Unprovoked, Israeli Soldiers Attack AFP Journalists in West Bank
Sputnik – 26.09.2015
While covering a demonstration in the West Bank, two journalists with Agence France-Presse were attacked by Israeli soldiers, who then proceeded to destroy their equipment.
Andrea Bernardi and Abbas Momani were near the village of Beit Furik on Friday. On assignment for AFP, the two journalists were reporting on a protest that followed the funeral of a Palestinian man shot by Israeli security forces.
In covering the events, Bernardi and Momani were themselves attacked by Israeli soldiers.
“They had passed the first checkpoint of the border police with their press cards without problem,” AFP bureau chief Thomas Cox told the Guardian. “Andrea paused to check his camera setting and as he was doing so a soldier immediately arrived and told him to stop filming and pushed his camera.”
“He then took the camera and smashed it.”
Video of the incident shows the journalists walking away, only to be chased down by another soldier who destroys more of the pair’s equipment.
According to Cox, Bernardi later went back to recover his camera, and things escalated from there.
“At this point a soldier jumped on him and put a pistol on his face and attacked him.”
“It was crazy,” Bernardi told the Guardian. “When we arrived at the border police checkpoint we showed our documents. There was no problem. They were being nice.”
“We passed the first line of soldiers loading teargas. I heard screaming and a soldier started pushing and shouting ‘what the f*ck are you doing’ in English. I then [realized] he was loading this gun and I thought ‘what the…’ and we started walking back.”
Bernardi notes that if either he or Momani had been guilty of some crime that they would have been arrested, but that never happened.
“After we got back to the car I saw a piece of the camera and wanted to take a picture of it because I was worried they would accuse me of doing something wrong,” he said. “That’s when a soldier pointed a pistol in my face and pulled me down.”
AFP has announced its intention to file a formal complaint. … Full article
Once again, Israeli forces prevent Palestinians’ freedom of religion
International Solidarity Movement | September 25, 2015
Hebron, occupied Palestine – Today, Israeli forces stopped, searched and harassed Palestinians on their way to Ibrahimi mosque and in the vicinity on the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha for Friday prayers in Al-Khalil (Hebron).
Crowds of worshippers were flocking to the mosque around noon. Before being allowed into the mosque they have to pass through metal detectors manned with Israeli forces. Even though the majority of the people passed from the Palestinian market and through a checkpoint already, only a few meters afterwards they are forced to pass through yet another checkpoint. Small children, boys and girls clung to the hands of their parents when passing through the checkpoint.
In total, 27 young adults were stopped and ID-checked on their way to Friday prayer, and forced to leave their ID with the Israeli forces before being allowed to enter into the mosque. Another two were detained for about fifteen minutes before finally being allowed to pass. All IDs had to be collected at the end of the prayer from the same soldier, delaying Palestinians on their way back home for yet another five to ten minutes during which soldiers where trying to find the right ID for each person.
Five teenagers were bluntly refused access to the mosque, denying them their right to exercise their religion. Whereas three of the boys left, two of them after being yelled at and pushed by an Israeli soldiers; two other teenagers were forced to perform their Friday prayer outside the mosque in the street.
One man, just passing on the street next to the checkpoint, talking to a friend entering to the mosque, was confronted by soldiers. One soldier ran towards him from the checkpoint, demanding him to stop and questioning him about the content of his bag. The man was forced to immediately open his bag, containing meat for lunch with his family, all while soldiers were shouting at him. They then forced him to pull up his shirt and trousers. Bystanders were watching anxiously, as only three days ago, the murder of 18-year old Hadeel Saleh Hashlamoun at another checkpoint in Al-Khalil shocked the community.
During the Jewish holidays this past month, many restrictions have been imposed on Palestinians living close to the Ibrahimi mosque. On several days, the checkpoint leading to the mosque was kept completely closed the whole day, denying entry to Palestinians and preventing them from free movement. With the Jewish holiday of Sukkot starting this Sunday, many more restrictions on Palestinian movement are expected.
Nablus police chief, 3-year-old daughter injured by Israeli fire
Three-year-old Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi was shot in the head by Israeli forces with a rubber bullet in the occupied West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum.
(MaanImages/Murad Ishteiwi)
Ma’an – September 25, 2015
NABLUS – The chief of police in the Nablus district and his three-year-old daughter were injured after being shot by Israeli forces with rubber-coated bullets on Friday during a raid in the village of Kafr Qaddum in Qalqiliya.
A Fatah leader in Kafr Qaddum, Murad Ishteiwi, told Ma’an that Israeli forces directly shot at three-year-old Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi, injuring her with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the head while she was standing on a balcony in her home.
Isheiwi added that when her father, Colonel Abd al-Latif al-Qaddumi, attempted to aid her and take her to the hospital in his car, Israeli forces opened fire, injuring him in the head.
They were both taken to the Rafidia Governmental Hospital in Nablus where their injuries were reported as moderate. Both are currently in a stable condition.
Ishteiwi said that Israeli forces had raided the area and set up several ambushes inside of the town in an attempt to prevent the weekly Kafr Qaddum march.
An Israeli army spokesperson didn’t have any immediate information but told Ma’an they were looking into the incident.
On Sept. 11, Israeli military forces raided the house of al-Qaddumi, and turned his home into a military outpost after evicting his wife and children.
Days earlier, Israeli forces held al-Qaddumi for more than an hour near the entrance of Hijja village west of Nablus.
Last week Israeli forces shot and injured a 14-year-old with live fire in Kafr Qaddum during a demonstration.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that there was a “riot” in Kafr Qaddum, where protesters threw rocks and rolled burning tires at Israeli forces, who opened fire “using .22 caliber rounds towards the extremities of the main instigator and a hit was confirmed.”
A weekly average of 39 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli forces since the start of 2015. The majority of injuries sustained by Palestinians occur during unarmed demonstrations.
Rights organizations have argued that methods of crowd control used by Israeli forces often result in excessive, and sometimes fatal, use of force.
Residents of Kafr Qaddum carry out weekly demonstrations in protest of the now 13-year closure of the main street out of the village, which leads to nearby Nablus — the area’s economic hub.
Kafr Qaddum has also lost large swathes of its land to Israeli settlements, outposts and the separation wall, all illegal under international law.
Two-thirds of Palestinians support Abbas departure
MEMO | September 23, 2015
An opinion poll has suggested that two-thirds of Palestinians believe that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should resign. They also think that his resignation from the PLO Executive Committee is not “real”.
The Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research released the results of a poll on Monday that it conducted in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip between 17 and 19 September. The results show that the popularity of President Abbas has declined “significantly” in the occupied West Bank and has improved “slightly” in the Gaza Strip. Fatah’s popularity has declined in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The results revealed an increase in Hamas popularity in the occupied West Bank and a significant decrease in the Gaza Strip. The popularity of the deputy leader of the Islamic movement, Ismail Haniyeh, has improved in the West Bank but fallen slightly in Gaza.
“If Abbas does not participate in the next presidential elections,” said the research NGO, “the only viable candidates from Fatah to replace him are Marwan Barghouti followed, but with much less support, by Mohammad Dahlan and Saeb Erekat.” Among Hamas candidates, it added, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal are the most popular to replace Abbas, while among the independents the most popular is Rami Al-Hamdallah followed by Salam Fayyad.
“Two-thirds of the public support Hamas-Israel indirect negotiations about a long term Hudna, or truce, in return for ending the siege of the Gaza Strip. But a majority believes that these negotiations will not succeed. A majority rejects the belief that such negotiations, even if they succeed, would harm the chances for reconciliation.”
The results also reveal that the Palestinian public does not view the PLO or its Executive Committee positively and declines to give it a mandate to make important decisions on behalf of all Palestinians. Instead, the public prefers to give such a mandate to the PA, even if the decisions in question relate to the permanent agreement with Israel. “This, though, does not mean that the public has considerable trust in the PA,” said the centre. “On the contrary, a majority believes that it has become a burden on the Palestinian people and, for the first time since we started asking, a majority now demands the PA’s dissolution.”
Results also show that two-thirds of the public believe that the protection of Palestinians against settler terrorism is the responsibility of the PA, not the Israeli army. “Furthermore, two-thirds believe that the PA is not doing enough to protect Palestinian citizens. To protect Palestinian towns and villages targeted by settlers, the largest percentage has selected, from among several options, the deployment of the Palestinian security forces in those areas. The public believes that if the PA formally establishes civil guard units made up of volunteers in such areas, it would also help to provide protection. Indeed, half of West Bankers say that if such unarmed units were established, they would volunteer to join them.”
The survey was conducted on a random sample of 1,270 people in 127 locations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces targeting Palestinian children in al-Khalil (Hebron)
International Solidarity Movement | September 20, 2015
Everyday, Palestinian families get attacked by Israeli forces in their own homes. Sometimes they bang on the door in the middle of the night, scaring children and adults, ransacking the house. On some of these raids, both during the night and in daytime, Israeli forces randomly arrest family members and take them to an unknown destination without any reason.
Last night, Israeli forces entered the Palestinian market in the Old City of al-Khalil (Hebron) and entered a Palestinian family home where they kidnapped an 8-year old girl and arrested 3 more young men. All of them were walked towards the military base in Shuhada street, but then kept behind a fence and military gate for more than 15 minutes before being released. No reason was given for the random arrest.
Even the way to school can be a dangerous and perilous journey for children in al-Khalil (Hebron). Having to pass through sometimes multiple checkpoints to get to school, children as young as 4 years old have to pass by heavily armed Israeli soldiers. As if the ubiquitous military presence weren’t scary enough, children are subjected to bag-searches, frisking, detainment and arrests. With Israeli forces using tear gas on children on their way to school and back home after a long school-day, children also have to duck away from tear-gas grenades shot towards them and navigate past clouds of tear-gas lingering on in the alleys.
Arresting children under the age of 11 is illegal even under Israeli law, as it is considered to be too traumatizing and detrimental to a child’s well-being, regardless of the accusations brought forward against a child. However, Palestinian children are detained, frisked, body-searched and arrested by Israeli forces on an every-day basis. As this illegal practice does not result in any consequences for the soldiers or policemen at all, Palestinian children are constantly at risk of maltreatment, abuse and denial of their most basic human rights.
Nearly 2,000 Palestinian children killed since 2000: Rights group
Press TV – September 17, 2015
An independent non-governmental organization (NGO) says nearly 2,000 Palestinian children have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli military forces and illegal settlers over the past 15 years.
Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), in a report released on Thursday, criticized the Israeli regime’s policy of land expropriation and consistent development of illegal settlements in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and West Bank, warning that such practices are placing Palestinian children and their families against “expanding and often violent Israeli settler communities.”
The Geneva-based NGO further noted that Israel’s ongoing settlement expansion activities are increasingly creating a “hyper-militarized environment” for Palestinian children, where they are highly exposed to disproportionate violence from both Israeli forces and settlers.
The DCIP said Israeli soldiers killed 12 Palestinian children in East al-Quds and West Bank in 2014, and the majority of the fatalities were caused by ammunition.
It highlighted that there is “no evidence that any of the children killed in the West Bank posed a direct threat to Israeli troops or settlers.”
The rights group also revealed that 553 of the Palestinian children killed since 2000 died as a direct result of the Israeli military’s onslaught against the impoverished Gaza Strip in summer 2014, noting that around 68 percent of the victims were under the age of 12.
Israel started its military campaign against the impoverished Gaza Strip in early July 2014. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014. Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, lost their lives in the Israeli war. Over 11,100 others – including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people – also sustained injuries.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967.
Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds, and the besieged Gaza Strip and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.
How did Rawabi get its water?
By Jan Selby | MEMO | September 17, 2015
In February this year, the new Palestinian town of Rawabi at last managed to secure a water supply, after several years of acrimonious negotiations with the Israeli and Palestinian authorities. With the greatest obstacle to populating Rawabi overcome, the first 200 families of this planned “shining city on a hill” have now finally started moving in.
Rawabi’s water woes have received extensive coverage in the Israeli, Palestinian and international media, not least owing to a campaign instigated by the town’s owners, the Bayti Real Estate Investment Company. But why did Rawabi encounter such problems? And how did they eventually get resolved? For all the media coverage, the reasons are not well known.
When I meet Amir Dajani, Deputy Manager Director of Bayti in his Rawabi office, he reserves most of his anger for the Palestinian Authority. “No one did anything to support Rawabi,” he says of the PA. He recognises, of course, that Israel’s occupation poses huge challenges to a billion-dollar investment project, but about these he is pragmatic. The contrast between his visceral anger at the PA and his cool realism about the occupation is striking.
For all that, it is Israeli demands and an Israeli-drafted document which were the ultimate reasons for the hold-up. Under Article 40 of the 1995 Oslo II Agreement – which Palestinian negotiators were simply handed and accepted when they should have known better – all new water facilities in the West Bank require prior approval from a Joint Water Committee, meaning that Israel has complete veto rights over Palestinian water developments in the occupied West Bank.
Worse still, while Article 40 did not directly mention water projects for Israeli settlements, it did not preclude them from being brought to the Committee either. Israel exploited this ambiguity by making its approval of Palestinian water projects conditional on Palestinian approval of settlement water infrastructures. For fifteen years, the PA’s pragmatic policy response – pursued with the full knowledge of Presidents Abbas and Arafat – was to consent, however unhappily, to this blackmail and approve every single water facility proposed by Israel for its settlements.
This changed only in 2010, when the Palestinian Water Authority and later the PLO Executive Committee decided that they would no longer approve settlement water infrastructures. The result has been five years of deadlock within the Committee; the PA refuses to approve settlement water projects, and Israel in turn refuses to approve new wells and pipelines for Palestinian communities.
Until February, this included Rawabi. But then, following a media campaign plus a series of high-profile interventions – including from Israeli President Rivlin – and a very public disagreement between the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) head, Major-General Yoav Mordechai and Infrastructure Minister Silvan Shalom, the issue was finally decided by Benjamin Netanyahu. Rawabi became an exception, the site of the only new West Bank Palestinian water infrastructure to have been formally approved by Israel since August 2010.
Contrary to reports, however, this was neither a “goodwill gesture” nor a function of a new era of Israeli “water generosity”; simultaneous to approving Rawabi’s connection, Mordechai and Netanyahu also unilaterally approved a handful of settlement water projects (one source has told me “four or five”, another says “six or seven”). These projects included, for instance, a new water supply line for Tekoa in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, supposedly needed because of declining groundwater levels in the Herodian area from which Tekoa is currently supplied.
Rather than an act of generosity, approval for Rawabi’s water was an internal Israeli quid pro quo. The Israeli government bowed to domestic and international pressure to provide the new Palestinian town with water, but could only square this with itself by simultaneously accommodating – nay, supporting – the country’s illegal settlements, by providing them with even more.
When I discuss this with Baruch Nagar of Israel’s Water Authority, he offers two justifications: that these settlement projects were “emergencies”; and that the Palestinian Water Authority, by refusing to approve settlement facilities, is acting unreasonably and is disrespecting Article 40. “We can’t understand why they stopped,” he says, as if the PA was just behaving irrationally. “We respect the water agreement,” he claims, “the Palestinians do not.”
This, though, is specious. Israel’s unilateral approval of settlement water facilities is a clear violation of Article 40, and invoking the false label of “emergency” does not alter this. There are scores of Palestinian communities across the West Bank which have no water in their pipes for days, weeks, even months on end each summer, and plenty of others which are not connected at all or whose small water collection systems are routinely demolished by the Israel Defence Forces. If “emergency” is the standard, then the PA would have every right – but not of course the power – to implement water projects unilaterally across the West Bank.
Moreover, no amount of deadlock within the Water Committee gives Israel the right to decide which new water facilities should be allowed to go ahead, and which not. However, this typifies Israel’s approach to the vestiges of the Oslo agreements, which can be summed up as bilateral “cooperation” when possible (i.e. when the Palestinians are compliant), unilateral violations whenever deemed necessary.
At least, though, Rawabi got its water supply, at least for now. For the other far-from-minor detail about this case is that Rawabi’s new water connection is only temporary; it will only supply 300 cubic metres of water per day, sufficient for the town’s first 5,000 residents and the next eighteen months. Thereafter, Rawabi will need another source, which is still being negotiated with Israel and the PA. Expect another raft of headlines about Rawabi’s water problems in a year or so.
Jan Selby is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK
Al Aqsa Under Attack: The NY Times Blames Its Youthful Defenders
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | September 14, 2015
Tensions are running high at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, and The New York Times can tell us where to place the blame: It’s not the fault of extremists who plan to destroy the landmark, according to the Times, nor is it recent Israeli moves to restrict Muslim access to the site; it is the fault of hot-headed Palestinian youth.
In a story today and in a similar article last July Isabel Kershner points directly to these young people as the source of trouble in clashes with police. This is how the police have framed the issue, and Kershner gives prominence to their claims.
The Times story contrasts with reports from international media and Palestinian sources. From these accounts we learn that the youths were volunteer guards helping defend the holy site against Israeli incursions and that police stormed the mosque while Muslims were inside, beating and injuring worshippers and damaging prayer rugs and other articles. We also learn that these actions prompted even Arab nations on good terms with Israel to speak out in protest.
Kershner quotes Palestinian Liberation Organization secretary Saeb Erekat and a Hamas spokesman who condemn the Israel invasion of the mosque, but she fails to tell readers that both Jordan and Egypt, two nations friendly to Israel, also protested, along with the Arab League and the United Nations representative for peace talks.
The Al Aqsa Mosque has stood at its site in Jerusalem for a thousand years and is revered by Muslims everywhere, but Jews also consider the area as holy ground, where the Second Temple once stood. Extremists openly call for the destruction of both Al Aqsa and the even more ancient Dome of the Rock, which dominates the Jerusalem skyline. They plan to raze the edifices and replace them with a Third Temple.
The Times story fails to acknowledge these real threats that cause anguish among the followers of Islam. It has also neglected to report on Israel’s numerous efforts to restrict Muslim prayer at the mosque and the increasing presence of Jewish worshippers, who are protected by troops when they visit the compound.
Muslims know that another holy site, the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, has been divided between a Muslim and a Jewish section, and that Israeli officials often choose to ban Muslims from entering altogether. This month, worshippers have been excluded from the Hebron mosque for six entire days.
Kershner reports that Muslims charge Israel with plans to divide the Al Aqsa compound, but she says that this is “an assertion vehemently denied by Israel.” Missing from her article is the history of Hebron and the restrictions Israeli authorities frequently impose on Muslim worshippers in both sites.
In recent weeks, for instance, Israel has prevented women from entering the Al Aqsa area, retained the identify cards of worshippers, allowed Jewish extremists to enter the mosque compound for “tours,” restricted the entry of students attending schools in the Al Aqsa compound and confiscated land in an Islamic cemetery next to the mosque.
After the latest incursion, the director of the mosque compound, Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, said that Israel occupation authorities “have imposed their sovereignty over [the mosque compound] by power of force.” Israel controls who enters and exists, he said, and officials use force against anyone who challenges them.
This is a cry of alarm from a site revered by millions of Muslims throughout the world, but it found no mention in the Times. Instead, we receive the Israeli spin on this tragic saga as the newspaper glosses over the expansionist aims of a Zionist state.
Clashes erupt in Silwan after Israeli settler attacks 8-year-old boy
Ma’an – September 12, 2015
JERUSALEM – An Israeli settler attacked an 8-year-old Palestinian boy late on Friday in the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan — a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem — leading to clashes in the area, a local monitoring group told Ma’an.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, located in Silwan, said 8-year-old Zaid Abu Qweidir was attacked by a group of Israeli settlers in the neighborhood.
An Israeli police spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
According to the center, a young Palestinian man witnessed the attack and moved to intervene, which quickly escalated into clashes between the two sides.
More than 20 Israeli settlers arrived on the scene, many of whom used pepper spray against Palestinians as young as five-years-old, the information center reported.
Witnesses said the Israeli attackers came out from a building which settlers had recently occupied.
After the attack, security guards of the settlement outpost, as well as Israeli forces, arrived to protect the settlers, witnesses said.
The forces fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades at Palestinians in the area.
The Wadi Hilweh center said at least 15 Palestinians were moderately to severely injured by pepper spray, including 60-year-old Abdullah Abu Nab and 14-year-old Mahdi al-Rajabi. Both were taken to al-Maqasid hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.
Zaid Abu Qweidir, 8, Adam al-Rajabi, 9, Rahaf Abu Qweidir, 5, Udayy al-Rajabi, 12, Hamza al-Rajabi, 12, Yazan al-Rajabi, 14, Walid al-Shaer, 16, were lightly injured and received treatment at the scene. A pregnant woman, Asmaa al-Rajabi, 29, and 75-year-old Abu Adnan Gheith were also lightly injured.
Furthermore, a tear gas canister was shot into a home housing five children aged 7-months to 13-years-old, the information center said.
Silwan is one of many Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem that is seeing an influx of Israeli settlers.
According to a statement released by the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department in August, illegal Israeli settlers have taken over 39 homes in Silwan, creating settlement enclaves in which approximately 400 Israeli settlers live.
Israeli soldiers take over home of PA police chief in Nablus
Ma’an – September 11, 2015
QALQILIYA – Israeli military forces on Friday raided the house of Palestinian Authority police chief in Nablus, Abd al-Latif al-Qaddumi, and turned his home into a military outpost after evicting his wife and children.
PA police spokesperson Luay Irzeiqat told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the home in Kafr Qaddum village and locked al-Qaddumi’s family in one room before declaring the property a military outpost.
Shortly afterward, Israeli forces expelled the family from the home and took it over.
Al-Qaddumi was not present at the time of the incident, with no further details about why Israeli forces seized the property.
On Sunday, Israeli forces held al-Qaddumi for more than an hour near the entrance of Hijja village west of Nablus, security sources told Ma’an.
They said that Israeli troops stopped the police chief on his way to Nablus police station and held him for more than an hour before releasing the police officer.
As Third Victim Dies, Arsonists Get a Pass in Israel (and in The NY Times)
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | September 8, 2015
Riham Dawabsheh, the third victim of an arson attack on her West Bank home, was laid to rest this week in a funeral attended by thousands. The New York Times has duly reported this, but the article is little more than a “color” piece, a detour around the full story of Israeli racism and impunity surrounding this event.
Riham, 27, died Monday, on her birthday, more than a month after the July 31 firebombing of her home in the village of Duma. Her toddler son, Ali, was burned to death in the attack, and her husband, Saad, 32, died a week later. A second son, Ahmad, 4, remains alive in a hospital with burns over 60 percent of his body.
The Times barely mentioned Riham’s death in a brief 135-word story yesterday (placed in the bottom corner of page 6 of the print edition); today it gives us a five-column photo with an article by Diaa Hadid that describes the women at her funeral and very little else.
It is a piece devoid of context, and it includes no official responses to the news of the latest death, with one exception—the statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decrying the attack and insisting that security services were “doing their utmost” to find the perpetrators.
Other media outlets in the United States and Israel report the anguished concern of United Nations and Palestinian officials over the lack of progress in the case. Nicholay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said that he “reiterated and strengthened” his earlier call for justice, and that he was “concerned by the lack of progress in identifying and prosecuting the perpetrators of this outrage.”
Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, released a statement saying, “Over a month has passed and the Israeli government has not yet brought the terrorists to justice. In fact, more hate speech and incitement have been coming out from members of the Israeli government, more settler attacks have been carried out, and more Palestinians have been killed, injured or detained.”
The Times story mentions none of this and says only that Israel arrested several extremists who belonged to a “network that had encouraged acts of arson” and that it is “unclear” if any of them were connected to the Duma attack because Israel had imposed a gag order on the investigation.
Missing from this all-too-brief summary are some significant facts: The Israeli authorities arrested several suspects soon after the arson attack but released them, and although villagers reported that four men ran from the house after setting it on fire and entered a nearby settlement, no one from the settlement is in custody.
Other media have noted that Israel has failed to arrest and prosecute those responsible for similar attacks in the past. The Israeli magazine 972 ran a piece titled “No one is put on trial when a Palestinian family is burned alive,” comparing the Duma attack to a taxi firebombing three years ago.
The taxi bombing left six Palestinian family members hospitalized, but all survived. The investigation, however, did not. As 972 writers John Brown and Noah Rotem state, “Despite incontrovertible evidence showing settlers were behind the attack, the case was closed after a two-week investigation.”
None of the Times stories on the Duma bombing have found this news fit to print, and the newspaper has failed to mention other developments that shed light on the tragedy. They include:
- Under Israeli law, the Dawabsheh family is not eligible for compensation, while settlers who suffer similar attacks automatically receive reparations.
- The family struggled to cover medical expenses for the three who were being treated for burns.
- Settlers tried to burn another Duma house not long after the July 31 arson attack.
The newspaper has had several opportunities to include this kind of information in its pages, but it has preferred to emphasize officials’ efforts to control the damage to Israel’s reputation as news of the deadly arson emerged in the media. Thus we have found several stories about the arrests of Jewish extremists and many reports of Israeli outrage over this act of terrorism.
Today’s story was one more opportunity to inform readers of the full context in this disturbing story, but the Times has given us a diversionary slice of local life, omitting any reactions beyond that from the prime minister’s office and obscuring the facts surrounding the investigation.
Even in the most egregious examples of violence against Palestinians, the Times chooses to act as a protector of Israel, placing this goal above its mandate as the newspaper of record.
Shooting Children Becomes Israeli Policy
Netanyahu’s response to kids throwing rocks
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 8, 2015
I have become weary of the dancing around by politicians and denial by Jewish organizations over what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. That anyone can with a straight face deny that there is anything wrong with a nearly fifty year occupation and strangling of the Palestinians because they have been demonized as “terrorists” or possibly only because they are not Jews is abhorrent. A new United Nations report states that Gaza will be completely uninhabitable in five years. Palestinians get imprisoned by Israel and gassed or shot if they look sideways at their occupiers. Fanatical settlers tear up olive trees that have fed the locals for hundreds of years, steal their land, vandalize and burn their houses churches and mosques, even kill them and are only rarely pursued or punished. Israel is the ugly face of a fascist state and calling it apartheid is to minimize its criminality as it does not even necessarily seek to set up a parallel state for the Arabs it controls. A number of leading Israeli politicians and journalists seek to remove them completely.
All of that said, as a committed anti-interventionist, I have to believe both that what goes on between Israel and the Palestinians should pretty much be none of our business but for the fact that a powerful domestic lobby has forced us to be involved. Jews and Arabs probably would have resolved their differences by now if Washington had not coddled corrupt Palestinian leaders while simultaneously empowering Israel to make a lot of bad choices. To be sure our government should feel free to speak up whenever foreign governments behave badly, but the tendency to impose sanctions, which don’t work, intervene directly, or even invade to deal with regimes that do not conform to our standards has brought nothing but grief, most particularly over the past fifteen years. One might even reasonably argue that it is Washington’s lame brained interventions have themselves destabilized the Middle East and caused the terrorism and refugee problems emanating from that region to metastasize.
Which is not to say that Israeli politicians have not become adept at shooting themselves in their own feet before the court of world opinion, which is becoming increasingly engaged in what is going on. Just when one thinks that Benjamin Netanyahu cannot possibly morph into something more horrible he astounds the observer by doing just that.
Netanyahu’s most recent foray grew out of a late August incident on the West Bank. A series of photographs plus video footage from a protest in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh appeared in the media. They showed a masked IDF soldier trying to arrest a young boy accused of throwing stones, followed by scenes of his mother and teenage sister trying to rescue him. The pictures and video reveal a crying and struggling 11 year old Mohammed Tamimi, with his broken arm in a cast, being held in a headlock and sat upon by the soldier, armed with an assault rifle. The boy’s mother then intervened, pulling on the mask while Mohammed’s 15 year old sister joined in to bite the soldier’s wrist, compelling him to free the boy. The soldier released him, backed off and then threw a grenade at the family.
Predictably, Israel’s apologists complained that the Palestinians had attacked the soldier who was only defending himself and they quickly flooded the social media with claims that it was all a set-up, which they even dubbed “Pallywood.” And inevitably Benjamin Netanyahu joined in the debate, blaming the Arabs for what transpired, calling them “terrorists.” He stated that he would recommend that Israeli soldiers be authorized to fire live rounds to protect themselves in similar situations where children are throwing rocks. Netanyahu was reportedly responding to demands from settlers for more aggressive action against Palestinians, completely ignoring the reality that the Arabs have been defending themselves from settler harassment and worse and the soldiers represent an occupying army. Some in the Israeli media and government also advised that as the soldier had been “humiliated” by the Palestinian women he should have shot them, but Bibi did not go quite that far. At least not yet.
In the United States the hasbara jumped on both stories, notably in comments sections on Yahoo and on other sites using constant repetition of the same arguments, often to include repeated misspellings and poor syntax suggesting that their “information” came from a common source in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The names the hasbara commenters use to post are characteristically American sounding, similar to the Anglo names used by employees of the obnoxious call centers in India and the Philippines when they interrupt you at dinner time. In the hasbara comments rocks thrown by the Palestinian children were repeatedly and improbably described as “football sized.” In other pushback, a Reuters account of the Netanyahu hard line, possibly acting under pressure from Jewish groups, changed the key word in its headline from “shoot” young Palestinians to “target” them.
But in this case, Benjamin Netanyahu’s horse has already left the stable. His new orders to shoot Palestinian children have been de facto operational for some time with punishments rarer than hens’ teeth for those Israeli Defense Forces commandoes who pull their triggers on six year olds. That kind of killing has been almost routine, exhibited dramatically during last July’s execution of four young boys playing soccer on a beach in Gaza. The boys were killed by Israeli rockets in full sight of a number of international and media observers. The Israeli government subsequently conducted an “extensive investigation” that nevertheless did not interview many eye witnesses, to include a Guardian journalist. Not surprisingly it absolved itself from blame for the deaths.
And beyond that singular bit of barbarity, numerous other Palestinian children have also been abducted, imprisoned and murdered by the Israeli Army and border police. International monitors reckon that 2,061 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel since September 2000 versus 133 Israeli children murdered in the same time frame by Palestinians. The body count is deplorable on either side but at some point Netanyahu has to come to recognize that the constant barrage of videos, photos and eyewitness testimony recording the mindless brutality of the occupation of the West Bank will influence public opinion to such an extent that Israel will become everyone’s pariah state.
Recently more than 100,000 Britons signed a petititon demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested for war crimes on an upcoming visit to the UK while Israel’s resistance to the Iranian nuclear deal, when subjected to a United Nations vote, resulted in Tel Aviv lining up against the entire rest of the world including the United States. Pictures of children being manhandled by two hundred pound soldiers create a lasting impression, one that inevitably influences how people react when the subject of Israel comes up. Netanyahu may think that he can maintain course forever with the uncritical backing of the United States but forever is a long time and even in the U.S. things can change.
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Breast Cancer: Before You Consent
A new Unbekoming paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | September 18, 2026
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
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