Judge rejects Obama attempt to conceal Guantanamo force feeding tapes
Reprieve | October 27, 2015
A US District Court judge has rejected the Obama administration’s latest request to conceal tapes of detainees at Guantanamo Bay being force-fed.
Responding to the government’s request to reverse her order handed down in October last year – that the Guantanamo tapes should be released – Judge Gladys Kessler wrote that, “What the Government is really saying is that its classification system trumps the decisions of the federal courts as to the public’s access to official court records; in other words, the Executive Branch (in this case, the Military) purports to be a law unto itself.”
In her ruling today, Judge Kessler described the government’s request as ‘repetitive, speculative, and extremely vague.’ In August, the US government handed to the court censored versions of the tapes which show former detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab being force-fed. These tapes have been redacted to conceal the identities of those military personnel carrying out the procedure. However, lawyers at international human rights NGO Reprieve – who have seen the redacted versions – have raised concerns that the redactions, especially of sound, are so heavy that they render the tapes nearly incomprehensible. Reprieve lawyers have filed a motion challenging the extent of censorship; that motion is pending.
Today’s judgement means that the US government must continue litigation if it is to successfully conceal the tapes from the American press and public. Alongside lawyers for Mr Dhiab, 16 news outlets – including the New York Times, Associated Press and Guardian – have joined the legal filing seeking release of the Guantanamo tapes to the public on First Amendment grounds.
Cori Crider, Reprieve’s Strategic Director and attorney for the Guantanamo detainees, said: “The Obama administration has dragged its feet for over a year to stop the American press and public seeing a single frame of these tapes. We’re glad the judge has denied the government’s request for a blanket cover-up, but a lot of problems persist – we expect the government to appeal this to the Supreme Court to stop people seeing the truth. Americans have a right to see what continues to be done in their name up to this day. The government should reduce its heavy-handed censorship of the footage, drop the appeals, and release the tapes immediately.”
Saudi authorities arrest father of juvenile set for ‘crucifixion’
Reprieve | October 27, 2015
The father of a juvenile sentenced to death by ‘crucifixion’ in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been arrested.
Mohammed al-Nimr, the father of Ali al-Nimr – a juvenile who has been sentenced to death by ‘crucifixion’ having been arrested when he was 17 for attending protests – was reportedly arrested today on unknown charges. He is currently being held at Al Awamiyah police station where his son and another juvenile – Dawoud al-Marhoon, also sentenced to death for attending protests – were first detained.
Yesterday, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph in which he complained that the UK was not showing enough ‘respect’ to the gulf Kingdom, after a controversial Ministry of Justice bid to work with the Saudi prison system was withdrawn, seemingly on the basis of human rights concerns.
This morning Mohammed al-Nimr has been vocal in calling for a commutation of his son’s death sentence by the Saudi authorities. Earlier this month he gave an interview to CNN in which he said that he and his family were ‘extremely worried’ about his son’s fate.
Kate Higham, caseworker at international human rights NGO Reprieve, said: “It is absolutely outrageous that Mohammed al-Nimr has been arrested, seemingly just for speaking out to save the life of his son. If the Saudi authorities have any concern for due process, human rights, or basic humanity, Mohammed al-Nimr must be released at once. The UK government and all those who have expressed concern about Ali al-Nimr’s case must act now to prevent this illegal detention from continuing, and must re-double their efforts to prevent Ali’s execution – and that of Dawoud al-Marhoon – from happening.”
Israel Takes On the First Amendment
Free speech except regarding Palestine
Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 27, 2015
I always enjoy reading the Washington Post each morning even though it drives my blood pressure up to stratospheric levels. Its embrace of the inexorability of a fabulous new Camelot-like Clinton White House is thrilling to witness as it unfolds, but it is the promotion of the neocon Israeli narrative that is most exciting. On October 23rd, the op-ed section outdid itself with a piece “Free speech is flunking out on campus” by Catherine Rampell, who described the increasingly sorry state of first amendment rights on politically correct American university campuses. Blacks, LGBTers, women and victims of sexual assault were all identified as constituencies demanding “safe spaces” resulting in curtailment of free speech but somehow Israel and its supporters screaming anti-Semitism at every drop of the hat were left out in spite of the fact that Jews on campus have been both extremely and successfully active in taking political action to pressure universities whenever they claim to feel “threatened.”
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians has again reached a boiling point. Palestinian frustration over Israel’s fifty year occupation of the West Bank and its continued theft of Arab land and resources has produced an uprising of mostly young Palestinians that is being called in some circles a new intifada. The conflict is playing out with knives and bullets in Palestine and Israel but it is also being fought internationally in the media, through cultural and economic boycotts and, most pointedly, at many colleges and universities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu realizes that the pressure on Israel is, for the first time, serious and has not hesitated to lie outrageously about the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. According to Netanyahu, the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem gave the idea to Hitler, presumably justifying whatever the Israelis of today choose to do to suppress the current unrest.
Israel has inevitably responded brutally, producing a death toll of significantly more Palestinians than Israelis. Netanyahu has been referring to the protesters as terrorists and has issued new rules of engagement which permit soldiers to shoot stone throwers. Israeli plainclothes soldiers and police have been identified as infiltrating the protesters while pretending to be Palestinians, urging the young Arabs to hurl stones before pulling out concealed handguns to beat protesters, shoot them and make arrests.
In Gaza five teenagers were shot dead by Israeli soldiers for the crime of coming too close to the separation barrier, which government press releases described as the “frontier.” Killing teenagers in Gaza is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel as they are fenced in and have in reality no way to actually confront the Israeli border guards. On the day following the killing of the boys a mother and infant were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Within Israel an Eritrean was even mistakenly killed by Israeli police because he was reportedly acting oddly.
Because of a hostile media’s self-censorship buttressed by an unfriendly political class, here in the United States one of the few places in which the Palestinians can exercise something like free expression relating to their national aspirations is on college campuses. Israel and its powerful supporters understand that gap in their ability to control the narrative and are doing everything possible to shut down the option.
Friends of Israel, as ever, work from the same playbook orchestrated by the large donors who fund them. They claim that anti-Israel protests on campus to include even letters to the editor in college newspapers constitute a “threatening environment” for Jewish students. The argument is based on a fundamental falsehood, which is that criticism of the actions of a foreign government is equivalent to hatred for the dominant religion of that country, that religion is exactly the same as nationality. Applying that notion liberally would mean that criticism of any country where there is de facto or de jure a dominant state religion would be unacceptable speech. If applied liberally countries spanning the globe would be exempt from criticism, to include not only Israel but also Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But this is not about Christian or Muslim sensitivities. It is all about protection against insult for Jews and it relies on a perception of perpetual victimhood, which can be and is produced on demand to stifle any criticism that might be regarded by some as objectionable. Indeed, if calls for violence directed against Jews as a race or religion were occurring pleas for some form of mitigation might have some very slim cogency, but campus protest movements have very carefully and deliberately avoided falling into that trap. And it might also be pointed that on many campuses a considerable proportion of the dissenters are themselves Jews who are appalled by Israeli behavior.
Criticism of Israel does not just include complaining about the policies of that country’s government. It also has inevitably involved the so-called BDS movement, “boycott-divest-and sanction” which aims to make Israel pay an economic and social price for its behavior, similar to the pressure that was once directed against apartheid South Africa. This second narrative has been cleverly woven into the complaints about “harassment,” labeling any campus calls for BDS ipso facto anti-Semitic and “hurtful.” School authorities have generally been accommodating to claims made by Jewish groups that students are feeling “threatened,” obstructing and intimidating critics of Israel and denying tenure to faculty members who are seen as troublemakers. They have looked the other way as organizations like Canary Mission began exposing college students on its website who are reported to be “anti-Freedom, anti-American and anti-Semitic” with the deliberate intention of damaging their future employment prospects.
Between January 2014 and June 2015 there were more than 300 incidents on 65 college campuses in 24 states involving intimidation or prevention of protests against Israel. Students at Northeastern University distributing flyers at dorms were interrogated by campus police and had their group suspended by college authorities. Some were disciplined. And faculty members have also been on the receiving end, with Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois, denied a teaching position after he sent tweets complaining about Israel’s 2014 assault against Gaza which killed more than 500 children.
Richard Blum, a member of the University of California’s regents, has demanded that students who criticize Israel be suspended for expelled because they are “intolerant,” exhibiting anti-Semitic bigotry. Blum is the multimillionaire husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein has also hinted that she could have the government look into possible violations occurring at federally funded institutions. The definition of bigotry being promoted by Blum and Feinstein conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and includes in its purview what are increasingly being referred to as “speech crimes.” The university regents are currently considering new language for their statement of policy against intolerance on campus but are under intense pressure from Jewish organizations that are lobbying them aggressively.
Many of the groups involved in the harassment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators are perhaps not surprisingly not indigenous to the colleges themselves. Stand With Us (SWU) and “Campus Maccabees” are national organizations well-funded by billionaire Sheldon Adelson and SWU has close ties to the Israeli government as does the lawfare center Shurat HaDin, which has filed lawsuits against Muslim and progressive groups on campus. Predictably, Congress and state legislatures have gotten into the act, seeking to pass laws that make it impossible for colleges and universities supported by taxpayer money to fund student groups that call for boycotts. The bills are drafted in terms of rejecting all selective boycotts but they are really all about Israel and everyone knows it. The fact that advocating voluntary boycotts is very much a part of one’s First Amendment rights appears to be irrelevant.
How to deal with it? The brouhaha is impossible to ignore as the advocates for Israel are relentlessly in one’s face even when the argument is being constructed in a restrained fashion and purposely framed so as not to offend Jews. It is consequently necessary to disarticulate being Israeli from being Jewish. Judaism is a religion and Israel is a foreign country. And it is important to recognize that legitimate direct criticism of Jewish groups for their involvement in pressuring universities should not itself be off limits. If the organizations self-identify as Jewish and they are attempting to restrict the discussion on Israel contrary to the First Amendment they become fair game. The First Amendment exists, after all, to permit free and open discussion of all issues and if some Jewish individuals and organizations are mobilizing to deny fundamental American rights on behalf of a foreign nation the rest of us have the responsibility to object forcibly and to make transparent just who is doing what to whom.
Saudi Arabia hits hospital run by Doctors without Borders in Yemen
Press TV – October 27, 2015
Doctors without Borders (MSF) says a hospital run by the international medical group in Yemen has been hit by Saudi airstrikes.
“MSF facility in Saada [sic] Yemen was hit by several airstrikes last night with patients and staff inside the facility,” the group said in a tweet on Tuesday.
MSF spokeswoman Malak Shaher separately said that there were “no casualties” in the attacks.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s state news agency Saba quoted the Heedan hospital director as saying that several people were injured in Saudi attacks on the hospital – which is also located in Sa’ada – last night.
“The air raids resulted in the destruction of the entire hospital with all that was inside – devices and medical supplies – and the moderate wounding of several people,” Doctor Ali Mughli said.
It was not immediately clear, however, whether the Heedan hospital was the one operated by the MSF and targeted by Saudi warplanes.
The Saudi military has been engaged in heavy strikes against Yemen since late March. The strikes are supposedly meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch Saudi ally.
About 7,000 people have lost their lives in the Saudi airstrikes, and a total of nearly 14,000 people have been injured since March 26.
It is the second time this month that an MSF facility has been hit in a conflict zone.
Earlier, on October 3, an MSF hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz was bombed by US forces, killing about 30 people.
Officials at the humanitarian organization have blamed the United States, calling for “independent investigation” into the incident, which the US says occurred as a result of a “mistake” made “within the US chain of command.”
J. K. Rowling and the Prisoners of Israel
By Omar Robert Hamilton | CounterPunch | October 26, 2015
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.”
— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007.
How disappointing to see JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel signing this nefarious letter calling for the need for ‘cultural bridges’ with Israel.
The letter, assembled by a new organisation calling itself Culture for Co-Existence, is a litany of the tired tropes and doublespeak employed by Israel and her apologists.
It opens, point blank, saying, “We do not believe cultural boycotts are acceptable.” Within two sentences the reader finds herself in the patrician hallways of the British conservative, being simply instructed what to think, what is polite. Cultural boycotts are never acceptable? Ever?
The lazy argumentation continues, with the limp disbelief that “the letter you published accurately represents opinion in the cultural world in the UK.” This is in reference to a letter published by Artists For Palestine UK in which 1,000 UK cultural workers pledged to boycott Israel until it reverses its policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
The letter struggles on with a series of meaningless assertions about the need to “inform and encourage dialogue” to “further peace.” When you’re dealing with the mechanized destruction of an entire people by one of the most technologically advanced and diplomatically shielded militaries in the history of mankind then talk, in 2015, of ‘cultural engagement’ is nothing more than further cover for Israel’s continuing colonization of what remains of Palestine.
Let us consider what the last twenty years of dialogue, mutual engagement and negotiation have brought us. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 the Israeli government has constructed 53,000 homes to house 500,000 new settler-colonists in the West Bank, has subjected Gaza to a medieval siege for over 6 years, destroyed 15,000 Palestinian homes, expelled 11,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem and divided the West Bank into 167 segregated population zones that are divided from each other by a 440km concrete wall and 522 military checkpoints. It has suppressed a popular uprising and launched four major offensives that have left over 7,000 Palestinians dead.
Israel, for all of those years (and we’re not even going back to 1948 here), has enjoyed full diplomatic and economic relations with all the world’s major players, it is at the centre of global trade in arms, hi-tech and diamonds. It competes in European sporting and musical competitions and enjoys European trade benefits. It has the US Congress in thrall to its every whim and has an army of lobbyists at work in every Western capital. Israel does not suffer from a shortage of ‘bridges.’
Words such as ‘dialogue,’ ‘peace’ and ‘bridges’ are hallmarks of the peace industry that has built up around Palestine in these years since 1993. Development money was released in reward for the PLO signing Oslo and foreign NGOs quickly came pouring into the West Bank armed with a new lexicon designed for annual reports and donor drives and an ultimate perpetuation of conflict and salaries. In this new language ‘peace’ means ‘submission’ and ‘dialogue’ means ‘silence.’ It’s not an Apartheid Wall, it’s a Separation Barrier – sometimes even fence. It’s not a ‘massacre’ it’s ‘fighting.’ The word justice is nowhere to be found. When Rowling’s letter states that “cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change” one can only applaud the crisp professional meaninglessness of it.
Who do we have to thank for this exercise in euphemistic insincerity?
They call themselves ‘Culture for Co-Existence’ and the coordinators include: an Executive Board member of One Family Israel, ‘a leading support organisation that deals with victims of terror in Israel’; the executive director of Friends of Israel Educational Foundation; an Israeli software designer whose Facebook profile picture is a big Star of David and an investment banker who assists campaigns for the charity Jewish Care.
Surely the Culture of Co-Existence Clan is missing something? Could they not find a single House Arab to sign on with them? Or did they decide that wasn’t even necessary?
Who exactly are they planning on co-existing with?
And then you realise. They are not actually talking about dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. They are talking about dialogue between themselves and Israel. The Palestinians are irrelevant. Peace, here, means being left at peace to keep doing business with the last apartheid state of the modern world. Dialogue and cultural exchange, in this lexicon, means that if you speak out about Israel then you can exchange your job for another one. In just the last week both the US State Department and MSNBC have had to retract statements that fell short of the Israel lobby’s standards. What chance, then, do independent institutions like London’s Tricycle Theatre have to exercise their moral right to refuse funding from an apartheid state? The answer: none. Because, remember, according to JK Rowling, cultural boycotts are never acceptable. A travelling troupe of KKK improvistas wants to ‘re-interpret’ a lynching in your school’s theatre to show the other side of the story? Right this way, sir. A cultural boycott would only single out white men from Mississippi unfairly when the world is so variously filled with wrong.
The Tricycle Theatre, like several politicians, popstars and athletes, was laid siege to last year when it tried to turn down Israeli government funding. They were quickly dialogued into submission and bridges were forced onto them in a manner reminiscent of the British Opium Wars.
Considering that Ms Rowling’s trade is in language it is deeply surprising to see her name attached to such a letter. Clearly this Co-Existence Coterie, which consists of her agent and two trustees of her charity, Lumos, came into being entirely for her signature. Many of their fans hope, though, that Ms Rowling and Ms Mantel reconsider their position and remove their names from this document. It is nothing more than a plea to allow Israel to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Economic and cultural isolation worked to end apartheid in South Africa and it can end it in Palestine too. If it is peace that people actually want, they have to recognize that it can only come with justice.
Omar Robert Hamilton is a filmmaker, writer and a producer of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature.
Netanyahu Proposes Cutting Off 80,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | October 26, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a recent Cabinet meeting, proposed revoking the residency rights of 80,000 Jerusalemites, which would mean that the people of Sho’afat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab, as well as other neighborhoods, would be cut off from the rest of Jerusalem.
The proposal was considered by the Israeli Cabinet in their recent meeting, but no decision was made.
Already, the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank have been severed from Jerusalem due to the Israeli construction of a massive Wall over the past 13 years. The Wall has annexed large sections of Palestinian land and made them a de facto part of the state of Israel, in direct violation of the responsibilities of an occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel’s government signed the Convention in 1957, requiring it to provide for the needs of civilian populations under occupation. The Convention also requires that an Occupying Power must not transfer any civilians into the land it has militarily occupied. But Israel has transferred over half a million people into settlements constructed on Palestinian land that was militarily occupied, then illegally seized, since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights began in 1967.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves. Now, under the Israeli Prime Minister’s proposal, residents of those enclaves would lose their residency rights altogether.
Israel has an identity card system for the residents of Jerusalem that is completely unique in the world. Jewish Israelis who live in Jerusalem or in paramilitary colonies in the West Bank are afforded full Israeli citizenship. But Palestinians who live on their ancestral land in Jerusalem are given a different kind of identity card, which ensures that they have far fewer rights than Jewish residents of the city.
If a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, for example, were to travel abroad for more than a year, Israel would consider that person to be an ‘absentee property owner’, and would seize their land and home and annex it to Israel, denying the Palestinian owner the right to return to their home. The rule only applies to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, and not to Jewish residents of the city.
According to the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahranoth, following the construction of new walls and barricades in recent weeks to further separate and segregate Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from Jewish residents, the Israeli Prime Minister told his Cabinet ministers, “We need to examine the possibility of canceling their [Palestinian Jerusalemites] residency. There needs to be a discussion about it.”
Some Israeli ministers voiced opposition to the plan, not because they were concerned about the Palestinian Jerusalemites losing their residency rights, but because they believe such a division would “give up territory” that some Israelis believe should belong to Israel.
That claim is based on a military takeover of the land by Israeli forces. Neither international law nor signed agreements recognize military takeover of land as a legitimate way of expanding state territory.
Saudi Supreme Court approves Sheikh Nimr death penalty
Press TV – October 25, 2015
Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court has approved the death penalty for prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, his brother says.
Mohammad al-Nimr, the prominent cleric’s brother, said in a message on social media on Sunday that the Saudi Supreme Court and an appellate court had approved the execution of the Shia cleric and authorized the Saudi Interior Ministry to carry out the sentence.
The execution warrant has been reportedly sent to Muhammad bin Naif bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Saudi crown prince, who is also the first deputy prime minister and the minister of interior of Saudi Arabia.
The warrant will now be sent to Saudi Arabia’s ruler Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud after the approval of the Interior Ministry.
To be implemented, the warrant must be approved by the Saudi king.
The execution of the Shia cleric can be carried out by the Interior Ministry without any prior warning if the Saudi king signs the order.
Nimr was attacked and arrested in the Qatif region, east of Saudi Arabia, in July 2012, and has been charged with undermining the kingdom’s security, making anti-government speeches, and defending political prisoners. Nimr has denied the accusations.
In October 2014, a Saudi court sentenced Sheikh Nimr to death, provoking huge condemnations and criticism in the Middle East and the world.
Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, the nephew of the prominent Saudi Shia cleric, has also been also sentenced to death over his alleged role in anti-regime protests in 2012, when he was 17 years old.
“We don’t want anything to happen to him or to Ali or the other young men,” Mohammed al-Nimr said.
Ali Mohammad was arrested during an anti-government protest in Qatif and was later convicted of alleged criminal activities and handed down a death penalty by Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court in May 2015.
Peaceful demonstrations erupted in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province in February 2011, with protesters demanding reforms, freedom of expression, the release of political prisoners and an end to widespread discrimination against people of the oil-rich region. Several people have been killed and many others have been injured or arrested during the demonstrations.
International rights bodies, including Amnesty International, have criticized Saudi Arabia for its grim human rights record, arguing that widespread violations continue unabated in the oil-rich country even though a new ruler, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, has taken the helm of the absolute monarchy.
Gaza journalists say Israeli forces ‘deliberately target’ media
Ma’an – October 25, 2015
GAZA CITY – Palestinian journalists across the Gaza Strip, who work for different Palestinian, Arab and international news agencies, are reporting that Israeli troops have “deliberately targeted” media while covering clashes between young Palestinian men and Israeli forces near the border fence between the coastal enclave and Israel.
Palestine TV reporter Sali al-Sakni told Ma’an on Sunday she and her crew had deliberately stayed away from the center of clashes near al-Bureij refugee camp, but that they were still “showered with tear gas” while covering the clashes.
She added that dozens of other reporters and photojournalists “wearing helmets and flak-jackets with ‘PRESS’ marked clearly,” were also attacked with tear gas in the area. Al-Sakni said three tear gas canisters were fired directly at her crew.
Similarly, cameraman of Palestine Today news agency Dawood Abu al-Kas was hit with a rubber-coated bullet in the foot while covering clashes near the border opposite to the Israeli Kibbutz of Nahal Oz in the northeast Gaza Strip.
“I was trying to capture photos while standing near an ambulance more than 300 meters away from the border fence when I was shot,” al-Kas told Ma’an.
Al-Kas highlighted that he was wearing a flak-jacket marked “PRESS” during the incident.
Al-Kas said that having been shot would not deter his efforts to “expose the crimes Israeli occupation commits against the Palestinian people.”
The deputy speaker of the Union of Gaza Journalists, Tahsin al-Astal, said Israeli assaults against journalists are consistent with Israeli violations of Palestinian rights in general.
“The Israeli occupation carries out systematic assaults against journalists who work in the field to prevent them from telling the truth about the crimes the occupation forces are committing against the Palestinian people,” al-Astal said.
“These serious breaches are classified war crimes and violations to international treaties and conventions,” he said.
Al-Astal added that the Union of Gaza Journalists, “has updated the International Federation of Journalists of the terrorism against Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.”
The IFJ, he said, is expected to issue a press release condemning “Israeli crimes and breaches against our people.”
Settler shoots, critically injures Palestinian near Gush Etzion
Ma’an – October 25, 2015
BETHLEHEM – An Israeli settler shot and seriously injured a young Palestinian man on Sunday morning in the Wadi Sair area near the illegal Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion and Sair village, east of Hebron, Palestinian security sources said.
Additionally, the mayor of nearby Sair village reported that seven Palestinians in the village had been shot and injured following the incident.
The settler who shot and critically injured the Palestinian man claimed, according to Israeli reports, that a Palestinian attacked him with a knife.
Palestinian security sources told Ma’an that an Israeli settler shot 20-year-old Azzam Azmi Shalalda four times while he was in his agricultural field, after the actual person suspected of carrying out the alleged attack had reportedly already fled the scene.
After the shooting, Shalalda was evacuated to al-Mamoon clinic in nearby Sair for first aid, before he was taken to al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron. Medics say he is in a critical condition. Shalalda is from the Sair village.
An Israeli army spokesperson said a Palestinian suspect attacked a 40-year-old Israeli after the Israeli man had stepped out of his car to confront Palestinians who were allegedly throwing stones at passing vehicles.
Israeli media outlets reported that the 40-year-old settler was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem after he was stabbed. He reportedly sustained moderate wounds.
An Israeli army spokesperson said that the alleged Palestinian “assailant fled from the scene,” adding that the reports were initial. The spokesperson had no information of a Palestinian shot or detained during the incident.
Mayor of Sair village, Kayed Jradat, told Ma’an that following the incident, Israeli forces raided Sair village and shot and injured seven Palestinians during the raid.
Doctor Zuheir Jaradat, who works at the town’s al-Mamoon clinic, said one of the victims sustained serious wounds as he was shot in the eye, while another man was hit with a live round in his thigh and was taken to hospital as well.
During the raid, Israeli forces inspected cars and checked the identities of villagers.
Jradat added that Palestinians in the village closed their stores out of fear of attacks by Israeli forces.
An Israeli police spokesperson said the area had been closed off.
Palestinian witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli forces chased a Palestinian vehicle between the southern West Bank towns of Sair and al-Shuyoukh after the incident. They highlighted that the alleged stabber had fled the scene, and an Israeli settler shot another young Palestinian man who had been working in nearby fields.
At Guantanamo, Sometimes Even the Judge Is In the Dark
By Dror Ladin | ACLU | October 23, 2015
I’m writing from Guantánamo Bay, where pre-trial proceedings in the military commissions prosecution of the 9/11 defendants have restarted after an 18-month delay. It has been a faltering start, to say the least: Within ten minutes of the first hearing, the agenda was derailed. Again.
One of the defendants, Walid Bin Attash, asked about the procedures that would allow him to represent himself because he could not trust the independence of the military commission, including his lawyers. All the parties then had to grapple with how self-representation would work in this novel context. But lurking behind these dilemmas is the real issue that has so often derailed the military commissions: the government’s use of secrecy in what it presents as a public death penalty trial.
As we have pointed out for years, the military commissions are unfair, unconstitutional, and plagued by excessive secrecy. These challenges make it extraordinarily difficult for the defense attorneys to do their job. And they make it even harder for defendants to exercise the right to represent themselves meaningfully.
There are straightforward logistical impossibilities for defendants if they attempt to represent themselves. They are held virtually incommunicado in “Camp 7” at Guantánamo, a secret prison within a secretive prison holding detainees who were tortured at the CIA’s secret black sites. Defendants cannot file motions, consult a law library, communicate with (or even learn the names of) witnesses, or compile confidential legal documents.
The defendants also face the unique challenge of representing themselves when they have been tortured by the government that seeks to kill them, continue to be subjected to a “controlled chaos strategy of changing the rules all the time” that serves to retraumatize them, and are denied rehabilitation to help them cope with the effects of their torture. Conditions at Camp 7 reportedly exacerbate the continued effects of CIA torture. Bin Attash declared at the beginning of this week’s hearings that “we are still in the black sites” before the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, cut him off.
The results of torture are quite visible at the trial: As an observer, one of the most difficult aspects of these hearings is watching the guards place a particularly frail defendant, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, each morning on a chair equipped with a special pillow. As the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report documents, al-Hawsawi was subjected to “rectal exams conducted with ‘excessive force’” while detained at a secret CIA prison. CIA records indicate that the result was “chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.” He now weighs less than 100 pounds and sometimes bleeds on his clothing. His medical records, like so much else at Guantánamo, are kept secret even from his counsel.
But perhaps the single biggest obstacle to self-representation is government secrecy. Defendants in the military commissions are not permitted to see classified evidence. That’s the case even if the government tries to use it to put them to death, and even if it could help their case. How can someone defend themselves when they can’t see the evidence? This problem isn’t confined to the self-representation context; even security-cleared defense counsel at Guantánamo are sometimes kept in the dark about relevant evidence.
These difficulties could be left for another day, suggested the judge. Perhaps, if a defendant chooses to represent himself, the military commissions could muddle through whatever problems cropped up along the way. Maybe the most obviously unfair scenarios would never come to pass, he hypothesized. At that point, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld entered the frame: Are concerns about the viability of self-representation in the military commissions merely a case of “unknown unknowns”?
So many questions arise when you try to invent justice as you go along.
The government has chosen to sidestep our tried and true federal courts and created a novel death penalty court here at Guantánamo. Without a doubt, there are a great number of unknown unknowns in this unprecedented proceeding. But as counsel for Ammar al-Baluchi observed, “there are huge known unknowns.” Given the government’s repeated and acknowledged efforts to rely on secret evidence and simultaneously hide that same evidence from the accused — and the public — a wide array of problems for a defendant who seeks to represent himself are easily predictable.
As David Nevin, counsel for defendant Khalid Sheik Mohammad, has explained, secrecy is “the live wire of this case.” At some point, Nevin suggested, the court will have to decide if it wants this trial to be a “real case” or merely a fundamentally unfair exercise of government power. And whether it’s a “real case” depends in part on whether the government succeeds in hiding from the American public the details of some of the most important trials in our history.
Perhaps the moment that most perfectly encapsulated the week of hearings so far happened at the end of the second day. Defense counsel had submitted a motion containing information that the government had decided was so secret that special permission was required to read it. But the government had not cleared the judge himself to know the information. After consulting with the court security officer, the judge refused to accept the defense’s submission.
“It’s hard for me to know what it is without knowing what it is,” he said. The same could be said for the military commission itself.
Court Chooses to Ignore Overwhelming Evidence of NSA’s Mass Internet Spying
By Ashley Gorski | ACLU | October 24, 2015
A federal district court yesterday dismissed Wikimedia v. NSA, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of a broad group of educational, legal, human rights, and media organizations whose communications are swept up by the NSA’s unprecedented Internet dragnet.
Our lawsuit concerns the NSA’s “upstream” surveillance, which involves the mass interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications. The court held that our clients lacked “standing” to bring suit, because they had not plausibly alleged that their communications were being monitored by the NSA. That’s just plain wrong.
The court’s opinion relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision in a previous ACLU lawsuit, Amnesty v. Clapper, a challenge to warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In February 2013, the Supreme Court dismissed that case on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had communicated with the NSA’s targets.
But as we explained in court, our current challenge to the NSA’s warrantless spying is very different than the last one. Among other reasons, Clapper was decided prior to the Snowden revelations and extensive government disclosures about upstream surveillance. These revelations fundamentally changed the equation. Since Clapper, the public has learned that the NSA is not surveilling only its targets — it is instead surveilling virtually everyone, looking for information about those targets.
Some early takeaways from the district court’s opinion:
1.The court misunderstands how upstream surveillance is fundamentally different from and much more intrusive than the surveillance considered by the Supreme Court in Clapper.
Upstream surveillance is accomplished through the installation of devices directly on the Internet “backbone” — the network of high-capacity cables, switches, and routers across which Internet traffic travels. One particularly disturbing feature of upstream spying is known as “about” surveillance. Through this surveillance, the NSA is not simply plucking the communications to or from terrorists, spies, or other targets. Instead, it’s copying and searching through the contents of nearly everyone’s international communications, looking for information about its many targets. When the Supreme Court considered warrantless surveillance in Clapper, it was focused on whether the plaintiffs communicated with targets. At that time, the public had no idea that the NSA was essentially opening everyone’s international emails. Indeed, contrary to the district court’s understanding, “about” surveillance is in no way targeted:
2. The court ignores how Internet communications are structured — and why that requires the government to intercept at least some of our clients’ trillion-plus international communications.
Collectively, our clients engage in more than one trillion international Internet communications each year, with individuals in virtually every country on Earth. As we explained in our complaint, given the structure of the Internet, it is virtually impossible for the NSA to conduct upstream surveillance without intercepting at least some of plaintiffs’ communications. Yet the court dismissed these allegations, characterizing them as having “no basis in fact.”
3. Given how much is in the public record about upstream surveillance, our clients’ allegations are not “speculative” or “hypothetical.”
As the court acknowledged, at this early stage of the litigation, plaintiffs have to satisfy only a very low threshold: plausibility. Especially considering what’s publicly known about how upstream surveillance works, and the volume and distribution of our clients’ communications, their allegations are more than plausible.
4. The court’s opinion would insulate government surveillance from any legal challenge, except in cases where the government has already admitted its reliance on a particular program.
Although the court recognized that “no government surveillance program should be immunized from judicial scrutiny,” its analysis would do precisely that in the overwhelming majority of cases. If the court’s reasoning were correct, then the only people who could challenge NSA surveillance would be those told by the government they were spied on — a result at odds with well-established precedent and our system of checks and balances:
Our clients’ standing doesn’t depend on a supposition. There’s no question that the NSA is capturing and searching through their communications. That’s something the court — and everyone else — should find extremely disconcerting.
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Book Review
‘Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison’: A Tale of Two Diaries
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 13, 2026
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary reveals a “mind-numbing” contradiction between what the former top U.S. infectious disease official knew about COVID-19 and what he told the public, senior White House adviser Peter Navarro, Ph.D., said last week on “American Thought Leaders.”
In his new book, “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison,” due out Oct. 20, Navarro compares Fauci’s private entries to his own pandemic-era diary, and uses what he calls “a tale of two diaries” to argue that Fauci should face criminal prosecution.
“I show, actually, how a prosecution can and should happen … at the state level, most likely,” Navarro said. “He should wind up in prison, and we’ve got the receipts in this book to put him there.”
Navarro said Fauci repeatedly acknowledged important facts in private, then publicly pursued policies that contradicted those facts — with devastating consequences.
“What he says many times privately in his diary is so at odds with both his public behavior and public statements that it’s mind-numbing,” Navarro said.
Navarro examines the lasting damage caused by lockdowns and other pandemic policies, and the ongoing toll of long COVID.
His book also addresses questions about vaccine safety, including why healthy young people faced COVID-19 vaccination mandates despite concerns about myocarditis, and why women were not warned about miscarriage risks linked to the shots. … continue
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