Educators, Holocaust group join Sept. 11 museum in ‘teaching’ children official 9/11 lies
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | May 15, 2014
The 9/11 official story is rooted in deception, distortion, and misdirection. Now all of its lies have been dressed up and put on display in an expensive federally funded monument for paying customers.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is more of a walk-in indoctrination center than a tribute to the victims of 9/11. It’s a piece of propaganda made of glass and steel that plays on emotions and on the sincere desire of people to honor those who sacrificed their lives in this false flag event.
The Memorial and Museum’s web site not only reiterates all the same lies, but it even explains a framework that educators will be using to indoctrinate children so they can grow up to be believers in the war on terror and the need for more wars and greater and greater security and surveillance. Even as the mainstream media turn their attention to misrepresenting other events, the museum and accompanying “lesson plans” for school children will continue to do their work.
On the site, we learn that: “The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has partnered with the New York City Department of Education and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education to develop a robust set of 9/11 lessons for K-12 classrooms.”
The New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education (created by the State of New Jersey) is involved in creating lessons that teach children that Muslims are the bad guys and that they attacked America? Oh wait, I forgot – they are making it clear that it’s not all Muslims, just the “extreme” ones. These lessons are directed at all age groups, and the content will be used within a wide array of subjects and courses.
Through its exhibits, the museum purports to tell the story of what happened on September 11, 2001 – that 19 Muslim extremists led by Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people by hijacking four airliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. We will even be shown photographs of the 19 alleged hijackers” (although I guarantee they won’t use the word “alleged”), which will be interesting since several of those turned out to be alive after 9/11, and no proof has been presented that establishes that any of the 19 ever boarded any of the planes.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has produced brochures in the same style as the official ones that teams of volunteers pass out to visitors to the museum, which it calls “an elaborate, taxpayer-funded, public relations campaign to forever cement the fantastic claims of the official conspiracy theory into the history books.”
I wish I’d written that.
In a fundraising email, AE describes what it wants to do in response to this PR campaign: “This historical revisionism needs to be countered with an all-out effort of the truth of 9/11. By printing thousands of educational flyers and distributing them via teams of AE911Truth volunteers at the memorial grounds entry, we can inform the public as to why the 9/11 Memorial Museum is largely a fraud.”
Muslim Americans have been the victims of increased bigotry and hate since they were tagged as the perpetrators of 9/11 more than 12-and-a-half years ago. Now, Muslim- and Arab-American groups fear this will happen all over again as a result of a seven-minute video called “The Rise of al-Qaeda” that is shown as one of the exhibits.
The film, they charge, perpetuates the myth that Muslims were responsible for 9/11, using terms like “Islamists” and “jihad” in the presentation. They say it fails to offer any nuance that would help people to understand that blaming Muslims in general for what happened is unjust and inaccurate. Based on the protest in New York in 2010 over the plan to open a Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, their concerns appear justified.
“The Rise of al-Qaeda” is even being protested by the Memorial’s own Interfaith Advisory Committee, which reacted with alarm when it was allowed to watch the short film last year. The committee’s only Imam resigned in protest in March. As quoted in the New York Times, Sheikh Mostafa Elazabawy, the imam of Masjid Manhattan, wrote in a letter to the museum’s director: “Unsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim believers near the site.”
The museum responded with some unintentional self-parody when they stated that they are standing by the film because it has been vetted by scholars of Islam and terrorism. What a relief to hear that scholars of the very lies that 9/11 represents are on the job, making sure the film sends the “proper” message.
A coalition of groups, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), wants changes to the video so that it is made clear that the extremist Muslims who it agrees carried out 9/11 are not portrayed as being representative of the more than 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.
In a letter to museum president Joe Daniels and director Alice Greenwald, the coalition raised concerns about the video, which neither they nor the media have been allowed to see. The letter states:
“We have learned that you have been aware, since at least June 2013, that viewers have found this video confusing and possibly inflammatory. The museum’s own interfaith religious advisory group has repeatedly asked that this video be edited, with their concerns being dismissed.”
According to their testimony, the video:
- Deploys haphazard and academically controversial terminology, in particular “Islamic” and “Islamist”, to generalize, unnecessarily, about al-Qaeda’s acts of terrorism.
- Does not properly contextualize al-Qaeda as a small organization in comparison to the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.
- Uses stereotypical, accented English for speakers of Arabic in translation.
- May give some viewers, especially those not familiar with the subtleties of the terminology being used, the impression that Islam, as a religion, is responsible for September 11.
I completely support the Muslim- and Arab-American groups in their protest of the stereotyping that it appears that the film contains. But I’m concerned about the fact that the big lie – that any kind of Muslims pulled off 9/11 – is being accepted by these groups. I think they concede too much when they accept the premise that an extremist Muslim group called al-Qaeda was actually behind the alleged terrorist attacks when the evidence shows that this is just a smokescreen to disguise the real culprits and to hide their real motives.
The truth of the matter is that Muslims were not responsible for 9/11 – period. The evidence simply isn’t there to show otherwise. By putting the focus on the idea that Muslims as a whole are not violent and that al-Qaeda is not representative of what Islam is all about just falls into the trap set by the actual perpetrators.
Of course, that’s easy for me to say: I’m not a Muslim and I have not been victimized in the way that they have since 9/11. For them to argue that the official story is false would be very tricky and would certainly result in more hostility coming their way. And, of course, they may genuinely believe the official story. After all, Muslim Americans are subject to the same disinformation and propaganda that everyone else is.
The real purpose of the museum
A tour around the web site of the Memorial and Museum offers a good summary of the language of the 9/11 official story and its accompanying talking points. On the page “9/11 FAQ,” we get all the key elements of the story fed to us by the 9/11 Commission, NIST, and other official agencies. But they get the year of the London bombings wrong (it was 2005, not 2007), they offer the lie that al-Qaeda took responsibility for several terrorist attacks including 9/11 (the “confession” video features an Osama bin Laden “double” and contains serious inconsistencies).
The Memorial and Museum’s announced mission is to honor the victims and to “educate” future generations. It will not succeed in doing either, however. In fact, by perpetuating the 9/11 lie, it does exactly the opposite. The only way to meaningfully honor the victims is by telling the truth about what happened. And no one in officialdom is willing to do that more than a dozen years after the fact.
The memorial’s web site is full of “information” about the artifacts contained within its walls (actual twin WTC girders, an exposed portion of the “slurry wall” that keeps the site from being flooded, an actual staircase that was used to escape one of the towers). But the most disturbing thing the site addresses is the museum’s effort to direct its propaganda at children who have no choice in the matter. I wonder what kind of mark a student will get if they write an essay questioning whether the official story is true?
On the surface, the site has some useful and positive things to suggest: including pointing out how destructive it can be to “compare the suffering of one person to another” or to “assign blame to an entire group.”
Sounds good, but what is suggested is that parents and educators focus on the heroic efforts of both victims and rescuers on 9/11, because 9/11 is “actually thousands of individual stories.” That’s true: everyone who was in New York, and particularly those who had a connection to the World Trade Center site in some way experienced the event in their own way. Some were true heroes, risking and even giving their lives to help others. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid with their lives.
But there is a bigger picture. And they don’t want you to look at that. They want you to stick to the emotion of the event, the stories, the courage, and the loss. Don’t look at whether the official explanation of the event fits with the evidence. Don’t “disrespect the victims” by questioning anything you’ve been told.
By the way, victims’ family members and recovery workers don’t have to pay the $24 adult entrance fee to the museum, while firefighters, the group that has paid a more terrible price than just about any other, gets a discount. That’s right, a discount.
Israel earmarks Palestinian land for natural reserve
Ma’an – December 14, 2014
NABLUS – In an indirect way to confiscate private Palestinian land, Israeli authorities have earmarked hundreds of acres in the western outskirts of the village of Kafr al-Dik near Salfit in the central West Bank as natural reserves, a researcher said Sunday.
Khalid Maali told Ma’an that Israeli forces have seized a bulldozer while trying to enlarge a dirt road in the area known locally as Banat Bar. The driver was told that he was unlawfully excavating in a natural reserve.
The soldiers seized the bulldozer without telling the driver when or how he can take it back.
The Banat Bar area is located near the Israeli settlements of Ale Zahav, Peduel and Leshem.
Maali said that earmarking Palestinian land as a natural reserve was part of preparation for confiscation so as to expand the three settlements.
AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): Israeli military arbitrarily change rules around Checkpoint 56 closure, detains elderly, sick people
CPTnet | December 12, 2014
On 10 December, Israeli soldiers prevented teachers from the Qurtuba School, elderly people, a disabled man, and both a doctor and an ill woman trying to reach the hospital from passing through Checkpoint 56 in Hebron. In some cases, they delayed people trying to pass through for one hour; in others, as much as three.
Checkpoint 56 has been subject to closure and restrictions by Israeli forces since it was burned from the inside nearly three weeks ago.
No one knows who is responsible for the burning of the checkpoint, and Israeli forces have not released footage.
Leading onto the small section of Shuhada Street on which Palestinians are allowed to walk, checkpoint 56 connects Bab iZaweyya, the commercial district in Palestinian Authority-governed H1, with the neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida in Israeli-controlled H2.
Checkpoint closure here demands that families living in Tel Rumeida and school children and teachers from the Qurtuba School walk an extra hour or that they walk a difficult route through the homes and gardens of other Palestinians to reach their homes. For the past week, Israeli soldiers and border police have permitted elderly people, teachers, children and ill people seeking medical treatment to pass the checkpoint.
When CPTers arrived at 11:00 a.m. on 12 December, one 60-year-old doctor told them that he had been at the checkpoint for two hours.
CPTers, ISMers, and those wishing to pass through the checkpoint, attempted to ascertain the reasoning behind this change, which was subjecting teachers leaving work, and older people of varying physical abilities to stand in the sun for hours. CPT and ISM stood in solidarity with the affected Palestinians and joined them in negotiating with soldiers to reopen the checkpoint.
At about 12:00 p.m., soldiers allowed individuals through the checkpoint one by one until approximately twenty minutes later when an elderly man arrived with a donkey, which initiated another arbitrary change in the ‘rules’ of occupation. The Israeli military again closed the checkpoint, and CPT was unable to gain an answer from the soldiers as to why this donkey appeared to necessitate another closure.
The New Republic’s Ugly Reality
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 8, 2014
There has been much hand-wringing of late in Official Washington about an editorial shakeup at The New Republic and the possibility that the century-old political magazine’s legacy will somehow be tarnished by its new owner. But the truth about The New Republic is that it has more blood on its hands than almost any other publication around, which is saying something.
In my four decades in national journalism – that’s two-fifths of The New Republic’s life – what I have seen from the magazine is mostly its smug advocacy for U.S. interventionism abroad and snarky putdowns of antiwar skeptics at home. Indeed, you could view The New Republic as the most productive hothouse for cultivating neoconservative dogma — and at least partly responsible for the senseless slaughter associated with that ideology.
Though The New Republic still touts its reputation as “liberal,” that label has been essentially a cover for its real agenda: pushing a hawkish foreign policy agenda that included the Reagan administration’s slaughter of Central Americans in the 1980s, violent U.S. interventions in Iraq, Syria and other Muslim countries for the past two decades, and Israel’s suppression of Palestinians forever.
Indeed, the magazine’s long-ago-outdated status as “liberal” has long served the cause of right-wingers. The Reagan administration loved to plant flattering stories about the Nicaraguan Contras in The New Republic because its “liberal” cachet would give the propaganda more credibility. A favorite refrain from President Ronald Reagan’s team was “even the liberal New Republic agrees …”
In other words, the magazine became the neocon wolf advancing the slaughter of Central Americans in the sheep’s clothing of intellectual liberalism. Similarly, over the past two decades, it has dressed up bloody U.S. interventionism in the Middle East in the pretty clothes of “humanitarianism” and “democracy.”
The magazine – which has given us the writings of neocons Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Steven Emerson, Robert Kagan and many more – has become a case study in the special evil that can come from intellectualism when it supplies high-minded rationalizations for low-brow brutality.
In the world of the mind, where The New Republic likes to think it lives, the magazine has published countless essays that have spun excuses for mass murder, rape, torture and other real-world crimes. Put differently, the magazine afforded the polite people of Official Washington an acceptable way to compartmentalize and justify the ungodly bloodshed.
Perhaps The New Republic had a different existence in the years before I arrived on the scene. I’ve heard some longtime New Republic lovers wax on about its era of thoughtful progressivism. But The New Republic that I encountered from the 1970s onward was the magazine of Martin Peretz, a nasty neocon who cared little about journalism or even thoughtful analyses, but rather pushed a dishonest and cruel agenda including crude insults against Muslims.
In his later years after moving part-time to Israel, Peretz began to expose more of his personal agenda. In one TNR blog post regarding the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan which prompted post-9/11 right-wing outrage, Peretz declared: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [the promoter of the Islamic center] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood.
“So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” (Facing accusations of racism, Peretz later issued a half-hearted apology which reiterated that his reference to Muslim life being cheap was “a statement of fact, not opinion.”)
A New York Times magazine profile of Peretz in 2011 noted that Peretz’s hostility toward Muslims was nothing new. “As early as 1988, Peretz was courting danger in The New Republic with disturbing Arab stereotypes not terribly different from his 2010 remarks,” wrote Stephen Rodrick.
Steven Emerson, one of Peretz’s favored TNR writers, also became notorious for similar Islamophobia as well as shoddy and dishonest journalism. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Unmasking October Surprise Debunker.”]
Ignoring the History
Yet, very little of this real history of The New Republic can be found in the mainstream media’s coverage of the recent staff revolt against plans by new owner (and Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes to modernize the publication. Hughes’s new chief executive – former Yahoo official Guy Vidra – vowed to rebuild the magazine as a “vertically integrated digital media company.”
At the Washington Post, the New York Times and pretty much the entire MSM, there has been much rending of garments over these plans and the ouster of some top editors but almost nothing about what some of those now ex-TNR editors actually did.
One was longtime literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who was a prominent advocate for the Iraq War and a promoter of right-wing Zionism. Another was editor Franklin Foer, another hawkish intellectual. Their departures were followed by a walkout by a dozen or so members of the editorial staff, resignations from contributing columnists, an outraged letter from former TNR writers and furious columns by ex-TNR staffers.
“The New Republic is dead; Chris Hughes killed it,” wailed Post columnist Dana Milbank, another TNR alumnus.
On Monday, the 31-year-old Hughes took to the Post’s op-ed page to offer Official Washington something like a paper bag to control all the hyperventilating. He denied that he was behaving like some spoiled Silicon Valley rich kid imposing an Internet-style culture on an old-fashioned print publication, but rather was trying to save the institution.
“I came to protect the future of the New Republic by creating a sustainable business so that our journalism, values and voice — the things that make us singular — could survive,” Hughes wrote.
But the real question is: Does The New Republic deserve to survive? Wouldn’t it be appropriate that at least one neocon institution faced some accountability for the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, not to mention the other victims of reckless U.S. interventionism in the Middle East or the tens of thousands of murdered Central Americans during the Reagan years?
Though The New Republic’s apologists depict the magazine as an honorable place where “long-form journalism” thrived and “serious thinking” was nourished, the reality was actually much different. Indeed, much of the trivialization of U.S. journalism in the 1980s stemmed from the punchy opinions voiced by TNR columnists as they moonlighted as talking heads on the TV “shout shows,” like “The McLaughlin Group” and “Inside Washington.”
Many of the regulars on those media “food fights” came from The New Republic and lowered the intellectual level of Official Washington into a “thumbs up, thumps down” reductionism where political leaders were rated on scales of one to ten. Their well-compensated behavior was the opposite of true intellectualism or – for that matter – true journalism.
Phony Posture
The typical posture of these media-beloved neocons was to pretend that they were bravely standing up against some “liberal” orthodoxy, courageously daring to embrace the Nicaraguan Contras or other right-wing “freedom fighters” despite the danger of taking such principled stands.
The reality was that TNR’s writers were lining up behind the real power structure, standing with the Reagan administration and much of the major media while joining in the bullying of the relatively weak and vulnerable forces in Washington that went against this grain.
The phoniness of TNR’s pretend bravery was demonstrated by how the neocon commentators were rewarded with plum jobs, prominent op-ed slots, regular seats on the TV shows, lucrative speaking fees, book contracts, etc. The opposite was true for journalists who challenged the Reagan administration’s propaganda. They were the ones who faced real punishment.
Journalists who dared file critical stories about the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army or the CIA-trained Contra rebels found themselves reassigned or out on the street. The New York Times’ Raymond Bonner was the best known example after he was pulled out of Central America while under fierce right-wing attack for his accurate reporting on human rights atrocities in El Salvador.
In a similar case, the Reagan administration’s public diplomacy team browbeat National Public Radio for airing a story about a Contra massacre of farmworkers in northern Nicaragua. Sensitive to government strings on NPR’s funding, NPR executives appeased the administration by getting rid of foreign editor Paul Allen who had allowed the story to air.
Within a short time, Washington journalists understood that their route to professional success required them to swallow any propaganda from Reagan’s team, no matter how absurd.
That servility was on display when Reagan’s White House fumed over one human rights report citing 145 sworn affidavits signed by Nicaraguans who had witnessed Contra atrocities. Many of the witnesses described Contras slitting the throats of captives and mutilating their bodies.
In stepped The New Republic and one of its many pro-Contra writers, Fred Barnes, who countered the eyewitnesses by referencing the findings of a secret U.S. investigation which had absolved the Contras of many charges, he wrote. In a harsh article entitled “The Sandinista Lobby,” Barnes denounced the human rights community for hypocritically criticizing the innocent Contras and other pro-U.S. forces, while allegedly going soft on Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
But when I got hold of the investigative report in 1986, I found that it had been written by the CIA and was based on the word of the Contras themselves. One of the CIA’s key findings, supposedly debunking the slitting-throat allegations, was that the Contras said they could not have slit throats because they “are normally not equipped with either bayonets or combat knives.” The CIA failed to note that photographs of the Contras from that period showed them slouching off to battle carrying a variety of machetes and other sharp objects.
The absurdity of suggesting that the Contras could not have slit the throats of captives because they weren’t “normally” given knives should have been something a cub reporter would have laughed at. But clearly journalism was not what was going on at The New Republic where there was no interest in exposing the atrocities committed by the Contras. It was all about pushing a hawkish foreign policy and serving the Reagan agenda.
A Contra Exposé
That sort of behavior continued throughout the Reagan era with one notable exception in fall 1986 – when editor Jefferson Morley and investigative reporter Murray Waas asked me and my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger to expand the work that we had done exposing Oliver North’s secret Contra support network into a New Republic cover story.
Our article appeared in November 1986 while Peretz was out of town visiting Israel. But he soon weighed in after receiving a furious letter from then-Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, another arch-neocon. Abrams ostentatiously canceled his TNR subscription in protest of our article, and Peretz responded to Abrams’s complaint by excluding Waas from the magazine and putting Morley in the publisher’s doghouse.
The situation could have gotten worse for those who had a hand in bringing our story into the magazine, except that the Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open in November 1986, confirming that Barger and I had been right about North’s secret network. Abrams eventually pleaded guilty to misleading Congress (though he was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush and was brought into President George W. Bush’s National Security Council to oversee Middle East policy, including the invasion of Iraq).
The New Republic’s pattern of playing fast and loose with the facts would eventually cause the magazine some embarrassment in 1998 when it was caught publishing a number of fabrications by writer Stephen Glass. But TNR never was held accountable for its support for atrocities in Central America, its pushing for illegal wars in the Middle East or its smearing of honest journalists and human rights investigators.
Though Peretz finally lost control of the magazine’s content in 2010, The New Republic has remained an important vehicle for pushing the neocon agenda. Earlier this year, TNR published a long exaltation to American interventionism by neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and a leading proponent for the Iraq War.
In the essay, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” Kagan “depicted President Obama as presiding over an inward turn by the United States that threatened the global order and broke with more than 70 years of American presidents and precedence,” wrote Jason Horowitz in the New York Times. “He called for Mr. Obama to resist a popular pull toward making the United States a nation without larger responsibilities, and to re-assume the more muscular approach to the world out of vogue in Washington since the war in Iraq drained the country of its appetite for intervention.”
President Barack Obama, who remains hypersensitive to criticism from well-placed and well-connected neocons, responded by inviting Kagan to lunch at the White House and shaping his foreign policy speech at West Point’s graduation in May to deflect Kagan’s criticism.
So, when you read the endless laments from the mainstream U.S. news media about the tragedy of having some Silicon Valley barbarians violating the sacred journalistic temple of The New Republic, you might reflect on all the suffering and death that the magazine has rationalized and intellectualized away.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Israel resumes building museum on Muslim cemetery
Ma’an – 10/12/2014
JERUSALEM – Israeli authorities have resumed excavations in Mamilla graveyard in West Jerusalem as part of the “Museum of Tolerance” project, a local committee said Tuesday.
The head of the Islamic cemeteries preservation committee, Mustafa Abu Zahra, said large machinery was placed in the cemetery. It poured reinforced concrete in preparation for the building of the structure of the museum.
Abu Zahra added that the structure is scheduled to be built over the “remains of icons, martyrs, grandparents and parents,” and he said that the project is being implemented by a California-based center in cooperation with the Jerusalem municipality and other Israeli departments.
The project was started by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 2001, and 12 dunams of the cemetery ground were seized including 70 percent which was transformed into “Independence Park,” he explained.
Abu Zahra said that the construction was a grave assault on Muslim heritage and history.
Journalist most recent victim of Israeli military violence at Kufr Qaddum
International Solidarity Movement | December 9, 2014
Kufr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – Bashar, a journalist from Palestine TV, was shot in the left leg at Kufr Qaddum on Friday the 5th of December 2014.
The weekly demonstration aims to highlight the issue of the road that has been closed to Kafr Qaddum and demands for it to be reopened. The road is closed to Palestinians but connects several illegal Israeli settlements nearby. The road was once the Palestinians’ main route to the villages of Jit and Sarra, and to the city of Nablus. Residents of Kafr Qaddum and nearby villages must now use a 14 kilometer detour on badly paved roads through olive groves. This proves especially problematic in emergency situations when ambulances are trying to get patients to Nablus hospital. Kafr Qaddum villagers state that several people have died because of the longer ambulance trip.
Bashar has been going to the Kafr Qaddum demonstrations since they began four years ago. This particular one was a special demonstration in solidarity with Patrick, an Italian activist who was shot in the chest with a .22 caliber bullet the Friday before. The demonstration began peacefully with people holding Italian and Palestinian flags. A skunk water truck, a renowned demonstration repression technique, sprayed the people who were peacefully holding flags right at the beginning of the protest. Within ten minutes, Bashar had been shot in his left leg by an Israeli sniper.
The bullet used to shoot Bashar was an expanding bullet, often called a “dum-dum”. International law has declared their use illegal in war because they are so destructive. Bashar was shot by a sniper with a weapon that is only supposed to be used when soldiers are at mortal risk and skunk water, tear gas, rubber bullets, rubber coated steel bullets, and other nonlethal weapons have all proved ineffective. This is supposed to be the last weapon soldiers use before they shoot to kill with M16s. Witnesses say that Bashar was filming as he usually did when he was shot. He was no threat to the soldiers at all. Witnesses say that there were no people in front or behind him throwing stones.
Bashar was taken by ambulance to Nablus hospital. The X-ray showed that the dum-dum bullet did as it was designed to, breaking into many pieces when it entered his leg.
Bashar had an operation on the 6th of December, the day after he was shot, to take out most of the bullet fragments.
Doctors have decided to leavein some pieces for the time being because they are very close to veins and would be dangerous to remove. Bashar will be bed bound for two weeks until the decision is made, but his condition remains stable.
Within one week at Kufr Qaddum, three people were shot with lethal, live ammunition—two with .22 caliber bullets and one with a dum-dum. One was a journalist, another an international peace activist. None of them were any threat to the soldiers. So why, then, were they shot at? To create fear for all the people who are in solidarity with the Palestinians and who want to tell the world the story of what is happening here? To physically stop peaceful resistance using the most extreme repression techniques?
It will not work. Patrick and many other international, Palestinian and Israeli activists will continue to nonviolently resist the confiscation of their lands in Kufr Qaddum each week. Bashar will continue to report their stories to the world. The unnecessary use of violent repression techniques will only continue to delegitimize the illegal occupation of the Palestinian people.
Israeli settlers stab Palestinian youth on his family’s land
CPTnet | December 9, 2014
On 8 December 2014, Israeli settlers attacked seventeen-year-old Palestinian boy, Moad Al Rajabi on his family land in Bani Naim, on the outskirts of Al-Khalil/Hebron. He was sitting with his father, Noah Al Rajabi, and two of his cousins when settler cars stopped nearby. As seven settlers exited the cars and came towards them, Noah ran away with his two nephews, believing that his son was also with him. He soon realised his son was not there, and turned to see seventeen-year-old Moad encircled by the settlers.
The seven were stabbing Moad, but fled as Noah ran back in a bid to rescue his son from the assault. Moad required hospitalization to treat the stab wounds, one of which penetrated to the bones in the hand; the other was on his thigh. He is now stable, and the hospital hopes to discharge him later today.
The Al Rajabi family has also suffered the violence of home demolition and the destruction of their livelihood by the Israeli military. In May 2012, Israeli forces destroyed the family’s dairy farm and home, which was on the land where Moad was stabbed yesterday. Commenting on the destruction of the caravan (mobile home) in which the family lived, an iron barn stabling cows, milking machines and other equipment worth over 8000 USD, Noah explained that the Israeli army not “only destroy[ed] my livelihood but also the livelihoods of three other families; our farm is our bread and butter.” The Al Rajabi family has continued to have financial difficulties ever since the demolition.
More young men and teenagers arrested by the Israeli military
International Solidarity Movement | December 9, 2014
Nablus, Occupied Palestine – On December 8th in Nablus, the Israeli army broke into the homes of two families in Balata refugee camp and arrested two young Palestinians, 19-year-old Mujahed al Shekhalil and 17-year-old Yazan Hta.
In both cases, their homes were raised by the military in the middle of the night (3am and 3:30am) damaging doors and property inside the houses. At the time of the incursions, all family members were sleeping. The military forced all family members into one room whilst they arrested the teenagers. Both families state that between 15 and 20 soldiers broke into their homes, and they were given no reason for either the intrusions or the arrests.
In the village of Madama, on the same night, the Israeli army also entered the home of the Wajeihqut family and arrested 23-year-old Assad Allah. The army spent an hour inside the house between 2:20am and 3:20am, again forcing all family members inside one room. The family reported to ISM that the soldiers told Assad’s 9-year-old brother that if he did not stop speaking they would take him with his brother. Another brother was told that if he did not go into the room with the family then they would cut his head off.
The army confiscated every family members phone and stole the sim cards from them and the hard drive from the family computer. They also smashed the apartments heating system.
This was the fifth time Assad has been arrested and the family home has been raided by the army on numerous occasions.
In all cases, the families were not given a reason for the arrests or for the damage done to their homes, and do not have any information as to where their sons have been taken.
Photo by ISM
Israeli group storms al-Aqsa as settlers attack 3 Palestinians in Jerusalem
Al-Akhbar | December 8, 2014
A group of right-wing Israelis toured the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Monday under police escort, a mosque official said.
The storming of the mosque compound came as Israeli settlers attacked three Palestinians in Jerusalem, and Israeli forces detained 19 in the West Bank.
Al-Aqsa director Omar al-Kiswani told Ma’an that groups of Israeli right-wingers “stormed the compound and toured its squares under the so-called foreign tourism program.”
A group of Israeli intelligence officers also toured the compounds, he added.
The Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs complained to Israeli police, expressing their objection to the visits, Kiswani said.
Meanwhile, Israeli police detained a woman identified as Umm Radwan Omar at one of the gates leading to al-Aqsa. Omar usually gives religious lectures inside the compound.
Israeli police collected the identity cards of all Palestinian men and women who entered the compound on Monday.
The al-Aqsa mosque is sensitive for Palestinians due to its status as the third holiest site in Islam and its location in the heart of the Old City of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
The al-Aqsa mosque compound, referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount, is also the holiest site in Judaism.
Tensions have been running high in occupied East Jerusalem after months of Israeli pressure on the region, including through a massive arrest campaign and a major military offensive on Gaza that left more than 2,100 dead and provoked outrage across Palestine.
They have also been stoked by Israeli authorities’ decision to hold a vote on splitting the al-Aqsa compound despite the existence of a Jewish prayer area at the Western Wall immediately next door.
Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, an agreement with Jordan has maintained that Jewish prayer be allowed at the Western Wall plaza – built on the site of a Palestinian neighborhood of 800 that was destroyed immediately following the conquest – but not inside the al-Aqsa mosque compound itself.
Israeli forces have long restricted Palestinians’ access to the al-Aqsa compound based on age and gender, but have further prevented Muslim worshipers from entering the mosque for more than a month while facilitating the entrance for Zionist extremists.
Settlers attack Palestinians in Jerusalem
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers attacked three Palestinians in two separate incidents in Jerusalem, leaving the latter with bruises and injuries, an Israeli news channel reported Sunday night.
On Sunday evening, Israeli police arrested an Israeli who – along with several other settlers – attacked a Palestinian bus driver, leaving him with injuries, Israel’s Channel 2 reported.
The settlers chanted “death to Arabs” while attacking the bus driver and threatened to kill him, the channel added.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses told Anadolu news agency that a group of Israeli settlers assaulted two Palestinians from Jerusalem while working in a petrol station in the neighborhood of Ein Karem on Sunday night.
One of the Palestinians sustained injuries that required his transfer to a hospital, the witnesses added.
Israeli forces arrest 19 across West Bank
The Israeli army detained 19 Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, a Palestinian NGO has said.
Israeli forces searched scores of homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and arrested nine Palestinians, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a statement.
Three more Palestinians were detained in Nablus, two in Jenin, two in Ramallah and one in Bateen village, the NGO added.
Israeli police detained another two Palestinians in East Jerusalem, according to a statement issued by the NGO.
Israeli forces routinely conduct arrest campaigns against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on claims they are “wanted” by Israeli authorities.
Over 7,000 Palestinians are currently languishing in Israeli prisons, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs.
On Saturday, Issa Qaraqe, the head of the Palestinian Authority Department of Prisoner Affairs, said that 2014 has been “the most difficult year” for prisoners.
Qaraqe said in a statement that prisoners in 2014 have been victims of “Israeli revenge policies,” adding that Israel’s move to re-arrest prisoners who were released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011 was a dangerous political action.
Qaraqe also decried Israel’s policy of detaining minors, saying some 1,500 minors were detained in 2014, mostly in Jerusalem.
According to Qaraqe, there were 550 new Palestinian prisoners held under administrative detention without charge or trial this year, and Israel renewed administrative detention orders for 63 percent of administrative prisoners. Excessive use of administrative detention is considered illegal under international law.
(Ma’an, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)
Israeli Occupation Authorities re-impose female detainee’s previous sentence
Palestine Information Center – December 8, 2014
RAMALLAH — The Israeli Occupation Authorities re-imposed the previous sentence of the re-jailed female ex-detainee Bushra al-Tawil after being released in the Wafa al-Ahrar swap deal in 2011, human rights sources said.
Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies recalled that al-Tawil was released in 2011, after spending five months of her 16-month sentence, in the swap deal. However, she was re-arrested following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli soldiers in June.
Al-Tawil is a university student at Ramallah Media College and an activist in prisoners’ issue. Her parents were also arrested by the Israeli occupation forces more than once.




