Israeli airstrike destroys Gaza training base
Ma’an – 29/12/2011
GAZA CITY – Israeli war planes bombed central and northern Gaza Strip early Thursday, with no injuries reported.
Israeli forces struck a training site of Islamic Jihad armed wing the Al-Quds Brigades in Al-Zahra district of central Gaza, flattening the compound and damaging nearby houses.
Another airstrike hit a location in the northern Gaza Strip.
A statement from the Israeli army said it hit a “terror activity site” and “terror tunnels.”
“The targeting of these sites was in response to the firing of rockets at Israel on Wednesday,” the statement said.
Rockets fired by Gaza militant groups have hit southern Israel in recent days, without causing injuries or damage.
An Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed one person and wounded ten others, as the coastal enclave commemorated the third anniversary of Israel’s large-scale ground invasion of the coastal strip.
On Wednesday, an Israeli tank fired an artillery shell which landed in an open area in the north of Gaza, without causing damage or injuries.
Israel launched an unprecedented three week war on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, 2008 which killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the military assault, including over 300 children. The majority of those killed were civilians and over 5,000 people were wounded.
Hamas vowed on Tuesday that it would not be intimidated by Israel’s threats to launch a new invasion, as Israel’s army chief called Operation Cast Lead an “excellent” operation and said any repeat attack must be “swift and painful.”
Israel cancels pardon of former militant leader
Ma’an – 29/12/2011
JENIN – Israel has canceled the pardon of a former Fatah militant leader in Jenin and instructed him to hand himself in to the Palestinian Authority, he told Ma’an on Thursday.
Zakaria Zubeidi, who headed the Al-Aqsa Brigades during the second intifada and set up The Freedom Theater in Jenin, said he had stuck to all the conditions of the amnesty deal granted him by Israel three years ago.
Israel informed Palestinian Authority security forces on Thursday that Zubeidi’s pardon had been revoked, and that Israeli forces would detain him if he did not turn himself in, Zubeidi told Ma’an.
An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter.
Zubeidi established the ground-breaking theater in Jenin refugee camp in 2006 with Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was shot dead outside the venue in April.
He led the Fatah-affiliated brigades during some of the fiercest fighting of the intifada, or uprising, and was wanted by Israel for many years before authorities granted pardons to hundreds of Fatah militants in 2007.
Israeli occupation forces round up 17 Palestinians including journalist, minors
Palestine Information Center – 28/12/2011
NABLUS — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) blasted their way into the home of Palestinian journalist Amin Abu Warda at the entrance to Balata refugee camp east of Nablus city on Wednesday before taking him away.
The wife of the journalist said that the soldiers encircled the building before dawn and isolated all males, her husband and his brothers who are all living in the same building but in different apartments, and checked their IDs then took away Abu Warda.
Abu Warda, 46, was about to obtain a doctorate in electronic journalism from Malaysia and is considered one of the most prominent Palestinian bloggers. He worked for Quds Press as a correspondent for 15 years and owns a media office in Nablus.
Local sources said that IOF troops rounded up 16 other Palestinians citizens in a rabid arrest campaign on Wednesday including two minors in Al-Khalil province and four Jerusalemites from Alezariye village to the east of occupied Jerusalem.
Dirty War suspect extradited to Argentina
Press TV – December 26, 2011
Bolivia has extradited former Argentinean military officer Luis Enrique Baraldini, who is wanted for human rights abuses during Argentina’s military dictatorship.
Bolivian Interior Minister Wilfredo Chavez announced on Sunday that Baraldini “was delivered to the Argentine authorities in [the border city of] Bermejo.”
Baraldini is accused of crimes he committed in Argentina’s La Pampa province, where he served as chief of police during the Dirty War, which lasted from 1976 to 1983.
The former officer has been “very much sought after as a longtime fugitive… for personally torturing people, according to witness accounts,” Argentine Security Minister Nilda Garre said at a press conference held after Baraldini was handed over.
Bolivian authorities apprehended the suspect on Saturday in Santa Cruz, about 900 kilometers (approximately 560 miles) east of the Bolivian capital La Paz. They said Baraldini had been living there for several years under the pseudonym Marco Antonio Aponte.
Buenos Aires had offered a reward of about $23,000 for information leading to his arrest.
According to human rights groups, an estimated 30,000 people — mostly leftist dissidents — died in Argentina’s Dirty War.
Euromed: Israeli occupation authority barred travel of 4,000 Palestinians in 2011
Palestine Information Center – 25/12/2011
RAMALLAH — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has banned 4,000 Palestinian citizens from travel through the West Bank into Jordan in 2011, a European human rights report has said.
The Euromed for human rights said in a detailed report that the travel ban was at an average of 83 cases weekly.
The report said that in two thirds of those cases the Palestinians were subjected to humiliating treatment such as strip searches and intelligence interrogation in addition to holding them for hours in crammed rooms.
It said in a 30-page report that the travel ban was imposed on sick people, students, women, old people, MPs, activists, journalists, and even employees with international agencies.
It said that the IOA deprives thousands of Palestinians on an annual basis from travel without any reasonable justification and without any consideration to humanitarian cases.
The Geneva-based Euromed warned that the Israeli intelligence was exploiting the need for travel to blackmail Palestinians into cooperating with it, adding that the IOA was violating a basic human right namely freedom of movement.
Israeli forces storm 3 West Bank villages
Ma’an – 25/12/2011
JENIN – Israeli forces erected three flying checkpoints in southern Jenin in the northern West Bank before they stormed houses in the villages of Meithalun, al-Judeida and Siris on Sunday, officials said.
Palestinian security sources said Israeli military patrols toured the three villages, but no arrests were reported. Witnesses said the checkpoints stopped several Palestinian vehicles and scrutinized their ID cards.
On Saturday Israeli forces closed all the entrances to the northern West Bank village of Azzun east of Qalqiliya preventing all residents from going in or out.
Locals told Ma’an a large number of troops stormed the village in the morning.
The soldiers completely shut down the northern and the western entrances before they ascended to the roof of a local resident’s home and started ransacking houses for inspection.
Onlookers said the soldiers claimed to have come under fire.
New York to Host Israel’s Top Drone Lab
By Max Blumenthal | Al Akhbar | December 24, 2011
On December 19, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the establishment of a 2 million square foot engineering and applied sciences university campus in the heart of New York City. The New York-based Cornell University and the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, were chosen to oversee the new institution.
“Thanks to this outstanding partnership and groundbreaking proposal from Cornell and the Technion, New York City’s goal of becoming the global leader in technological innovation is now within sight,” Bloomberg proclaimed. “When people look back 100 years from now, I believe that they will remember today as a signal moment in the transformation of the city’s economy,” Deputy Mayor Robert K Steel declared.
The Cornell-Technion partnership will result in a shimmering new university campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, a sleepy and long-neglected slice of land between midtown Manhattan and Queens. A US$350 million grant from the publicity shy philanthropist Charles Feeney supplemented by US$100 million in public money will fund the construction of the campus. The joint project was awarded after a well-publicized competition between several top-flight universities, and was enthusiastically trumpeted by the Mayor’s office, earning it coverage in the New York Times. However, neither Bloomberg or the Times bothered to mention a few facts that might have outraged the local taxpayers corralled into funding the project.
Presented as an anodyne research and development initiative that promises to produce thousands of jobs and hundreds of “spin-off” tech companies, the Cornell-Technion campus is also likely to be a boon to the military-industrial complex in the US and Israel. For decades, the Technion has provided the brains Israel required to create the elaborate mechanism of control under-girding its occupation of Palestine. Through its partnership with Israel’s burgeoning arms industry, Technion’s creations have been imported to armed forces around the world. In the words of Israeli researcher Shir Hever, the Technion “has all but enlisted itself in the military.”
In 2008, the Technion signed a joint research agreement with Elbit Systems, the Israeli weapons and security systems giant. Elbit is best known for providing the monitoring system for the Israeli separation wall, a 760 kilometer long concrete barrier that juts into the occupied West Bank, enabling Israel’s annexation of tens of thousands of dunams of Palestinian land. The company also produces weaponized aerial drones that have been procured by the Brazilian and US air forces, Elbit representatives routinely host recruitment seminars for ambitious Technion students.
In recent years, the Technion has distinguished itself in the field of robotic weapons systems, developing some of the latest in aerial drone and unmanned combat vehicle technology through its Arlene and Arnold Goldstein UAV & Satellite Center.
Here are a few Technion creations intended to streamline the maintenance of Israel’s occupation and enhance the violent capacity of America’s ongoing drone wars:
The unmanned “Black Thunder” D-9 bulldozer – The armored bulldozer is an essential weapon of Israel’s occupation, enabling the Israeli army engineering unit to demolish approximately 25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition. On occasion, bulldozers have come under attack from Palestinian guerilla fighters and stone throwing children. But thanks to the innovative spirit of the Technion, which boasts of pioneering the unmanned bulldozer, the Israeli army can demolish homes, olive groves and tunnels without any risk to the physical safety of its soldiers. As Jerusalem Post military affairs correspondent Yaakov Katz reported, “The IDF Ground Forces Command plans to double the number of unmanned D9 armored bulldozers in the Engineering Corps arsenal after the vehicle provided exceptional results during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in January.”
The “Stealth UAV” drone – According to the website of the American Technion Society, in 2010 Technion students designed “a ‘Stealth UAV’ designed to fly up to 2,977 kilometers without refueling. It can carry two 499 kg ‘smart bombs,’ and be equipped with various sensors (electro-optic, infrared and radar) to enable operation in the dark and under all weather conditions.” The weapon appears to be an unmanned version of the US-made B-2 “Spirit,” also known as the Stealth Bomber.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the Israeli military has killed 825 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2006. The New America Foundation, a Washington DC-based think tank, reported that the US military has killed over 1800 civilians and accused militants in Pakistan during the same period.
The “Dragonfly UAV” mini-drone – Tiny, remote controlled drones capable of flying through windows and into homes and buildings for delicate spying operations are the latest craze in UAV technology. Technion students recently designed a drone plane with a 9-inch (23cm) wingspan and a 7.9-inch (20cm) body modeled after the dragonfly insect. “The plane’s relatively low speed enables it to easily enter rooms through small windows and to send back photos from a miniature camera,” the American Technion Society’s website states.
As America’s manufacturing base enters its death throes, once industrialized cities are seeking out high-tech research and development projects to stimulate their cash-strapped economies while filling blighted urban centers with a young, upwardly mobile “knowledge class.” The Cornell-Technion NYC campus, with its direct link to the American military-industrial complex and the Israeli occupation, exposes the disturbing underside of a seemingly progressive model of urban renewal.
In the name of transforming the New York City’s economy, local taxpayers have been enlisted into the disturbing world of “asymmetrical” robotic warfare, in which faceless human targets are liquidated by remote control. And a generation of ambitious students seeking careers in the fields of engineering and science may wind up volunteering their talents to Israel’s occupation without ever seeing the consequences of their handiwork.
Brutal assault on 16 year old boy
SILWANIC – December 23, 2011
Silwan, Jerusalem – Dawood Yousef Sharaf, 16, was brutally beaten by Israeli soldiers on two separate occasions in the past week in Silwan. Here he recounts the dramatic story to Silwanic.
On Thursday, 15 December Dawood was on his way home from school in East Jerusalem. As he passed by the Mercy Cemetary near the Lion Gate of the Old City the police station outside Silwan, Israeli troops began to harass him. Three troops called Dawood over and asked for his ID and if he’d ever been arrested. He was then told to come into the police station, remove his clothes and get ready to be searched.
“I stood against the wall and raised my hands. One soldier forced me to put my legs apart, then started to beat them. The soldier demanded to know why I had spoken in a high voice when being questioned outside, and I told him that I was in a hurry. They then left me wait over 30 minutes before allowing me to leave. As I was about to exit the building, several officers drew their weapons and forced me back in for another inspection. Finally I was able to leave.”
Two days later as Dawood was on his way home from school, an Israeli soldier stopped him in the street and said “you’re the one they took in and humiliated on Thursday.” He pointed to a group of soldiers standing nearby, and said “those are the ones over there who did it. Why don’t you go and ask them why they did it?”
“I thought that confronting them might stop them from harassing me in the future,” said Dawood. “So I went over to the three soldiers who had assaulted me. As I approached them, they knocked me to the ground immediately. They handcuffed me and dragged me back into the police station, where I was beaten for over 40 minutes. I was beaten brutally, all over my body, until I passed out. I didn’t believe I would get out alive.”
Dawood comments that he is only the most recent in an ever-increasing line of brutalities inflicted on the children of Silwan. “Soldiers are constantly harassing children from Silwan.” He also added that soldiers told him that despite his clean record, Dawood would now have a criminal record after the attack.
The Children Protection Committee at the Wadi Hilweh Information Center states that “physical assault of children from Silwan by Israeli forces are taking place both in and outside of the Silwan area at an unprecedented level. Israeli soldiers, settlers and settler guards often target Silwan children when they are outside the neighborhood on their way to or from school.
Palestinians stopped from crossing roadblock because they refused a strip-search
Palestine Information Center – 23/12/2011
JENIN — A Palestinian man and his sister on Friday were not allowed to cross the Barta’a military roadblock because they refused to be strip-searched.
Local sources said that occupation soldiers stopped Rabab Qabaha while on her way back to her village after giving birth and insisted that she should submit to a strip-search which she refused.
Hamas had earlier issued a statement calling on West Bank Palestinians to reject this humiliating practice which occupation soldiers have started to impose on roadblocks.
Live sniper-fire injures protester in Nabi Saleh
23 December 2011 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Two weeks after the killing of Mustafa Tamimi during a demonstration in the village, an Israeli sniper shot a protester with live 0.22″ caliber ammunition, banned for crowd control purposes.
Protester evacuated after being shot with live ammo in Nabi Saleh today. Picture credit: Oren Ziv/ActiveStills
Earlier today, an Israeli military sniper opened fire at demonstrators in the village of Nabi Saleh, injuring one in the thigh. The wounded protester was evacuated by a Red Crescent ambulance to the Salfit hospital. The incident takes place only two weeks after the fatal shooting of Mustafa Tamimi at the very same spot. Additionally, a Palestinian journalist was injured in his leg by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him, and two Israeli protesters were arrested.
The protester was hit by 0.22″ caliber munitions, which military regulations forbid using in the dispersal of demonstrations. Late in 2001, Judge Advocate General, Menachem Finkelstein, reclassified 0.22” munitions as live ammunition, and specifically forbade its use as a crowd control means. The reclassification was decided upon following numerous deaths of Palestinian demonstrators, mostly children.
Despite this fact, the Israeli military resumed using the 0.22” munitions to disperse demonstrations in the West Bank in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. Since then at least two Palestinian demonstrators have been killed by 0.22” fire:
- Az a-Din al-Jamal, age 14, was killed on 13 February 2009, in Hebron,
- Aqel Sror, age 35, was killed on 5 June 2009, in Ni’lin.
Following the death of Aqel Srour, JAG Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit reasserted that 0.22” munitions “are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances. The rules for use of these means in Judea and Samaria are stringent, and comparable to the rules for opening fire with ‘live’ ammunition.”
Contrary to the army’s official position, permissive use of 0.22” munitions against demonstrators continues in non life-threatening situations.
Background
Late in 2009, settlers began gradually taking over Ein al-Qaws (the Bow Spring), which rests on lands belonging to Bashir Tamimi, the head of the Nabi Saleh village council. The settlers, abetted by the army, erected a shed over the spring, renamed it Maayan Meir, after a late settler, and began driving away Palestinians who came to use the spring by force – at times throwing stones or even pointing guns at them, threatening to shoot.
While residents of Nabi Saleh have already endured decades of continuous land grab and expulsion to allow for the ever continuing expansion of the Halamish settlement, the takeover of the spring served as the last straw that lead to the beginning of the village’s grassroots protest campaign of weekly demonstrations in demand for the return of their lands.
Protest in the tiny village enjoys the regular support of Palestinians from surrounding areas, as well as that of Israeli and international activists. Demonstrations in Nabi Saleh are also unique in the level of women participation in them, and the role they hold in all their aspects, including organizing. Such participation, which often also includes the participation of children reflects the village’s commitment to a truly popular grassroots mobilization, encompassing all segments of the community.
The response of the Israeli military to the protests has been especially brutal and includes regularly laying complete siege on village every Friday, accompanied by the declaration of the entire village, including the built up area, as a closed military zone. Prior and during the demonstrations themselves, the army often completely occupies the village, in effect enforcing an undeclared curfew. Military nighttime raids and arrest operations are also a common tactic in the army’s strategy of intimidation, often targeting minors.
In order to prevent the villagers and their supporters from exercising their fundamental right to demonstrate and march to their lands, soldiers regularly use disproportional force against the unarmed protesters. The means utilized by the army to hinder demonstrations include, but are not limited to, the use of tear-gas projectiles, banned high-velocity tear-gas projectiles, rubber-coated bullets and, at times, even live ammunition.
The use of such practices have already caused countless injuries, several of them serious, including those of children – the most serious of which is that of 14 year-old Ehab Barghouthi, who was shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet from short range on March 5th, 2010 and laid comatose in the hospital for three weeks.
Tear-gas, as well as a foul liquid called “The Skunk”, which is shot from a water cannon, is often used inside the built up area of the village, or even directly pointed into houses, in a way that allows no refuge for the uninvolved residents of the village, including children and the elderly. The interior of at least one house caught fire and was severely damaged after soldiers shot a tear-gas projectile through its windows.
Since December 2009, when protest in the village was sparked, hundreds of demonstration-related injuries caused by disproportionate military violence have been recorded in Nabi Saleh.
Between January 2010 and June 2011, the Israeli Army has carried 76 arrests of people detained for 24 hours or more on suspicions related to protest in the village of Nabi Saleh, including those of women and of children as young as 11 years old. Of the 76, 18 were minors. Dozens more were detained for shorter periods.
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