NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
This evening am having trouble with formatting—My computer is doing all sorts of odd things, e.g., adding lines where I don’t want them, not copying, and other odds and ends. Therefore, I ask your indulgence if the text comes out rather oddly (though I hope by now that I have somehow or other caught most of the oddities). I just haven’t the energy to argue further with the keyboard and screen. Much easier to argue with a person than with a machine.
8 items this evening.
The first informs us why activists plan to sue Minnesota for investing in Israel bonds. I wish them much luck.
Item 2 is a sad tale and a request for help. It was sent in October. I apologize for not sending it sooner, but only saw it last night as I was closing up shop. Julia in this tale furnishes the names of the organizations that participated in the conference that she organized. The first of these is the ‘Other Voice.’ I think it worth mentioning that this an organization from Sderot, an Israeli community that endured a great many missiles from Gaza , and yet the Other Voice includes people from Sderot and Gaza who continue to maintain contact with one another. However, whereas previously—before the blockade—it was by visiting as well as by other means, now the contact is possible only by phone and computer.
Item 3 “ Israel ’s other occupation” relates how “the ethnic conflict in the West Bank is metastasizing into Israel , threatening its democracy and unraveling its society.” I would not agree that Israel ever was truly democratic. But now even the democratic-like aspects are being threatened on the one side by infiltration of religious-idealist fanatics into mixed Arab-Jewish communities, and on the other side by present legislation.
Item 4 reports that Dan Meridor, the Deputy Prime Minister, threatens to resign if the bill restricting appeals to the High Court becomes law. Just awhile ago Haaretz reported that the PM himself opposes the law. Whether he really does or does not, he will not vote for it , letting others do the dirty work.
Item 5 Tim King“ The High Cost of Using War Criminals to Train U.S. Police,” elaborates on using ADL and Israeli programs to train American police.
Item 6, “Pepper Spray Nation.” is a longish article not about Israel , but theoretically could apply anywhere where privatization has taken over education, in which case ‘education’ becomes a minor goal subservient to interests of the 1%.
Item 7 reports that a motion by Israel , the US , Russia , and China to legalize the use of cluster bombs was defeated—thank goodness! Does this mean that these countries or others will not use them? Unlikely. But, at least if they do then they can be accused of war crimes. Not much help to the innocents that get killed by them, though.
Item 8, forwarded by Ann Lokoi, is more on the same subject as Item 5, but consists of a compilation from a variety of sources. Especially useful for researchers on the subject.
That’ s it for tonight.
All the best,
Dorothy
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
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Activists to sue Minnesota for investments that fund Israeli occupation
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/11/activists-to-sue-minnnesota-for-investments-that-fund-israeli-occupation.html
by Sylvia Schwarz and Phil Benson on November 22, 2011 8
Minnesota is among twenty-two states and the District of Columbia which invest in State of Israel Bonds . Proceeds from the sale of Israel Bonds are disbursed by Israel ’s Ministry of Finance to various Israeli government agencies and then used, in part, to fund illegal settlementactivities in the West Bank, including the construction of the apartheid wall, the confiscation of Palestinian lands and the construction of Israeli-only bypass roads.
The State Board of Investment (SBI) is charged with managing Minnesota ’s public employee pension fund investments, including the Israel Bond investments. The members of the SBI (Governor Mark Dayton, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, Attorney General Lori Swanson and State Auditor Rebecca Otto) have a statutory responsibility to the taxpayers to invest prudently and lawfully, while the SBI claims that it has no obligation to take into account moral or ethical issues in making investment decisions.
Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC) was formed in response to the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel and chose as its specific target the millions of dollars in Israel Bonds that the SBI holds in its portfolio. One of the primary reasons for targeting these state investments was the opportunity it provides to educate a broad state-wide audience to remedy the extreme dearth of accurate public knowledge of the Palestine /Israel situation. To this end, members of MN BBC have been traveling the state and presenting programs and educational events, film series and discussion sessions. Our group has grown from its two founders in 2006 to several hundred active members today.
Along with its educational component, for more than a year members of MN BBC have been meeting with state senators and representatives to encourage them to sponsor a bill to divest from Israel bonds. This effort has been largely met with steely stares and forced smiles. Invariably, legislators tell us that they have no control over the investments and that we should be speaking to the SBI. This we did. At one notable SBI meeting, several MN BBC members addressed the board, and although Governor Dayton listened respectfully, he clearly had other things on his mind. The response from the SBI was that we should instead be speaking to the legislators, since they had the power to legislate bans on certain investments.
While our appeal to the legislators and to the SBI was based on moral and ethical grounds, we also informed the Board that its investments in Israel Bonds were already illegal under existing Minnesota law. The Minnesota statute that controls the SBI’s investment decisions only permits investment in a narrow category of government bonds, including Canadian and U.S. Government bonds. Israel Bonds are not included. Nor, for example, are the government bonds of Iran , North Korea and Sudan included. Interestingly, the Minnesota legislature passed divestment legislation targeting privately held companies doing business in Iran and Sudan . These Iran and Sudan divestment bills include no provisions requiring divestment from the government bonds of either of those two countries, since any such investments are already prohibited, just as investment in Israel Bonds. Yet, the only foreign country (outside of Canada ) in which Minnesota has invested in government bonds is Israel . Minnesota law is being broken for Israel alone.
In addition to the Minnesota statutory violation, Minnesota has an obligation to comply with all international conventions and treaties of which the U.S. is a signatory. This includes the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits transferring the civilian population of the occupier into occupied territory. Israel , in contravention of this article, has been transferring Israeli civilians into the West Bank since 1967. The UN, the International Court of Justice and the United States Government all concur that this transfer is illegal. Knowingly providing financial material support for Israel ’s illegal settlement activities and infrastructure equally violates the law.
The SBI has a duty to protect the taxpayers and the state pension plan from lawsuits. By financially aiding and abetting Israel ’s violation of Article 49 and other international laws, the SBI could potentially be sued by victims of these violations. These lawsuits could come under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), an 18th century law allowing foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts against those who aid and abet international law violations committed against them. Minnesota ’s investment in Israel Bonds exposes the SBI and its agents, officers and employees to these lawsuits. Minnesota ’s taxpayers would be stuck with the bill for defending against any such lawsuits and paying for any adverse judgments.
Because the SBI has refused to divest from its Israel Bond investments, before the end of November, MN BBC will serve a lawsuit on the Minnesota SBI seeking an order from the court directing the SBI to immediately divest from Israel Bonds and to refrain from purchasing more on the grounds that 1) the SBI’s investments in foreign government bonds (with the exception of Canadian bonds) are illegal according to Minnesota statutes; 2) investments in Israel Bonds aid and abet Israel’s continuing violations of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention contrary to international, U.S. and Minnesota law; and 3) by investing in illegal settlement activity, the SBI exposes Minnesota taxpayers and the state pension plan to potential lawsuits.
We believe strongly that the law is on our side. The lawsuit will also help to educate Minnesotans and Americans about the ongoing international law violations occurring in Israel and Palestine which our government leaders and politicians have supported with impunity. This is a small part of the work involved in solidarity with Palestinians and the call for BDS. The struggle for human rights continues.
P.S. We have recently been informed that the Minnesota State Board of Investment has invested in sovereign German bonds. Although this is in violation of state statutes, it is no longer correct that Israel is the only country for which Minnesota has violated its own laws.
Phil Benson is an active member of Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign and Friends of Sabeel North America . As an activist Presbyterian, Phil’s Christian values have been the force behind his work for justice in Palestine . Sylvia Schwarz is an engineer in St. Paul, a member of Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
About Sylvia Schwarz and Phil Benson
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
View all posts by Sylvia Schwarz and Phil Benson →
Posted in Activism, BDS | Tagged featured
2. thanks for taking the time, and for passing it on
http://ifyouwillititwhttp://ifyouwillititwillcome.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-friend-who-used-to-be-from-gaza.html
Julia
Julia Chaitin , Ph.D.
School of Social Work – Sapir College
Home address: Kibbutz Urim, D.N. Hanegev , ISRAEL
Phone (h): 972-8-9920445; Phone © : 972-54-7976090
e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
3. NYTimes Friday, November 25, 2011
Israel ’s Other Occupation
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinion/sunday/israels-other-occupation.html?ref=global
By GERSHOM GORENBERG
Jerusalem
“CLEARLY, there’ s a war here, sometimes even worse than the one in Samaria ,” the yeshiva student said. “It’s not a war with guns. It’ s a war of light against darkness.”
We were sitting in the mixed Jewish-Arab town of Acre in Israel . The war he described was another front in the struggle he knew from growing up in a settlement in the northern West Bank, or Samaria : the daily contest between Jews and Palestinians for control of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River .
The explicit reason that his yeshiva had been established in Acre was to serve as a bridgehead in that struggle, just as West Bank settlements are built to bolster the Jewish hold on land there.
Israeli politicians and pundits labeled the Oct. 3 burning of a mosque in Tuba Zangaria, an Arab community in northern Israel , and the subsequent desecration of Arab graves in Jaffa as a sudden escalation. But they were mistaken.
For several years, extremist West Bank settlers have conducted a campaign of low-level violence against their Palestinian neighbors — destroying property, vandalizing mosques and occasionally injuring people. Such “price tag” attacks, intended to intimidate Palestinians and make Israeli leaders pay a price for enforcing the law against settlers, have become part of the routine of conflict in occupied territory.
Now that conflict is coming home. The words “price tag” spray-painted in Hebrew on the wall of a burned mosque inside Israel ’s pre-1967 borders transformed Israel ’s Arab citizens into targets and tore at the all-too-delicate fabric of a shared democracy.
Indeed, the mosque burning represented the violent, visible edge of a larger change : the ethnic conflict in the West Bank is metastasizing into Israel , threatening its democracy and unraveling its society.
The agents of this change include veterans of West Bank settlements seeking to establish a presence in shared Jewish-Arab cities in Israel and politicians backing a wave of legislation intended to reduce the rights of Arab citizens.
JEWS began settling in occupied territory weeks after the Israeli conquest of 1967. The strategy of settlement was born before Israeli independence in 1948, when Jews and Arabs fought for ethnic dominance over all of British-ruled Palestine . By settling the land, Jews sought to set the borders of the future Jewish state , one acre at a time. Post-1967 settlers, though they saw themselves as a vanguard, were really re-enacting the past, reviving an ethnic wrestling match — this time backed by an existing Jewish state.
Now, the attitudes and methods of West Bank settlement are inevitably leaking back across a border that Israel does not even show on its maps.
In 1996, the former Israeli chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and his son Shmuel Eliyahu established a project to place “core groups” of their followers in depressed Jewish towns. The Eliyahus assigned their first core group to Acre .
Their goal was to bolster religious education and build faith-based charities. The elder Eliyahu, now deceased, was a pre-eminent teacher of the pro-settlement religious right. His son recently gained notoriety for issuing a religious ruling forbidding Jews to rent or sell real estate to non-Jews anywhere in Israel .
The group’s rabbi, Nachshon Cohen, was an alumnus of a yeshiva in the Palestinian city of Hebron . The reason to start the religious project in Acre was “the demographic problem,” Rabbi Cohen explained to me. The mixed city had about 45,000 residents. But Jews were leaving because “people didn’t want to live next to Arabs.” The energy of the new core group, Rabbi Cohen hoped, would keep the town Jewish.
A key part of the settlement project in Acre was the establishment of a hesder yeshiva — a seminary mixing religious study and army service. It, too, would help draw Jews who were both “ideological” and “on a high socio-economic level” into the town, the yeshiva’s director, Boaz Amir, told me. While moving back into Israel and speaking of helping poor Israelis, the settlers were reimporting the message of Jewish-Arab struggle. It was gentrification with a hard ethnonationalist edge.
Acre is just one of the mixed Jewish-Arab cities that religious nationalists have set out to “save.” The Acre core group has grown to 110 families, roughly one percent of the town’s population. Drawing this number of potential settlers to live inside Israel has an insignificant effect on settlement growth in the West Bank.
Yet it broadcasts a message that Israel ’s Arab citizens are strangers and opponents rather than members of a shared polity. Rabbi Yossi Stern , the yeshiva’ s dean , described the transformation of Acre ’ s Wolfson neighborhood — a set of Soviet-style apartment blocks built in the 1960s — from a Jewish to a majority-Arab area as “a national sin.” He argued forcefully that Jews should move back into such shifting areas. For Arabs and Jews “to be in the same neighborhood, in the same building … that’s not good,” Rabbi Stern said. Coexistence was clearly not his goal.
Segregation, though, is intrinsically a denial of rights. The countryside throughout the Galilee region of northern Israel is dotted with a form of segregated exurb, the “community settlement.” In each of these exclusive communities, a membership committee vets prospective residents before they can buy homes.
The concept, born in the mid-1970s, originally allowed West Bank settlers to ensure that their neighbors shared their “ideological-social background,” including the same shade of religious commitment. The Likud government that came to power in 1977 applied the model to create Jewish-only bedroom communities in the Galilee and in the Negev .
In 1995, Adel and Iman Ka’adan, an Israeli Arab couple, tried to buy a lot in the community settlement of Katzir. As educated professionals eager to live in a place with good schools for their daughters, they fit the community’s profile. But as Arabs they were ineligible. Their legal battle led to an Israeli Supreme Court decision in 2000 that rejected discrimination against Arab citizens, stressing, “equality is one of the foundational principles of the State of Israel.”
Katzir’s membership committee proceeded to turn the Ka’adans down again on the grounds that they would not fit in socially. It took five more years in court before they were they allowed to buy land there. But last April, the legislature overrode the judiciary, when the Knesset passed a law authorizing community settlements in the Galilee and Negev to reject candidates who did not fit their “social-cultural fabric.” The new law may not hurt the Ka’adans, but other Israeli Arabs will not be able to benefit from their Supreme Court victory.
That law is not an isolated incident. In its current term, the Knesset has sought to turn parliamentary power against democratic principles and Israel ’s Arab minority. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party has led the offensive, but other legislators have joined it. Members of Tzipi Livni ’s Kadima party co-wrote the community settlements law.
Another law makes it illegal to call for consumer boycotts of products from settlements. Other bills would require loyalty oaths to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and to its flag and national anthem. They may never pass but they serve as political theater, labeling the Arab minority as disloyal.
Israel ’s courts, human rights groups and large parts of the public have fought back, seeking to preserve the principle of equality and the fragile sense of a shared society. The problem they face is that Israel remains tied to the West Bank and the settlement enterprise. And the ethnic struggle cannot be kept on one side of an unmarked border.
If and when Israel finally leaves the West Bank quagmire behind, it will face a further challenge : the settlers need to be brought home. But allowing them to apply their ideology inside Israel , or to transplant whole communities from the West Bank to the Galilee, will only make the situation worse in Israel proper.
The reason for Israel to reach a two-state solution and withdraw from the West Bank is not only to reach peace with the Palestinians living in what is now occupied territory. It is to ensure that Israel itself remains a democracy — one with a Jewish majority and a guarantee of equality for its Arab minority.
Israel does not need to bring the war from Samaria home. It needs to leave that war in the past.
Gershom Gorenberg is an Israeli journalist and historian and the author of “The Unmaking of Israel.”
4. Haaretz
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Deputy PM threatens resignation over bill to limit Israel High Court
Dan Meridor’s comments come before ministers review Likud bill that would bar human rights groups not registered in Israel from petitions against the state.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/deputy-pm-threatens-resignation-over-bill-to-limit-israel-high-court-1.397855
By Jonathan Lis and Ophir Bar-Zohar
Tags : Israel Supreme Court
[the latest news on Ynet reports that Israeli PM Netanyahu also opposes the bill http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4153379,00.html
This does not mean that it won’t become law. D]
Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said on Saturday that he would not remain in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if it supported a Likud bill that would limit the public’s ability to submit petitions to the High Court.
On Thursday, it was made known that the Ministerial Committee for Legislation was due to discuss a bill that would restrict the ability to file petitions against government actions in the High Court of Justice.
The bill, initiated by Likud MKs Yariv Levin and Danny Danon, is aimed at reducing the flood of such petitions submitted in recent years, often by petitioners who have no direct connection to the issue at hand.
Speaking of the bill on Channel 2’s Meet the Press, Meridor, who is also Intelligence and Atomic Energy minister, said that there was “a red line, limiting the High Court will not pass,” Meridor said, adding that “there won’t be a single day in which a law such as this exists and I am still in the cabinet.”
“I don’t believe that Israel will go dozens of years back in time and support such a move,” he said, adding that he had “returned to the government to stop such things. I don’t think that anyone in his right mind will support it.”
The deputy PM also criticized recent verbal attacks against the Supreme Court, saying that claiming the court was made up of a “radical leftist elite” was “appalling.”
“If there’s any point in my sitting in the cabinet, as well that of others, it’s this,” Meridor said.
In response to Meridor’s threats to resign if the bill to limit High Court petitions would pass as law, one of the bill’s sponsors, Danny Danon said that Likud would not “be allowed to turn into a branch of Kadima.”
“Anyone who disagrees with the opinion of the majority within Likud needs to reach his own conclusions as to his political place – the door is open for minister Meridor,” Danon said.
In explaining their bill to limit High Court petitions, Levin and Danon wrote earlier this week that there was a need “to set criteria that balance the use of this critical tool, using parameters to assure the soundness of the process and to preserve the link between the alleged harm and the identity of the petitioner.”
Under the bill, human rights groups not registered in Israel and whose main activities are not in Israel would not be permitted to petition the High Court. Nor would a group be allowed to file a petition over a wrong ostensibly being done to someone, unless that individual himself petitioned the court as well.
Petitions of a general nature would only be permitted regarding issues of substantial constitutional import to the conduct of government, or if the harm that might be done to the public is substantial and palpable.
Moreover, any group who files such a public petition and accepts donations from abroad, would be required to report its funding sources to the court, to prevent the “irrelevant motives of interested or hostile groups” from getting a hearing under the guise of a public petition.
Salem-News Wednesday,Nov-22-2011 23:33
The High Cost of Using War Criminals to Train U.S. Police
Political Perspective by Tim King Salem-News.com
Anti-Defamation League is now funding ‘anti-terrorism’ efforts as apartheid Israel’s Human Rights violations stack up.
http://salem-news.com/articles/november222011/adl-occupy.php
Tim King
Photo: theyeshivaworld.com
( SALEM / TEL AVIV) – Members of the American law enforcement community are being trained in Israel , where Human Rights violations by police and Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are a matter of policy, under Israel ’s morally bankrupt apartheid political system.
Interestingly, a Salem-News. com contact in Israel noted while watching video of police raiding Occupy activists, strong similarities between the techniques being employed, and those currently used by Israeli military and police while subduing peaceful demonstrations that police bill as ‘illegal’ as a matter of course.
In this article I will review some of the more grim consistencies between the U.S. and Israel in the use of weapons, physical and deadly force, and the general uptrend in police brutality in both places.
Our contact wrote:
“
Yesterday I complained that, among other things, the situation in the US is getting to be horrible, and mentioned in passing that the police handling of the Occupation protesters is almost as if they had been trained by Israeli military or border police.
”
Information released by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) a few months ago confirms that as the Arab Spring was raging in rebellious spirit; this advocacy lobby brought 15 law enforcement executives from across the United States to Israel from 9-17 April to be trained by Israeli forces.
“
This morning I found a note from a friend… recommending that I read ADL (anti-defamation league) on security. I did. Considering that I had always thought that the ADL’s main concern was fighting anti-Semitism, I was surprised to learn that it dealt also with security, and was even more surprised to learn that it trains counter-terrorist forces, but less surprised by this time to learn that the ADL sends forces to Israel for training. (ADL Law Enforcement Training)
”
Apparently the U.S. lacks inadequate facilities?
The ADL stated that the U.S. police were brought across… to learn how Israel ’s police, intelligence, and security forces prevent terror attacks.
“
As participants in ADL’s National Counter-Terrorism Seminar, they met with counter-terrorism experts in an intensive program incorporating formal presentations and briefings with site visits around the country to areas that have borne witness to terror attacks. They learned how Israel has prevented and responded to suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and how the nation protects its airports, shopping malls, and public events.
The delegation consisted of executives from the California Highway Patrol and major city police departments from across the country, including New York , Philadelphia , Houston , Dallas , Atlantic City , Louisville , Richmond , Tulsa , Nashville , Charlotte , Albuquerque , and St. Louis County . More than 115 federal, state and local law enforcement executives have participated in this ADL program since it was first launched in 2003.
”
The Yeshiva World News wrote about it just weeks ago, on 26 October 2011. Their account is about another ‘ADL training mission’.
Based on historical record, it seems plausible to conclude that Israel is taking ideas that are contrary to international law, and telling U.S. law enforcement that they should use the same approaches.
It seems like an extremely costly proposal.
“
The trip brings together law enforcement from the New York , New Jersey , Massachusetts and New Hampshire and provides them with an opportunity to network and learn from each other and their Israeli counterparts. A senior officer from the Italian National Police’s Counter Terrorism unit is also participating in the seminar.
The participants will travel across Israel to interact with commanders from the Israel National Police to learn first-hand how Israel deals with terror. These briefings include operational approaches, border security, monitoring of holy sites and media response during a crisis.
”
From the story: Israeli Soldier Shoots American in Face
One technique regularly used by Israeli forces that could lead U.S. cops down a dark path, is shooting people in the face with tear gas canisters.
This can be fatal and at minimum can rob a person of their sight, one or more eyes, etc. If Israel simply allowed freedom of assembly instead of completely outlawing such activity, people could make their point and perhaps influence positive political change that could benefit all parties involved. Instead people become something like ducks in a shooting gallery.
While it takes no real training to comprehend that the devices are extremely dangerous and life-changing, tear gas just might be the top weapon used against Palestinian people by the Israeli government, and the IDF never hesitates to use this technique and others that are far worse to subdue unarmed people.
It is troubling to consider that this religious militant state that stands in direct violation of several international laws regarding the treatment of civilians, would train U.S. officers who live in an actual democracy, rather than a bona fide apartheid regime.
From the story: Oakland Cops Shoot Two-Tour Marine
In fact the tear gas canister is what Israeli forces used to partially blind a young Jewish American art student named Emily Henochowicz, who was drilled at close range by an Israeli soldier’s tear gas gun in the summer of 2010.
Henochowicz was taking part in a demonstration in Palestine , after Israel attacked a passenger ship on the high seas killing nine unarmed people. Our writer Ken O’Keefe was aboard that ship, the Mavi Marmara.
This tear gas canister to the eye approach was used at Occupy Oakland against a Marine Combat Vet named Scott Olsen who was attacked by officers. Like Henochowicz, Olsen was totally unarmed and not posing violence toward authorities at the time of the shooting.
Another Israeli tactic involves shooting prisoners that are already cuffed and in police custody.
Palestinian Ashraf Abu Rahma, 27, cuffed by the IDF and blindfolded for 30 minutes before being shot.
Of course this is a simple way for police to administer pretrial retribution and in Israel , the military’s moral code does not encourage humane treatment, in fact it calls for the opposite by policy.
A 27-year old Palestinian protester named Ashraf Rahma, with his arms tied behind his back, was lined up and shot by Israeli occupational forces who were unaware of the fact that a teen girl was videotaping their actions.
As it turns out, Abu Rahma was also gagged as he was shot. He said the soldiers told him afterward, “You deserve this and even more.”
The soldiers were from the IDF’s 71st Battalion.
Of course you could say Ashraf got off easy, as Israeli forces targeted and shot his brother to death as he begged in Hebrew not to kill him.
As I wrote in April 2010, they did anyway, and struck Ashraf’s brother, Bassem Rahmah, squarely in the chest.
Then without surprise, the Israeli courts excused the action and the trigger happy Israeli soldier, Brian Ross , was immediately cleared of any wrongdoing, of course, to the surprise of absolutely no one.
On 17 April 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmah was shot dead during a peaceful demonstration against Israel ’ s Wall in Bil’in.
If you want to be a criminal, join the Israeli Defense Forces. They have a special program involving all levels of Israeli government, that allows anyone in uniform to slaughter innocent people from afar, and be acquitted.
Palestinian activist Bassem Abu Rahmah was known to friends simply as ‘Phil’. He was loved and admired by many and he died after being struck by an Israeli tear gas round.
Every day the Israeli military commits crimes against humanity, and each day, year after year, the Americans and British and other western countries are feeding and caring for this religious state.
There is no recourse for any Palestinian who is illegally injured or killed by Israeli forces, as Israeli courts exist in a land of separate laws for people of different religions and it is not possible to administer justice under the existing conditions. Israel may say it allows Palestinians to take action, but I have never heard of one ever receiving compensation from the Israeli government.
While Henochowicz, who is Jewish and also an Israeli citizen was offered the ability to sue Israel, the process was nothing less than a daunting task for the family of another victim of Israel’s guns, Tom Hurndall, whose wealthy family from London spent months in Israel trying to seek justice for the shooting death of their son by an Israeli military sniper at Gaza.
See : The Shooting of Tom Hurndall for the entire movie.
All of this might be considered a different way by Americans, who absolutely do have the right to sue government agencies and individuals that step out of line and carry out acts of terrorism against their own citizens under the color of law or military authority.
This is seen regularly in police shootings and taser incidents which are widespread in America , and cost municipalities and county and state governments millions and millions of dollars every year in legal reimbursements to people whose rights the agency violated.
This, in a country where cities in the state Michigan for example, are unable to pay their own employees; where police departments are being closed down to a lack of financial resources.
This, in a country of developing ghost towns and factories, pollution and decay fostered by the military industrial complex.
A few lawsuits from using “Israeli counter-terrorism’ tactics put into use by American cops who already have a long list of their own problems, just might finish the rest off.
Perverted Misuse of the Word ‘Terrorism’
Israel and the U.S. have mastered the use of the word ‘terrorist’ to advance their agendas, but that doesn’t change the fact that only the U.S., U.K. and a handful of other nations accept and overlook Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.
Of course they have their own; British commandos were exposed posing as terrorists in Iraq ; they Murdered Iraqi police officers while attempting to transport more bombs used in the killing of allied troops. U.S. soldiers were outed by Wikileaks gunning down Iraqi reporters, and here we see Israeli soldiers- the people presently training American police… firing tear gas on Palestinians protesting against the Israeli separation barrier which cuts through their West Bank village, and at a correspondent who works for Al Jazeera named Jacky Rowland. Terrorism is a word used for convenience, period.
Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at British Reporter
Jacky Rowland, near Bilin, in occupied Palestine .
The countries that approve of Israel have collectively slaughtered one point five million people in Iraq over false information, the U.S. is a degenerate nation that never gave itself a chance to be a good country after World War Two when it had every opportunity to do so. It really isn’t a surprise that war crime countries like the U.S. and Israel stick together, they must believe they have to.
Israel maintains apartheid laws and separate laws and roads for Jews and non-Jews. While the U.S. overlooks this dangerous political behavior, it is noteworthy that both the United States and Great Britain were strong backers of the South African apartheid regime that routinely slaughtered political opponents and children.
Both U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. maintained that African National Congress President Nelson Mandela, who eventually freed South Africa from racist apartheid, was a terrorist.
The word ‘terrorist’ is misused and has lost all meaning and the people called terrorists have slaughtered far fewer human beings than their political opponents.
What we do know is that Israel , a country that routinely violates human rights, has an extensive cross training program with the United States .
Phyllis Gerably, Director of the ADL Israel office said:
“
Since 9/11, the Anti-Defamation League and the Israel National Police have worked together to provide opportunities for the Israeli police officers to share their experience in counter-terrorism with their American counterparts. ADL trainings are conducted regularly in the US and in Israel . The meetings are beneficial for both the US and Israeli officers who have a real chance to learn from one another.
”
The ADL is headed by the controversial Abe Foxman, known for his pro-gay rights position which places him at odds with the Jewish Orthodox community in Israel .
Foxman is also known for his opposition to Park51, the New York City community center that was situated somewhat near the place Americans regard as Ground Zero. His stand seems to entirely contradict the ADL’s mission statement, which states that it seeks, “to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”
Foxman’s words caused Fareed Zakaria to return the ADL’s Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize, and the $10,000 honorarium. He said he “cannot in good conscience hold onto the award or the honorarium that came with it” and returned both to ADL. Fareed Zakaria has “urged the ADL to reverse its decision.”
Israel has U.S. money tumbling out of its rear side from the hard earned taxes of American citizens. In order to build political control, as if they don’t already have enough, the ADL is paying lock stock and barrel for these cops to travel to Israel, ‘see historic sites’, and learn how to violate the rights of human beings. Did Americans cross train with Germany in the years prior to WWII? Didn’t think so.
There you go Occupy Wall Street ; we’ve done a little bit of groundwork for you and you in turn need to add Israel to the top of every complaint list in existence.
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Tim King : Salem-News.com Editor and Writer
Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com’s Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan , and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim is a former U.S. Marine.
Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Silver Spoke Award by the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (2011), Excellence in Journalism Award by the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs (2010), Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), First-place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona , Nevada and Oregon . Tim was a member of the National Press Photographer’s Association for several years and is a current member of the Orange County Press Club.
Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News. com is the nation’s only truly independent high traffic news Website. As News Editor, Tim among other things, is responsible for publishing the original content of 91 Salem-News.com writers. He reminds viewers that emails are easily missed and urges those trying to reach him, to please send a second email if the first goes unanswered. You can write to Tim at this address: [email protected]