Israeli forces erasing Palestinian lives as if they never existed – 23-year old gunned down in Hebron
International Solidarity Movement | October 28, 2015
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – At 10.30pm last night, Tuesday 27th October 2015, a Palestinian man who has been identified as 23 year old Hammam Said was shot in al-Kahlil (Hebron) at the Gilbert checkpoint, directly outside the ISM apartment. The man was in the H2 neighborhood of Tel Rumeida which was otherwise quiet at the time.
No commotion, shouting or running was heard prior to the six gun shots echoing suddenly through the streets and no other security risk could otherwise be perceived.
Immediately following the incident, Israeli forces, who are permanently posted at the checkpoint for 24 hours a day, surrounded the body of the fallen man. Within minutes settlers from the nearby illegal settlement arrived and were allowed to approach and photograph the scene. Further forces then arrived, including soldiers and several police vehicles. An Israeli ambulance arrived but no medical aid was delivered to Said, instead paramedics stood close to the bleeding man and watched passively as he died.
Said was then stripped of his clothes, revealing that the gunshot wounds were all on the back of his body. He was then placed in a bodybag and the street was cleaned. By midnight the scene was totally cleared of all evidence of the incident.
A short video shows Hammam after he was stripped of his clothes by Israeli forces:
Eyewitnesses reported that no knife was originally witnessed on the scene, though one appeared after the soldiers surrounded the body. “I cannot say for sure they put the knife there, but I know even 5 seconds after the shooting I looked, I really looked, and I could see nothing. I am 99% sure of it. But afterwards, it was there.” She added “if an attack was planned at this location it wouldn’t even make sense. He was still 20 meters from the soldiers or checkpoint, in the middle of the night. Why would he wave the knife around?”
Extrajudicial executions of this kind are illegal in international law and there is no evidence that warning or deescalating force was applied before the lethal shooting of Said. The checkpoint has a camera positioned above the street and the International Solidarity Movement is demanding that Israeli forces release the raw footage to prove an association between the man and the knife allegedly found at the scene.
An hour and a half after the incident, an eyewitness reported that “it is like nothing happened, there is no bloodstain, nothing but a dog sniffing the ground. The street is eerily quiet and there are just the normal number of soldiers at the checkpoint.” They added that “they cannot really feel like there is a security threat here right now.” An hour after that an illegal settler vehicle was parked by the location of the shooting, playing loud festive music.
Listen to audio of settlers playing party songs after Hammam Said’s blood was washed off the ground:
Said’s death marks four Palestinian deaths in Hebron within two days, and brings the total death toll within the Occupied Territories of Palestine to 64 since the start of October. Hebron has been a centre of the rising tension in the West Bank, and today witnessed extreme suppression of peaceful protests in Bab Al-Zawwiya, when innumerable rounds of teargas were shot directly at dense crowd of demonstrators who were demanding the release of Palestinian corpses killed by Israeli forces.
It is anticipated that with allegations that Said had a knife that no investigation will be launched, yet another Palestinian will be branded as a terrorist, and as a final injustice another family will be denied their rightful mourning rites.
In The NY Times, Israeli Injuries Make Headlines, Palestinian Deaths Are Footnotes
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | October 27, 2015
These are the last moments of 17-year-old Hebron schoolgirl Dania Irsheid, as described by witnesses: Raising her hands above her head, terrified by the shouts of Israeli police, Dania cried out, “I don’t have a knife.” Immediately, one shot hit the ground between her legs; then a hail of bullets followed, and she fell.
A video shows her lying motionless, her white headscarf stained with blood, as police mill about but make no attempt to assist her. The terrible scene took place at a checkpoint near Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque on Sunday.
Her death merited a brief and anonymous mention in The New York Times. Far into a story about the changing tactics of Palestinian Authority security forces, we find this single sentence: “Elsewhere in the West Bank, an Israeli police officer fatally shot a 17-year-old Palestinian girl who tried to stab him, The Associated Press reported.”
Witnesses at the scene said she had no knife and had already passed through two metal detectors and revolving doors before opening her book bag for inspection at the mosque site. Israeli police, however, released a statement saying she was a “female Arab terrorist” and had been “neutralized.”
The Times says nothing of these contradictions, and it has maintained a resounding silence over other Palestinian deaths, including the shooting of two Hebron schoolboys who were killed last week, also in disturbing and disputed circumstances. (See TimesWarp 10-21-15).
On the other hand, the newspaper has taken pains to draw readers’ attention to an alleged stabbing attack on an Israeli citizen, which left the victim “moderately wounded” and resulted in the death of one Palestinian and the arrest of another.
The story appeared online five days ago, on Oct. 22, and was still present on the Middle East page through most of today’s online edition (it disappeared only after this post came out) under the headline “Jewish Man Stabbed in Israel by Palestinians as Violence Continues.” The article, touted so tenaciously on the Times website, is a mere 270 words and sketchily reported, but it outlasted other breaking news from the region with unusual longevity.
The death of Dania Irsheid merited no headline in the Times while the “moderate wounding” of an Israeli man was repeatedly flagged for online viewers. It is clear from this (and many other choices they make) that the newspaper’s editors have an agenda of their own, one that is inconsistent with accepted journalistic standards.
Israel is to be the perennial victim. Palestinians are to be the aggressors. Any deviation from this narrative causes dissonance at the Times.
Thus we find no stories about the harried and fearful lives of Palestinians in Hebron, even though the situation cries out for a close look at their ordeal. (Some 16 Palestinians have been killed in the city since the beginning of this month, out of 44 in the West Bank overall and 17 in Gaza, according to the International Middle East Media Center). Nor do we find any serious examination of the brutal occupation and colonization of Palestine that fuels the resistance.
We do, however, find a Times story about youthful Palestinian attackers inspired by social media, and we find an article focused on Palestinian songs with a nationalistic and sometimes violent bent. Both these articles appeared in print on page 1, and both conveniently fit the portrait of Palestinians as aggressors.
When evidence to the contrary cannot be ignored (as in the arson deaths of three Palestinian family members this summer), the Times turns to damage control. Thus, we have the newspaper attempting to undermine video evidence that shows Israeli security forces making false accusations or killing Palestinians who pose no threat.
This was the purpose of a story with the disingenuous headline, “Conflicting Accounts of Jerusalem Strife Surround a Wounded Arab Boy.” The point of this article is not what it purports to be, an examination of two different narratives, but an effort to debunk videos and witness accounts challenging the statements of Israeli security forces.
The Times devotes 1,600 words to telling us that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abba and others got it wrong when they said Ahmad Manasra, 13, caught on video as he lay bleeding in Jerusalem, had been killed. He had only been wounded, the Times notes, and he is now being cared for in hospital.
The Times (and Israeli officials) are using this error to claim that Palestinian testimonies cannot be trusted. Some video evidence of Israeli misconduct is irrefutable, however, and monitoring groups outside of Palestine have vouched for them, calling for an end to the use of excessive force and extrajudicial executions.
Moreover, the video of Ahmad is shocking in its revelations of Israeli settler brutality even though the boy eventually survived. And beyond this, the Times story itself makes a significant error in claiming that the boy is shown in hospital being “spoon-fed by a nurse.”
In fact, it was an attorney, Tareq Barghout, who held the spoon, as the man later testified. Barghout also said Ahmad was shackled to the bed and suffered constant verbal abuse from hospital staff. The Times story, however, included none of this information.
Israeli officials made much of the error over Ahmad’s survival, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it “the new big lie,” and the Times obligingly followed suit. The overblown story is consistent with Times efforts to support the Israeli narrative and to discredit the testimony of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, three more died in Hebron on Monday, and the Times has once again failed to take notice. Palestinian deaths are—at best—footnotes in the newspaper of record while Israeli injuries are headlines. This is the unspoken but evident policy at The New York Times.
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Palestinian MP among 34 issued administrative detention orders
Ma’an – October 27, 2015
RAMALLAH – Israeli authorities issued administrative detention orders against 34 Palestinian prisoners, including a Hamas-affiliated lawmaker, for periods of three to six months on Tuesday, a prisoners’ rights group said.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society told Ma’an that some of the detainees have previously spent years in administrative detention, an Israeli practice that allows for internment without trial or charge indefinitely.
The society said that Hamas-affiliated lawmaker Hassan Youssef had been issued a six-month sentence under administrative detention.
Youssef, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Palestine’s parliament, has been imprisoned by Israel on several occasions previously.
Most recently, he was released from Israeli custody in June after spending a year without trial or charge.
Since the start of October Israeli forces have detained around 1,000 Palestinians, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.
The 34 newly ordered administrative detainees are listed as follows with the periods of their detainment:
1. Shaher Jamil al-Hih, Hebron, 6 months.
2. Rasmi Jihad Khatib, Hebron, 3 months.
3. Idris Youssef Hassan, Ramallah, 3 months.
4. Hussein Saleh Abu Aker, Bethlehem, 6 months.
5. Ali Abd al-Karim Eweiwi, Hebron, 6 months.
6. Sadeq Muhammad Siyaj, 6 monyhs.
7. Jaafar Muhammad Maloul, Jenin, 3 months.
8. Mahmoud Wajih Qatt, Nablus, 6 months.
9. Nihad Muhammad al-Dib, Hebron, 4 months.
10. Maher Nathmi Jaradat, Hebron, 6 months.
11. Ashraf Muhammad Zaid, Jenin, 3 months.
12. Hatem Hafeth shawamreh, al-Ram, 3 months.
13. Mahmoud Imad Shawqi, Bethlehem, 6 months.
14. Ahmad Jamal Abu Jalaghif, Bethlehem, 4 months.
15. PM Hassan Youssef, Ramallah, 6 months.
16. Wissam Walid Khashan, Jenin, 6 months.
17. Munir Othman Zahran, Ramallah, 4 months.
18. Diyaa Aziz Imla, Hebron, 6 months.
19. Sami Hassan Shqeir, Ramallah, 6 months.
20. Mujahed Haitham Qawasmeh, Hebron, 3 months.
21. Ahmad Jamal Hreimi, Bethlehem, 6 months.
22. Abd al-Ghani Hassan Hammad, Ramallah, 3 months.
23. Ibrahim Khalid Ghafri, Ramallah, 3 months.
24. Muhammad Hani Suman, Bethlehem, 6 months.
25. Ibrahim Muhammad Sweiti, Hebron, 3 months.
26. Hussam Muhammad Abu Dayyeh, Bethlehem, 6 months.
27. Muhammad Atta Zahran, Qalqiliya, 6 months.
28. Muhammad Jamal Youssef, Ramallah, 6 months.
29. Ibrahim Abd al-Rahman Khasib, Ramallah, 3 months.
30. Fayiz Saad al-Rajabi, Hebron, 6 months.
31. Taysir Taleb Abu Snineh, Hebron, 6 months.
32. Diyaa Abd al-Rahim Abu Daoud, Hebron, 6 months.
33. Ahmad Hassan Nasr, Ramallah, 4 months.
34. Fadi Muhammad Srour, Hebron, 6 months.
Israel Takes On the First Amendment
Free speech except regarding Palestine
Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 27, 2015
I always enjoy reading the Washington Post each morning even though it drives my blood pressure up to stratospheric levels. Its embrace of the inexorability of a fabulous new Camelot-like Clinton White House is thrilling to witness as it unfolds, but it is the promotion of the neocon Israeli narrative that is most exciting. On October 23rd, the op-ed section outdid itself with a piece “Free speech is flunking out on campus” by Catherine Rampell, who described the increasingly sorry state of first amendment rights on politically correct American university campuses. Blacks, LGBTers, women and victims of sexual assault were all identified as constituencies demanding “safe spaces” resulting in curtailment of free speech but somehow Israel and its supporters screaming anti-Semitism at every drop of the hat were left out in spite of the fact that Jews on campus have been both extremely and successfully active in taking political action to pressure universities whenever they claim to feel “threatened.”
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians has again reached a boiling point. Palestinian frustration over Israel’s fifty year occupation of the West Bank and its continued theft of Arab land and resources has produced an uprising of mostly young Palestinians that is being called in some circles a new intifada. The conflict is playing out with knives and bullets in Palestine and Israel but it is also being fought internationally in the media, through cultural and economic boycotts and, most pointedly, at many colleges and universities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu realizes that the pressure on Israel is, for the first time, serious and has not hesitated to lie outrageously about the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. According to Netanyahu, the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem gave the idea to Hitler, presumably justifying whatever the Israelis of today choose to do to suppress the current unrest.
Israel has inevitably responded brutally, producing a death toll of significantly more Palestinians than Israelis. Netanyahu has been referring to the protesters as terrorists and has issued new rules of engagement which permit soldiers to shoot stone throwers. Israeli plainclothes soldiers and police have been identified as infiltrating the protesters while pretending to be Palestinians, urging the young Arabs to hurl stones before pulling out concealed handguns to beat protesters, shoot them and make arrests.
In Gaza five teenagers were shot dead by Israeli soldiers for the crime of coming too close to the separation barrier, which government press releases described as the “frontier.” Killing teenagers in Gaza is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel as they are fenced in and have in reality no way to actually confront the Israeli border guards. On the day following the killing of the boys a mother and infant were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Within Israel an Eritrean was even mistakenly killed by Israeli police because he was reportedly acting oddly.
Because of a hostile media’s self-censorship buttressed by an unfriendly political class, here in the United States one of the few places in which the Palestinians can exercise something like free expression relating to their national aspirations is on college campuses. Israel and its powerful supporters understand that gap in their ability to control the narrative and are doing everything possible to shut down the option.
Friends of Israel, as ever, work from the same playbook orchestrated by the large donors who fund them. They claim that anti-Israel protests on campus to include even letters to the editor in college newspapers constitute a “threatening environment” for Jewish students. The argument is based on a fundamental falsehood, which is that criticism of the actions of a foreign government is equivalent to hatred for the dominant religion of that country, that religion is exactly the same as nationality. Applying that notion liberally would mean that criticism of any country where there is de facto or de jure a dominant state religion would be unacceptable speech. If applied liberally countries spanning the globe would be exempt from criticism, to include not only Israel but also Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But this is not about Christian or Muslim sensitivities. It is all about protection against insult for Jews and it relies on a perception of perpetual victimhood, which can be and is produced on demand to stifle any criticism that might be regarded by some as objectionable. Indeed, if calls for violence directed against Jews as a race or religion were occurring pleas for some form of mitigation might have some very slim cogency, but campus protest movements have very carefully and deliberately avoided falling into that trap. And it might also be pointed that on many campuses a considerable proportion of the dissenters are themselves Jews who are appalled by Israeli behavior.
Criticism of Israel does not just include complaining about the policies of that country’s government. It also has inevitably involved the so-called BDS movement, “boycott-divest-and sanction” which aims to make Israel pay an economic and social price for its behavior, similar to the pressure that was once directed against apartheid South Africa. This second narrative has been cleverly woven into the complaints about “harassment,” labeling any campus calls for BDS ipso facto anti-Semitic and “hurtful.” School authorities have generally been accommodating to claims made by Jewish groups that students are feeling “threatened,” obstructing and intimidating critics of Israel and denying tenure to faculty members who are seen as troublemakers. They have looked the other way as organizations like Canary Mission began exposing college students on its website who are reported to be “anti-Freedom, anti-American and anti-Semitic” with the deliberate intention of damaging their future employment prospects.
Between January 2014 and June 2015 there were more than 300 incidents on 65 college campuses in 24 states involving intimidation or prevention of protests against Israel. Students at Northeastern University distributing flyers at dorms were interrogated by campus police and had their group suspended by college authorities. Some were disciplined. And faculty members have also been on the receiving end, with Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois, denied a teaching position after he sent tweets complaining about Israel’s 2014 assault against Gaza which killed more than 500 children.
Richard Blum, a member of the University of California’s regents, has demanded that students who criticize Israel be suspended for expelled because they are “intolerant,” exhibiting anti-Semitic bigotry. Blum is the multimillionaire husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein has also hinted that she could have the government look into possible violations occurring at federally funded institutions. The definition of bigotry being promoted by Blum and Feinstein conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and includes in its purview what are increasingly being referred to as “speech crimes.” The university regents are currently considering new language for their statement of policy against intolerance on campus but are under intense pressure from Jewish organizations that are lobbying them aggressively.
Many of the groups involved in the harassment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators are perhaps not surprisingly not indigenous to the colleges themselves. Stand With Us (SWU) and “Campus Maccabees” are national organizations well-funded by billionaire Sheldon Adelson and SWU has close ties to the Israeli government as does the lawfare center Shurat HaDin, which has filed lawsuits against Muslim and progressive groups on campus. Predictably, Congress and state legislatures have gotten into the act, seeking to pass laws that make it impossible for colleges and universities supported by taxpayer money to fund student groups that call for boycotts. The bills are drafted in terms of rejecting all selective boycotts but they are really all about Israel and everyone knows it. The fact that advocating voluntary boycotts is very much a part of one’s First Amendment rights appears to be irrelevant.
How to deal with it? The brouhaha is impossible to ignore as the advocates for Israel are relentlessly in one’s face even when the argument is being constructed in a restrained fashion and purposely framed so as not to offend Jews. It is consequently necessary to disarticulate being Israeli from being Jewish. Judaism is a religion and Israel is a foreign country. And it is important to recognize that legitimate direct criticism of Jewish groups for their involvement in pressuring universities should not itself be off limits. If the organizations self-identify as Jewish and they are attempting to restrict the discussion on Israel contrary to the First Amendment they become fair game. The First Amendment exists, after all, to permit free and open discussion of all issues and if some Jewish individuals and organizations are mobilizing to deny fundamental American rights on behalf of a foreign nation the rest of us have the responsibility to object forcibly and to make transparent just who is doing what to whom.
‘Strategic depopulation’ of Syria likely cause of EU refugee crisis – Assange
RT | October 27, 2015
The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.
Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.
“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.
The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that …[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.
Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed.
Syria isn’t the only case of migration being used as a weapon in recent history; during the Iraq War, Sweden told the US that “the acceptance of Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution,” according to cables.
The WikiLeaks founder said that it’s a “disgrace” that the US refuses to take in Syrian refuges because it’s Washington who should be held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe and making EU states close its borders with one other.
“The situation comes about as a result of the US, UK and French policy in the Middle East together with the behavior of US regional allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel… and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.
“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.
Meanwhile any of Assad’s attempts to battle terrorism and the expansion of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) strength were presented as a demonstration of weakness and “an example of [the] Syrian government not having full control over its territory to encourage the government overthrow,” the whistleblower added.
Assange stressed that the people in America have nothing to gain from the Syrian conflict, but “only particular factions that pushed for it” might believe that they will benefit in the end.
“Of course, the CIA perceives they have a benefit. They create a problem and then they’re given a greater budget to clean the problem up. Similarly, with the contractors, arms dealers and arms manufacturers. If there’s no problem then their budgets are cut. So they create problems,” Assange explained.
By meddling with Syria, Washington also pursued “a grand area strategy to weaken Hezbollah, to allow Israel greater control of Golan Heights, maybe a buffer zone as well; to knockout (Syria) a regional ally of Iran; to knockout the last Russian base that’s left outside the former Soviet Union in Tartus; to create a path for a gas pipe that is proposed pass is from Qatar to Saudi and up through Syria to Europe, which will compete with Russian gas,” added Assange.
US interference has led to Syria being ensnared in a bloody conflict since 2011. Over 220,000 people have been killed, according to UN estimates. Government forces have fought various militant groups throughout the conflict, including the so-called moderate opposition backed by the West as well as the jihadist IS and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups.
In late September, Russia began airstrikes against the terrorists in Syria at the request of President Bashar Assad, allowing government forces to launch a large-scale offensive and recognize a turning point in the conflict.
J. K. Rowling and the Prisoners of Israel
By Omar Robert Hamilton | CounterPunch | October 26, 2015
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.”
— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007.
How disappointing to see JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel signing this nefarious letter calling for the need for ‘cultural bridges’ with Israel.
The letter, assembled by a new organisation calling itself Culture for Co-Existence, is a litany of the tired tropes and doublespeak employed by Israel and her apologists.
It opens, point blank, saying, “We do not believe cultural boycotts are acceptable.” Within two sentences the reader finds herself in the patrician hallways of the British conservative, being simply instructed what to think, what is polite. Cultural boycotts are never acceptable? Ever?
The lazy argumentation continues, with the limp disbelief that “the letter you published accurately represents opinion in the cultural world in the UK.” This is in reference to a letter published by Artists For Palestine UK in which 1,000 UK cultural workers pledged to boycott Israel until it reverses its policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
The letter struggles on with a series of meaningless assertions about the need to “inform and encourage dialogue” to “further peace.” When you’re dealing with the mechanized destruction of an entire people by one of the most technologically advanced and diplomatically shielded militaries in the history of mankind then talk, in 2015, of ‘cultural engagement’ is nothing more than further cover for Israel’s continuing colonization of what remains of Palestine.
Let us consider what the last twenty years of dialogue, mutual engagement and negotiation have brought us. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 the Israeli government has constructed 53,000 homes to house 500,000 new settler-colonists in the West Bank, has subjected Gaza to a medieval siege for over 6 years, destroyed 15,000 Palestinian homes, expelled 11,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem and divided the West Bank into 167 segregated population zones that are divided from each other by a 440km concrete wall and 522 military checkpoints. It has suppressed a popular uprising and launched four major offensives that have left over 7,000 Palestinians dead.
Israel, for all of those years (and we’re not even going back to 1948 here), has enjoyed full diplomatic and economic relations with all the world’s major players, it is at the centre of global trade in arms, hi-tech and diamonds. It competes in European sporting and musical competitions and enjoys European trade benefits. It has the US Congress in thrall to its every whim and has an army of lobbyists at work in every Western capital. Israel does not suffer from a shortage of ‘bridges.’
Words such as ‘dialogue,’ ‘peace’ and ‘bridges’ are hallmarks of the peace industry that has built up around Palestine in these years since 1993. Development money was released in reward for the PLO signing Oslo and foreign NGOs quickly came pouring into the West Bank armed with a new lexicon designed for annual reports and donor drives and an ultimate perpetuation of conflict and salaries. In this new language ‘peace’ means ‘submission’ and ‘dialogue’ means ‘silence.’ It’s not an Apartheid Wall, it’s a Separation Barrier – sometimes even fence. It’s not a ‘massacre’ it’s ‘fighting.’ The word justice is nowhere to be found. When Rowling’s letter states that “cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change” one can only applaud the crisp professional meaninglessness of it.
Who do we have to thank for this exercise in euphemistic insincerity?
They call themselves ‘Culture for Co-Existence’ and the coordinators include: an Executive Board member of One Family Israel, ‘a leading support organisation that deals with victims of terror in Israel’; the executive director of Friends of Israel Educational Foundation; an Israeli software designer whose Facebook profile picture is a big Star of David and an investment banker who assists campaigns for the charity Jewish Care.
Surely the Culture of Co-Existence Clan is missing something? Could they not find a single House Arab to sign on with them? Or did they decide that wasn’t even necessary?
Who exactly are they planning on co-existing with?
And then you realise. They are not actually talking about dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. They are talking about dialogue between themselves and Israel. The Palestinians are irrelevant. Peace, here, means being left at peace to keep doing business with the last apartheid state of the modern world. Dialogue and cultural exchange, in this lexicon, means that if you speak out about Israel then you can exchange your job for another one. In just the last week both the US State Department and MSNBC have had to retract statements that fell short of the Israel lobby’s standards. What chance, then, do independent institutions like London’s Tricycle Theatre have to exercise their moral right to refuse funding from an apartheid state? The answer: none. Because, remember, according to JK Rowling, cultural boycotts are never acceptable. A travelling troupe of KKK improvistas wants to ‘re-interpret’ a lynching in your school’s theatre to show the other side of the story? Right this way, sir. A cultural boycott would only single out white men from Mississippi unfairly when the world is so variously filled with wrong.
The Tricycle Theatre, like several politicians, popstars and athletes, was laid siege to last year when it tried to turn down Israeli government funding. They were quickly dialogued into submission and bridges were forced onto them in a manner reminiscent of the British Opium Wars.
Considering that Ms Rowling’s trade is in language it is deeply surprising to see her name attached to such a letter. Clearly this Co-Existence Coterie, which consists of her agent and two trustees of her charity, Lumos, came into being entirely for her signature. Many of their fans hope, though, that Ms Rowling and Ms Mantel reconsider their position and remove their names from this document. It is nothing more than a plea to allow Israel to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Economic and cultural isolation worked to end apartheid in South Africa and it can end it in Palestine too. If it is peace that people actually want, they have to recognize that it can only come with justice.
Omar Robert Hamilton is a filmmaker, writer and a producer of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature.
Netanyahu Proposes Cutting Off 80,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | October 26, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a recent Cabinet meeting, proposed revoking the residency rights of 80,000 Jerusalemites, which would mean that the people of Sho’afat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab, as well as other neighborhoods, would be cut off from the rest of Jerusalem.
The proposal was considered by the Israeli Cabinet in their recent meeting, but no decision was made.
Already, the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank have been severed from Jerusalem due to the Israeli construction of a massive Wall over the past 13 years. The Wall has annexed large sections of Palestinian land and made them a de facto part of the state of Israel, in direct violation of the responsibilities of an occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel’s government signed the Convention in 1957, requiring it to provide for the needs of civilian populations under occupation. The Convention also requires that an Occupying Power must not transfer any civilians into the land it has militarily occupied. But Israel has transferred over half a million people into settlements constructed on Palestinian land that was militarily occupied, then illegally seized, since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights began in 1967.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves. Now, under the Israeli Prime Minister’s proposal, residents of those enclaves would lose their residency rights altogether.
Israel has an identity card system for the residents of Jerusalem that is completely unique in the world. Jewish Israelis who live in Jerusalem or in paramilitary colonies in the West Bank are afforded full Israeli citizenship. But Palestinians who live on their ancestral land in Jerusalem are given a different kind of identity card, which ensures that they have far fewer rights than Jewish residents of the city.
If a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, for example, were to travel abroad for more than a year, Israel would consider that person to be an ‘absentee property owner’, and would seize their land and home and annex it to Israel, denying the Palestinian owner the right to return to their home. The rule only applies to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, and not to Jewish residents of the city.
According to the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahranoth, following the construction of new walls and barricades in recent weeks to further separate and segregate Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from Jewish residents, the Israeli Prime Minister told his Cabinet ministers, “We need to examine the possibility of canceling their [Palestinian Jerusalemites] residency. There needs to be a discussion about it.”
Some Israeli ministers voiced opposition to the plan, not because they were concerned about the Palestinian Jerusalemites losing their residency rights, but because they believe such a division would “give up territory” that some Israelis believe should belong to Israel.
That claim is based on a military takeover of the land by Israeli forces. Neither international law nor signed agreements recognize military takeover of land as a legitimate way of expanding state territory.
Gaza journalists say Israeli forces ‘deliberately target’ media
Ma’an – October 25, 2015
GAZA CITY – Palestinian journalists across the Gaza Strip, who work for different Palestinian, Arab and international news agencies, are reporting that Israeli troops have “deliberately targeted” media while covering clashes between young Palestinian men and Israeli forces near the border fence between the coastal enclave and Israel.
Palestine TV reporter Sali al-Sakni told Ma’an on Sunday she and her crew had deliberately stayed away from the center of clashes near al-Bureij refugee camp, but that they were still “showered with tear gas” while covering the clashes.
She added that dozens of other reporters and photojournalists “wearing helmets and flak-jackets with ‘PRESS’ marked clearly,” were also attacked with tear gas in the area. Al-Sakni said three tear gas canisters were fired directly at her crew.
Similarly, cameraman of Palestine Today news agency Dawood Abu al-Kas was hit with a rubber-coated bullet in the foot while covering clashes near the border opposite to the Israeli Kibbutz of Nahal Oz in the northeast Gaza Strip.
“I was trying to capture photos while standing near an ambulance more than 300 meters away from the border fence when I was shot,” al-Kas told Ma’an.
Al-Kas highlighted that he was wearing a flak-jacket marked “PRESS” during the incident.
Al-Kas said that having been shot would not deter his efforts to “expose the crimes Israeli occupation commits against the Palestinian people.”
The deputy speaker of the Union of Gaza Journalists, Tahsin al-Astal, said Israeli assaults against journalists are consistent with Israeli violations of Palestinian rights in general.
“The Israeli occupation carries out systematic assaults against journalists who work in the field to prevent them from telling the truth about the crimes the occupation forces are committing against the Palestinian people,” al-Astal said.
“These serious breaches are classified war crimes and violations to international treaties and conventions,” he said.
Al-Astal added that the Union of Gaza Journalists, “has updated the International Federation of Journalists of the terrorism against Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.”
The IFJ, he said, is expected to issue a press release condemning “Israeli crimes and breaches against our people.”
Settler shoots, critically injures Palestinian near Gush Etzion
Ma’an – October 25, 2015
BETHLEHEM – An Israeli settler shot and seriously injured a young Palestinian man on Sunday morning in the Wadi Sair area near the illegal Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion and Sair village, east of Hebron, Palestinian security sources said.
Additionally, the mayor of nearby Sair village reported that seven Palestinians in the village had been shot and injured following the incident.
The settler who shot and critically injured the Palestinian man claimed, according to Israeli reports, that a Palestinian attacked him with a knife.
Palestinian security sources told Ma’an that an Israeli settler shot 20-year-old Azzam Azmi Shalalda four times while he was in his agricultural field, after the actual person suspected of carrying out the alleged attack had reportedly already fled the scene.
After the shooting, Shalalda was evacuated to al-Mamoon clinic in nearby Sair for first aid, before he was taken to al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron. Medics say he is in a critical condition. Shalalda is from the Sair village.
An Israeli army spokesperson said a Palestinian suspect attacked a 40-year-old Israeli after the Israeli man had stepped out of his car to confront Palestinians who were allegedly throwing stones at passing vehicles.
Israeli media outlets reported that the 40-year-old settler was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem after he was stabbed. He reportedly sustained moderate wounds.
An Israeli army spokesperson said that the alleged Palestinian “assailant fled from the scene,” adding that the reports were initial. The spokesperson had no information of a Palestinian shot or detained during the incident.
Mayor of Sair village, Kayed Jradat, told Ma’an that following the incident, Israeli forces raided Sair village and shot and injured seven Palestinians during the raid.
Doctor Zuheir Jaradat, who works at the town’s al-Mamoon clinic, said one of the victims sustained serious wounds as he was shot in the eye, while another man was hit with a live round in his thigh and was taken to hospital as well.
During the raid, Israeli forces inspected cars and checked the identities of villagers.
Jradat added that Palestinians in the village closed their stores out of fear of attacks by Israeli forces.
An Israeli police spokesperson said the area had been closed off.
Palestinian witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli forces chased a Palestinian vehicle between the southern West Bank towns of Sair and al-Shuyoukh after the incident. They highlighted that the alleged stabber had fled the scene, and an Israeli settler shot another young Palestinian man who had been working in nearby fields.
Hamas: Kerry’s statements boost Israeli hegemony over al-Aqsa
Palestine Information Center – October 25, 2015
GAZA – Hamas has deemed remarks by U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, an attempt to quell the ongoing Palestinian intifada and consolidate Israeli domination over the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On Saturday, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, slammed Kerry’s remarks in which he signaled Netanyahu’s commitment to allow Muslims to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque while granting non-Muslims the right to visit the holy site.
The group said Kerry’s remarks come as an attempt on part of the United States to help the Israeli occupation find a way out of the crisis it faces as a result of the Palestinian uprising.
The Movement noted that the declaration equates Muslim prayer rights with visitation rights for non-Muslims and could be used to justify provocative and sacrilegious break-ins by Israeli extremist settlers.
Hamas added that the vague language of the declaration gives Netanyahu the opportunity to maneuver and renege on any commitments in an attempt to pave the way for grabbing hold of the holy Mosque.
Hamas urged the PA president Mahmoud Abbas and the Jordanian authorities to turn down any compromise that gives the occupation the opportunity to violate Palestinian rights at Al-Aqsa or that limits Palestinians’ ability to protect the Mosque.
Hamas called on all Palestinians to watch out for attempts to abort the Jerusalem Intifada and to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque no matter the prices that might have to be paid.
‘US blindly supports Israeli interests in Middle East’
US to reduce aid to the Palestinian Authority
Press TV – October 24, 2015
The United States is the “proxy” for Israeli interests in the Middle East and “blindly supports” the regime’s position in the region, says an American political scientist.
In a phone interview with Press TV, Wilmer Leon pointed to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday in the Jordanian capital of Amman, saying “anything is really going to come out of this.”
“I don’t really see anything substantive or long term coming out of these meetings,” he said, because “the United States has failed to do anything substantive in order to get Israel to honestly negotiate.”
He also noted that Kerry first held a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “took Netanyahu’s position to Palestinian Authority President [Mahmoud] Abbas, instead of meeting with Palestinian Authority President Abbas first and taking the Palestinian positions to the Israelis.”
On Thursday, Kerry held talks with Netanyahu in Berlin and called for an immediate end to “all incitement” and “violence” against the Palestinians.
“For all intents and purposes, the United States is the proxy for the Israeli interests and until the United States decides to become an unbiased real arbiter actually working for peace in the region, instead of continuing to blindly support the Israeli position, I don’t see how anything is going to happen,” Leon added.
In supporting the regime’s positions, the US State Department said it will reduce its annual aid to the Palestinian Authority from $370 million to $290 at the end of September.
The 22-percent cut for the 2015 fiscal year came after US Congress sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, telling him that the US funds were contingent on tamping down “incitement.”
The latest wave of Israeli-Palestinian clashes began when Tel Aviv restricted the entry of some Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque on August 26.
The surge in tensions, triggered by Israeli raids on the al-Aqsa Mosque in East al-Quds (East Jerusalem), as well as increasing violence by Israeli settlers, has seen some 54 Palestinians killed and hundreds more injured since October 1. Eight Israelis have also died in the same time period.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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