Britain discusses increase in arms exports to Egypt
Arms sold by the UK to Egypt have also been used to violently suppress protests against the Sisi regime
MEMO | May 14, 2016
The British Embassy in Cairo has revealed that discussions have been held regarding an increase in arms exports to Egypt. The talks were led by Britain’s adviser for the Middle East at the Ministry of Defence, Lieutenant-General Tom Beckett; the aim is to strengthen Egypt’s capabilities for fighting ISIS/Daesh, Moheet.com has reported.
In a statement issued on Friday, the embassy said that Becket’s visit to Cairo was to consolidate mutual cooperation and Egypt’s military partnership with Britain. “The UK considers Egypt an important military partner in the region and in the fight against Daesh,” the senior army officer was quoted as saying.
Britain exports arms worth millions of pounds to Egypt annually, with a dramatic increase in export licences for weapons recorded in 2015.
Since 2013, Egypt has been waging what it calls a war against Daesh in Sinai. The army claims that it has killed dozens of extremists, although locals say that the war has been waged against them, with soldiers destroying houses and public facilities. Residents have also been evicted from their homes.
There have been periodic attacks on troops and their vehicles, and some have been killed. No group has claimed responsibility, which is unusual. However, the Egyptian authorities insist that Daesh — known locally as Wilayat Sinai – carries out the attacks.
Israel imposes “general closure” on Palestinian territory for Israeli Independence day
Ma’an – May 11, 2016
BETHLEHEM – Israeli authorities declared a “general closure” on Gaza and the occupied West Bank since midnight on Tuesday and continuing until midnight on Thursday as Israel celebrates its Memorial and Independence day.
The general closure was implemented on the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip yesterday, marking Israeli Memorial day, and will continue until the finish of Israel’s Independence day on Thursday.
Crossings into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza are only being permitted in humanitarian cases. However, a representative of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has requested approval for Palestinians in need of serious medical assistance, a spokesperson for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told Ma’an.
An Israeli army spokesperson said the closure was implemented following an army “security assessment” and added that the closure restrictions included the passage of products and the movement of people into Israel and its illegal settlements.
Debilitating poverty and lack of employment drives many workers in the occupied West Bank to enter Israel in search of work. Israel’s imposition of closures on the Palestinian territory has severely affected the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who depend on entering Israel, or its illegal settlements, for employment opportunities.
The number of Palestinians employed, both documented and undocumented, in Israel and its illegal settlements for the first quarter of 2016 was 114,000, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The average unemployment rate for the Palestinian territory was 26.6% for this same period: 18% in the West Bank and a staggering 41.2% in Gaza. The poor state of the Palestinian territory’s economy is largely attributed to the decades-long Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the nearly nine year Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip which severely undermines any economic developments.
Israeli authorities movement restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank as recently as a few weeks ago during the Jewish holiday of Passover, including implementing a full closure on the besieged enclave of Gaza.
Climate changes in Holy Land for World Council of Churches
Israeli treatment of representatives at airport ‘unacceptable’
WCC | May 9, 2016
After traveling to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv in the last week for a climate justice meeting, World Council of Churches (WCC) staff and partners were detained or deported in a manner that WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit terms both unprecedented and intolerable.
“The WCC protests the excessive, unreasonable and wholly unwarranted treatment by the Israeli authorities of these representatives of WCC member churches and staff traveling to engage in discussions on climate change and environmental stewardship, at the invitation of and hosted by WCC’s member churches in the region,” he said.
Members of the WCC’s Working Group on Climate Change from as many as 13 countries reported they were held for hours of interrogation, including tough intimidation and detention in prison-like conditions for up to three days — a very difficult experience, Tveit said. “We react in different ways emotionally to experiences like this. For all of them, I think it was totally unexpected and very disturbing, for most of them shocking, as they have never experienced anything like this before.”
Although there have been small incidents in the past, there has been nothing approaching this level of intimidation, Tveit added.
The members of the Working Group on Climate Change had traveled to Israel in a spirit of ecumenical solidarity to address shared global challenges in environmental protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Travelers were detained, interrogated and intimidated. Expressing his concern about the effect of such treatment on people, Tveit said he had no reason to believe there would be any problem for people traveling to this meeting, particularly since there have been other such meetings over many years, not only related to climate change but also to ecumenical relations, peacemaking and theological reflection. For many years, the WCC has drawn on resources and counterparts from both Palestine and Israel to promote peaceful relations and coexistence.
All traveling WCC participants from the WCC working group are safely out of Israel. The WCC called on the government of Israel for an apology as well as to desist its aggressive behaviour toward WCC member churches and staff in the future. “We believe that it is also in the interest of the government of Israel to address these very unpleasant incidents for future visitors to this country, and to prevent their recurrence,” said Tveit and added “We are ready to meet and discuss these issues.”
4 members of Egyptian satire troupe Street Children referred to prosecution for ‘insulting the state’
Ahram Online | May 10, 2016
Four members of Street Children (Atfal Shawaree), a satirical performance art troupe, were referred Tuesday to a Cairo prosecution on accusations of inciting protests and publishing videos that insult state institutions, a judicial source told Ahram Online.
The artists were arrested on Monday and are being held at Cairo’s Sayeda Zeinab police station prior to the referral to Heliopolis prosecution.
On Sunday, the group’s sixth and youngest member, Ezz El-Din Khaled, 19, was ordered to be released on EGP 10,000 bail pending investigation into charges of inciting protests and publishing videos that insult state institutions.
Prosecution appealed the decision to release Khaled on Monday. The appeal was rejected on Tuesday and the 19-year-old was released.
Khaled was arrested from his home on Saturday evening.
The six-member performance group gained popularity among youths for their videos in which they that mock societal norms as well as the discourse of government officials and supporters.
Street Children released their first video in January 2016. The troupe’s last video was another satirical titled “Sisi is my president.”
Israeli occupation authorities ban female ex-detainee from going to university
Palestinian Information Center – May 10, 2016
NABLUS – Israeli occupation forces handed a letter to the 21-year-old Palestinian ex-detainee Asma al-Qadah banning her from going to university for five months which threatens her completion of university studies.
Islam al-Qadah told Quds Press that Israeli intelligence forces summoned his sister to be interviewed in Ariel settlement and handed her the ban order one month after her release after three months of administrative detention with no charge or trial.
Asma al-Qadah is a Bachelor student in the English Department. She serves as the cultural committee secretary at the student union council.
She is affiliated with the Islamic bloc, the student wing of Hamas Movement, in Beirzit University.
Majd Atwan, 22, sentenced to 45 days imprisonment for Facebook postings
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 10, 2016
Majd Yousef Atwan, 22, a young Palestinian woman from Al-Khader village, Bethlehem, and a recent beauty school graduate, was sentenced by an Israeli Ofer military court to 45 days imprisonment and a 3,000 NIS ($794) fine for posting on Facebook, which the Israeli military occupation deemed “incitement.”
Atwan is one of approximately 150 Palestinians detained and imprisoned for social media postings, including the case of Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet from Nazareth being prosecuted for poetry posted online. She was arrested in a 2:00 am army raid on her family home on 19 April, which was invaded by occupation soldiers. She is one of 7,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and nearly 70 women and girls.
Drone ‘kill list’ could leave MPs, military & spies ‘facing murder charges’
RT | May 10, 2016
Britain’s drone ‘kill list’ could leave politicians, pilots and intelligence personnel facing murder charges unless rules of engagement are quickly clarified, a parliamentary report has warned.
The joint committee on human rights warned on Tuesday that killing with drones outside warzones could lead to “criminal prosecution for murder or complicity in murder.”
The report also warned that the widely-used term “targeted killing” sounded “uncomfortably close to assassination“ and took the view that the UK pursues an active policy “to use lethal force abroad outside armed conflict” under the banner of “counter-terrorism.”
The committee acknowledged the likelihood of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) pursuing a case is slim, but said authorities in other countries may if their citizens are killed.
Chaired by Labour‘s Harriet Harman, the committee also said the UK owed it “to all those involved in the chain of command for such uses of lethal force to provide them with absolute clarity about the circumstances in which they will have a defense against any possible future criminal prosecution.”
The investigation began in August 2014 after it was announced a UK targeted drone strike had killed British Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighter Reyaad Khan in Syria.
The killing took place prior to December’s parliamentary vote on military action in the country. The US had developed a pattern of carrying out drone strikes in regions which are not official warzones such as Yemen and Pakistan, a trend which critics find worrying.
Harman’s panel said it is “vital that the legal line between counter-terrorism law enforcement and the waging of war by military means does not become blurred, leading to the use of lethal force in circumstances not permitted by law.”
Human rights NGO Reprieve warned on Tuesday the report highlighted some of the risks involved in an assassination policy.
Reprieve staff attorney Jennifer Gibson said “this is a wakeup call.”
She warned there is a “very real danger that the UK is following the US down the slippery slope of kill lists and targeted killings.”
“This is alarming, given the CIA’s secret drone war has killed hundreds of civilians and been described as a ‘failed strategy’ by [US President Barack] Obama’s own former head of defense intelligence,” she added.
While UK Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged at the time that the Khan killing was a “new departure,” the government maintains it only uses such methods in cases where there is an “immediate” or “imminent” threat to the UK.
Sheikh Raed Salah begins nine-month prison term for “incitement”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 9, 2016
Sheikh Raed Salah, Palestinian leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, began a nine-month jail term for “incitement” on Sunday, 8 May. He arrived at the jail with dozens of supporters, and said that “this prison sentence will not deter us from maintaining the defence of [Jerusalem’s] Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Since 1996, Salah is the leader of the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, which organizes Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the movement banned last year, sparking widespread protest and condemnation. Salah has been imprisoned in the past for incitement and related charges; this imprisonment is related to a 2007 rally against Israeli construction work near Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Salah arrived for his sentence at Beersheba prison, and was then transferred to Nafha prison by Israeli occupation forces. He has repeatedly stated that his imprisonment is an attempt to shut down Palestinian defense of Al-Aqsa from attacks by settlers and the Israeli government.
He served as mayor of Umm al-Fahm between 1987 and 2001. In 2010, he participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara, the ship attacked by Israeli special forces who killed ten Turkish and American activists, as the armed forces took over the ship and prevented it from breaking the siege of Gaza.
In 2011, Salah was targeted during a visit to the UK for deportation and exclusion. Arrested in the UK, he was kept in the country until March 2012 fighting the charges, which he eventually defeated in a significant court victory.
Bir Zeit University student arrested in night raid, student leader banned from Ramallah and Bir Zeit
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 9, 2016
Palestinian engineering student Alaa Assaf was arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers after they raided her family’s home in Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, in an early-morning armed attack on the home.
Assaf, a student in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at Bir Zeit University, was formerly a member of the university’s student council from 2014-2015. Recent elections at the university were won by the Islamic Bloc; dozens of students associated with the Islamic Bloc, the leftist Progressive Democratic Pole, and other active student organizations have been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces.
At the same time, Asmaa Qadah, the secretary of Bir Zeit student council’s cultural committee, was banned from entering Ramallah and Bir Zeit for five months. Qadah was previously held under administrative detention without charge or trial for several months. The ban on Qadah’s entering Bir Zeit and Ramallah obviously interferes with her ability to study, attend classes, and participate in the university. Her graduation – originally scheduled for July 2016 – was already delayed due to three months of arbitrary imprisonment.
Alaa Assaf was among at least 14 Palestinians arrested in late-night/early-morning raids by Israeli occupation forces in home invasions.
Students and faculty at several Palestinian universities have been targeted for arrest, including students at Bir Zeit University, Al-Quds University, and Palestine Polytechnic University. Student offices were raided by Israeli occupation forces who invaded Al-Quds University, while astrophysics professor Imad Barghouthi is imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention.
samidoun@samidoun.ca
Israel forces open fire on Palestinian farmers in southern Gaza
Ma’an – May 8, 2016
GAZA – Israeli forces on Sunday morning opened fire on Palestinians farmers in the southern Gaza Strip, local sources said.
Locals told Ma’an Israeli forces deployed east of Khan Yunis opened fire on farmers, preventing them from reaching their lands. No injuries were reported.
An Israeli army spokesperson said they could not confirm the incident.
The incident comes after Israeli forces targeted the southern region of the small Palestinian territory with airstrikes for four consecutive days beginning Wednesday evening. Several were injured and a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli shelling.
Israel said airstrikes were launched in response to Palestinian resistance groups targeting its troops with mortar rounds in an attempt to thwart Israeli military excavation activities in search of Hamas-made tunnels. However, Israel’s regular incursions inside Gaza’s border areas were perceived by many as the instigator of the hostilities.
The exchange was seen as an unusual escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip since a 2014 ceasefire was brokered after Israel’s devastating 50-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave that left some 2,200 dead and 11,000 injured.
Hamas, Gaza’s de facto ruler, had widely observed the 2014 ceasefire; Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yalon in March said Hamas “hasn’t fired a bullet” since the war, and following Thursday’s hostilities, Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a senior Israeli army officer as saying that Hamas had even been instrumental in preventing terrorist attacks and rocket fire directed at Israel.
However in the almost two years since the ceasefire was declared, regular violations have been committed on the Israeli side.
Israeli bulldozers frequently enter Gaza territory, carrying out land-leveling and excavation operations while accompanied by military vehicles, with four such incursions recorded by the UN between April 26 and May 2.
On a near daily basis, the Israeli army fires “warning shots” on Palestinian fisherman, farmers, and shepherds entering the Israeli-enforced “buffer zone,” implemented after Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip a decade ago.
Due to the high frequency of the attacks, live fire often goes unreported.
While Israel typically cites security concerns when targeting Palestinian agricultural areas, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights has reported in the past that fishermen are often targeted when they pose no threat.
Approximately 35 percent of Palestinian agricultural land in Gaza is inaccessible without high personal risk, according to the center.
In 2015, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen at least 139 times, killing three, wounding dozens, and damaging at least 16 fishing boats, according to the UN Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Israeli forces also regularly open fire on Palestinian protesters during Friday demonstrations held along Gaza’s border, with injuries sustained by live fire and rubber-coated steel bullets reported nearly every week. At least 25 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza clashes since the beginning of October, according to UN documentation.
Israel Stoking More Conflict With Gaza
By Stephen Lendman | May 5, 2016
Three Israeli wars of aggression on illegally besieged Gaza since December 2008 perhaps aren’t enough for Israel’s killing machine.
Repeated inter-war ground, air and sea attacks occur regularly. Is Israel preparing the ground for another major assault – blaming Gazan victims like it always does for its high crimes against peace?
On Wednesday, Israeli tanks shelled two Hamas watchtowers provocatively. Senior Hamas official Musheer al-Masri called the attacks “dangerous developments and an obvious breach of the ceasefire in Gaza.”
“The Israeli occupation should avoid testing the Palestinian resistance. The enemy should realize that the toll would be in proportion to the Israeli crimes.”
“The Israeli escalation is a new development, and the Palestinian resistance is (deciding) how to react.”
Hamas’ armed wing al-Qassam Brigades responded with mortar fire on an Israeli bulldozer. An Interior Ministry source reported no casualties, just damage.
Islamic Jihad spokesman, Daud Shihab, said “Israel has not ceased its hostilities against the Palestinian people since the ceasefire was agreed on in 2014.”
“There are continued onslaughts and infiltrations in both Gaza and the West Bank and in other locations in Palestine.”
Gaza remains illegally blockaded since June 2007 – for political, not security reasons. According to an April UN report, about 75,000 Palestinians remain displaced from Israel’s summer 2014 naked aggression.
Affected families are forced to “liv(e) in store rooms, unfinished units, substandard apartments in relatives’ or neighbors’ buildings” or wherever else they can find shelter.
Some live in damaged homes, others in prefabricated shelters. War and displacement affected women and children hardest.
Over 30% of displaced females “liv(e) in shelter conditions… lacking safety, dignity and privacy, including tents, makeshift shelters, destroyed houses or the open air.”
Nearly all affected families lack resources and construction supplies to rebuild. Most funds pledged for reconstruction weren’t delivered.
Israel blocks or greatly restricts building supplies entering the Strip on the phony pretext of being useful to Hamas or other resistance groups.
The UN warned “(a)t the present rate, it will take years to address the massive reconstruction and repair needs, adding to the general frustration of the population following years of movement restrictions, rising unemployment and poverty.”
Gazans suffer hugely under open-air prison conditions. Israel attacks the Strip at its discretion.
Are things heading for another war? Does Israel want remaining parts of Gaza turned to rubble – thousands more of its residents slaughtered or injured?
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.
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Book Review
Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy
By Kevin Barrett • Unz Review • February 1, 2019
A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories, saying “we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”
At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9/11 and other historical events are undesirable.
But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word “recommend” is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn’t really recommend anything. When it says it does, it is lying. … continue
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