been subject to Palestinian resistance since 1981 but fails to inform the reader of the consequences for the indigenous Palestinians living nearby the relatively large (ca. 7000 inhabitants) settlement. Nor will one find written that such colonies are considered illegal by international law as confirmed by the International Court of Justice. Nor of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 which was committed against Palestinians by an Israeli settler from the same area.

Hebron residents regularly speak with the International Solidarity Movement about constant violent attacks by the settlers, land expropriation by Israeli policies, lack of freedom of movement and the requirement of special permits for car use, lack of running water, and demolitions.

Demolitions

In 2006, Palestinian landlord Fayiz Arajar began the construction of a large building intended to house a dozen shops and several families. The building is formidably situated, overlooking the olive grove of the ar-Ras area and the distant white houses of Al Khalil, flickering in the heat.

In 2007, as the project was nearly completed, Israeli settlers occupied the building. Subsequent to a high court decision to evict them, settlers from across the West Bank gathered in the house ready to defend their illegal takeover of the building. The eviction deadline was set to December 4, 2007 by the high court.

The week leading to the deadline was tense. Israeli settlers vandalized the Palestinian cemetery, burned Palestinian cars, and attacked Palestinian houses. The escalation in such attacks came due to the arrival of thousands of illegal settlers in support of the squatters. They succeeded in fighting the eviction force. Israeli authorities simply refrained from further attempts to remove them and, as seen before, allowed the story to twist from that of property theft to a question of security (of the settlers). In recent years, Israel has even decided to erect a military checkpoint for Palestinian pedestrians in the interest of ‘protecting’ the settlers.

Muhammed Al-Jabari ‘Abu Naim’ and his family live in a house about 100 metres from the occupied building. On May 28 of this year, they began to build an extra floor ontop of their house. The family of 15 members needed more space.

Settlers from a nearby recently occupied house repeatedly attacked the building project underway by Abu Naim. Subsequently, Abu Naim was banned by Israeli authorities from continuing construction.

With reference to the Oslo accords (Annex 1, article XII) Palestinians are not allowed to build within 50 metres of security roads. In Abu Naim’s case, a security road was announced with the construction of a new military checkpoint in the area. The legal value of Abu Naim’s construction permit was overruled although his house is far from the 50 meter no-construction zone. The land on which the house was built 14 years ago has belonged to the Al-Jabari family since before the Israeli occupation in 1967.

For now, the mid-construction upper floor is left as an empty shell without windows or doors. Israeli bulldozers are on stand by to demolish the entire house should Abu Naim continue construction.

Prevention and annexation of resources

Across the olive grove and by Kiryat Arba’s barbed wire fence lives Kayid Dana and his brothers. Another stunning view embraces you from just outside their house, disrupted only by a looming Israeli watchtower. Most of the occupied West Bank is spotted with these grey towers. Watching from their windows, the ever present occupation, reminding Palestinians that privacy is a luxury that few, if any, enjoy.

The Dana family has been living on the same land for over 50 years. In 1958, the Israeli authorities repetitively offered them money to leave the house and make room for the growing illegal settlement. The family refused and nonetheless Israeli forces bulldozed half of their garden.

As of June 24, the Dana family has been without water. Israeli authorities prevented water trucks from entering the area to refill their water tanks. As a result, Kavid and his family are relegated to pump water from an unsanitary well outside their home. This is where they encounter the next problem: water is only available for a couple of hours each day. This is not enough to supply their 4 camels (100 liters/day) and the most basic household needs.

North of the Dana family home, through the olive groves, lives the Abdul Hay family (Abu Hossni). Their windows are fenced to prevent Israeli settlers from shattering the glass with the stones they throw. On December 4, the family was subject to a vicious attack that left 3 with dumdum (expanding bullet) wounds. Dumdum bullets are a type of live ammunition that enter the body, expand, and cause permanent injuries or death. Although dumdum bullets have been known to be used by Israeli settlers, they are illegal according to international law.

Jamal Abu Saifan, who lives in the area, captured the incident on his camera and explains how a lightly injured Israeli settler was choppered away 15 minutes after his injury, whereas the 3 Palestinians wounded by gunfire, one critically, waited 3 hours for an ambulance.

The ambulance attempting to reach them was stopped and denied entry to the area by Israeli forces.

Unfortunately, settler attacks are far from rare and have been occurring since Kiryat Arba was established in 1968. The purpose of these violent attacks, and the army violence and policies that accompany them, are not only to injure people and destroy their lands. That is only a strategic measure to reach an ultimate goal: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The next step by Kiryat Arba is the construction of a new road which will divide the vital Palestinian olive groves down the middle. The road will be inaccessible to Palestinians, not only preventing Palestinians from tending to their trees on the other side, but annexing further land, expropriating an economic necessity, and making life more difficult for the indigenous Palestinians.

Despite the collection of circumstances to make life difficult, all the families in the area have made the choice to remain on their land despite the uncertainty and pressures of their everyday life under Israeli occupation.

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July 28, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shin Bet Detains Irish Woman at Dublin Airport, Prevents Reunion with Israeli Boyfriend

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | July 26, 2012

Ynet reports (Hebrew) that the Shin Bet detained a 26 year-old Irish woman at Dublin airport when she arrived three hours prior to flight time (in order to go through the security check). She’d hoped to fly to Israel for a romantic reunion with her Israeli boyfriend, Alon, who she’d met in South America. It was to be her first visit to Israel.

When the Shin Bet security interrogators asked her why she was flying to Israel and she told them, they actually called her boyfriend in Israel to confirm this. They asked personal questions about the nature of their relationship. But that wasn’t enough.

At first, she was told she could board the flight, but without any personal electronic devices. Then, she was told she couldn’t bring any luggage at all. When offered this option, after the decidedly chilly reception she’d experienced from the Israeli security apparatus, she said: thanks, but no thanks. The distinct impression she got from her inquisitors was that the only reason she was treated this way is that she isn’t Jewish.

Keep in mind that her boyfriend is a former IDF officer who served his country and understood the need for security precautions.

During her trip to South America, she’d met many Israelis who told her about the bad rap that Israel got in the world media. They assured her that the real Israel was something else entirely.

The Shabak claims that it told the woman she could board the flight without her baggage and could send it separately via London. She denies they made this offer. They also claim that they couldn’t allow her luggage aboard because it required scanning by a special device which local airport security didn’t make available to them. I’d venture to say that if any Irish journalist picks up on this story and queries officials at Dublin airport they’ll find this is a crock. But the way the Shin Bet works, it only has to deflect criticism for a day or so for the embarrassing incident to be forgotten (or so they expect). That’s why they often don’t even make a pretence of having a credible story.

Alon’s girl still wants to reunite with him–anywhere but Israel. So think about this, if Alon and his girlfriend someday marry, where do you think they’ll live? Anywhere but Israel. But that won’t bother the racist thugs who control entry to the ‘Jewish homeland.’ They prefer their guests and betrothed to be Jewish. Non-Jews need not apply. The needs of the national security state trump love and romance.

There are two lessons to be learned from this story. First, don’t fly to Israel on an Israeli airline. Second, if I were Irish authorities I’d demand the head of whoever was responsible for this mess. In South Africa, when a flyer was abused racially, the authorities threatened to ban the airline from flying to South Africa. That got Israel’s attention.

Since I published this story, Maan reporter George Hale told me he received the exact same treatment. He was told on two separate occasions that he could only fly without luggage (that’s besides the regular strip searches). The Shin Bet official told him he could retrieve it “the next time you’re in Zurich.” That didn’t sit too well with George since it was everything he needed to practice his profession.

When he arrived at Ben Gurion he filed a complaint with the Press Office and the Shin Bet relented and returned his effects (which included all his electronic reporting gear). The Irish lass’ story is, unfortunately, not unique.

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July 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hebron: Over 30 detained

27 July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the evening of July 18, over 30 Palestinians were detained in Tel Rumeida of Hebron after being accused of attacking an Israeli settler from the illegal settlement in the city. The attack allegedly took place after the settler went to swim in Abraham’s spring, which is on Palestinian land, but has a history of being used by settlers from the local colony.

A number of houses nearby to the spring were raided, along with the headquarters of Youth Against Settlements (YAS).

One of the Palestinians detained lives with his family in a house overlooking the spring. Their house was raided by soldiers and a young man was taken.

About 70 Israeli soldiers and 35 settlers gathered at the spring. The settlers insisted that the soldiers arrest the Palestinians, and internationals were barred from approaching the site by soldiers and border police.

Several Palestinians were detained near the spring, while three others were detained separately near the YAS headquarters. They were not accused of the attack, but nevertheless had their ID’s confiscated. The reason behind their detention is still unknown.

After several hours of being detained near the spring, a few Palestinians were released and others were taken to the police station for questioning. The remaining were released shortly after midnight, none of them being charged with the attack.

Earlier that day, Israeli settlers tried for the third time to build a wall of rocks around the spring which lies on Palestinian-owned land. Around 10 Israeli settlers were building, while 15 soldiers guarded them.

According to soldiers, the settlers had a permit but it was not possible to see it. The Palestinian owners of the land thus had no choice but to watch as settlers continued building, and teenagers from the illegal settlements swam in the water.

This incident is symptomatic of the settler mentality as they steadily try to build into Palestinian-owned land and increase the size of their colonies in the West Bank.

Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida say that the settlers are hoping to encroach upon the spring and the surrounding land, and thus connect two settlements located in the area.

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July 26, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Real Crime in Anaheim

By GARY LEUPP | CounterPunch | July 26, 2012

“He was a documented gang member,” say the Anaheim police of Manuel Diaz, a 25 year old unarmed man they shot dead  around 4:00 pm Sunday. They shot him in the buttocks as he ran, and as he stooped to his knees in someone’s yard they followed up by a bullet to the back of his head. Then they handcuffed their immobile quarry with a bloody face and a hole in his skull (as described by a 17 year old neighborhood resident), and searched his pockets before sending him to the hospital to die within three hours.

As I understand it, California law states: “Any person who actively participates in any criminal street gang with knowledge that its members engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity, and who willfully promotes,furthers, or assists in any felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period not to exceed one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or two or three years.”

It does not say that gang membership in itself is illegal, or that documented gang members may be shot on sight.

According to the Associated Press, “The shooting sparked a melee in the neighborhood as some threw rocks and bottles at officers who were securing the scene for investigators to collect evidence.”

Evidence for a drug deal presumably.  But his sister Lupe Diaz said on the day of his murder that Manuel had been “just hanging out with friends,” adding “There is no explanation. It’s not fair.” Neighbor Yesenia Rojas (34) who received a welt on her stomach after the police attacked her with a bean bag Sunday, calls him a “good person” and asks, “Why kill this man?” (She’s the woman with the stroller whose grandson was nearly attacked by the K-9 police dog in the now-famous video.)

Even if he was  involved in a drug transaction, and even if he were known for such activity in the neighborhood, how could his murder not produce outrage?

A melee is a skirmish, brawl, free-for-all. Is that what happened? It’s not what the video shows. That’s not what the 22 photos posted on the Orange County Register site show.

The AP coverage continues: “Sgt. Bob Dunn, the department’s spokesman, said that as officers detained an instigator, the crowd advanced on officers so they fired bean bags and pepper balls at them.”

Yeah, like this?

I don’t see any attack on police. I see maybe a dozen woman and children approached by cops with rifles drawn and shooting bean bags and pepper spray (and maybe rubber bullets) at close range. One sobbing woman mentions seeing a person throw a water bottle at police before a police dog attacked her and her baby. Could it be that the cops angered at verbal and symbolic expressions of outrage “were provoked” to do what they clearly do in the video? And that that’s what produced statements of defiance? And after darkness set in, such symbolic actions as blocking a street with a dumpster filled with paper on fire?

The two officers involved have been placed on paid leave. You can bet your life they wouldn’t have been, had there not been a “melee” or two and a PR nightmare for the police department. Nor would the police department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office have announced separate investigations of the incident, nor would Anaheim mayor Tom Tait be asking California’s attorney general to assist in that. These are minimal measures to contain the natural outrage.

A video of a police statement carried on the Orange County Register site tells us a lot of how the police view these things.

“About 4 pm this afternoon,” says the spokesman, in  a pleasant upbeat voice, “uh, two of our officers were on patrol here in the 600 block of North Anna Drive in the center alley. They attempted to make contact with three subjects. Uh, during that contact the subjects fled, uh, a foot pursuit ensued. During that foot pursuit one of our officers encountered, uh, one of the males they had been chasing and an officer involved shooting occurred.  Only one person was hit during that officer involved shooting. That was the person that we were chasing, a male. He was transported to the hospital and at this point I don’t know what his condition is. So at this point the investigation is ongoing. There were two additional, uh, male  suspects in the alley at the time this foot pursuit began.  Uh, at this point we will be conducting an investigation to try to identify who those males are. This is still a very active crime scene. Anyone that saw anything or witnessed this that has not spoken to police this is welcome call and remain anonymous the Anaheim Police Department…”

“Attempted to make contact with three subjects… ” What does that mean? Attempting to see what they were doing? Attempting to arrest them? Attempting to harass them?  The language is so  mundane and friendly sounding.

Why did they flee? A niece of Diaz, Daisy Gonzalez (16) told reporters that her her uncle probably ran from the two officers because, “He (doesn’t) like cops. He never liked them because all they do is harass and arrest anyone.” Is that not a very common feeling, particularly among Blacks and Latinos, in cities throughout the country? Isn’t the fear totally justifiable?

“A foot pursuit ensued.” Notice how the passive voice leaves agency out of it. Why not just say, “The two policemen chased him?” And why “an officer involved shooting occurred”? As though there were no real people involved here. Like the officer didn’t really do anything but was just “involved” by something fated to happen.  Like for some reason a tree fell down. Why not be honest and say: “The officers chasing him shot him to death, from the back, as he ran?”

“He was transported to the hospital and at this point I don’t know what his condition is.” Why not mention that he’d been deliberately shot in the brain and was unlikely to survive? And why not mention that he was unarmed?

“This is still a very active crime scene.” Well yes, at least in the sense that, while no weapons have been found there, armed police continue to criminally harass people.

“Anyone that saw anything or witnessed this that has not spoken to police about this is welcome call and remain anonymous the Anaheim Police Department.” (Am I being to picky in noting that “that” ought to be “who” or “whom” when we are talking respectfully to people?) Feel welcome to fink, people, to help us get those who ran away successfully and who we want for reasons we don’t need to explain to you. Trust us, we know who’s good and bad.

The real crime here is obviously the murder of an unarmed young man charged with no crime, murdered for running terrified through a crowded neighborhood at 4:00 in the evening, in full view of the people. A crime compounded by a police attack on those people with rifles and a police dog. (I suspect the claim made Monday that the dog broke free from restraint and his trainer is mortified by what happened is more PR damage control. What was a police dog doing there in the first place?)

It was not (apparently) caught on tape, like the Rodney King beating. But the vicious assault on men, women and children just hanging out outside on a warm summer late afternoon, leaving welts, bites and scratches sending a few to the hospital should be equally infuriating. It’s just another statement of the impunity the police feel. However poorly paid (and they are); however closely they resemble the criminals they’re hired to hunt down and control, they are in the end the enforcers of a system which because it cannot satisfy human needs makes humans hard to control without guns and dogs, fear and repression.

On Tuesday City Hall was surrounded with five or six hundred protesters, facing off against 250 police who arrested 24 during seven hours of what AP calls “confrontations.” The protests were peaceful all afternoon—until the police moved in to arrest someone around 6:30 supposedly threatening them with a gun. But like Diaz on Saturday, he had no gun. As on Saturday, unwarranted police action led the crowd to pelt the police with rocks, the weapon of the weak, of the intifada.

Police spokesman Dunn explained that some of the rock throwers appeared to be outsiders “who were prone to violence and wanted to incite” violence. We’ve heard this before many times.

The angry people (according to AP, citing Dunn) “took over an intersection, and a splinter group walked to the scene of one police shooting and back, throwing rocks, vandalizing cars and throwing a Molotov cocktail that damaged a police car… Throughout the night, knots of protesters spread through downtown, setting fires in trash cans and smashing windows of businesses, including a Starbucks… There also were reports that a T-shirt store was looted… A gas station was shut down after reports that some protesters were seen filling canisters with gas. Police used pepper balls and beanbag rounds. Twenty adults and four minors were arrested…”

We need more than a melee, more than a riot. To end the routine abuses of the cops we need conditions that don’t require cops, at least not cops who are outsiders charged with earning their collar by training their guns on youth, occupiers comparable to foreign troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who drop bombs almost as sport. We need conditions that allow for community self-policing based on values of kindness and respect. We need to replace the hurling of water bottles with demands for revolution.

GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gary.leupp@tufts.edu

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July 26, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

UN Committee against Torture releases list of issues for Israel

DCI | July 19, 2012

In June, the UN Committee Against Torture (the Committee) released a list of issues it would like the Government of Israel to address when the Committee reviews Israel’s compliance with the Convention Against Torture (CAT) in 2013. Specific issues raised by the Committee relevant to the continued prosecution of Palestinian children in military courts include:

  1. What steps has the Government of Israel taken to audio-visually record interrogations conducted by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) as a further means to prevent torture and ill-treatment? DCI-Palestine further recommends that this inquiry should be broadened to include interrogations conducted by the Israeli police, being the body most likely to interrogate Palestinian children from the West Bank.
  2. What steps has the Government of Israel taken to ensure that all detainees are promptly brought before a judge and have prompt access to a lawyer? Under military law, Palestinian children are not required to be brought before a judge for 8 days, and can be denied access to a lawyer for up to 90 days. By way of contrast, Israeli children, including those living in the settlements, must be brought before a judge within 24 hours and can be denied access to a lawyer for 48 hours.
  3. Please indicate how many Palestinian prisoners from the Occupied Palestinian Territory are held in detention facilities inside Israel? Transferring and detaining Palestinian prisoners out of occupied territory violates article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and attracts personal criminal liability under articles 146 and 147 of the same convention.
  4. Please indicate the measures taken to ensure that the detention or imprisonment of a child is used as a measure of last resort, that solitary confinement is never used as a means of coercion or punishment and that all children receive appropriate education.
  5. Please also explain the regime applied to children under military detention, in particular if their interrogations are recorded and if their parents or other legal representatives can have access to them. DCI-Palestine recommends that all interrogations of children must be audio-visually recorded and parents must be entitled to accompany their children at all times, as is the right generally afforded to Israeli children. Further, children must be entitled to consult with a lawyer of their choice prior to their interrogation.

The full list of issues released by the Committee is available here.

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July 25, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

UK Foreign Office agrees that imprisoning Palestinian children inside Israel violates international law – but what are they going to do?

DCI | July 17, 2012

In a letter dated 29 June 2012, the UK Foreign Office responded to concerns raised by a group of UK lawyers about the forcible transfer of Palestinian children to prisons located inside Israel. The transfer of Palestinian prisoners (adults and children) to detention facilities inside Israel violates article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for which personal criminal liability applies.

In the letter, the UK Foreign Office responded that:

“The British Government shares your concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and we have a continual dialogue with the Israeli authorities on this question. […] The Government agrees that Israel has legal obligations as an Occupying Power with respect to the Occupied Palestinian Territories under applicable international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. […] We agree with you that Israel’s policy of detaining Palestinians within Israel is contrary to Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and that domestic law cannot be used as a justification for violations of international law.”

According to Israeli Prison Service figures released in June 2012, 85 percent of Palestinian prisoners, including children, were detained inside Israel. Given that this violation has continued for decades, questions need to be asked as to what additional steps the UK Government is considering to ensure that it complies with its own legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention, as dialogue does not appear to be working when it comes to the forcible transfer of prisoners.

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July 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama: Shooting People “Evil … Senseless”

By Jay Janson | Dissident Voice | July 22nd, 2012

While reading the text of Obama Statement on Shootings in Colorado, one line struck this writer as quite astounding:

“We may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this. Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason.”

The President may have realized afterward that since he has been ordering the shooting of thousands in a half-dozen countries, the words “evil, senseless, beyond reason” could easily reflect back on himself. A later Obama statement on the massacre in a Colorado movie house did not contain the words “evil,” “senseless,” “violence beyond reason.”

In any case, history books, in some future, probably not too distant, day will deplore Obama’s pathetic 9/11 excuse for increasing and extending a ten-year-old military occupation war in dirt poor Afghanistan, killing, and killing easily, young and old Afghani, who are fighting invaders of their nation as they have always done. And perhaps one day independent investigative journalism will reveal whose instructions Obama was following from within that “financial element” that FDR confided “has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.”1

Historians will denounce his shameful exceeding of his executive powers under the Constitution, to have assassinated even American citizens without trial, and ridicule the pack of lies he offered in sick defense of his frightening Hellfire and Predator drones murdering intentionally and collaterally while menacing all citizens in some of the most poverty-stricken populations on earth. Historians will judge his character by his once infamous joking about using a drone on his daughters boyfriends — “they’ll never know what hit them.”2

Very possibly, scholars will chronicle a time when Americans were no longer kept in ignorance by a commercial media blackout of the last year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, when King called his country “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and condemned US wars as all meant to maintain “unjust overseas predatory investments.”3 Such a time might well arrive in the racing era of instant world-wide personal communication while Barack Obama is still alive and prosecutable for crimes against humanity, or in his own words of 2012, “for violent, evil, senseless and beyond reason, terrorizing fellow human beings.” With the recording of his words, Obama would have difficulty pleading insanity.

  1. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wikiquote.
  2. Obama Jokes About Killing Jonas Brothers With Predator Drones.
  3. Listen or read: King’s April 1967 New York sermon: Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence click here;
    or see International Awareness Campaign, King Condemned US Wars.
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July 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Morsi orders release of 572 inmates

Press TV – July 20, 2012

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has ordered the release of 572 people detained by the Army since last year’s revolution.

Morsi, who took office last month as Egypt’s first elected civilian president, on Thursday ordered military courts to grant amnesty to the defendants, AFP reported.

The Egyptian president earlier set up a committee to examine the cases of civilians put on trial by the military. The committee says 11,879 Egyptians were detained by the military throughout out the uprising that ousted former dictator Hosni Mubarak. Out of them, 9,714 have since been released.

Human rights activists and bodies have unanimously called for the end of military trials of civilians.

“International law is crystal clear on this: No civilian, regardless of the crime, should be tried by a military court,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said this week.

“Military trials and arrests of civilians by the military have continued, despite the June 30 handover to civilian authority,” the HRW noted.

Sworn in on June 30, Morsi is locked in a power struggle with the powerful Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Last week, Egyptians thronged the iconic Tahrir Square in Cairo to express solidarity with Morsi over his decree to reconvene parliament.

The parliament, dominated by Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers, was dissolved in line with a ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court, based on a decision by the military, prior to the presidential elections.

July 19, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

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