Veterans of Elite Israeli Unit Refuse Reserve Duty, Citing Treatment of Palestinians - NYTimes.com. JERUSALEM — Denouncing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians under occupation, a group of veterans from an elite, secretive military intelligence unit have declared they will no longer “take part in the state’s actions against ” in required reserve duty because of what they called “our moral duty to act.” In a letter sent Thursday night to their commanders as well as ’s prime minister and army chief, 43 veterans of the clandestine Unit 8200 complained that Israel made “no distinction between Palestinians who are and are not involved in violence” and that information collected “harms innocent people.”
Intelligence “is used for political persecution,” they wrote, which “does not allow for people to lead normal lives, and fuels more violence, further distancing us from the end of the conflict.” “There are certain things that we were asked to do that we feel do not deserve the title of self-defense,” he added in a telephone interview. Lt. Col. Israel and Gaza in context | Here's the thing... Since Israel’s military operation in Gaza commenced in earnest, the party line among western politicians and corporate news media has been a familiar one: Israel has the right to defend itself against rocket attacks originating in the Gaza Strip. This frame immediately establishes Israel as the defensive agent and Hamas as the “terrorist” aggressor, and begets an intellectual dilemma that the Israeli military, through its propaganda channels, has blithely exploited.
“What would you do?” Reads a caption overlaid atop an image of Paris, with the orange signatures of explosions photoshopped onto residential buildings in the environs of the Eiffel Tower. The answer, as far as the Israel Defence Forces are concerned, is implicit in the question: respond with lethal firepower. Once again, history is repeating itself. “Why are you [Hamas]…shooting your rockets?” A problem with historical roots Today, Israelis recall the events of 1947-48 as part of the “War of Independence.” A turbulent period. A Former AP Correspondent Explains How and Why His Colleagues Get Israel So Wrong. A TV reporter does a stand-up near the Israeli/Gaza border as a 24-hour ceasefire begins on July 27, 2014.
(Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images) The Israel Story Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. When the hysteria abates, I believe the events in Gaza will not be remembered by the world as particularly important. The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. While global mania about Israeli actions has come to be taken for granted, it is actually the result of decisions made by individual human beings in positions of responsibility—in this case, journalists and editors. In this essay I will try to provide a few tools to make sense of the news from Israel. This essay is not an exhaustive survey of the sins of the international media, a conservative polemic, or a defense of Israeli policies. How Important Is the Israel Story? What Is Important About the Israel Story, and What Is Not.
08TELAVIV2329_a. Show Headers 1. (S) Summary and Comment: Within the span of several days, the Israeli Defense Force Regional Commanders made direct and frank comments in separate interviews to the press regarding the state-of-play in Israel's northern, central, and southern regions. On the northern border, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot described a GOI policy to respond with indiscriminate force against Lebanon should hostilities resume. OC Central Command Maj. Gen. S E C R E T TEL AVIV 002329 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/15/2018 TAGS: MARR, PGOV, MOPS, MCAP, IS SUBJECT: IDF REGIONAL COMMANDERS SPEAK OUT IN PRESS INTERVIEWS Classified By: DCM Luis G. You can use this tool to generate a print-friendly PDF of the document 08TELAVIV2329_a. The formal reference of this document is 08TELAVIV2329_a, please use it for anything written about this document. Submit this story. 08TELAVIV2447_a. Palestine-Israel Journal: <b>The Intifada, <i>Hasbara</i> and the Media</b>
Last Palestinian family vows to remain as Israel gentrifies historic Haifa neighborhood. A local authority plans to demolish a Palestinian neighborhood in Haifa, a coastal city in the Galilee region of present-day Israel. “One day, two years ago, there was an order from the municipality on our door,” Tawfiq Abbas told The Electronic Intifada. He was born and raised in Wadi al-Siyah, a valley on the outskirts of Haifa. Abbas’ extended family includes more than sixty members, twenty of whom are children. The family holds Israeli citizenship. “No one actually talked to us. Wadi al-Siyah predates the 1948 establishment of Israel. Abbas and his family are being threatened with eviction because of the city’s plans to gentrify the area and generate a larger income for the local municipality. “My family has documents proving that it has lived here for over a hundred years, but now Israel wants to remove us by any means possible.” Behind Abbas’ home, his grandfather was born in a cave in the early 1900s, though the exact year is not certain.
Few services Broken promises.
GazaUnderAttack 2014. David Grossman v. Max Blumenthal. Anyone familiar with Max Blumenthal’s journalism—in print or video (his interviews with Chicken Hawk Republicans are legendary)—knows him to be absolutely fearless. Whether he’s exploring the id of American conservatism or the contradictions of Israeli nationalism, Max heads deep into the dark places and doesn’t stop till he’s turned on all the lights. Courage in journalism requires not only physical fortitude but also an especially shrewd and sophisticated mode of intelligence.
It’s not enough to go into a war zone; you have to know how to size up your marks, not get taken in by the locals with their lore, and know when and how to squeeze your informants. Max possesses those qualities in spades. With laser precision, he zeroes in on the most vulnerable point of his subjects’ position or argument—he reminds me in this respect of an analytical philosopher—and quietly and calmly takes aim. Max’s new book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel has just come out. Israel / Palestine. Compilation of Wikileaks Relating to Israel & the Palestinians. The Palestine Papers - Al Jazeera English - english.aljazeera.net. Saeb Erekat resigns.
Pro-Palestinian activists halted from flying - Middle East. More than 40 pro-Palestinian activists have detained by Israeli authorities at Tel Aviv's international airport for taking part in an attempted "fly-in". The Welcome to Palestine campaign, now in its third consecutive year, aims to gather activists from more than 15 countries in Israel from April 15 to 21 to "challenge the Israeli siege of the occupied territories", it says on its website. Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said on Sunday that 41 people had been refused entry at Ben Gurion airport by early afternoon and would be deported. Four Israeli supporters, two holding "Welcome to Palestine" signs, were also arrested as they waited to greet the arrivals. Rosenfeld told Al Jazeera, "We know those activists have intentions of arriving here, intentions of causing disturbances both inside the terminal ... to stop the the Isreali aircrafts from coming in.
" Al Jazeera's Cal Perry in Tel Aviv said that 60 per cent of the activists had been stopped at their point of origin. Olympia Food Co-op's symbolic, historic BDS decision. Uncovered: Israel's role in planned US lawsuit to fight BDS. A group of pro-Israel activists, backed by StandWithUs, a national US pro-Israel US organization, is planning to take legal action to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its historic decision to boycott Israeli products. The Electronic Intifada has obtained a copy of a 31 May 2011 letter sent to the Board of Directors of the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, Washington, threatening “expensive” legal action if the pro-Israel activists’ “demands” to end the boycott of Israeli products are not met.
Other documents, supported by interviews, confirm that the Israeli government has taken part in discussions about, and been given advance knowledge of, the planned lawsuit and another planned action against Evergreen State College in Olympia in response to Palestine solidarity activism by students. Evergreen State is noted for being the school attended by Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli occupation soldier operating a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003.
An historic vote. Palestinian journalist pardoned, debate on legislative reform sparked - IFEX | Rights & Liberties. Human Rights activist Ahmad Qatamesh, detained for 6 years in the 90s, is arrested again without charges. Omar Barghoti released this statement earlier today accompanying an article (which follows) regarding Dr. Ahmad Qatamesh, a prominent Palestinian writer, academic and human rights advocate.
“They told him they will issue an “administrative detention” order against him, clearly indicating that they have arrested him for his writings and political views. Human rights organizations have squarely condemned administrative detention as an affront to justice, as the detainee is not formally charged and is not given a chance to defend him/herself or even access to the charges list. Please distribute this to your human rights and activists networks, urging everyone to do their best to pressure Israel to release him and all other Palestinian prisoners of conscience.”
In the early hours of dawn on Thursday, 21 April 2011, a large force of Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers raided the home of the prominent Palestinian writer and academic Dr. Ahmad Qatamesh in Al-Bireh and arrested him. Photographer deliberately shot by Israeli soldier during Nakba Day clashes. Palestinian news photographer Mohammed Othman was badly injured by a shot fired by an Israeli soldier while covering clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli troops at the Beit Hanoun (Erez) border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel on 15 May, the anniversary of Israel’s creation, marked as “Nakba Day” (Day of Disaster) by Palestinians.
He was taken to Shifa hospital where he underwent surgery for a gunshot injury to the chest yesterday. Doctors described his condition as stable. Reporters Without Borders was told that Othman was clearly identifiable as a journalist at the time of the shooting and was deliberately targeted. The press freedom organization urges the Israeli authorities to investigate the circumstances in which he was shot and punish those responsible. In response to a call by the Union of Journalists, dozens of reporters gathered yesterday in Gaza City to express their support for Othman and to condemn Israeli military abuses against Palestinian journalists. Al-Shabaka. How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas. Cafe Noah: Cultural exile in Israel - Witness. In 1948, a group of Jewish Arab musicians from Baghdad and Cairo were amongst the streams of Jewish immigrants coming to the new state of Israel from all over the world.
They were masters of Arabic music - but found that their music was not valued in their new homeland, and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war left no room for their identity as Arab Jews. Cafe Noah in Tel Aviv became the one place where their music and culture could survive. Award-winning filmmaker Duki Dror spoke to Al Jazeera's Donata von Hardenberg about the making of Cafe Noah and the issues behind it.
Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to make a film about Cafe Noah and cultural exile in Israel? Duki Dror: When I was a child, Cafe Noah was the place where my parents spent their happy Saturday nights with friends, listening to their favorite Arabic music, drinking whiskey and forgetting for a moment the agony of being in cultural exile in Israel. They both were born in Iraq. What does it mean to live in cultural exile in Israel?
Netanyahu's big fat Greek Wedding. Multinational companies mining occupied Palestinian land. HeidelbergCement and Cemex, two building materials industries from Germany and Mexico, respectively, are involved in the operation of quarries in the occupied West Bank. The Electronic Intifada has obtained documentation showing loaded trucks leaving the illegal quarries and traveling into Israel. International law prohibits Israel’s exploitation of natural resources in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights for its own benefit. Meanwhile, Israeli run-quarries in the West Bank — including Nahal Raba and Yatir quarries, which are operated by subsidiaries of HeidelbergCement and Cemex — supply almost a quarter of Israel’s construction material.
HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Hanson Israel operates the Nahal Raba quarry in the West Bank near the green line — Israel’s internationally-recognized boundary with the occupied West Bank — and Kfar Qasim, a Palestinian village in Israel. Cemex owns fifty percent of Yatir Quarry through its subsidiary ReadyMix Industries. ISRAEL: Supreme Court orders demolition of West Bank settlement | Rights & Liberties. Israel's impunity challenged by torture victim in Jerusalem. JERUSALEM (IPS) - In a case that has highlighted Israel’s abuse of Palestinian detainees, an Israeli military court recently acquitted a Palestinian man after it became clear that Israeli interrogators used physical and psychological abuse as a way to coerce a confession from him.
Ayman Hamida, a resident of Ezariya in East Jerusalem, was accused of various security offenses, including shooting at an Israeli border police outpost in September 2009. He was indicted for 17 offenses, based largely on a confession obtained during a forty-day interrogation period. In his testimony before an Israeli military court, however, Hamida asked to retract his confession because he said he was threatened with detention, his family members were threatened, and he was beaten, spat on, choked and deprived of food by Israeli interrogators.
“They intimidated him, saying that they will bring his sister and interrogate her. “Deprived of free will” Setting a precedent “It’s a very important precedent. Ei: Egypt's uprising and its implications for Palestine. We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine. If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress.
Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (“Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast,” 29 January 2011). Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” As for Jordan, change is already underway. Related Links. Arab Spring may be good for Israel after all. The Egypt Revolution & The Jewish Revolution It Produced. Revealed story of Israeli troops told to 'cleanse' Gaza - Channel4 News - Wednesday 26 January 2011. Israeli Soldiers’ Brutality at Prison Camp for Palestinians | RO: Ramallah Online. Majida Abu Rahmah: A Message from Israeli Military Prison on International Human Rights Day. What about Israels right to self determination? Jerusalem baby denied rights by Israeli apartheid. Israeli checkpoints kill women in childbirth, says new study.
How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones - Middle East, World. Palestinian Children 'Routinely Tortured & Used As Human Shields By Israeli Forces', Says UN. “I picture a dead Arab”: In disturbing video, Israeli children’s words echo indoctrination. What's going on in Israel. The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail | World news. Israel has 101 different types of permits governing Palestinian movement. False Flag - By Mark Perry. Arendt: Born in conflict, Israel will degenerate into Sparta, and American Jews will need to back away. The Russel Tribunal on Palestine - Cape Town session.