Vilnai is depending on Israelis’ total indifference to our Qassams: our soldiers’ nearly daily firing on Gaza civilians, regularly wounding and sometimes killing them.
IDF/war crimes
A Palestinian doctor is filing a lawsuit against Israel for the death of his three daughters, just a day before the second anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza. Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish’s daughters were killed during the military assault when Israeli forces fired on his home.
In an unusual move, the Shin Bet security service has agreed to compensate Jamal al-Hindi, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, for a partial disability that he says is due to having been tortured by Shin Bet agents 15 years ago. The amount of compensation remains secret by court order.
The book’s stark – and inevitably highly political – conclusion is contrary to the view that “Israel is withdrawing from the Palestinian Territories slowly and with the appropriate caution and security”. The IDF soldiers quoted “describe an indefatigable attempt to tighten Israel’s hold on the territories, as well as on the Palestinian population”.
The absence of an effective Palestinian political body that could mobilize and represent refugees as a collective national group, combined with repressive state policies, catapulted UNRWA to center stage. Taking on a unique and visible role, it assumed many of the functions of a welfare government.
We must gather up our courage and teach our children to refuse. Refuse to take part in an organization that is led by war criminals, murderers of children. An organization like that cannot be anything but a crime organization. Avoid it like you would avoid live fire, we should tell them, and think of other ways to contribute to the society in which you live.
The head of the Israeli secret service, who the Egyptians nicknamed “Superman” after the assassination of Hamas senior official al-Mabhouh earlier this year, concluded on Monday eight years at the helm of the organization.
Amira Hass has been a correspondent in the Occupied Territories for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz since the early 1990s. Hass describes her work as “writing about the Israeli occupation and Apartheid regime and about Israelis through the experiences of Palestinians.” She also covers internal Palestinian issues. She is the author of the widely acclaimed Drinking the Sea at Gaza and two books of collected articles.
“In underlining them we are purposefully directing attention to individuals rather than the static structures through which they operate,” the website states while calling on visitors to spread the info “widely”.
UPDATED: ‘War criminals’ site exposing personal details of IDF soldiers taken down.
Mandelblit’s recent decisions to open investigations into soldiers and officers for actions inconsistent with international law have aroused criticism in various circles.
IOA Editor:Israelis demand the right to massacre Palestinians with impunity. Reality Check: It was the very same IDF prosecutor’s office that had a key role in planning the Gaza attack so that it can be ‘legally defensible’ in the international arena.
The use of mathematical euqations to calculate basic humanitarian needs cannot help but raise parallels with the most monstrous uses of science.
Caterpillar, the company which supplies the IDF with bulldozers, has announced that it is delaying the supply of D9 bulldozers during the time that the trial of Rachel Corrie proceeds.
Turkish newspaper reports agencies stopped exchanging intelligence and conducting joint operations following Turkish government decision.
Amira Hass: The many incidents described in the human rights organizations’ reports indicate that the drone photographs are not as precise or clear as they are said to be, or that the technology considered “objective” also depends on commanders’ interpretation: Children playing on the roof are liable to be regarded as “scouts,” people trying to speak to their relatives over the phone are liable to be “signal operators for a terrorist brigade,” and families that went to the garden to feed the goats, squads of Qassam launchers.
Beit Ummar is just one of hundreds of villages in Palestine under constant harassment from Israeli settlers. [Its residents] have suffered the loss of their land, limited access to their own water supply, rocks smashing their windows, midnight arrests, tear gas, rubber bullets, and daily Israeli military aggression. The most recent insult: settlers’ feces covering the vineyards of Beit Ummar.
Senior army officers are under investigation for authorizing an air strike in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead that killed 21 members of the same family despite possibly receiving warnings from subordinates that there could be civilians in the area.
My nearly 25 years of covering the Israeli occupation and expressing my controversial opinions have indeed stirred up wrath in some circles. But I have always taken pride in the fact that after hundreds of reports from the field – this entire modest documentation enterprise – none of the facts have ever been refuted despite the efforts of many.
“My biggest struggle,” he says, “is to rehumanize the Palestinians. There’s a whole machinery of brainwashing in Israel which really accompanies each of us from early childhood, and I’m a product of this machinery as much as anyone else. [We are taught] a few narratives that it’s very hard to break. That we Israelis are the ultimate and only victims. That the Palestinians are born to kill, and their hatred is irrational. That the Palestinians are not human beings like us? So you get a society without any moral doubts, without any questions marks, with hardly public debate. To raise your voice against all this is very hard.”
Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the IDF established a special unit whose purpose was to prevent the leakage of classified information onto the internet via social networks. The unit scans a list of popular websites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace looking for breaches of security.
IOA Editor: Israel’s own violent Occupation actions are the best ‘gifts for Hamas,’ not the reporting of such actions.
Livni: “Any international intervention in military operations carried out by Israel is unacceptable, just as it would be unacceptable to any other country fighting terrorism.”
IOA Editor: Israel’s “moderate,” “opposition” leader.
What is delaying treatment of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman, if not punishment of someone who opposes her foreign rulers?
Israel, like North Korea, must have something to hide about its occupation regime and this is why it prevents people of conscience from entering and report about it to the world. Israel, like North Korea, is afraid of anyone who tries to protest against it or criticize its regime. No terrorists will enter here, but neither will anyone who opposes terror yet dares to criticize the occupation. For safety’s sake,let’s call them “terrorists” too, as we falsely called the Turkish activists. It will make it easier for us to deal with them. Yes, we prefer terror, because we know well how to handle it.
IOA Editor: Israel prefers terror because terror helps Israel: it justifies Israel’s false “security” claims and makes it easier for it to get away with crimes on a grand scale (e.g., the Gaza attack). Terror helps Israel mask its colonial practices behind the “right to defend itself” – a key element of Israel’s long-term strategy of crushing the Palestinian people.
Israeli Court rejected Friday an appeal against deportation filed by Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who has been denied entry to Israel. The deportation has been suspended for 48 hours in order to allow an to appeal to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE Not surprisingly: Israel rejects pro-Palestinian Nobel laureate’s deportation appeal (Haaretz – 4 Oct 2010).
Thirteen percent of all combat company commanders on active service in the IDF come from settlements … a five-fold over-representation based on their proportion in the general population of Israel.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers used excessive force while taking over a Gaza-bound aid ship organized by Jewish and Israeli activists, flotilla participants said Tuesday, countering the military’s official version claiming that the takeover had been uneventful.
Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire refused to board a UK-bound flight on Tuesday after she was earlier barred by Israeli security from entering the country over her participation in a Gaza-bound aid ship.
The Irene, a boat carrying nine passengers and aid for Gaza’s population has been taken over by the Israeli navy and denied access to Gaza.
UPDATES (2)
Israeli nationals released and heading home
They have all had their phones confiscated so we have not had contact with them yet, but we have spoken to their family members, who are all very relieved about their imminent safe return. We will get them to contact us as soon as we can.
A boat carrying aid for Gaza’s population and organized by Jewish groups worldwide has set sail from Cyprus today [26 Sept 2010] at 13:32 local time. The boat, Irene, is sailing under a British flag and is carrying ten passengers and crew, including Jews from the US, the UK, Germany and Israel as well as an Israeli journalist. Among the passengers are Israeli peace activists Rami Elhanan and Yonatan Shapira.
Former US Marine Kenneth O’Keefe was aboard the Mavi Marmara in the Free Gaza flotilla. He witnessed the passengers’ preparations for a clash and the confused takeover by Israel troops that resulted in nine dead.
UN report: “The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds. It constituted grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law.” The panel concluded that there was “clear evidence” of wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health – all crimes under the Geneva Convention.
The Israel Defense Forces continues using the Ruger 10/22 rifle to disperse protests even though it has been prohibited by the military advocate general, a hearing at a military court revealed last week. A brigade’s former operations officer told the court he wasn’t even aware of the prohibition.
The base … is central to the [global] activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, according to report in Le Monde Diplomatique.
An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by [an Israeli] military court yesterday.
The occupation did not turn us into lawless criminals, you write with a pure heart. Really? You handcuffed thousands of people for no reason, without trial, in humiliating conditions, causing them pain that made them scream, according to your testimony. Is this not a loss of humanity?
MORE by Gideon Levy
Puppet theater
“Arabs, get out”
Missing the forest
And what about the sexual assault?
“I caressed his leg? He’s a liar. I would never touch him. On the contrary, I took the picture from a distance so as not to be close to them, because they stink. It’s a simple as that…”
So, you didn’t kiss him, you didn’t touch his leg?
“They are ingrates and of course they wouldn’t say that I gave them food. Of course they would slander me.”
Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi testified before a UN panel probing Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, telling the panel that commandos who boarded the ships intended to kill, [Israeli] Army Radio reported.
