Israeli forces destroy 100 trees to build separation wall in Beit Jala
Ma’an – August 17, 2015
BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces on Monday destroyed more than 100 trees as they leveled Palestinian-owned land in the Beit Jala area to make way for construction of the separation wall, locals said.
Israeli bulldozers reportedly destroyed the trees in an area known as Bir Onah, near the illegal settlement of Gilo.
The trees belonged to the Al-Shatla, Abu Eid, Abu Ghattas, Abu Saada, Khaliliya, and Abu Mohor families, locals said.
Witnesses told official Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli bulldozers razed an area of 30 dunams near Beit Jala for the expansion of the wall following a recent court ruling to change the route of the controversial infrastructure.
Residents in Beit Jala have been engaged in a nine-year legal battle against a 2006 Israeli military order to build the separation wall around Beit Jala and Har Gilo.
In 2013, 58 local landowners as well as nuns from the Salesian convent who joined their legal action, lost an appeal against the route of the separation wall.
Residents hoped that an Israeli Supreme Court decision in 2014 — which ordered the Israeli state to justify the route of the separation wall in Beit Jala’s Cremisan valley — was an indication that the proposed land seizure could be canceled, with a ruling in April this year in favor of a petition by locals creating further hope construction of the wall could be suspended.
However, in July the Israeli High Court approved construction of the wall using an alternative route, which would still separate the Salesian monastery and convent from the community it serves in Beit Jala.
The Cremisan Valley lies between the sprawling settlement of Gilo in annexed East Jerusalem, and the smaller West Bank settlement of Har Gilo, a few kilometers to the southwest.
Palestinians have long argued the the separation wall in Cremisan had no security benefit for Israel and was being constructed to annex land and connect illegal settlements in the area.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion calling on Israel to stop building the wall and dismantle or re-route sections that had been constructed.
The separation wall will be approximately 708 kilometers long when complete, nearly twice the length of the 1949 Armistice Line due to its meandering route, and 85 percent of the wall will be located in the occupied West Bank, according to UNOCHA.
Israeli forces punish Kafr Qaddum by damaging the water supply system
International Solidarity Movement | August 16, 2015
Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – On Saturday the 15th of August 2015, the villagers from Kafr Qaddum once again demonstrated against the blockage of the road leading to Nablus as well as the nearby Kedumin settlement. In solidarity with the local people there were a few international activists and journalists covering the demonstration.
The non-violent protest was immediately suppressed by the Israeli occupation forces shooting dozens of teargas canisters and live ammunition. Instead of the frequently used bad-smelling skunk water, the army drove a bulldozer into the village. This bulldozer destroyed the only water pipe in the village, leaving the people Kafr Qaddum without any connection to water until the pipe is repaired. Especially during the hot summer months, water is a scarce and essential good.
Murad Shtaiwi, one of the leaders of Kafr Qaddum Popular Committee, understands the damage to the water pipe as a way to collectively punish the village for its ongoing resistance. The costs of a new pipe have to be paid for by the municipality. As Murad explains, damaging the water pipe is a deliberate attempt by the Israeli army to suppress the support among the villagers to continue to protests and thus block future demonstrations.
Settlements and the settler state of ‘Judea and Samaria’
Al-Araby Al-Jadid | August 13, 2015
There is a clear contradiction between Israel’s demolition of two houses built by Jewish settlers in Beit El settlement following a judgement by the Supreme Court that they were built on private property belonging to a Palestinian, and the approval of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the construction of 300 new homes in the same settlement, one of a number of building projects across the occupied West Bank.
Such a contradictory stance was reflected in the Israeli prime minister’s condemnation of the arson attack on the home of the Dawabsheh family by Jewish settlers, which killed a Palestinian baby and his father, given that the building programmes approved by the Netanyahu government and a climate of state-sanctioned impunity not only entices settlers to move in but also encourages them to carry out such attacks. We should not, therefore, be deceived by the apparent awakening of Netanyahu’s conscience towards the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of settlers and settlements.
It is through the judgements passed by the Israeli courts that the legal system plays a role in expanding settlements and gives them the legitimacy that Israelis crave. If the courts call for what we know will only ever be a temporary removal of some violations (the two Beit El houses, for example) they are only trying to remind settlers that they need to follow official guidance on the best way to confiscate Palestinian land and uproot the Palestinian residents therefrom.
Netanyahu’s justice minister said that it is useful to destroy two houses to make it possible to establish dozens of others in the same place, albeit it is “regrettable” to have to demolish them in order to re-build them. The minister of education explained that the court can decide whatever it wants, for the judicial system has to issue judgements while the government gets to decide about ongoing construction. It is as if they are saying, “We will learn from our mistakes, and we will build settlements in accordance with the legal instructions booklet with which the government overrides some of its formal procedures, so that the courts’ task becomes to re-direct the government towards better methods and pretexts for the confiscation of land and expansion of settlements.”
The legal process for this is represented by the permissibility of confiscating land from its owners for security reasons, or to establish army bases; later, civilians — Jewish settlers only, of course — are allowed to live there, on the pretext that they are part of the security provision; then these bases are turned into settlements, which are gradually expanded, and they swallow the surrounding areas on the pretext that the settlers themselves need security. The Israeli courts can also provide Palestinian land for the settlers because their presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is a security necessity for the state.
A number of laws are available to the government which allow it to control Palestinian land as it wishes. The Closed Areas Law, for example, allows the military to close any area without giving any reason; the Law of Absentee Property, allows the confiscation of land that belongs to people who are not in residence, for whatever reason (they may just be travelling); and the Law of Fallow Land, which allows for the confiscation of land that has not been cultivated. The latter is one of the most unjust and ridiculous of laws, because the Israeli authorities declare certain areas to be closed and prevent the owners from reaching their land to cultivate it, and then the government confiscates the land on the basis that it is uncultivated.
The Oslo Accords did not address the issue of settlements and allocated more than 60 per cent of the West Bank to what is known as Area C, which is entirely under Israeli military administration. Settlements are the essence of Israel’s founding Zionist ideology, and they have expanded many times under peace negotiations; the Palestine Liberation Organisation has failed to extract any Israeli pledge to halt settlement activity or freeze it. The West Bank is filled with settlements housing more than 600,000 settlers — all illegal under international law — with 200,000 in Jerusalem alone. The settlement programme has dismembered the West Bank, making a two-state solution almost impossible to envisage and making it unlikely that Israel will ever withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory under its control.
In the process, Jewish settler groups and political parties have grown in number and influence; it is impossible to form a government in Israel without their support. Militant extremists amongst the settlers are responsible for attacks against Palestinians and their homes and farms. An estimated 1,000 such attacks take place every year, and include murder, beatings, the burning of crops and trees, arson attacks on buildings and restricting free movement. The latest of these attacks was the arson attack targeting the Dawabsheh family. The incident cannot be separated from the context of all other settler violence. Needless to say, all settlers are heavily armed and are provided with back-up and protection by the Israeli army, and encouragement from the state.
It is no longer a secret that ardent Zionists are talking about the creation of a settler state in what they call “Judea and Samaria” in an effort to thwart any attempt by the government to withdraw from any occupied territory or close settlements as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians. This has even been mentioned by Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet. Such a move would subject the West Bank to the control of the settlers, under the pretext that there is a dispute between residents of the West Bank; any “solution” in the occupied territories must therefore take into account the diversity of the population, even if the settlers have imposed their presence on the Palestinians in their own land.
It is enough for us to get alarmed to know that the proportion of Jewish settlers relative to the Palestinians in the West Bank exceeds the proportion of Jews to Arabs in 1948 when Israel was created. The Jewish settlers have the ability and influence to enable them to declare their own state, leaving the Israeli government free to claim that it is not responsible for what is happening there. That would, of course, be a disingenuous argument, given that it has created the settlements and settler-only access roads, and provided security and infrastructure for the settlers in the first place.
The West Bank is thus undergoing a serious Judaisation process as I write, and a major disaster is about to hit the Palestinians amid the near-complete absence and deadly inaction of the so-called Palestinian Authority. Regional Arab states and the international community are silent about what is happening before their eyes, which leaves the Israeli occupation government free to do what it wishes, and settlers free to declare their own state in the West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria. Is anyone going to respond, to stop the disaster before it takes place?
Translated by Moein Taher
Israeli settlers torch Bedouin tent near Ramallah
(MaanImages/Zakariyya al-Sidda)
Ma’an – August 13, 2015
RAMALLAH – Israeli settlers torched a Bedouin tent in the area of Ein Samiya near Kafr Malik village in northern Ramallah Thursday morning, local sources told Ma’an.
A group of Israeli settlers raided the village of Ein Samiya and threw flammable material on a Bedouin tent before the residents noticed and attacked the settlers, forcing them to flee the area.
An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed the attack but could give no further details.
The fire caused substantial damages to the tent but locals were able to put the fire out without any injuries, locals said.
Israeli settlers also sprayed “price tag” near the scene and signed slogans calling for the killing of Palestinians and expelling them out of their lands.
Graffiti sprayed in red paint also read “administrative revenge” alongside a crudely drawn Star of David.
The graffiti seemed to refer to the internment without charge — known as administrative detention — of three alleged Jewish extremists in the wake of a July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father Saad.
Locals said Israeli forces and police arrived to the area, investigated the incident, and dusted for fingerprints at the scene.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces had closed the Ein Samiya area road and prevented Palestinians from using it.
Recent weeks have seen a rise in Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
An 18-month-old Palestinian, Ali Dawabsha, was burned alive when alleged Israeli extremists firebombed their home at the end of last month in the village of Duma near Nablus.
The toddler’s father, Saad Dawabsha, succumbed to his wounds a week later, after suffering third degree burns on 80 percent of his body.
On Saturday morning, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home with firebombs and rocks in an area east of Tayba in the Ramallah district. The bombs landed outside of the house, causing no damage, locals told Ma’an.
Israeli settlers have carried out at least 120 attacks on Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the start of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli forces demolish 3-story building in Qalandiya industrial zone
Ma’an – August 11, 2015
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Tuesday morning demolished a three-story commercial building in the industrial zone of Qalandiya north of Jerusalem, the owner told Ma’an.
Mazin Abu Diab said that Israeli forces stormed the industrial zone and sealed it completely before bulldozers demolished a three-story building he owns in the area.
He said that the building consisted of two meeting halls, four offices and additional utilities measuring 220 square meters in total.
Abu Diab said that part of the building was constructed in 1971, and another part measuring 100 square meters was added on in 2013.
He said that he had tried to obtain the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities for the additional structure, but said that the Jerusalem municipality decided to demolish the entire building rather than give him a license.
Abu Diab said that he started to refurbish the building about five months ago.
According to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, 98 percent of Qalandiya’s territories are classified as Area C.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, building permits must be approved by the Israeli Civil Administration for Palestinians to build in Area C.
As a result of rarely-approved permits, however, Palestinian residents are often forced to build structures without permits, which are liable to be torn down later by Israeli forces.
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Israel has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967.
Israel bars footballers from leaving Gaza for West Bank match
MEMO | August 8, 2015
The Israeli authorities have stopped several players from Gaza’s Ittihad Al-Shejaiya football team from leaving the Gaza Strip via Israel’s Erez border crossing to play a scheduled match in the occupied West Bank.
Ittihad al-Shejaiya is slated to play the final match of the Palestinian Football Cup against West Bank-based football club Ahli Al-Khalil on Sunday.
In a Friday statement, Ittihad al-Shejaiya said its members would not leave the blockaded strip until the entire team was allowed out of the coastal territory.
Earlier this week, Ahli al-Khalil players entered the Gaza Strip for the first time in 15 years for a scheduled match with Ittihad Al-Shejaiya.
Due to the Israeli travel hindrances, however, the match – which ended in a goalless draw – was postponed until Thursday.
Thursday’s final was the first Palestinian match to be played in the Gaza Strip since 2000, when the Second Intifada – a Palestinian popular uprising – erupted against Israel’s decades-long occupation.
Although the uprising ended some five years later, the Gaza Strip has continued to groan under a tight Israeli-Egyptian blockade – first imposed in 2007 – that has deprived the enclave’s roughly two million inhabitants of most basic needs, including food and medicine.
Nablus residents protest Israeli water supply cut-off
Ma’an – August 5, 2015
NABLUS – Dozens of Palestinian residents of the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum staged a sit-in on Wednesday to protest the Israeli national water company cutting off its supply to the village, locals said.
Hamzeh Jumaa, the head of the village council, told Ma’an that the Israeli water company Mekorot cut off its supply on Sunday.
He said that the water supplies some 4,000 people living in Kafr Qaddum in Nablus, which he highlighted was an agricultural village.
He said that thousands of poultry birds had died due to a lack of water combined with extreme temperatures.
Jumaa said that they have not received any answer from Mekerot as to why the water was cut off or when it will be brought back.
The council head added that Mekerot provides water to all Palestinian villages and illegal Israeli settlements in the surrounding area.
Israelis, including settlers, have access to 300 liters of water per day, according to EWASH, while the West Bank average is around 70 liters, below the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum of 100 liters per day for basic sanitation, hygiene and drinking.
Kafr Qaddum has lost large swathes of its land to Israeli settlements, outposts and the separation wall, all illegal under international law.
According to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, more than 10 percent of the village’s land has been confiscated for the establishment of the settlements alone — Kedumim, Kedumim Zefon, Jit, and Givat HaMerkaziz.
Residents of Kafr Qaddum stage regular protests, including a weekly Friday march, to protest land confiscations as well as the closure of the village’s southern road by Israeli forces.
The road, which has been closed 13 years, is the main route to the nearby city of Nablus, the nearest economic center.
Israeli forces regularly use violent means to suppress the protests.
Update on Photo of “Israeli Officer Being Shielded from Stone-throwing Settlers”
Popular Struggle Coordination Committee Facebook page
Video showing the actual story not apparent in the viral picture of RHR Field Coordinator Zakaria Sadah and Qusra Mayor… returning policewoman to prevent second officer from shooting Palestinians…
“The bottom line is that, while settlers are calling this an intentional publicity stunt, and some Palestinians are angry with Zakaria and the Qusara mayor for having helped an Israeli policewoman. (The residents of Qusara and the hundreds of additional Palestinians he has helped are not angry with him.)
The fact is that Zakaria may very well have saved Palestinian lives, as another police officer was preparing to shoot. Zakaria is a one person command center who is often the first person to get a call when something happens. He is hated by settlers in the area for having foiled many attempts to attack, threaten, invade and trespass.
On this particular day, he was with reporters in Douma (where he had also been the first to arrive early last Friday morning, and help evacuate the wounded) when he received the call to come quickly to Qusra, because Israelis had descended from the Eish Kodesh outpost and were trying to prevent Palestinians from developing land in Area B by shouting and standing in front of the equipment.
Although the army now acknowledges that this is Area B, where they have no authority to stop land development, when Zakaria arrived, the army seemed to be siding with the Israelis.
In another video posted on Ynet, you see a settler claiming that Palestinians had thrown stones at him. just before the portion of the video here, you see a police officer speaking with the Israelis. This officer, then, comes over and attempts to arrest Palestinians. Quickly he starts using a taser and, then, the Palestinains do start throwing stones.
The frightened policewoman froze, began to cry, and got caught in between the Palestinians, on one side, and security forces with Israeli citizens on the other. She wasn’t hurt, but rocks were falling near her from one side, and tear gas and stun grenades from the other.
Sensing that she was in danger, the police officer in a t-shirt, whom we see later extending his hand to take the policewoman, prepared to shoot at Palestinians.
You can hear Zakaria shouting “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
You then see Zakaria and the Qusara mayor escorting the policewoman and the other officer extending his hand to draw her to him.”
http://rhr.org.il/eng/2015/08/the-context-behind-the-photo/
Updated from:
08/04/15 (Press TV/Al Ray) In this picture, which was posted on social media websites last week, two Palestinians can be seen protecting a female Israeli police officer from a group of stone-throwing Israeli settlers.
Shaul Golan, an Israeli photographer, took the picture during clashes between settlers and Palestinian farmers in the illegal Israeli settlement of Esh Kodesh in the West Bank on Saturday.
When Israeli police forces arrived on the scene to break up the clashes, the settlers started throwing rocks at them too.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settlers frequently attack local Palestinian villages and prevent farmers from reaching their lands.
The Israeli regime maintains a defiant stand on the issue of its illegal settlements on Palestinian land as it refuses to freeze settlement expansion. Tel Aviv has come under repeated and widespread international condemnation over the issue.
Israel denies West Bank-based football team entry to Gaza
Ma’an – August 3, 2015
JERUSALEM – The Israeli authorities on Sunday denied Palestinian footballers from the occupied West Bank visa permits to enter Gaza to face a rival team in the first leg of a cup competition, the Palestinian Football Association said.
The Israeli authorities denied the players and managers of Ahli al-Khalil, based in Hebron, visas to enter Gaza to play Ittihad al-Shujaiyeh at the Yarmouk stadium for the first leg of the Palestine Cup.
The PFA decried the move by Israeli authorities as “racist policies towards Palestinian sports.”
The entry permits were reportedly denied due to “security reasons,” the PFA added, without elaborating.
The match was scheduled for Tuesday and touted as a symbol of Palestinian unity after last year’s devastating conflict with Israel and months of political backbiting.
It would have been the first time the rival teams played each other in 15 years.
According to Gazan sports journalist Ashraf Matar, as many as 10,000 fans can pack into the Yarmouk stadium.
In May, PFA President Jibril Rajoub dropped a bid to suspend Israel from FIFA minutes before the bid was brought to the table.
The football governing body voted instead on an amendment proposing the formation of a committee to monitor the movement of Palestinian football players, Israeli racism, as well as the status of Israeli league teams based in illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
The last minute bid changes left FIFA members looking on in confusion as the PFA and Rajoub had for months been saying they would not succumb to pressure to drop the bid.
The move was also widely criticized by Palestinian political factions and civil society, who called for Rajoub’s resignation.
Routine restrictions placed on Palestinian players by Israeli authorities under the pretext of security has long hindered the Palestinian National Football team’s ability to play.
Current and former players have spoken of hours held at checkpoints, being shot at with live Israeli ammunition, the ongoing restriction of their movement, and rampant racist verbal abuse at football matches that the Israel Football Association has ignored.
AFP contributed to this report.
Number of administrative detainees doubles in Israeli jails
Palestine Information Center – July 27, 2015
RAMALLAH – The number of Palestinian administrative detainees held in Israeli jails without charge or trial has doubled within a year, Haaretz (Hebrew) newspaper reported Monday.
Since the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli soldiers in al-Khalil last summer, Israeli authorities notably intensified the use of administrative detention policy against Palestinians “due to the Military Advocate General’s decision to lower the requirements in such cases for holding people involved in terrorism.”
Israeli administrative detention order, based on a secret file which neither the detainee nor his lawyer are allowed to see, can be renewed more than once.
More than 1,000 administrative detainees were documented in 2003. The number had fallen significantly to 134 in August 2013, only to rise again to reach 473 in 2014 after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli soldiers.
There are currently 391 administrative detainees in Israeli jails … twice as many as were being held before the kidnapping process.
New York Times: Outcry Over Susiya Nothing but Clever PR
By Barbara Erickson | Times Warp | July 24, 2015
Susiya, a West Bank village under threat of demolition, has now made it into the pages of The New York Times news section, and we are permitted a view of how Israel wants us to see this disturbing story: All the fuss about Susiya is little more than the result of clever marketing on the part of the villagers.
Thus we find a story today by Diaa Hadid titled (in the online version) “How a Palestinian Hamlet of 340 Drew Global Attention.” This primes readers from the start to expect a tale of simple villagers who devised a winning media strategy, and it distracts from the real issue, which is nothing less than ethnic cleansing: Susiya is to be destroyed to make way for Jewish settlers.
High in her story Hadid writes, in a telling phrase, that “the cause of [this] tiny village” has become “outsized,” in other words overblown, as if Susiya, with its population of 300 or so, is not worth the fuss.
The village first got notice when “sympathetic” foreigners visited Susiya some 20 years ago and took up its cause, Hadid states. By that time the residents had been forced out of their original homes and were living near the centuries-old site that had belonged to their ancestors.
Jewish settlers had taken over the original village in 1986, she writes, and Israeli forces made them move on again them in 1990 “for unknown reasons.” They were expelled once more in 2001, according to Hadid, “as collective punishment over the shooting death of a Jewish settler.”
Her story omits a crucial detail: The authorities knew that the villagers were innocent of the killing but used the incident as an excuse to harass the Susiya residents once more. The Times account leaves the impression that a Susiya resident was responsible for the settler’s death.
Hadid quotes a staff member of B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, who notes that residents “have managed to place Susiya on the international agenda in ways that other villages have not managed to do,” and her story goes on to say that “years of advocacy appeared to pay off when Susiya’s residents began warning early this month that their village was under threat.”
As a result, the story reports, Susiya received visits from a European Union delegation, Israeli activists and American consular officials. Then, a week ago, the U.S. State Department mentioned Susiya in a press briefing and urged Israel to spare the village.
The Times story suggests that Susiya has received this backing because of its skill in winning attention, and by imposing this angle on the story, the newspaper is attempting to divert readers from the real issues at play: the fact that Israel’s treatment of the villagers is blatantly racist and defies the norms of international and humanitarian law.
Also missing is the context of occupation and dispossession that is crushing Susiya and other villages. Hadid fails to give any sense of this. She writes only that activists have used the village as a symbol of how Israel “has sought to maintain control over large parts of the occupied West Bank.”
We find the word “occupied” here, as usual in Times reporting, but it is devoid of meaning. Readers do not hear that the West Bank is Palestinian territory; that Israel is there as an invading military force; and that the settlements violate international law, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its own population into the foreign territory.
The Times story makes no reference to international law, but it does quote an Israeli military spokesman who says Susiya “was built illegally.” Thus Hadid emphasizes the pretext of legality Israel draws over its defiance of international norms while she ignores the flagrant breaches of the Geneva Convention and other standards.
Readers can pick up some revealing details in the story: the ousted villagers’ descriptions of sleeping outside “in the wild, in the rain,” the fact that they can no longer access two- thirds of their original land because of the settlers, the expectation that if Susiya goes, other vulnerable villages will also fall to Israel’s greed for Palestinian land.
But the story glosses over these details to present the Susiya’s case as above all a successful publicity effort. The Times would have us believe that the real story here is how the village became an “outsized” international cause, through “years of advocacy.”
Susiya is just one of many villages in Israel’s Negev and in the occupied West Bank where Israel is determined to ethnically cleanse certain areas of their indigenous inhabitants and install Jewish residents in their place. Times readers are finally learning about Susiya only because international attention has forced the newspaper to acknowledge the issue.
The village should have been known to readers long before now, just as they should also know of dozens more facing annihilation: Al Araqib, Umm Al Kher and Khirbet Yarza, to name just a few. In the South Hebron Hills alone, where Susiya is located, some 30 villages are faced with demolition.
But even now the Times can’t just tell the story of a village nearly helpless under the weight of Israeli might, a community faced with extinction after centuries of living on the land. Instead we find an effort to play down the tragedy, to present it as an overblown cause, not really worth our concern.
Save Susiya: Israeli Threat to Demolish Village Finds a Back Door to the NY Times
By Barbara Erickson | Times Warp | July 23, 2015
The New York Times has finally done the right thing and informed readers of Israel’s plan to destroy an entire village in the West Bank. This is good to see, but the move exposes a significant fault line in the newspaper: The foreign desk and Jerusalem bureau have been the gatekeepers here, avoiding their responsibilities in reporting the story.
The piece appears on the op-ed page under the byline of one of the threatened villagers—Nasser Nawaja, community organizer and a researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. It’s a good article, summarizing the sad history of Susiya and the resistance to Israel’s plan, which comes from local and international supporters.
Nawaja’s article includes a quote from U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby made during a press briefing last week. Kirby was clearly prepared to address the issue and ask Israel to back off. This in itself should have prompted the news section of the paper to address the story, but the Times remained silent. (See TimesWarp 7-20-15.)
Until today the only mention of Susiya’s plight came in a Reuters story that the Times published earlier this week without posting it on the Middle East or World pages. Readers had no way to find it unless they specifically searched for it, by typing in the key word “Susiya,” for instance.
The story of Susiya and its struggle to survive has been reported in news outlets since 2013. The United Nations and other groups, such as Rabbis for Human Rights, have issued statements and press releases on Susiya; the European Union, and now the State Department, have spoken out; but none of this prompted the Times to do what good journalism demands and assign a reporter to the story.
The Times’ treatment of Susiya is reminiscent of a similar story, which emerged during the attacks on Gaza in 2012: In one day Israel targeted and killed three journalists traveling in marked cars, but the Times article describing events that day simply said that “a bomb” had killed two men, even though an officer confirmed the army’s responsibility.
Times readers learned the full story only when columnist David Carr wrote of the journalists’ deaths days later in the Business section. He titled his piece “Using War As a Cover to Target Journalists,” and he did the reporting that was missing in the news section. (See TimesWarp 2-17-15.)
Carr gave the details of the killings, and quoted the lieutenant colonel who affirmed the attacks on the journalists. He then wrote, “So it has come to this: killing members of the media can be justified by a phrase as amorphous as ‘relevance to terror activity.’”
When Carr died earlier this year, the Times was filled with tributes to his work, but none of the articles mentioned this fine moment of his career. The story of the assassinated journalists never again emerged in the newspaper.
Susiya may have a different fate, however. Now that its name has appeared in the back pages of the newspaper, we may find that the story flickers to life in the news section as well. All things are possible, even in the Times.
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The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
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- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
