Israel extends so-called administrative detention of two Palestinian officials
Palestinian detained officials Khaled Abu Arafa (L) and Sheikh Ra’ed Salah
Press TV – March 4, 2021
Israel has extended the custody of two current and former Palestinian officials according to the so-called administrative detention rule, a form of imprisonment in which the individual is never tried and can be held indefinitely.
An Israeli court extended the solitary confinement of Sheikh Ra’ed Salah for yet another six months, the Palestinian Information Center said in a report on Thursday.
A few days earlier, his lawyer Khaled Zabarqa had revealed that the Tel Aviv regime intended to hold Sheikh Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, in isolation under flimsy security pretexts.
“He has been in isolation since six months ago and today the court extended it for another six months, which means he will spend a whole year in solitary confinement,” Zabarqa said.
Israeli security authorities claimed that the Palestinian official could pose a security threat to the regime if he were held with other inmates, his lawyer added.
Zabarqa described Wednesday’s court session as a mere formality, lambasting the tribunal for approving what the security services had requested without looking into the truth of their accusations and not caring about the impact of its verdict on his client.
“Israel is prosecuting Salah for his ideology and religious beliefs and not because of any criminal offense,” the lawyer stressed.
Separately on Wednesday, a court in the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds extended the administrative detention of Khaled Abu Arafa, the former Palestinian minister of al-Quds affairs, for another four months, without trial or indictment.
Israeli’s spy agency Shin Bet arrested Abu Arafa, 59, in November last year after summoning him for interrogation at the Ofer detention center near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
A week later, an Israeli court in Jerusalem al-Quds extended his detention for several days before issuing an administrative detention order for four months against the ex-minister.
The Palestinian official has so far been in Israeli jail several times. He was banished from Jerusalem al-Quds upon his release in 2014.
More than 350 detainees are under administrative detention, in which Israel keeps the detainees for up to six months, a period which can be extended an infinite number of times. Women and minors are also among the detainees.
Such detentions take place on orders from a military commander and on the basis of what the regime describes as “secret” evidence.
Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years without any charge. Palestinians in administrative detention resort to hunger strikes to force the Israeli authorities to release them.
Hamas: Israel detention campaigns aim to alter election results
MEMO | March 3, 2021
Hamas said yesterday that detention campaigns carried out by Israeli occupation against Islamic Bloc activists aim to affect the results of the Palestinian election.
Recently, Israeli occupation forces escalated detention campaigns targeting Hamas leaders, members, and activists in the occupied West Bank.
Hamas MP Sheikh Nayef Al-Rajoub said that the Israeli occupation detains Hamas members and holds them under administrative detention.
These detention campaigns aimed at “targeting the will of Palestinian youth, who are at the core of the upcoming elections,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We stress that achieving national consensus and partnership is a national priority,” Hamas added, reiterated that it “will continue its efforts to rearrange the Palestinian national home on the basis of achieving partnership, ending divisions and setting up a comprehensive, national programme to face off the Israeli occupation and settlement activities.”
Hamas called on all free people of the world and parliaments to impose sanctions on the Israeli occupation, which has been targeting Palestinian democracy for years.
“The detention campaigns come as part of a policy adopted by the Israeli occupation since 2006 to undermine the Palestinian political system and exclude any influential Palestinian party that gained legitimacy through the ballot boxes,” Hamas concluded.
Samidoun: We will not be silenced by Israel’s “terrorist” designation
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | February 28, 2021
In response to Israeli Defense Minister and war criminal Benny Gantz’s designation of Samidoun as a “terrorist organization”, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that we will continue to organize and mobilize internationally in defense of Palestinian rights and liberation. This is the latest manifestation of a smear campaign that is intended to silence international support for the Palestinian people and especially the nearly 5,000 Palestinians jailed by the Israeli occupation. This is an attack on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as well as the right of Palestinians in exile and diaspora to organize. We affirm that we will not be silenced or deterred by Israel’s smear campaigns.
The Israeli allegations are replete with false, misleading and careless allegations, beginning with listing an incorrect date for the founding of Samidoun (we actually mark our 10-year anniversary this year, in 2021, as is easily learned from our website). Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat has expressed his support for Samidoun’s work on multiple occasions, and we are proud to share his writings and thoughts. However, Israel’s complete disregard for facts once again comes into play here: Khaled Barakat is not now, nor has he ever been, a director or “chief coordinator” of Samidoun.
We are a grassroots organization with no paid full-time staff and that does not fundraise for any organization except for sustaining our advocacy campaigns. We have chapters in the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Greece and occupied Palestine, and a network of member organizations including the Collectif Palestine Vaincra in France. This is a blatant attempt to disrupt and undermine this growing mobilization of support for Palestine around the world.
We conduct our work openly, visibly and publicly, as is visible at our website, samidoun.net, and we are proud to call for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners like Ahmad Sa’adat, Khalida Jarrar, and thousands of Palestinians of diverse political backgrounds. The entire Israeli campaign is based on a complete disregard for facts and reality.
In fact, most of the listed points appear to come directly from right-wing propaganda organization NGO Monitor, which aims to shield Israel from international accountability for war crimes by smearing human rights defenders in Palestine and around the world./ NGO Monitor’s “baseless claims and factual inaccuracies” are a long-standing feature of their defense of Israeli apartheid, extrajudicial killings, land confiscation, arbitrary detention, military occupation, siege and colonialism.
Samidoun is an independent international, Arab and Palestinian organization that mobilizes for the liberation of nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. We advocate for the boycott of Israel, and we uphold the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, apartheid and oppression, and the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands. We stand for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
It is for these reasons and these reasons alone that Israel’s Defense Ministry, engaged in daily war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people under occupation, is attacking Samidoun’s work. This is a further attempt to use repression and threats against the Palestinian people and their international allies as a campaign activity for Benny Gantz’s party in the Israeli elections. This is also an attempt to divert attention from the serious problem facing hundreds of Zionist officials – including Gantz himself – who are afraid from the next steps of the investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) after its last announcement on 5 February 2021 affirming that it has the authority to investigate war crimes in the Palestinian occupied territories.
Further, it is no surprise that this public announcement comes only days after 300 international organizations have joined in a collective campaign to free Palestinian student prisoners.
In fact, this should not be conceived of as an attack on Samidoun alone: instead, it comes hand in hand with a series of smear campaigns directed at Palestinian human rights defenders and those who uphold Palestinian rights around the world — and the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people themselves. The same designation has been levied against a number of international organizations engaged in public advocacy for Palestinian rights and freedom. This attack is an attempt to isolate the Palestinian prisoners, not only behind bars, but from their international base of support and solidarity. It is further an attempt to silence support for the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people, targeting opposition to imperialist wars, the Oslo process and the ongoing colonization of Palestine.
We are among many activists and organizations who have been attacked by Israel — many of whom have paid a much higher price, including those Palestinians, Arabs and internationalists who have been jailed, tortured and assassinated by Israel. Always, the goal is the same: an attempt to undermine the growing international support for the Palestinian people and their just cause.
Almost every organization, movement and even individual activist that stands for Palestinian freedom is targeted by the Israeli occupation and its leading war criminals for harassment, threats and attempts to mobilize state power to suppress an anti-colonial, anti-racist movement for justice and liberation. We are proud to stand with all of those who face such smear campaigns and repressive attacks — by intensifying our work and coming together to confront Israeli apartheid, occupation, war crimes and colonization, and organizing for the liberation of Palestine.
We invite activists and organizations to join the Samidoun Network and build together with us. Contact us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
The massacre of Ibrahimi Mosque
By Bilal Yasin | MEMO | February 27, 2021
Twenty-seven years ago, on 25 February, 1994, an Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein shot at hundreds of Palestinians gathering for Al-Fajr prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied city of Hebron.
Goldstein took advantage of the gathering of the worshippers in the prostration position and the closure of the mosque’s doors by the occupation soldiers, to kill 29 Palestinians and wound more than 150 others.
The massacre did not end until the Israeli forces shot at the attendees of the victims’ funeral, raising the death toll of the massacre to 60.
Despite the atrocity of the massacre, it was widely supported by the Israeli occupation and settlers. When asked if he felt sorry for those killed by Goldstein, Jewish Rabbi Moshe Levinger remarked: “The death of an Arab makes me feel sorry as much as I pity the death of a fly.”
Goldstein is considered a saint by Israeli authorities, who transformed his grave into a shrine and assigned a number of honour guards to perform the military salute every day before his grave.
The Arab and Muslim countries were outraged and condemned the criminal attack via peaceful demonstrations, demanding an end to the Israeli settlements and the prosecution of the occupation for its repeated crimes. However, the Israeli authorities argued that Goldstein was insane and was receiving treatment, making it legally impossible to hold him responsible for his actions. This is how the occupation managed to escape the legal responsibility for this crime.
Despite the attempts of Israeli media to mislead the public about what really happened during the massacre, the United Nations (UN) Security Council approved, on 18 March, 1994, a resolution condemning the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and called on the Israeli authorities to take measures to protect the Palestinians, including the disarming of settlers.
This decision resulted in the formation of an international mission in the city of Hebron, with the aim of monitoring the practices of the occupation. Because of a report issued by the international mission, which between 1994 and 2019 monitored more than 42,000 violations committed by the Israeli authorities against the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused in January 2019 to extend the stay of the international observers.
The media office of Netanyahu quoted him stating: “We will not allow an international force that works against us to stay any longer,” considering that the mission of the observers, which consisted of documenting violations of his soldiers against the Palestinians, is an anti-Israel act.
The Ibrahimi Mosque massacre was not just a passing event, but rather an act planned to impose a new reality through which the occupation could achieve its goals, seeking to expel the Palestinians from the Old City and control the Ibrahimi Mosque – exactly what Hebron is witnessing now.
Since the massacre, the city of Hebron has been subjected to a series of measures that changed its historical features and strengthened Israeli settlement, including:
- Closing the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Old City for six months, under the pretext of holding investigations.
- Unilaterally forming the investigation committee, known as “Shamgar”.
- The most prominent recommendations of the committee consisted of dividing the Ibrahimi Mosque into a synagogue and a mosque.
- Imposing tight security measures on the mosque, with electronic gates placed at its entrances.
- Granting settlers the right to sovereignty over 60 per cent of the Ibrahimi Mosque.
- Closing the roads leading to the mosque, except for one gate that was subjected to heavy security measures.
- Closing the Hisbah market, the Hebron Khan Khalil, Khan Shaheen, Al-Shuhada and Al-Sahla streets.
- Closing more than 1,800 shops in the Old City.
- Preventing Adhan (the call to prayer) in the mosque dozens of times a month.
- 1,400 families abandoned their homes, fearing for their lives.
According to the aforementioned, it is clear that the Israeli authorities are encouraging settlers to commit more massacres against the Palestinians by iconising the perpetrator of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and refusing to commit to the UN Security Council resolution, recommending the protection of Palestinians and disarming the settlers.
On the other hand, the occupation state restricted the movement of Palestinians and gave the green light to settlers to expand their settlements and kill Palestinians, destroying their property and attacking their religious sanctities. This prompted many residents of the Old City to leave for fear of being harmed by Zionist gangs. Therefore, the international institutions must work harder to end the Israeli occupation and implement UN Resolution 242 to ensure that such massacres do not happen again, and to end the daily violations against Palestinians in the city of Hebron.
Israel’s killing of Palestinian man at checkpoint was ‘extrajudicial execution’, concludes report
Ahmed Erekat, a 27 year old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint in Abu Dis on 23 June 2020
MEMO | February 24, 2021
Further doubts have been raised over Israel’s killing of Ahmad Erekat. The 27-year-old was shot dead in June at an Israeli military checkpoint near the town of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem. Israeli police claimed that Erekat was a “terrorist” conducting an attack.
But a new report by Forensic Architecture, a British research body based at Goldsmiths, University of London, has challenged the Israeli narrative following a “frame-by-frame” analysis of the security camera footage which clearly showed Erekat’s movement prior to his killing.
The report found that Erekat posed no “immediate threat” to Israeli soldiers; that he was denied medical treatment after he was fatally shot; his body was treated in a “degrading” manner and that following his death his family was subjected to collective punishment.
Details of the report, which includes the reconstruction of the scene using available film, including security footage published by police, cast “significant doubt” over the Israeli narrative. It cited collision experts who concluded that Erekat’s car was not accelerating significantly. “Our analysis also comes across evidence that raises the possibility that Erekat braked before impact with the checkpoint,” the report said.
Collision expert Dr Jeremy J Bauer concluded that “the driver did not rapidly accelerate into the checkpoint. Had the driver truly wanted to maximize the chance that he would surprise the guards and strike them with his vehicle, he could have accelerated to the maximum capacity of the vehicle.”
After the impact, video footage shows Erekat leaving the vehicle unarmed and moving away from the soldiers, raising his hands in the air. He is first shot when standing around four metres away from the nearest soldier. He then continues to move backwards as he falls to the ground. Israeli soldiers fired six shots in the space of two seconds.
Detailed analysis of the footage contradicts the Israeli army’s claim and confirms that Erekat did not pose any immediate threat. It also found that Israeli forces offered no immediate medical aid, even while Erekat was clearly alive. The killing amounted to an extrajudicial execution, it concluded.
Israel said to warn Hamas leader not to run in polls
MEMO | February 23, 2021
Hamas leader Nayef al-Rajoub said Tuesday he was warned by Israeli intelligence agents against running in the Palestinian elections later this year, Anadolu Agency reported.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, al-Rajoub, 63, said he was searched during an Israeli raid on his home in the town of Dura, west of Hebron.
“An intelligence officer then threatened me not to run in the upcoming polls,” al-Rajoub said, adding that he was only allowed to cast a ballot in the elections.
Al-Rujoub, a brother of prominent Fatah leader Jibril al-Rujoub, received the most votes during the 2006 parliamentary elections won by Hamas.
In the Hamas-led government that emerged from those elections, Al-Rujoub served as minister of religious endowments. He had previously been detained by Israeli forces and served more than eight years in prison.
Earlier Tuesday, Israeli forces arrested 13 Palestinians, including Hamas leader Faze’ Sawafta, in overnight raids in the occupied West Bank.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, had earlier warned of Israeli plans to stage a mass arrest campaign against the resistance group ahead of Palestinian elections later this year.
Over the past month, several Hamas members were detained in Israeli raids, with the Palestinian group warning that the Israeli arrests aim to disrupt the Palestinian elections and affect its results.
Palestinians are scheduled to vote in legislative elections on May 22, presidential polls on July 31, and National Council polls on Aug. 31.
The last legislative elections, in which Hamas won a majority, were held in 2006.
Ex-MP Williamson slams University of Bristol for failure to defend anti-Zionist professor
RT | February 19, 2021
Former Derby North MP Chris Williamson has called out the University of Bristol for its “outrageous lack of solidarity” with sociology Professor David Miller, currently under attack by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has been targeting Miller, a professor in the University of Bristol’s sociology department, with a series of accusations, most recently blaming the academic on Friday for putting Jewish students at risk of “real physical harm” by sharing his view that the “Zionist movement” is the “enemy of world peace.” The group’s latest letter was addressed to Hugh Brady, the university’s vice chancellor.
Specifically, Miller had stated that Jewish students on UK university campuses were “being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing” – that is, the Israeli government. The Board of Deputies framed the statement as targeting the students themselves, even though “being used as political pawns” suggests that they are being led by the nose.
Williamson, a former Labour MP, tore into Brady for his university’s failure to muster more than a “mealy-mouthed response” to attacks by a “politically motivated lynch mob,” a lack of action that had encouraged “bad faith actors to continue pursuing this censorship drive.”
Williamson should know. He is no stranger to spurious allegations of anti-Semitism himself, and was suspended from the Labour Party for arguing that it had apologized unnecessarily for something of which it was not guilty – namely, the ‘chronic anti-Semitism’ the party was accused of by its own Blairite faction and media collaborators. Williamson witnessed the danger of excessive apologies secondhand, having watched his colleague Jeremy Corbyn get slowly buried under a pile of unnecessary apologies as the party’s phantom anti-Semitism plague invited further attacks upon him.
Declaring the rhetorical assault on Miller to be part and parcel of “a pernicious campaign of censorship that is currently being waged against British universities by apologists for the state of Israel,” Williamson urged Brady to come forward with “an unambiguous statement in support of Professor Miller,” to whom – as his employer – he owed it to protect him from “malicious complaints.”
Miller himself refused to be silenced, issuing a statement on Friday morning that affirmed his belief that “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing.” Hitting back at the Union of Jewish Students, who he accused of targeting him with “a campaign of manufactured hysteria for two years” in an effort to have him fired, he claimed the group even planted a fake student in one of his classes, who was not registered for the class at all, but was merely there “for the purpose of political surveillance.”
Miller concluded that the war on academics critical of Zionism was “an age-old Israel lobby tactic imported from the US, where academics are routinely harassed for teaching about Zionism and its effects.” Should any other foreign lobby try such an approach, they would be “laughed out of the room,” Miller pointed out, insisting “Israel and its advocates deserve the same treatment.”
Far from rendering Jewish students unsafe, Miller declared, the campaign of censorship against critics of the Zionist regime put Arab and Muslim students in danger – as well as anti-Zionist Jewish students.
While the comments about Zionism seem to have topped the list of the Board of Deputies’ grievances, the professor was also denounced as a conspiracy theorist for directing the Organization for Propaganda Studies (which, among other wrongthink views, takes issue with the squeaky-clean image of Syria’s White Helmets favored in the UK and US). Additionally, his concerns over the meddling of pro-Israel organizations in the previous two UK elections were pooh-poohed as mere fantasy, even though in one case an Israeli foreign agent was actually discovered working undercover in Labour Friends of Israel, caught on film plotting the downfall of Corbyn and his allies.
Israel prepares law to prohibit cooperation with ICC
MEMO | February 18, 2021
Israeli authorities are preparing a law that would prohibit any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and would propose five years in prison for any violations of this law, RT reported yesterday.
Reporting Israeli TV Channel 7, RT said the law would also include a ban on handing over Israeli nationals to the ICC, financing the expenses of legal defence before it and imposing penalties on the court and those working for it.
This, it explained, comes as part of a series of measures taken by Israel against the ICC after its announcement that it would probe potential Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
Channel 7 reported that the bill is being inspired by the American Civil Service Protection Act, which was enacted in Congress in 2002.
The US law, which was known as the Invasion of The Hague, gives the US president wide ranging powers to do anything in order to release any American citizen arrested by the ICC, including the use of force.
Reporting the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, Channel 7 said that the Israeli law aims to create a legal safety network for Israeli soldiers and senior officials who could be prosecuted.
It will also sanction the tribunal’s members, ban them from entering Israel and impose restrictions against foreign entities that help them.
The ICC’s declared intention to investigate possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories has enraged Israel. The government has apparently drafted a list of its officials and former officials who should avoid foreign travel as they may be arrested and charged with such crimes.
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
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