‘Saudi Arabia sending troops to Bahrain’
Press TV – February 15, 2011
Saudi Arabia is sending troops to Bahrain in a move to crack down on pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets in the capital Manama, a political analyst says.
The analyst told PressTV on Tuesday that Riyadh is sending its troops in an attempt to help King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa to crack down on the protesters.
Bahraini police have been using tear gas and batons to disperse the pro-democracy protesters in the Bahrain capital.
Three protesters have so far been killed due to police gunshot in the Shia village of Daih, in the suburb of Manama.
The last fatalities came as the protesters were participating in the funeral ceremony of another protester who lost his life earlier on Monday.
His death prompted the opposition to call for a vast participation at the funeral and to urge Bahrainis to escalate the pro-democracy protests.
Security forces have been deployed in force along the main routes into Manama in an effort to prevent a gathering that had been inspired by similar online initiatives around the Arab world.
Palestinian Quarry Ordered to Close Due to Settler Action
By Circarre Parrhesia & David Steele – IMEMC & Agencies – February 14, 2011
A Palestinian quarry in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, is to close due to “enforcement activities” by the Israeli authorities.
Although Beit Fajjar is located deep in the West Bank, the area falls within zone C, and thus is under full control of the Israeli military. As a result, the quarry has been informed that it is mining on “State Land”.
An Israeli pressure group, the National Land Protection Trust, brought a case against the business to the Israeli High Court of Justice, which ruled against the company.
Shortly after this ruling, the Israeli military began ‘enforcement activities’, which “led to an almost complete cessation of quarrying in the unlicensed area”.
The authorities confiscated a large number of items in a series of raids last year. The National Land Protection Trust has vowed to prevent any attempts to license the quarry, due to the fact that nearby settlements had suffered from dust and noise.
Mining is one of the major economic contributors to the town, along with their agricultural industry, with over 20% of the West Bank’s mines found in Beit Fajjar alone.
On October 4 2010, a mosque in Beit Fajjar was set alight, by settlers, in the early hours of the morning. In addition to the arson, settlers left “price tag” graffiti near the entrance.
Israeli commander refuses to allow murder victim funeral
Ma’an – 13/02/2011
JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities told the family of murder victim Husam Rweidi that his body would not be returned unless they agreed to a set of conditions, relatives said.
Husam Rweidi, 24, was stabbed to death Friday by a mob of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem’s city center.
The victim’s cousin Firas Baydoun said Israeli authorities stipulated that his burial must take place at midnight, and that a maximum of 10 mourners could attend the funeral.
Baydoun told Ma’an that Rweidi’s body was being kept in the mortuary of Israel’s Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
An Israeli central commander said the family could not take Rweidi’s body to the Al-Aqsa Mosque for funeral prayers and Islamic rituals, Baydoun said.
“The body must be carried to the Al-Rahma cemetery directly,” the commander told the family.
Rweidi’s father refused the demands, and the Israeli commander eventually agreed that the funeral could be held at 8 p.m. But the commander insisted the body must not be taken to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The family is considering taking on legal council to challenge the conditions, and to ensure Rweidi is given a decent funeral, Baydoun said.
Israeli forces shoot 3 Gaza workers
Ma’an – 13/02/2011
GAZA CITY — Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinian workers Saturday in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said.
A 19-year-old man was moderately injured, a Gaza medical spokesman said.
Earlier, Marhan Tanboura, 24, and Ashour Shukheidim, 29, were shot in the leg, medics said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers fired at Palestinians who approached the border and did not heed orders to stop. Forces identified hitting two men in the lower body, she said.
The men were collecting rubble from evacuated settlements near the Gaza border to sell as cement aggregates, medics said.
Cement is in demand to rebuild thousands of homes destroyed in Israel’s last offensive on the coastal enclave. Under Israel’s siege policy, most construction materials are banned from the Gaza Strip.
Israel declared a buffer zone along the border zone inside Gaza, which reaches deep into the coastal enclave, and Israeli forces regularly shoot at Palestinians who enter the area. Defense for Children International has reported that teenagers have been shot as far as 800 meters from the border.
But, with unemployment standing at 45.4 percent in the Strip according to a UN estimate, workers continue to risk entering the exclusion zone.
Israel extends administrative detention of Ayed Dudein for twelfth time
Palestine Information Center – 12/02/2011
NABLUS — Israeli intelligence has extended the period of detention of the longest running Palestinian administrative detainee Ayed Dudein for the twelfth consecutive time since his arrest, the Ahrar center for prisoners studies said.
The Israeli Supreme Court denied appeals submitted by Dudein’s lawyer requesting his release, claiming a ”secret file” was prepared against him and his release was a security concern for Israel, Ahrar center director Fouad Al-Khafsh said.
He has so far not received a fair trial.
In administrative detention since October 2009, Dudein, a father of six who works as assistant director of the Al-Khalil emergency department, has been in and out of Israeli prisons over the past 13 years. He has refused bargains by the Israeli Supreme Court that would have him exiled.
Dudein’s wife Umm Hamza contacted the Ahrar center complaining of years of instability since her husband’s arrest and frequent raids on their home.
Dudein is a prominent figure among Palestinian detainees and is respected by the country’s factions. One of his brothers serving a life sentence has been detained since 1992. His mother passed away two months back, but his detention kept him from bidding her farewell.
In Wake of Fourth Demolition, Tana Villagers Vow to Rebuild
PNN – 10.02.11
Nablus – On Wednesday, Israeli army bulldozers demolished all but the mosque in the tiny village of Tana, east of Nablus, because it did not have the required permits. On Thursday afternoon, the villagers began to rebuild. This is their fourth time.
A villager from Tana carries away part of his demolished home (PNN Images).
Thirty-five buildings in all were destroyed, most of them makeshift houses constructed of metal siding, pipes, and blue tarp. Now most of the roughly 200 villagers made homeless by the demolitions must move to nearby caves as winter winds and rain buffet this mountainous region of the West Bank. Livestock sheds were destroyed, so five thousand sheep are shivering.
Nobody, however, is leaving Tana.
“This is my life,” said one man, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals. “I was born here and I have my children here. I won’t leave.”
Many residents even laugh at the idea, saying if they wanted to leave they would have gone when the village was first demolished in 2005. Since then Israeli bulldozers have come back three times, most recently in December, when they destroyed the Tana schoolhouse, forcing villagers’ children to make the seven kilometer walk to the village of Beit Furik. Each time the reason is the same: the structures in Tana, which falls in the West Bank’s Israeli-controlled Area C, are unlicensed.
“Of course my house doesn’t have a permit,” said Radi Mahmoud Hamali, 64, the remains of whose house lie close to the small stone mosque, the only structure left untouched. “I cannot get a permit. It’s impossible. They just [demolished Tana] to take the land for the settlers.”
Radi Hamali prepares tea in a cave near his demolished home (PNN Images).
Two illegal Jewish settlements, Yitzhar and Makhoura, stand atop nearby hills. Both have been named as the sources of violent attacks on local Palestinian shepherds in the past. On January 27, Yitzhar settlers were suspected, but not arrested, in the shooting death of 18-year-old Adi Qaddous from the village of Iraq Burin. Residents in Tana suspect that the Israeli army—commonly seen as a powerful enabler—demolished the village to clear the land for further settlement.
At least on Thursday, however, Tana was not without friends. An Italian NGO has pledged to pay for and build a new schoolhouse. In the afternoon a convoy of UN and Fatah party vehicles stopped on the dirt road that runs through the village. Ghassan Douglass, the Palestinian Authority (PA) official in charge of filing settler attacks in the West Bank, spoke at the mosque and promised that both Fatah and the PA would help rebuild the village.
“We in the Fatah movement are all standing in support of these citizens,” said Douglass. He pointed to the caves in which the Tana villagers will have to live for the time being. “There are no hotels here, unfortunately.” The convoy moved on after about twenty minutes.
Down the hillside, Radi Hamali’s son and neighbor helped clear away the wreckage of pipes, twisted metal, and chicken wire that was his home. Hamali reckoned it will take him two days to set it up again. But there are other problems: the Israeli soldiers knocked over the water barrels and feeding troughs he used for his 150 sheep. One sheep is pregnant and sick. His wife is sick, he’s sick, and he’s sleeping in a cave.
Radi Hamali, 64, says he will stay on his land, “if God wills, until death.” (PNN Images)
“I say to Barack Obama, come and look at this!” he said. “This is my land, this is the land of my father, of my grandfather. I call on all Europeans to come help me, everyone in the West, everyone in the [Palestinian] Authority, all people and journalists. I will stay on our land, if God wills, until death.”
New Gaza factory, jobs destroyed in Israeli attack
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 10 February 2011
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What remains of a plastics factory after it was bombed by Israel earlier this week. (Rami Almeghari) |
“I still cannot believe my eyes as I see the machines of our new factory, scattered to all corners,” said Rabah al-Hatto as he surveyed the rubble of his recently-established plastic water tank factory in northeast Gaza, which was bombed by Israeli warplanes early yesterday. “What have I and the twenty workers here done to find ourselves jobless?” al-Hatto told The Electronic Intifada.
The factory was due to start distributing its products in the local market in two weeks. “I am completely shocked,” the trim-bearded al-Hatto said. “I never imagined that the factory in which I and my partners invested all our money and energy, would become rubble.” As he spoke, al-Hatto was surrounded by workers, friends, reporters and a field worker from a human rights group.
“Yesterday [Tuesday] afternoon, we left the factory to go home. Just before 1am on Wednesday morning I heard Israeli warplanes bombing the area, but I did not imagine it was the factory. Later in the morning, I came to work to find our machines and the ceiling torn apart,” Bashar al-Wehaidi, a technician in the factory, told The Electronic Intifada. “Everything in this 1,200 square meter building was hit.”
Israeli air strikes early Wednesday hit a number of sites in northern Gaza, injuring eight persons, according to medical sources. Three men, three women and two children were hit by debris and shrapnel that struck area homes. The Israeli attacks also destroyed a medical storage building and damaged a school.
Near to where owner Rabah al-Hatto was seated on a chair at his factory site, there was a large truck badly damaged by the Israeli bombing and a heap of aluminum and iron bars on the ground.
“Please look! Please look! A modern truck has been struck before it even traveled the streets of Gaza to distribute our products. Why?” al-Hatto asked. Commenting on Israeli claims that the attack was in retaliation for several rockets fired from Gaza at Israel, al-Hatto said, “Oh my God! What kind of a response is this!”
Now in his early forties, al-Hatto told The Electronic Intifada the story behind his factory. “A year ago, my brother, other partners and I decided to build this factory,” he said. “I used to work as a steelworker, but with the lack of steel due to the Israeli blockade, I decided to invest all my savings in manufacturing plastic water tanks.”
Al-Hatto estimates the losses to him and his partners from the Israeli attack to be $300,000, as well as the incomes for the twenty now jobless workers and their families.
Bashar al-Wehaidi, the now unemployed technician, said that the attack was a complete injustice by Israel. “We have been working tirelessly over the past year in order for this important facility to see the light. May God compensate us such a great loss,” he said.
In the vicinity of the factory, which is located in the al-Qerem neighborhood in the northeast of the Gaza Strip, there are a number of other facilities hit in the Israeli attack. Among them are a large medical storage building, a primary school for 600 students, as well private homes. The school’s ceiling and windows were damaged, forcing the administration to suspend classes until further notice.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry, the al-Qerem medical storage facility was hit by a missile fired from an F-16 fighter jet, causing enormous damage.
“The attack on this store constitutes a flagrant Israeli occupation violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons in time of war, as well as other relevant world health conventions,” Dr. Munir al-Bursh, chief of Gaza’s medical stores with the Gaza health ministry, told The Electronic Intifada at his office in Gaza City on Wednesday.
The bombed facility is one of nine storage sites run by the Gaza health ministry according to al-Bursh, who estimates the losses from the Israeli attack at $400,000.
“This is a great loss, in light of the four-year-long Israeli blockade,” Dr. al-Bursh said. “Recently we have listed 183 drugs that our stores are lacking as Israel continues to delay deliveries through the crossings into Gaza.”
Israeli army sources said on Wednesday that their latest air strikes on Gaza were in response to five homemade rockets that landed in southern Israel causing no injuries and minor property damage.
Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
Dismantling Impunity: Campaign to help Palestinian victims of army abuse
9 February 2011 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee is proud to announce a new campaign, the “Dismantling Impunity Fund”. This fund will directly challenge Israel’s culture of impunity surrounding the murder and maiming of Palestinians. The fund will be managed by a committee that will include representatives of Popular Committees and Palestinian human rights organizations.
The Abu Rahmah family will be the fund’s first recipient. The family has lost two of their children, Bassem and Jawaher, to Israeli military violence. Both were murdered while nonviolently protesting Israel’s separation wall, built on their village’s land. The family has filed a civil suit in Israeli courts demanding compensation for Bassem Abu Rahmah’s 2009 murder, in which he was shot in the chest from 40 meters with a high-velocity tear gas canister.
The court is demanding 25,000 shekels ($6,700) as a deposit from the Abu Rahmah family. According to a loophole in Israeli law, Palestinians can be considered “foreigners”. This enables the court to demand an upfront deposit large enough to cover the defense’s legal fees, should the prosecution lose the case. If the family does not submit the money, the court will close the case without hearing it.
Through this loophole, Israel has supported its culture of impunity. Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories are effectively prohibited from filing civil suits against Israel, the Israeli army or individual soldiers. Financial resources are needed to combat this loophole and enable Palestinians to seek legal redress.
Bassem Abu Rahmah was shot in the chest with the same type of canister that critically injured US citizen Tristan Anderson one month prior. After conducting an extensive investigation into Abu Rahmah’s death, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem demanded a criminal investigation be launched. B’Tselem’s findings proved that Abu Rahmah was shot in direct violation of open-fire regulations while acting in a nonviolent manner. Despite video footage and expert testimony to corroborate this, no one has yet been punished or even charged with Bassem’s killing. A civil case is now the option left for the Abu Rahmah family to seek legal redress.
Mohammed Khatib, Coordinator, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee: “From our experience with the Israeli legal system, we do not expect justice from the occupier’s courts. But we do know that a court case brings to light things that the occupation would rather keep in the shadows. By suing, victims of Israeli violence would be extracting both a monetary and political price for the crimes that Israel has committed against them. It is essential to challenge the prevailing culture of impunity, in which Israeli soldiers and settlers murder and maim Palestinians while going unpunished and unquestioned.”
Donate Electronically to the “Dismantling Impunity Fund” by following the link and checking the “Dismantling Impunity Fund” box.
Donate by check: Write checks to “Alliance for Global Justice”, with “CfJS-Dismantling Impunity Fund” in the memo line. Mail checks to:
Alliance for Global Justice
1247 “E” Street,SE
Washington, DC 20003
Israel bombs medical aid warehouse in Gaza
MEMO – February 9, 2011
Israeli aircraft carried out a number of air raids on the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday 9 February, destroying a medical aid warehouse in Gaza City. The raids began shortly after midnight, hitting several places across the Strip, from Jabaliya in the north to the Rafah border with Egypt in the south.
Fires raged through the early hours of the morning as fire-fighters and volunteers tried to salvage medical supplies and aid. The carpenter’s workshop adjacent to the warehouse was also affected by the bombing.
The press spokesperson for the Emergency Services, Abu Adham, said that eight civilians were injured by the Israeli bombs, including two children and three women. The casualties were taken to the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Abu Adham pointed out that there is already an acute shortage of medicines and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli blockade of the territory. In his assessment, the airstrike targeted the medical warehouse in an attempt to subdue further the civilian population. Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber aircraft also fired two missiles in an empty landfill south-east of Gaza City; no casualties were reported. Two men were injured in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Photo credit – Ma’an Images
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A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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