New Jersey high schooler accused of violating bullying laws for making anti-Israel tweets
@bendykoval / Twitter
RT | January 7, 2016
A social media storm erupted after administrators at a New Jersey high school accused a student of bullying because of anti-Israel comments that she posted on Twitter. They say that the tweets may have violated the state’s broad anti-bullying laws.
Bethany Koval, a 16-year-old Israeli Jew, said on Wednesday that she was called to the principal’s office at Fair Lawn High School and reprimanded for making tweets criticizing Israel and mentioning that a pro-Israel classmate had unfollowed her on Twitter.
Administrators warned her that she could face legal consequences for her actions, since New Jersey has some of the strictest anti-bullying legislation in the country. Under the New Jersey Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, which only came into force in 2011, she could be suspended or expelled.
Koval is a prolific Twitter user. She had made over 21,000 tweets and has almost 7,000 followers, many of whom she gained in the last few days. The fiasco that she is the center of has since become a social media sensation.
The outspoken high schooler has been met with both support and opposition online.
When Koval was called down to the principal’s office, she began documenting the situation on Twitter.
“I’m about to be exposed for being anti-Israel. Pray for me,” she tweeted.
A few minutes later, she tweeted that the administrator threatened to “file a bullying case” against her.
“It’s against state law to express unpopular political views on the Internet, now.”
In addition to rebuking her and warning her about legal consequences, the administator searched Koval’s phone to make sure that she had not recorded their conversation. The student could be sued if she had, he told her.
The administrator was correct in their assumption; Koval posted videos of the meeting on Twitter. In one recording, Koval can heard telling the administrator that her tweets may have been controversial, but she didn’t think they were “problematic.”
“Well that’s your interpretation,” the administrator said. “There’s a state law that might interpret it differently.”
In a second clip, the administrator can be heard warning her about legal consequences again.
“You can sit there with your smug attitude right now, but if it’s got to go into a bullying case because you think it shouldn’t be and the state says it is, you’re going to lose,” he said.
Fair Lawn High School Principal James Marcella told The New York Times that the issue has been referred to the school district’s superintendent, Bruce Watson, and that a statement would be released on Thursday afternoon.
Stanley Cohen, a lawyer consulted by Koval’s family, said that he doubted that the complaints over her tweets would end up being a legal matter. He said he hoped school officials would look beyond “the emotion of the moment and say ‘Move on, this is no big deal,’” adding that he believes that young people should be encouraged to express their opinions in an academic environment.
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The Disingenuous Apologies for Israel’s Assault on Palestinian Education
By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | January 6, 2016
As the American Historical Association (AHA) prepares to vote this week on a symbolic resolution that affirms support for the right to education in the occupied Palestinian territories, apologists for the Israeli regime’s policies against Palestinians are putting forward nonsensical rationalizations for their opposition to the measure. Writing in History News Network, University of Maryland History Professor Jeffrey Herf essentially argues that his profession has no practical value: “as historians we have neither the knowledge nor expertise to evaluate conflicting factual assertions about events in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.”
If historians should not evaluate the veracity of factual assertions about an issue then what exactly is the use of historical studies? To merely compile and organize documents? Surely a historian’s job involves analytical — in addition to technical — skills. And surely their methods include empirical analysis – no different than a scientist testing a theory. If someone says the earth is round but another person says the earth is flat, that doesn’t mean the scientist should throw his hands up in the air and say “as scientists we have neither the knowledge nor expertise to evaluate conflicting factual assertions.”
Historians analyzing political questions use the same principles as scientists testing a theory. Take, for example, conflicting accounts of the actions of the Belgians under King Leopold in the Congo near the end of the 19th century. Leopold claimed he treated the Congolese people benevolently as part of his “Christian duty” to help the poor. Others claimed Leopold’s forces were engaged in the systematic plunder of resources carried out through massive violence. They described women held hostage by Belgian forces to force Congolese men to engage in involuntary labor, with the hands of those who did not produce enough rubber for the colonists cut off and kept as trophies.
According to Herf’s axiom, historians would not have the ability to distinguish between these competing claims. It would be outside the scope of the historical vocation to evaluate the available evidence and reach a conclusion about the truth.
In the Congo, the African American historian George Washington Williams worked tirelessly to document the true condition of the local population under Belgian rule. As Adam Hochschild explains in his book King Leopold’s Ghost, Williams’s insistence on questioning the official narrative enabled him to uncover and expose the brazen lies meant to cover up the genocidal destruction of an entire society for the material enrichment of a tyrant.
“Williams was a pioneer among American historians in the use of nontraditional sources. He sensed what most academics only began to acknowledge nearly a hundred years later: that in writing the history of powerless people, drawing on conventional, published sources is far from enough,” Hochschild writes.
Much like the Belgian regime in the Congo more than a century ago, the state of Israel today covers up its crimes against Palestinians by denial, deflection and counter-accusations. They rely on the support of apologists in media, government, civil society, and academia to side with authority by accepting their justifications at face value.
Herf writes that “(i)t is fair to insist that where there is an indictment, we must pay attention to the case for the defense.” Absolutely true. But we must pay attention to the evidence for the case itself, not merely conclude that the existence of a defense means there is no way to draw a conclusion about the facts.
Herf requested a response from the Israeli Embassy on accusations presented in the AHA resolution. Among their claims are that the movement of faculty, staff and visitors in the West Bank are not limited except occasionally because “Palestinian universities periodically serve as sites of violence and incitement.”
The evidence is overwhelming that movement in the West Bank is severely limited and adversely impacts education. A UN report found that checkpoints, settler violence, and long commutes present risks to West Bank students. Another UN report documented 542 obstacles to movement in the West Bank. Students from Gaza are denied permission to study in the West Bank, a policy that has been criticized by Amnesty International. The policy has been endorsed by Israel’s High Court. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have raided West Bank universities. Visiting academics are denied entry to the West Bank. After arbitrarily being denied entry to deliver several lectures there, world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky compared his treatment by Israeli authorities to that of Stalinist regimes.
There is no evidence presented, however, to support the claim that Palestinian universities serve as sites of violence and incitement.
Herf also quotes the Israeli Embassy defending their bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza (IUG) in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge “not because it was a university but because it was used by the terrorist organization Hamas to manufacture and fire rockets at Israeli civilians.”
First, it should be noted that Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. The description carries exactly as much weight as Hamas calling the Israeli regime a terrorist organization. But that is beside the point. The accusation is that Hamas used the university to make and fire rockets.
The source provided for this claim is “Israeli military intelligence officials.” After the bombing, the IDF claimed to target a “weapons development center” within the university. This is a predictable accusation. The IDF made similar accusations after bombing the same university in 2008. A UN report on that conflict “did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target.”
Rami Almeghari, who teaches journalism at IUG, noted in the Electronic Intifada that the university is not run by Hamas or any other political party. Students and faculty, like those at any higher educational institutional, have varied political affiliations. Many others, like himself, belong to no party.
“Contrary to what Israel claims,” Almeghari writes, “Gaza universities do not have departments dedicated to military research or training. This is in contrast to Israeli universities which play an integral role in the military occupation and weapons development and have actively promoted the onslaught in Gaza.”
None of the Israeli government’s accusations are substantiated by anything other than its own word – which should be treated with the same skepticism as any criminal defendant pleading his innocence. On the other hand, a mountain of evidence from independent sources (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNESCO, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Institute for Middle East Understanding, B’Tselem, etc.) supports the accusations in the AHA resolution.
The idea that evaluating contrasting factual assertions and reaching a judgment is outside the scope of a historian’s profession is asinine. This notion is beneficial for the propagation of state propaganda, but devastating for the advancement of human rights, including the right to education.
Newly expanded Shuhada checkpoint is even more difficult to traverse
International Solidarity Movement | January 6, 2015
Al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine – At the end of December Israeli forces re-opened the newly expanded Shuhada checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). The checkpoint had been closed since December 7th, when Israeli forces had declared they would be conducting “renovations” for a then-unknown period of time.
Officially known as Checkpoint 56, Shuhada checkpoint separates Bab al-Zawiye, a Palestinian neighborhood in the H1 (nominally Palestinian-controlled and administered) part of al-Khalil and Tel Rumeida, part of Israeli military-controlled H2 and currently covered in part by a closed military zone order first issued on November 1st.
Palestinian family leaving Tel Rumeida, crossing toward Bab al-Zawiye
The checkpoint was rebuilt with a high fence blocking the entire street and additional turnstiles and metal detectors. The turnstiles make it very difficult for anyone carrying heavy, bulky luggage or even several bags of groceries to pass. Israeli authorities also added a completely closed off room in the center of the checkpoint, where Palestinians are questioned and searched entirely out of site of any onlookers, media, or human rights monitors.
As in previous versions of the checkpoint, there is no possibility for any car or truck – even an ambulance responding to an emergency – to pass; any vehicle larger than a baby carriage must take a time-consuming detour in order to enter or leave Tel Rumeida.
Shuhada checkpoint as seen from a nearby window in Bab al-Zawiye, an imposing barrier Palestinian families living in Tel Rumeida must navigate
The new checkpoint has already become a flashpoint for Israeli military aggression against Palestinians, which includes the arrest of 38-year-old Wafa’ Sharabati on Monday afternoon by Israeli forces who first claimed she had a discrepancy in her ID then accused her of being a troublemaker and threatened to plant a knife on her. Wafa’s family and local activists staged a sit-in outside Shuhada checkpoint to protest her treatment and the continued humiliation and harassment faced by Palestinians forced to endure the checkpoint and the closed military zone.
Wafa Sharabati’s family staged a sit-in awaiting her release
A large group of local activists and residents gathered after Wafa’s arrest in front of the checkpoint, which has has been the site of countless demonstrations against the Israeli occupation of al-Khalil
He never fired, but this Israeli soldier spent much of Monday afternoon on the roof of Shuhada checkpoint, prepared to attack nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators with potentially deadly rubber-coated metal bullets
A sign on the H1 side of the checkpoint explains the protocols for passing through: metal detector, bag search, no animals allowed through, checkpoint closed if there are any clashes. The 4th instruction reads “wait until the soldier will allow you to pass.” Sometimes people can pass in six minutes; sometimes they must wait for over an hour, outside and exposed to any weather, before being allowed to pass the few meters of turnstiles, metal detectors, fences and walls between them and the streets leading to their homes.
Lines on Monday evening left many, including young children, waiting for nearly half an hour in the cold night. Only Palestinians who are registered in the closed military zone can ever pass through the checkpoint; family members of residents, journalists, human rights defenders and internationals have all been barred. Even Palestinians who are registered have reported being forced to wait for over an hour only to be harassed and threatened by the soldiers inside the checkpoint.
Activists have planned another protest for Thursday morning to continue the struggle against the closed military zone, the even harsher regime at the newly reopened checkpoint, and the continued closure and Israeli military occupation of al-Khalil.
Canadian media is ignoring evidence of 1948 Israeli massacres
By Dan Freeman-Maloy | Rabble | January 6, 2016
The better part of a decade ago, I described the Toronto Star‘s Mitch Potter as “a canary in the mineshaft of liberal Canadian racism.” A piece on 1948 Palestine published in a recent edition of The Star shows the canary very close to asphyxiating.
Since Potter insists he was within his rights to describe Palestinian fighters in Gaza as “lemming-like,” he’ll surely forgive the metaphor.
The article, entitled “The Toronto man who saved Nazareth,” celebrates the heritage of Ben Dunkelman, the most prominent Canadian to travel to 1948 Palestine to support the Zionist war effort. In more than 2500 words spread across The Star‘s “Insight” section, Potter and his editors transform this Canadian’s role in occupying Palestinian communities into fodder for patriotism. “What he did was bring his hard-earned Canadian military professionalism to help organize a chaotic fighting force and help set down the rules of engagement,” the Star quotes one of a number of friendly sources as explaining. “And that included saying, ‘No, we will not expel civilians.'”
The record of this “gentle giant of a man,” as Potter introduces Dunkelman, is well documented. The son of the founder of Ontario retail giant Tip Top Tailors and a veteran of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, Dunkelman was not an obscure figure. In Canada, he was an eminent member of the country’s community of patriotic respectables. In Palestine, he was a participant in the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Galilee, commanding troops who repeatedly massacred civilians.
Dunkelman’s record of Canadian patriotism and Zionist colonization has long made for a popular sell. He has been happily remembered as “a Canadian and Israeli war hero,” as The Globe and Mail once described him. His basic character should be apparent to anyone who picks up his autobiography, Dual Allegiance.
Potter’s article for The Star pines over lost pages of this book without conveying to readers its utterly thuggish tone. The first five pages, to give you a sense, move from a description of a fight Dunkelman picked with a Palestinian (“Kneeling astride him, I began hitting him again and again, until his body went limp”) to boyhood reminiscences that feature a young Dunkelman in Toronto, soon to enroll in Upper Canada College, “waving a little Union Jack.” A lovely patriotic tale.
In Palestine, Dunkelman did not stop at beating Palestinians with his fists. In the summer and autumn of 1948, he served as commander of the Seventh (Armoured) Brigade of the newly established Israel Defence Forces (IDF). This is a representative sample of how Potter now presents this history to The Star‘s readership: “Named to lead Israel’s 7th Brigade in the final phase of the 1948 war, Dunkelman pushed methodically — and almost bloodlessly — through the Galilee with a series of nighttime flanking movements, eventually ending at the Litani River in Lebanon. He quite literally shaped borders, delivering territory Israel might not otherwise hold today.”
“Bloodlessly”?
One of the Seventh Brigade’s “nighttime flanking movements,” on October 29-30, 1948, brought the Palestinian village of Safsaf under Dunkelman’s command. A Palestinian woman from Safsaf, Umm Shahadah al-Salih, described what happened the next morning. Villagers were ordered to assemble in file around two houses to the north of the village.
“As we lined up, a few Jewish soldiers ordered four girls to accompany them to carry water for the soldiers. Instead, they took them to our empty houses and raped them. About 70 of our men were blindfolded and shot to death, one after the other, in front of us. The soldiers took their bodies and threw them on the cement covering of the village’s spring and dumped sand on them.”
If Potter’s editors can cough up subway fare to Yonge and Bloor, he can read this and other accounts for free at the local library, in Nafez Nazzal’s The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 1948. The Seventh Brigade’s trail of death, destruction and mass displacement of Palestinians from the Galilee into Lebanon is detailed authoritatively by Nazzal.
But right, this is a Canadian discussion of Palestine. Surely, Palestinians can’t be trusted! Unfortunately for Potter and The Star, more than mistrust of Palestinian testimony would be needed to make their whitewashing of these massacres halfway credible. In 1978, the year that Nazzal’s study was published, Israel began declassifying documents on these events. The Israeli record tells much the same story.
Israel Galili had been chief of staff of the Haganah, the main precursor to the IDF. In a declassified November 11, 1948 briefing cited by Israeli historian Benny Morris, Galili described the conduct of Dunkelman’s men in Safsaf. He spoke of the fate of “52 men tied with a rope and dropped into a well and shot,” and of three cases of rape, including of a 14-year-old girl. He also described large-scale killing of civilians by the Seventh Brigade in the villages of Saliha, Jish, and Sa’sa’. In Sa’sa’, Galili said, Dunkelman’s troops committed “mass murder” and then forced all remaining survivors out: “The whole village was expelled.”
Palestinian witnesses recount the most horrifying details. One survivor of the occupation of Safsaf recalled the stabbing of a pregnant woman with a bayonet. The witness lived out his life in the Ayn Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon; his testimony was kept alive by his nephew and cited in Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In his memoirs, Dunkelman admits to authorizing looting by his forces, but predictably does not discuss most abuses. He does, however, proudly relate how one of his units set a landmark in the summer of 1948 with “the first bayonet charge ever mounted by the Israeli Army.” Facing an Arab position in the central Galilee, the company commander “ordered his men to fix bayonets; then, yelling like banshees, they rushed the Arab positions. When the astonished Arabs saw what was coming up the hill at them, they kicked off their boots and fled in terror.”
We don’t know much about specific atrocities with bayonets. We do know that Operation Hiram, during which Dunkelman’s troops carried out severe atrocities, helped push Palestinians out of the Upper Galilee en masse. On October 31, Dunkelman received an order from the IDF’s northern command spelling out this objective: “The inhabitants should be assisted to leave the conquered areas,” Dunkelman was instructed.
Here massacres by Dunkelman’s troops played their part. “What happened at Safsaf and Jish no doubt reached the villagers of Ras al Ahmar, ‘Alma, Deishum and al Malikiya hours before the Seventh Brigade’s columns,” writes Morris. “These villages, apart from ‘Alma, seem to have been completely or largely empty when the IDF arrived.” A week and a half into November 1948, an IDF intelligence report observed that “more than 50,000 new refugees” had crossed the border into Lebanon as a result of Operation Hiram.
Dunkelman — cue Potter’s praise — did not order expulsions in every Palestinian community that his forces occupied. He specifically opposed the (widespread) expulsion of Palestinian Christians by Israeli forces. When in July 1948 his troops occupied one of the main Christian centres in Palestine, the city of Nazareth, he spared it the harsher treatment he accorded to predominantly Muslim villages in its vicinity.
Potter is effusive with praise! He laments to The Star‘s readership that Dunkelman “won no medals for refusing to molest civilians” in Nazareth, but takes the opportunity to trumpet Canadian civility: “Transpose that morality to the modern era and imagine how the U.S. military interrogations at Abu Ghraib might have played out with a Dunkelman in command.” If those held at gunpoint were Muslims? Should we really follow this thread? “In many of the Palestinian oral histories that have now come to the fore,” observes Ilan Pappé, “few brigade names appear. However, Brigade Seven is mentioned again and again, together with such adjectives as ‘terrorist’ and ‘barbarous.'”
Israel has not declassified enough documentation for us to know for certain whether Dunkelman ordered his troops to massacre Palestinian civilians in line with instructions from higher-level IDF officers, took the initiative himself, or left the details to lower levels of command. But there is no record of him taking any action to discipline the culprits. By all accepted standards, he is therefore among them. Only the best liberal patriots want to award war criminals prizes for each possible war crime they didn’t commit.
Introducing a co-edited volume entitled Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmad Sa’di explore the challenges of asserting Palestinian memory “under the conditions of its silencing by the thundering story of Zionism.” Engaging with 1948 as a landmark of enduring trauma, both individual and collective, may not be simple. But one can imagine an alternate universe in which Canadian journalists made a respectable effort. In which some attempt was made to look to the kind of work assembled by Abu-Lughod and Sa’di, to consider the recorded memories of those who lives were uprooted by Dunkelman’s troops, to bring their experiences into this history.
Instead, The Star basks in patriotic self-satisfaction and ignores the evidence.
This is not just a question of professional standards, or of historical accuracy. As Abu-Lughod and Sa’di argue, “the Nakba is not over yet.” It was Israel’s current defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, who described Israel’s twenty-first-century assaults on Palestinians as “the second half of 1948.” How this war is represented abroad can affect its continuation into the present. I haven’t paid much attention to Potter’s work since his distortions of Israel’s 2006 assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. But it seems he’s decided to whitewash past and present attacks on the Palestinians in much the same spirit.
People in Canada need to demand better. In the coming period, we will have to face the fact that the end of the Harper years did not spell an end to Canadian support for Israel’s perpetual warfare against the Palestinian people. The liberal patriotic impulse is to bury this problem in comforting myths: to pretend that even in its support for Israel, Canadian liberalism shines. This requires nothing less than falsification of the record. An open discussion of the realities of Palestine will raise troubling questions about local burdens of responsibility. If this is what drives so many opinion-makers to avoid it, it is also what makes it urgent.
Dan Freeman-Maloy is an activist and writer based in Montreal. For a more detailed review of the record of Western recruits in 1948 Palestine, see this article of his from the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Israelis force Palestinians off plane in Greece
Press TV – January 6, 2016
Israeli passengers aboard a Greek plane have forced two Palestinians to leave the flight after demanding further security checks on them.
Aegean Airlines said in a statement on Tuesday that the incident occurred on a flight that was leaving the Athens International Airport to Tel Aviv on Sunday.
According to the airlines, a group of Israelis on the flight “very vocally and persistently” requested a security check on the two Palestinian passengers. When police checked the passengers’ passports and found nothing suspicious, Israelis then demanded a further check of the cabin.
“It started with 3-4 people, and by the end, there were 60-70 people standing up, demanding that the pair disembark,” a company spokesperson said, adding, “The pilot said anyone who does not feel safe to fly should disembark, and would not be compensated.”
The Palestinian passengers, however, left the plane themselves. They were compensated for the incident and took another flight to Tel Aviv on Monday.
Palestinian officials on Wednesday demanded that the Greek government act over the incident, saying the decision to remove the Palestinian passengers was “racist.”
“We are outraged by how two Palestinians were treated with discrimination and prejudice at the hands of the Aegean cabin crew prior to the departure of last Sunday’s flight,” said senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, who added, “We call upon the Greek government to take strong action against this racist act, including compensation for the two Palestinian passengers.”
The incident occurred amid a wave of violence against the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian territories, where at least 144 Palestinians have been killed since the violence erupted in various towns of West Bank and Gaza. Some 25 Israelis have also died during the same period.
Israeli official calls for occupying Damascus
MEMO – January 4, 2016
A senior Israeli official called on Saturday night for the occupation of the Syrian capital Damascus based on the teachings of the Jewish holy book the Torah, Felesteen newspaper reported.
During a TV show on the Israel’s Channel 2, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Bezalel Smotrich said that Israeli borders are beyond the current borders and Jerusalem’s borders reach Damascus based on the Torah.
Smotrich, member of the extremist Israeli party Jewish Home, suggested that Israel temporarily accept the current borders, which include the Golan Heights and the occupied West Bank, stressing that it has to work to achieve what was dictated by the Torah.
Meanwhile, the MK reiterated that the extremist Israeli settlers who burnt the home of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family were not terrorists. He said such acts are only considered a kind of terror when they are carried out by the “enemies of the Jewish people who are Arabs”.
He also called for the settlers’ leaders to control all the lands of the occupied West Bank, considering it Israeli land.
In addition, he stressed that anyone who does not accept Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank “must be expelled from this land,” adding that there are 20 Arab countries which can be their destination.
He went on to stress the importance of building a Jewish temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Deceit and Obfuscation: How The NY Times Shields Israel
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | January 4, 2016
As scores of Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli forces over the past three months, The New York Times has endeavored to hide the full story of this bloodbath, emphasizing Israeli losses, ignoring the majority of Palestinian deaths, and promoting a narrative that shields trigger-happy troops and obscures facts to the point of deceit.
Thus, a recent story about deadly attacks in Tel Aviv tells us that “at least 20” Israelis have been killed since Oct. 1 and about 130 Palestinians, “up to two-thirds of them while carrying out attacks, or attempting to attack Israelis, according to the police. Others have been killed in clashes with the Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and along Israel’s border with Gaza.”
In other words, the Times is saying that Israeli troops were justified in these killings because they were trying to repel deadly attacks or responding to “clashes” with the army or police. This is the message we are to hear, and readers are unlikely to notice that its source is none other than those responsible for a significant number of Palestinian deaths—the Israeli police.
The Times betrays its claim of neutrality by ignoring other sources. Nothing is said of reports by alternative media and human rights groups that accuse Israeli forces of carrying out extrajudicial executions and killing Palestinians who pose no possible threat to security forces or civilians. Likewise, nothing is said of those victims who were taking no part in demonstrations but were merely bystanders or passers-by when they were killed.
The Times, omitting contrary evidence, thus leaves readers with the impression that all of the Palestinian dead were killed as they participated in acts of violence.
At the same time the Times has been quick to name Israeli casualties but has provided identities for only a fraction of the Palestinians. Virtually every Israeli victim has been identified in stories by Times reporters, while only some 34 Palestinians out of more than 130 were mentioned by name. (Some, however, may have been identified in wire services reports that appear briefly online.)
This tally was based on a search of Times stories out of its Jerusalem bureau, using a published list of those killed since Oct. 1. It shows a grossly lopsided preference for Israeli victims over Palestinians, with the names of more than 100 victims omitted from news reports.
Moreover, in the single instance when an Israeli victim was unnamed, the Times apologized, saying the man “was not immediately identified” but was said to be 45 years old and the father of seven.
By contrast, the Times often failed to report Palestinian deaths or it mentioned them almost as afterthoughts, as in this paragraph tucked into a story about dampened Christmas celebrations in the West Bank: “On Thursday, Israeli forces killed three young Palestinian men who they said were trying to carry out attacks. In one episode, a Palestinian tried to ram his vehicle into soldiers near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, lightly wounding a man before he was shot dead.”
The man who was said to have “tried to ram his vehicle into soldiers” had a name. It was Wisam Abu Ghweila; he was from Qalandiya refugee camp, and according to the International Middle East Media Center, there is much more to his story than appeared in the Times.
Abu Ghweila drove his car “too close to a roadblock,” IMEMC reported, and lightly struck a soldier in the process. “Instead of addressing the situation as if it were an accident,” the story continues, “Israeli troops immediately began to empty their guns at the suspect, wounding him severely.”
Eyewitnesses told IMEMC that soldiers shot more than 30 rounds at Abu Ghweila’s car and allowed the injured soldier to receive medical care but left Abu Ghweila unattended as he lay dying in his car.
B’Tselem, an Israeli monitoring group, has reported on other cases in which troops have denied medical care to wounded Palestinians, and alternative media often give accounts of ambulances and medics being denied access to injured victims. The Times, however, makes no mention of these charges, even though some are backed by video evidence.
Israeli media have also reported killings that never appear in the Times. One of these involved a teenage girl who was shot as she sat in the back seat of her family car. The story in Haaretz was titled “The Face of Collateral Damage” and carried this subhead: “Samah Abdallah, 18, from a little-known Palestinian village in the West Bank, was shot dead, either on purpose or by accident—but most assuredly without legitimate reason.”
The Times made no mention of this incident, which took place near Nablus, nor did it report on the death of a mother of four, an inexperienced driver, who was killed in a hail of bullets when she drove slowly through a checkpoint and failed to stop in time. Haaretz, however, told her story under this headline: “A Palestinian Mother of Four, Shot 17 Times for Being a Bad Driver.”
This unfortunate woman, Mahdia Hammad, appears in the Times merely as one of the “about 130” Palestinian killed in the past three months. As in dozens of other cases, the fact of her death at the hands of Israeli security forces received no notice at all, not even a brief paragraph citing officials’ claims that they had “neutralized” a would-be attacker.
These incidents expose the deception inherent in the Times’ claim that Palestinian casualties have occurred only during attacks on Israelis or during “clashes” with security forces.
This self-serving narrative, however, is what Israeli officials want us to believe, and the Times is a willing co-conspirator, showing an appalling indifference to the mounting death toll among Palestinians. It gives credence only to the official reports of police and army spokespersons, the groups most responsible for the bloodshed, turning its back on respected sources and betraying its readers and its own stated values of journalistic ethics.
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Israeli forces demolish homes of 2 Palestinian attackers in Jerusalem
Ma’an – January 4, 2016
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Monday demolished the family home of a Palestinian attacker killed in October and sealed off the home of another attacker’s family with cement, the families told Ma’an.
The homes, in the Jabal al-Mukabbir neighborhood of East Jerusalem, belonged to relatives of Alaa Abu Jamal and Baha Elayyan who were both shot dead on Oct. 13 after carrying out separate attacks that left four Israelis dead.
Israeli forces reportedly stormed the homes and ordered the families to evacuate them before they proceeded with the demolitions.
Abu Jamal’s family told Ma’an that Israeli forces sealed with cement the home of Safa Abu Jamal, Alaa’s sister, after claiming to have secret information that it belonged to her slain brother.
The home consisted of one floor and three apartments, and was lived in by Safa, her husband, and their two children, the family said.
They added that Israeli authorities had earlier decided not to demolish the home after ruling that it belonged to Safa and not to her brother, Alaa.
Meanwhile, the father of Baha Elayyan told Ma’an that his family had been ordered to evacuate his home while Israeli forces demolished its interior walls.
The home is an apartment on the second floor of a three-story building, measuring 130 square meters and currently housing eight family members.
Punitive home demolitions were expedited at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in mid-October, and many have been carried out since.
The move came despite past recommendations by an Israeli military committee that the practice does not deter attacks.
While families who receive demolition orders are given the opportunity to appeal the measures, Israel’s High Court of Justice typically rejects such appeals, according to Israeli watchdog Hamoked.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem condemned the practice in October as “court sanctioned revenge,” carried out on family members who have not committed crimes, amounting to collective punishment.
The Israeli authorities have been holding the bodies of Alaa Abu Jamal and Baha Elayyan since they were shot dead in another controversial Israeli practice that has been seen by some as further raising tensions.
Settlers breach wall of Palestinian home in Jerusalem’s Old City
Ma’an – January 4, 2016
JERUSALEM – Israeli settlers on Sunday made a number of breaches through the wall of a Palestinian home belonging to Noura Sub Laban in the Old City of Jerusalem, family members told Ma’an.
Noura’s son, Ahmad Sub Laban, said the family was shocked to find at least six breaches through the wall, which borders a property that was taken over by settlers just two weeks ago.
Ahmad said the family called Israeli police, who arrived on the scene and asked that the settlers repair the damage without bringing any formal procedures against them, despite the settlers admitting to breaching the wall.
An Israeli police spokesperson had no immediate information on the reports.
Ahmad said: “I do not know the motivations behind this action, but this has confirmed that our house is in real danger as it is surrounded by Israeli enclaves on all sides, which means the house could be stormed at any moment.”
The far-right settlement organization Ateret Cohanim has been trying to seize the home of Noura Sub Laban, which lies in the Old City’s Oqbit al-Khalidiya area, since 2010, with the Sub Laban fighting to defend the home in Israel’s courts.
There are more than 500,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
UN monitor on Palestine quits over Israel’s entry denial
Press TV – January 4, 2016
The United Nations expert on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories has resigned, complaining that the Tel Aviv regime continues to deny him access to the areas he is tasked with monitoring.
In a Monday statement, the UN said Makarim Wibisono submitted his resignation to President of the Human Rights Council Joachim Rucker earlier in the day.
It said Wibisono, who will effectively quit his job as of March 31, had “expressed deep regret that, throughout his mandate, Israel failed to grant him access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Wibisono has been in charge of monitoring rights violations in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli regime has time and again prevented the UN official from visiting the areas.
In June 2015, Israel denied Wibisono access to the Gaza Strip, where he was to investigate the aftermath of Tel Aviv’s 2014 war that killed over 2,200 Palestinians in the blockaded coastal enclave. The regime said at the time that the mandate handed to the UN official’s team was “anti-Israel,” and that it was exclusively focused on cases of Israeli rights violations.
Last November, Wibisono, and the expert on summary executions, Christof Heyns, slammed Israel for using excessive force and carrying out summary executions against Palestinians amid a surge in tensions in the occupied territories, where Palestinians have held almost daily anti-Israel protests since early October.
The latest wave of tensions was triggered by Israel’s imposition in August of restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds.
The restrictions have enraged Palestinians, who are also angry at increasing violence by Israeli settlers frequently storming the al-Aqsa Mosque, a place highly revered by the Muslims across the world.
The Palestinian protesters also say Israel has a covert plan for changing the status quo of the al-Aqsa Mosque.
At least 144 Palestinians have been killed since the violence erupted in various towns of West Bank and Gaza. Some of 25 Israelis have also died during the same period.
Egypt sends ambassador to Tel Aviv after three-year haitus
Press TV – January 3, 2016
Egypt has sent a new ambassador to Tel Aviv after a three-year lapse in diplomatic presence in the occupied territories.
Israel’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that Egyptian ambassador Hazem Khairat arrived on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Khairat’s arrival at his cabinet meeting on Sunday and said this would enable both sides to further “strengthen relations.”
Khairat previously served as Egypt’s ambassador to Chile and the Arab country’s envoy to the Arab League. He was appointed as the ambassador to Tel Aviv by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in June, but was deployed on Friday.
Khairat is the first residing Egyptian ambassador in Tel Aviv since former President Mohammed Morsi recalled Cairo’s last ambassador in November 2012 in protest to the Israeli regime’s aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Relations between Egypt and the Israeli regime have been growing since Sisi took power in the Arab country in 2014 after orchestrating a military coup against Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, a year earlier.
The Israeli regime appointed Haim Koren as its envoy to Cairo in 2014 and opened its embassy in September 2015 after a four-year closure due to security concerns.
The embassy was closed on September 9, 2011, after thousands of protesters stormed the compound following the killing of six Egyptian policemen in August the same year by Israeli forces during cross-border operations on Egyptian soil in the Sinai Peninsula.
Last summer, Egypt launched a project to flood the area along its border with Gaza Strip to destroy the underground lifeline tunnels linking Egypt to the Palestinian territory.
In mid-June 2015, the Egyptian military said it had demolished nearly 1,430 underground tunnels in 18 months.
The Egyptian army claimed that the tunnels were “used by terrorists and criminals” to smuggle weapons to militants in the Sinai Peninsula. The World Food Program (WFP), however, said in a report in February 2014 that the tunnels have represented “the main supply and commercial trade route for goods into Gaza” since 2007.
Dozens of people, mostly Palestinians, have lost their lives during the destruction of tunnels, which has intensified since the 2013 ouster of Egypt’s first democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi.
Gaza has been under the Israeli air, sea and land blockade since 2007, causing a decline in living standards, unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
The Rafah border crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and Gaza, has also largely been shut since the 2013 coup in the African country.
Ariel university continues to pollute Salfit environment
Palestine Information Center – January 3, 2016
SALFIT – The Ariel settlement university has continued to pour its harmful chemical waste through its sewer system onto Palestinian agricultural land in al-Matwi Valley in Salfit province, local sources complained on Sunday.
Residents from the area told the Palestinian Information Center that the Israeli university persists in disposing of hazardous chemical waste into the valley with no regard for the environment in the surrounding areas.
Palestinian researcher Khaled Ma’ali said that the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem had affirmed in previous reports that Israeli settlements and Ariel university in the West Bank violate international and local environmental protection laws.
Ma’ali invited international and local environmental institutions to visit Salfit province and witness its suffering from the pollution resulting from the flow of wastewater from several settlements, especially Ariel.
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From the Archives
The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
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