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.
Israel-Palestine
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.
Attorney Sari Bashi, director of the NGO Gisha that closely follows the restrictions on the freedom of movement of persons and goods, says that as far as is known, the “easing” has not included construction materials or raw materials. “Continuing the restrictions on the ability to produce will also limit the [Palestinians] buying power,” she said.
Israel on Tuesday launched a spy satellite from a base in the south of the country, the defence ministry said, with the device reportedly capable of monitoring arch-foe Iran.
My story is that the Israeli intelligence, “the Shabak”, assumed something without knowing and without any evidence. I was requested and forced to explain to them in a very detailed way how exactly I did what I didn’t do, ever. In case of any logical problem for them to complete the puzzle, they have the legal tools to fill it in by so-called secret evidence, which my lawyers and I have no legal right to know about.
Dan Yakir, chief legal counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel: “It is insupportable that, in a democratic country, authorities can arrest people in complete secrecy and disappear them from public view without the public even knowing such an arrest took place.”
It is the first arrest worldwide that is directly related to the Dubai murder. German officials in Berlin are outraged that the Mossad apparently obtained a genuine German passport under false pretenses that involved — of all things — a fake story of Nazi persecution.
No, he is not a villain, the Israeli patriot – he is merely brainwashed and blind. He would like to live in a democracy … But it’s a democracy without most of its mechanisms. He is satisfied with elections and majority rule: The majority will make the decisions, and to hell with the minority.
Those who demand that I prepare students for [military] recruitment should know that my duty is also to tell them that they would enter a territory which was occupied 43 years ago, in which human rights are being shamefully violated on a daily basis by means of our military superiority. In [the] future, these children will have to account for themselves, and they will ask if their school has revealed to them the terrible secret called occupation. Yes, occupation. An occupation, not a liberation, not a return to an ancestral land.
Israeli troops have been accused of stealing from activists arrested in the assault on the Gaza flotilla after confiscated debit cards belonging to activists were subsequently used… Activists say Israel still has possession of at least £1m of goods and cash… Some passports, three of them belonging to British citizens, have still not been returned.
IOA Editor: Loot is traditionally shared by pirates – clearly, also those belonging to the Most Moral Army in the World, to cite General Barak. One can reasonably expect that the passports, confiscated by the State of Israel, are destined for a much more sinister use.
The latest gimmick of the Israeli occupation under the guise of “security considerations” has emerged. The test subject: Nasser Laham, a Palestinian journalist from Bethlehem who is close with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and who advocates peace with Israel.
IOA Editor: Yossi Melman is the Haaretz specialist on Israel’s intelligence services. In recent months, his writing has been turning increasingly more critical of the Occupation authorities.
Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin: “The Shin Bet is required to thwart subversive activity by elements who wish to harm the nature of the State of Israel as a democratic Jewish State — even if they act by means of democratically provided tools — by virtue of the principle of ‘defensive democracy.’”
At this time it is hard to convince the Jewish public in Israel that what happens at Ben-Gurion International Airport is a systematic injustice, if not worse. The ethnocentric panic undermines the principle of civil equality.
IOA Editor: Racial profiling is a well-established practice in Israel. Its contribution to “national security” is, at best, questionable. What isn’t is its purpose: it is a thoroughly planned and calculated method intended to harass Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, to ‘put them in their proper place.’
Yousef Jabareen: “There has been an atmosphere of incitement against the Arab community in general and especially against its leaders since [Netanyahu’s] right-wing government was formed a year ago, [b]ut in the past few days the incitement has peaked.”
Amira Hass: A motorist from East Jerusalem who ran over and wounded several Border Police officers Friday was shot twice in the face from close range while still lying on the ground, eyewitnesses said. Neighborhood witnesses said the fatal shots were fired once the officers no longer had reason to fear that their lives were in danger, and could have easily arrested the suspect.
IOA Editor: Shoot first, and don’t nobody ask any questions later.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union is set to discuss recommendation to strip Balad MK Hanin Zuabi of privileges over Gaza flotilla participation.
MK Afu Aghbaria: “In its 62 years of existence, Israel has attacked its neighbors and its Arab citizens nonstop… Israel prevents the passage of medicines and medical supplies to Gaza. As a result of this, 700 Gazans have died at the border crossings. Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman and Livni should be brought to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”
Fifty five percent of Jewish Israelis said they believe a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential to the survival of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. However, 49 percent disagreed that settlements pose a threat to Israel and “feed the delegitimization process” that Israel currently faces.
A number of local supermarket chains are taking a political stand: They have decided to boycott products manufactured in Turkey.
IOA Editor: Israel can boycott the world, but won’t tolerate the world boycotting it.
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
IOA Editor: While Israel’s morality (inherent, past, other?) is a figment of Siegman’s imagination, this is an important article in that it makes a powerful connection between the Holocaust and Israel’s Occupation and Gaza crimes.
If a real Commission of Inquiry had been set up (instead of the pathetic excuse for a commission), here are some of the questions it should have addressed.
In response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.
Public prosecutors in Germany are looking into a war crimes complaint filed against Israel by two members of parliament with the far-left Left Party and a human rights activist who were on board the Mavi Marmara when Israeli troops stormed it 11 days ago.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi has appointed Maj-Gen (ret.) Giora Eiland to head “external inquest into deadly raid of Gaza flotilla”. Gen. Eiland is the main author of the Dahiya Doctrine of “disproportionate response”, which calls for “the wholesale destruction of the military, government and civilian infrastructure of the enemy entity”.
Will Palestinian soon pay price for boycott? A new bill submitted by 25 Knesset members Wednesday would see money slated for transfer to the Palestinian Authority used to compensate Israelis hurt by the PA’s settlement boycott… According to the bill, Israeli citizens must not initiate, encourage, or aid a boycott against the State of Israel. Anyone who violates the order will be forced to pay compensation to those undermined by the embargo.
The report, published by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (Malam), said activists who attacked commandos with clubs and knives were supported by the Turkish government. Malam is privately run but is widely seen as an unofficial branch of Israel’s intelligence community.
IOA Editor: Even if this “probe” were to be taken entirely seriously – it should not, because it was conducted by a shell organization that is a mouthpiece of the Israeli security services – it does not relieve Israel of the responsibility for its Gaza war-crimes, and international law and maritime law violations.
UPDATE: Max Blumenthal’s Nailed Again: IDF Description of Suspicious Photo It Distributed Is Retracted
Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterised as a legitimate “act of self-defence”, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists.
Hanin Zoabi was aboard the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla where all nine activists were killed, and she witnessed some of them bleed to death. When she returned to Israel to speak in the Knesset, she was verbally assaulted by parliament members for her participation in the flotilla.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters believe pro-Palestinian activists on the Gaza-bound aid ships raided by Israeli forces are to blame for the deaths that resulted in the high-profile incident.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 19% of voters think the Israelis are to blame. Thirty-two percent (32%) more are not sure.
The American stores [in Israel] hold rockets, bombs, aircraft ammunition and armored vehicles, along with other weapons. The gear fully matches equipment already used by the Israel Defense Forces and is cataloged upon arrival to ensure quick and easy access at a time of need, pending permission from the United States. The American move has a dual purpose: bringing military equipment closer to areas in which Americans might need to fight, and assisting the U.S. ally should the need arise.
Jonathan Cook: In addition to the removal of Ms Zoubi’s [Knesset] privileges, she is also facing the revocation of her citizenship. The measure has been used only twice before in Israel’s history — both times against Palestinian citizens accused of terrorism.
[Haneen Zoabi] stated that the Knesset committee has taken decisions in retaliation against her, and virtually every Knesset Member is calling for more extreme measures, including calls for her dismissal from the Knesset, to revoke her citizenship, to expel her from the country, and imprisonment. Thus, these MKs consider the committee’s decisions to be just a first step of more punitive measures to come. “Our response will be to defy them. We will continue on our path of upholding human values and human rights, calling for equality, justice and the end of occupation and racism despite all their incitement and threats.”
