BETHLEHEM – Israeli settlers from the illegal Beitar Illit settlement raided Palestinian lands in the village of Wadi Fukin in the central occupied West Bank district of Bethlehem on Tuesday, according to local witnesses.
Ahmad Sukkar, head of the Wadi Fukin village council, told Ma’an that a group of Israeli settlers raided agricultural lands in the al-Fuwwar area of the village, destroying two greenhouses and tearing up plants belonging to Maher Sukkar, Jamil Assaf, and Muhammad Manasra.
Sukkar also said the Israeli settlers uprooted the plants of Muhammad Saleh Manasra and Naim Daoud Attiyeh, before spray-painting “Death to Arabs” on their property.
Israeli settlers from the illegal Beitar Illit settlement, which has been built on private Palestinian lands belonging to the villages of Husan, Nahalin, and Wadi Fukin, commonly raid the communities and destroy Palestinian property.
Beitar Illit is one of several settlements that comprise what Israel refers to as the “Gush Etzion” settlement bloc, which Israel plans to illegally annex into its territory, according to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ).
According to ARIJ, Israel’s plans of incorporating the Gush Etzion settlement bloc into the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem — boundaries that Israel continuously redefines in order to annex land further into Palestinian territory — parallels with Israel’s objectives of reshaping the demographics of the city by lowering the Palestinian population to 20 percent, and filling in the rest with Jewish Israelis.
Local Palestinians often attribute settler attacks on Palestinian communities — 51 of which have been reported since the start of this year, according to UN documentation — to Israel’s larger goals of depopulating Palestinian villages near settlements by scaring Palestinians into leaving their lands in an attempt to make room for the expansion or connection of the illegal settlement blocs.
While the Israeli government does not make Israeli settler population statistics public, most rights groups agree that some 600,000 settlers reside in Israeli settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem — all of which are considered illegal under international law.
Pro-Israel Neocons have said they will jump off the Republican ship and vote for Hillary Clinton, because she will continue business as usual with regard to our militarized foreign policy. Apologists for Donald Trump argue that he will pursue a more restrained and less warlike foreign policy, including a more balanced policy toward Israel.
But recent report by Stuart Winer in the Times of Israel suggests Trump’s bombastic ‘art of the deal,’ at least when applied to pol-mil policy, will turn out to be yet another politician’s distinction without a difference — to wit:
A senior adviser to Donald Trump said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should wait for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to win the White House before signing a military aid deal with Washington, because Trump would offer a better deal than the Obama administration.
In an interview with Channel 2 television David Friedman said that a Trump administration would maintain Israel’s military advantage over its neighbors. He said Trump would not reduce defense aid to Israel but “in all likelihood will increase it significantly.”
“The aid package will certainly not go down in all likelihood it will go up in a material amount because Israel must maintain a technological and military superiority within the region,” Freidman said. “I can’t give advice how Israel should bargain and develop its own strategy.”
Friedman’s suggestion that Trump would increase aid to Israel apparently ran contrary to the GOP candidate’s call to make Israel pay back foreign aid. In March, Trump said he believed Israel should pay for defense aid it receives from the US.
Could it be that the choice for President in 2016 will have no effect on America’s militarized foreign policy, and if so, would this be something new and different?
As with most political questions in Versailles on the Potomac, the pathway to answering this question is less one of Ivory-tower policy analysis than a gritty one of following the money — in this case the money flowing through the triangular relations of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex. It is a question that goes to the heart of President Eisenhower’s prophetic warning, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
A brief resumé of the hearing held last week in Paris, by Alison Chabloz.
In contrast to the Court of Appeal hearing given last March, this latest bout of Ziocon persecution of revisionist, Robert Faurisson, was held in the 17° Chambre Correctionelle of the High Court at the Palais de Justice in Paris, ensuring that numerous members of the public who’d gathered there to support the professor were able to witness the proceedings from the court room’s spacious gallery.
Starting an hour late owing to the morning session having overrun the allocated time-slot, magistrates initially dealt with several other cases, lasting for almost another hour, before it was the turn of the world’s foremost ‘Holocaust’ revisionist to defend himself against three separate charges. There was no apology forthcoming from the court for this delay which of course had the negative effect of reducing valuable debating time as well as causing magistrates to rush the proceedings.
Two charges for contesting a crime against humanity (one of which brought by former Justice Minister, Pascal Clément) and a third for racial defamation brought by the LICRA – Ligue contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme.
All three complaints targeted a speech made by the professor in 2006 at a conference on the ‘Holocaust’ in Tehran, Iran. A star witness in the person of Lady Michele Renouf who had travelled from London for the hearing would testify after the initial debates. For once, the number of lawyers on the accused benches seemed to outnumber those of the prosecution by five to two (five to three, if we include the state prosecutor). In reality, however, Robert Faurisson’s defence was assured by Maître Damien Viguer alone. Three immense dossiers were produced and placed on the judge’s desk almost completely hiding the magistrate himself. Cue: hushed, slightly amused tittering from the public benches.
The defence’s principle argument rested on the fact that Faurisson’s speech in Tehran had been delivered in English and had lasted only ten minutes. As his speech had been given outside French territory, French law would not apply. In this case, however, it was the professor’s written essay The Victories of Revisionism, published in Tehran then distributed on the Internet, that had led to the three charges. The article details the major successes of Robert Faurisson’s revisionist career and, in particular, confessions of his adversaries which substantiate the professor’s outright technical and moral victory over his detractors. It is this same article which Maître Viguer uses consistently in defence of his client during the many trials brought by a judicial system which is plainly rotten to the core.
The judge, a man in his forties with curly, dark ginger hair and a beard, began by reading Faurisson’s article (see Part 1 and Part 2). The longer the reading went on, the more the judge seemed to be taking in Faurisson’s words. Towards the end, the judge’s face had completely disappeared behind the hand-held, stapled bundle of A4 sheets.
Faurisson’s counsel, Maître Viguer, asked that the two complaints for contesting crimes against humanity be nullified because of legal non-compliance. After a short break for deliberation, the court reserved its ruling in relation to this matter until September 27. Thus, only the third charge of ‘racial defamation’ would be deliberated on this humid afternoon in the centre of the French capital.
The charge of defamation brought by LICRA concerned the following passages of Faurisson’s article:
“President Ahmadinejad (then head of the Islamic Republic of Iran) used the right word when he said that the alleged Holocaust of the Jews is a myth: that is to say, a belief maintained by credulity or ignorance.
“The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Jews form one and the same historical lie, which allowed a gigantic political and financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism and whose main victims are the German people – but not their leaders – and the Palestinian people in their entirety.”
The accusation’s charge of defamation lay solely on the ‘argument’ that, by these statements, Faurisson was clearly targeting the Jewish community. The judge asked Faurisson to explain.
Faurisson’s retorts were confident and unrelenting: citing Israel and international Zionism is not the same as citing “the Jews”. The public as well as the officers of the court present were then treated to an hour and a half’s exposé by the man himself. Unlike orthodox historians who merely repeat the given narrative, he would actually go out on the job, tape measure in hand. The 60-word phrase, he explained, is the summary of his lifetime’s work in the field of revisionism. As he advised his students, the key to success when researching any subject is the ability to resume this work in a phrase of approximately 60 words. The enormous body of work he carried out began in the 1950s when he first asked:
“Show me a photo, an architect’s plan or even a drawing of a gas chamber.”
Faurisson continued his testimony with an explanation of Rudolf Höss’ witness statement at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, gained via torture, in particular sleep deprivation. Then, a brief lesson on the explosive quality of Zyklon-B with analysis of actual execution chambers which employ this same gas (no longer used) in the USA. In the 187 pages of court transcripts from Nuremberg concerning Auschwitz, practically nothing is dedicated to the subject of gassing.
The professor went on to expose the lies of Elie Wiesel in his book Night as well as other fabrications concerning execution by boiling water at Treblinka which also feature in the Nuremberg transcript. So many false witnesses: only last week we learned of yet another in the news.
The judge, at this point, interjects with “You’ve therefore not modified your proposals after all this time..?” The female magistrate present appears to have fallen asleep! Such is the contempt for Faurisson’s indisputable strength of character, as apparent and all the more humbling here and now, at the grand old age of 87, as when he started his research more than six decades ago. Faurisson’s conclusions are based on fact, documented evidence, repeatable scientific experiment and, above all, are the fruit of a lifetime’s study and research. What reason other than insanity would make him change his proposals “after all this time”?
Faurisson elaborates on the magical six million number. In August, 1944, Wilhelm Hötll, friend of Eichman, gave a witness statement purporting that the sensational sum could be reached by adding the four million in Auschwitz ‘extermination camp’ to another two million slain Soviets. This was the first time the phrase extermination camp was used in place of concentration camp. However, Hötll was never called to testify at Nuremberg.
The prosecution declines the opportunity to grill Faurisson; Maître Viguer invites the professor to talk about the conference in Iran.
Contrary to media reports, the 2006 conference was inclusive of all opinions concerning the ‘Holocaust’. The professor remembers one adversary challenging him to go to the National Archives in Washington where he would see the evidence that his findings were erroneous. The poor fellow hadn’t bargained on the professor already having been to these very same archives where, amongst other clues, he uncovered documents relating to the 32 RAF sorties over Auschwitz, none of which had succeeded in showing smoke billowing out from the crematoria chimneys.
Maître Viguier questions the professor further on the origin of all these lies surrounding the “Holocaust”. Faurisson replies that it’s impossible to say; the rumour runs and runs. The CICR had also heard rumours of gas chambers at Auschwitz, yet their investigation team was unable to find anyone confirming these rumours. Even Eric Conan in French weekly, L’Express, said of the gas chamber exhibit at Auschwitz “Tout y est faux” – everything is false. 1.7 million people visit Auschwitz annually.
At this point, the judge decides to call Lady Renouf to hear her witness statement. As this will be in English, the court has arranged for an accredited translator to be present. After giving her name and details, Lady Renouf first congratulates Maître Viguier for his bravery in accepting to defend the professor. Her witness statement follows in short phrases which are immediately translated for the benefit of the court. We hear confirmation that Faurisson’s speech was an impromptu affair which lasted only ten minutes and Lady Renouf makes reference to the professor’s English-spoken heritage, owed to his mother being a Scot. She repeats Faurisson’s anecdote, often used to introduce himself to an English-speaking audience, that his French ear should not listen to his Scottish ear because, whereas Scottish law permits inquiry and research into the “Holocaust”, French law does not.
Linguistic confusion arises when Lady Renouf speaks of guidelines (in French, “les consignes”) on how the “Holocaust” should be taught in schools, published in Stockholm in 2000. The translator is unable to translate the word for guidelines, using “guides” instead. Whether or not the greffière recorded a corrected version is uncertain; perhaps the court thought that Lady Renouf was talking about “tour guides”, at Auschwitz or elsewhere?
The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust where the ‘Holocaust’ education guidelines were first announced was also the site of two physical attacks on Faurisson by Jewish terrorist organisation LDJ (Ligue de Défence Juive or Jewish Defence League). These guidelines instruct all public and private schools worldwide not to give a platform to revisionists. Lady Renouf summarises, stating that historical debate and rational argument do not seem to be part of educational guidelines on this subject. There are no questions from the court.
Maître Viguier promptly urges the professor to talk about a case dating back to 1983 when he was accused of “falsifying history”. Faurisson explains that this was the catalyst which led to creation of the 1990 Fabius-Gayssot Act. He also recalls the work of British historian and semi-revisionist David Irving, along with the fact that neither Churchill nor de Gaulle ever mention any gas chambers. In fact, during WW1 already, UK national newspaper the Daily Express had written about enemy gas chambers as early as 1914. An investigation after the war ended in 1918 proved that the story was a propaganda lie. Again, in 1943, the same story about gas chambers appears in the Daily Express. This time, however, there was no similar post-war investigation. Another piece of vital evidence is the documented case of Marinka in Russia where the local mayor was shot dead by the German army for killing a Jewish woman. Many such examples exist yet are suppressed from public knowledge.
The professor then relates his victories over Raul Hilberg and Jean-Claude Pressac; cites Valerie Igounet’s book of smears Histoire du négationnisme en France and tells us that Ariane Chemin didn’t know who Hilberg was when she interviewed the professor in Vichy for Le Monde newspaper. Faurisson also names the director of Yad Vashem 1953-1959, Ben-Zion Dinur, who resigned after coming to the realisation there were far too many false witnesses.
Change of tone as Mâitre Christian Charrière-Bournazel representing LICRA comes to the bar. He’s clearly unhappy about having been forced to listen to Faurisson for two hours (in reality Faurisson had only spoken for an hour and a half), although it’s doubtful Charrière-Bournazel will be complaining quite so much when he receives his fat fee. The only accusation is restricted to the same, tired refrain: when Faurisson mentions the state of Israel and international Zionism, Faurisson means Jews. Faurisson is a racist. Faurisson has already been prosecuted and convicted, etc., etc.
The state prosecutor raises even more eyebrows as she tries to stabilise her microphone (no working mic and a dodgy translator suggest the French judiciary can’t afford to run their courts properly?). Diabolical smears regards Faurisson’s personality as well as the obligatory jibe about using the court room as a platform from which, according to Madame la Procureure, Faurisson would take immense gratification. Perhaps the most telling phrase amongst all the outright lies and smears (paid for by the French tax payer, of course) is when the prosecutor states Faurisson should no longer be given the possibility of further court appearances.
Maître Viguier once again stands to contest the accusation’s claims. That the professor’s words in Tehran constitute ‘defamation’ is a fraudulent lie. The professor’s work is that of an historian. Viguier protests his colleague’s conflation of Israel and Jews, defiantly and correctly stating that conflict in the Middle East could be seen as one direct result of the lies of the Shoah. Faurisson’s work, he insists, will last as long as does this mensonge (“lie”). Viguier deplores the moral order inflicted upon revisionists in the name of war and war crimes, and which effectively prevents revisionists from doing their job.
The judge invites Faurisson to have the last word. Faurisson is finally able to respond to Charrière-Bournazel’s earlier attacks by comparing the lawyer’s attitude and manner to that of an enflure (in the sense of over-exaggerated, self-important, turgid). This warrants an admonishment of Faurisson by the judge, who then fails to chastise Charrière-Bournazel for leaving the court in a show of brazen pomposity whilst Faurisson is still speaking.
Faurisson finishes with another couple of examples of dubious witness statements and mistranslations which have been used by propagandists to bolster the case for a presumed genocide of countless Jews. We’re told of the wildly varying death toll estimates and asked why those who revised the official Auschwitz death toll – down from four to one-and-a-half million – were not punished in the same atrocious manner which Faurisson has been subjected to throughout his career.
The prosecution is demanding a month’s prison sentence and a 3,000 euro fine in the event of a guilty verdict. We shall now have to wait to September 27 to hear the court’s ruling.
Palestinian student Baraa Amer, 19, a student at an-Najah University and a resident of Kafr Qalil in southern Nablus, was sentenced on Monday, 27 June to 10 months imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 shekels ($675 USD).
Ahmed Khader
Arrested two months ago, Amer is involved with the student Islamic Bloc at the University, and was previously arrested along with 18 fellow students by Palestinian Authority forces in 2015.
Amer was arrested by Israeli occupation forces amid ongoing student elections at the university; active members of Palestinian student blocs are frequently targeted for arrest and persecution, especially at the height of election campaigning.
His father, Nawwaf, is a journalist and former political prisoner himself.
The arrests of Palestinian students continue. On Saturday, 25 June, Israeli occupation forces arrested Ahmed Hussam Khader, 19, as he traveled south of Nablus; Khader is the son of Fateh Palestinian Legislative Council member Hussam Khader and a student of political science at Bir Zeit University.
Today following the ongoing diplomatic negotiations Israel and Turkey have officially announced normalized relations, which have been strained following the attack on Mavi Marmara on 31st May 2010. Netanyahu’s announcement on behalf of Israel came around the same time Turkey issued a statement about it. In the press conference, Netanyahu has declared in a victorious attitude that “It is a tremendous economic success for Israel. The blockade on Gaza by no means is lifted nor shall it ever be lifted. Turkey has agreed to our terms.” He has highlighted that Israel agreed not to pay compensation but to make a donation of 20 million dollars provided that the cases are withdrawn; that this move will prevent the case from establishing a precedent for other crimes of Israeli soldiers; that the agreement is a significant gain. Unfortunately the rapprochement agreement which is announced by Turkey means that blockade on Gaza is recognized by Turkey. Indeed Gaza is free according to the agreement signed in 2005 and is entitled to the right to travel and do business as it pleases without relying on anybody. The embargo means that Israel is recognized as a superior authority which has the final say on what and how much supplies can enter Gaza and this is the subject matter of the agreement announced.
The rapprochement agreement may be regarded as the easing of the blockade although many provisions are quite ambiguous. However it only constitutes a partial permission granted to Turkey. What kind of supplies and how much supplies will Israel allow Turkey to bring in to Gaza stands as a big question mark. Indeed supply entry and exit from Gaza should be free like in every other country. The issue is not entry of humanitarian relief supplies into Gaza but making sure that Gaza has its freedom of movement and transactions so that it does not have to rely on external aid. Palestine is deprived of this freedom and doomed to rely on external aid only while international law grants it to every land and government. It is simply unacceptable. Therefore, as IHH we would like to announce that we will keep up our efforts in all fronts including legal and physical arenas for the removal of the illegal and unjustifiable blockade on Gaza.
Meanwhile it is reported that the agreement has a provision stipulating that a donation will be made to the families of the victims provided that the court cases are withdrawn. These lawsuits are not filed only by victims’ families and Turkish citizens but international victims of the Mavi Marmara attack from 37 different countries. There is no withdrawal of the cases. The victims’ families remain adamant about refusing to give up their cause or withdraw their case until and unless the blockade is removed.
Israel’s arrogant attitude as if to say “I kill people and pay in cash whatever is the cost” is unacceptable. Who is going to protect Turkish citizens from Israel in international waters? Turkish government has acted this way and came to an agreement with the Israeli party. Just like what we have said since the beginning, as an international NGO we do not condone an agreement with Israel. We were never involved in the agreement nor did we partake as a party. To this day we have voiced our warnings and suggestions. From then onwards we will keep standing with Palestinian people through our court cases, our actions to break the blockade, our protests and various aids. The Mavi Marmara court cases are to continue. We hope that the parliament does not endorse this agreement which means that Israeli murderers are exonerated by Turkey. Mavi Marmara stood as a hope in the Islamic world and for the oppressed people of the world. It is our duty to keep this hope which stands for the common consciousness of humanity alive. We would like to rest our case with a Palestinian saying “Whoever covers up with Israel will remain naked.”
The US military has tested an Israeli short-range missile for possible use in its European network of missile systems to deter Russia, says a US Army general.
Major General Glenn Bramhall of the US Army’s Air and Missile Defense Command made the comments on Monday, as he visited the occupied Palestinian territories.
Bramhall said his units needed a reliable system to counter less powerful missile threats as a third tier beside the Army’s array of midrange Patriot and THAAD missile systems.
“Patriot and THAAD are great systems that do what they were designed to do. But I don’t think we would want to waste a Patriot or a THAAD missile on something that can be affected by something that’s lower cost and is actually designed for that job itself,” the general told Reuters.
For that purpose, he said the US military has test-launched a variant of the Israeli “Tamir” rocket which is incorporated to the Tel Aviv regime’s so-called Iron Dome missile system.
Jointly manufactured by American and Israeli firms, each Tamir battery, consisting of a radar unit, missile control unit, and several launchers, is worth $50 million, with each missile costing about $100,000.
“I think we are looking at something that is similar to Iron Dome. We have looked at the Tamir as a possible missile,” Bramhall said. He was due to inspect an Iron Dome unit on Tuesday.
Russian deterrence
Elsewhere in his remarks, the American general noted that the Israeli missile system is being considered mainly as a deterrent against what he called Russia’s military buildup in Europe.
“With all that is happening in Europe, especially the fact that Russia has really awakened itself and has really decided to rebuild its military and is really posing a threat, we are looking at how we can do the multi-tiered defense,” Bramhall said.
Military tensions between Russia and the US further heightened in May, when American and NATO officials activated a land-based missile system in Romania, despite Russia’s warning against US-led arms deployments near its borders.
The missiles’ activation marked the penultimate step in the completion of a missile shield, which Washington proposed nearly a decade ago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly criticized the system’s deployment, vowing to neutralize any threats against his country’s security.
As many as 71 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli jails as a result of torture since 1967, Abdel Nasser Farwana, head of the documentation and studies unit at the detainees and ex-detainees committee, said.
In a statement released on Sunday to mark the International Day Against Torture, Farwana said dozens of others died shortly after being released as an effect of the torture they had endured, adding that many more suffer from long-term physical and psychological disabilities.
“Israel practices a unique and atypical form of physical and psychological torture and it is the only country in the world that legalises torture in its jails and detention camps and protects its perpetrators,” he explained.
“Israel uses torture on institutional level against Palestinian and Arab detainees. According to our data, 100 per cent of the Palestinian prisoners were subjected to one form or another of torture,” he added.
Farwana called on international institutions and human rights organisations to take serious and effective steps to stop all forms of torture against Palestinian prisoners and to prosecute those who practice torture against them.
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
Yes, they are that nuts.
If the fault line for the Tories is Europe, for Labour it is the Middle East. Those opposing Corbyn are defined by their enthusiasm for bombing campaigns that kill Muslim children. And not only by the UK. Both of the first two to go, Hilary Benn and Heidi Alexander, are hardline supporters of Israel.
This was Benn the week before his celebrated advocacy of bombing Syria:
Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn told a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lunch yesterday that relations with Israel must be based on cooperation and rejected attempts to isolate the country.
Addressing senior party figures in Westminster, Benn praised Israel for its “progressive spirit, vibrant democracy, strong welfare state, thriving free press and independent judiciary.” He also called Israel “an economic giant, a high-tech centre, second only to the United States. A land of innovation and entrepreneurship, venture capital and graduates, private and public enterprise.”
Consequently, said Benn, “Our future relations must be built on cooperation and engagement, not isolation of Israel. We must take on those who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel or question its right to exist.”
Heidi Alexander actually signed, as a 2015 parliamentary candidate, the “We Believe in Israel” charter, the provisions of which state there must be no boycotts of Israel, and Israel must not be described as an apartheid state.
This fault line is very well defined. The manufactured row about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party shows exactly the same split. In my researches, 100% of those who have promoted accusations of anti-Semitism were supporters of the Iraq War and/or had demonstrable links to professional pro-Israel lobby groups. 100% of those accused of anti-Semitism were active opponents of the Iraq War. Never underestimate the Blairite fury at being shown not just to be liars but to be wrong. Iraq is their Achilles heel and they are extremely touchy about it.
No rational person would believe Brexit was Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. No rational person would believe that now is a good moment for the Labour Party to tear itself apart. Extraordinarily, the timing is determined by Chilcot.
Israel and Turkey have reached an agreement to normalize ties, a senior Israeli official told reporters, according to Reuters. This will end the bitter rift over the Israeli Navy’s killing of nine Turkish citizens during a Gaza flotilla raid in 2010.
The agreement, which took three years to reach, is expected to be officially announced on Monday, said the official traveling with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently in Rome.
The restoration of full diplomatic relations that deteriorated after the Israeli navy killed nine Turkish and one Turkish-American pro-Palestinian activists in 2010 has been brokered with the help of Washington.
Israel conducted an operation against six civilian ships that belonged to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The ships fit by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) were carrying humanitarian and construction supplies to the blockaded Gaza Strip.
The deal is likely to involve compensation (of around $20 million) to the families of the killed Turks and higher Turkish aid and development projects for Gaza, Israeli media report.
The $20 million in compensation will come as a humanitarian act to a special fund organized for the families of the victims killed by the Israeli soldiers. The payment is external to the agreement, an act of good will, and doesn’t imply that Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the incident, the official stressed, according to the Jerusalem Post. The transaction will be carried out as soon as Turkey passes legislation making it impossible for the families to file further claims against Israeli officers or soldiers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly pledged to make efforts to release the bodies of two Israeli soldiers that are held by the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip and two other Israeli civilians.
“We asked for and received a document in which the Turkish president instructs the relevant Turkish agencies to work toward resolution of the issue of those kidnapped and missing. The document is in our hands, that’s what Turkey can do for now,” the official said, according to the Times of Israel.
The deal is to be signed on Tuesday by Foreign Ministry Director Dore Gold and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Two of Turkey’s conditions for normalizing diplomatic relations that involved an apology and compensation are going to be fully met, reports say. The third demand – lifting the Gaza blockade – was a matter of disagreement and called for a compromise.
Israel will reportedly allow Turkey to help with the completion of a hospital in the Palestinian enclave and the construction of a new power station as well as a plant for desalination of water.
The Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) has expressed its objections to the agreement on its official Twitter feed, both in English and Turkish. It includes 12 points that explain why Turkey shouldn’t be constrained with the terms of the deal, especially stressing that the agreement “should be based on the conditions of abolishing the blockade, not the embargo.”
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has said that the shooting of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on Tuesday night was “deliberate, entirely unjustified and a direct result of military policy.” The group’s report gave details of the incident during which Mahmoud Badran was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. The boy from Beit Ur a-Tahta was with four of his friends at the time; they were wounded in the unprovoked attack.
“The shots were fired at a car with seven passengers inside, who were making their way back from a night out at a water park,” reported B’Tselem. “The military initially announced the soldiers had ‘targeted terrorists who were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli cars on Road 443’, but later changed its version and stated the boy had been ‘mistakenly’ killed.” The organisation’s field-researcher indicated that “the soldiers used heavy fire against the moving car without any justification.”
According to B’Tselem, said: “At around 1:30am, seven residents… were making their way home after a night out at the Lin Land Waterpark in the village of Beit Sira. When the car approached a narrow underpass used by Palestinian vehicles to get across Road 443, [Israeli] soldiers standing on the road, on top of the underpass, opened massive fire at the car from a distance of 40 to 50 metres.”
Most of the passengers in the car were hit by the shots, including the driver, who lost control and crashed into a wall. “Five of the seven passengers were hit in the shooting: Mahmoud Badran was killed instantly, four passengers were injured.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backtracked from his neutral position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and is now “committed” to supporting Israeli settlement expansion on territories it has seized illegally, according to an advisor.
David M. Friedman, a real-estate attorney serving as Trump’s main advisor on Israel, said the Republican presidential candidate and reality television star would not support the recognition of the Palestinian state without “the approval of the Israelis.” Friedman also remarked that Trump was unconcerned with the inhabitants of the West Bank, because “nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”
Trump made Friedman a part of his campaign staff in April, at a meeting with Orthodox Jews, naming him and Jason Greenblatt, another real-estate lawyer and Trump’s chief attorney, as his advisors on Israel. Friedman said at the time, “Mr. Trump’s confidence is very flattering. My views on Israel are well known, and I would advise him in a manner consistent with those views. America’s geopolitical interests are best served by a strong and secure Israel, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital.” Friedman has made no secret of his feelings about a two-state solution with Palestine, writing that, “It was never a solution, just an illusion that served both the US and the Arabs.”
Trump has earned a reputation for taking contradictory stances on issues, and when asked in May if he thought Israel should cease construction in the West Bank, the candidate said, “No, I don’t think there should be a pause… because I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.” Later in the same interview he remarked, “I’d love to negotiate peace. I think that, to me, is the all-time negotiation… I would love to see if peace could be negotiated. A lot of people say that’s not a deal that’s possible. But I mean lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again. So we’ll see what happens.”
Friedman says Trump’s attitude toward Israel is positive, and his view on the Palestinian state springs, in part, to a lack of power on the part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “His [Trump’s] feeling about Israel,” Freidman said, “is that it is a robust democracy. He does not think it is an American imperative for [Gaza Strip and other territories seized by Israel] to be an independent Palestinian state.”
When asked directly about his own feelings on recognizing the State of Palestine, Friedman was open, if tentative.
“If the Israelis conclude that they need to do this [recognize the Palestinian state] in order to enhance their long-term security – which I think we are very skeptical about – but if this is what they conclude they want to do, we will respect this decision…. If the circumstances change… and there is a reason to be optimistic, then great, but the current facts don’t make that [recognizing the Palestinian state] an American imperative at all.” he said.
BETHLEHEM – Israel’s Public Security Ministry proposed its latest bill to prevent “security” interrogations from being videotaped, for “fear the footage could reach terror groups that would learn Israeli interrogation techniques,” Israeli media said Friday.
According to the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, there is a “fear” that those being interrogated would refuse to reveal information in the event the video could possibly reach the groups they had informed against, said Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
In 2003 a law came into effect that required Israeli police to document almost all its interrogations, both visually and aurally.
Since then, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has consistently approved an “exemption” for security interrogations, which Israeli Deputy Attorney General Raz Nazri reiterated “stems from security considerations.”
In 2015, the committee agreed to extend the exemption for a year and a half, but rejected a proposed exemption of five years.
Israel has consistently been criticized by international rights groups for its interrogation practices, specifically towards Palestinian children.
Some 700 Palestinian children per year are arrested and face “ill-treatment” by Israeli forces, according to a 2015 report by Child Rights International Network (CRIN).
“Arrested children are commonly taken into custody by heavily armed soldiers, blindfolded with their wrists tied behind their backs before being transported to an interrogation centre,” the CRIN report said.
“Children questioned about their experience frequently report verbal and physical abuse during the arrest.”
According to research conducted by Defense for Children International – Palestine cited by the report, some 56 percent of children report having experienced “coercive” interrogation techniques during their time in Israeli custody.
Some 42 percent say they signed documents in Hebrew, despite the fact that most Palestinian children do not speak or understand the language.
Additionally, 22 percent of detained children say they underwent up to 24 hours of solitary confinement, in violation of international standards.
In a report released in February 2013, the UN children’s agency UNICEF criticized Israel for its treatment of arrested Palestinian children, saying their interrogation mixes “intimidation, threats and physical violence, with the clear purpose of forcing the child to confess.”
According to the latest numbers from prisoner rights group Addameer, there were a total of 414 child prisoners in Israeli prisons in May 2016, 104 of whom were under the age of 16.
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.”
“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
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.