Jewish settlers attack Palestinians south of Jenin
Palestine Information Center – January 2, 2015
JENIN – A group of Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles traveling on Jenin-Nablus road near the junction of Jaba village south of Jenin at dawn Friday.
Around 12 vehicles carrying settlers stormed the evacuated settlement of Tarsleh and blocked Jenin-Nablus road today under military protection.
The settlers spread among nearby olive trees and began attacking and stoning passing Palestinian cars in the presence of Israeli soldiers, eyewitnesses said.
During the attack, the settlers chanted racist slurs against the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Israeli media sources claimed that three Molotov cocktails were thrown at a home appropriated by settlers in Ras Amoud neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem overnight. The sources said that Palestinian young men threw three Molotov cocktails at the house, with no reported injuries.
The Israeli police launched a wide manhunt following the incident.
Palestinians Need Less Negotiations, Not More
By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | January 1, 2015
When the U.N. Security Council resolution to end the Israeli military occupation of the occupied territories and establish a Palestinian state by 2017 was defeated, not a single human with a pulse was surprised. The resolution received eight votes in favor, with the United States and Australia against and five countries abstaining. Even though the measure was one vote shy of adoption, the United States decided to exercise its veto power anyway just to make its rejectionist stance abundantly clear. But the bill would not have lead to a fair settlement anyway. If it led to a settlement at all it would have been an unjust one for Palestinians. A just settlement would mean assuming the goals of the resolution as a starting point, not as an end point.
Explaining why she put a kibosh on the resolution, United States Ambassador Samantha Power said the bill was “imbalanced” and addressed “only one side.” It did address only one side – Israel’s. It was imbalanced because it sought legal rights already due to Palestinians since 1967 as its objective while ignoring other Palestinian rights like the right of return and equal rights inside the 1948 borders. And it rewarded Israel for 47 years of atrocious criminality – ethnic cleansing, land and water theft, destruction of thousands of homes and olive trees – without any consequences.
The insistence on maintaining the status quo was explained by Power saying that “we firmly believe the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians is unsustainable.”
Power also made multiple references to negotiations between the parties. “The United States every day searches for new ways to take constructive steps to support the parties in making progress toward achieving a negotiated settlement,” she said. By this, she apparently meant that the United States searches for ways to force Palestinians to negotiate how many of their rights they are willing to forfeit, while Israel demands that it doesn’t have to give up anything.
The only acceptable outcome for Israel is maintaining control of all of Mandate Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Sea, by de facto annexation. The United States knows this and has enabled them to do so, by giving them $3 billion per year in aid and vetoing 43 resolutions meant to hold them accountable since 1972, among other things.
If Power was not being dishonest and deceitful, the only other explanation for her statement is that she is clinically insane. The definition of insanity is “a mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.” The idea that Israel has ever for one second been interested in a negotiated settlement since its foundation in 1948 is more of a fantasy than Game of Thrones. And to think the U.S. has done anything other than aid and abet Israel’s conquest of Palestine through ideological, financial and diplomatic support would require an unfathomable level of historical amnesia.
If Israel was interested in an actual settlement they would have to admit that they cannot bargain with what does not belong to them – namely any land beyond the Green Line. Palestinians don’t need another resolution to clarify that Israel needs to remove its military occupation from the lands that were conquered in the 1967 war. This has already been the law for 47 years.
UN Security Council Resolution 242 declared that “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East … should include” the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and “termination for all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area.”
This was reiterated six years later with the demands in Resolution 338 to implement 242 “in all of its parts” and that “negotiations shall start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace.”
By proposing a new resolution that would achieve at best what is already guaranteed by Resolutions 242 and 338, Palestinians would be forced to surrender the rest of their rights – namely the right of return of the 1948 refugees and their descendents displaced during the Nakba, and the end to discrimination of Palestinians within Israel who are second-class citizens in the Jewish State.
Israel could not practically dismantle all the illegal settlements they have built in the West Bank and move 500,000 settlers back inside the Green Line, much less absorb possibly millions of refugees, many who still hold the keys to their ancestral homes inside Israel. There is no possibility of a two state solution. It is as much as a fantasy as Ambassdor Power’s claim that the U.S. doesn’t believe in the status quo.
Once this two-state scam is exposed for what it is, the only possibility left is a binational state where Palestinians enjoy equal rights with Jews. It is the reason that Ali Abunimah, writing in the Electronic Intifada, said last month he hoped for the U.S. to veto the U.N.’s “terrible resolution.”
“It insists that the entire question of Palestine be reduced to the question of the 1967 occupation and that merely ending this occupation would effectively end all Palestinian claims,” Abunimah writes.
When the question of the occupation has already been resolved in existing law in favor of the Palestinians, why would they want to give away willingly the rest of what was stolen from them? Since Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinian leadership has demonstrated their willingness to surrender the rights of the people they represent to placate Israel and the United States and be left with scraps.
With incredible foresight Edward Said called the Oslo Accords, with “so many unilateral concessions to Israel,” the “Palestinian Versailles.” Then, as now, Israel was not willing to give an inch toward recognition of Palestinian self-determination. Pretending that Palestinians can lure Israel into accepting a settlement if they just concede a little bit more is even more absurd now than it was 21 years ago in Oslo.
A news census shows that Palestinians will outnumber Jews in Greater Israel by 2016. Palestinians in the occupied territories and within the ’48 borders are expected to equal Jews with a population of 6.42 million before surpassing them. By the end of the decade, the census bureau estimates Palestinians will reach 7.4 million to 6.87 million Jews. This does not even include the estimated 5 million Palestinians living in the diaspora and prohibited by Israel’s Prevention of Infiltration Law from returning.
So by virtue of merely existing Palestinians will put an end to Israel’s hollow claims of being a democracy. Of course this is no small feat. Palestinians have been struggling for seven decades to maintain their existence in spite of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and slow-motion genocide. How else to honor this heroic resistance than to prove definitively that Israel’s claims to being a democracy and Jewish state have never been anything more than a myth?
By demanding their rights outside of negotiations with Israel, as they did when they signed the Rome Statute this week, Palestinians are able to apply pressure unilaterally. With world opinion turning in favor of the Palestinian plight, it has become clear that isolation of Israel and forcing them to be accountable for their crimes is the only way for Palestinians to attain their rights.
Joseph Massad writes that “Palestinians must insist that those in solidarity with them adopt BDS [Boycott, Divest, and Sanction] as a strategy and not as a goal, in order to bring about an end to Israel’s racism and colonialism in all its forms inside and outside the 1948 boundaries.
It is worth remembering that the only reason Israel exists at all is precisely because the colonial powers who created it acted against all concepts of democracy and human rights. If the newly formed World Court would have heard the case of Palestinians in 1948, when they owned nearly 90% of the land and consisted of about 66% of the population, they never would have permitted granting the country to a minority to rule over it.
No amount of negotiations will be able to force Israel to give up its racism and colonialism willingly – just as no negotiations were able to force the South African apartheid regime to do so. The only way for Palestinians to achieving peace will be in spite of Israel and the United States, who will continue as they have for decades to do everything they can to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Palestinians must expose Israel and the U.S.’s hypocrisy on democracy and human rights, not let them hide from it.
86 Israeli Attacks on Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in 2014
IMEMC News & Agencies | January 2, 2015
Al Aqsa Association for Waqf and Heritage has reported that Israelis carried out some 86 assaults and violations of Islamic and Christian Palestinian holy sites in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in 2014.
In a report published Wednesday, the association stated that about 30 cases of assault on mosques, 21 cases of assault on graveyards, six cases of attacks on Christian holy sites, and other sporadic attacks, including preventing the call for prayer in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque hundreds of times — amounting to dozens a month — were documented.
To the previous list, the association added the complete destruction of 73 mosques, the partial vandalism of 197 mosques, and damage of one church during this past summer’s war on Gaza.
Al-Aqsa Association recorded five cases of burning mosques or parts of them, including the burning of Ali bin Abi Talib mosque in the village of Deir Estia, in Salfit, spraying of racist slogans on a shrine in Anata town near Jerusalem, Abu Bakr mosqe in Umm al-Fahm, and Abu Bakr mosque in the town of Aqraba, south of Nablus, and the Great Western mosque al-Mughayir village in Ramallah.
Other incidents were recorded such as the attacks on two mosques and Islamic shrines with racist writings and Talmudic words. The report also documented the demolishing of five mosques in Nablus, Jerusalem and Naqab.
Meanwhile, six cases of assault on Christian holy sites were also recorded by the association. In April, “price tag” groups vandalized a monastery in Rafat, to the west of Jerusalem, while an extremist Israeli threatened a priest in Nazareth. Another incident happened in the same month, when price tag groups sprayed racist comments near the Roman church in Jerusalem.
In May, Israeli extremists sprayed offensive comments about Jesus Christ near a church in Beersheba. Meanwhile, other Israelis wrote offensive comments about the prophet Mohammad and Jesus, an incident which coincided with the Holy See’s visit to Palestine.
The report also recorded 18 attacks against mosques in Hebron and Bethlehem, while other attacks which were documented targeted Muslim’s graveyards, such as smashing gravestones, stealing monuments, spraying racist comments, confiscating yards and selling the land to build commercial malls.
According to the report, in 2014, Israeli forces and settler efforts increased to take control over Waqf land to turn it into Jewish shrines; among these attempts were putting up fake gravestones and raiding the sites.
As for the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is targeted on daily basis, the call for prayer was prevented more than 250 times under the pretext that it annoys Israeli settlers. The violations include preventing worshipers from entering the mosque to pray.
In the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs said the Israeli army destroyed 73 mosques completely, 197 partially, and one church partially. It added that six Zakat offices were completely damaged, a waqf school was bombarded and 11 graveyards were destroyed.
Extremist Israeli Settlers Burn Palestinian Home Near Hebron
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | December 31, 2014
A Palestinian family from a village east of the town of Yatta, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, narrowly escaped death on Wednesday at dawn, when a number of fanatic Israeli settlers hurled Molotov cocktails into their home as they slept.
The head of the Yatta City Council Mousa Makhamra told the Maan News Agency that the attack is a very serious and dangerous escalation, adding that it is an attempt to annihilate a family of seven; five children and their parents.
Makhamra added that the fanatic settlers, from Karmiel illegal settlement, infiltrated into ad-Deerat village, east of Yatta, at approximately 3 am, and throw the Molotov cocktails into the Palestinian home after writing racist graffiti on its outer walls.
Makhamra further stated that the family woke up in time, and their neighbors rushed in when they saw the house on fire, and rescued the family.
The fires consumed the furniture in the living room, but was controlled before it spread.
The settlers wrote racist anti-Arab graffiti, including the infamous statement “Death To Arabs”, and other graffiti.
Image Shehab News
Jewish settler runs over Palestinian child walking to school in Tuqu
Ma’an – 31/12/2014
BETHLEHEM – A 10-year-old Palestinian boy was injured after an Israeli settler ran him over on the main road of the Palestinian village of Tuqu south east of Bethlehem early Wednesday.
Bethlehem region emergency services official Muhammad Awad told Ma’an that Amir Majed Ahmad Suleiman, 10, received a number of bruises after being hit by an Israeli settler’s car as he was heading to school in the town.
Awad said that the settler immediately fled the area despite the fact that Israeli forces were deployed on the main road of the village.
He added that Suleiman was taken to the Beit Jala Governmental Hospital in Bethlehem for treatment.
The incident comes only three days after an Israeli settler ran over an seven-year-old Palestinian boy from the village of Zif south of Hebron.
Recent months have seen a wave of hit-and-runs against Palestinians by Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, as well as reprisal car attacks in Jerusalem.
In October, a settler ran over two Palestinian children as they walked near near Ramallah, killing 5-year-old Einas Khalil.
PLO: Israel has detained 1266 Palestinian children in 2014
Al-Akhbar | December 30, 2014
Israeli forces detained over 1,000 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem in 2014, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said Tuesday.
Abdul-Nasser Farawna, head of Authority of Prisoners’ Affairs, a PLO body, said that Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children, below the age of 15, in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2014.
“The vast majority of the arrests happened in the second half of the year,” Farawna said in a statement, adding that at least 200 children are still detained in Israeli jails on various charges.
Israeli forces routinely conduct arrest campaigns targeting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem on claims they are “wanted” by Israeli authorities.
According to the PLO, more than 10,000 Palestinian minors in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem have been held by the Israeli army for varying periods since 2000.
“The number of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces, especially in annexed East Jerusalem, has sharply risen,” Farawna declared, saying that the number of children detainees had increased by 87 percent over the past three years.
“The majority of the detained children were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention,” he asserted.
Farawna’s statements echoed similar comments last month by another PLO official, Issa Qaraqe, who said that around 95 percent of children detainees were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention, while many were forced to make confessions under duress and undergo unfair trials.
Violent practices by Israeli soldiers as well as settlers against Palestinian children is endemic and often abetted by the authorities.
“Israel does not provide any immunity for children and regularly violates international agreements on children’s rights by humiliating and torturing them and denying them fair trials,” Qaraqe explained.
A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.
DCI said that minors held in solitary confinement spent an average of 10 days in isolation. The longest period of confinement documented in a single case was 29 days in 2012, and 28 days in 2013.
A report by The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights Israeli forces arrested nearly 3,000 Palestinian children from the beginning of 2010 to mid-2014, the majority of them between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.
The report also documented dozens of video recorded testimonies of children arrested during the first months of 2014, pointing out that 75 percent of the detained children are subjected to physical torture and 25 percent faced military trials.
The most excruciating violations are seen in the psycho-physical torture methods, including the act of forcing children to sit on the investigation chair chained hand and foot and covering their entire heads with foul-smelling bags, in addition to depriving them of sleep.
In 2013, the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) reported that Israel was the only country in the world where children were “systematically tried” in military courts and gave evidence of practices it said were “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”
The UNICEF report said in a 22-page report that over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, mostly boys, noting the rate was equivalent to “an average of two children each day.”
Palestinian children as young as five years old have also been detained in the past.
In 2013, Israeli forces in the West Bank detained four Palestinian children aged five to nine years.
Palestinian activist Murad Ashtiye told AFP at the time that “Israeli soldiers arrest the children and tie their hands behind their backs using plastic strips.”
Meanwhile in Gaza, a 51-day Israeli aggression last August left at least 505 children dead, 20 percent of the total civilian death toll.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said 138 of its students were killed during the assault. The organization’s spokesperson Christopher Gunness said an additional 814 UNRWA students were injured and 560 have become orphans due to the Israeli onslaught.
The worst massacre took place in the Abu Hussein School of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north killing and injuring dozens even after the agency said that it gave the school’s coordinates to the Israelis more than 17 times so they won’t hit it.
(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)
Chronicle of impunity for unprovoked shooting by ‘security’ forces
Yesh Din | December 29, 2014
Someone shot a bullet at Ashraf Muhammad Jamal Tufiq’s foot in Bil’in in 2009. The IDF’s investigatory bodies did their best to make sure they will never find the shooter.
On Friday, January 16 2009, someone – a member of the Israeli security forces – fired a bullet into the foot of Ashraf Muhammad Jamal Tufiq from the West Bank village Bil’in. According to Tufiq, the shooting occurred without any provocation and came after the weekly demonstration ended. As a result of his injury, Tufiq had to undergo an operation and had to give up on being a professional a soccer player. On November 4, 2013, the Operational Affairs Prosecution closed the case, reaching the conclusion that it contains no evidence whatsoever.
Hold on, you say, you’ve made an error. You’re saying the shooting took place on January 2009, but the case closed in November 2013. That’s more than four years between one event and another. You must have made a mistake.
No mistake. This is the heart of the issue. I’ll present the chronology of events based on the work of Adv. Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man. But before we start, we should note that Tufiq’s testimony is not bereft of problems, and that at certain points he even contradicts himself. The fact, however, is that he was shot and became a cripple. A quick investigation might have found out what actually took place. But, as we can see from the flow of events below, that did not exactly happen.
January 16, 2009 – A Friday demonstration in Bil’in, and it’s more violent than usual. The soldier in question will later remember the events because, unusually, another soldier was wounded. After the demonstration, a member of the security forces shoots Tufiq. He is taken to a hospital and, with our aid, submits a notice (the equivalent of a complaint to the police) to the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID).
May 24, 2009 – More than four months after the incident, the Jerusalem branch of the MPCID confirm they have received the notice.
July 7, 2009 – The Operational Affairs’ prosecution informs us that it is dealing with the case.
August 4, 2009 – The Operational Affairs’ prosecution informs us that it has frozen the investigation in order to “clarify the issue with military officials.” This, in effect, means the investigation is delayed while the case is referred to an operation debriefing.
February 14, 2010 – Thirteen months after the incident: the Operational Affairs’ prosecution says the case is under consideration.
October 14, 2010 – Twenty-one months after the incident: the Operational Affairs’ prosecution says the case is under consideration.
April 14, 2011 – Two years and three months (!) after the incident: the Operational Affairs’ prosecution says the case is under consideration.
November 29, 2011 – Two years and 10 months after the incident: reports that Atlantis has risen from the sea, fish are climbing trees, cats and dogs have foresworn their ancient enmity, and MPCID has re-opened its investigation.
Which is nice, but there are two main problems with opening an investigation so late in the game:
1. The chances of finding evidence is nil. There is no crime scene to speak of, particularly since the incident took place before the IDF has deigned to obey the ruling of the High Court of Justice and moved the separation fence in Bil’in. Also, human memory blurs rapidly.
2. Even if there was evidence, once a soldier has been discharged from the army for six months (or a year, in extreme cases) he or she is no longer under the jurisdiction of military law. Given that mandatory military service in the IDF lasts for three years for men, even if the MPCID had found the culprit on the day in which it began its investigation (which, naturally, did not happen) chances are that they would not have been able to bring him to trial. Only the Attorney General can decide to do so – which hardly ever happens in practice.
And after this methodical break, back to our chronicle:
December 8, 2011 – MPCID Jerusalem contacts us and wants to set up an interview with the victim. After a series of delays – including one case in which Tufiq comes to a meeting set up by MPCID and finds no one who can take his statement – MPCID finally takes a statement from him on December 30, 2012, i.e. two months after the resurrection of the investigation.
February 9, 2012 – The MPCID interviews the operations officer of the battalion involved in the incident. He says he doesn’t remember anything, which sounds perfectly plausible. After all, this was a negligent incident from a military point of view, not to mention the fact that more than three years have passed since it happened.
February 20, 2012 – The MPCID receives the translation of the medical reports regarding Tufiq’s wound, which the Operational Affairs’ prosecution could easily have obtained some three years earlier. But let’s not be petty.
March 11, 2012 – Three weeks later, the MPCID interviews the operations officer once again. He says he doesn’t even remember which forces were involved in the incident. Since, well, three years have passed, and it wasn’t exactly the Battle of the Bulge.
8.3.12 – The MPCID interviews the battalion commander. He claims there was no shooting during the incident, much less live shooting. He adds that it is inconceivable his patrol troops would lie on this issue.
March 11, 2012 – The MPCID interviews the battalion commander again, who says that given the time that has gone by, his outfit no longer has any documents relating to the incident.
March 13, 2012 – The MPCID tries, without success, to gain access to the operational logs. Given the passage of time, they were not kept.
July 25, 2012 – More than four months after the last investigative action took place, the MPCID interviews another officer – this time a major. He does not think there was live fire.
July 31, 2012 – The MPCID investigators interview another officer, a Lt. Colonel. He does not even remember over whom he presided at the time. After all, this was more than three years since the incident.
August 1, 2012 – After a delay of three years and seven months, the MPCID decides to interrogate the platoon commander under legal warning. He remembers the soldier who was wounded, thinks there may have been a Ruger bullet fired but is not certain and remembers that there was a report about a wounded Palestinian when he got back to base. The officers interviewed earlier did not remember this detail. One should note that his testimony, where he says a live bullet may have been fired, contradicts the testimony of his battalion commander. And since he was closer to the incident, we should give more weight to his testimony.
October 28, 2012 – Nearly three months after the latest investigation, the MPCID interrogates the wounded soldier. He us convinced there was no live fire, not by him at any rate. He claims that he kept asking for permission to use live fire. His request was denied and he used rubber bullets instead.
November 11, 2012 – The MPCID interrogates another soldier in the section under warning. The soldier also remembers that they fired rubber bullets – not live ones.
November 16, 2012 – The MPCID interrogates the sergeant major of the force under warning. He denies any sort of shooting, saying the forces used only tear gas grenades. This testimony is contradicted by all the other testimonies.
December 18, 2012 – The MPCID interrogates yet another soldier, who says they fired rubber bullets and believes there was no live fire.
December 18, 2012 – The MPCID interviews a medical officer, a Lt. Colonel, who says there is no point in interviewing Border Policemen, since their outfit carries out such actions on a weekly basis, and thus they won’t remember a thing. He seems to be right; there is no evidence of MPCID trying to interview Border Policemen.
November 4, 2013 – We’ve come to the end of this comedy of errors: nearly a year after the last investigation, and four years and 10 months after Tufiq was shot, the Operational Affairs’ prosecution closes case, citing lack of evidence.
So what had we here? A failure from beginning to end. The investigation began almost three years after the incident, and from the start it was doubtful whether it ever stood a chance. Too much time had passed.
But there is an even more important point to make here. Almost all the witnesses contradict each other. The battalion commander says only rubber bullets were fired – but the platoon commander thinks there may have been a Ruger bullet fired. The sergeant major thinks only gas was used, while all other witnesses report the use of rubber bullets. The medical documents speak clearly of a live bullet. Did someone pull the Beitunia trick by firing a live bullet and masquerading as if it were a rubber bullet? We’ll never know.
The IDF keeps telling us it needs to hold an operational debriefing – that it needs its soldiers to tell the truth during the debriefing. Therefore, it claims, the debriefing must not be turned over to MPCID as evidence. But note what happened: after almost three years wasted by the Operational Affairs’ prosecution, nobody has a clue as to what happened. The officers cannot even remember their order of battle. No one is sure about what kind of ammunition was actually used. There is a vague Border Police force in the area of operations, but no one knows what it did. The operational logs no longer exist.
If this the situation, what is the purpose of the operational debriefing? Ostensibly it is supposed to provide the forces with insight into the events so they can improve their tactics. But if no one remembers what was said in it, what is it really good for? And why can’t the MPCID investigation run parallel to it, rather than months afterward?
The Turkel Commission, which dealt with the behavior of the military investigative bodies, recommended that an investigation ought to be swift. Two years before Turkel’s recommendations, the JAG decided to hold MPCID investigations (after an appeal by B’Tselem and ICRI) – in cases of death only – in parallel to the operational debriefing. We have some indications that MPCID is beginning to internalize and implement the Turkel Commission recommendations, with an emphasis on speedier investigations. But in the meantime, the investigation of the shooting of Ashraf Muhammad Jamal Tufiq stands as Exhibit A that the IDF doesn’t know how and perhaps doesn’t want to investigate itself.
Photo: Israeli border police officers shooting tear gas canisters during the weekly protest against the Wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in, November 1, 2013
Photo by Activestills
Israeli Forces Train with Live Ammo in West Bank Civilian Areas

IMEMC News & Agencies | December 30, 2014
Israeli occupation forces, since the early hours on Monday, have been holding military training sessions with live ammunition, in the Khirbet Taweel area, South Nablus.
Member of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee of Aqraba, Yousef Deriyyah, said that Israeli occupation forces, Sunday evening, bulldozed and damaged several dunams of wheat fields in preparation for the training.
The PNN further reports that military training has often targeted Palestinians, including children, causing injuries and home evictions.
Back in August, Israeli authorities evicted 1,300 Palestinians from their homes in the south Hebron hills, of the occupied West Bank, claiming that they are located in a military training zone.
In October, Israeli forces stormed Aida refugee camp without any provocation and began firing tear gas canisters, sound bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets at children in the streets.
Eyewitness said that soldiers were training by using families, children and homes as military practice.
Also in October, Israeli authorities distributed eviction notices to 19 Palestinian families in the Northern Jordan Valley area, in order to use the area for military purposes.
America stumbles through another year, spreading chaos and trivia everywhere in its path
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | December 30, 2014
The Palestinians are seeking a vote in the United Nations’ Security Council on a resolution favoring their statehood, unquestionably a reasonable proposal in the minds of most of the world’s people. Of course, the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, would automatically veto such a resolution, as it vetoes all efforts to restore order to the chaos of the Middle East. And of course, were such a resolution somehow miraculously to pass, Israel would simply ignore it, as it has ignored a long list of binding UN resolutions. But a veto and certain contempt are not enough for an upright, God-fearing Southern gentleman like US Senator Lindsey Graham. He busied himself recently with threatening America’s withholding funds from a United Nations that gets involved in the “peace process.” Imagine, the United Nations getting involved in peace? That is a chilling thought. Since the United States has a history of withholding its UN dues against its solemn treaty obligations to bully its way to certain changes, such threats do carry weight.
Senator Graham, regarded neither as an idealist nor a voice for peace, is only doing what so many American politicians do under the unbelievably corrupt, money-drenched American election system, and that is to make ridiculous public statements about the Middle East in return for generous dollops of campaign funds from the world’s most tireless political lobby, that for Israel. You might think that the lobby itself would tire of funding backwater blowhards demanding the other ninety-five percent of humanity play the game by America’s rules or America is picking up its marbles or chips or whatever and going home, but clearly it does not.
“The peace process” is the longest running farce on the planet, continuing for nearly fifty years. It might have been funny in the vein of The Mouse That Roared, but there is nothing remotely funny in the killing of thousands of people and the extreme abuse and hopelessness of millions. You just could not make a worse hash of a diplomatic and human welfare situation than America has made in the Middle East. And the situation has only intensified in its cruelty and injustice. Today, Israel openly and regularly steals homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It threatens ancient Muslim shrines and desecrates some of them. It has savaged Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison camp, twice, killing close to four thousand including nearly a thousand children. It has attempted to starve Gaza’s people out with a years-long embargo, and is making ugly noises about still another invasion. It is about to steal Syrian oil on the occupied Golan Heights, drilling there illegally, and it is busy arranging the theft of offshore natural gas that belongs to Gaza and Lebanon. It does all of this with complete impunity and not even a cross word from the likes of Senator Graham. I do think the Middle East provides the strongest possible evidence of the complete unsuitability of the United States to play a dominant role in international affairs. It is genuinely a case of the inmates running the asylum.
In another example of chaos mixed with farce, the United States pretends to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and while that charade continues, planes loaded with American weapons keep flying out of Turkey to make the seeming lunatics even stronger. Indeed, the various ragtag factions trying to overthrow the Syrian government, cutthroats assembled by the US and its friends from all corners of the globe in a kind of hellish foreign legion, announced a new alliance, so telling Washington’s approved terrorists in the conflict from those who haven’t made the cut is more difficult than ever. Recently, one or another of the lunatic mobs shot down two fighter jets, and how do you think they managed that without American anti-aircraft missiles? Turkey’s certifiably unbalanced president, Tayyip Erdoğan, one day makes fiery speeches threatening Israel (to please the poor fools voting for him) and the next makes new secret deals with Israel. Remember, this is a man who just built a one-thousand room palace for himself – yes, that’s right, exactly one thousand rooms – and it is the ugliest, most pointless large structure built since the early Soviet era, a kind of gigantic sprawling warehouse incrusted with jewels and filled with porcelain.
Well, dippiness is no barrier to membership in a secret club in the region which includes the UAE, Saudia Arabia, and Israel, all lovingly assisted by the US. They are all governments who regard change as desirable only when it results in an even more rigid status quo, as in Egypt. Never mind the welfare of the region’s people or democracy or human rights or national boundaries. These guys resemble twelfth century lords seeing paupers cross their paths: they run them down and proceed to a rollicking good dinner in the great hall. The club is all about security for hereditary monarchs, security for America’s crusader fortress colony in the Middle East, and security for helper states in the American agenda. We’ve had many reports recently of secret air-freight flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. We also have reports of flights out of Turkey into Syria. The never explained events at Benghazi were undoubtedly blowback from an operation collecting unemployed thugs and arms for secret shipment to Turkey and then into Syria. Saudi Arabia is voluntarily taking a bath by pushing oil prices down, a favor to the US and Israel and Turkey and a way of hurting Russia, Iran, Syria, and even Venezuela – all current members in good standing of Captain America’s ever-changing galaxy of villains – aka, the Axis of Evil. The US is willing to sacrifice for the time being its booming shale oil industry, whose more costly production requires higher prices than Saudi conventional crude, in return for the Saudi sacrifice.
Since both countries are desperate to hurt Russia, Iran, and Syria, the deal is a marriage made in Realpolitik heaven. Russia has helped Syria and does business with Iran, while Saudi Arabia and Israel hate Iran and Syria. The US has made a large investment in toppling Syria for Israel’s benefit, but the plan has been thwarted by Syrian endurance and Russian help. The plan also overlooked the loyalty of important Syrian societal groups to President Assad, but America often overlooks details as it attempts to reshape the world to its liking with bombs. Of course, there was also the precedent of Iraq, a bloody fiasco that achieved nothing but a million deaths and splintering a country into pieces. That splintering, by the way, continues with the ISIS fiasco: Iraq’s Kurds are being used against ISIS to strengthen their own region’s quasi-independence from Iraq.
The chaos the secret club-member countries have created in Syria – perhaps 200,000 killed and a couple of million refugees – appears not to bother them in the least, just so many paupers in the roadway when galloping home to dinner at the great hall. The victims do provide useful free material for the propaganda war being waged, the understanding implicit in America’s and Canada’s and Europe’s press being always that President Assad is responsible for the catastrophe. The US, and cheerleaders on the sidelines like Canada’s current dismal right-wing government, are doing virtually nothing for the refugees, or for the many civilians crippled or wounded. Ironically, Israel actually accepts for treatment in its northern medical facilities some of the very fanatics wounded in the dirty work. After all, it is ultimately Israel’s dirty work they do, regardless of their fanaticism. It’s a phenomenon we might call selective terrorism: fanatical killers who do America’s work, or Israel’s, are not treated as terrorists at all. No matter how many women and children you kill, no matter how many places you bomb, you only become a terrorist if you oppose the interests of America or Israel.
The toll in killed and wounded and homeless in Eastern Ukraine continues to mount. New punitive measures come regularly from Kiev, undoubtedly with American advice about possible vulnerabilities – after all, a top cabinet minister in the coup-created government is American. Only the other day we read reports of Ukrainian militia-types, the kind of right-wing thugs who helped the US overthrow an elected government in Kiev, blocking food traffic into the East. Attempting to starve people into submission is defined in international law as a war crime, but we hear no word of concern from America, just as we heard no word of concern for Israel’s original blockade of Gaza which actually included a calculated level of calories intended to just keep the population alive (since modified under intense secret international pressure).
In all these induced chaotic situations, we hear little or nothing from the UN, an institution which should be among the first condemning aggressive behavior. But the UN, despite the many differing private views of its members, is now in all official capacities under the thumb of the US. Its current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, a candidate favored by America, is ineffectual and behaves at times almost as though he headed an organization having nothing to do with peace or human rights.
Well, there is some intimidating history. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the only UN secretary-general not to be elected to a second term in office, and the reason was an American plan to be rid of him, one of Madeleine Albright’s glorious career achievements. America vetoed his second term because it was most unhappy when he did not embrace the bombing of Bosnia, and they disliked other of his views which tended to be thoughtful and compassionate. Earlier, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, a much admired man, was assassinated in an engineered plane crash, said to have been the work of Belgian mining companies unhappy with the UN’s policies in Congo, a place the mining companies had drained of wealth for decades of brutal exploitation, but I think it unlikely anything of that nature happened without at least a nod of approval from Washington, which after all was a major customer for the products of Congo.
The evidence is piling up, despite delays and many irregularities in the official investigation into the crash of airline Flight MH-17 in Ukraine, that a Ukrainian pilot deliberately shot the plane down. His fighter jet is said to have been armed with air-to-air missiles on take-off, something completely out-of-the-ordinary in the conflict since Eastern Ukrainians have no air force. It returned, according to an eye-witness, with no missiles and the pilot muttering cryptic phrases. Of course, this would be the kind of act you might expect from people who used sniper rifles earlier this year to kill many hundreds of civilians in Maidan, the central square of Kiev, in order to terrorize the population and start the coup. But where is America’s voice in these grotesque doings? As Russia has patiently pointed out, an American spy satellite was virtually overhead at the time of the crash, so definitive evidence exists without a doubt but is not produced. But then neither is it produced for the destruction of Flight MH-370 in the Indian Ocean, an event it is virtually certain was the work of American forces at the secret Diego Garcia base as the plane came their way for whatever unknown reason.
The irregularities around Flight MH-17’s investigation include Malaysia, owners of the airline, being excluded from the group conducting the investigation and include the fact that segments of the wreckage were left behind at the crash site, and that after taking a very long time to get there in the first place, making manipulation of forensic evidence possible and even likely. We also have the absence of any American satellite or radar records, and we have not a word about the autopsy on the pilot, something which might solve the entire mystery, as from the discovery of Ukrainian missile fragments in his body.
What kind of world do we want to live in? One where coups and civil wars are engineered for the pleasure of others? One where airliners full of people are shot down deliberately? This is the chaos, and just part of it, America has bestowed upon us in the twenty-first century. I won’t even go into the financial tsunami it created in 2008 with the same lack of caution for others and concern about doing things correctly. The full impact of that has yet to strike us all.
But America brings laughable trivia, too. The President of the United States spending time and breath on the hacking of a private company’s web site? A Japanese company, no less? And turning the relatively trivial business of hacking, which happens every day now somewhere, into an international incident by blaming, almost certainly incorrectly, North Korea?
The President said the FBI had investigated and assured him that North Korea was responsible. What he didn’t tell us was that the FBI has a decades-long record of being wrong, seriously wrong, a great deal of the time. Given the FBI’s history, it certainly is in the running for the title of Most Incompetent Security Organization in the Western World, although, like other national security institutions in the United States, it is grossly over-funded with money gushing out like water from broken plumbing. Americans pay more per unit of misinformation than likely any other people on the planet.
Anyone familiar with the record of the FBI listens to assurances like the President’s with a sarcastic smile at best (see FOOTNOTE for a partial list of the FBI’s viciousness and incompetence over the years). Shortly after the president’s silly words, we had several world-class tech experts tell us why it could not have been North Korea, and I’ll take bets against the FBI on this one from anyone.
It likely was someone at Sony doing a publicity stunt to promote what by all reports is a dud of a film, but why should the man with the biggest job in the world join in? Consider also the fact that if you make what can be viewed as a threatening comment or presentation of any kind against the President of the United States, you will be visited and interviewed by the Secret Service, who will then keep you on file permanently. Why is it okay to make a movie about the assassination of North Korea’s president then, the subject of The Interview ? Sony certainly has a right to do stupidly foolish things, but it is more than a little muddled for the President, eagerly, to support it. Will he now address the rights of porn actors in California to work without condoms?
As I write this, a British newspaper reports that some Sony employees have been quietly dismissed. Reported also is the discovery of a web site strongly suggesting disgruntled employees. See what I mean about America overlooking the facts before it acts?
FOOTNOTE ON HOW WRONG AND DISHONEST THE FBI HAS BEEN: The FBI was wrong in claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia, something J. Edgar Hoover insisted for many years while he gambled at their racetracks and stayed at their resorts for free, some biographers believing Hoover had been compromised by the Mafia with photos of his secret gay, cross-dressing life. The FBI was wrong in focusing huge resources for many years on the pathetic American Communist Party, half of whose small membership is said to have consisted of FBI agents. The FBI was wrong about the threat of Albert Einstein, seeking his extradition for a time and checking the contents of his garbage to his dying day. The FBI was wrong about the danger of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it played judge and jury with his personal life. The FBI was wrong about Dr. Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos being a spy, although it ruined his career. The FBI was wrong about the crash of TWA Flight 800, taking an inordinate amount of time trying to let public interest cool and avoid the obvious fact that the crash was an accidental shoot-down by the American military, there being a radar track showing something like a missile rising towards the plane. Despite its vast resources, the FBI never saw 9/11 coming. One of its own senior agents, Robert Hanssen, was one of the more damaging spies of modern times, a man whose carelessness in many details, classic indicators of a paid spy, went unnoticed for years. The FBI was wrong in the Atlanta Olympic bombing, ruining the life of another innocent man. It couldn’t have been more wrong in its handling of the sad kooks at Waco, effectively murdering them all. So, too, at the Ruby Ridge standoff where an FBI sniper killed a woman and her child needlessly. The FBI Crime Labs were cited in the 1990s by the Inspector General for misconduct and manipulating evidence, something many had suspected for years. The FBI specialized for years in hurting the reputations of those it didn’t like or those it merely suspected, as by asking questions at their place of work and neighborhood, not have any proof of wrong-doing. The FBI, at least under J. Edgar Hoover, held career-threatening information obtained by spying over the heads of many prominent congressmen and government leaders, effectively blackmailing them to do its bidding. It did the same with non-government officials where it felt so inclined. The FBI was wrong about the assassination of President Kennedy, it being the only investigative agency for the lamentable, embarrassing Warren Commission, thereby assuming at least equal responsibility for its inaccurate, dishonest report. Indeed, the FBI did not reveal at the time that Oswald secretly worked for them as a paid informant (since documented). It also lied about evidence a senior FBI agent destroyed after the assassination, a note Oswald had written.
Gaza, Syria, militarized cops, and ‘lone-wolf’ shootings: during a brutal year, 9/11 truth held its own
The people of Gaza experienced real terrorism during a siege that left 2,100 dead
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | December 30, 2014
Gaza, ISIS, Syria, Ukraine, Ferguson, militarized cops, Malaysian planes, torture, drones, and “lone-wolf” shootings. It has been a tough year for the truth.
But in the midst of all the deception and brutality, it has been an intriguing year for the struggle to expose the lies of 9/11. The elusive breakthrough that 9/11 truthers fantasize about may not be coming any time soon, but there are encouraging signs on a number of fronts. There were also some disappointments, but even those don’t seem so bad if you subscribe to the idea that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
A major highlight was the spectacular sight of an 89-foot wide electronic billboard in New York City’s Times Square repeatedly showing the destruction of WTC 7 throughout the month of September. An estimated two million New Yorkers saw the message. Who would have thought something like that would ever happen? This latest project was the initiative of Rethink 9/11 and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which were responsible for billboards in major cities around the world last year.
At the beginning of December we had the presentation of a petition asking the Canadian government to conduct a Parliamentary review of the evidence of 9/11. For years, no politician was willing to touch this subject or this petition in Canada until Green Party leader Elizabeth May agreed to present it to Parliament. Of course the likelihood of Parliament reviewing the evidence is about as good as Congress doing so in the U.S. But anything is positive that gets 9/11 into the news and lets people know that the movement continues to fight.
Unfortunately, May chose to tell the mainstream media that she only presented the petition because Parliamentary rules obligated her to do so. They don’t. She also said she doesn’t agree with the petition, which was regrettable but predictable. Any politician who shows any openness about 9/11 is going to get roasted in the media, and she was. But at least May was willing to take some political risk. Following up on the petition effort, AE911Truth has commissioned a poll of Canadians, asking them their views about 9/11.
Speaking of media, the High-Rise Safety Initiative launched by the New York Coalition for Accountability Now got 9/11 into the news even though it ultimately did not succeed in getting the initiative on to the New York City ballot. The goal was to force a change to the city charter obligating the Department of Buildings to investigate any building collapses going back to Sept. 11, 2001 (including Building 7 but not the twin towers).
The money was raised and the signatures were collected. It was quite an effort. But the courts did what they always do, dashing hopes for the time being. I know many truthers are quick to say that no official investigation will ever get to the truth of 9/11 – and that’s probably true – but the publicity the effort would produce would be worth it. Mayor Bill De Blasio calling the initiative “inappropriate after all the suffering that went on 9/11,” got the subject some welcome mainstream coverage.
The most hostile – and incoherent – attack on 9/11 truth occurred after AE9/11Truth distributed information pamphlets at the opening of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero. The hook was that the pamphlets used the same design to offer an alternative view of what happened on 9/11. CNN’s Jake Tapper and his guest, Slate editor Emily Bazelon combined on a five-minute piece that made the usual gibberish about conspiracy theories seem intelligent.
My favorite quote from Bazelon: “You see these dark corners of the Internet where people pile on, and there’s this minute parsing of the technicalities of the supposed evidence, and more and more detail gets added and accumulated, and it kind of feeds on itself.”
Don’t you hate it when conspiracy theorists parse evidence and examine details?
Then there was the vicious maligning of Richard Gage and all truthers as being anti-Semitic hate mongers by the Canadian “news” network, Sun News. This came in an interview of Gage done by right wing hack Michael Coren in Toronto. I filed two complaints against Coren with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and waited more than six months for a decision from their adjudicating panel. I got an email from the national chair of the Council, Andrée Noel, saying that the complaint did not deal with anything that hadn’t been ruled on in the past, and that she had dismissed both complaints without giving them a hearing.
In an interview, Noel said that Coren’s accusation that Gage was a hate monger was “not unduly aggressive.” Riiiight. The only recourse left is to refer the complaint to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). My expectations for that are not high.
The year produced some excellent research material relating to 9/11 in the form of books, films, and art. Graeme MacQueen published an important book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, which explains the failure of the anthrax false flag and reveals how 9/11 was its twin false flag. This excellent book was the subject of a review on Truth and Shadows by Barrie Zwicker.
David Hooper also released his personal documentary The Anatomy of a Great Deception, which chronicles his awakening about 9/11 as well as offering an excellent overview of the evidence that the official story of what happened at the World Trade Center is false.
The most pleasantly unexpected bit of news was that a wonderful piece of 9/11 truth art was (inexplicably) accepted into the private collection of the “official” 9/11 Museum. And the best part is that the artist, Anthony Freda, is a prominent illustrator who works with mainstream media like the New York Times and Rolling Stone, but who is also an articulate voice on behalf of 9/11 truth. The donation of the art will also be featured in an upcoming documentary called Behind Truth Art by John Massaria.
The bigger picture in 2014
While progress on the 9/11 front was encouraging but slow, world events were neither and seemed to be filled with ever more contrived chaos, deception and violence. The supposed “war on terror” – which was truly launched by the 9/11 false flag deception – played out in the CIA-backed assault on Syria, and the appearance of ISIS, the latest Muslim “threat.” The convenient and implausibly sudden emergence of this well-funded and outfitted band of “extremists” has provided the West with all the excuse it needs to bomb Iraq and Syria. There were highly suspicious videos of beheadings and a highly unbelievable back story to explain ISIS, the latest excuse for more military action in the Middle East and the stripping away of more civil liberties at home.
The U.S. Senate torture report got lots of press in 2014, but of course that’s because it serves the illusion that terrorists are truly a genuine threat, and the most important issue is how we deal with them.
On the domestic front, there was the police state crackdown on protests in Ferguson, Missouri after a cop shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown. Not only did this focus attention on the targeting of blacks for police violence, but also on the militarization of police forces across America – a process that has been ongoing for two decades.
We’re being conditioned to accept police in military gear as being standard and normal. In the U.S., 2014 was a truly disturbing year during which a shocking number of individuals were killed by police, often for minor infractions or no infractions at all. The most visible of those was the choking of Eric Garner as he was held down by five New York City police officers. Finally, we had the killing of two NYPD cops, seemingly in retaliation for police violence.
And the number of “lone wolf” shootings (in some cases labelled terrorist attacks) continued to increase in 2014. While the media automatically accepted all of these as being authentic and focused on the emotional and sensational aspects of each, many alternative voices seriously questioned whether some of the shootings were either staged or perpetrated by organized entities rather than crazed extremists or disturbed loners.
We had the killings of two soldiers in Canada in October. There was the Santa Barbara shooting, the Portland shooting, the Las Vegas shooting, the LAX shooting, the Seattle shooting, the Vancouver shooting, the Moncton shooting, and finally the Sydney hostage taking and shooting.
In the case of the LAX event, a drill had been practised three weeks before using “the exact same scenario,” according to an LAPD spokesman. We learned that in the few weeks before the Canadian one-two punch, authorities had carried out an exercise simulating a terrorist attack in Quebec followed by one in a large Canadian city – exactly what happened. We found out that police in Melbourne, Australia had practised their response to a hostage taking in a cafe just six weeks before the real thing happened in Sydney. They had also held a drill a year before in Martin Square where the hostage taking would play itself out 12 months later.
With all this, the story that affected me more than any other was Israel’s brutal siege against Gaza, leaving 2,100 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands homeless, and turned large parts of the city to rubble. And while this human catastrophe was going on the Israeli government and its apologists in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere were making the Orwellian claim that Israel was the victim, that Hamas was the aggressor, and that it was the Palestinians’ own fault for electing them.
Palestinian youth shot dead by Israeli forces south of Nablus
Ma’an – 29/12/2014
NABLUS – A Palestinian youth was shot dead by Israeli forces at the Tappuah checkpoint south of Nablus in the northern West Bank on Monday.
Local Palestinian sources told Ma’an that Israeli troops opened fire at two young Palestinian men in the Jabal Sbeih area within Beita village, near the Tappuah checkpoint, which is also known to Palestinians as Zaatara.
The youth who was killed in the incident was identified by Nablus TV as Imam Jamil Dweikat, a resident of Beita. His age was not yet clear, however.
The other victim was identified as Nael Thiab, 19, and he was reportedly evacuated to a hospital in Nablus with moderate to serious gunshot wounds following the incident.
Palestinian security sources confirmed that the Israeli liaison department officially notified the Palestinian Authority that Israeli troops shot dead a young Palestinian man and that his body is still with the Israeli army.
The slain youth is the 50th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2014, bringing the total Palestinian dead at Israeli hands so far this year, including those who died in Gaza as a result of Israel’s summer offensive, to around 2,335.
An Israeli military spokeswoman told Ma’an that an Israeli military patrol was passing through the area when they “encountered a group of Palestinians hurling rocks at a main road, which endangered both civilians and vehicles.”
“The forces called them to halt and fired warning shots, and when they didn’t comply they responded to the threat with direct fire which wounded one of the attackers.”
She said that the military treated him on site but he later died of his wounds.
“A military police investigation has been opened into the matter,” she added.



