Palestine Under Siege
By Richard Hugus
A video documentary of the destruction caused by the April 2002 Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp in Palestine. Filmed three months after the attack. Also visits Jerusalem and Gaza. 41 minutes.
Winner of 2006 award from Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition worldwide film contest at Al-Awda’s Third Annual International Convention in Los Angeles
Full screen view recommended.
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Israeli nukes aimed at terrorizing world: Ralph Schoenman
Press TV interview with Ralph Schoenman | January 19, 2014
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ralph Schoenman, author of Hidden History of Zionism, from Berkeley, California, to discuss Israel’s use of nuclear bombs to terrorize and dominate populations with the help of the United States.
What follows is a rough transcript of the interview.
Press TV: First of all, with this report in, will there be any political or legal implications for those who assisted Israel in acquiring these nuclear weapons?
Schoenman: The question is really going to the relationship of imperialism to the Zionist [entity] from its inception, in specific terms now the issue of the use of nuclear weapons.
There is a book,The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, which details the joint development of nuclear weapons by including neutron bombs by Israel and South Africa, and their testing.
The well-known figure Mordechai Vanunu – who was kidnapped by the Israelis when he disclosed the evidence of the Israeli preparations for nuclear capacity and testing of weapons, indeed, with the full panoply of evidence pertaining to this – was kidnapped, taken to Israel and held in incommunicado for 18 years.
There is a very sorted and menacing history of the use of these weapons to menace peoples across the world. I want to give a specific example in illumination of this, namely ‘View of the Cameroon Disaster…’, which Dan Fisher wrote about in the Los Angeles Times on August 27, 1986.
Death occurred in which people were found frozen in place as if they have been killed by gas. This was an event in 1986 in Cameroon – it was immediately described as an event in which the Israelis were involved. The Israeli infantry troops were soon to be on the scene. In fact, Shimon Perez, who was the former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Israel, was quickly on the scene with a team.
Indeed, the evidence about this was documented by Dan Fisher in the Los Angeles Times, as I’ve mentioned, but also there was a detailed account by the Cameroonian journalists which specified the role of the Israelis and the evidence of a neutron weapon: ‘The Lake Nyos Disaster 20 Years After: Revisiting Israeli Connection’, by Dibussi Tande.
My wife and I had a role in this expose because after the time we flew to the big island of Hawaii where leading volcanologist in the island of Hawaii was involved in the report on what occurred in Cameroon, he confirmed that the claims that this was the result of gases emerging from a lake with presumptive latent volcano that emitted gases in Lake Nyos, those gases then reached the atmosphere in causing thousands of people to die in their tracks frozen, while no damage to property occurred, was quickly exposed as a myth.
In fact, what we’re dealing with here is a neutron weapon. One of the people who’s most associated with the neutron bomb, Sam Cohen, who was working with the RAND Corporation in the United States, has detailed the neutron weapon.
There is no question whatsoever, given what Vanunu has exposed, given what evidence there is in Cameroon, that neutron weapons have been used and tested by the Israelis with the approval and collusion of the United States and the imperial powers notably France.
This is not a new development. The story is important. It is the culmination of a series of documentations, revelations over a period of 20, 30 and 40 years. These are crimes against humanity.
These are ongoing threats to the peoples of the world. They define the relationship of Israel and the Zionist [entity] to imperialism and the utilization of the nuclear capacity and of neutron bombs and weapons of this nature to terrorize the populations they seek to dominate, whose sovereignty they wish to destroy.
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REMEMBER Sabra & Shatila ~ Roots of Blood!
Sabra and Shatila are two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon where nearly two thousand Palestinian refugees were massacred during three days from September 16 to September 18, 1982. The massacre was carried out by hundreds of Christian Lebanese Phalangists with the aid of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) surrounding the camp.
This was only possible because of the tacit approval and complicity of Israeli Defence Minister, butcher Ariel Sharon and his gang of zionist war criminals.
__________________
“Thou shalt not be a Victim.
Thou shalt not be a Perpetrator.
Above all, thou shalt not be a Bystander” ~ Yahuda Bauer,
Inscription at the Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
__________________
“Remember the solidarity shown to Palestine here and everywhere … and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding.
Why?
Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.” ~ Edward Said
___________________
*FURTHER READING:
| Lest we forget:
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967…
| The Legacy of Ariel Sharon, by Robert Fisk
The Independent, February 6, 2001
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fis…
| The Massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Camps: http://www.soundofegypt.com/palestini…
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Glenn Greenwald Gets It Wrong
Jonathan Pollard Is No Victim
By Philip Giraldi • The Unz Review • January 10, 2014
In many predominantly progressive and libertarian circles journalist Glenn Greenwald is regularly praised and even called a hero for his courageous and unflinching criticism of the developing national security state and for his custodianship of what might be described as the Snowden papers. Through the years I too have generally found his insights both informative and refreshing and, while I have believed Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning’s theft of huge masses of classified information to be a considerable overreach, I do think that after twelve years of government autarky it is now time for the White House to come clean on what it has been doing to its own citizenry, something that would not be taking place without the intelligence leaks.
But all of that conceded, I often find that people on the left of the political equation are frequently trapped by the terms of their own orthodoxy which is every bit as conducive to tunnel vision as would be a tea party pronouncement made by a Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz. Greenwald is now calling for the release from prison of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina and he is appearing on the Israeli media to make his case.
Greenwald’s logic goes something like this: as the Snowden papers demonstrate that the United States has been spying on Israel Washington has no right to judge others engaged in the same behavior and is therefore hypocritical when it continues to hold an Israeli spy engaging in espionage against the United States. He states that Snowden and Pollard are connected, “When the US government goes around the world criticizing other countries for spying on allies and prosecuting them, are they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re doing exactly that?” Greenwald calls the double standard governmental hypocrisy and insists that no country has the right to tell other countries not to do something that it itself is secretly engaging in. He rejects the argument that the NSA spying has been carried out to protect against terrorism and asks rhetorically if the US, revealed to be spying on Israeli officials, really believes that “democratically elected” Israelis are involved in terror?
Greenwald goes on in his interview with Israeli television Channel 10 to assert that the leak of the Snowden documents has “defended the values of American democracy.”
I, perhaps not surprisingly, see the issue differently. There is a certain amount of smugness and self -justification in what Greenwald is trying to sell about Snowden (and Pollard). Does he claim that stealing great masses of documents is intrinsically a defense of democracy or is he only referring to those documents that reveal illegal or unconstitutional behavior that should be halted and condemned? If stopping illegal activity by the United States government is his actual objective why is he releasing documents on spying on foreign officials, an action that is neither illegal in the US nor unconstitutional? Or is he designating himself as arbiter of acceptable behavior for the entire world? So I am not quite sure what to make of his logic and fail to understand what exactly he is condemning. Nor is it clear to me if there are any limits to what he might reveal.
I believe that spying is essential for every country that needs information relating to its legitimate foreign interests that is not available through public records or open sources. I at the same time concede that United States intelligence post 9/11 has become an out-of-control monster pursuing its own agendas and believe espionage should only be employed when it is a last option and only in a situation where a vital interest is at stake, limitations that have not been much in evidence over the past twelve years.
One can believe that the government’s spying on its own people in a fashion that is arguably both illegal and unconstitutional should be subject to the scrutiny that it is now receiving and should be stopped immediately, but spying on foreign countries is another issue altogether as is the spying carried out by other nations directed against the United States. Every nation in the world that engages in espionage, which means nearly all nations, denies that it is engaging in such activity and is certainly hypocritical in its professed attitudes towards spying, as Greenwald notes, but that does not mean that spies cannot do serious damage and should not be arrested and punished as a consequence. The Greenwald line of argument does not recognize that distinction and his comments suggest that all spying is wrong and indefensible so therefore those involved in it at any level or in any place should be judged by the same standard.
Sometimes spying is the only option for learning about foreign government activity that might do genuine damage to one’s country. And Greenwald should know better than to ask whether the “democratically elected” officials in Israel are carrying out terrorism. Of course they are, and all he has to do is refer to the murder of nine unarmed Turks on the ‘Mavi Marmara’ in 2010, the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010 and the assassinations of Iranian scientists over the past three years.
Might it be in the interest of Washington to know exactly what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is up to, particularly as he described 9/11 as “good for Israel” while much of the world will blame any outrage carried out by Israel on the United States particularly as the Israelis have frequently used foreign passports to carry out their assassinations? And would it be a good idea for the United States to have prior knowledge if Israel were about to bomb Iran to get American ships in the Persian Gulf out of the way if for no other reason? And Greenwald might also consider the proportionality issue relative to the espionage that goes on between Israel and the US. It is largely a one way street with Israel doing most of the spying. Among nations friendly to the United States Israel is the most aggressive in its espionage activity, largely because it knows it can get away with it given the Justice Department’s all too convenient unwillingness to prosecute Israelis.
Greenwald also does not appear to appreciate the damage that Pollard did. Pollard was undoubtedly motivated to help Israel because he was Jewish but he also tried to sell information to several other countries and might even have been involved in trying to set up arms deals that could have placed sophisticated weapons in the hands of terrorists. Ultimately, he spied for Tel Aviv because he was paid for his services. He violated his oath to protect the information he had access to and gave the Israelis an entire room full of highly classified information. Some of that intelligence wound up in the Soviet Union in exchange for increased Jewish emigration. Greenwald might recall that the Soviets were (and still are) fully capable of destroying the United States in a nuclear exchange, so the provision of information that revealed US technical intelligence capabilities was potentially a serious matter. It has also been alleged that American intelligence sources were executed as a result of the information obtained in Moscow from Pollard by way of Israel.
It is not clear to me where Greenwald is likely to go next but employing logic similar to that which he uses with Pollard he might well conclude that because the US criminal justice system is flawed and sometimes convicts people who are innocent all people who have been judged guilty and sent to prison should be set free. The suggestion is appropriate applied to Pollard as he is, apart from anything else, a criminal. He stole something that did not belong to him and sold it. He betrayed his country. To claim that government hypocrisy is good grounds for freeing him is ludicrous.
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BBC News Night on Dieudonné & The Quenelle
Gilad Atzmon:
If the quenelle is loosely defined as an anti establishment salute, one may wonder why Jews are offended by it and regard it as an ‘anti-Semitic’ gesture? Is it because many Jews actually identify with ‘the establishment’? And how do we explain the fact that the French government is happy to compromise the most elementary liberties just to appease the French Jewish Lobby (Crif)?
The truth is devastating – Palestine is here and the French people are the Palestinians Du Jour…
The French Palestinian Solidarity Deserves a Quenelle
Ariadna Theokopoulos | Bold Face News
France is the middle of a sweeping popular movement sparked by Dieudonné and symbolized by la Quennelle, a movement that has united young and old, white and black, men and women, the middle class and the unemployed, extreme Left, center and Right, many Muslims, Christians and even a couple of Jews.
It is an anti-establishment revolt but also one specifically directed at the Jewish power that rules the French establishment and has destroyed individual freedoms long cherished by the French, like freedom of speech. The French appear to have had enough of forced indoctrination into the worship of the Holocaust (a topic Dieudonné has dared to ridicule in his comedy sketches), of laws throwing historians in prison for daring to question the official Holocaust narrative, of the foreign policy of France being conducted according to the dictates of CRIF (the French equivalent of AIPAC).
It is a peaceful revolt, employing a gesture, not words, in a state muzzled by anti-free speech laws, one that mocks Power and says, “We are no longer afraid of you.” It is precisely that message that has sent the French Israeli Firsters into a hysterical panic: that “they” are no longer afraid and that a single spark was sufficient to unite all segments of society that JP had worked for so long to atomize and set against each other.
The measure of their panic is given by the preposterous, Orwellian ways in which they propose to silence and punish Dieudonné. The French Interior Minister, Mon. Valls (the same one who declared that through his wife he is eternally tied to Israel) has instructed (he prefers the word “advised”) the mayors of all French towns to forbid any performances of Dieudonné anywhere, in any venue. “You will never work in this country again!” Another contemplated measure is to form a joint commission of no less than three ministeries: Interior, Justice and Economy, to find modalities of punishing Dieudonné in all possible ways: depriving him of liberty, ruining him finnacially. He already owes close to 100,00 Euros in fines for offending speech.
Now in the middle of all this popular revolt, a progressive voice that despite its French accent sounds so very familiar, speaks out… against Dieudonné! It is Jean-Claude LeFort, President of the Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS):
“Pour quiconque suit objectivement les faits, les gestes et les propos de Dieudonné, la chose ne peut prêter à aucun doute possible : son antisémitisme est patent. Il n’est pas acceptable. Le racisme, redisons-le avec force, n’est pas une opinion mais un délit. Nous le condamnons par principe, absolu et non discutable, mais aussi par nécessité politique : il nuit terriblement à la cause du peuple palestinien dont Dieudonné fait mine de se réclamer.
Ses propos ont été condamnés par la justice à de nombreuses reprises. Et la loi doit s’appliquer sans la moindre mansuétude.”
French is a beautiful language but abject groveling sounds as foul as it does in English.
In free translation, with emphasis added:
“To those who follow events objectively, the gestures and statements of Dieudonné leave no doubt: they are patently anti-semitic. It is unacceptable. Racism, let is restate it strongly, is not an opinion but a felony. We condemn it by principle, absolute and undebatable, but also by political necessity: it harms terribly the cause of the Palestinian people which Dieudonné claims to support.”
His statements have been condemned by judicial authorities many times. And the law must be applied in full force.”
Not making the “fight against anti-semitism” a priority of the Palestinian solidarity, I am sure, would “harm terribly the cause” of AFPS’ funding. Who’s your daddy, Jean-Claude?
AFPS, like their English-speaking brethren, “give no quarter” to “anti-semites,” and they support punishing them “sans la moindre mansuétude!”
AFPS, this quennelle is for you:
Dieudonné répond à Yann Barthès
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How Much Money Do The Rothschilds Have?
Bilzerian Report / March 16, 2012
For more than 200 years the Rothschild family has kept their banks in family hands, out of the general view of the public, in an effort to conceal their vast wealth. The Rothschilds have taken advantage of tax-free jurisdictions and have purposefully established their banks in countries with strict banking secrecy laws like Monaco, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
The Rothschild dynasty first began to acquire prominence around the mid 1700′s. The first major patriarch of the family, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, sent his 5 sons to strategic banking centers throughout Europe. Nathan Rothschild went to London, Jabob to Paris, Salomon to Vienna, Asmchel (Jr.) to Frankfurt, and Calmann Rothschild to Naples.
From 1813-1815 Nathan Rothschild almost single handedly financed the British war effort while his brothers financed the French war effort. In one year of the war, 1815, Nathan Rothschild provided the British government with nearly 10 million pounds, which is equivalent to 6.5 billion pounds today.
Since the Rothschilds were playing both sides of the warring parties, they were the only ones who could get through both sides of the blockades quickly. Their network of banks provided news of major battles to Nathan Rothschild in London before even the British government received it. The Rothschilds traded on this inside information on the London stock exchange, making vast fortunes in the process. After the final battle of Waterloo, Nathan Rothschild received news that the British were victorious and promptly started to sell British government treasuries. The market knew by this point that Nathan was getting information before anyone one else and therefore assumed the British had lost the battle and started selling their British government bonds. Once the price had crashed, Nathan used his agents to secretly buy up nearly the entirety of the British government debt. Using large amounts of leverage, Nathan Rothschild made many multiples of his money on this one trade.
After the war, Nathan Rothschild bragged of turning his 20k pound fortune into 50 million pounds in only 17 years. In 1820, 50 million pounds would be equivalent to 32 billion pounds today. It was at this point that Nathan Rothschild so famously said, “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”
In 1850, Jacob Rothschild’s recorded net worth was 600 million francs, which was significantly more than all the other French bankers combined. In today’s US dollars that would be equivalent to $11.4 billion. James and Nathan Rothschild became two of the richest men in the world in only a few decades. With this vast wealth they built or bought 41 massive mansions and palaces across Europe. The video below (at 2:22) shows just a fraction of their real estate holdings.
In 1840, the Rothschild family became the Bank of England’s bullion brokers.
In 1844, Salomon Rothschild purchased the United Coal Mines of Vitkovice and Austro-Hungarian Blast Furnace Company which went on to become one of the top ten global industrial companies.
In 1845, the Rothschild family was granted exclusive access to build a rail transport company across much of France. The company was called Chemin de Fer du Nord.
In 1871, the Rothschild family raised 5 billion francs so the French government could pay reparations to Prussia. This sum would be equivalent to $95 billion today.
In 1880, the Rothschild family took control of Rio Tinto, ending up with a 30% stake. Rio Tinto is now the 4th largest mining company in the world. In the same year, the Rothschilds founded Imerys, which is currently a world leader in industrial metals mining.
In 1890, the Rothschild family founded the mining company Eramet, which is currently a multi-billion dollar company listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.
Kuhn and Loeb, which received financing from the Rothschilds, financed Standard Oil, various profitable railroad projects, and Carnegie’s steel empire. The European Rothschild dynasty also had close financial ties to multiple leading American banks including J.P. Morgan.
In 1886, the French Rothschild bank acquired significant Russian oil fields and formed the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company, which became the world’s second largest oil producer. They sold their interest to Royal Dutch Shell in 1911 for an undisclosed amount.
In 1887, the Rothschild family financed and invested in the Kimberly diamond mines in South Africa, which became De Beers. The Rothschilds were the largest shareholders.
To this day the Rothschild family own and operate some of the largest and most profitable investment banks around the world.
During the first 17 years of his career, Nathan Rothschild’s annual rate of return was 81.4%, while Jacob’s annual rate of return from 1812-1868 was 14%.
Based on historical records and financial calculations it is possible to provide a rough estimate of their wealth today. The following estimate of the Rothschild family fortune will be based on an annual rate of return of 5%, which is extremely conservative given their past track record of using power, political connections, and inside information to make incredibly high annual returns. When the extremely profitable investments listed above are factored in, it is a certainty that they were able to achieve such a modest return.
In 1817, Nathan Rothschild bragged of having 50 million pounds. At a 5% annual rate of return that would equate to roughly 500 billion pounds today. In 1850, Jacob Rothschild was worth 600 million francs. At a 5% annual return that would equate to 860 billion francs, which would have been converted to Euros in 2001 at a 6.56 to 1 ratio, equalling €130 billion. By 2012, that fortune would total €224 billion.
Combined their fortunes would equal more than 1 trillion US dollars, which could do any one of the following:
1. Buy every stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange
2. Support the military of every NATO country combined for a year
3. Buy everyone on earth an iPod
4. Pay off Greece’s debt 2.5 times
5. Run the Australian government for nearly 3 years.
Obviously this estimate is conservative in its own right, and does not take into account the fortunes of the other three brothers who built financial empires in Switzerland, Frankfurt, and Italy. The Rothschild family eventually spread their operations to America, Israel, and most tax-free jurisdictions around the world.
As per the command of the patriarch, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, the family has intermarried and maintained cohesiveness until the present day so the fortune was not squandered or dispersed. One of their websites today reads: “Across two centuries and many generations, the qualities associated with the Rothschild family have remained unchanged: innovation, industriousness and, above all, strength through unity.”
In 1909, British Prime Minister Lloyd George claimed that Lord Nathan Rothschild was the most powerful man in Britain. This is of course at a time when Britain was considered to be one of the world’s preeminent superpowers. During the 20th century the Rothschild family started to disappear from mainstream attention. Many Rothschild financed biographies were released during this time period, which claimed that their fortunes have dwindled in modern times. It should be noted that these biographies have not given any detailed accounting of the families’ assets or mentioned the specific investments that lost more money than was made through some of the world’s most profitable investments listed above.
The real questions that must be asked are why the most powerful family in the history of the world, who financed nations and provided the money to create Israel, are not prominently featured in history courses? And why the media refuses to even mention the name of this incredibly wealthy and powerful family today?
The answers to these questions are one in the same. As the video below proves, nearly the entirety of the American (and European) media are controlled by Jewish Zionists. And these Zionists know that if the world knew that one family controlled more wealth than dozens of poor nations put together, there would be a public outcry.
Boycott of Israeli universities angers NY lawmakers
Press TV – December 31, 2013
Two New York legislators say they will introduce a bill to strip state aid from universities that take part in a recent movement to boycott Israeli academic centers.
State Sen. Jeff Klein, a Bronx Democrat, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat who is also a former member of the Jewish Defense League that was classified as a “terrorist group” by the FBI in 2001, say they want to cut off state aid to universities affiliated with the American Studies Association’s movement to boycott Israeli institutions.
Earlier this month, members of the ASA overwhelmingly voted to ban Israeli universities from collaborations with their campuses.
The organization said the reason behind its decision was that the Israeli institutions were “a party” to policies “that violate human rights” as Israel’s “violation of international law and UN resolutions” continues and the “impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students” is well-documented.
“The American Studies Association is carrying on a long and proud tradition of American academics by engaging in an academic boycott much like many professors did during apartheid South Africa,” Michael Shallcross, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at Temple University in Philadelphia, told Press TV.
However, the move, which is part of a larger international effort to win boycotts of Israeli institutions, angered some US politicians both at state and federal level.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York) has urged the ASA to end the boycott, saying he was surprised by the organization’s decision.
And now, two pro-Israel Democrats in New York’s state legislature, Klein and Hikind, are trying to cut state aid to universities affiliated with the movement.
“[It] is a shameless attempt at censorship by powerful Zionist politicians in New York State by cutting off economic life lines that make higher education possible,” Shallcross said.
The ASA is the largest and oldest association involved in interdisciplinary studies of American culture and history.
Murad Eshtewi, head of the Popular Committee of Kafr Qaddum, has been arrested
International Solidarity Movement | December 21, 2013
Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – Yesterday morning, Murad Eshtewi, the head of the Popular Committee of Kufr Qaddum and leader of the Friday demonstrations was arrested and is still being held by Israeli forces.
At around 3:00 on Friday morning, Israeli soldiers entered the village of Kafr Qaddum, in Qalqilya district, arresting two citizens on the accusation of having taken part in the regular Friday demonstrations held in the village. The men were released the following morning without charges.
The house of Murad Eshtewi, the head of the Popular Committee of Kafr Qaddum, was also raided during the night incursion and he was subjected to aggressive questioning.
Later, at approximately 10:00 on Friday morning, two hours before the demonstration was due to begin, Mr Eshtewi was walking on the outskirts of the village and was ambushed and arrested by soldiers. He did not resist this arrest and yet Israeli forces were extremely aggressive in their use of both pepper spray and stun grenades. He has not yet been released.
His attorney, Lymor Goldstein, stated that, “Contrary to the fundamental principles of due process we have not been presented with the accusations against Murad nor has he been interrogated since his arrest. “
In recent weeks there has been a steady escalation of night raids, increasingly violent repression of Friday demonstrations, flying checkpoints and seemingly arbitrary arrests. In the past month alone there have been more than twenty night raids on houses in the village.
Last month a new army commander responsible for the area gave a verbal warning to villagers stating that, unless they suspend their Friday demonstrations, the military harassment outlined above would be increased.
A typical night raid will involve up to around fifty soldiers surrounding and entering a particular house. Tear gas is often released and live ammunition may be fired into the air to intimidate residents. Israeli soldiers may break windows and doors in order to enter the houses.
Arrestees are blindfolded and handcuffed before being taken for questioning to another location. Interrogation may take place in the back of an army jeep, on the ground at the side of the road, or within the police station. Frequently they are subjected to verbal and physical abuse. When released, the detainees are often left in the road, kilometers from their homes.
The villagers of Kafr Qaddum are currently unable to access much of their land due to the closure by the Israeli army of the village’s main and only road leading to Nablus in 2003. The road was closed in three stages, ultimately restricting access for farmers to the 11,000 dunams of land that lie along either side to one or two times a year. Since the road closure, the people of Kafr Qaddum have been forced to rely on an animal trail to access this area; the road is narrow and, according to the locals, intended only for animals. In 2004 and 2006, three villagers died when they were unable to reach the hospital in time. The ambulances carrying them were prohibited from using the main road and were forced to take a 13 km detour. These deaths provoked even greater resentment in Kafr Qaddum and, on 1 July 2011, the villagers decided to unite in protest in order to re-open the road and protect the land in danger of settlement expansion along it.
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- Month-old child injured during Israeli raid in Kafr Qaddum (altahrir.wordpress.com)
- Israeli forces attack protests commemorating Mandela across West Bank (altahrir.wordpress.com)
- PHOTOS | Israeli forces open fire on West Bank protests, injuring dozens (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Israel ‘opens dams’ flooding Gaza Strip near Deir al Balah
Ma’an – 13/12/2013
BETHLEHEM – The Gaza Government’s Disaster Response Committee announced late Friday that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just east of the Gaza Strip, flooding numerous residential areas in nearby villages within the coastal territory.
Committee chairman Yasser Shanti said in a press conference that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just to the east of the border with the Gaza Strip earlier in the day.
He warned that residential areas within the Gaza Valley would be flooding within the coming hours.
He said that the move by Israeli authorities would flood areas in Moghraqa and other parts of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, and he called upon residents of areas near the Gaza Valley to evacuate their homes in preparation for the anticipated flooding.
The Gaza Strip is currently under a state of emergency due to severe weather conditions caused by a historic storm front moving south across the Levant.
Fuel shortages have caused daily life in the Gaza Strip to grind slowly to a halt since early November, as power plants and water pumps are forced to shut down, cutting off access to basic necessities for Gaza residents.
Lack of diesel fuel is a result of the tightening of a seven-year-long blockade imposed on the territory by Israel with Egyptian support.
The Gaza Strip has been under a severe economic blockade imposed by the State of Israel since 2006.
See also:
Israelis open Wadi Salaqa dams, dozens of homes flooded
Palestine Information Center – 16/12/2013
GAZA — Israeli occupation forces opened on Sunday Wadi Sofa dam east of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, flooding dozens of Palestinian homes, local sources said.
The IOF opened its dams towards Palestinian houses without any prior warning for the second time since the stormy weather hit the region recently.
Rescue teams have evacuated trapped people from their flooded houses and transferred them to safe places and shelter centers.
Several Israeli earth dams have been established to the east of Gaza Strip, in order to benefit from rainwater and prevent its access to Gaza; however in such cases the Israeli occupation opens its dams toward the Strip to prevent swamping its agriculture lands.
Many residential areas and agricultural lands in Gaza were flooded when the Israeli authorities opened up the dams, which aggravated the population’s suffering. … Full article
Update:
Did Israel Deliberately Flood Gaza?
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | December 17, 2013
It has been reported in the past several days, by Ma’an News and on several websites including this one, that Israel may have opened one or more dams resulting in the severe flooding we have seen in Gaza and further exacerbated conditions already made dire by the onslaught of winter storm Alexa. This at any rate is the charge that has been made by the Gaza government’s Disaster Response Committee and its chairman, Yasser Shanti.
So far I myself have heard no official response from Israel either confirming or denying. However, the following is reported by the Middle East Monitor:
According to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the rainfall led to a lot of excess water which couldn’t drain away, so “the Israeli authorities resorted to discharging the excess water into the Gaza Strip.”
I could not find this reported on Ynet’s English website, but it’s possible it was reported in the Hebrew edition. So was a dam released? All we have to go on is the statement by Shanti, accompanied, of course, by the shocking images we have seen of inundated streets, flooded homes, and people paddling in boats. But I did come across this video and thought I would share it. If it turns out that a dam or floodgate of some sort was deliberately released, it apparently would not be without precedent. The following was reported by Press TV in January of 2010—and take special note of what the reporter says regarding the flooding and its coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the close of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.
If Israel did this in 2010, does it beggar belief they would have done the same thing again this past week? If they did, the question then becomes did they do it out of a) a need to divert flooding from their own communities in Israel, or b) pure malice?
The question of whether a dam was opened or floodwater in some way diverted is addressed in a report on the Gaza flooding published at The Ecologist, an environmental website:
Amid the chaos it is impossible to verify the accusations. The heavy rain has also affected bordering areas of Israel and whether or not dams have been deliberately opened, drainage systems in Sderot and other cities were certainly overwhelmed by the volume of water.
What is certain is that low-lying Gaza, on the coastal plain, lacking functioning drainage and sewage systems, would in any case suffer most severely from the rainfall. Moreover Israel already stands accused of deliberately running down basic sanitation services in Gaza in order to make life unlivable for its residents.
And as Gaza resident Fidaa Abuassi points out: “Unlike their neighbors in Sderot Gaza’s refugees have nowhere to flee when heavy rains flood their 25-mile occupied territory, blockaded by land, air, and sea.”
Even as the floodwaters recede, there may be worse to come. The report warns of what most likely is an “impending health catastrophe” in the making, with a flare up of respiratory and skin diseases brought on by constant exposure to sewage water and lack of medical supplies.
Update #2
No Dams in the Negev? Anatomy of a Hasbara Swarm
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From the Archives
Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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