On Monday, Security Council members met behind closed doors to discuss weeks of Israeli state terror against defenseless Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
The Biden regime blocked a statement — demanding that Israel “cease settlement activities, demolition and evictions” of Palestinians from their homes and land, according to AFP.
Short of a binding international law resolution, the watered down statement expressed “grave concern regarding escalating tensions and violence in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
It called for “refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric, and upholding and respecting the historic status quo at the holy sites.”
Since establishment of a Jewish state on stolen Palestinian land in 1948, the US supported and ignored the worst of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity against Palestinians and regional states.
Instead of condemning Israeli violence in Occupied East Jerusalem, State Department spokesman Price said the following on Monday:
The Biden regime “condemns in the strongest terms the barrage of rocket attacks fired into Israel” from Gaza.
Price ignored Palestinian retaliation against weeks of Israeli state-terror.
He was silent about IDF terror-bombing of multiple parts of the Strip, killing at least two dozen Gazans, injuring many more, traumatizing thousands, causing extensive damage.
Defying reality, he “welcome(d) (nonexistent) steps by the (Netanyahu regime) aimed at avoiding provocations (sic).”
At the same time, he called Israeli aggression “self-defense.”
Asked if he condemned Israeli killing of Palestinian children, he ignored reality by claiming:
“(W)e don’t have independent confirmation of facts on the ground yet, so I’m very hesitant to get into reports that are just emerging.”
Instead of denouncing Israeli plans to dispossess Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood families of their homes and land, he largely ducked the issue, saying:
“We’ve been clear in urging the Israelis to act responsibly, to treat Palestinian residents with compassion and with humanity in this case.”
Refusing to call East Jerusalem occupied, he said what’s going on in the city “is a final status issue to be determined by the parties (sic).”
Ignored was that following the Oslo Accords over a generation ago, Palestinians got nothing in return but empty Israeli promises, colonization, apartheid, and occupation harshness.
They got nothing for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and agreeing to leave major unresolved issues for later final status talks. They’re still waiting.
Major unresolved issues include an independent sovereign Palestine free from occupation, the right of return, settlements, borders, water and other resource rights, as well as East Jerusalem as exclusive Palestinian territory and future capital.
One-sidedly supported by the US — while pretending otherwise — Israel refuses to accept all of the above, its hard-wired policy for over half a century.
It includes delaying resolution of issues with Palestinians to facilitate continued theft of their land — wanting all valued parts of historic Palestine Judaized, including Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital, its Arab residents expelled, and diaspora Palestinians denied their right of return.
During a Monday press briefing, Price refused to condemn ongoing Israeli state terror against defenseless Palestinians — calling on both sides to show restraint instead, along with ducking responses to tough questions.
According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society on Monday:
“At least 612 Palestinians sustained injuries in the course of the day in (and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) and the Old City of Jerusalem.”
During the day, Israeli violence escalated after its security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque — Islam’s third holiest site.
They fired rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades at Palestinian worshipers inside, causing large numbers of injuries.
Rocket fire from Gaza on Israel followed its desecration of the holy site.
Ignoring Israeli state terror on Monday and previous days, interventionist Blinken said the following:
“We’re very focused on the situation in Israel, West Bank, Gaza, very deeply concerned about the rocket attacks that we’re seeing now (sic), that they need to stop (sic).”
“They need to stop immediately (sic).” But IDF terror-bombing of Gazan civilians is OK, according to longstanding one-sided US support for apartheid Israel.
A Final Comment
On Monday, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said the following:
“…Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) violated al-Aqsa Mosque and its facilities, suppressed, and assaulted Palestinian worshipers and fired sound bombs and rubber bullets inside the Mosque and in its yards.”
“As a result, 305 Palestinians, including 8 journalists, were wounded — 7 were deemed in critical condition.”
“This serious escalation came only a few hours before a planned demonstration by thousands of Israeli settlers in Bab al-‘Amoud area and near al-Aqsa Mosque’s gates.”
“Chief of Israel Police ordered a large force to raid al-Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to facilitate the entry of Israeli settlers, who were gathering in Bab al Magharibah, into the Mosque.”
“Afterwards, IOF moved into al-Aqsa Mosque’s yards and its facilities via Bab al Magharibah and Bab al Silsilah amid heavy firing of rubber bullets, teargas canisters and sound bombs for 4 consecutive hours.”
At the same time, “Israeli snipers topped al-Aqsa Mosque’s western roofs, in addition to al-Qibli Mosque’s roof, and then raided the Mosque, assaulted Palestinian worshipers, and fired rubber bullets, teargas canisters and sound bombs at them.”
“As a result, dozens of Palestinians, old and young, men and women, who were detained inside the Mosque sustained wounds.”
“Also, IOF prevented medical and paramedics crew from providing first aid for the wounded. Moreover, IOF assaulted and severely beat worshipers.”
The Biden regime and its press agent media ignored virtually all of the above — in support of apartheid Israeli viciousness against defenseless Palestinians.
May 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
8 Comments
Colombian state violence and human rights abuses have stoked the protests in which nearly 50 have died
Mérida – Venezuelan authorities have dismissed accusations that they are intervening in on-going mass protests in neighboring Colombia.
Speaking on Friday from a Miami-based forum on Defense of Democracy in Latin America, Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno claimed that “Our [Ecuador’s] and Colombia’s intelligence agencies have detected a gross intervention from the dictatorial and authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro [in the Colombian protests] (…) We call on Maduro to remove his bloody and corrupt hands from the democracy and stability of the Colombian people.”
The outgoing right-winger went on to describe the Venezuelan president as “the great instigator and financier of the violence in Colombia,” claiming that he had authorized public payments to pay for the “intervention.”
The evidence-free accusations were quickly echoed on social media by rightwing former Colombian Presidents Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe, with the latter writing that “They [the Maduro administration] are destroying Colombia, which has a future, in order to construct another Venezuela or Cuba, which do not.”
Following Moreno’s comments, Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano claimed a “strong” Venezuelan participation in the protests, referencing the arrest and deportation of six Venezuelan citizens allegedly participating in the protests over 10 days ago. There are an estimated 1.7 million Venezuelans living in Colombia, many of which have denounced frequent xenophobic attacks against them.
While Colombian President Iván Duque is yet to comment on the alleged “intervention,” his government decided to take action against Argentina and Cuba over the weekend, accusing them of meddling and expelling a Cuban diplomat from the country.
Both Duque and Moreno recognize US-backed self-declared “Interim President” Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. They also belong to the Lima Group, a regional ad hoc organization of right governments which have previously made similar accusations of Venezuelan incitement, financing or involvement in mass protests across the region, including in Colombia (2019 and 2020), Ecuador (2020), Bolivia (2019), Chile (2019 and 2020) and the United States (2020), all of which were rebutted by Caracas.
In response to the latest claims, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza described the accusations as “shameful,” going on to say that the accusers were “underestimating their people.” He also quoted Spanish poet Antonio Machado, writing via Twitter that “Lies are the most destructive weapon used by fascism.”
For his part, Chavista number two Deputy Diosdado Cabello likewise downplayed the accusations, questioning Colombian intelligence capabilities. “They couldn’t even investigate Operation Gedeon – the failed maritime incursion which happened a year ago and was planned in Colombia – but they can conclude that we [supposedly] have people there. Get out of here!” he said.
Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas chimed in as well, pointing out the hypocrisy of the accusations in comparison to Duque’s 2019 call for Venezuelan soldiers to rebel against the Maduro government.
Colombia has been rocked by a wave of popular protests and strikes since April 28, with government sources claiming 27 people have died. Independent organizations have placed the figure as high as 47, with around 800 injured and more than 400 missing.
The protests were initially organized to oppose a fiscal reform which increased the poor’s tax burden. In efforts to quell the protests, Duque withdrew the reform last Sunday and Finance Minister Alberto Barrera resigned.
However, widespread police brutality, as well as accumulated grievances based around the state’s noncompliance with the 2016 Peace Agreement and other human rights violations have stoked the mass demonstrations. Despite ongoing dialogue, the protests have continued, with Duque authorizing state agencies to use “all necessary force” against them on Monday.
Reports of widespread state violence and human rights abuses have been denounced by a range of Venezuelan leftwing movements, including at a piquet outside the Colombian Consulate in Caracas on Friday.
The rally, which featured the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) bloc and a number of other leftist forces, came in addition to a number of activities in solidarity with the Colombian people held across the country. Solidarity events also took place in a number of other Latin American cities, including Buenos Aires, Santiago and La Paz.
Venezuela and Colombia have had a tense relationship over past years, with diplomatic relations broken and borders closed in 2019. Recent border skirmishes have resulted in a number of deaths, with the Venezuelan government pointing to Colombian “irregular armed groups.” Additionally, Caracas has accused it neighbor’s government of backing regime change attempts, including the 2018 drone attack against Maduro, the 2019 attempted ‘humanitarian’ border incursion, the 2020 Operation Gedeon, and a 2021 foiled terrorist plot, amongst others.
May 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture | Colombia, Human rights, Latin America |
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Two former British Army paratroopers accused of murdering an Official IRA commander have been acquitted, after prosecutors failed to provide further evidence against them and the trial collapsed.
Joe McCann, 24, was unarmed when he was shot dead by paratroopers as he tried to evade arrest by a plainclothes police officer in Belfast in 1972.
The accused, identified only as Soldiers A and C, have admitted firing at McCann, but claim they acted within the law. The veterans, now in their 70s, made statements to the Royal Military Police in 1972 and were interviewed by the Historical Enquiries Team – a police legacy branch – in 2010.
At Belfast Crown Court on Tuesday, presiding judge Justice John O’Hara ruled that the statements – which formed key evidence for the prosecution – were inadmissible at the trial. Prosecutors accepted the judge’s findings that the statements were not given under caution and the soldiers did not have access to legal representation.
The court heard that McCann was allegedly behind the deaths of 15 British soldiers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. His family have said they will ask the attorney general to open an inquest into his death.
Outside the court their lawyer, Niall Murphy said: “This ruling does not mean that Joe McCann was not murdered by the British Army.”
Four other cases involving the prosecution of former British soldiers in Northern Ireland are currently at the pre-trial stage.
May 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | UK |
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Now that Cuban president Raul Castro has resigned the presidency of Cuba, will the U.S. government lift its six-decades-long economic embargo against Cuba?
Don’t count it. Squeezing the life out of the Cuban people as a way to get regime change has become such a normalized way of life for the United States that it is unlikely that this cruel and brutal policy will be ended anytime soon.
Back in the day, the embargo was justified as part of the Cold War against “godless communism” and, specifically, the international communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia and that supposedly threatened to envelope the United States and the rest of the world. (Yes, that Russia, the one we are being called upon, once again, to treat as our official enemy.) The Pentagon and the CIA steadfastly maintained that the “national security” of the United States was gravely threatened by a communist outpost only 90 miles away from American shores.
But when the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly came to an end in 1989, the embargo just kept gong and going. And even though former communist dictator Fidel Castro is now dead and his brother Raul is now out of the presidency, there is no push within the federal government to finally bring an end to this cruel and brutal program.
What’s up with that? The U.S. government doesn’t have an embargo against communist Vietnam, whose northern half killed some 58,000 American men. Why have an embargo against a country that has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so?
I suspect that part of the reason is that the CIA has never been able to get over the humiliation of having been defeated when its ragtag army of Cuban exiles invaded Cuba in 1961 in a futile attempt to secure regime change on the island. In fact, my hunch is that the CIA and the Pentagon have never been able to get over the fact that their entire regime-change operations against Cuba, including sabotage, terrorism, and assassination, as well as the embargo, failed to oust the communist regime and replace it with a U.S.-installed regime, one that would, once again, do the bidding of the U.S. government.
In the ultimate analysis, it’s all about empire and control. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. came to the defense of Cuba in its war for independence from the Spanish Empire. Once Spain was defeated, however, the U.S. government double-crossed the Cubans and refused to permit them their independence. Instead, the fledgling U.S. Empire simply replaced the Spanish Empire.
The U.S. Empire then proceeded to control Cuba for the next 60 years through a succession of pro-U.S. dictators who agreed to do the bidding of the U.S. government. They were what are sometimes referred to as “puppets”—dancing to the strings of U.S. control. That’s in fact how the U.S. government got its imperial outpost in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government’s puppet regime in Havana gave that portion of Cuba to the United States.
One of the U.S. puppets was Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt pro-U.S. tyrant who was ousted by the Cuban revolution in 1959. One of his programs was to have his government goons go out into the Cuban countryside and kidnap young girls — minors. They would then bring them back to Havana, where they would be handed over to the Mafia-controlled casinos, which were giving Batista a cut of the action. The girls would be handed over to the high-rollers in the casinos as sexual favors.
U.S. officials loved Batista and were hoping that he would remain in power. It was not to be. The person who instigated the revolution was a woman named Celia Sanchez, who had a young girlfriend who was kidnapped by Batista’s goons and then raped as a sexual favor in the Mafia’s casinos.
What the Pentagon and the CIA want today is to resume control over Cuba with another pro-U.S. dictator who will do their bidding, just like before the Cuban revolution. That’s what the embargo is all about. That’s why they continue to target the Cuban people with death and economic privation. They want to resume control over Cuba, and they want it bad.
There is something else to keep in mind about the U.S. government’s relationship with Cuba for the last 60 years: It has always been the U.S. government that has been the aggressor. It is the U.S. government that has targeted the Cuban people with death and economic privation with its embargo. It has been the U.S. government that has engaged in sabotage and terrorism against the Cuban people. It is the U.S. government that has repeatedly tried to murder Cuban officials, even in partnership with the Mafia, one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world.
Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the U.S. government’s embargo against Cuba has always been a direct attack on the natural, God-given rights of freedom of travel and economic liberty of the American people. After all, let’s not forget that Americans are the ones who are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for traveling to Cuba and spending money there without the official consent of their Washington overlords.
If the American people wished to begin restoring a sense of morality to the U.S. government and a small bit of economic freedom to their lives, a good place to begin would be by bringing about an end to the six-decades-old embargo against Cuba. It’s an evil and destructive Cold War dinosaur that deserves extinction.
April 24, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Cuba, United States |
2 Comments
Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King, yesterday called on Israeli police to execute Palestinian protesters who take to the streets of the holy city at night, Shehab news agency reported.
He proposed a change in police policy regarding dealing with protesters and stop using traditional means to disperse them.
According to the Israeli TV Channel 7, King said that shooting the protesters “is the only way which can end the night protests phenomenon.”
Police “do not save any efforts to prevent these demonstrations which were aggravated by the start of Ramadan,” he added.
King, Israeli newspaper Haaretz said, is best known for settling Jews in occupied East Jerusalem and evicting Palestinian families from the city’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism |
4 Comments
Americans aren’t dying at the hands of police because of racism.
For that matter, George Floyd didn’t die because he was black and the cop who killed him is white.
Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, died because America is being overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
These warrior cops may get paid by the citizenry, but they don’t work for us and they certainly aren’t operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution. As retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis warns, “The system is corrupt. Police really are oppressing not only the black community, but also the whites. They’re an oppressive organization now controlled by the one percent of corporate America. Corporate America is using police forces as their mercenaries.”
Now, not all cops are guns for hire, trained to act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the populace.
However, the unfortunate reality we must come to terms with is that the good cops—the ones who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace—are increasingly being outnumbered by those who believe the lives (and rights) of police should be valued more than citizens.
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.
Indeed, if you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings during encounters with the police.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the right, it doesn’t matter if a cop is in the wrong, it doesn’t matter if you’re being treated with less than the respect you deserve: if you want to emerge from a police encounter with your life and body intact, then you’d better comply, submit, obey orders, respect authority and generally do whatever a cop tells you to do.
In this way, the old police motto to “protect and serve” has become “comply or die.”
This is the unfortunate, misguided, perverse message that has been beaten, shot, tasered and slammed into our collective consciousness over the past few decades, and it has taken root.
This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat “we the people” like suspects and criminals.
At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.
The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is “not that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it’s that authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone.”
Warrior cops—trained in the worst case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—are definitely not making us or themselves any safer.
This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat has all but guaranteed that unarmed Americans will keep dying at the hands of militarized police.
Consider just some of the scenarios in which unarmed Americans have been shot and killed by police:
Killed for taking public transit.
Killed for standing in a “shooting stance.”
Killed for holding a cell phone.
Killed for displaying air fresheners from a rearview mirror.
Killed for behaving oddly and holding a baseball bat.
Killed for opening the front door.
Killed for being a child in a car pursued by police.
Killed for approaching police with a metal spoon.
Killed for holding a tree branch.
Killed for crawling around naked.
Killed for hunching over.
Killed because a police officer accidentally pulled out his gun instead of his taser.
Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey.
Killed for telling police you lawfully own a firearm.
Killed for leaving anywhere at all when a police officer pulls up.
Killed for driving while deaf.
Killed for shopping at Walmart.
Killed for being homeless.
Killed for brandishing a shoehorn.
Killed for playing in a park.
Killed for having your car break down on the road.
Killed for being in your own apartment.
Killed for staying up late.
Killed for holding a garden hose.
This is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.
Making matters worse, when these officers, who have long since ceased to be peace officers, violate their oaths by bullying, beating, tasering, shooting and killing their employers—the taxpayers to whom they owe their allegiance—they are rarely given more than a slap on the hands before resuming their patrols.
Much of the “credit” for shielding these rogue cops goes to influential police unions and laws providing for qualified immunity, police contracts that “provide a shield of protection to officers accused of misdeeds and erect barriers to residents complaining of abuse,” state and federal laws that allow police to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing, and rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats.
It’s happening all across the country.
This is how perverse justice in America has become.
If you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and your property, you should be, because as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
4 Comments
Every aspect of their existence on occupied Palestinian land is illegal. Still, the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against civilians continues, propped up by Israel’s legal system and the world’s blind eyes.
Periodically, we will hear in the news something about the illegal colonies (settlements), but increasingly rarely over the years, and generally without a human face: just numbers and false promises to end the expansion of these colonies choking Palestinians from their land.
Recently, UN Special Rapporteurs and experts shed light on the uptick of brutality and land theft by Israeli colonists. In a new UN report, they noted:
“In 2020, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 771 incidents of settler violence causing injury to 133 Palestinians and damaging 9,646 trees and 184 vehicles mostly in the areas of Hebron, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah. Already, during the first three months of 2021, more than 210 settler violent incidents were recorded, with one Palestinian fatality.”
Stop for a moment and imagine this was a report on violent incidents by Russia, Syria, Venezuela, or any of the nations in NATO’s crosshairs. Media would be howling with outrage and faked tears, with demands for heads to roll, or at least for perpetrators to face justice.
But this is occupied Palestine, where the Israeli legal system serves continued colonist expansion and terrorism against Palestinians. And, let’s be clear, what the colonists do to Palestinians is indeed terrorism.
Colonists have burned alive a Palestinian youth, shot and killed Palestinian civilians, have run people over, including children, leaving them to die. They routinely attack farmers trying to work their land or harvest their olives.
They hail stones, large rocks, sewage and waste onto Palestinians walking or living below their illegally occupied homes, steal Palestinians’ flocks of sheep (or poison them), even uproot and thieve their olive trees.
This has been going on for decades, and the so-called international community allows it, in spite of overwhelming documentation of these crimes.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem has been reporting on such attacks since 1989. A 2017 B’Tselem article noted:
“Thousands of testimonies, videos and reports, as well as many years of close monitoring by B’Tselem and other organizations, reveal that Israeli security forces not only allow settlers to harm Palestinians and their property as a matter of course – they often provide the perpetrators escort and back-up. In some cases, they even join in on the attack.
After more than 25 years of this work, there is no escaping the conclusion that the authorities merely make a show of law enforcement in this context and that, with few exceptions, they have no interest in seriously investigating settler violence against Palestinians.”
Disturbing memories of colonist brutality
In 2007, I witnessed and heard of colonist violence and land theft when I spent eight months in the West Bank as an activist documenting the crimes against Palestinian civilians by both the Israeli military and the illegal colonists.
The city of Hebron has some of the most violent squatters, who, like colonists all over the West Bank, walk with guns slung over their back and routinely attack and abuse the Palestinian residents, including children.
In fact, during my two-week stay in Hebron in mid 2007, one of the things I and other activists did was simply to stand on shara Shuhada, the once vibrant main street, now a shuttered ghost town.
We stood, or sat, on that street for hours, in the heat of the day, to deter colonists from attacking children going to or from school, or adults going to market, work or mosque. It seemed a colossal waste of time, but there had been many precedents of Israeli colonists stoning or beating Palestinians.
South of Hebron, in a desert-like hamlet called Susiya, over the course of many months I stayed in the makeshift tent and metal structures of the Palestinians living there. Prior to their shantytown, they, and generations before them, had lived in stone houses and even cave dwellings. But, they were evicted in the 1980s, when Israel declared the area an archaeological site.
As I wrote, “We stayed with them in hopes of preventing the inevitable attacks by the nearby colonists. Hajj Khalil, an elder in his eighties, had been brutally beaten by colonists the year before I met him.”
The recent UN report also noted:
“Settler violence was predominantly ideologically motivated and primarily designed to take over land but also to intimidate and terrorize Palestinians. The violence and intimidation often prevents Palestinians from accessing and cultivating their land, and creates a coercive environment pressuring Palestinians to stay away from certain areas or even move.”
Indeed, in the Susiya region, I witnessed land being stolen and quickly annexed by the illegal Jewish colonists.
As I wrote, “The elderly Palestinian landowners have been harassed and threatened, and physically abused. They have been moved off of the land by menacing of the illegal colonists. The owners of the land very much want to use it for agricultural purposes and have tried–mostly unsuccessfully–to file complaints at the nearest police station, Kiryat Arba, nearly two hours away. These illegal tactics have been largely successful in the region, with many Susiya residents and landowners leaving their land for nearby cities and towns.”
During the olive harvest that year, I accompanied Palestinian farmers to their orchards in a northern West Bank region. Not long after they had begun collecting olives, six masked colonists descended a hill, slinging hefty stones at us, for forty minutes stoning and then physically hitting people in our group.
I wrote about that at the time, noting, “One of the six attackers slung a large rock at me. Hitting my camera hand, the rock missed my temple. One of the farmers, on the other hand, was not so fortunate, with severe gashes on his head from multiple stone strikes.”
On another occasion, the Palestinians had the needed paperwork to be on their land (that’s right, they have to ask their occupiers for permission to access their land for limited amounts of time, to harvest their olives), and had only just begun to harvest when gun-toting colonists dressed in white descended the hill and began menacing the Palestinians.
What did the Israeli army do? Point their guns at the farmers and tell them to take a hike. Get off their land. The setters have spoken…
There are far worse examples. My encounters and documentation at the time was more on the crimes of the Israeli army against Palestinians. But, B’Tselem has pages of reports and videos of Israeli colonists’ attacks on Palestinians.
In 2015, Haaretz reported colonists had “firebombed” a West Bank house, the ensuing fire burning to death an infant.
The youth I mentioned earlier, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was indeed burned alive by Israelis, in mid-2014. As I wrote some years ago, “Khdeir went missing while going to mosque for morning prayers in occupied Jerusalem. His slight body was found a few hours later charred and beaten. The autopsy report “showed soot in the victim’s lungs and respiratory tract, indicating he was alive and breathing while he was being burnt.”
In a rare instance of justice, the colonist was sent to prison for life for his crime.
But as Israeli rights group Yeshe Din in December 2019 reported, most attacks go unpunished.
According to their research, “Israeli Police failed in the investigation of 82% of the files opened between 2005 and 2019. 91% of all investigation files were closed without an indictment. After 15 years of monitoring Israeli law enforcement authorities in their handling of complaints filed by Palestinian victims of ideological crimes committed by Israelis, the picture that emerges demonstrates that the State of Israel is failing in its duty to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories from those who would harm them and, in fact, leaves them defenseless as they face assault and harassment.”
In their 2017 report, B’Tselem further noted, “Violent actions of settlers against Palestinians are not exceptions to a rule. Rather, they form part of a broader strategy in which the state colludes, as it stands to benefit from the result. Over time, this unchecked violence is gradually driving Palestinians from more and more locations in the West Bank, making it easier for the state to take over land and resources.”
That is the essence: the crimes of Israel’s colonists actually benefit Israel in occupying more and more Palestinian land. So there is incentive to look away, close investigations, let the attacks and murders continue.
In researching for this article I came across yet another account of colonists beating a Susiya resident I knew. The article described an attack in December 2020 on 78 year-old Khalil Haraini. In which, “about 10 settlers rushed out from behind a hill, armed with pistols, rifles, clubs, axes and iron chains. One of them assaulted the elderly farmer, knocking him to the ground. Settlers then beat him with their clubs.”
Although I’m not naive enough to believe anything will change after a UN report here or there, I feel the need to write about it still, 13 years after meeting people like Khalil Haraini or the farmers I accompanied.
Their hell continues and, tragically, no one is going to rein in the terrorists known as Israeli settlers.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
April 17, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank |
3 Comments
Rule by brute force.
That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our nation.
SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Homeowners finding their homes under siege by police out to confiscate lawfully-owned guns. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.
The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.
We are approaching critical mass.
The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.
In effect, you will disappear.
Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.
We have seen this come to pass under past presidents with their use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements.
President Biden’s long list of executive orders, executive actions, proclamations and directives is just more of the same: rule by fiat.
Now the Biden Administration is setting its sights on gun control.
Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will become yet another means by which to subvert the Constitution and sabotage the rights of the people.
These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.
Nineteen states and Washington DC have red flag laws on their books.
That number is growing.
In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings (the statistics suggest otherwise), these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws, which don’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.
Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police the authority to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.
It’s a powder keg waiting for a lit match.
Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.
At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.
The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.
Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.
So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?
According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”
Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.
This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.
This is what happens when you use SWAT teams to carry out routine search warrants.
This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.
Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.
Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
All you need to do is end up on a government watch list.
Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
You will be tracked wherever you go.
You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
April 13, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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The Israeli army detained three prominent Hamas leaders the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that an Israeli soldier detained Hatem Qaffeisha, 58, a top Hamas leader in Hebron and a Palestinian lawmaker.
Former Local Governance Minister Isa Al-Jabari, 55, and top Hamas figure Mazen Al-Natsha, 49, were also detained.
The three figures have been jailed several times by the Israeli army.
Hamas has warned of Israeli plans to stage a mass arrest campaign against its members ahead of the Palestinian elections slated for May.
In February, key Hamas members were detained including Mustafa Al-Shannar, Adnan Asfour, Yaser Mansour, Khalid El-Haj, Abdel-Basit El-Haj, Omar Al-Hanbali and Faze’ Sawafteh.
Hamas says the Israeli authorities aim to disrupt the Palestinian elections and affect the results.
Hamas also accused the Israeli authorities of threatening its members with imprisonment if they run in the upcoming elections.
Palestinians are scheduled to vote in the legislative elections on 22 May, presidential polls are to be held on 31 July and the National Council elections on 31 August.
The last legislative elections were held in 2006, with Hamas coming out on top.
March 26, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Palestinian detained officials Khaled Abu Arafa (L) and Sheikh Ra’ed Salah
Israel has extended the custody of two current and former Palestinian officials according to the so-called administrative detention rule, a form of imprisonment in which the individual is never tried and can be held indefinitely.
An Israeli court extended the solitary confinement of Sheikh Ra’ed Salah for yet another six months, the Palestinian Information Center said in a report on Thursday.
A few days earlier, his lawyer Khaled Zabarqa had revealed that the Tel Aviv regime intended to hold Sheikh Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, in isolation under flimsy security pretexts.
“He has been in isolation since six months ago and today the court extended it for another six months, which means he will spend a whole year in solitary confinement,” Zabarqa said.
Israeli security authorities claimed that the Palestinian official could pose a security threat to the regime if he were held with other inmates, his lawyer added.
Zabarqa described Wednesday’s court session as a mere formality, lambasting the tribunal for approving what the security services had requested without looking into the truth of their accusations and not caring about the impact of its verdict on his client.
“Israel is prosecuting Salah for his ideology and religious beliefs and not because of any criminal offense,” the lawyer stressed.
Separately on Wednesday, a court in the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds extended the administrative detention of Khaled Abu Arafa, the former Palestinian minister of al-Quds affairs, for another four months, without trial or indictment.
Israeli’s spy agency Shin Bet arrested Abu Arafa, 59, in November last year after summoning him for interrogation at the Ofer detention center near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
A week later, an Israeli court in Jerusalem al-Quds extended his detention for several days before issuing an administrative detention order for four months against the ex-minister.
The Palestinian official has so far been in Israeli jail several times. He was banished from Jerusalem al-Quds upon his release in 2014.
More than 350 detainees are under administrative detention, in which Israel keeps the detainees for up to six months, a period which can be extended an infinite number of times. Women and minors are also among the detainees.
Such detentions take place on orders from a military commander and on the basis of what the regime describes as “secret” evidence.
Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years without any charge. Palestinians in administrative detention resort to hunger strikes to force the Israeli authorities to release them.
March 4, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Hamas said yesterday that detention campaigns carried out by Israeli occupation against Islamic Bloc activists aim to affect the results of the Palestinian election.
Recently, Israeli occupation forces escalated detention campaigns targeting Hamas leaders, members, and activists in the occupied West Bank.
Hamas MP Sheikh Nayef Al-Rajoub said that the Israeli occupation detains Hamas members and holds them under administrative detention.
These detention campaigns aimed at “targeting the will of Palestinian youth, who are at the core of the upcoming elections,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We stress that achieving national consensus and partnership is a national priority,” Hamas added, reiterated that it “will continue its efforts to rearrange the Palestinian national home on the basis of achieving partnership, ending divisions and setting up a comprehensive, national programme to face off the Israeli occupation and settlement activities.”
Hamas called on all free people of the world and parliaments to impose sanctions on the Israeli occupation, which has been targeting Palestinian democracy for years.
“The detention campaigns come as part of a policy adopted by the Israeli occupation since 2006 to undermine the Palestinian political system and exclude any influential Palestinian party that gained legitimacy through the ballot boxes,” Hamas concluded.
March 3, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Ramallah – An Israeli interrogator allegedly physically and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Israeli custody during interrogation in mid-January at a Jerusalem detention facility.
The 15-year-old boy* was detained by Israeli paramilitary border police forces from his home around 5 a.m. on January 13, 2021, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. Israeli forces transferred him to Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention center in West Jerusalem where he was bound and blindfolded and detained in an interrogation room. An individual accused him of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and then allegedly subjected the boy to physical and sexual violence amounting to torture, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine.
“Israeli forces routinely subject Palestinian child detainees to systematic ill-treatment and torture following arrest,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program Director at DCIP. “These latest allegations are a particularly disturbing reminder that Palestinian children in Israeli custody are vulnerable to all forms of violence. Israeli authorities must immediately investigate these allegations that amount to torture.”
DCIP maintains that all children must be entitled to have a parent present at all times during interrogation, as well as have access to a lawyer of their choice prior to interrogation and throughout the interrogation process. DCIP demands that all interrogations of children must be audio-visually recorded.
When he was detained on January 13, the boy was already subject to house arrest following a previous arrest in November 2020 and was scheduled to appear in court that day.
Upon arrival at Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention center, the boy was forced to sit in a hallway bound and blindfolded where he was subject to physical violence by those passing by, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
“Every two to three minutes, someone would come by and slap, push, punch, or kick me,” the boy told DCIP. “I kept silent and never said anything. I did not know what was going on, but it was painful and tiring.”
He was eventually brought into an interrogation room. “A man came to the room and told me his name was Captain Kamel,” the boy told DCIP. “He kicked me and punched me while shouting and saying I should tell him what I did. Whenever I told him I did not do anything, he would beat me harder. He threatened to shock me with electricity, but I told him I did not do anything.”
The boy alleges the individual then knocked him to the floor while blindfolded and raped him with an object, according to documentation collected by DCIP. The individual threatened that the sexual violence would continue unless he confessed to the allegations against him.
The boy was then made to stand against a wall, where the individual inflicted extreme pain on his genitals. “There are no words to describe that moment,” the boy told DCIP. The Captain subsequently threatened the boy, telling him that the physical and sexual violence would continue if he told his lawyer what had occurred.
Around 15 minutes after the incident, Israeli forces transferred the boy to another room where he met with a lawyer for about five minutes. Then, he was taken to a room where a man in civilian clothing introduced himself as an Israeli interrogator. The boy was interrogated for almost four hours, during which he experienced verbal abuse and was forced to sign papers written in Hebrew, the content of which he did not understand, according to information collected by DCIP.
With his court session adjourned for four days, the boy was detained in a room with four other children for three days. After that time, he was again taken to an interrogation room. He was interrogated for approximately four hours, at the end of which he was again forced to sign papers in Hebrew. The following day, January 17, he was released under the terms of house arrest pending another court session at a later date, according to information collected by DCIP.
“What he did to me was very oppressive and humiliating,” the boy told DCIP. “I want this house arrest to end because it is exhausting. I want my life back. I want to leave the house and see my friends.”
Palestinian children in East Jerusalem are prosecuted in Israel’s civilian criminal legal system, not the Israeli military court system, due to Israeli authorities’ unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, a move unrecognized by the international community. Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem are generally subject to the Israeli Youth Law, which theoretically applies equally to Palestinian and Israeli children in Jerusalem. However, evidence collected by DCIP clearly demonstrates that Israeli authorities implement the law in a discriminatory manner, denying Palestinian children in East Jerusalem of their rights from the moment of arrest to the end of legal proceedings.
Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system are overwhelmingly subjected to widespread and systematic violence and ill-treatment, according to documentation by DCIP. Between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2019, DCIP collected sworn affidavits from 752 child detainees, describing their arrest, interrogation, and detention experiences. Of these, 72 percent were subjected to physical violence and 61 percent to verbal abuse. Less than one percent were threatened with sexual violence; however, sexual violence amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment are known to be underreported by child detainee survivors.
A 2015 study on sexual torture by Israeli authorities found that the sexual torture of adult Palestinian male detainees by Israeli authorities is systematic, and includes verbal sexual harassment, forced nudity, and physical sexual assault.
*The boy’s name is known to DCIP but is not disclosed here due to privacy concerns.
March 2, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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