Lady Ashton:“The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah to be a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier … The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal. The high representative is deeply concerned that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmah is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner.”
IDF/war crimes
It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside … two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the IDF. The word was “occupation”. “I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken… It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, ‘end the occupation’. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw.”
Since September 2009, Defence for Children International has given the UN details of more than 100 cases in which the military authorities allegedly abused minors who were held in detention.
Breaking the Silence: Facebook photos depicting Israel Defense Forces soldiers pictured alongside handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees represent the norm, not the exception, in IDF conduct … refuting an official army statement claiming the opposite.
Yishai Menuchin, director of the Public Committee Against Torture: “The horrible pictures demonstrate a norm of treating Palestinians like objects instead of human beings – treatment that disregards their feelings as humans and their right to privacy.”
The violence of the occupier is the norm that no one questions, so much so that it becomes invisible. Only the response to that norm is presented and perceived as criminal, and the occupying nation wallows pleasurably in its eternal victimhood to justify its violent actions.
A police officer known as “Major George” who is accused of torturing Arab prisoners in his previous role as chief interrogator in a secret military jail has been appointed to oversee relations with Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, it has emerged.
Israeli defense companies have scored one of the biggest deals in the industry’s history: They will be making about $4 billion worth of parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter [manufactured by] Lockheed Martin… The discussions about Israel’s involvement were led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
IOA Editor: There’s no business like War Business, to misappropriate Irving Berlin.
[South Lebanon] was under Israeli occupation for 18 years… It was an occupation no less brutal than the one in the territories, but whitewashed well… So now, as well, we can do what we like… For months now the drums of war have been beating here again. Rat-a-tat, danger, Scuds from Syria, war in the north. No one asks why and wherefore.
But no one could say what killed 21 members of the Samouni family in a few minutes on January 5, 2009, in their neighborhood of Zeitoun. Some said it was shells fired by tanks in the main street. Some said it was something from the air, certainly not a plane that they would have heard. An Israel Defense Forces bulldozer destroyed the entire building later, with all its bodies, and it was difficult to identify the projectile. But what difference does that make? It was the Israeli soldiers who told them to gather in one house – women, children, elderly and middle aged people – and it was the soldiers who fired what they fired at them.
IAF officer: “There are very high mountains in central Romania with a flat area around them and this unfamiliar terrain … provided the crews with a unique environment for training that cannot be carried out in Israel” … As Israeli-Turkish relations began deteriorating … so far as joint air force exercises go, Romania is now Israel’s closed European ally.
IOA Editor: Of all probable future Israeli targets, high altitude training can only serve to emulate conditions in Iran.
[A]utomation makes killing cheaper… the demand for remote-controlled machines is stoked by the large savings in defence costs. A drone operator can be trained in a day; a pilot may need years of expertise to fulfil the same mission.
Several of the most dramatic instances of war crimes, which previously stirred Israel’s defenders into fits, are now publicly admitted by the IDF in the recent update to its official response. [Including: The use of] white phosphorous in urban areas … the murder of two unarmed Palestinians carrying white flags … the Al-Fakhura Street incident … the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields … the Al-Samouni family massacre … firing on Al Maqadmah and other mosques during prayer time.
Brigadier Ilan Malka is not alone. More than 550 [IDF] officers and men of IDF who participated in the “Cast Lead” operation have been interrogated by the investigative military police of the IDF in the last 18 months.
It has become impossible to supervise the defense budget … It is utterly opaque. The system does everything to deflect true supervision… [T]he army is completely opaque to us. There is no civilian supervision over the IDF.
IOA Editor: This is an important story, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, about the power of the Israeli defense industry — from the professional classes of the IDF to the private sector arms manufacturers, dealer/exporters, “consultants,” and the rest — and the inherent financial and personal interest it has in continuing the Occupation. The Occupation is an essential part of the “business environment” of Israel’s largest and most influential economic sector. Civilian financial oversight of the IDF is only one aspect of a much bigger picture. See also:
Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Jonathan Cook: Remote-Controlled Killing
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people — Palestinians in Gaza — who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. The [Israeli] female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.
Israel’s diplomatic and defense establishments will hold several meetings this week on how to contend with what some officials described as a “barrage” of international investigations into Israel’s conduct. Officials say particularly concerned over UN probe of country’s court system in the wake of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin travels to Jenin and Ramallah as a guest of the Palestinian Authority security service.
The report, prepared by the Office of the Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, found that thousands of Palestinians have limited access to East Jerusalem hospitals because of the barrier. Ambulances are routinely delayed at checkpoints, and Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to pass through barrier checkpoints, forcing sick or elderly patients to walk.
Haaretz: “An increasing number of complaints of abuse during the interrogation of Palestinians from the Hebron area can apparently be traced to a computer program that grades police performance. An investigative report on the digitization of evil.”
IOA Editor: This important report shows how the Israeli Occupation authorities combine sophisticated performance management techniques, taken from the American corporate world, with traditional interrogation/torture techniques – resulting in sheer horror for their Palestinians subjects.
Commentators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often complain that there has not yet been a legitimate Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. to emerge from within Palestinian civil society. The reality is that there are many Palestinians engaged in popular unarmed resistance to the Israeli occupation, preferring organized demonstrations in the West Bank to suicide bombs in Tel Aviv.
The secrecy surrounding the attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save President Bashar Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate.
Meeting at the White House, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the “unbreakable” bond between Israel and the United States. Despite ongoing Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks, closures and the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Obama said he thinks Israel “has shown restraint.” Democracy Now! speaks to veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass.
“What’s really disturbing about Operation Cast Lead is not the ordinary soldiers. The true problematic situation is the general policy, that they tell soldiers ‘Go in and shoot, you’re at war – whatever moves should be taken down.’”
The defense establishment is demanding that the state delay approval for the construction of gas reception terminals on a strip of Israel’s coastline.
Video of IDF soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrolling as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance.
Published by OR Books – 31 March 2010
Buy the book HERE
6,800 Detainees are currently imprisoned by Israel, including 300 children, 34 women, 213 detainees in administrative detention, and 11 elected legislators. Nearly 1,500 detainees are ill and need urgent medical attention, dozens of them requiring surgeries and constant hospitalization… Gilad Shalit is the only Israeli held by the Palestinians.
ALSO: Boy receives second administrative detention order
Dan Plesch, director of the University of London Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran … US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours … The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003.”
The IDF views Mullen as someone who is capable of effectively presenting Israel’s stance in Washington. Officials hope that Mullen will become convinced during his visit that Israel acted appropriately during the May 31 raid of the Mavi Marmara, and that Israel should be allowed to investigate the event independently, without U.S. interference.
So an “occupation” becomes a “dispute”. Thus a “wall” becomes a “fence” or “security barrier”. Thus Israeli acts of colonisation of Arab land, contrary to all international law, become “settlements” or “outposts” or “Jewish neighbourhoods”. It was Colin Powell … who told US diplomats to refer to occupied Palestinian land as “disputed land” – and that was good enough for most of the US media.
Seven oxygen machines donated to the Palestinian Authority by a Norwegian development agency were seized by Israeli officials en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, the Ramallah-based health ministry said.
A semi-official Iranian news agency reported Wednesday that Israel Air Force helicopters recently landed at a Saudi Arabia airport and unloaded equipment intended for attacking targets in a Muslim state. This follows last weekend’s reports of an American fleet passing through the Suez Canal, triggering fears that the US and Israel were preparing for an attack on Iran, with Egypt’s cooperation, the Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi said.
Belgian lawyers … working on behalf of a group of Palestinians intend to charge 14 Israeli politicians, including Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni … for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Israeli police … are sent to the streets of East Jerusalem as enforcers of government and municipal policy. It is that same policy of intentional discrimination that has brought 65% of the 303,429 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem below the poverty line (double the number of poor Jews in the city) and 74% of Palestinian children below that line. The police serve the government that since 1967 has expropriated 24,000 dunams (8,000 acres) of land from Palestinians and over the years has built more than 50,000 housing units on it – for Jews only. Police accompany the bulldozers that demolish homes built, for lack of choice, without permits.
