Last updated on

27th June 2008

 

 

 

 

(More about Stein and that quotation HERE)

 

 


 

 

 

See below about Amnesty's latest campaign

 

 


 

 

 

 

Links to interesting websites

 

HERE

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

The time in the UK is now

   

 

 

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Israelis Assault Award Winning IPS Journalist

 

 

 
With thanks to Dr David Halpin for this information
Brian 


 
 

MIDEAST: Israelis Assault Award Winning IPS Journalist
By Mel Frykberg

GAZA CITY, Jun 28 (IPS) - Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.

Omer, a resident of Rafah in the south of Gaza, and previous recipient of the New America Media's Best Youth Voice award several years ago, was returning from London where he had just collected his Gellhorn Prize, and from several European capitals where he had speaking engagements, including a meeting with Greek parliamentarians.

Omer's trip was sponsored by The Washington Report, and the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv was responsible for coordinating Omer's travel plans and his security permit to leave Gaza with Israeli officials.

Israel controls the borders of Gaza and severely restricts the entrance and exit of Gazans allegedly on grounds of security. Human rights organisations accuse the Israelis of using security as a pretext to apply collective punishment indiscriminately.

While waiting in Amman on his way back, Omer eventually received the requisite coordination and security clearance from the Israelis to return to Gaza after this had initially been delayed by several days, he told IPS.

Accompanied by Dutch diplomats, Omer passed through the Jordanian side of the border without incident. However, after arrival on the Israeli side, trouble began. He informed a female soldier that he was returning home to Gaza. He was repeatedly asked where Gaza was, and told that he had neither a permit nor any coordination to cross.

Omer explained that he did indeed have permission and coordination but was nevertheless taken to a room by Israel's domestic intelligence agency the Shin Bet, where he was isolated for an hour and a half without explanation.

"Eventually I was asked whether I had a knife or gun on me even though I had already passed through the x-ray machine, had my luggage searched, and was in the company of Dutch diplomats," Omer said.

His luggage was again searched, and security then proceeded to go through every document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the European parliamentary officials he had met.

The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being "the prize-winning journalist".

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to "the hell of Gaza after we allowed you to leave." To this he responded that he wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a "trouble-maker".

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

"At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear," Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told, "you haven't seen anything yet." Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his boot on Omer's neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.

When he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.

"I eventually woke up in a Palestinian hospital with the doctors trying to reassure me," Omer told IPS.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry at the Hague told IPS that Foreign Minister Maxime Zerhagen spoke to the Israeli ambassador to The Netherlands and demanded an explanation.

The Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv has also raised the issue with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which in turn has promised to investigate the incident and get back to the Dutch officials.

Ahmed Dadou, spokesman from the Dutch Foreign Ministry at the Hague told IPS, "We are taking this whole incident very seriously as we don't believe the behaviour of the Israeli officials is in accordance with a modern democracy.

"We are further concerned about the mistreatment of an internationally renowned journalist trying to go about his daily business," added Dadou.

A spokeswoman at the Israeli Foreign Press Association said she was unaware of the incident.

Lisa Dvir from the Israeli Airport Authority (IAA), the body responsible for controlling Israel's borders, told IPS that the IAA was neither aware of Omer's journalist credentials nor of his coordination.

"We would like to know who Omer spoke to in regard to receiving coordination to pass through Allenby. We offer journalists a special service when passing through our border crossings, and had we known about his arrival this would not have happened.

"I'm not aware of the events that followed his detention, and we are not responsible for the behaviour of the Shin Bet."

In the meantime, Omer is still traumatised and in pain. "I'm struggling to breathe and have pain in my head and stomach and will be going back to hospital for further medical examinations," he said. (END/2008)

 



 

NEWS RELEASE 29 June 2008
 
AMBASSADOR PROSOR ASKED TO INVESTIGATE BEATING UP OF INTERNATIONALLY-HONOURED JOURNALIST
 
Concerned citizens have asked the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, to investigate reports that the young award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer was brutally assaulted by Israeli security officials on his way home to Gaza.
 
Omer had been in London to receive the coveted Martha Gellhorn award for journalism. The Dutch government made arrangements for him to leave occupied Palestine for the trip, which included speaking engagements in Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands and France. The letter to Mr Prosor reads....
 
Dear Ambassador Prosor,
 
Our good friend, the young prize-winning  journalist Mohammed Omer, was assaulted by Israel's Shin Bet at the Allenby Bridge border crossing as he returned home to Gaza, according to the reports below.
 
He had been in London to receive the coveted Martha Gellhorn award for journalism in war. Last year he was in America to collect a US award. He left Gaza at the invitation of the Dutch government and had been well received by a number of EU governments during his trip.
 
A few days ago we heard that he was marooned in Amman after being denied permission by the Israeli authorities to return home to the bosom of his family. As a result he missed his brother's wedding. Yesterday we were shocked by the sickening reports below and are extremely worried especially as we have been unable to establish direct contact.
 
Mohammed Omer's family has suffered grievously at the hands of the Israelis. One of his brothers was shot dead, anotherwas shot in the leg which had to be amputated, the family home in Rafah was demolished in 2004 and their belongings burnt, and his mother was injured as the house was pulled down around her.... and now this.
 
You recently spoke of an anti-Israel campaign being stoked up in Britain "to harass, humiliate and discriminate purely on grounds of nationality". You said (in The Daily Telegraph) that Britain is "a hotbed of anti-Israeli sentiment" and "Israel faces an intensified campaign of delegitimisation, demonisation and double standards". It must be embarrassing for you that Israel exhibits the very racist vices you complain of. Will not your countrymen's conduct towards Mr Omer simply fan the flames, here and in the Holy Land?
 
Some of us have witnessed and experienced for ourselves the gratuitous humiliation inflicted on people passing through crossings and checkpoints. We invite you therefore to persuade the authorities back home to investigate the incident and, if there's any truth in it, to make a fullsome apology to Mr Omer for their brutal conduct, compensate him for the  injury and in future respect his and his fellows right to go about their work unmolested.
 
We now look forward to the matter being resolved in a courteous and humane way.
 
Sincerely,
 
(signatories)
Mary Bedforth, Guildford
Barbara Mayhew, Bury St Edmunds
Nanny Brett, Cambridge
Felicity Arbuthnot, London
Tim Williams, Exeter
Paul Maddison, Huntingdon
Mark Brett, Cambridge
Stuart Littlewood, King's Lynn
David Halpin, Newton Abbot
 
The group says the thuggish treatment handed out to Mohammed Omer is typical of the daily humiliations, beatings, detentions - and not infrequent deaths - at Israel's borders and checkpoints.
 
Mr Prosor recently berated Britain in the press for anti-Israel harassment, humiliation and discrimination. The group feels that this country needs no lectures from a regime that thrives on demolishing Palestinian homes, stealing their lands, crushing their economy and generally making life a misery. Diplomatic representatives from Israel like to portray their country as 'the only democratic state in the Middle East' and 'a democracy under fire', but the facts on the ground contradict these claims.
 
David Halpin, who has met Mohammed Omer several times and attended the award-giving in London, commented: "The Zionist entity has eleven basic laws.  That on human dignity and liberty requires that 'there shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person as such' (Section 2).  The violation and torture of Mohammed is one of the latest instances amongst millions which have been carried out for the purpose of ethnic cleansing.  It is apparent that this Basic Law does not apply to the Palestinian and one can therefore assume the entity regards Mohammed and all his people as being 'untermenschen.'
 
 
Writer Felicity Arbuthnot said: "The appalling treatment of Mohammed Omer demonstrates utter disregard for international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - now 60 years in being - in which is enshrined the right for all to travel freely."
 
"Israelis should put their own house in order before preaching to the British people. They win no friends by inflicting suffering on this brilliant young man and the countless other Palestinians who are harrassed, humiliated, dispossessed and impoverished by the regime's brutal occupation," said Stuart Littlewood.
 
-ends-
29 June 2008
 
For more information please contact [phone nos removed in this copy - BR]
David Halpin
Felicity Arbuthnot
Stuart Littlewood
 
 
 
June
 
    June 27th
 
    Action Alert from WRMEA:
 
    At a June 16 ceremony in London, Mohammed Omer, author of the regular Washington Report feature "Gaza on the Ground," received the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (a link to the presentation and Omer's remarks can be found on our home page, <www.wrmea.com>). He shared the prestigious prize with independent American journalist Dahr Jamail, who was honored for his "unembedded" reports from Iraq.
 
    Before traveling to England to receive his award, Omer spoke in Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece about the situation in Gaza. Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen, head of the parliament's foreign relations committee, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Pilger spent weeks lobbying Israel to issue an exit permit to allow this young reporter to travel to Europe and London.
 
    Not for the first time, however, getting home was even harder than leaving.
 
    As soon as Omer arrived in Amman, the Dutch diplomats who were helping facilitate his travel arrangements informed him that the Israelis did not want to allow him to return. After further intervention by his Dutch sponsors, Omer finally got the green light, and on the morning of June 26 crossed from Jordan into the occupied territories via the Allenby Bridge. There he was interrogated, strip-searched and manhandled for several hours. After losing consciousness, he finally was taken to a hospital in Jericho, and from there escorted back to Gaza.
 
    MP Van Baalen has demanded that Israel launch an investigation into Omer's barbaric treatment.
 
    

 

 

 

 


 

From Caroline Moorehead's widely praised and (I gather) authoritative

book on MarthA Gellhorn

 

 

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

 


 

From the British Medical Journal

Medical evidence exposes US use of torture

 

BMJ  2008;336:1458-1459 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a490

News

Medical evidence exposes US use of torture

Peter Moszynski

1 London

Suspected terrorists held at US detention facilities were "systematically subjected to torture and ill treatment," says a detailed medical and psychological evaluation of former detainees conducted by Physicians for Human Rights.

The findings were announced last week at a press conference at the BMA, where investigators from the organisation described how they uncovered "medical evidence of torture and ill treatment inflicted on 11 men detained at US facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay who were never charged with any crime."

A report of their investigations details the "severe physical and psychological pain and long-term disability that has resulted from abusive and unlawful US interrogation practices."

 

BMJ video  [I've made a compressed low but adequate copy of this video available for viewing and / or download here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/52947926/1559aeb1/BMJ_video_USA_torture_xvid.html

which is:

http://tinyurl.com/55jlse

A fraction over 3 mins - But please let me know if there's any problem with the download, thanks BR  gbr2004uk-mw [AT] yahoo [DOT] co [DOT] uk ]

In the report Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the US Army’s investigation into the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib detention centre, points out that "the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the wilful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect."

Complaining that the UN Convention against Torture was "indiscriminately ignored," General Taguba says: "There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, told the meeting: "Rigorous clinical evaluations confirm the enormous and enduring toll of agony and anguish inflicted for months by US personnel on 11 men who were detained without any charge or explanation."

He explained that the physical and psychological evaluation of the detainees and the documentation of the crimes were based on "internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims." A team of two doctors spent two days examining each one of the 11 men and went through the detailed medical records kept by their interrogators.

Dr Rubenstein said, "Their first hand accounts, now confirmed by medical and psychological examinations, take us behind the photographs to write a missing chapter of America’s descent into the shameful practice and official policy of systematic torture."

Christian Pross, of the Berlin Centre for the Treatment of Torture Victims, one of the trauma therapists who interviewed the men, told the BMJ he was shocked that such flagrant abuses would be tolerated by a democratic government.

The report details the practices "used to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end." These included:

 

  • Suspension and other stress positions
     
  • Routine isolation
     
  • Sleep deprivation, combined with sensory bombardment and extreme temperatures
     
  • Sexual humiliation and forced nakedness
     
  • Sodomy
     
  • Beatings
     
  • Denial of medical care
     
  • Electric shock
     
  • Involuntary drug treatment, and
     
  • Threats to their lives and families.
     

Some of these techniques were officially authorised, while "additional practices recounted by the interviewees including beatings and other forms of severe physical and sexual assault that, while not officially authorized . . . came to be part of a regime of brutality at the facilities where the detainees were held."

As only 11 detainees were examined, "the findings of this assessment cannot be generalized to the treatment of all detainees in US custody," the report says. However, the documented incidents are consistent with findings of other investigations, "making it reasonable to conclude that these detainees were not the only ones abused, but are representative of a much larger number of detainees subjected to torture and ill-treatment while in US custody."

A Department of Defense spokesman told the BMJ that the report represented "sweeping conclusions based on dubious allegations."


Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and its Impact is available at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org.


MusicWeaver note:  See below for testimonies of torture victims in Israel compiled by PCATI, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel

 

Also see box just below this - latest letter from Dr Derek Summerfield to Dr Baum

 

 

 

Letter from Dr Derek Summerfield to Michael Baum, professor emeritus of surgery, University College London, London
 
Dear Dr Baum

I trust you were in receipt of my open letter to you of 21 May, copied for public information reasons to a range of interested parties, including medical journal editors and the International Committee of the British Medical Association (concerned with medical ethics). As before, I asked you to provide evidence for your unconditional support in the BMJ last year of the Israeli Medical Association in their dismissal (they call it a “lie” and this you endorsed) of the huge body of evidence of the IMA’s systematic collusion with ongoing violations by Israeli doctors of the World Medical Association’s anti-torture Declaration of Tokyo, and of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the rights of Gaza residents to access medical and other services vital to life. As before I attached supportive citations from a range of international (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, United Nations OCHA, International Red Cross etc) and regional (PHR Israel, B’Tselem, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel etc) organisations. Its not my word at stake Dr Baum, but the word of these organisations in report after report over the years.

5 weeks have passed and you have not replied. Clearly, as last year, you are refusing to engage with the evidence because there is nothing there to your or Israel’s advantage- because it all points unambiguously the same way and because no independent counter-evidence supportive of the probity of the IMA exists. As your own remarks (about academic boycott etc) posted up elsewhere make crystal clear, the point- at source the only point- is to be a loyal Zionist supporter of Israel, isn’t it Dr Baum? I and others urge you to comment on the evidential mountain informing so crucial an issue for the public reputation of the medical profession, one upon which you have committed yourself in the BMJ, and you complain that you are being subjected to a “vendetta”. Those of us- in particular hundreds of doctors and other health professionals in UK and worldwide who are reading this letter- have to contend with pro-Israel apologists in UK ,US etc who deploy all the professional weight and authority at their disposal to blacken the name of those who point to the evidence, and to threaten the editors of the medical journals who dare to publish it. In your various ways you are all Israel’s soldiers, and your aggressive self-righteousness and sense of impunity mirrors Israel’s own public stance. This is ethical corruption straight and simple, a slur upon the profession. How do you imagine medical historians will assess your role in due course?

Yours

Derek Summerfield BSc(Hons) MBBS MRCPsych
 

 


Jon Stewart takes on AIPAC in 5-minute clip

 

 

 

 


 

 

From the British Medical Journal

BMJ  2008;336:1461 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a539

News

Zimbabwean doctors see big rise in cases of trauma in wake of political violence

Owen Dyer

1 London

Zimbabwe’s doctors have been overwhelmed by the burden of serious physical trauma in recent weeks, as thousands of opposition supporters have been systematically beaten by militiamen loyal to Robert Mugabe.

The Zimbabwean Association of Doctors for Human Rights reported last week that its members had seen 1007 such patients during May, of whom 119 had fractures, in many cases multiple or compound fractures.

"There has been a gross surge in both the quantity and severity of injury. Fracture cases alone increased threefold in number from April to May," the association reported in an email sent to supporters abroad. "It is certain that a far greater number of patients will have been attended to by other members of the health professions, especially nurses, but will never have been near a doctor."

Opposition activists and civic groups complain that Zimbabwe’s public hospitals have done little or nothing to aid victims of political violence. Instead they have functioned as bases for the government’s campaign of intimidation, they say, in which the health minister, himself a doctor, has been personally implicated.

The minister, David Parirenyatwa, and two other Zanu-PF members of parliament from the town of Murewa reportedly accompanied young militiamen on a sweep through the town soon after one of its three constituencies fell to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the general election in March. They threatened MDC supporters with death, fired shots into the air, and rounded up locals and forced them to attend a rally in the grounds of the local hospital, said an affidavit signed by an opposition supporter who witnessed the events.

The MDC has reported 86 deaths from violence among its supporters, but a bigger threat to health is posed by the ongoing collapse of the public health system and a government ban—imposed earlier this month—on all work by non-governmental organisations.

More than 3000 Zimbabweans die each week from complications related to AIDS, and the country has the world’s lowest average life expectancy: 37 for men and 34 for women. Government hospitals stopped registering new patients with HIV in 2006, and the number of people paying privately for antiretroviral drugs fell from about 10 000 last summer to 6000 early this year, in the face of hyperinflation.

Many doctors and nurses are among the three million Zimbabweans—a quarter of the population—who have fled to South Africa in recent years.

The government imposed an indefinite blanket ban on all field operations by non-governmental organisations on 4 June, accusing them "engaging in political activities." It apparently relented last week, permitting more than 400 organisations in the HIV and AIDS area to resume fieldwork. However, Fambai Ngirande, spokesman for NANGO, an umbrella group for non-governmental organisations, said, "War veterans and militia are still blocking the operations of our member organisations. Rural areas are no go areas at the moment."

Kenneth Walker of the charity Care International, speaking from Johannesburg, said that the group’s plans to distribute food to 100 000 people in June had been cancelled. "There is no NGO activity in Zimbabwe right now," he said.

Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Welfare did not return calls for comment.

 

 

 

 


 

 

BAFTA award to Dahr Jamail and Mohammed Omer

Martha Gellhorn Prize

 

http://www.humanrightstv.com/episode/469

 

 

Short videos of the presentation and speeches

 


BMJ Editorial Measuring Deaths from Conflict

19 June 2008

 

HERE

 

 


 

Click on picture for BBC video

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

http://www.thestruggle.org/returns_invite_08.htm

 

 

 94 Year Old Israeli Peace Activist Returns Barak's Invitation
 

 

"I am returning your invitation"

 

Dov Yirmiya - Open letter to Defence Minister

 

Below is an English translation of an open letter by the 94 year old peace activist, Dov Yirmiya, an ex-colonel in the Israeli army, which was published on June 11 in Zo Haderekh, the Communist weekly. Yirmiya's book "My War Diary" (1983) played an important role in mobilizing Israeli public opinion against the First Lebanese War. In 1983 he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award for his "activities promoting the welfare of civilians in Lebanon".
 

I am returning your invitation

An open letter to the Minister of Defence

 
I have received your elegant invitation to veterans of the 1948 war, on the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, under the slogan: "The State of Israel expresses its thanks to you."
 
As a veteran of the 1948 war, who was already wounded in face to face combat two weeks before the Declaration of the State, I feel obliged herewith to return the invitation to you, as Minister of Defence. I do so regretfully but see this as my duty.
 
I consider you, Ehud Barak, as one of the top military commanders and prominent political leaders who were responsible for converting the army from "the Israeli Defence Force" to an army of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people and defender of the criminal settlements in their country.
 
40 years of occupation have utterly corrupted the Israeli army and all strata of Israeli society.They are both characterized by the nationalist 'east wind' [the east wind brings the chamsin and locusts - C.A.] which blows and kindles conflagrations of endless wars, which threaten our people and land with the third and final destruction. Your share in the responsibility for all this is enormous, and therefore I return your invitation to you, without thanks...
 
Dov Yirmiya, Naharia
 
P.S. I sent this letter to Haaretz, but it was not printed...[D.Y.]
 
====================
 

http://www.thestruggle.org/index.htm
This site is sponsored by The Middle East Crisis Committee
We’re a group of activists that organized in 1982 in New Haven, CT during Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
 

Over the years we've picketed the likes of Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir, Lebanese President Gemayel, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, Rabbi Meyer Kahane, Members of Congress Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, and Rosa DeLauro.

Since 1984 we have published the journal, "The Struggle".
In 2003 we started “The Struggle” as a weekly TV news program
In 2006 we merged with Al-Awda-Ct, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition(CT)

 

 Stanley Heller wrote on the Jewswhospeakout list:

I was so pleased to hear that Yirmiyah's is still alive and full of fight.  In 1948 he was a Haganah commander.  He left his unit for a few days and his substitute led his troops in a massacre.  Yirmiyah demanded he be punished. ( I think that was the only such act in the whole sorry war.)

 
I met him in New Haven in the mid 1980's.  His talk and his book had great influence on me.
 
Stanley Heller

 

 

 


Click on top picture for Independent story

by Donald Macintyre in Gaza City

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

WORDS

Apartheid - Nishul - Hafrada

 

The Afrikaans word apartheid has often been used to describe the situation obtaining in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and often within Israel itself.  From the point of view of campaigning, there have been problems with the use of this word in the Israeli-Palestinian context: its descriptive accuracy has been called into question¹ and to use it can end up letting apologists for Israeli brutality employ diversionary tactics, expressing outrage at the use of a word whilst ignoring or denying, certainly obscuring the very real Palestinian sufferings to which the word refers.

Apartheid may well, despite Machover's warnings and objections, be the appropriate word to use, but sometimes it's not enough to be right:  in campaigning, as in diplomacy, you often have to be right in the right way.  We want to persuade people with the words we use, not make them stop up their ears in some sort of defensive conditioned reflex.

I am therefore grateful to Deborah Maccoby² for reminding me that at his recent talk in London, Jeff Halper of ICAHD 'mentioned that he has met South Africans who object to the phrase "Israeli apartheid", not because what's going on doesn't resemble South African apartheid, but because they think the word "apartheid" was specific to their own situation and they think a specifically Israeli word should be used to describe the Israeli/Palestinian situation'.  (Email communication.)

I am also grateful to Richard Kuper, who clarified for me that the word Jeff used was nishul - dispossession (variant spelling, nishool). A related Hebrew word is hafrada, which, like the Afrikaans word "apartheid", means literally separation. These are the words used by the Israeli government to describe its own policies.  (By email.)

These words could become just as highly charged, and with the same results, as did the Afrikaners' own word to describe their policies.  If we started to use them at every opportunity in our own campaigning, they could hardly be challenged for accuracy, since they're the Israeli government's own terms, and they would deny our opponents the chance of time-wasting obfuscatory tactics.

 

¹ See Moshe Machover, Is it Apartheid? in Jewish Voice for Peace, 10 Nov 2004

² See report of London meeting here

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

From http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

 

Fatalities

Click on the numbers for a list of individual names and details about the circumstances of their death

29.9.2000-31.5.2008
Occupied Territories
Israel
Gaza Strip West Bank Total
Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces
2941 1777 4718 67
Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians
4 41 45
 
Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians
39 197 236 485
Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians
97 147 244 90
Foreign citizens killed by Palestinians
10 7 17 37
Foreign citizens killed by Israeli security forces
4 6 10
 
Palestinians killed by Palestinians
442 135 577
 


 
Additional data (included in previous table)
Occupied Territories
Israel
Gaza Strip West Bank Total
Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces
633 311 944 3
Israeli minors killed by Palestinians
4 35 39 84
Palestinians killed during the course of a targeted killing
 
Palestinians who were the object of a targeted killing
150 82 232
 
Palestinians killed by Palestinians for suspected collaboration with Israel
11 109 120
 
Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces
1176 461 1637 58
Palestinians who did not take part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces ( not including the objects of targeted killings).
1378 837 2215 5
Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and it is not known if they were taking part in the hostilities
387 479 866 4

Notes:

  1. The data may change due to ongoing research, which produces new information about the events .

  2. The figures do not include :

  • Palestinians who died after medical treatment was delayed due to restrictions of movement .

  • Palestinians killed by an explosive device that they set or was on their person .

  • 12 Palestinian citizens of Israel killed within Israel by the Israeli Police in October 2000 .

  • One Jewish Israeli citizen killed within Israel by a Palestinian-Israeli citizen in October 2000 .

  • Two Jewish Israeli citizens and One member of the Israeli security forces, killed by a Palestinian citizen of Israel in Nahariya in September 2001 .

  • Four Palestinian-citizens of Israel killed by IDF gunfire in the Territories .

  • One Palestinian-citizen of Israel killed by Border Police gunfire within Israel in July 2003 .

  • Five Palestinian citizens of Israel killed by  an absconded IDF soldier on a bus in Shfar'am, within Israel , in August 2005 and the shooting soldier, beaten  to death by Palestinian-citizens of Israel.

  • Seven members of the Ghaliya family (the two parents and their five children, one an adult), who were killed in June 2006 in an explosion on the coast by Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. The cause of the explosion remains unclear.

  • One Palestinian resident of a-Sheikh Sa'ed was killed on May 2007 during a fire exchange between Palestinian militants and Israeli policemen at the a-Sheikh Sa'ed checkpoint in East Jerusalem.

  • One Twelve-year-old Israeli child who, in August 2007 while on a family visit in the village of Saida in Tulkarm district, was killed by undercover troops who had come to arrest his brother and his brother's friend, who were wanted by Israel.

  • One Israeli citizen from Kfar Qana, who was killed in August 2007 in the Old City in East Jerusalem after he grabbed a security guard's weapon.

 

 

 


 

 

 

http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en

 

 

See especially

click image

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Diary

Louisa Waugh

‘Don’t ask me how I am,’ a colleague said to me when I arrived at the office yesterday morning. ‘You know how bad things are here now, so please don’t ask.’

Things are certainly very bad in the Gaza Strip. The fuel crisis grinds on, and though Israel has just allowed a small consignment of fuel in, nearly 90 per cent of private cars remain off the road. Bus and taxi services are overwhelmed, and since the taxis have more than doubled their rates, most of us are still walking. Black market fuel prices are extortionate, and the streets reek with gassy and oily fumes because drivers have resorted to converting their cars to use cooking gas, or even cooking oil. These crude conversions are potentially dangerous, liable to induce nausea, eye infections and asthma. The lack of industrial fuel has sparked widespread power cuts (Gaza’s sole power plant is operating at partial capacity), as well as shortages of drinking water: the electric pumps shut down when the power goes off. Up to half of Gazans only have access to drinking water at home for between four and six hours a day. Domestic cooking fuel is increasingly scarce, and on some days there are long queues for bread, because bakers have started turning off their ovens to save gas.

The fuel crisis didn’t start last week, or even last month. Israel has been steadily reducing fuel supplies since October. In February, ambulances in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza were temporarily grounded when the diesel ran out. In April, Israel permitted 152,000 litres of petrol to enter and 33,280 litres of diesel, a tiny fraction of demand.

Last week I drove from Gaza City, where I work with a British aid organisation, down to Rafah, where I talked to several ambulance drivers. Samir Abdul Akil has been driving ambulances for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for the last five years. ‘The situation is miserable,’ he said. ‘We have to restrict our movements and can only answer emergency calls, but demand for our services has soared, because people have no other way of getting to hospital.’ People are turning up on donkeys or mule carts. Another driver, Asad Daoud, who works at the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, told me his ambulance ran out of fuel completely ten days ago. Despite having a large obstetrics unit, where up to twenty babies are born every day, the hospital can afford only one ambulance. Daoud regularly has to transfer patients to the European Hospital, seven kilometres away, but doesn’t always have enough fuel for the return journey.

The Gaza Strip is 26 miles long and six miles wide, with a total of eight commercial and pedestrian crossings: apart from the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, they all lead into Israel. The main pedestrian crossings, at Erez in northern Gaza and Rafah in the south, have been effectively sealed since June 2006, after the abduction by Hamas of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held hostage in Gaza. Hamas and the Egyptian government are now negotiating over whether to open the Rafah crossing on a regular basis, and Gazans are desperately hoping that they will. Everyone in the Strip, even children, requires a travel permit from the Israeli military in order to cross Erez, and the overwhelming majority of applications, including those from people who need emergency medical treatment, are denied on grounds of ‘security’. Over the last year, 33 Gazans, including several young children, have died after being refused a permit, or having their permits delayed. There are 1.4 million people living in the Gaza Strip, and Khalil Shaheen, a human rights activist here, estimates that less than 3 per cent of the population has freedom of movement into and out of the Strip.

The Israeli siege began in the wake of Hamas’s takeover last June, and has been steadily tightening ever since. Imports and exports are severely restricted: Israel has gradually increased the categories of food items allowed to be imported via the commercial crossings from nine to 40, but this apparent liberalisation doesn’t make much difference because the crossings are open so rarely that very little can be brought in. Other goods, including medicines, hearing aids, computers, cardboard and electrical elements, are either in short supply or are not coming in at all. Importing construction materials has been prohibited for months and, apart from small quantities smuggled through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the border with Egypt, there is nothing to build with. Houses and streets that have been damaged, or bombed, are left as they are. Strangely, Coke is available because it is brought in through these tunnels from Egypt, but fruit juice and milk are impossible to find. The WHO produces a drug list of 480 essential items; Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, is 90 items short, and has less than three months’ supply left of another 130. Exports, too, have been drastically curtailed: family-owned strawberry and flower farms have been ruined; the annual catch of Gaza’s fishermen is less than a sixth of what it was five years ago. The people of the Strip are now one of the most aid-dependent populations on earth.

It’s not surprising that morale is at rock bottom, and that my colleagues don’t want to make small talk about how they’re feeling. You can’t watch what’s going on without asking why Israel is so intent on destroying civilian life in Gaza. Israel does have legitimate concerns about the home-made rockets and mortars being fired towards its borders almost every day. Two Israelis have recently been killed and dozens injured; doctors are trying to save the legs of an Israeli toddler wounded in last week’s rocket attack on a clinic in the centre of Ashkelon. But Israel’s main assumptions – that the siege would force the militants to stop launching rockets, and that the Gazan people would rise up and overthrow Hamas – have proved to be false. Though the number of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza has dropped over the last three months, the targeting has become more precise, and the militants are starting to upgrade their rockets, enabling them to strike further into Israel. Hamas has consolidated its power base and is politically and financially secure. As the International Crisis Group noted in a recent report, ‘the belief by some that the siege somehow will lead to Hamas’s overthrow is an illusion.’

Hamdi Shaqqura, a senior researcher at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City, says that ‘when we talk about a political power struggle in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, we are talking about the struggle between the governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But there is no real opposition to Hamas here in Gaza. Hamas started to accumulate strength right after the takeover last June, and they have also institutionalised their power base; for instance, they re-established the entire police force. Hamas is now stronger than ever.’

I know many Gazans who say they hate Hamas; the huge majority, including some of those who say they support Fatah, also feel that they have been completely abandoned by the Palestinian Authority. President Abbas, recently forced to deny rumours of his own resignation, has done little to counter accusations that the PA doesn’t really care what happens inside Gaza. Instead, he remains caught up in increasingly pointless talks with the intransigent Olmert, who is once again under investigation for corruption and could be forced out of office himself. The negotiations between Hamas and Israel being brokered by the Egyptians are crucial: until Israel ends its siege, the two sides will remain locked in this ugly stalemate that is making life hellish for almost one and a half million people. The siege is illegal under international law, amounting as it does to the collective punishment of a civilian population. But Palestinian politicians also have a lot to answer for. The political and economic chasm between the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip has neutered the PA and strengthened Hamas, which, while offering a ceasefire to Israel, has continued to fire rockets over the border. There is no effective political opposition in either the West Bank or Gaza, and while Palestinians on the West Bank continue to endure humiliation at more than five hundred Israeli military checkpoints, the vast majority of Gazans are struggling to survive. Palestinians are fed up with politics, with their inept and greedy leaders, and with everything the Israelis have imposed on them.

Political divisions inside Palestine have played into Israel’s hands. Tamer Qarmout, a Gazan friend of mine who has just been accepted onto a PhD programme in the US to study conflict analysis and resolution, believes the situation has never been so bad for the Palestinians. ‘There is deep fragmentation in our society,’ he said, ‘with families divided because they belong to separate political factions. The moderate voices of Fatah and Hamas need to put their differences aside and reach a political agreement so they can work together. Basically, they need to put the national Palestinian interest above everything else.’ Any dialogue, he says, has to take place ‘outside the political influence of the US, Israel, Syria and Iran’. ‘We have a very just cause. It is very depressing to see how we’ve harmed it and given Israel a perfect excuse to manipulate their legal obligation to end the occupation.’ Whatever the sharply dressed Israeli government spokesmen say, this is not a ‘war against terrorism’. Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967; 41 years later it is still expanding its illegal settlements in the West Bank while controlling the movement of every Palestinian inside the Gaza Strip. Tamer has no idea whether he will be allowed to leave to study for his PhD.

No one – Bush, Olmert, Abbas, the Egyptians – knows what to do with the Gaza Strip. Gaza has very few friends, and people here don’t understand why the outside world seems to hate them so much, to care so little about what is happening to them. ‘We have no life here,’ Khalil Shaheen said to me last week. The Israelis ‘deprive us of everything – and then what? Our life becomes so fucking difficult that we think freedom means having enough fuel to drive our cars around Gaza, electricity in our homes, and bread in the shops. We are caged.’

Sometimes, living in Gaza is like watching a bizarre experiment in how much people can endure before they crack. Yesterday a friend of mine went to buy a pizza from his local bakery, but the baker had no flour. So he went to another bakery – but the second baker had no flour either, and no fuel. Another friend, Ehab, has not been able to buy shoes for months, because none of the shops has any left in his size. A neighbour, Aitemad, called round to tell me about the trouble she had getting her hair cut. Her hairdresser had no electricity in her shop, so she drove Aitemad to another hairdresser – but her car ran out of fuel on the way. So they had to leave the car and wait an hour for a taxi. I went to see Aitemad last night: we had a candlelit dinner because there was a power cut. Her hair looked great.

While the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas go on in Sharm El-Sheikh, I am sitting in my living-room in Gaza City with the doors and windows open for some cool air. I can hear bombing in the north; more people may be dying as I write this. The death toll is climbing on both sides, but the number of Israeli and Palestinian fatalities can’t be compared. Fourteen Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians this year, two by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip and two by snipers from inside Gaza. In the same period, 333 people in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, including 127 adult civilians and 56 children. More Gazan children were killed in the first four months of this year than in the whole of last year. Israel’s siege has achieved nothing but misery and bloodshed.

20 May

Louisa Waugh is the author of Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia and Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance.

 

 

 

 


 

I have removed the uruknet.info report pending further investigation

Some doubt has been expressed concerning its accuracy

 


 

 

 

Penn and Teller take us through the Bible and find

 

 

 

 

Those of a religiously sensitive disposition may wish to consider

whether they really want to watch this

comedy video

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RV46fsmx6E

 

 


 


 

 

 

Reza Moradi's remake of Fitna, the Movie:  Fitna Remade

 

"To stop terrorism we must be against poles of terrorism, the US terrorism and the Islamist terrorism; being against one should not lead us to support the other one. No one must be allowed to legitimize and promote killing people …”

-- Shiva Mahbobi, 30/9/2006 (on Maryam Namazie's blog here: http://tinyurl.com/66v8w5 )

 

Some comments from the discussion (link below §)

 

“[Wilders] has got his own [very right wing] agenda [and] his basic concern is [about] immigration into Europe [as well as] the threat that he thinks Islam poses to Europe. [I]f it wasn’t for that he would have absolutely no concerns about Islam and so his agenda really doesn’t coincide with ours at all…”

 

“[T]he aim of this film was not to criticise Islam, it was to attack immigrants who are basically labelled Muslims. It was ridiculous propaganda I think against these people. …”

 

“[B]ut criticising Islam is important …and there should be big criticism [but] the bad thing that I think the film has supported is, that the next person who wants to criticise Islam, they are just going to point the finger at him saying: oh you are anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, anti-foreigners. I think this big distinction needs to be made. …”

 

Maryam Namazie:  “[I] thought how dare he. The political Islamic movement has wreaked havoc for decades, long before September 11, long before the Madrid or London bombings.  In Iran, we have lost an entire generation to this movement and we have struggled and fought against this movement. How dare he equate all of us as one and the same with the political Islamic movement? It made me quite angry.”

 

 

----------------oOo------------------ 

 

Fariborz Pooya, summing up the discussion §, says: "Fitna, as mentioned here, doesn’t fundamentally criticise Islam; it doesn’t criticise the political Islamic movement and Islamic states that is destroying the lives of millions every day. And effectively its anti-immigrant tone distorts the whole picture. The reality is that millions of people are fighting against the political Islamic movement and that’s the movement that needs to be supported. Freedom of expression and the right to criticise Islam and religion and is a fundamental right that needs to be upheld."