Tom was 21 years old when he was shot. A photography student, he had left the UK to volunteer as a ‘human shield’ in Iraq. Here he heard about the ISM, one of whose volunteers, Rachel Corrie, had just been killed by a bulldozer whilst protesting house demolitions in Rafah. He headed there himself, arriving on the 6th April.
On the day of his shooting, Tom was with other ISM activists walking through Rafah when Israeli sniper fire started. Almost everyone ran for safety, but Tom noticed that three children, aged between four and seven, had remained motionless, paralysed with fear. Tom went back for them. He got the little boy to safety, and then went back for the two girls. He was wearing a fluorescent vest, and was clearly unarmed. An Israeli sniper shot him in the head.
There was a two hour delay at the border of the Gaza Strip before an ambulance was able to take him to a hospital in Be’er Sheva. In a coma, he was transferred to a hospital in the UK, where he died the following year.
The soldier who shot him, Taysir Hayb, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eleven and a half years in prison. A British inquest into the killing found that the killing was intentional – in other words, murder.
Tom’s shooting followed the murder of Rachel Corrie, run over by a bulldozer on the 16th March, and the near fatal shooting of Brian Avery, shot in the face in Jenin on April 5th. Later that month, another Brit, filmmaker James Miller, was also killed by a sniper in Rafah. The Israeli military have refused to accept any responsibility for what they did to Rachel, Brian or James.
Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. “While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle… It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, ‘We are International volunteers. Don’t shoot!’ That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can’t be sure where from…” – The Independent, 2009
Tom Hurndall was a young man with a dream…he paid for it with his life. –The Telegraph, 2004
Tom, blind to nationalities and borders, exuded humanity. He wanted, he wrote in his journal, “to make a difference”. He did. He also had an outrageous sense of humour and will be missed, most of all, because he made those of us who were his friends smile. He is survived by his parents, sister Sophie, and his brothers Billy and Freddy. – Carl Arindell, The Guardian, 2004.
Today International Solidarity Movement pays tribute to Tom Hurndall for his bravery and sacrifices. He is never far from our thoughts, and he continues to inspire our Palestinian, Israeli, and International volunteers throughout our campaigns in the Occupied Territories. Tom would want us to remember him. But we also know he’d want us to remember that thousands of innocent Palestinians have died under similar circumstances. These people’s deaths have not been investigated, and have often been lied about, claiming the victims to be combatants or explained away with empty phrases like “caught in the crossfire” or “tragic accident.”
While the ISM acknowledges that the Israeli military court found Wahid Taysir guilty of manslaughter, an injustice was committed by his early release from prison in September 2010 due to “good behavior.”
The international community will continue to question the policy and decision makers responsible for Tom’s murder and the murder of thousands of other innocent people.
It’s exactly three years ago that the ins and outs of the overpopulated strip were sealed off by the Israeli military just as tightly as the entire “International Community” shut its eyes and ambivalently turned its back on a horrifying massacre that was in the making. And it’s three years ago that we’ve used up what little was left of our quota of sympathy and compassion towards the Palestinians and took our collective apathy to a whole new level.
Three years after the “unilateral cessation of military operations” on January 18th, 2009; and the Israeli apparatus of mass murder and annihilation is still roaring at the borders; ready to be initiated at a moment’s notice, the IOF is literally licking its lips, salivating at the chance of yet another vicious round of wholesale slaughter, its animalistic zeal for more bloodletting is as vigorous today as it was only three years ago –if not more-, Israeli political, diplomatic and military officials alike don’t seem to miss an opportunity to beat the war drums – and they do so with an almost reckless abandon.
The day starts and ends with the gloom of impending war amassing over Gaza; on December 27th, 2011 (third anniversary of the war on Gaza), Israeli army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz stated that another attack on the strip is “inevitable” while southern brigade commander Tal Hermoni was quoted by Haaretz newspaper as saying that another “varied and different military campaign” is being prepared, this is of course not counting the fact that targeted killings, aerial night raids and the occasional ground incursion have already become such horrible albeit daily realities in the strip.
Today, an entire population in Gaza is held hostage to dire living conditions and the Zionist state’s death grip, Israel’s heartless policy of meticulously calculating and determining the calorie-intake for Gazans is still the order of the day; university students are being robbed of their academic futures due to arbitrary travel restrictions, patients denied their right to treatment and systemic disregard for anything even resembling human rights still goes on apace.
Three years after the bombs fell; and Palestinians in Gaza –with so many cards stacked against them- are still trying to piece together the broken shards of their lives and entire families are still living through worn out photographs of their loved ones; those who lost their lives to Israel’s Casting Lead and the rest of the world’s self-incriminating silence.
Three years after the bombs fell; and new injustices heaped on top of ongoing ones. The piercing wail of sirens, keening voices of loss amongst the ruins of the strip still prevail till this very day in the little coastal enclave. Three years after the bombs fell; and the only justice the international community could afford to the people of Gaza was a meek report that was even disowned by its author.
Three years after the sky of Gaza was blanketed with all means of spiraling white phosphorous ammunitions; and the ground of the strip is still littered with leftover shells and unexploded bombs laying in wait for a second chance to claim yet more lives of Palestinian kids. Three years after the bombs fell; and living a normal childhood still remains such a rare feat for Gazan children as the sheer weight of life on Israel’s draconian terms takes its heavy toll on their fragile souls; deathly hues of the last war still take hold of their memories and the overcrowded makeshift classrooms are daily reminders of the horrors they’ve endured in that winter of 2008/2009.
Three years after Israeli “spectators” from nearby southern cities took to hilltops in groups to catch sight of the sky raining death and destruction on defenseless Palestinians, giggling, sharing laughs and passing their binoculars from one person to the next as they cheered enthusiastically for the “might” of the IOF as if the carnage unfolding right before their eyes was a mere sporting event; and killing is still a spectator sport for Israeli authorities, trigger-happy junior Israeli border officers still get their kicks from firing live rounds at Palestinian farmers attempting to harvest their crops near the “buffer zone” while hunting the Palestinians in their tunnels near the Rafah border with unmanned drones is still the “standard operating procedure”.
Three years after the bombs fell – almost one year after the dictatorship of Husni Mubarak was dissolved-; and the crushing weight of Israel’s blockade is still pressing hard against the chests of Gazans, the inhumane siege of Gaza –which has long outserved its theoretical usefulness, if there ever was any to begin with- has gradually morphed into this internationally condoned policy that the world has become, for all intents and purposes, far too comfortable to abandon; eventually this chronic passiveness has sadly maneuvered the Palestinians in Gaza into a seemingly unending life of siege and collective punishment, a life in which they have no choice but to literally tunnel their own way out.
Today “Operation Cast Lead” remains an open wound and a dark stain on the conscience of the world as its sense of morality and justice is rapidly waning and the value of a human life remains gravely skewed. Are Palestinian victims somehow not worthy of mass candle-lit vigils at dusk in honor of their memory? Will they ever have someone to recite each and every one of their names at their own “hallowed ground”? The images of the 22-day long massacre in Gaza are too strong to be forgotten; of grief stricken fathers digging the remains of their loved ones buried under the rubbles of what was once their house, of the injured wheeled into chaotic emergency rooms on office chairs, of unidentified bodies of dead children with the word “anonymous” scribbled in black markers across their tiny bellies at the morgue in the Adwan hospital and of doctors at al Shifa Hospital desperately performing CPR on little infants’ chests to no avail.
Unfortunately the media still has a blind spot when it comes to Gaza; screams of protest from Tunisia, Cairo, Benghazi and Sana’a have drowned out the incessant appeals to lift the blockade. Of course; plenty of exploits to be reaped from the Arab Spring nowadays, where -sadly enough- opportunism and gutter politics reign supreme, and so little time to do so.
Three years after the bombs fell; and it seems that Gaza will remain on the back-burner for a while; largely absent from our TV sets and daily dose of news bites, until perhaps Cast Lead II.
Ahmad Barqawi, a Jordanian freelance columnist & writer based in Amman, he has done several studies, statistical analysis and researches on economic and social development in Jordan
Washington, DC – Today, on the tenth anniversary of the arrival of the first detained men at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued the following statement:
Today marks the tenth anniversary of indefinite detention without charge or fair trials at the prison at Guantánamo, and it is an anniversary that should not have come. The men indefinitely detained at Guantánamo have been abandoned by all three branches of government, but the primary responsibility for the prison remaining open lies with President Obama. On his second day in office, President Obama signed an Executive Order mandating the closure of Guantánamo within a year. Since then, his administration has in fact perpetuated and sanctioned the system at Guantánamo by continuing indefinite detentions without charge or trial, resuming illegitimate military commissions, and most recently, signing into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which substantially hinders the closure of Guantánamo by restricting the transfer of the remaining 171 detained men, over half of whom have been approved for transfer by every branch of government with a stake in the matter. Despite its promise of a new era of accountability and respect for the rule of law, the Obama administration has also repeatedly acted to block virtually any accountability for those who have planned, authorized, and committed torture at Guantánamo and beyond. On this day marking ten years of injustice at Guantánamo, we call on people of conscience everywhere to demand that the prison finally be closed and to intensify opposition to all unjust U.S. detentions and prosecutions conducted in the name of national security. We must also build opposition to the government’s covert and overt wars in a re-branded “War on Terror” which is being used to justify both military detentions and military strikes to the detriment of the safety and dignity of peoples in the United States and abroad.
In the morning, CCR hosted a briefing at the National Press Club entitled “Obama’s Prison: Guantánamo Turns 10.” The briefing featured CCR’s Executive Director Vincent Warren; CCR’s Legal Director Baher Azmy; Stephen Oleskey, co-counsel in the landmark Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court case, who argued that the men’s right to challenge the legality of their detentions has since been effectively eviscerated; Rear Admiral John Hutson, a former military officer who supported President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order promising to close Guantánamo within one year and stood behind him as he signed it; and Colonel Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo military commissions who ultimately resigned because of the injustices he witnessed. (Short statements by participants in the press briefing can be seen on CCR’s website here.)
The press briefing was followed by a large rally in front of the White House demanding the closure of Guantánamo led by a broad coalition of human rights organizations and activists including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International-USA, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. At this rally, Martha Rayner, an attorney who represents men detained at Guantánamo, read a statementsigned by over a hundred habeas counsel denouncing the unjust detention of their clients and President Obama’s failure to close the prison. Ramzi Kassem, an attorney who represents men detained at Guantánamo and Bagram and a professor who directs the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of law, spoke of the injustices within terrorism detentions and prosecutions that occur domestically in the U.S. and abroad. Talat Hamdani, mother of Salman Hamdani, an emergency medical technician who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks while helping people at the Twin Towers in New York City, also called for the closure of Guantánamo.
According to habeas counsel who had spoken with their clients, the men at Guantánamo were heartened by the planned protests marking the anniversary in cities across the U.S. and planned their own peaceful protests to coincide with the rally in DC and to demand the end to their continued indefinite detention without charge or a fair trial. They planned to protest by staging sit-ins and participating in a three-day hunger strike.
Following the rally, the demonstrators marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, led by 171 people dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods representing the number of men still detained at Guantánamo. They continued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, holding brief rallies at four locations to demonstrate the chain of responsibility that connects the White House, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Capitol, and the Supreme Court. … Full article
The assassination of Iranian scientists has disgraced the UN nuclear agency as the body has provided Western intelligence agencies with confidential information on Iran’s nuclear experts, a political analyst tells Press TV.
On Wednesday morning, an unknown motorcyclist attached a sticky bomb to Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan’s car near Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran.
Ahmadi Roshan, a Sharif University of Technology chemical engineering graduate and the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, was killed immediately and his driver, who had sustained injures, passed away a few hours later in hospital.
In an interview with Press TV on Wednesday, Professor Seyyed Mohamed Marandi said, “IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] officials had met him [Ahmadi Roshan] earlier.”
Marandi added that “a lot of Iranian intelligence and information have been given to intelligence sources as well as terrorist organizations” by the IAEA in the past.
The prominent political analyst said it is difficult for Iran to continue cooperation with the IAEA as the agency is “dominated by the Western countries” and puts “[Iranian] people at risk.”
Marandi said all of Iranian scientists who had been targeted by terrorist attacks “have had their names given by the IAEA to third parties.”
“It is obvious that Western intelligence agencies are carrying out these attacks, or if the Israelis are carrying them out, it is with the knowledge of the Europeans and Americans. Because these agencies are very closely aligned to one another, they cooperate extensively, they exchange information,” he added.
The latest terrorist attack comes as Iran has reached an agreement with the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany – to hold negotiations in Turkey.
The US, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to sway the UNSC to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran.
Based on these accusations, they have also repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike.
This is while in November 2011, some of the US presidential hopefuls called for conducting covert operations ranging from assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists to launching a military strike on Iran as well as sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program.
The calls for assassinations are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror.
On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks; Shahriari was killed immediately and Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, only sustained injuries.
Iran says as the UN Resolution 1747, adopted against Tehran in March 2007, cited Abbasi’s name as a “nuclear scientist,” the perpetrators were in a position to trace their victim.
According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met IAEA inspectors, a fact which indicates that the UN nuclear agency has leaked information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists.
According to sources in Iran, a nuclear scientist was killed in Tehran today by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist. It is very clear to most of us who stands behind these continuous attacks on Iran’s scientists and military personnel.
However, the discrepancy between Hebrew and English press reporting on the incident is pretty staggering and demands some deliberation.
While the Israeli English outlet Ynet reports on the incident in a pretty cold manner, it goes as far as reporting on “mysterious explosion in Iranian capital”, the Hebrew Ynet is happy to suggest that Israel is probably behind all those ‘mysterious attacks’.
The Hebrew publication ends its coverage of the story stating that yesterday Chief of Staff – Major General Benny Gantz, said that 2012 would be a “critical year for Iran”. he referred specifically to “continued pressure (on Iran) from the international community and the things that happen to them unnaturally”. It doesn’t take a genius to gather that if General Ganz speaks about future “unnatural” events, he must be closely familiar with the details of such events!!!
While the English Ynet, operates as a Hasbara outlet, spreading Israeli propaganda for the Goyim and English speaking Jews, the Hebrew version, is there to boost Israeli morale. And as it happens, Israelis love to see their ‘enemies’ being, terrorised, slaughtered and murdered.
The true ‘mysterious’ nature of the Jewish state and its relation with the world is indeed a disturbing one and a reason for serious concern.
Today, EFF filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration seeking information on drone flights in the United States. The FAA is the sole entity within the federal government capable of authorizing domestic drone flights, and for too long now, it has failed to release specific and detailed information on who is authorized to fly drones within US borders.
Up until a few years ago, most Americans didn’t know much about drones or unmanned aircraft. However, the U.S. military has been using drones in its various wars and conflicts around the world for more than 15 years, using the Predator drone for the first time in Bosnia in 1995, and the Global Hawk drone in Afghanistan in 2001. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US military has used several different types of drones to conduct surveillance for every major mission in the war. In Libya, President Obama authorized the use of armed Predator drones, even though we were not technically at war with the country. And most recently in Yemen, the CIA used drones carrying Hellfire missiles to kill an American citizen, the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. In all, almost one in every three U.S. warplanes is a drone, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2005, the number was only 5%.
Now drones are also being used domestically for non-military purposes, raising significant privacy concerns. For example, this past December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purchased its ninth drone. It uses these drones inside the United States to patrol the U.S. borders—which most would argue is within its agency mandate—but it also uses them to aid state and local police for routine law enforcement purposes. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported in December that CBP used one of its Predators to roust out cattle rustlers in North Dakota. The Times quoted local police as saying they “have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June.” State and local police are also using their own drones for routine law enforcement activities from catching drug dealers to finding missing persons. Some within law enforcement have even proposed using drones to record traffic violations.
Many drones, by virtue of their design, their size, and how high they can fly, can operate undetected in urban and rural environments, allowing the government to spy on Americans without their knowledge. And even if Americans knew they were being spied on, it’s unclear what laws would protect against this. As Ryan Calo, the ACLU (pdf) and many others have noted, Supreme Court case law has not been friendly to privacy in the public sphere, or even to privacy in areas like your backyard or corporate facilities that are off-limits to the public but can be viewed from above. The Supreme Court has also held that the Fourth Amendment’s protections from unreasonable searches and seizures may not apply when it’s not a human that is doing the searching. None of these cases bodes well for any future review of the privacy implications of drone surveillance.
However, there are some reasons to hope that the courts will find the ability of drones to monitor our activities constantly, both in public and—through the use of heat sensors or other technology—inside our homes, goes too far. For example, in a 2001 case called Kyllo v. United States, the Supreme Court held the warrantless search of a home conducted from outside the home using thermal imaging violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court held that, “in the sanctity of the home, all details are intimate details”—it didn’t matter that the officers did not need to “enter” the home to “see” them. United States v. Jones, argued before the Supreme Court this term, could also have ramifications for drones. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal’s opinion in this case held that warrantless GPS-enabled 24/7 surveillance of a car violated the Fourth Amendment, noting, “When it comes to privacy . . . the whole may be more revealing than the parts.” Though the outcome of the case at the Supreme Court is far from clear, the Court did seem surprised during oral argument that, under the government’s theory of the case, the justices themselves could be tracked without a warrant and without probable cause. Drones that use heat sensors to “see” into the home and that can track one or many people around the clock wherever they go are not much different from the technologies at issue in Kyllo and Jones.
It is likely a court will be forced to address this issue in the not-to-distant future. The market for unmanned aircraft in the United States is expanding rapidly, and companies, public entities, and research institutions are developing newer, faster, stealthier, and more sophisticated drones every year. According to a July 15, 2010 FAA Fact Sheet (pdf), “[i]n the United States alone, approximately 50 companies, universities, and government organizations are developing and producing some 155 unmanned aircraft designs.” According to one market research firm, approximately 70% of global growth and market share of unmanned aircraft systems is in the United States (pdf). In 2010 alone, expenditures on unmanned aircraft “reached more than US $3 billion (pdf) and constituted a growth of more than 12%.” The market for these systems is only expected to increase: over the next 10 years the total expenditure for unmanned aircraft “is expected to surpass US $7 billion.” And some have forecast that by the year 2018 there will be “more than 15,000 [unmanned aircraft systems] in service in the U.S., with a total of almost 30,000 deployed worldwide.”
EFF will keep monitoring this issue. We hope to learn from our lawsuit against the FAA which entities in the United States—whether they are government agencies, state or local law enforcement, research institutions or private companies—are currently authorized to fly drones and which entities are seeking or have been denied authorization. Once we have that information we will be better able to define the scope of the problem and can further assess and address the privacy issues at stake.
On Jan. 9, 2012 an Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) delegation of US and Canadian citizens visited the farming community or Rigores, Honduras in the fertile Aguan Valley near the country’s Caribbean Coast.
It was a far different visit than was experienced by a previous AfGJ delegation just six months earlier. On that July 1st morning our delegation stood in a line at the top of a wash, standing between 40 police armed with military grade weaponry, and peasant farmers determined to hold their land against an illegal eviction. For 3-1/2 hours our delegation faced down the police, who had pistols drawn and snipers targeting us from the tree line.
Unable to produce an eviction order and unaccompanied by a lawyer as required by Honduran law, the police did not know what to do when faced with nearly 20 North Americans wearing blue t-shirts reading “Observador Internacional de Derechos Humanos” (International Human Rights Observer). After hours of tense discussion, negotiation, and demands, the police decided that they could leave the community. We accompanied them to their vehicles and then stayed with the community for another couple of hours during which the police drove through several times to see if we were still there.
But July 1, 2011 was neither the beginning nor the end of the story for the peasant farmers of Rigores. Rigores is a long-established community of farm cooperatives. The cooperative which we helped shield from eviction was 10-years-old, a tenancy under Honduras’ Law of Agrarian Reform which should have insured them title to the land. But one of Honduras’ rich landowners wants their corn fields, bean fields, grazing land and orchards so he can expand his African Palm plantation with this tree that produces an oil that is used in the majority of food products in First World supermarkets and supplies an increasing share of the European and US biofuel market.
Exactly one week before our stressful experience, police entered Rigores and at gunpoint burned the homes of 135 families, killed their animals, bulldozed their orchards, the school, and two churches. When we arrived on July 1, the community was living in the town’s community center and a large tent provided by a Catholic charity. The police had arrived that day to drive off or kill the people, breaking their tenancy and weakening their legal case of ownership.
Six months later all but four families remain on their land. They have rebuilt their houses, although now from branches and mud wattle where before stood larger block or poured cement homes. Their corn is waist high, a few banana and orange trees survived the depredations, and chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows which survived the slaughter are breeding quickly.
Today Rigores is poor in material wealth but the people are rich in courage and determination that they will not be driven from their land; land that is their hope for their children. As a person privileged to have visited Rigores both on that fateful day in July 2011 and again today, the current visit was an emotional experience. To witness growth where previously there was only destruction, to see chicks and piglets where previously there were only carcasses, but most of all to hear the stories of courage and defiance of a people who will be pushed no farther, was to renew my faith in solidarity and struggle. This peasant Occupy Movement long precedes our own. We can only hope to show the same courage as these people who daily face death defending their right to land to grow food to feed their families and their communities.
But this is not a fairy tale. There is no happy ending where the people of Rigores get to live happily ever after and we get to feel satisfied by performing a good deed.
Police, military, and private “security guards” still drive through the community and fire their weapons. On Sept. 16 and again on Sept. 19, the military invaded and terrorized the community. The 15-year-old son of the community spokesperson and another boy were kidnapped by the military, beaten, doused with gasoline and threatened with being set on fire.
Community members gave testimony to our delegation about the trauma they are suffering, especially the children. One man said, “Whenever my son hears a noise he shouts, ‘The police are coming. The police are coming.’” A woman said her young child crawls under the bed when he hears noises. When their houses were burned in June 2011, children were torn from the arms of their mothers and literally thrown from their houses. Mothers were shot at inside their houses to force them to leave. They were brutalized in ways that are hard for us in the United States to comprehend, and impossible for those who suffered through the terror to remain unmarked.
And now, as they still struggle to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they have learned from the media that an official eviction order has been signed by a judge with an eviction date of later this month. At this point the eviction order may or may not exist. It is certain that they are receiving daily threats of violent eviction from the hired thugs of a rich landowner. However, they do not intend to leave their homes and we have an obligation to shine the light of international attention on the repression and injustice suffered by the people of Rigores and by the many other communities of the Aguan which are under similar threat. … Full article
A prominent Israeli professor at the University of Haifa, Arnon Sofer, is urging the government to act fast to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouins lest Israel be “destroyed” by them.
For years the Israeli state has mobilized all its resources to complete the ethnic cleansing of Bedouins – Palestinian indigenous people – and the “judaization” of their land. Already much of their land has been taken, and the few places they’ve found refuge are under threat.
The ethnic cleansing proceeds with the full support or active participation of Israel’s Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund which uses bogus tree-planting initiatives to greenwash the theft of Bedouin land.
The Jewish Agency, for example, recently conceded that the goal of government plans in southern Palestine’s Naqab region “is to grab the last remaining piece of land and thereby prevent further Bedouin incursion into any more state land and the development of an Arab belt from the south of Mount Hebron toward Arad and approaching Dimona and Yeruham, and the area extending toward Be’er Sheva.”
All of this is based on the racist notion that Bedouins – who are struggling to hold on to their land and way of life for example in the village of al-Araqib – are actually invaders and that the land naturally belongs exclusively to Jews.
Sofer provides intellectual cover for ethnic cleansing
Enter Sofer (sometimes spelled “Soffer”), the Reuven Chaikin Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa, who has long been in the forefront of warning about the “demographic threat” to Israel from too many non-Jewish babies.
In a December speech, reported on 15 December 2011 by The Marker, the Israeli financial publication syndicated by Haaretz, Sofer raised the alarm about the supposed invasion by Bedouins and other undesirable non-Jews and urged the government to act, presumably to expel them and retain the land for the exclusive use of Jews.
The Hebrew article was translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra. In it Sofer warns that Israel is “filling up” with non-Jews and warns that in certain areas of the country, non-Jews (mostly indigenous Palestinians who are nominally citizens of the state), are already the majority. Sofer speaks of these areas as being “lost” – indicating a view that despite their nominal citizenship, non-Jews can never really be part of Israel.
Even worse, Sofer presents the Bedouins as such a threat that Israel is on the verge of being “destroyed.” Naturally so grave a threat obviously warrants Israel acting to destroy it first.
From the article:
Sofer added that the Bedouin population is managing to take over every clear plot of land, and so it turns out, according to Sofer, that as of today, the percentage of Jews in Israel and in the Judea and Samaria regions comes only to 52%. “In the northern district alone there are 44% Jews, and in the central Galilee there are 23% Jews. What is Nazareth Illit [Upper Nazareth] today? It’s Lower Nazareth. Has anyone heard of the Bedouins in the South? Most of you drive along the road and see only both sides of the road, but in practice, the dimensions are entirely different, and you don’t know where we are living. Have we lost the Northern Negev? We certainly have.”
But it is not just the Negev that the Bedouins have taken over. “As far as Rehovot, around the Weizmann Institute, there are about 19 new Bedouin settlements. In Rishon Lezion there are about 12 Bedouin colonies, and near the Asaf Harofe hospital they’ve already set up a city without us paying heed. It is starting to come to Tel Aviv. The government must start taking action, and not flounder in the defense. We do not have another country. If I am not wrong about this terrible map, and I hope that I am wrong, Israel will simply be destroyed.”
What’s also notable is that the article on Sofer appears in the Real Estate section of The Marker, an indication of the banality and normalization of such racism in Israeli discourse.
Academic complicity
Sofer has been active for many years, but what gives him credibility and even an international audience for such raw and primitive racial hatred and incitement is his perch at Haifa University. It’s an example of the complicity Israel’s universities have in disseminating ideologies that confer legitimacy on Israel’s violence, ethnic expulsions and racist policies.
Translated article
Translation of article originally found in The Marker
Around midnight on January 10th two international, female activists were attacked by a middle aged settler woman living in the occupied area of Hebron.
After entering Shuhada Street, which is closed to Palestinians, the two women encountered a settler woman who threw a large rock at them unprovoked. When they turned to see their attacker, the woman kicked them and tried to choke them by their kuffiyehs, Palestinian scarves worn in solidarity. Both internationals called for help and screamed, but the Israeli soldier on duty some 30 meters away did not intervene. The settler woman once again picked up a rock to renew her attack.
Knowing that if they were to defend themselves they would face assault charges, the two activists chose to flee their attacker instead. The soldier did nothing to either prevent nor respond to the attack, and when the internationals asked him to call the police, the soldier said simply he did not see anything.
When asked about his indifference to the attack, the soldier answered, “What would you do if someone is bothering the h*ll out of you?” and, “I’m not allowed to leave the area around my checkpoint.”
When the police finally arrived, the same soldier translated since the police officer refused to bring along an English-speaker. The police and soldiers took advantage of the situation to make fun of, cat call, and attempt to flirt with the international women.
Although they were given a detailed account of what happened, the police wrote nothing down and gave no information about what steps would be taken to address the event or prevent future occurrences.
When it was obvious that the police were not taking down any details, the internationals suggested them to raid the area’s Israeli settler neighborhood in the same way as soldiers raid Palestinian neighborhoods when there is a suspicion of a stone-throwing. The internationals were told not to interfere or to instruct the police in how to do their jobs, and were then ordered to leave the street.
As the internationals walked home, a police car and army jeep drove up and continued at a walking pace, sandwiching the women in between the vehicles. As they walked the police continued shouting and whistling cat calls at the internationals.
Hebron or al Khalil is a Palestinian city in the south of the West Bank. A few hundred Israeli settlers occupy the very city center from within, in an area known as H2. The Israeli army has implemented a policy of apartheid and strict separation citing the protection of the Jewish illegal settlers. Movement restrictions affects tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and have led to the destruction of Hebron’s commercial center and mass abandonment of the area, and have forced people to leave their homes. Yet, the approximately 2000 soldiers stationed in the area do little or nothing to prevent settler attacks against Palestinians, which continue to escalate. In addition, Israeli soldiers control entries and exits of H2 with several checkpoints. In cases of emergency, Palestinians’ lives are sometimes left in the hands of their occupiers, since neither Palestinian ambulances nor police are allowed into the occupied area of H2.
The occupation is illegal under international law, and many reports have raised concerns of human rights violations against Palestinians living in the area. In addition, there are many accounts where the soldiers have either stood by or assisted settlers in attacks against Palestinian residents and homes.
Attacks on internationals are nothing compared to what Palestinians face on a daily basis. International Solidarity Movement views the recent attack and the failures of soldiers and police to intervene as a further escalation and approval of settler violence, intended to worsen already unbearable circumstances for Palestinians living under occupation.
Emma and Meriam are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).
Citing Attorney-Client Privilege, Col. J.P. Colwell Tells Military Lawyers That Following New Prison Rules Would Be Unethical
NEW YORK – The top defense lawyer for the Guantánamo military commission system has ordered the attorneys under his command not to comply with rules issued by the Guantánamo prison chief that require Defense Department screening of all written materials lawyers want to send to their clients.
In an email sent Sunday and obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, Marine Col. J.P. Colwell, the chief military defense counsel for the commissions, informed all military commission defense lawyers that they were ethically obligated to refuse to follow the rules, which were issued last month. The email is available on the ACLU website.
“Col. Colwell joins an honorable line of Guantánamo military lawyers who have opposed superiors’ attempts, ostensibly in the name of security, to undermine longstanding rules necessary for a fair trial,” said Zachary Katznelson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “In seeking to force military defense counsel to cast aside their professional ethical obligations of client confidentiality, the new rules fly in the face of American justice and tradition. Once again, the government’s actions show exactly why these cases need to be in federal court where the rules are established, fair and effective.”
Guantánamo’s commander, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, issued the rules on monitoring legal communications on Dec. 27. Under the rules, any information provided by lawyers that military censors found objectionable, such as communications about U.S. personnel who tortured the prisoners, could be kept from the prisoner and brought to the attention of the base commander. This would eliminate attorney-client privilege.
The new prison rules say that defense attorneys must agree in writing to the monitoring as a condition of communication with their clients. In his email, Colwell told military commission defense lawyers that they should not sign the monitoring agreement, and if they already had signed, then they should immediately withdraw from the agreement. Citing the ethics codes that govern every branch of the military, Colwell wrote that following the agreement and revealing such information would be “in violation” of rules for professional conduct.
The rules on communication monitoring issued by Guantánamo’s commander are available at:
RAMALLAH -Israel on Tuesday confiscated 75 tents belonging to the Palestinian Authority and detained drivers delivering the tents, ministers said.
Israeli forces confiscated five vehicles delivering the tents to residents of Khan al-Ahmar near Jericho, the PA cabinet said in a statement.
The drivers of the vehicle and employees of the company contracted to deliver the tents were detained and taken to Beit El military camp.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld had no immediate comment but said he would look into the report.
Israel is planning to demolish Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin community near Maale Adumin settlement, and forces have already destroyed homes in the camp. Settlers have filed a petition for the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar’s school.
The PA cabinet said the confiscation of tents was in line with Israel’s plan “to extradite the residents from their area by destroying and confiscating all means of life.”
A senior lawmaker says assassination of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan proves that the confidential information provided to international bodies by Iran has been leaked to the country’s enemies.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must be trusted by nations because nations and governments give their documents to the agency,” said speaker of the Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Kazem Jalali on Wednesday.
“How the enemies of [the Islamic] establishment have obtained the names and information of our country’s elite is a question we would like to know the answer to,” he added.
Jalali stressed that the IAEA, international community and the UN nuclear agency’s member states using their membership against the Islamic Republic must be held accountable for their actions.
The lawmaker said the resemblance of the Wednesday assassination and other Zionist-American killings indicate that the “principle of assassination has been institutionalized in the American system and Zionist regime.”
“Assassinations like what happened in Tehran this morning lack operational value as such assassinations are called blind [acts of terror] which prove the maximum frustration of the enemies because they have not been able to weaken the [Iranian] nation’s resolve and therefore resort to any shameful measure,” Jalali said.
Ahmadi Roshan was a Sharif University of Technology chemical engineering graduate and served as the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.
On Wednesday morning, an unknown motorcyclist attached a sticky bomb to Ahmadi Roshan’s car near Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran.
Ahmadi Roshan was immediately killed as the result of explosion, and his driver, who had sustained injures, passed away a few hours later in hospital.
The latest terrorist attack comes as Iran has reached an agreement with the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany – to hold negotiations in Turkey.
The US, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to sway the UNSC to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran.
Based on these accusations, they have also repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike.
This is while in November 2011, some of the US presidential hopefuls called for conducting covert operations ranging from assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists to launching a military strike on Iran as well as sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program.
The calls for assassinations are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror.
On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks; Shahriari was killed immediately and Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, only sustained injuries.
Iran says as the UN Resolution 1747, adopted against Tehran in March 2007, cited Abbasi’s name as a “nuclear scientist,” the perpetrators were in a position to trace their victim.
According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, a fact which indicates that the IAEA has leaked information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists.
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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