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Israeli story on raid of RT office in Ramallah falls apart

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Collapse of Israeli explanation

June 22, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Collective punishment in Palestine

International Solidarity Movement | June 22, 2014

Occupied Palestine – On Thursday 12th of this month, three settler youth disappeared while hitchhiking in the Hebron area of the West Bank. No Palestinian group or organisation has taken responsibility for the disappearance.

15-year-old Mohammad Dudeen was murdered in the early hours of Friday morning (20th) after he was shot with live ammunition by the Israeli military. This was during a raid on his home village of Dura, near the city of Hebron.

Mohammad Dudeen (photo from Defence for Children International Palestine).

Mohammed was not the only youth killed on Friday. The Israeli military raided Qalandiya refugee camp (south of Ramallah) and shot three youths with live ammunition. Mustafa Hosni Aslan, 22-years-old, was shot in the head and died of his wounds later the same day.  

Mustafa Aslan at the hospital before he died from his injuries (photo from Maan News).

A Palestinian man in his sixties died of a heart attack on Saturday, 21st, after the Israeli military invaded his home. Hajj Jamil Ali Jaber Souf was at his home in Hares village, near Salfit, when the Israeli military violently broke in and attacked him. One of his nephews stated that the soldiers prevented the family from moving Jabber to a local clinic to receive medial treatment.

The Israeli army invaded the city of Nablus last night at approximately 2AM. The youth took to the streets and clashes ensued as they attempted to drive the soldiers out of the city. Many stun grenades were used throughout the night and a final barrage of tear gas was fired on the youths as the were leaving the city centre at approximately 5AM. 

An ISMer in al-Khalil (Hebron): “For the past week in Hebron, there has been a heavy military presence. Solders from the Israeli military have been taking over Palestinian homes for their own use and harassing people in the streets with body searches. Many people have been detained, beaten, and arrested.

Settlers from the illegal settlements walk around armed and have been attacking Palestinians on the streets. Today the Israeli army attacked the residents of the Qeitun neighbourhood in Hebron. They entered several times during the day, but this evening the solders attacked an 11-year-old boy by hitting him on the mouth. They arrested two Palestinians and searched the locals for no reason. The solders continued the violence with property damage, ripping apart a local car under the guise of a ‘search’.”

Photo by ISM

Last night Israel’s army invaded Ramallah district from  three directions – Qalandia, Beituniya and Beit El, reaching as deep as Arafat Square inside the city. Pal Media offices in Baloa’ were raided. In Burj al-Sheikh, the army raided the office of a prisoner that was released in the Shalit exchange deal, and used it as a firing post against youths attempting to repel them from the area. The youths sustained multiple injuries from rubber coated steel bullets. In Batn al-Hawa the army raided a charity building and confiscated computers.

Nablus Street, al bireh, Ramallah (photo by Samer Nazzal).

These are just some examples of life in Palestine over the last nine days. According to Maan News, approximately 370 Palestinians have been arrested since last Thursday. The Israeli military have been brutal in their tactics of collectively punishing the citizens of Palestine for the disappearance of three Israeli youths. All over the West Bank, in villages, towns, and cities, Palestinian homes and offices have been raided, cities have been held under siege, people have been injured, arrested, and executed.

In Gaza, Israeli warplanes have targeted several locations and caused extensive property damage and injuries, spreading panic among Palestinian civilians.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33, states that: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”

June 22, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces demolish structures, road pavement in South Hebron Hills

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Photo by Operation Dove
Operation Dove | June 20, 2014

Khallet Forem, Occupied Palestine – On June 18th, the Israeli army, along with border police officers and DCO (District Coordination Office) officers entered in the Palestinian village of Khallet Forem, in South Hebron Hills, and demolished seven houses, a bathroom, and a shelter.

No demolition orders were delivered for these structures.

According to Palestinian witnesses, a woman was injured by the soldiers during the operation.

The seven houses, the shelter, and the bathroom were owned by the Abu Dahar family. These demolitions involved at least 26 people, 12 of them are children.

In the same day, Israeli forces demolished the main road of Ar Rifa’Iyya Ad Deirat and built a roadblock in order to prevent the access from that road to the bypass road 356.

According to PHROC (The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council), the recent wave of demolitions, arrests, attacks, killings, and total closure of large parts of the West Bank following the disappearance of three Israeli settlers is a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people. This is in direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that forbid reprisals against protected persons and their property, as well as collective punishment.

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Photo by Operation Dove

June 21, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Recent Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza infrastructure

Palestine Information Center – 20/06/2014

004GAZA – The Palestinian interior ministry said that the recent Israeli aerial attacks on the Gaza Strip directly targeted its infrastructure, factories and workshops.

A spokesperson for the ministry stated that an Israeli warplane bombed a dairy plant in Gaza City at dawn today.

Israel escalated its aerial attacks on Gaza over the past few days in Gaza Strip, which rendered many civilians wounded amid persistent international and Arab silence.

For its part, the Palestinian education ministry strongly condemned Israel’s repeated bombing of educational institutions, asserting that 10 schools sustained damage during recent Israeli air raids on Gaza.

June 21, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian dies of heart attack as Israeli troops raid home

Ma’an – 21/06/2014

286104_345x230SALFIT – An elderly Palestinian man died early Saturday of heart attack during a heated argument with Israeli troops who broke into his house in the village of Haris in Salfit district in the northern West Bank.

Palestinian security sources said Israeli soldiers refused to allow family members of Jamil Ali Abed Jabir to take him to hospital for treatment after he suffered a heart attack and eventually died at home. The victim was in his 60s.

The sources explained that dozens of Israeli soldiers stormed Haris village, ransacked several homes and assaulted residents.

Jawad Muhammad Dawood suffered a hand fracture after Israeli troops brutally attacked him and his brother Jawdat during a raid on their home. In addition, seven family members inhaled tear gas after Israeli forces fired a canister in their home.

No detentions were reported in the village.

June 21, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu: We expect Abbas to dissolve unity government

Ma’an – 20/06/2014

285939_345x230BETHLEHEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he expected the Palestinian national unity of government to dissolve and the the Israeli government was moving closer to finding three Israeli youths missing for the last week.

The comments, which came during a press conference in the southern West Bank city of Hebron that has been besieged by Israeli forces since the kidnapping, signal renewed pressure on the Palestinian Authority to end a unity deal agreed on between Fatah and Hamas in late April.

“I expect (Palestinian) president (Mahmoud) Abbas to dissolve the union with this murderous terror organisation. I think that’s important for our common future,” he said.

Netanyahu also reasserted that Hamas kidnapped the three young men, even though the Israeli government has yet to provide any evidence of the accusation.

“They were kidnapped by Hamas, we had no doubt of that. It’s absolutely certain,” he said, adding that the public needed to have “patience” as the Israeli forces continued their search.

Over 300 Palestinians have been arrested and more than 800 houses searched in the last week as Israeli forces have carried out a wide-ranging search across the West Bank in pursuit of the the youths.

Israeli forces have also raided charities and all organizations related to Hamas in anyway in the West Bank, arresting former and current Palestinian members of parliament and many others in what some have begun to view as an excuse to round up Hamas members.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Qwasmeh Family Story

CPTnet | June 17, 2014

The public so far knows very little outside of the alleged time that Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach were kidnapped. But what we do know is the absolute mayhem the Israeli military has spread throughout the Hebron district among innocent families.  Additionally, routine night raids, day patrols, confiscation of public property for military outposts, and the blockades on all but two access points into Hebron have suffocated the livelihood of Hebronites.

Soldiers raided the home and took possession of the Al Awewe family home in Aqbet Taffuh for six hours on Sunday. Over fifty troops had occupied the home while three adults, four young girls, and a young boy were in the home. The Israeli military would not allow a one-year-old baby to leave the house and her mother had to sit outside helplessly wondering about the safety of her daughter, who was still nursing. The soldiers found no suspects connected to the kidnapping in the home.

In that same area on Monday morning, the IDF confiscated the security camera equipment the al-Natshe family had installed around their house for their protection, along with video footage the cameras had recorded.

Further down the road in the Aqbet Taffuh area, approximately fifty-five Israeli soldiers left the hilltop area of the Palestinian municipality, occupied several homes, questioned families, tore down a private Palestinian fence and occupied the neighborhood for several hours.

Throughout the afternoon, northeast of Bab i-Zaweyah, just outside of the H1/H2 intersection, a brigade of more than forty soldiers stationed themselves in four different homes and a supermarket within a two hour period, leaving families frightened and unsure of their intentions.

On 15 June at around 9:30 p.m., an Israeli raid on a Palestinian home ended with a seven-year-old Palestinian boy hospitalized after the Israeli military used an explosive device to blow open the front door of the Akram Al Qawasmeh home. The subsequent powerful blast shattered the tempered reinforced glass, shearing off the decorative steel and sending pieces of shrapnel into all corners of the home, which severely injured Akram Al Qawasmeh’s son.

After the explosion, Israeli soldiers did not allow Akram Al Qawasmeh to see his son, and according to reports, the military initially stopped medical personal from treating the victim. CPT arrived the following day and found a home turned upside down. (See video below.) Children’s belongings were spread and broken around the house.  Israeli soldiers demolished the kitchen, smashing fruits, vegetables, and other food items on the floor, and left feces on a rug in the basement.

These are just a few of the incidents that CPTers were able to report on directly. Other human rights organizations have also reported an increase in settler violence against Palestinians who live near the Hebron area settlements.

Historically, Palestinian violence has been the justification for settlement expansion in Hebron. Currently, the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee has identified over twenty-two locations of pending settlement expansion and settler activity. The behavior of the Israeli military and settlers in Hebron suggests the government may use the case of the three young kidnapped boys as an excuse to expand these settlements in the Hebron area or elsewhere in the West Bank while the international community is distracted.

See previous release, AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): Hijacking a kidnapping, Part I

June 19, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Killing without consequence

By Moira Jilani | June 19, 2014

East Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine – Ziad and I met at a party at the University of Houston. Six months later Ziad proposed, saying, “I’m a Palestinian. I am only here to get an education. After graduating I’ll return home to Jerusalem. Come with me.”

We married the following year and moved to Jerusalem. For nearly 20 years we lived happily, raising a family and enjoying our lives together. But my fairy tale came to an end on the afternoon of June 11, 2010. In the morning we made plans to take our daughters to the beach that afternoon, Ziad never made it home.

The Israeli border policemen who shot and killed my husband declared that Ziad was a “terrorist” shot dead from a distance.  But my husband was no terrorist.  He loved life. He loved people and animals and he loved us, his family, with a passion. We had to conduct our own investigation to find out how my husband died.

The Israeli unit that investigates police killings failed to interrogate any of the many eyewitnesses to Ziad’s death and only questioned the border policemen involved in the killing. By gathering evidence and testimonies independently we learned the truth. Ziad, while driving home in his pickup truck, swerved into the opposite lane, where a group of border policemen were walking on the road. Ziad’s pickup truck brushed against two of the border policemen causing scrapes and bruises.

Unfortunately, Ziad can no longer tell us exactly what happened, but eyewitnesses reported that there was stone-throwing in the area and that Ziad’s windshield was hit by a stone. This description explains a big dent in Ziad’s front windshield and accounts for his swerve.

The Border Policemen opened a massive barrage of live fire at Ziad’s vehicle. Surrounding cars were hit and a little girl was injured. Ziad fled from the bullets to a nearby dead-end alleyway where his uncle lives. Three Border policemen ran forward firing into the alley.

Ziad leapt out of the truck and ran in the direction of his uncle’s house, but was shot in the back and fell injured to the pavement. While the commander of the unit, Shadi Heir al Din, reported that the “terrorist” had been neutralized, border policeman Maxim Vinogradov walked up to my husband and confirmed the kill.

Vinogradov put his M16 to Ziad’s head and fired two shots. According to an eyewitness, Vinogradov placed his boot on my husband’s neck when he shot him. The practice of confirming killings is illegal under international law.

Twelve days before Vinogradov killed my husband, he responded to a Facebook message voicing support for annihilating “Turkey and all the Arabs from the world” by saying, “I am with you, brother, and with the help of God I will start this.” This is just one of many similar posts. In his profile on a social network website, he describes as a hobby “hitting and destroying things,” his favorite food as “Arabs,” and his favorite sport as “Undocumented Arab Workers.”

My lawyers appealed to an Israeli judge to exhume Ziad’s body in order for an autopsy to be performed. As it was clear that the autopsy would reveal the fact that Ziad was shot from point-blank range, Vinogradov completely altered his original testimony because he  “suddenly remembered” that as he was standing above Ziad he saw him move his hand and so had to shoot him in the head.

Despite Vinogradov’s misrepresentation and the fact that the investigations unit concluded that they “could not rule out that Ziad had swerved innocently and without the intention of running over the border policemen,” the case against Vinogradov and his commander was closed for lack of evidence.

My daughters and I have appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court, but when I asked the American Consulate to help me see to it that my husband’s killer stands trial they told me that their hands were tied since they had no jurisdiction in Israel. I disagree. Our government gives Israel more than $3 billion in annual military aid. It is our government’s responsibility to use its leverage with Israel to stop Israel from using these weapons to commit crimes.

The Israeli military has a history of ignoring the lives of Palestinians, and then supporting their killers. An example is the appointment of Brig. Gen. Roni Numa as the head of the Israeli army’s “Depth Corps” and the Military Colleges, as well as his promotion to major general, two weeks ago. This occurred despite the fact that the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Military Advocate General determined that, in 2001, Numa approved an operation in which Abdallah Jarousha, from Tul Karem refugee camp was shot in the back and killed in violation of the Israel Defence Forces’ rules of engagement. The criminal case in the matter was closed, though the Military Advocate General Corps noted in its decision that “in advance, the firing, as was approved, should not have been approved.” Roni Numa also changed his version of the events many times while the murder was being investigated, forgetting and then remembering that he had given the order. Like the case demanding accountability for my husbands murderer, the case Abdallah Jarousha’s family launched spent years in the Israeli courts, and despite an innocent civilian being murdered in cold blood ended, no Israeli was ever charged.

My husband was killed by a trigger-happy Israeli border policemen.  They ought to face trial for both the crime and the cover-up.  It’s time for the American government to step up, support American citizens such my daughters and I, and insist that Israel hold a proper trial.

Moira Jilani is an American citizen. She is the widow of Ziad Jilani who was killed by Israeli border policemen in 2010 while driving home. Moira and her daughters have appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court against the closing of the case against Ziad’s killers.

June 19, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians must be stopped!

By Sam Bahour | ePalestine | June 19, 2014

I have had enough of those Palestinians. I think the world in general is also fed up with Palestinians. They have gone too far in demonizing Israelis and must be stopped. The international community must act now before it is too late and Israel is wiped off the map and a second tragedy of historic proportions fall on a significant part of the world’s Jewish population.

For starters, Palestinians embarked by land, sea and air onto Israel and displaced more than half the Jewish population of Israel in 1948. Imagine, more than half of the population of Israel displaced, forced to live to this day, 66 years later, in squalid refugee camps only hours from their homes. Other than some faint attempts to fight their way back to their homes in Israel, Israeli refugees have been “unreasonably reasonable” in accepting their fate, and continue to patiently wait for word when they can return home to Israel. This man made tragedy was perpetrated by Palestinians, who continue to this day to strangulate Jewish citizens of Israel by the use of brute force and economic suffocation in an attempt to have them voluntarily emigrate elsewhere.

Palestinians are a violent people. Every Palestinian high school graduate is forced into mandatory conscription, three years for males and two years for females. During this military stint, every Palestinian citizen is trained on the use of weapons and combat methods. Many Palestinians brag about how they brutalize Jewish Israelis during their military service; some have even posted photos on their Facebook wall of them posing with Israeli corpses or a blindfolded Israeli who was taken prisoner.

Palestinians are making Israeli livelihood miserable. They have set up military checkpoints in and around major Israeli cities, like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Eilat. Palestinian soldiers stop only Israeli cars, sometimes for hours on end, while letting Palestinian registered cars ride through their checkpoints unhindered. When an Israeli wants to leave Israel, s/he must get Palestinian permission beforehand. If any Israeli gets on the Palestinian blacklist, his/her ability to leave Israel is impossible. Imagine not being able to leave your own country or being allowed to leave but not to return. Even when Israelis want to travel from one Israeli city to another, Palestinians have set up checkpoints, which resemble the border terminals between the US and Canada, with one difference: the process to pass is one of pure humiliation, more like cattle being pushed through caged pathways than passengers crossing a terminal.

Israel has a huge potential to be a regional economic hub of tourism and trade, but Palestinians are blocking Israel’s ability to economically develop by every means possible. Israelis love technology, but every smartphone in Israel is a dumb phone because Palestinians are refusing to allocate the electromagnetic spectrum—which they control as part of their occupation of Israel—required for 3G services to Israeli telecommunications companies. Can you imagine, those Palestinians are actually refusing to free the airspace above Tel Aviv to Israelis! It gets worse. Israelis have found a huge natural gas well in Israeli territorial waters, in the sea of Tel Aviv, and the Palestinians are refusing to give Israeli firms access to tap the gas. Even Israeli fishermen are routinely shot at when fishing in the Mediterranean Sea.

As if all of this was not bad enough, for the past 47 years Palestinians have slowly moved their citizens to the hilltops around Israeli cities. The hilltops were first confiscated by the use of force, then Arafat, and now Abbas, send Palestinian security forces to protect the confiscated lands. Once the lands are ready, Palestinians have tapped the huge amounts of funds that donors have passed to them and used the funds, not to build schools and a health care system, but rather to build permanent housing in these military enclaves around Israeli cities, in order to entice Palestinians from Ramallah and Hebron to move to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. This is not only against international law, but defies common sense. How can Palestinians keep paying lip service to wanting to live in peace with Israelis when they keep gobbling up more Israeli land and move their population to take up residence inside Israel?

You think it cannot get worse? Well, you’re wrong. Palestinians have kidnapped 5,000 Israelis from their homes, about 200 are Israeli children under 18 years old, and have locked them into Palestinian jails. These jails that the Palestinians maintain are all built inside Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza. When Israeli mothers want to go visit their loved ones, they must get permission from Palestinian security forces to visit. Hundreds of those 5,000 prisoners are being held without charge; the Palestinians deceitfully call it Administrative Detention. You would think the world would hold these Palestinian jailers accountable, but they haven’t for decades. This is why the time has come to stop those Palestinians once and for all.

Israelis cannot be expected to live like this forever. Something must be immediately done to stop these Palestinians and hold them accountable for the daily atrocities that they are committing against humanity. Israelis are a peace loving people. They come from a religion that rests on a pillar of social justice. What is being done to them is beyond imagination.

Israeli civil society has made a call for the world to divest from Palestine. Israelis across the political spectrum are referring to how Jews around the world supported the boycott and divestment of Apartheid South Africa, which successfully collapsed that racist regime. Jews are pointing to their always being on the correct side of history, from the US civil rights movement to people’s struggles in Latin America. They now beg the world to act to stop Palestinians before it is too late.

The time is now to boycott Palestine, divest from Palestine, and apply serious sanctions on Palestine until it removes the boot of military occupation from the necks of Israelis.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank.

June 19, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Ottawa hypes phony Iran ‘terror threat’

By Brandon Martinez | Press TV | June 19, 2014

The Canadian media is awash with hysteria about what it calls a potential Iranian-sponsored terror attack in Ottawa.

Unsurprisingly, the hype is rooted in baseless innuendo typical of neocon warmongers who act as loudspeakers for the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv.

The neoconservative National Post, which is for all intents and purposes an Israeli propaganda organ, published a scurrilous piece on June 16 quoting from alarmist Canadian intelligence reports which state that Iran and Hezbollah (Lebanon’s national resistance movement) may be planning to strike Ottawa.

What evidence do these intelligence analysts proffer to support their slanderous assertions about Iran and Hezbollah? Absolutely none.

The National Post admitted the documents “do not specify the exact nature of the threat Tehran may pose to the Ottawa region.”

So they claim there is a “threat” but cannot even specify what that threat is or in what form it may manifest?

“[I]n the past,” the dubious intelligence report continued, “Iran has used its proxy force, Hezbollah, to attempt attacks internationally.”

This Zionist rhetoric looks as if it could have been written by Stephen Harper’s “good friend” Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

Despite feeble Zionist disinformation, Iran has not sponsored any international terror attacks. The bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994, which took the lives of 85 people, is still unsolved. The Zionists immediately pinned the blame for the atrocity on their Iranian and Lebanese foes, offering not one particle of proof. Argentinian researcher Adrian Salbuchi contends that the attack was a false flag operation engineered by the Israeli secret services to swing public opinion against its enemies.

When in late 2013 Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez announced that she would launch a new joint Iranian-Argentinian probe into the 1994 attack, the Zionists went berserk and their mouthpieces in Ottawa and Washington condemned the move to have a real investigation into what happened, for obvious reasons.

Canada’s intelligence services function as a political tool of the neoconservative, pro-Zionist regime in Ottawa led by the rabid Likudnik Harper. As such, their reports about Iran, Hezbollah and anything else related to the Middle East, Arabs and “terrorism” cannot be considered to be anything but propaganda and misdirection designed to serve Israel’s geopolitical agenda.

In his book “Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid,” Canadian foreign policy expert Yves Engler documented the close ties between Canada’s spy agency CSIS and Israel’s spy agency Mossad. The two spook organizations work together closely, sharing intelligence and conducting joint espionage operations targeting Arabs in Canada and abroad. Mossad has often used forged Canadian passports on covert missions (even attempted assassinations), and CSIS has looked the other way.

What may lie behind this latest dose of Iranophobic poison emanating from Ottawa? The National Post says that the Canadian intelligence documents it based its story around are from late 2013, so why promote it now?

Well, a number of events that have unfolded over the past few weeks may explain it.

On June 13 three Israeli teens were allegedly kidnapped from an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The circumstances surrounding the alleged kidnapping are murky. Strangely, nobody has taken credit for the kidnapping nor has anyone demanded a ransom. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the militant Palestinian resistance group Hamas is to blame for the abduction and vowed swift action against it Monday,” reported a June 16 Globe and Mail article.

If Hamas was behind the capture of the three Israelis, surely they would have demanded a prisoner exchange as thousands of Palestinians are unjustly held as political prisoners in Israeli jails. But they have not done this, and as the Globe noted, Hamas has nothing to gain from such a reckless move at this critical juncture when they have just recently formed a unity government with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu called the new Hamas-PA unity government “bad for Israel.”

The only beneficiary of the kidnapping, it seems, is Israel.

Political analyst Kevin Barrett noted in a recent article on Veterans Today that this kidnapping incident may have been staged by Israel as a political stunt to undermine the new Palestinian unity government and to justify a crackdown on Hamas. “How dare the Palestinians unify against us,” the Zionist occupiers are saying to themselves.

Israel’s military chief of staff Benny Gantz has pledged a “broad operation” against Hamas. “Our aim is to find the three boys, bring them home and hurt Hamas as much as possible,” he said. Using the kidnapping incident as a pretext, Israel has arrested more than 160 Palestinians and conducted several air strikes in the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials are now lusting to re-arrest all 1,027 Palestinian prisoners who were freed in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, reported the Globe.

“Israeli political leaders on the right,” the Globe article continued, “have demanded all sorts of punitive action be taken against Hamas [as a result of the unsolved kidnapping]: some advocate expelling the group’s leaders to Gaza; others want to annex parts of the West Bank… Minister Moshe Ya’alon hinted at a return to the practice of targeted killings – assassinations – of Hamas leaders.”

To back up his false flag hypothesis, Kevin Barrett cited a revealing June 15 Haaretz article headlined, “Mossad chief’s chillingly prescient kidnap prophecy.” In the article Israeli journalist Barak Ravid disclosed that, “Ten days ago, at a security cabinet meeting, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo outlined a scenario spookily similar to the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens missing since Thursday night.”

The security meeting in question “dealt with the report of the Shamgar Committee on prisoner exchanges and on the Habayit Hayehudi bill that prohibits granting pardons to terrorists.”

Pardo and his colleagues tried to convince Israeli ministers not to pass the bill, arguing that it would “limit the government’s room for maneuver in future abduction cases, would keep its hands tied, and prevent it from considering other solutions for dealing with a potential crisis.”

“What will you do if in a week three 14-year-old girls will be kidnapped from one of the settlements?” Pardo asked. “Will you say there is a law, and we don’t release terrorists?”

As Haaretz inadvertently demonstrated, Zionists have quite a talent for predicting and foreshadowing future events. In 1979, the founder of Israel’s spy agencies, Isser Harel, predicted 9/11 with amazing precision, telling an Evangelical Zionist named Michael Evans over dinner that “Islamic fundamentalists” would eventually strike New York City’s “tallest building.”

Zionist neocons of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) think-tank spoke of a “New Pearl Harbour” that would facilitate their militarist foreign policy objectives exactly one year before the planes hit the twin towers in New York in 2001.

Israeli dirty tricks of this nature are nothing new. Shortly after 9/11, the Israelis were caught red-handed establishing a fake al-Qaeda cell in Gaza. Ariel ‘the butcher’ Sharon attempted to use the existence of the counterfeit “terror cell” as a pretext to bomb the beleaguered coastal enclave. “Israel ‘faked al-Qaeda presence’,” noted a Dec. 2002 BBC headline, which unveiled Israel’s deception.

A Sept. 10, 2001, Washington Times report also shed light on Israel’s penchant for ruthlessness and deception. Reporting on the content of a US Army study on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Times article quoted the study’s authors who stated that Israel is “known to disregard international law to accomplish mission.” The US Army analysts were even more blunt in their assessment of Israel’s Mossad, characterizing the rogue agency as a “ruthless and cunning” wildcard that is “[capable of targeting] U.S. forces” and making it “look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”

Knowing Israel’s sordid history of false flags and dirty tricks, one would be foolhardy to dismiss the possibility that the “kidnapping” scandal that has unfolded over the past few days is yet another Machiavellian stage-play designed to derail Palestine’s unity government and expedite Israel’s expansionist aims.

With Syria and Iraq being overrun by bloodthirsty Western-backed mercenaries and brutes, Israel sees an opportunity to push forward with its imperialist schemes to neutralize Palestinian resistance to the occupation.

Ottawa’s ratcheting up of anti-Iranian hysteria at this conspicuous time can only be seen as a gesture of support for Tel Aviv’s campaign of terror in Gaza and the West Bank, deflecting international attention from the Israeli cuckoo in the nest.

June 19, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu should look at his own record

356574_Benjamin Netanyahu

By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | June 18, 2014

Standing in front of a map of what both no doubt hope will one day be Greater Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Tony Blair have today given a practical demonstration of chutzpah. Translated roughly as “audacity” (but could also mean “insolence”), the two men with blood on their hands tried to convince the world that the lives of three illegal Jewish settlers – “children,” said the Israeli PM – are worth more than the lives of over 1,300 Palestinian children killed by the Israelis since September 2000 at an average rate of 3 murders per day. This is entirely consistent with the view expressed by at least one extremist Rabbi, Yaacov Perrin, at the funeral of Baruch Goldstein, the terrorist settler who murdered 29 Palestinians while they prayed in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1984: “Even one million Arabs,” claimed Perrin, “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.”

To the best of my knowledge, Blair has never, even as arguably the most ineffective “peace envoy” the world has ever seen, expressed regrets at the loss of Palestinian lives with as much gravitas as he employed to condemn the kidnapping of the settlers. If, indeed, that is what has happened to them; with no credible claims of responsibility, there is already talk on social media that the three will surface unharmed after spending a few days in a military facility somewhere in Israel having served their purpose of giving Netanyahu an excuse to try to break Palestinian will and the unity government in one brutal step. Israel has carried out false flag operations before, so why might this be any different?

According to statistics supplied by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel is holding 196 Palestinian children in its jails. Although it regards Israeli citizens as adults from the age of 18, as far as sentencing is concerned, Palestinians aged 12 and over are “adults” in Israeli eyes. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) reports, “Every year between 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system.”

There are almost two hundred men held by Israel under so-called “administrative detention”. They have never been charged with or found guilty of any crime and their detention can be extended indefinitely. To all intents and purposes, they have been “kidnapped” by Israel’s occupation authorities.

All of this doesn’t matter, of course. With a compliant media at its disposal, Israel has once again been able to control the narrative so that Palestinian fatalities over the past few days are ignored and the missing settlers grab the headlines. This pattern is repeated in the lack of coverage of the almost daily Israeli military incursions into Gaza and attacks on farmers and fishermen, which go unreported. It is as if they have become so commonplace that they are not newsworthy. The PSC has monitored the BBC for its coverage of the conflict in Palestine: “[The Corporation] has a unique responsibility, enshrined in the BBC Charter, to provide news that is balanced, fair and accurate. In the case of its coverage of Palestine and Israel, this is not the case. Audiences are constantly presented with the Israeli perspective on events, while being kept in the dark about Israel’s atrocities committed against the Palestinians.” It is within that sort of context that we must view displays of solidarity by the likes of Netanyahu and Blair on any issue, not just missing settlers.

So when the Israeli prime minister declares that the Palestinian Authority should dissolve the newly-created unity government because “they cannot build a government that is backed by the kidnappers of children and the murderers of innocents” he should take a long, hard look at his own record, for that is exactly what his government, and those before it, are guilty of. Never mind the chutzpah, Netanyahu is being a “tsvuak” (hypocrite) of the highest order. Come to think of it, though, I think I prefer plain old schmuck; that suits him down to the ground.

June 19, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers invade more Palestinian homes in Hebron

International Solidarity Movement | June 18, 2014

Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Yesterday the Israeli army invaded a family house in the H1 area, supposedly under full Palestinian Authority civil and security control, of al-Khalil (Hebron). The father of the family is very ill with heart disease; the family was forced in to one room and was not allowed to leave. The eight Israeli soldiers used the house as an unofficial army post, both to rest and to view the area. The soldiers stayed there overnight, terrifying the family, as they had no idea when the soldiers would leave. At approximately 11:00 am, the soldiers left the house, however they informed the family that they would return.

The soldiers then entered the next house, relatives of the same family, with four young children. First they searched the house, and then occupied the children’s room on the second floor. They moved the children’s beds to get more space and placed a black blanket to cover the doorway.

The soldiers took shifts, sitting in front of the room watching the family, while the rest were sleeping, eating, and viewing the area. The family told the ISMers present that the soldiers also took showers. The soldiers seemed very uncomfortable with the ISM volunteers in the house, and behaved very aggressively towards them, and the family members who were taking photos.

The family offered the soldiers to use the roof instead of the children’s room, but they refused.

The military presence in the house caused a lot of fear for the family, they were unable to carry out their daily routines, and the children were very upset that they could not enter their room; they were afraid the soldiers would take their belongings and break their toys.

After five hours the family convinced the military to leave, as they left, it was witnessed them joining with a much larger group of soldiers.

Since last Friday, there has been a large increase in home invasions all over the West Bank. This is part of the collective punishment inflicted on the Palestinian population, since the disappearance of three Israeli settler youth on Thursday.

June 18, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment