South Jerusalem — A Progressive, Skeptical Blog on Israel, Judaism, Culture, Politics, and Literature Israeli Soldiers’ Brutality at Prison Camp for Palestinians | RO: Ramallah Online Juan Cole, 22 April 2011 Israeli television has shown shocking cellphone video of the October, 2007, actions at Ketziot Prison, against unarmed Palestinian prisoners, by Israeli security forces. The thousand or so prisoners there revolted at a provocative search abruptly conducted by “Control and Restraint” units or Metzada. Far from being menacing, the Palestinian prisoners are shown cringing and obeying orders to come out of their tents with a promise that the shooting would stop. An interview with an inmate was broadcast by The Real News in 2007 soon after the Israeli attack: B’Tselem was already charging in 2007 that abuse and even torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons was all too common. The Israeli excuse for the killing and injuring of the prisoners was that they were menacing, but the video does not bear out this charge. Ketziot was the prison camp for Palestinians at which Cpl. Citizenship is the right to have rights. Juan Cole Juan R.
The Folly of World War IV: Wars Are Never Quick, Cheap or Easy This post first appeared at TomDispatch. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, left, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey speak to the press about the ongoing bombing campaign against militants in Iraq and Syria during a news conference at the Pentagon on September 26, 2014 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by T.J. Assume that the hawks get their way — that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent US interventions in the Greater Middle East. In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris, the American mood is strongly trending in favor of this sort of escalation. In fact, subsequent events in each case mocked early claims of success or outright victory. Indeed, the very existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) today renders a definitive verdict on the Iraq wars over which the Presidents Bush presided, each abetted by a Democratic successor. Not so with Cohen.
About Mondoweiss Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. It has four principal aims: To publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign policy in a timely fashion.To publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues.To foster the movement for greater fairness and justice for Palestinians in American foreign policy.To offer alternatives to pro-Zionist ideology as a basis for American Jewish identity. This blog is co-edited by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. We maintain this blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, and our Jewish background. This site aims to build a diverse community, with posts from many authors. Contact Allison Deger, Assistant Editor Email: allison@mondoweiss.net Twitter: @allissoncd Donate
Watch: Former IDF soldiers reveal nature of occupation Breaking the Silence, the organization of former Israeli soldiers who literally “break their silence” by sharing experiences from their military service and exposing the IDF to criticism, launched a video campaign on YouTube this week in which soldiers are seen identifying themselves for the first time in front of the camera. A formal launch event took place Monday evening in Jaffa, at a highly fitting venue called “Na LaGa’at” (Please Touch) a theater/restaurant space operated by the deaf and blind. The release of the video campaign marks another achievement for BTS, which has demonstrated not only that the testimonies are genuine and cannot be disregarded, but that increasing numbers of Israeli citizens are willing to go on record and speak out, despite the harsh criticism and attacks the organization has experienced and the fact that many Israelis see them as traitors. Here is another video of a former border policewoman.
The Echoes of 1939 IN AUGUST 1939, two weeks before the start of World War II in Europe, I was admitted to England as an infant refugee. My parents and I got out of Germany, where I was born, at the last moment. Three months earlier, my older sister, then age 10, had been admitted to England along with about 10,000 other unaccompanied Jewish children in what became known as the Kindertransport. When the British admitted us, all other doors were closed. America, for its part, had a restrictive quota system for immigrants that my father saw as lengthy and, thus, hopeless. Some refugees who had fled Germany to other countries in Europe continued to arrive in England even after war broke out. The British dealt with this by sending late arriving adult males to the Isle of Man, in the sea between England and Ireland. Senator Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush say that only Christian Syrians should be admitted. One of those who proposes to exclude all Syrians is Senator Marco Rubio.
Israel Policy Forum | Principled. Pragmatic. Pro-Israel. LRB · Yitzhak Laor · You are terrorists, we are virtuous As soon as the facts of the Bint Jbeil ambush, which ended with relatively high Israeli casualties (eight soldiers died there), became public, the press and television in Israel began marginalising any opinion that was critical of the war. The media also fell back on the kitsch to which Israelis grow accustomed from childhood: the most menacing army in the region is described here as if it is David against an Arab Goliath. Yet the Jewish Goliath has sent Lebanon back 20 years, and Israelis themselves even further: we now appear to be a lynch-mob culture, glued to our televisions, incited by a premier whose ‘leadership’ is being launched and legitimised with rivers of fire and destruction on both sides of the border. Mass psychology works best when you can pinpoint an institution or a phenomenon with which large numbers of people identify. In the melodramatic barrage fired off by the press, the army is assigned the dual role of hero and victim. This time we must try harder to remember.