Telling It As It Is
Dorothy Naor's cri de coeur from Israel is so much to the point here. Yes, Israelis and most of the rest of us Westerners pretty clearly have stereotyped Middle Easterners -- in part to justify our own greedy expropriations and support of repressive regimes there.
Let us not forget that Bin Laden is a product of Saudi Arabia, our principal oil pal and its corrupt princes. Fifteen of the 19 on 9/11 were from that nation. Certainly only a small portion of Muslims are mad terrorists. Islam, after all, gave shelter to the Jews when they were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. And our Western countries have (guiltily) down the ages been pervaded by the anti-Semitism unleashed by the convert from Judaism, 'Saint' Paul ("The Jews killed Jesus.") who perverted Christianity with his hatreds -- of Jews, women, gays and others and his sycophantic and proud subservience to the corrupt and brutal Roman authorities who actually did kill Jesus. Read his Letter to the Romans -- including the portions never used as sermon texts. I have encountered experienced clergy who were startled to have his hate passages apparently for the first time drawn to their attention.
The bottom line is that Israeli xenophobia is committing hate crimes against Palestinians (and Lebanese) in far greater proportions than subsets of these peoples have inflicted upon Israelis. And we Americans are engaged in the same brutal games -- with all the shameful rationales peddled by the Bush administration. Bringing democracy to the 'natives'? What a damned lie! We are after their natural resources and to hell with the corpses piling up in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and Iran next?
I will be deeply saddened to see Israel shattered amidst this mess. Will the voices of such as Dorothy Naor who dedicates her life to peace making and the small band of Christian Peacemakers over there make any dent in the denial rationales in Israel. There are some good men and women there -- Dorothy, Uri Avnery, and many other caring ones. But they are not heard and the Palestinians are brutally silenced and imprisoned by their occupiers.
But we who are observers must also speak out against atrocities from any quarter -- terrorists of all persuasions including state run ones that muster 'shock and awe' assaults on women, children, and other living beings. If name calling is to be done, they are among our present day 'Nazis' and 'fascists'. Remember the originals also viewed themselves as the saviors of their respective super 'races'. "Sieg Heil" still haunts my consciousness. I do not want to see it repeated by my own political leaders. We must cut through the vicious propaganda and deceptions and call things what they actually are.
Thanks, Dorothy, for this posting, as all your others. I will pass it along as widely as I can. Best, Ed
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Dear All,
After reading a number of reports as Gideon Levy’s last night, I was left too depressed to write. It’s not only what is happening, and that the situation continues steadily to worsen, but also that while there are numerous individuals around the world who can't abide injustice, governments appear not to care. Of course we have to admit that there is money to be made from occupation and wars—not only in the arms industry, but also in restorations (of destroyed villages, airports, and power supply installations, for instance), and in credit, and oil reserves, and very likely other areas. In other words, for some individuals there are monetary benefits to be derived from the misery of others. But as concerns Palestinians and Palestine, it seems to me that there is more to the issue than that.
The question of why, for instance, the UN in 1947 did such an unjust thing as to divide Palestine, giving the larger portion (55%) to the minority (the Jews). Not only was the Jewish population half of the Arab one, but also the Jewish population owned but 6% of the land, and was barely 20% rural, whereas the Muslim population was about 70% rural. By what right, by what discretion did the UN decide to perform so gross an injustice to the Palestinians?
Of course, we all know that there was sympathy at the time for the Jewish population, due to its loss of 6 million. But I can’t help but think that there was more to it than that—that even then the Arabs were looked upon as inferior by Western Christian countries, and that therefore taking land from them and giving it to the Jews appeared to be no great crime.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Christian communities, particularly in Europe, after the Holocaust felt guilty for the injustice and racism they themselves had practiced towards Jews, and this blinded their judgment. Maybe. But I can’t help but feel that the Western world continues to look down at the Palestinians as inferiors. Else how can one explain why the Western governments close their eyes to the Palestinian plight, no less than they closed their eyes to the Jewish plight during the Holocaust.
Below, Gideon Levy’s Deadly Diaries alone are by themselves enough to make the world sit up and take stock, if only it would. Following Levy is an ISM weekly digest; its first item is positive, but most of the rest is more of a similar tenor as Levy’s.
Minute after minute, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the atrocities continue.
For how much longer?
Dorothy
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Ha’aretz Friday, September 1, 2006
Last update - 23:10 30/08/2006
Twilight Zone / Deadly diaries
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/756772.html
Hebrew: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=756678 &contrassID=2&subContrassID=13&sbSubContrassID=3
By Gideon Levy
Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the fourth floor. Two brothers. Their parents and siblings were all killed while they were sleeping. Only the brothers were saved from the inferno caused by two missiles dropped by a plane on their house in the middle of the night. Awad, 19, is seriously injured; Mohammed, 20, uninjured, tends him. Their parents and all seven of their younger siblings, including a disabled sister, were killed. Just try to imagine.
The signs of shock and grief are obvious on the two orphaned brothers. They stare at the floor, speak very softly; their faces are pale and lifeless, even six weeks after that bloody night. On the wall of the hospital room they've taped a picture of their father, taken with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
Dr. Nabil Abu Salmiya was a lecturer in mathematics at the Islamic University in Gaza and a Hamas activist. The wanted man Mohammed Deif visited the family's home in the middle of the night - and the air force bombed it. Deif was wounded, but survived. A family was almost entirely wiped out. This was on the day that the war broke out in Lebanon; no one paid any attention to the killing in the south.
The wounded and the dead continue to arrive at Shifa. This week, ambulance after ambulance pulled up, carrying the victims of Israel Defense Forces' actions - this time in the Sajiyeh quarter of Gaza City - followed by distraught family members. The atmosphere was bleak and threatening, with dozens of armed Hamas soldiers in their blue camouflage uniforms securing the place, Kalashnikovs cocked, on the surrounding roofs, in the hospital yard and corridors. Relatives of the injured lay on the floors of the rooms. The only hospital in Gaza is full to bursting.
A stench permeates the city streets. The garbage hasn't been collected for many days, due to a strike by municipal employees who haven't received their wages for months. The smell filters into the hospital. The electricity only works for a few hours a day, since the air force bombed the only power station in the Gaza Strip; the heat is oppressive. The elevator is either stuck or barely moves.
Awad Abu Salmiya lies with both legs in bandages in a bed by the window. A faint breeze from the sea offers the only bit of relief.
Not far away, in Beit Lahia, Ahmed al-Attar, 17, sits in a wheelchair. His father pleads with Israel and the world for someone to see that his son gets prosthetic legs. Ahmed was injured when the air force fired a missile that hit the mule-drawn wagon in which he was riding with his mother and nephew. They were on the way to pick figs from the family plot near the sea. His mother and the other boy were killed outright; Ahmed lost both legs.
This also happened in the course of Operation Summer Rains, whose end appears to be nowhere in sight; no one in Israel seems very interested in it. Meanwhile, the IDF goes on killing - nine members of the Abu Salmiya family, two members of the Al-Attar family. Together, they're 11 out of 212 people who were killed, including 50 children and teenagers, between the abduction of Gilad Shalit at the end of June, and the end of August.
An empty lot in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. A two-story house used to stand here. Unlike other places, all the rubble here has already been cleared away. The back part of the house was completely destroyed; the front was left tilting on its side. Two missiles. Mohammed and Awad were sleeping in the front of the house, which faced the street. The rest of the family was asleep in the back and was killed. Perhaps only the father was still awake, together with Deif. No one knows. No one will say. It was 3 A.M. Neighbor Ibrahim Samur had gone with Dr. Abu Salmiya to the mosque that evening to pray, and afterward they'd chatted a little in front of the house. They parted at nine. No one saw Deif, of course. In the middle of the night the neighbors were awakened by a tremendous explosion, followed immediately by another one. They say the blast shook them out of their beds. The houses are that close to one another.
In a rented office on the ground floor of the house next door, which serves as a public court for settling conflicts in the neighborhood, a picture of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi hangs on the wall; a water cooler with Israeli-brand Eden spring water sits below it. Here, Abdullah Samur, an 18-year-old, describes what happened that night at the neighbors' house. The children crowding about outside are all wearing T-shirts from the Hamas summer camp. One wears a shirt bearing the likeness of the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Abdullah went to sleep at midnight that night and woke up at 3 A.M. to the noise of a plane overhead. He lives on the third floor. It was July 12, a few hours before the outbreak of the war in Lebanon. The boom jolted him out of his bed. The windows shattered and the doors came off their hinges. Smoke filled his house from the fire that broke out next door, and his parents yelled for the children to flee.
Outside, Abdullah saw the destroyed house next door and the smoke coming from it. He knew the neighbors well. Nabil and his wife Salwa and all the kids he grew up with - Nasser, 6, Aya, 7, Uda, 8, Iman, 11, Yihyeh, 13, and Basma, 15.
And there was Sumiya, too, a disabled 12-year-old, who used to get picked up by a special car that took her to school. She was also killed. Abdullah had been with Awad and Mohammed that afternoon - the only ones who survived. That night Abdullah helped his father extricate the bodies. They found Awad rolled up inside a carpet. And Mohammed Deif? "I don't know him at all," the neighbor says.
The Israeli papers reported that the wounded Deif was pulled from the wreckage and rushed to Shifa. According to the reports, the rescue vehicle was also hit by a missile from the air.
Abdullah's uncle, Ibrahim Samur, also says he's never seen Deif and has no idea what he looks like. Ibrahim lives on the second floor. His 3-year-old son, Mutaz, was lightly wounded by shrapnel, and so was his wife. He rushed them to Shifa while his neighbors' house continued to burn. Since then, all the children have been sleeping in their parents' room. Mutaz cries when he hears a plane.
"He was a good person," Ibrahim says about his neighbor, Abu Salmiya. "He was active in Hamas, but not in its military wing. He was a teacher who helped his poor neighbors." Ibrahim recalls that in their last conversation, on the way back from the mosque, they didn't talk about politics, Abu Salmiya didn't mention any meeting he was supposed to have during the night.
The IDF Spokesman's comment: "In a joint operation of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service, an attack on a house in the northern Gaza Strip was carried out in the early hours of July 12. The house served as a hideout for senior activists in the military wing of Hamas, who planned and carried out acts of terror and the firing of Qassam rockets. At the time of the strike on the house, those present were involved in planning the continued military activity of Hamas. One of those present was Mohammed Deif, who sustained wounds of unknown severity."
The unpaved street is now named for Nabil Abu Salmiya. Before we say good-bye to head over to the hospital and see the two surviving brothers, Ibrahim mentions a name: Nissim Mizrahi. Nissim Mizrahi from the bankrupt Rosh Indiani clothing business, who left Ibrahim - who ran a sewing workshop that has since closed down - with a debt of NIS 130,000.
Ahmed al-Attar sits in a wheelchair. The stumps of his legs are still bandaged. The pain bothers him and he presses on them to find some relief. On July 24, Ahmed and his mother and nephew set out, as they did every day, to the family plot near the sea, to pick some figs. It was around 3 P.M.; they proceeded slowly in their mule-drawn wagon.
"Suddenly we got hit by a missile," he recalls. "After that I didn't see anything. I woke up in the hospital and they told me that my mother and Nadi were killed and that my legs were amputated."
After three days in Shifa, he was transferred to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, but they couldn't save his legs there either. He also suffered burns on his head and other parts of his body, and these wounds are still bandaged. Ahmed is a 12th-grader who, two months before the tragedy, married a 16-year-old named Zeina. His mother, Hiriya, was 58; his nephew, Nadi - his mother's grandson - was 12. Ahmed heard that Nadi was thrown dozens of meters from the wagon, and that his mother's body was torn to pieces as a result of the direct hit.
The IDF Spokesman: "On the morning of July 24, two Qassam rocket launchings were identified as originating next to the Agricultural College in Beit Hanun. The two rockets were fired at Sderot, and one landed next to a school in the city. Later that same day, IDF forces identified two terrorists, who arrived at that location and loaded the launchers on a mule-drawn wagon. The IDF fired accurately at the point where the terrorists were and at the wagon with the launchers, and verified a hit. At the time of the firing, an older woman and her grandson were not seen in the wagon. In the event that they were riding in the same wagon, then it was the terror organizations that are the ones who took no pity on their lives, and engaged in terror activity directed at Israeli civilians under the cover of noncombatants, exploiting them as a human shield."
Hiriya left nine children and some 50 grandchildren. She was a peddler in the Jabalya market, where she sold figs, grapes and strawberries, and cheese that she made herself. On the wall in the Beit Lahia home hangs a picture of a cousin, Mohammed, 23, who was killed by an IDF bullet while standing at the window of his home, exactly three weeks before the grandmother and grandson were killed.
In the memorial picture of Nadi that hangs in the street, one sees the boy's face and that of the killed leader of the Popular Front, Abu Ali Mustafa, in the background. Why the Popular Front? "Because they supplied the family with food during the four days of mourning," Ahmed's father, also named Nadi, explains. Instead of a picture of Hiriya, there is a poster with a drawing of a red rose. Here, pictures of women are not displayed, even after their death. They won't show us a picture of Ahmed from his wedding either, so that we won't see his young bride.
Nadi heard about the tragedy on the radio, when he was in the city. This morning he went back to fishing for the first time, but since 5 A.M. he hadn't caught anything. Someone brings a picture from the scene of the tragedy: a dead mule. The photo is on the cover of the weekly report, No. 29, of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, 2006. In the background an ambulance is visible. The mule lies on the sand, at the foot of the wrecked wagon. A direct hit.
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Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:31:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: ism-media-group
Sender: palsolidarity@googlegroups.com
1. Partial Demolition of Israeli Colony in Bil’in
2. Israeli Company Blockaded in Britan For the Second Time in Bid to Gain Ruling on Illegality of Settlement Products
3. 12 Year Old Boy Shot by Settler While Playing Near His Home
4. Palestinian Activists with International and Israeli Supporters Picket Kofi Annan’s Visit
5. Settler Children Burn Down Palestinian Olive Tree in Hebron, Israeli Soliders Block Firefighters
6. Israeli Army Destroying Olive Trees in Jenin
7. Israeli Army Harrassment in Hebron Continues
8. Israeli Army Kills 15 year old Demonstrator, Injures 12, and Demolishes Houses.
1- Partial Demolition of Israeli Colony in Bil’in
[for background on Israeli land laundering and Matityahu East see
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=662729 Dorothy]
On Monday, August 28th, two structures were demolished in the illegal Israeli settlement of Matityahu East, on the land of Bil’in village. Construction of the settler colonies had continued until an Israeli court issued a stop work order pending a decision on the status of the colony. The demolition was carried out by the construction company responsible for expanding the colony. This reversal is in response to an Israeli Supreme Court order on July 20th, instructing the company to demolish the two partial structures. The court also decided that a Palestinian road must be built in order to give the villages access to their land. This latter ruling has so far not been enforced.
As well as demanding the demolition of the two structures in the Matityahu East enclave, the court instructed the company to restore the land to its previous pre-colonial state, wherein the land was a flourishing olive grove. Previously the whole of the illegal colonies of Matityahu and Mod’in Elit was agricultural land belonging to Bil’in and other villages in the area.
Occupation authorities annexed 1,100 dunums (275 acres) of the land of Bil’in in 1991. At the time, the confiscation was justified by reference to an old Ottoman-era law allowing for confiscation of unused land. Much later, it was revealed that in order to demonstrate that the coveted land was “unused,” the State made use of photos of seasonal crop farm land taken when the crops were not yet in season. More than a decade after the confiscation, Israeli colonial settlements began to be built, following a typical pattern of settlement expansion, whereby first, Palestinian land is declared State property and then eventually distributed to Israelis. As a reaction to the theft of the land, weekly non-violent demonstrations have been held in Bil’in village for the past 17 months.
These demonstrations, in existence weekly since January 2005, garnered international attention and support, making a protracted legal campaign challenging the settlement’s legality a possibility. Yesterday’s demolition is a major step in the struggle of Bil’in village to restore their land to its pre-colonial state. The village plans to continue to challenge plans to gain retrospective permission for other parts of the colony already constructed or under construction.
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2. Israeli Company Blockaded in Britan For the Second Time in Bid to Gain Ruling on Illegality of Settlement Products
URGENT! As of the last update at 1:30pm, Thursday the 30th, this blockade action is still ongoing and needs support! If you are reading this from the UK, the blockaders have requested your support. If you are able, get down there and support them, the address is on http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/08/349478.html Indymedia UK http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/08/349440.html
Get the latest on updates Indymedia UK.
Early Wednesday morning Palestine solidarity activists blockaded the Israeli company Carmel Agrexco’s British headquarters. This was part of a non-violent protest against recurrent breaches of human rights and international law in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine.
Carmel is complicit in war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act). They import fresh produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The action follows a legal warning letter to Carmel stating clearly why they are in breach of the law.
The action took place at Agrexco UK, Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex, Israel’s largest importer of agricultural produce into the European Union. It is 50% Israeli state owned.
Protestors used wire fencing and bicycle D-Locks in a well planned blockade at the two entrances to the building.
Before taking part in the blockade, many of the protesters had witnessed first hand the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation.
This follows on from an action of 11th November 2004, when seven Palestine-Solidarity protesters from London and Brighton were arrested after taking part in a non-violent blockade outside the same company.
Last September a Judge ruled that Agrexco (UK) must prove that their business is lawful. The acquittal of the seven activists before they were able to present their defence meant that the court did not have to rule on the legalityof Agrexco-Carmel’s involvement in the supply of produce from illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
Today’s blockade aims to draw attention to this company’s complicity, in murder, theft and damage of occupied land, collective punishment, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and other breaches of International Law.
Links with information on profiteering from the occupation:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2006/08/347361.html" Text of letter sent to Carmel Agrexco
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/09/322537.html Report on Carmel’s Involvement in the Jordan Valley
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/331851.html
Press release from previous trial
http://www.waronwant.org/?lid=12671
War on Want’s Report –”Profiting from the Occupation”
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3. 12 Year Old Boy Shot by Settler While Playing Near His Home
On August 27, 2006, Hakim Ersan, a 12 year old boy from the village of Beit Fourik near Nablus, was shot by an Israeli colonist from the Aitmar settlement near his home. Hakim was playing with two friends, ages 8-9, when the boys spotted 3 Israeli colonists approaching them. The boys began to run away, and Hakim tripped and fell; when he stood up, the colonist man, aged approximately 40, shot him through his lower back. The bullet exited through his upper groin area, and the younger boys carried him to his home. Hakim is currently in critical condition and awaiting surgery at Raffidia Hospital in Nablus; the extent of damage to his internal organs is yet undetermined.
Colonist violence is nothing new for Beit Fourik; four years ago, an elderly man was farming his land when colonists attacked him and beat him to death with a stone.
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4. Palestinian Activists with International and Israeli Supporters Picket Kofi Annan’s Visit
by ISM Media Office volunteers
This afternoon, peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement joined Palestinians, Israelis, and international supporters from other organizations to picket the visit to Ramallah of Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. Mr Annan was in the West Bank today to meet Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The demonstration began at 1.30pm at the Muqata, headquarters of the PA. Activists brought banners and placards, written in Arabic, Hebrew and English, with slogans including “Stop Land Theft”, “Scotland Against The Wall” and “Enforce Resolution 242?. A large banner included illustrations of the illegal partition wall, currently under construction in the West Bank, and the ongoing destruction of olive trees (by the Israeli Government) which provide livelihoods for many Palestinians.
The central purpose of the picket was to emphasize the impact of the Israeli Government’s policies upon the lives of people living in the occupied West Bank, with particular reference to the partition wall, which is preventing ordinary Palestinians from accessing their farmland, jobs and schools, and has divided families. Amongst the demonstrators were people from Bil’in, a village to the West of Ramallah, where 60% of the villager’s farmland has been cut off from the village by the wall, and where regular non-violent demonstrations are held in protest at the erection of the wall.
Activists hoped to remind Mr Annan that the Israeli Government has still not complied with a raft of UN resolutions, nor has it moved following last year’s ruling, by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which confirmed that the erection of the partition wall is illegal under international law.
Prior to beginning formal talks, both Mr Annan and Mr Abbas came outside to briefly meet demonstrators. Mr Annan listened to the concerns of the gathered villagers and activists, and confirmed that these matters would be discussed in talks today.
for pictures, please click http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/30/kofi-visits-ramallah/
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5- Settler Children Burn Down Palestinian Olive Tree in Hebron, Israeli Soliders Block Firefighters
by ISM Hebron
On Saturday August 26th, at approximately 12 noon, a Palestinian family in Tel Rumeida, (in the Israeli controlled H2 district of Hebron) noticed a group of settler boys setting fire to the dry grass in front of their home.
This land contains many olive trees and settlers have attempted to burn down these trees on many occasions by starting grass fires. The family put the fire out with water but the kids returned and started a fire which spread to the center of a large olive tree. By the time the family noticed, the fire was so hot that they could not put it out by themselves. Phone requests to the DCO (District Command Office of the military) to allow firefighters from the Palestinian municipality of Hebron to enter into H2 to put the fire out were denied.
The family tried to solicit the help of soldiers who poured a white, firefighting powder on the burning tree. This attempt at putting the fire out was not successful and eventually the whole tree was destroyed. Soldiers attempted to charge the family 600 shekels ($135) for the firefighting powder and the family refused. The soldiers threatened to come back and confiscate the family’s television is they refused to pay.
In addition, settlers set the ground on fire in another location next to this same family’s house. No olive trees were destroyed in this fire.
for pictures, please click http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/30/no-firefighters/
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6- Israeli Army Destroying Olive Trees in Jenin
August 29th, 2006 in the town of Zububa in the Jenin region, Israeli soldiers are currently destroying large swaths of Palestinian olive groves. The attacks began around 7:00 in the morning with American-made Caterpillar armoured bulldozers, and is currently ongoing.
According to Mohammad, a resident of Zububa, the tress being destroyed are in an area, 2km in length and 100km in width. This land amounts to the total area owned by the town. The farmers who have repeatedly tried to access their fields have been beaten and fired upon by Israeli forces. The residents of Zububa have argued that the destruction of their fields serves no security purposes, because the land is on the Palestinian side of the Annexation Wall.
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7- Israeli Army Harrassment in Hebron Continues
Soldiers violently attack Palestinian man in his home: August 25th, 2006
There were two cameras filming most, if not all, of the following incident. A few soldiers are easily recognizable by Human Rights Workers (HRW) given the number of times they have been present while soldiers have been invading numerous Palestinian homes.
At approximately 5:15 PM, an HRW posted at the Tel Rumeida checkpoint heard yelling and screaming coming from up the hill. The HRW moved up the hill, and a Palestinian woman was able to point out the house and medical facility from which the screams were issuing. The HRW asked Israeli soldiers immediately inside the building’s door what was going on. They refused to answer, and the soldiers physically prevented the HRW from entering the house. At this point, Dr. Taysir, the building’s owner, broke free from the soldier who was holding him, and pulled on the HRW’s arm while begging him to enter. The HRW managed to enter the door, and saw two, elongated contusions high on Dr. Taysir’s left arm. While being pushed out once again, the HRW negotiated with the soldiers to leave the door open on the condition that he remain outside.
Shortly thereafter three more HRWs arrived. The HRWs managed to enter the building. Three HRWs demanded access to Dr. Taysir, who was now out of sight, while a fourth video taped the encounter. Dr. Taysir could be heard yelling and crying out in pain from a room further in the house. The HRWs attempted to move past the soldiers in order to prevent further injury to Dr. Taysir, but were repeatedly forced back. The soldiers refused to explain why the doctor’s home had been entered, why he had been struck, or why the HRWs could not see him. Throughout this time, the soldiers were physically and verbally aggressive towards the HRWs, repeatedly shoving them towards the door, and yelling at them to get out, shut up, etc.
At this point, an Israeli major arrived with approximately six more soldiers. The major entered the building and began speaking with Dr. Taysir’s brother, who had observed some, but not all, of the incident; this conversation is filmed almost entirely. The major spoke briefly to the soldiers already on site, who quickly became considerably less aggressive toward the HRWs. After approximately ten minutes, the major and all soldiers departed the house without speaking to anyone else. The HRWs then videotaped interviews with both Dr. Taysir and his brother regarding the incident.
Dr. Taysir told the HRWs that he gone to open the door for the soldiers when almost immediately they began shoving him around and pinned him against a wall by pressing on his chest. The doctor told the soldier not to push him, and the soldier responded by punching him in the temple. Other soldiers joined in, and Dr. Taysir received blows to his arms, legs, and torso. At least two blows, those to his left arm, were strikes with the butt of a rifle; these injuries are documented with video.
Seeing that Dr. Taysir was being attacked, a female patient who was present attempted to intervene, putting herself between the doctor and the soldiers. She was struck by a soldier, and fell unconscious. The patient was later placed on a medical exam table with an oxygen feed to help her recover, where she was videotaped (with permission) by the HRWs. Dr. Taysir’s adult daughter was also beaten at some point during the encounter, though the events are not clear to us what happened. Dr. Taysir and his brother both stated repeatedly that soldiers used and regularly use foul language towards him and his family, including his wife and small children.
Later that evening, before sunset, soldiers could be seen on the roof of Dr. Taysir’s house. HRWs were standing on their own roof, and when they looked in the direction of the soldiers, the soldiers used their arms in a gesture to say ‘fuck you’ to the HRWs. The soldiers were laughing the entire time. The HRWs did not respond.
* * *
Soldiers invade yet another home in Tel Rumeida, Hebron : August 20th, 2006
At approximately 12 PM HRWs arrived at a house being invaded by IDF soldiers. HRWs found the the door blocked by two soldiers, who refused to let them in the house; these soldiers did not tell the HRWs to not film them. After a few minutes of attempting to negotiate our way into the house, HRWs walked around the soldiers, and were met with little resistance. One HRW went to the family and asked if they were OK; the family appeared to be nervous but unharmed. Other HRWs proceeded to come into the house and look around, seeing if anything was disrupted or broken. None of us could see evidence that the soldiers had done this, unlike the previous week, in which the neighbor’s house was destroyed from the inside.
An HRW approached the commander of the unit with her camera on and asked him what they were doing; his face is clearly seen on film. The commander told the HRW that if she and her friends wanted to stay in the house, she should turn the camera off. The HRW told the commander that she could film and that if the soldiers weren’t doing anything wrong, it shouldn’t bother them. The commander then stepped closer to the HRW and said, “Look, i’m in control of this house now. If you want to stay and watch us search, then turn the camera off. If you don’t do that, then I will make all of you go outside, lock the doors, and you can wait for us to finish outside.” The HRW put her camera down and proceeded to follow the soldiers through the house. They did not break or take anything that was obvious. The soldiers left about ten minutes after HRWs had arrived. As the soldiers were leaving, one HRW said to the commander, “Hey, see you later, Yosi.” The soldier then replied, “You have a lot of guts saying that to me.”
The family told the HRWs afterwards that the soldiers come frequently to their house. The soldiers always tell them they’re looking for weapons, but have never found any. An HRW asked the family if the soldiers ever break or steal things, and one of the women replied, “Sometimes yes, sometimes no; we are always at their mercy. Today they behaved very well, and I think it was because all of you came.” The family thanked the HRWs repeatedly as we sat and drank tea with them.
for pictures, please click
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/27/telrumeida-homes/
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8- Israeli Army Kills 15 year old Demonstrator, Injures 12, and Demolishes Houses
Nablus, Palestine–Today, August 26, 2006, in the Jabal Shamali neighborhood of Nablus, soldiers of the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) launched a 16 and a half hour incursion, wherein they killed one young boy, hospitalized at least twelve with many more injured, and destroyed twenty homes and apartments. The IOF entered the area around 2:00am, with over 26 military vehicles including armoured jeeps, hummers, border police jeeps, a Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozer and Caterpillar “excavator” wrecking machines.
Upon entering the area, the army went to the Labbada house, a three-story building, built in 1927, and home to over seventeen families, including eights flats housing members of the Labbada family. Immediately after entering the area, the soldiers used loudspeakers to order the residents of the building to leave within one minute. At this time, seventeen families exited the building, and were detained on the street, from 2:00-4:00am, while IOF soldiers fired live ammunition over their heads.
Upon seeing the bulldozers, the families of the Labbada house made repeated offers to act as shields for the soldiers in order to allow them to enter the building to search for the target of the raid, but the soldiers refused, and soon began to demolish the homes. At 4:00am most of theresidents were released and allowed to enter the home of a neighbor, but one elderly man, approximately eighty years old, was further detained until around 9:00am when he was released.
At 3:00am, with the residents still detained in the street, IOF bulldozers and “excavators” began to demolish small homes surrounding the Labbada complex, in an attempt to reach the three-story building. Once the building around the Labbada house had been completely demolished, the army began to demolish the three-story building from three sides. At this time, soldiers entered the At Tamimi building, a two-story home adjacent to the Labbada complex, and used the top floor as a sniper position. At 9:30am, five men were kidnapped from the neighboring house and forced to enter the apartment being used as a sniper nest to act as human shields for the army.
These men were held from 9:30am-11:45am. The men are named Shadi, age 23, Majdi, age 35, Tamer, age 19, Rami, age 17, Mohammad, age 21 and Walid, age 64.
The army proceeded to demolish at least three homes bordering the Labbada complex, and an additional eleven flats within the complex. While they demolished the homes, the army fired almost constantly into the building, while also firing at demonstrators with live ammunition, tear gas and concussion grenades. During this assault, the soldiers repeatedly fired explosive grenades from M-16 assault rifles into the building’s windows.
While demolishing the homes, the army crushed at least eight automobiles, and utilizing a bulldozer, dropped three of them on a neighboring house. Also during the attack, IOF soldiers entered the adjacent children’s’ school and after knocking out the windows, used the area as a firing position to shoot at demonstrators. In addition, Palestinian medical volunteers reported that around 5:00pm, a large fire was seen blazing in the Labbada house, the result of repeated IOF grenade fire.
During the demolition, young Palestinian demonstrators gathered on and around Amman street, and were fired upon repeatedly. Rafidia hospital has confirmed that during these clashes, Muntasir Sulaiman Muhammad Ukah, 15 from Askar refugee camp, was shot in the back and killed. Rafidia has also confirmed treating an additional 12 persons for injuries, they are:
Issam Fathi Joma’a, 27 years old, with shrapnel in his right shoulder.
Ammar Nizar Saed, 16 years old, shot in the hand.
Jaber Naser Abd-Alrahman, 16 years old, shrapnel in an unknown location.
Ayman Abed Al-kareem Al-Khayat, 17 years old, shot in left leg.
Rani Mohammad Al-akhbar, 18 years old, shot in the leg.
Mahdi Atif Shrooti, 13 years old, shot in the hip.
Abed Al-latif Tahseen Agha, 9 years old, with shrapnel in the neck.
Abed Al-aziz Khalel Jebril, 18 years old, shot with a rubber bullet in the right hand.
Fathi Mohammad, 80 years old, shot in the right leg.
Ramadan Husam Al-ajori, 13 years old, shot in the right leg.
Fadi Ahmad, 18 years old, show with a rubber bullet in the head.
Ahamd Zayad Solayman, 15 years old, shot in the back.
Local news sources report an additional ten injuries but only those named were transfered to Rafidia hospital. On at least two occasions, IOF soldiers prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching injured persons in a timely manner.
The target of the incursion is unclear, but IOF soldiers arrested Nizar Labbada, 30 years old, before leaving the scene at 6:30pm. This is not the first time the 79 year old building was raided. In 2004, IOF soldiers attacked the building on four separate occasions in search of Firaz Labbada, now 34. Firaz was arrested in 2004 and is currently imprisoned until at least 2008.
***
* Israeli Assault on Balata
This morning, two Palestinian resistance fighters were killed by Israeli military during an incursion into Balata refugee camp just outside of Nablus. Another young man was shot in the stomach and is, according to sources at Rafidia hospital, in critical condition. Hani Al-Hashash, 22, and Ibrahim Neba, 23, were chased up on the roof by Israeli special forces who broke the door and entered their home at about five o’clock this morning. As the military opened fire, one of the men attempted to defend himself and shot two soldiers, injuring them slightly.
The two resistance fighters attempted to escape by climbing up to the roof. An Apache helicopter then backed them up against a wall before firing several rounds of bullets into their bodies. Hani Al-Hashash died from a bullet to his brain and Ibrahim Neba incurred several fatal wounds to the neck, stomach and chest. Five to six missiles were also fired from the helicopter, breaking two water tanks and making several large holes in the roof of the building.
* Palestinian Children Assaulted by Israeli Army
On Sunday August 27th, two HRWs were on Shuhada Street in front of the military post which watches the Beit Hadassa settlement in Hebron. At around 5 p.m. a group of six Palestinian kids between approximately 10 and 12 years of age, who had been around the area for a few hours, went towards the checkpoint and started a conversation with the soldier in the military post. After a couple of minutes, the group of kids sat down on the steps in opposite of the post and started obviously joking with the soldier, so that it was not clear if the kids were detained, or if they were just joking around with the soldier. The HRWs wanted to clarify the situation and asked the soldier what the kids are doing there. The soldier responded that the kids were detained because they tried to steal a bicycle from the settlement and that he called the police to deal with this case. The HRW asked the soldier to let the kids leave, but he refused to do so. A short time later, some Palestinian residents started talking to the soldier.
At about 5.30 p.m. one police officer and four Border policemen arrived at the military post and started questioning the boys and talking to a Palestinian woman who was still around. After about 15 minutes, three boys were allowed to leave and the Palestinian woman left with them, giving each a cuff on the head. The other three boys were still there, and the police officer told the HRW, who tried to intervene, that he should leave because they were “taking the kids back home”.
The HRWs moved back several yards and saw the border police and the police officer take one boy after another into the military post, behind the camouflage netting, where the HRWs couldn’t see what was being done. When the first boy came out again (after about 15 seconds), the HRW saw that he was holding his head, so they suspected that those boys were taken in there to beat them. The HRW went quickly towards the military post while asking the soldiers and the police, if they would beat the kids in there. Being closer to the post, the HRW was able to hear slaps and see obvious moves. The Border Police came quickly towards the HRWs and tried to intimidate them while asking them questions and demanding their passports.
Meanwhile, the three boys left.
for pictures, please click http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/26/nablus-idf-kills-boy/
==================================
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
Let us not forget that Bin Laden is a product of Saudi Arabia, our principal oil pal and its corrupt princes. Fifteen of the 19 on 9/11 were from that nation. Certainly only a small portion of Muslims are mad terrorists. Islam, after all, gave shelter to the Jews when they were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. And our Western countries have (guiltily) down the ages been pervaded by the anti-Semitism unleashed by the convert from Judaism, 'Saint' Paul ("The Jews killed Jesus.") who perverted Christianity with his hatreds -- of Jews, women, gays and others and his sycophantic and proud subservience to the corrupt and brutal Roman authorities who actually did kill Jesus. Read his Letter to the Romans -- including the portions never used as sermon texts. I have encountered experienced clergy who were startled to have his hate passages apparently for the first time drawn to their attention.
The bottom line is that Israeli xenophobia is committing hate crimes against Palestinians (and Lebanese) in far greater proportions than subsets of these peoples have inflicted upon Israelis. And we Americans are engaged in the same brutal games -- with all the shameful rationales peddled by the Bush administration. Bringing democracy to the 'natives'? What a damned lie! We are after their natural resources and to hell with the corpses piling up in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and Iran next?
I will be deeply saddened to see Israel shattered amidst this mess. Will the voices of such as Dorothy Naor who dedicates her life to peace making and the small band of Christian Peacemakers over there make any dent in the denial rationales in Israel. There are some good men and women there -- Dorothy, Uri Avnery, and many other caring ones. But they are not heard and the Palestinians are brutally silenced and imprisoned by their occupiers.
But we who are observers must also speak out against atrocities from any quarter -- terrorists of all persuasions including state run ones that muster 'shock and awe' assaults on women, children, and other living beings. If name calling is to be done, they are among our present day 'Nazis' and 'fascists'. Remember the originals also viewed themselves as the saviors of their respective super 'races'. "Sieg Heil" still haunts my consciousness. I do not want to see it repeated by my own political leaders. We must cut through the vicious propaganda and deceptions and call things what they actually are.
Thanks, Dorothy, for this posting, as all your others. I will pass it along as widely as I can. Best, Ed
....................................
Dear All,
After reading a number of reports as Gideon Levy’s last night, I was left too depressed to write. It’s not only what is happening, and that the situation continues steadily to worsen, but also that while there are numerous individuals around the world who can't abide injustice, governments appear not to care. Of course we have to admit that there is money to be made from occupation and wars—not only in the arms industry, but also in restorations (of destroyed villages, airports, and power supply installations, for instance), and in credit, and oil reserves, and very likely other areas. In other words, for some individuals there are monetary benefits to be derived from the misery of others. But as concerns Palestinians and Palestine, it seems to me that there is more to the issue than that.
The question of why, for instance, the UN in 1947 did such an unjust thing as to divide Palestine, giving the larger portion (55%) to the minority (the Jews). Not only was the Jewish population half of the Arab one, but also the Jewish population owned but 6% of the land, and was barely 20% rural, whereas the Muslim population was about 70% rural. By what right, by what discretion did the UN decide to perform so gross an injustice to the Palestinians?
Of course, we all know that there was sympathy at the time for the Jewish population, due to its loss of 6 million. But I can’t help but think that there was more to it than that—that even then the Arabs were looked upon as inferior by Western Christian countries, and that therefore taking land from them and giving it to the Jews appeared to be no great crime.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Christian communities, particularly in Europe, after the Holocaust felt guilty for the injustice and racism they themselves had practiced towards Jews, and this blinded their judgment. Maybe. But I can’t help but feel that the Western world continues to look down at the Palestinians as inferiors. Else how can one explain why the Western governments close their eyes to the Palestinian plight, no less than they closed their eyes to the Jewish plight during the Holocaust.
Below, Gideon Levy’s Deadly Diaries alone are by themselves enough to make the world sit up and take stock, if only it would. Following Levy is an ISM weekly digest; its first item is positive, but most of the rest is more of a similar tenor as Levy’s.
Minute after minute, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the atrocities continue.
For how much longer?
Dorothy
------------------------------------------------------
Ha’aretz Friday, September 1, 2006
Last update - 23:10 30/08/2006
Twilight Zone / Deadly diaries
Hebrew: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=756678
By
Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the fourth floor. Two brothers. Their parents and siblings were all killed while they were sleeping. Only the brothers were saved from the inferno caused by two missiles dropped by a plane on their house in the middle of the night. Awad, 19, is seriously injured; Mohammed, 20, uninjured, tends him. Their parents and all seven of their younger siblings, including a disabled sister, were killed. Just try to imagine.
The signs of shock and grief are obvious on the two orphaned brothers. They stare at the floor, speak very softly; their faces are pale and lifeless, even six weeks after that bloody night. On the wall of the hospital room they've taped a picture of their father, taken with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
Dr. Nabil Abu Salmiya was a lecturer in mathematics at the Islamic University in Gaza and a Hamas activist. The wanted man Mohammed Deif visited the family's home in the middle of the night - and the air force bombed it. Deif was wounded, but survived. A family was almost entirely wiped out. This was on the day that the war broke out in Lebanon; no one paid any attention to the killing in the south.
The wounded and the dead continue to arrive at Shifa. This week, ambulance after ambulance pulled up, carrying the victims of Israel Defense Forces' actions - this time in the Sajiyeh quarter of Gaza City - followed by distraught family members. The atmosphere was bleak and threatening, with dozens of armed Hamas soldiers in their blue camouflage uniforms securing the place, Kalashnikovs cocked, on the surrounding roofs, in the hospital yard and corridors. Relatives of the injured lay on the floors of the rooms. The only hospital in Gaza is full to bursting.
A stench permeates the city streets. The garbage hasn't been collected for many days, due to a strike by municipal employees who haven't received their wages for months. The smell filters into the hospital. The electricity only works for a few hours a day, since the air force bombed the only power station in the Gaza Strip; the heat is oppressive. The elevator is either stuck or barely moves.
Awad Abu Salmiya lies with both legs in bandages in a bed by the window. A faint breeze from the sea offers the only bit of relief.
Not far away, in Beit Lahia, Ahmed al-Attar, 17, sits in a wheelchair. His father pleads with Israel and the world for someone to see that his son gets prosthetic legs. Ahmed was injured when the air force fired a missile that hit the mule-drawn wagon in which he was riding with his mother and nephew. They were on the way to pick figs from the family plot near the sea. His mother and the other boy were killed outright; Ahmed lost both legs.
This also happened in the course of Operation Summer Rains, whose end appears to be nowhere in sight; no one in Israel seems very interested in it. Meanwhile, the IDF goes on killing - nine members of the Abu Salmiya family, two members of the Al-Attar family. Together, they're 11 out of 212 people who were killed, including 50 children and teenagers, between the abduction of Gilad Shalit at the end of June, and the end of August.
An empty lot in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. A two-story house used to stand here. Unlike other places, all the rubble here has already been cleared away. The back part of the house was completely destroyed; the front was left tilting on its side. Two missiles. Mohammed and Awad were sleeping in the front of the house, which faced the street. The rest of the family was asleep in the back and was killed. Perhaps only the father was still awake, together with Deif. No one knows. No one will say. It was 3 A.M. Neighbor Ibrahim Samur had gone with Dr. Abu Salmiya to the mosque that evening to pray, and afterward they'd chatted a little in front of the house. They parted at nine. No one saw Deif, of course. In the middle of the night the neighbors were awakened by a tremendous explosion, followed immediately by another one. They say the blast shook them out of their beds. The houses are that close to one another.
In a rented office on the ground floor of the house next door, which serves as a public court for settling conflicts in the neighborhood, a picture of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi hangs on the wall; a water cooler with Israeli-brand Eden spring water sits below it. Here, Abdullah Samur, an 18-year-old, describes what happened that night at the neighbors' house. The children crowding about outside are all wearing T-shirts from the Hamas summer camp. One wears a shirt bearing the likeness of the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Abdullah went to sleep at midnight that night and woke up at 3 A.M. to the noise of a plane overhead. He lives on the third floor. It was July 12, a few hours before the outbreak of the war in Lebanon. The boom jolted him out of his bed. The windows shattered and the doors came off their hinges. Smoke filled his house from the fire that broke out next door, and his parents yelled for the children to flee.
Outside, Abdullah saw the destroyed house next door and the smoke coming from it. He knew the neighbors well. Nabil and his wife Salwa and all the kids he grew up with - Nasser, 6, Aya, 7, Uda, 8, Iman, 11, Yihyeh, 13, and Basma, 15.
And there was Sumiya, too, a disabled 12-year-old, who used to get picked up by a special car that took her to school. She was also killed. Abdullah had been with Awad and Mohammed that afternoon - the only ones who survived. That night Abdullah helped his father extricate the bodies. They found Awad rolled up inside a carpet. And Mohammed Deif? "I don't know him at all," the neighbor says.
The Israeli papers reported that the wounded Deif was pulled from the wreckage and rushed to Shifa. According to the reports, the rescue vehicle was also hit by a missile from the air.
Abdullah's uncle, Ibrahim Samur, also says he's never seen Deif and has no idea what he looks like. Ibrahim lives on the second floor. His 3-year-old son, Mutaz, was lightly wounded by shrapnel, and so was his wife. He rushed them to Shifa while his neighbors' house continued to burn. Since then, all the children have been sleeping in their parents' room. Mutaz cries when he hears a plane.
"He was a good person," Ibrahim says about his neighbor, Abu Salmiya. "He was active in Hamas, but not in its military wing. He was a teacher who helped his poor neighbors." Ibrahim recalls that in their last conversation, on the way back from the mosque, they didn't talk about politics, Abu Salmiya didn't mention any meeting he was supposed to have during the night.
The IDF Spokesman's comment: "In a joint operation of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service, an attack on a house in the northern Gaza Strip was carried out in the early hours of July 12. The house served as a hideout for senior activists in the military wing of Hamas, who planned and carried out acts of terror and the firing of Qassam rockets. At the time of the strike on the house, those present were involved in planning the continued military activity of Hamas. One of those present was Mohammed Deif, who sustained wounds of unknown severity."
The unpaved street is now named for Nabil Abu Salmiya. Before we say good-bye to head over to the hospital and see the two surviving brothers, Ibrahim mentions a name: Nissim Mizrahi. Nissim Mizrahi from the bankrupt Rosh Indiani clothing business, who left Ibrahim - who ran a sewing workshop that has since closed down - with a debt of NIS 130,000.
Ahmed al-Attar sits in a wheelchair. The stumps of his legs are still bandaged. The pain bothers him and he presses on them to find some relief. On July 24, Ahmed and his mother and nephew set out, as they did every day, to the family plot near the sea, to pick some figs. It was around 3 P.M.; they proceeded slowly in their mule-drawn wagon.
"Suddenly we got hit by a missile," he recalls. "After that I didn't see anything. I woke up in the hospital and they told me that my mother and Nadi were killed and that my legs were amputated."
After three days in Shifa, he was transferred to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, but they couldn't save his legs there either. He also suffered burns on his head and other parts of his body, and these wounds are still bandaged. Ahmed is a 12th-grader who, two months before the tragedy, married a 16-year-old named Zeina. His mother, Hiriya, was 58; his nephew, Nadi - his mother's grandson - was 12. Ahmed heard that Nadi was thrown dozens of meters from the wagon, and that his mother's body was torn to pieces as a result of the direct hit.
The IDF Spokesman: "On the morning of July 24, two Qassam rocket launchings were identified as originating next to the Agricultural College in Beit Hanun. The two rockets were fired at Sderot, and one landed next to a school in the city. Later that same day, IDF forces identified two terrorists, who arrived at that location and loaded the launchers on a mule-drawn wagon. The IDF fired accurately at the point where the terrorists were and at the wagon with the launchers, and verified a hit. At the time of the firing, an older woman and her grandson were not seen in the wagon. In the event that they were riding in the same wagon, then it was the terror organizations that are the ones who took no pity on their lives, and engaged in terror activity directed at Israeli civilians under the cover of noncombatants, exploiting them as a human shield."
Hiriya left nine children and some 50 grandchildren. She was a peddler in the Jabalya market, where she sold figs, grapes and strawberries, and cheese that she made herself. On the wall in the Beit Lahia home hangs a picture of a cousin, Mohammed, 23, who was killed by an IDF bullet while standing at the window of his home, exactly three weeks before the grandmother and grandson were killed.
In the memorial picture of Nadi that hangs in the street, one sees the boy's face and that of the killed leader of the Popular Front, Abu Ali Mustafa, in the background. Why the Popular Front? "Because they supplied the family with food during the four days of mourning," Ahmed's father, also named Nadi, explains. Instead of a picture of Hiriya, there is a poster with a drawing of a red rose. Here, pictures of women are not displayed, even after their death. They won't show us a picture of Ahmed from his wedding either, so that we won't see his young bride.
Nadi heard about the tragedy on the radio, when he was in the city. This morning he went back to fishing for the first time, but since 5 A.M. he hadn't caught anything. Someone brings a picture from the scene of the tragedy: a dead mule. The photo is on the cover of the weekly report, No. 29, of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, 2006. In the background an ambulance is visible. The mule lies on the sand, at the foot of the wrecked wagon. A direct hit.
==========================================================
From: ism-media-group
Sender: palsolidarity@googlegroups.com
1. Partial Demolition of Israeli Colony in Bil’in
2. Israeli Company Blockaded in Britan For the Second Time in Bid to Gain Ruling on Illegality of Settlement Products
3. 12 Year Old Boy Shot by Settler While Playing Near His Home
4. Palestinian Activists with International and Israeli Supporters Picket Kofi Annan’s Visit
5. Settler Children Burn Down Palestinian Olive Tree in Hebron, Israeli Soliders Block Firefighters
6. Israeli Army Destroying Olive Trees in Jenin
7. Israeli Army Harrassment in Hebron Continues
8. Israeli Army Kills 15 year old Demonstrator, Injures 12, and Demolishes Houses.
1- Partial Demolition of Israeli Colony in Bil’in
[for background on Israeli land laundering and Matityahu East see
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=662729 Dorothy]
On Monday, August 28th, two structures were demolished in the illegal Israeli settlement of Matityahu East, on the land of Bil’in village. Construction of the settler colonies had continued until an Israeli court issued a stop work order pending a decision on the status of the colony. The demolition was carried out by the construction company responsible for expanding the colony. This reversal is in response to an Israeli Supreme Court order on July 20th, instructing the company to demolish the two partial structures. The court also decided that a Palestinian road must be built in order to give the villages access to their land. This latter ruling has so far not been enforced.
As well as demanding the demolition of the two structures in the Matityahu East enclave, the court instructed the company to restore the land to its previous pre-colonial state, wherein the land was a flourishing olive grove. Previously the whole of the illegal colonies of Matityahu and Mod’in Elit was agricultural land belonging to Bil’in and other villages in the area.
Occupation authorities annexed 1,100 dunums (275 acres) of the land of Bil’in in 1991. At the time, the confiscation was justified by reference to an old Ottoman-era law allowing for confiscation of unused land. Much later, it was revealed that in order to demonstrate that the coveted land was “unused,” the State made use of photos of seasonal crop farm land taken when the crops were not yet in season. More than a decade after the confiscation, Israeli colonial settlements began to be built, following a typical pattern of settlement expansion, whereby first, Palestinian land is declared State property and then eventually distributed to Israelis. As a reaction to the theft of the land, weekly non-violent demonstrations have been held in Bil’in village for the past 17 months.
These demonstrations, in existence weekly since January 2005, garnered international attention and support, making a protracted legal campaign challenging the settlement’s legality a possibility. Yesterday’s demolition is a major step in the struggle of Bil’in village to restore their land to its pre-colonial state. The village plans to continue to challenge plans to gain retrospective permission for other parts of the colony already constructed or under construction.
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2. Israeli Company Blockaded in Britan For the Second Time in Bid to Gain Ruling on Illegality of Settlement Products
URGENT! As of the last update at 1:30pm, Thursday the 30th, this blockade action is still ongoing and needs support! If you are reading this from the UK, the blockaders have requested your support. If you are able, get down there and support them, the address is on
Get the latest on updates Indymedia UK.
Early Wednesday morning Palestine solidarity activists blockaded the Israeli company Carmel Agrexco’s British headquarters. This was part of a non-violent protest against recurrent breaches of human rights and international law in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine.
Carmel is complicit in war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act). They import fresh produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The action follows a legal warning letter to Carmel stating clearly why they are in breach of the law.
The action took place at Agrexco UK, Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex, Israel’s largest importer of agricultural produce into the European Union. It is 50% Israeli state owned.
Protestors used wire fencing and bicycle D-Locks in a well planned blockade at the two entrances to the building.
Before taking part in the blockade, many of the protesters had witnessed first hand the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation.
This follows on from an action of 11th November 2004, when seven Palestine-Solidarity protesters from London and Brighton were arrested after taking part in a non-violent blockade outside the same company.
Last September a Judge ruled that Agrexco (UK) must prove that their business is lawful. The acquittal of the seven activists before they were able to present their defence meant that the court did not have to rule on the legalityof Agrexco-Carmel’s involvement in the supply of produce from illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
Today’s blockade aims to draw attention to this company’s complicity, in murder, theft and damage of occupied land, collective punishment, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and other breaches of International Law.
Links with information on profiteering from the occupation:
Press release from previous trial
War on Want’s Report –”Profiting from the Occupation”
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3. 12 Year Old Boy Shot by Settler While Playing Near His Home
On August 27, 2006, Hakim Ersan, a 12 year old boy from the village of Beit Fourik near Nablus, was shot by an Israeli colonist from the Aitmar settlement near his home. Hakim was playing with two friends, ages 8-9, when the boys spotted 3 Israeli colonists approaching them. The boys began to run away, and Hakim tripped and fell; when he stood up, the colonist man, aged approximately 40, shot him through his lower back. The bullet exited through his upper groin area, and the younger boys carried him to his home. Hakim is currently in critical condition and awaiting surgery at Raffidia Hospital in Nablus; the extent of damage to his internal organs is yet undetermined.
Colonist violence is nothing new for Beit Fourik; four years ago, an elderly man was farming his land when colonists attacked him and beat him to death with a stone.
**************************
4. Palestinian Activists with International and Israeli Supporters Picket Kofi Annan’s Visit
by ISM Media Office volunteers
This afternoon, peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement joined Palestinians, Israelis, and international supporters from other organizations to picket the visit to Ramallah of Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. Mr Annan was in the West Bank today to meet Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The demonstration began at 1.30pm at the Muqata, headquarters of the PA. Activists brought banners and placards, written in Arabic, Hebrew and English, with slogans including “Stop Land Theft”, “Scotland Against The Wall” and “Enforce Resolution 242?. A large banner included illustrations of the illegal partition wall, currently under construction in the West Bank, and the ongoing destruction of olive trees (by the Israeli Government) which provide livelihoods for many Palestinians.
The central purpose of the picket was to emphasize the impact of the Israeli Government’s policies upon the lives of people living in the occupied West Bank, with particular reference to the partition wall, which is preventing ordinary Palestinians from accessing their farmland, jobs and schools, and has divided families. Amongst the demonstrators were people from Bil’in, a village to the West of Ramallah, where 60% of the villager’s farmland has been cut off from the village by the wall, and where regular non-violent demonstrations are held in protest at the erection of the wall.
Activists hoped to remind Mr Annan that the Israeli Government has still not complied with a raft of UN resolutions, nor has it moved following last year’s ruling, by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which confirmed that the erection of the partition wall is illegal under international law.
Prior to beginning formal talks, both Mr Annan and Mr Abbas came outside to briefly meet demonstrators. Mr Annan listened to the concerns of the gathered villagers and activists, and confirmed that these matters would be discussed in talks today.
for pictures, please click http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/30/kofi-visits-ramallah/
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5- Settler Children Burn Down Palestinian Olive Tree in Hebron, Israeli Soliders Block Firefighters
by ISM Hebron
On Saturday August 26th, at approximately 12 noon, a Palestinian family in Tel Rumeida, (in the Israeli controlled H2 district of Hebron) noticed a group of settler boys setting fire to the dry grass in front of their home.
This land contains many olive trees and settlers have attempted to burn down these trees on many occasions by starting grass fires. The family put the fire out with water but the kids returned and started a fire which spread to the center of a large olive tree. By the time the family noticed, the fire was so hot that they could not put it out by themselves. Phone requests to the DCO (District Command Office of the military) to allow firefighters from the Palestinian municipality of Hebron to enter into H2 to put the fire out were denied.
The family tried to solicit the help of soldiers who poured a white, firefighting powder on the burning tree. This attempt at putting the fire out was not successful and eventually the whole tree was destroyed. Soldiers attempted to charge the family 600 shekels ($135) for the firefighting powder and the family refused. The soldiers threatened to come back and confiscate the family’s television is they refused to pay.
In addition, settlers set the ground on fire in another location next to this same family’s house. No olive trees were destroyed in this fire.
for pictures, please click
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6- Israeli Army Destroying Olive Trees in Jenin
August 29th, 2006 in the town of Zububa in the Jenin region, Israeli soldiers are currently destroying large swaths of Palestinian olive groves. The attacks began around 7:00 in the morning with American-made Caterpillar armoured bulldozers, and is currently ongoing.
According to Mohammad, a resident of Zububa, the tress being destroyed are in an area, 2km in length and 100km in width. This land amounts to the total area owned by the town. The farmers who have repeatedly tried to access their fields have been beaten and fired upon by Israeli forces. The residents of Zububa have argued that the destruction of their fields serves no security purposes, because the land is on the Palestinian side of the Annexation Wall.
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7- Israeli Army Harrassment in Hebron Continues
Soldiers violently attack Palestinian man in his home: August 25th, 2006
There were two cameras filming most, if not all, of the following incident. A few soldiers are easily recognizable by Human Rights Workers (HRW) given the number of times they have been present while soldiers have been invading numerous Palestinian homes.
At approximately 5:15 PM, an HRW posted at the Tel Rumeida checkpoint heard yelling and screaming coming from up the hill. The HRW moved up the hill, and a Palestinian woman was able to point out the house and medical facility from which the screams were issuing. The HRW asked Israeli soldiers immediately inside the building’s door what was going on. They refused to answer, and the soldiers physically prevented the HRW from entering the house. At this point, Dr. Taysir, the building’s owner, broke free from the soldier who was holding him, and pulled on the HRW’s arm while begging him to enter. The HRW managed to enter the door, and saw two, elongated contusions high on Dr. Taysir’s left arm. While being pushed out once again, the HRW negotiated with the soldiers to leave the door open on the condition that he remain outside.
Shortly thereafter three more HRWs arrived. The HRWs managed to enter the building. Three HRWs demanded access to Dr. Taysir, who was now out of sight, while a fourth video taped the encounter. Dr. Taysir could be heard yelling and crying out in pain from a room further in the house. The HRWs attempted to move past the soldiers in order to prevent further injury to Dr. Taysir, but were repeatedly forced back. The soldiers refused to explain why the doctor’s home had been entered, why he had been struck, or why the HRWs could not see him. Throughout this time, the soldiers were physically and verbally aggressive towards the HRWs, repeatedly shoving them towards the door, and yelling at them to get out, shut up, etc.
At this point, an Israeli major arrived with approximately six more soldiers. The major entered the building and began speaking with Dr. Taysir’s brother, who had observed some, but not all, of the incident; this conversation is filmed almost entirely. The major spoke briefly to the soldiers already on site, who quickly became considerably less aggressive toward the HRWs. After approximately ten minutes, the major and all soldiers departed the house without speaking to anyone else. The HRWs then videotaped interviews with both Dr. Taysir and his brother regarding the incident.
Dr. Taysir told the HRWs that he gone to open the door for the soldiers when almost immediately they began shoving him around and pinned him against a wall by pressing on his chest. The doctor told the soldier not to push him, and the soldier responded by punching him in the temple. Other soldiers joined in, and Dr. Taysir received blows to his arms, legs, and torso. At least two blows, those to his left arm, were strikes with the butt of a rifle; these injuries are documented with video.
Seeing that Dr. Taysir was being attacked, a female patient who was present attempted to intervene, putting herself between the doctor and the soldiers. She was struck by a soldier, and fell unconscious. The patient was later placed on a medical exam table with an oxygen feed to help her recover, where she was videotaped (with permission) by the HRWs. Dr. Taysir’s adult daughter was also beaten at some point during the encounter, though the events are not clear to us what happened. Dr. Taysir and his brother both stated repeatedly that soldiers used and regularly use foul language towards him and his family, including his wife and small children.
Later that evening, before sunset, soldiers could be seen on the roof of Dr. Taysir’s house. HRWs were standing on their own roof, and when they looked in the direction of the soldiers, the soldiers used their arms in a gesture to say ‘fuck you’ to the HRWs. The soldiers were laughing the entire time. The HRWs did not respond.
* * *
Soldiers invade yet another home in Tel Rumeida, Hebron : August 20th, 2006
At approximately 12 PM HRWs arrived at a house being invaded by IDF soldiers. HRWs found the the door blocked by two soldiers, who refused to let them in the house; these soldiers did not tell the HRWs to not film them. After a few minutes of attempting to negotiate our way into the house, HRWs walked around the soldiers, and were met with little resistance. One HRW went to the family and asked if they were OK; the family appeared to be nervous but unharmed. Other HRWs proceeded to come into the house and look around, seeing if anything was disrupted or broken. None of us could see evidence that the soldiers had done this, unlike the previous week, in which the neighbor’s house was destroyed from the inside.
An HRW approached the commander of the unit with her camera on and asked him what they were doing; his face is clearly seen on film. The commander told the HRW that if she and her friends wanted to stay in the house, she should turn the camera off. The HRW told the commander that she could film and that if the soldiers weren’t doing anything wrong, it shouldn’t bother them. The commander then stepped closer to the HRW and said, “Look, i’m in control of this house now. If you want to stay and watch us search, then turn the camera off. If you don’t do that, then I will make all of you go outside, lock the doors, and you can wait for us to finish outside.” The HRW put her camera down and proceeded to follow the soldiers through the house. They did not break or take anything that was obvious. The soldiers left about ten minutes after HRWs had arrived. As the soldiers were leaving, one HRW said to the commander, “Hey, see you later, Yosi.” The soldier then replied, “You have a lot of guts saying that to me.”
The family told the HRWs afterwards that the soldiers come frequently to their house. The soldiers always tell them they’re looking for weapons, but have never found any. An HRW asked the family if the soldiers ever break or steal things, and one of the women replied, “Sometimes yes, sometimes no; we are always at their mercy. Today they behaved very well, and I think it was because all of you came.” The family thanked the HRWs repeatedly as we sat and drank tea with them.
for pictures, please click
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8- Israeli Army Kills 15 year old Demonstrator, Injures 12, and Demolishes Houses
Nablus, Palestine–Today, August 26, 2006, in the Jabal Shamali neighborhood of Nablus, soldiers of the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) launched a 16 and a half hour incursion, wherein they killed one young boy, hospitalized at least twelve with many more injured, and destroyed twenty homes and apartments. The IOF entered the area around 2:00am, with over 26 military vehicles including armoured jeeps, hummers, border police jeeps, a Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozer and Caterpillar “excavator” wrecking machines.
Upon entering the area, the army went to the Labbada house, a three-story building, built in 1927, and home to over seventeen families, including eights flats housing members of the Labbada family. Immediately after entering the area, the soldiers used loudspeakers to order the residents of the building to leave within one minute. At this time, seventeen families exited the building, and were detained on the street, from 2:00-4:00am, while IOF soldiers fired live ammunition over their heads.
Upon seeing the bulldozers, the families of the Labbada house made repeated offers to act as shields for the soldiers in order to allow them to enter the building to search for the target of the raid, but the soldiers refused, and soon began to demolish the homes. At 4:00am most of theresidents were released and allowed to enter the home of a neighbor, but one elderly man, approximately eighty years old, was further detained until around 9:00am when he was released.
At 3:00am, with the residents still detained in the street, IOF bulldozers and “excavators” began to demolish small homes surrounding the Labbada complex, in an attempt to reach the three-story building. Once the building around the Labbada house had been completely demolished, the army began to demolish the three-story building from three sides. At this time, soldiers entered the At Tamimi building, a two-story home adjacent to the Labbada complex, and used the top floor as a sniper position. At 9:30am, five men were kidnapped from the neighboring house and forced to enter the apartment being used as a sniper nest to act as human shields for the army.
These men were held from 9:30am-11:45am. The men are named Shadi, age 23, Majdi, age 35, Tamer, age 19, Rami, age 17, Mohammad, age 21 and Walid, age 64.
The army proceeded to demolish at least three homes bordering the Labbada complex, and an additional eleven flats within the complex. While they demolished the homes, the army fired almost constantly into the building, while also firing at demonstrators with live ammunition, tear gas and concussion grenades. During this assault, the soldiers repeatedly fired explosive grenades from M-16 assault rifles into the building’s windows.
While demolishing the homes, the army crushed at least eight automobiles, and utilizing a bulldozer, dropped three of them on a neighboring house. Also during the attack, IOF soldiers entered the adjacent children’s’ school and after knocking out the windows, used the area as a firing position to shoot at demonstrators. In addition, Palestinian medical volunteers reported that around 5:00pm, a large fire was seen blazing in the Labbada house, the result of repeated IOF grenade fire.
During the demolition, young Palestinian demonstrators gathered on and around Amman street, and were fired upon repeatedly. Rafidia hospital has confirmed that during these clashes, Muntasir Sulaiman Muhammad Ukah, 15 from Askar refugee camp, was shot in the back and killed. Rafidia has also confirmed treating an additional 12 persons for injuries, they are:
Issam Fathi Joma’a, 27 years old, with shrapnel in his right shoulder.
Ammar Nizar Saed, 16 years old, shot in the hand.
Jaber Naser Abd-Alrahman, 16 years old, shrapnel in an unknown location.
Ayman Abed Al-kareem Al-Khayat, 17 years old, shot in left leg.
Rani Mohammad Al-akhbar, 18 years old, shot in the leg.
Mahdi Atif Shrooti, 13 years old, shot in the hip.
Abed Al-latif Tahseen Agha, 9 years old, with shrapnel in the neck.
Abed Al-aziz Khalel Jebril, 18 years old, shot with a rubber bullet in the right hand.
Fathi Mohammad, 80 years old, shot in the right leg.
Ramadan Husam Al-ajori, 13 years old, shot in the right leg.
Fadi Ahmad, 18 years old, show with a rubber bullet in the head.
Ahamd Zayad Solayman, 15 years old, shot in the back.
Local news sources report an additional ten injuries but only those named were transfered to Rafidia hospital. On at least two occasions, IOF soldiers prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching injured persons in a timely manner.
The target of the incursion is unclear, but IOF soldiers arrested Nizar Labbada, 30 years old, before leaving the scene at 6:30pm. This is not the first time the 79 year old building was raided. In 2004, IOF soldiers attacked the building on four separate occasions in search of Firaz Labbada, now 34. Firaz was arrested in 2004 and is currently imprisoned until at least 2008.
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* Israeli Assault on Balata
This morning, two Palestinian resistance fighters were killed by Israeli military during an incursion into Balata refugee camp just outside of Nablus. Another young man was shot in the stomach and is, according to sources at Rafidia hospital, in critical condition. Hani Al-Hashash, 22, and Ibrahim Neba, 23, were chased up on the roof by Israeli special forces who broke the door and entered their home at about five o’clock this morning. As the military opened fire, one of the men attempted to defend himself and shot two soldiers, injuring them slightly.
The two resistance fighters attempted to escape by climbing up to the roof. An Apache helicopter then backed them up against a wall before firing several rounds of bullets into their bodies. Hani Al-Hashash died from a bullet to his brain and Ibrahim Neba incurred several fatal wounds to the neck, stomach and chest. Five to six missiles were also fired from the helicopter, breaking two water tanks and making several large holes in the roof of the building.
* Palestinian Children Assaulted by Israeli Army
On Sunday August 27th, two HRWs were on Shuhada Street in front of the military post which watches the Beit Hadassa settlement in Hebron. At around 5 p.m. a group of six Palestinian kids between approximately 10 and 12 years of age, who had been around the area for a few hours, went towards the checkpoint and started a conversation with the soldier in the military post. After a couple of minutes, the group of kids sat down on the steps in opposite of the post and started obviously joking with the soldier, so that it was not clear if the kids were detained, or if they were just joking around with the soldier. The HRWs wanted to clarify the situation and asked the soldier what the kids are doing there. The soldier responded that the kids were detained because they tried to steal a bicycle from the settlement and that he called the police to deal with this case. The HRW asked the soldier to let the kids leave, but he refused to do so. A short time later, some Palestinian residents started talking to the soldier.
At about 5.30 p.m. one police officer and four Border policemen arrived at the military post and started questioning the boys and talking to a Palestinian woman who was still around. After about 15 minutes, three boys were allowed to leave and the Palestinian woman left with them, giving each a cuff on the head. The other three boys were still there, and the police officer told the HRW, who tried to intervene, that he should leave because they were “taking the kids back home”.
The HRWs moved back several yards and saw the border police and the police officer take one boy after another into the military post, behind the camouflage netting, where the HRWs couldn’t see what was being done. When the first boy came out again (after about 15 seconds), the HRW saw that he was holding his head, so they suspected that those boys were taken in there to beat them. The HRW went quickly towards the military post while asking the soldiers and the police, if they would beat the kids in there. Being closer to the post, the HRW was able to hear slaps and see obvious moves. The Border Police came quickly towards the HRWs and tried to intimidate them while asking them questions and demanding their passports.
Meanwhile, the three boys left.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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posted by Ed Kent at 10:42 PM
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