NOVANEWS
- Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’
- Cuba-Gaza parallels explored (by Gaza Center for Political and Developmental Studies)
- Zionism totalled
- On the passing of Novick: the political limitations of ‘The Holocaust in American Life’
- ‘Tribefest’ excommunicates group of young Jews who dared to speak about ethnic discrimination
- Israel describes UN Human Rights Council’s inquiry into settlements as ‘preposterous’
- A night raid in Nabi Saleh displays oafishness and contempt
- NYPD: Snoops, spies and … agent provocateurs?
Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’
Mar 24, 2012
Annie Robbins
We’ve missed this and everyone is talking about it: a massive anti-Arab gathering that took place in Israel on Monday. Chanting “Death to Arabs,” hundreds of Beitar soccer fans crowded into a mall in Jerusalem after their team won a match and what spilled out …words escape me:
Hundreds of fans, mostly teenagers, descended on busy Malha Mall, jumping on tables, waving scarves, and chanting “Death to Arabs”.
When a group of fans started to heckle and spit on Palestinian women dining with their children in the food hall, the centre’s Arab cleaning staff rushed to their defence and chased the fans off. But moments later, the fans returned, and started to attack the Arab staff.
“They [the fans] caught some of them and beat the hell out of them,” Yair, the Jewish owner of a bakery in the shopping centre, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. … One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy.” The brawl might have turned deadly, but food hall staff refused to respond to fans’ demands for knives and sticks. It was only when police arrived 40 minutes later the situation was brought under control.
“I’ve been here many years and I’ve never seen such a thing,” Haaretz quoted Gideon Avrahami, Malha’s director, as saying. “It was a disgraceful, shocking, racist incident; simply terrible.”
The police defended its failure to make any arrests, saying it had received no complaints from any of the public, a response that drew immediate derision. “No complaints and no arrests. Does this mean riots against Arabs in malls is acceptable behaviour in Israel?” tweeted Joseph Dana, an Israeli blogger.
Shmulik Ben Rubi, a Jerusalem police spokesman, later told The Independent the police would investigate the incident, which might lead to arrests.
After 40 minutes the police arrived.
One commenter at Haaretz noted “if it was skinheads beating Jews the whole world would know about this. ” Joseph Dana and others are questioning the implications of why there have been no arrests.
Meanwhile, amongst the Israeli media only Haaretz newspaper published a report about this incident – even though it occurred five days ago. One would think that a major race riot in Jerusalem’s largest shopping mall, patronized by Jews and Arabs alike, would garner some significant local media attention. But no.
More shocking and insidious is the fact that, even though the riot was recorded by the Malha shopping centre’s CCTV cameras, no-one has been arrested. Why not? Well, said the police, because no-one filed a complaint.
Okay, let’s try a little thought experiment here. Imagine that a few hundred Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel rioted at the upscale Ramat Aviv mall in northern Tel Aviv. Imagine that they were fans of the Arab soccer team Bnei Sakhnin, that they waved team jerseys and scarves as they chanted “death to Jews” in Arabic and cursed and spat at some nice middle class Jewish women sipping cappuccinos with their children and sharing pains au chocolat at the Arcaffe. Imagine that they ran around the mall, asking for knives to attack the cleaning staff that was trying to protect the women from being attacked. And that they slammed some of those cleaners into plate-glass shop windows.
Imagine that all of this was was recorded on the Ramat Aviv shopping centre’s CCTV cameras.
And then imagine the police announcing to the media that they had not made any arrests because no-one had filed a complaint.
Yes, I’ve imagined.
There were plenty of warning signs. Remember that this is the truth about Israeli society that Max Blumenthal has sought to convey and that so many denied–stuffing his video, Feeling the Hate. Last month in Newsweek, bureau chief Dan Ephron’s story ” No Arabs Allowed” reported “Jerusalem’s favorite football team has hiring policies reminiscent of Apartheid and Jim Crow”.
Israeli football teams started hiring Arabs only in the 1970s; these days they are among the highest scorers in the league. But Beitar, the team of Israel’s capital city, has been a holdout, shunning Arabs even as it hired other non-Jewish players from abroad. “It’s hard to explain the policy as anything but racism,” says Yoav Borowitz, an Israeli journalist who writes regularly about football.
Supporters of the team have a more nuanced explanation. They say the ban is bound up with Beitar’s history and with tensions in Jerusalem, a city where Arabs and Jews live mostly in their own segregated neighborhoods (Israeli Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel’s population). Until a few years ago, most Israeli football teams were affiliated with political parties. Beitar’s sponsor was the right-wing Likud, the party now headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though Likud was never an overtly Arab-hating party, Beitar became a magnet for right-wing extremists, who would often shout chants like “Death to Arabs” at players of opposing teams.
How much worse can it get before it gets better? And some still say it’s not apartheid– on both sides of the green line.
Cuba-Gaza parallels explored (by Gaza Center for Political and Developmental Studies)
Mar 24, 2012
Yousef M. Aljamal
Gaza Center for Political and Development Studies/Julie Webb-Pullman lecture
The Gaza Center for Political and Development Studies held a lecture on Tuesday entitled “Resistance in Latin America”, delivered by Julie Webb-Pullman, an activist from New Zealand and an election observer in Latin America, who spent much time traveling there. The lecture, attended by Gazan and pro-Palestinian activists, is the first at CPDS to discuss a topic of this kind.
“There had been more than 57 U.S. military interventions in Latin America since 1890. This includes Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico”, said Webb-Pullman.
To respond to this, Dr. Gilo Muiragui, a social economist from Ecuador, added Pullman, identified four necessities: the necessity to eat, from which arises the economy, the necessity to be understood in order to live and act in society, from which arises culture, the necessity to make and implement decisions in the name of the community, from which arises the ‘politics’, and the necessity to defend physically from aggressions and impositions, from which arises military.
There are similarities between Latin America and Palestine in terms of suffering from occupation and intervention. The conditions in Cuba over the last 40 years is not so different than the conditions in Palestine.
“In Cuba, they successfully resisted an armed invasion by about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. The economic blockade imposed in 1962, still in effect. Cuba lost 80% of imports and exports almost overnight, with fall of Soviet bloc. There was a severe shortage of gasoline, diesel and food and
electricity for 16 hours per day. They waited for hours for public transport, in spite of the tough conditions. During the 1990s ‘Special Period’, only 30,000 left the country”, she noted.
Illiteracy in Palestine is the lowest in the world, say experts. Despite the miserable life refugees lead, they are still interested in education and make it priority over other things.
“In Cuba, they have high levels of literacy and education, commitment to the socialist ideology, a culture of mutual aid since the revolution, top-down governance, faith in Fidel Castro’s leadership, and easing of material conditions through tourism income, co-operation with Venezuela – oil for doctors/teachers”, she stressed.
Latin America, for its strategic geographical location, experienced American intervention like the military coup in Honduras. “19 journalists murdered since June 2009 coup that ousted democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, at least 17 of whom were critical of the coup regime. None of these murders have been investigated or the perpetrators brought to justice. There have been at least 65 other extrajudicial killings, including 30 farmers, and other protestors”.
“In Oaxaca, violations including legal, psychosocial and health, and communications sectors took place. In addition to harassment and threats to defenders of human rights, women and indigenous individuals and communities”, she continued.
“In CHIAPAS, the Zapatistas took control. In 2001, in spite of the “March for Indigenous Unity”, Congress introduced anti-Indigenous law. Zapatistas encouraged formation of autonomous rebel Zapatista municipalities”, she added. “Many lack electricity and potable water”.
Learning from other nations struggles is beneficial, there are lessons to learn, she continued. “What is needed is new forms of government and resurrection of successful forms from the past”, she said.
The lecture is one in series CPDS held lately to make use of other national movements’ struggles around the world to contribute to the Palestinian just, yet not well-know, cause.
Zionism totalled
Mar 24, 2012
Philip Weiss
Hillel Ben Sasson at Peter Beinart’s new Zion Square blog at Daily Beast is done with trying to resuscitate the term Zionism. “Zionism’s been stolen.” I like this piece because it shows the growing awareness inside Jewish life, and inside Zionism, that Zionism just hasn’t worked out well, whatever the idealism of its founders. This is why Jewish Voice for Peace eschews the word entirely and says that it includes Zionists and former Zionists. And also shows why American liberals and anti-Zionists are necessary to this conversation: to lift the curtain on the Nakba and interrogate the racist component of the original movement. Excerpt of the Ben Sasson (emphasis mine, and thanks to Peter Belmont):
In contemporary Israel, you can’t express values of human rights, tolerance, ideological pluralism, or critique the occupation or the militarization of Israeli society. If you do, leading public figures, Knesset members, and government officials will denounce you as undermining the existence of Israel. The anti-Zionist trump card is waived whenever a public figure of any color or denomination questions the hegemonic economy of hatred and fear towards Arabs, Europeans, Democrats, or anyone that doesn’t recite the mantra that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The fact that many founding Zionists would have strongly opposed such a narrow definition the term matters little to this loud and somewhat paranoid crowd of Jewish McCarthys.
As long as the word Zionism no longer refers simply to the right of a people to self definition, but rather to a means of determining who is on “our” side and who is a traitor, Zionism will not serve me as a useful component of identity. For me, the apologetic task of trying to defend (or re-conquer) the term is futile, because it necessitates endless ordeals; none of which could ever legitimize what could have been Zionism for me.
On the passing of Novick: the political limitations of ‘The Holocaust in American Life’
Mar 24, 2012
David Green
Peter Novick. (Photo: Fredric Stein/New York Times)
The deservedly esteemed historian Peter Novick died on February 17th, and his obituary appeared on March 13th in the New York Times [Peter Novick, Wrote Controversial Book on Holocaust, Dies at 77]. It is perhaps unlikely that an obituary in the paper of record would have appeared without his publication in 1999 of the book The Holocaust in American Life,which provoked great controversy. As the Times‘ obituary notes, “Dr. Novick’s book drew wide and varying reactions from reviewers and academicians.” The book was largely a critique of Jewish-American culture and institutions, rather than Jewish-American politics and its relationship to Israel and U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, much of the criticism of the book was an implicit defense of Jewish and American support for Israel, and U.S. foreign policy in general.
Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry (2000) was an explicit response to Novick’s book, motivated both by Finkelstein’s criticism of Israel and his revulsion at the exploitation of the Holocaust for financial gain. Finkelstein extended and transformed Novick’s critique, in terms of both political and criminal motives. Novick was, in turn, harshly critical of Finkelstein, and made clear his wish to be disassociated from both the analysis and accusations made in The Holocaust Industry. Events of the past decade on both political and prosecutorial fronts have affirmed Finkelstein’s perspectives on the nature of the centrality of the Holocaust in both Jewish and American life. The review below was originally written in 2001, and contains minor current edits. Its purpose then and now is to clarify the context and limits of Novick’s important book in a manner that is predictably not alluded to in the Times’ obituary:
It is no longer unusual for a Jewish writer to lament the manner in which memory of the Holocaust has been incorporated into Jewish-American identity. It has been ten years since essayist Phillip Lopate wrote “it almost seems that the Holocaust is a corporation headed by Elie Wiesel, who defends his patents with articles in the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times.” So it is not surprising that in The Holocaust in American Life, historian Peter Novick of the University of Chicago critically examines the Holocaust not as history but as, in the phrase of Maurice Hawlbachs collective memory, “in which the present determines the past.” Unfortunately, Novick’s political limitations deprive this book of the incisive critique of what irreverent Israelis refer to as “Shoah business.”
To be sure, Novick’s basic insight into the context of the Nazi genocide and the political parameters of Holocaust remembrance allows him to conclude, correctly, that the notion of uniqueness is quite vacuous; that in the United States, memory of the Holocaust is “so banal, so inconsequential, not memory at all, precisely because it is so uncontroversial, so unrelated to real divisions in American society, so apolitical;” and finally that in the 1960s, increased awareness among Jews coincided with the “inward and rightward turn of American Jewry, as the Middle Eastern dispute came to be viewed with all the black-and-white moral simplicity of the Holocaust.”
If Novick understands that beneath the cult of Holocaust memory are essential political divisions in Jewish-American and American life, he nonetheless misconstrues these conflicts, undermining both his scholarly efforts and his claim to intellectual insight that matches his penchant for iconoclasm.
Thus Novick mistakenly thinks he is challenging conventional wisdom by debunking those who, following the meticulous research of historian David Wyman, believe correctly that the Roosevelt administration failed miserably in its treatment of Jewish refugees before and during the war. He is apparently unaware that it has become the political fashion, even among the Jewish intelligentsia, to rationalize and minimize American guilt–as does Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., so as defend FDR’s protective liberal image among Jews; and as does Novick himself.
Nor can Novick bring himself to criticize American postwar and Cold War policies which left Holocaust survivors waiting to emigrate to the U.S. in refugee camp purgatory while American intelligence recruited Nazi spies and our military employed rocket scientists. This leads to a blatant contradiction: he asserts that during the war American leaders could not possibly have been expected to effect “dramatic reversals in mass attitudes toward immigration,” but the end of the war saw our alliances change with “breathtaking speed,” as the Russians were transformed from “indispensable allies to implacable foes, the Germans from implacable foes to indispensable allies.” Breathtaking indeed, as is Novick’s sudden recognition of the effectiveness of state propaganda, much more willing to identify red demons and redeem Nazis than to challenge anti-Semitism and save Jews during the war itself.
Most important, Novick fails to apply his critique of Holocaust memory to the past three decades of its relationship to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Novick accurately describes this relationship as it evolved among American Jews between the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars. But he abruptly abandons the issue by claiming that American Jews no longer see the Holocaust as a framework for understanding the Middle East, that the American people never did, and that in any event memories of the Holocaust have had no real influence on American realpolitik in that region. These views allow Novick to avoid confronting the complex, implicit ideological relationships among Holocaust memory, foreign policy from Vietnam to the post-Cold War era’s “clash of civilizations,” and Israel’s military role in the post-Cold War New World Order.
Novick thinks that Holocaust memory is a transitory, sentimental, kitschy aspect of Jewish-American identity and American culture, already on its last legs except among its professional advocates. But events in Yugoslavia in the first half of 1999 proved this wrong, as the media rushed to demonize Milosevic as the latest “Hitler,” and American Jews collected money for Kosavar Albanian refugees in the name of “never again.” It is not by accident that Jewish Holocaust survivors have become America’s favorite victims–not only because they are uncontroversial, as Novick does understand, but because their images effectively serve to reinforce a belief in American innocence as we conduct our imperial business.
Novick concludes on the domestic front with Leon Wieseltier’s view that Jews, like African-Americans, score “a posthumous victory for the oppressors when pain becomes a tradition.” This is surely a tendentious analogy between African-American pain, which is ongoing and institutionalized, and Jewish pain, which is rooted in a past with few remnants, and exists in a present of tolerance and prosperity. The issue is whether “pain as a tradition” can be transformed into empathy and a passion for justice, especially beyond one’s own group or community. The question left unaddressed by Novick is why, in American political life, memory of the Holocaust has contributed so little to such a transformation, and indeed has on balance contributed to something quite the opposite. Even in this controversial and courageous book, the answers are beyond Novick’s political limits.
‘Tribefest’ excommunicates group of young Jews who dared to speak about ethnic discrimination
Mar 24, 2012
Philip Weiss
We got this email from Young Jewish and Proud. Deeply dismaying. And I say the Jewish community is opening up! This is pure intolerance. What will it take to change these attitudes:
It’s been over a month since Young Jewish and Proud (YJP), the youth wing of Jewish Voice for Peace, got accepted to have a booth at Tribefest, the Jewish Federations of North America’s (JFNA) annual gathering of young people. We’ve signed contracts for the booth, sent materials, paid a hefty registration fee, booked our rooms, and planned our flights. And then, with no explanation or apology, we just got a call from Tribefest organizers kicking YJP out!
If you are like me and you are tired of Jewish community institutions stifling open conversation and silencing young Jews, please sign our open letter to the JFNA right now. [“Stop silencing the next generation of Jewish leadership”]
I was thrilled when the TribeFest organizers accepted our application to present to the largest annual gathering of young Jews in the United States. When we applied we thought it was unlikely they’d let us in—we had tried to have direct meetings with the JFNA but had been rebuffed—and so their welcome seemed like the sign of a new era of openness. We even used social media to share our excitement— it felt important to be completely transparent that we were coming to talk!
I thought that TribeFest was demonstrating its commitment to Jewish values, which have always emphasized the importance of learning and open debate.
Sadly, TribeFest’s organizers, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), have decided that young Jews are not entitled to learn about the full range of Jewish ideas on Jewish issues. When we asked why YJP is being banned from an event that was supposed to be ABOUT being young, Jewish and proud, we were told only that the person calling to inform us was “not at liberty to share all the details.”
While it’s painful for us to be excluded from and marginalized within spaces that claim to represent our community, it’s not ourselves that we’re worried about here.
What we’re worried about is the future of a community that allows its institutions to dictate which ideas are allowed to be discussed, and who is fit to discuss them.
We are worried that, as we’re told we can’t talk about it, Israel’s policies of massive violence, collective punishment, and ethnic discrimination continue.
A large and rapidly growing number of people who are Young, Jewish and Proud have come to the conclusion that to be committed to Jewish values requires them to not only criticize policies with which they disagree, but to actively seek to change them.
At Tribefest, we intended to host a booth inspired by the Babylonian Talmud’s call to “go and learn”. We wanted to provide a space to talk about how we believe Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) can play a vital role in pursuit of Tikkun Olam. And we wanted to give other young Jews the chance to make up their own minds about it.
But instead of welcoming the chance for young Jews to exchange ideas about the issues most important to us, the JFNA leaders are shoving us out the door and locking the gates.
Jewish institutional leaders are spending their time silencing young Jews as settlements continue to expand, bombs continue to drop, repression continues to intensify, and innocent people of every ethnicity continue to suffer.
We need your support to help tell Jewish community leaders that gatekeeping and silencing have never served Jews. We need your support to tell them that young Jews will go elsewhere if communal institutions increasingly reject and marginalize us. We need your support to tell them that muzzling debate will not make the problem of Israel’s human rights abuses go away.
Please sign the letter today. We will hand deliver it to the JFNA ourselves. Tell Jewish community leaders to let us go and learn!
Israel describes UN Human Rights Council’s inquiry into settlements as ‘preposterous’
Mar 24, 2012
Kate
and other news from Today in Palestine:
Land, property, resources theft & destruction / Apartheid / Exile
Israeli court exiles Jerusalem child
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 22 Mar — The Israeli magistrates court in occupied Jerusalem ruled on Wednesday that Jerusalemite child Elias Al-Awar should be banished from his home in Silwan. The court said that the 16-year-old child should be under house arrest in Jabal Al-Mukabar until his next court hearing and should pay a fine of 5000 shekels while four of his relatives would sign an affidavit pledging to pay 5000 shekels each in case he did not abide by the house arrest.
The same court extended the detention of three Jerusalemite youths until next Sunday, two of whom were arrested at dawn Wednesday. Families of the three young men said that the court guards refused to allow them to attend the hearing, saying that it was in-camera.
The court also extended the house arrest of 34-year-old Ibrahim Sabri after exiling him from his hometown of Silwan.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Israel Supreme Court justice criticizes state over West Bank outpost evacuation deal
Haaretz 22 Mar — Salim Joubran says deal to to allow settlers three and a half years to rebuild homes on Hayekev Hill will ‘inevitably turn into eight.’
link to www.haaretz.com
Shuafat refugee camp: Walled Jerusalem ghetto gets more walls
972mag 22 Mar — For the people using the brand new light rail in Jerusalem, Shu‘afat is just another station servicing an Arab neighborhood in the city. But Shu‘afat refugee camp, stuck between the French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev settlements (and distinct from the nearby neighborhood of the same name), is a third world community that lies just two kilometers away from the country’s most important tourist sites … Although many Palestinians obtained Israeli nationality after the 1948 war, a majority of Shuafat’s inhabitants (70 percent) are currently living under a hybrid status. They have neither Israeli citizenship nor Palestinian identity documents. They are permanent residents of Jerusalem, which means they can leave and enter the municipal boundaries of the city as they wish, but are not full citizens of Israel. The remaining 30 percent have no Israeli residency at all, and cannot cross the checkpoint
link to 972mag.com
UN human rights body to probe Israel’s settlement activities in West Bank
Haaretz 22 Mar — Human Rights Council votes to dispatch a fact-finding mission to investigate the effects of Israel’s settlements on Palestinians; Netanyahu calls council ‘hypocritical’ and out of touch with reality.
link to www.haaretz.com
Israel refuses to cooperate with UN probe into Jewish settlements
NAZARETH (PIC) 23 Mar — Israel announced that it refuses to cooperate with an independent international fact-finding mission which is due to “investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.” Israeli sources quoted an Israeli official as saying: ““Israel will not cooperate with the fact finding mission,” describing the performance of the UN Human Rights Council as “preposterous”.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Israel’s national water carrier violates Palestinians’ right to water
LifeSource 22 Mar — Occupied Palestine – For years, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and other UN bodies have found Israel to be in violation of Palestinians human right to water and sanitation as part of normal reviews of Israel’s compliance with human rights treaties ratified by Israel. In 2010 the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council passed resolutions … Yet Israel’s violations of Palestinians human right to water and sanitation are only increasing. Between 2009 and 2011, Israel demolished 57 rainwater harvesting cisterns and 40 wells Palestinians depend on for their livelihoods. Military destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure is both a direct violation of the human right to water and a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
link to mondoweiss.net
Taking it for all it has / Shuki Sadeh
Haaretz 23 Mar — Israel’s control of the West Bank has both political and economic implications. Whether natural resources or renewable energy, it seems like whatever the Palestinians seek, Israel denies. Israeli officials: The requests are not serious … Two years ago, Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO that works to safeguard human rights in the territories, filed a court petition demanding suspension of operation by Israeli quarries in the territories. The organization argued that they operate in violation of international law – specifically a clause in the Fourth Geneva Convention that was intended to prevent an economic incentive for going to war, and which stipulates that an occupying power is not permitted to exploit natural resources for its own benefit … Several weeks ago, however, the High Court of Justice denied the petition.
link to www.haaretz.com
Israeli violence against Palestinians
PCHR Weekly Report: ‘Army conducts 56 invasions into W. Bank, 1 in Gaza’
IMEMC 23 Mar — …During these invasions, Israeli soldiers kidnapped eight Palestinians in the occupied territories, including three children and one woman. Five Palestinians, including one child, were kidnapped by Israeli soldiers stationed at various roadblocks in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip remains under deadly siege, and remains to be isolated from the rest of the world despite Israeli claims of easing the siege. The PCHR further stated that one child was shot and injured while sitting at his home when the army opened fire at a civilian area in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The child, 6 years old, was shot by a bullet to his right thigh as he was sitting at home; the bullet was fired by soldiers stationed at the border between Gaza and Israel, to the east of Rafah. Soldiers also opened fire at agricultural areas in Khuza‘a village, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The army carried out a limited invasion into the northern part of the Gaza Strip, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian land which they had already razed. Full report
link to www.imemc.org
VIDEO: Illegal settlers in Al Khalil attack Palestinian student
ISM — On Sunday 18th of March, an 18-year old Palestinian student, Mustafa Abu Salime, got attacked by settlers between Checkpoints 56 and Gilbert. Mustafa passed the Gilbert checkpoint on his way to visit his friends. He saw three settlers talking to a soldier. Few meters down from the checkpoint the same settlers came behind him and sprayed him with pepper spray and started beating him. The settlers hit him on his head, back and knee then pushed him on the ground and kicked him. In the attack Mustafa lost his eye glasses and phone. The soldiers did not interfere. After the beating the soldiers came and made him stand next to the wall while they did a body search of him before taking him to Checkpoint 56. From the checkpoint Mustafa was taken to an army ambulance, in which he was driven around and questioned before they handed him to the Palestinian ambulance that took him to the hospital where he spent two hours. Issa Amro, a local human rights activist, filmed the ordeal and can be viewed here.
link to palsolidarity.org
EAPPI fact sheet: Violence without sanctions
WAFA 23 Mar — n recent years, violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians has risen sharply. The Israeli authorities do little to prevent or punish it. This EAPPI fact sheet shows how settler violence affects Palestinian communities, and calls for violent settlers to be held to account for their actions. (The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) brings internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation. Ecumenical Accompaniers (EAs) provide protective presence to vulnerable communities, monitor and report human rights abuses and support Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace. When they return home, EAs campaign for a just and peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through an end to the occupation, respect for international law and implementation of UN resolutions.)
link to english.wafa.ps
Two civilians injured, one critically, as troops attack West Bank anti-Wall protests
IMEMC 23 Mar — At the village of al Nabi Saleh, central West Bank, two teenagers were injured, one critically, when soldiers attacked the weekly anti wall protest on Friday. This week protest was organized under the title of “continued resistance” in response to the Israeli military campaign targeting the villagers to stop the weekly activity in al Nabi Saleh. Soldiers stopped the villagers along with their international and Israeli supporters at the village entrance and attacked them using rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas. The military also used chemical water as well to force people back into the village. Two 16-year-old boys from the village were hit with rubber-coated steel bullets, one in the face….
link to www.imemc.org
Jewish settlers storm Nablus under PA/Israeli military protection
NABLUS (PIC) 22 Mar — Hundreds of Jewish settlers along with one Israeli minister stormed Thursday evening under military protection Nablus city to perform alleged religious rituals inside Joseph’s Tomb. Local sources said that in coordination with the Palestinian authority security forces, hundreds of settlers escorted by troops were allowed to enter Nablus, which is under full Palestinian control.
In a separate incident, a gang of armed Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian citizens in Hammamat area of Wadi Al-Maleh in the Jordan Valley and chased their cattle. Local sources said that armed settlers from Maskiot settlement stormed the area many times on Thursday evening and night
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Mayor: Israeli forces raid Jenin village
JENIN (Ma‘an) 22 Mar — Israeli forces raided Zubuiba village west of Jenin and fired tear gas, the head of the local village council told Ma‘an Thursday. Imad Jaradat said five military jeeps entered the village and stayed at the center. The official said the soldiers sparked clashes by firing tear gas canisters toward homes. Three Palestinians were taken to hospital for inhaling gas, locals said. They were identified as Zahreya Jaradat, 55, Muhannad Jaradat, 10, and Marouf Jaradat, 24.
link to www.maannews.net
Israel raids Jenin organizations
JENIN (Ma‘an) 22 Mar — Israeli forces raided two charitable organizations in Jenin overnight Wednesday, witnesses told Ma‘an.
Locals said that 20 military vehicles raided the Al-Baraa institution and an orphanage center, destroying the front gates and confiscating contents from the building.
link to www.maannews.net
PA official: Child injured in Nablus explosion
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 23 Mar — A child was injured on Friday after a suspicious object exploded near the Nablus village of Qaryut, a PA official said. Noman Azzam, 8, was moderately injured in the incident, Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma‘an. It is too early to determine the circumstances of the explosion, he added. The village of Qaryut is flanked on its western side by the illegal settlement of Eli, with Shilo settlement to its south.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza
Fuel shipments arrive in Gaza
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 23 Mar — Israel has opened a key crossing point to allow a large shipment of industrial fuel into the Gaza Strip, Palestinian and Israeli officials said Friday … Nathmi Mhanna, a Palestinian Authority border official in Gaza, told Ma‘an that Israel agreed to let the fuel tankers cross Kerem Shalom following intervention by officials in Ramallah and Cairo. The fuel will restart Gaza’s sole power plant, said Ahmad Abu al-Amarin, a spokesman for the energy authority. “We were informed that 450,000 liters of fuel will be sent to the electricity station,” he said. But al-Amarin warned the shipment will only power the plant for one day. Another Palestinian official said contacts were under way to arrange an additional delivery on Friday.
link to www.maannews.net
Official: Gaza hospitals at 20-percent capacity
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 Mar — The health ministry in Gaza says it is running on less than 20 percent of electricity, and the remaining amounts are enough for only another four days of power. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman of the ministry, said around 70 ambulances will stop working if there is no fuel in the next few days, adding that 15 health service cars and 18 ambulances were already offline.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza running low on fuel, patience / Yousef al-Helou
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) — With shortages of electricity, water, fuel, cooking gas and medicine, a lack of economy and no infrastructure, patience with the Hamas-led government in Gaza is running low. The chronic fuel shortages have added to the despair of Gaza’s 1.6 million people, many of whom blame the government for its failure to resolve the endless crises.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza official reports airstrike, Israel denies
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 Mar 22:08 — Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmiya reported an airstrike Thursday in an open area east of Gaza City, which he said caused no injuries or damage. An Israeli army spokesman denied the account and said there was no activity on Thursday. He said a rocket landed in the Negev on Tuesday, causing no injuries or damage.
link to www.maannews.net
Germany funds 2 news schools in Gaza
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 23 Mar — Germany on Thursday pledged to fund two new schools in the Gaza Strip, the UN agency for refugees said. Germany will contribute €3 million ($3.96 million) to UNRWA to enhance the agency’s free schooling program, UNRWA said in a statement. At a signing ceremony in Jerusalem, UNRWA official Marina Skuric-Prodanovic said the donation “will further strengthen UNRWA’s efforts to provide education to young Palestine refugees.” The new schools will serve 4,400 children, she added.
link to www.maannews.net
Hunger strikers
Amnesty: Palestinian hunger-striker ‘at risk of death’ highlights injustice of administrative detention
23 Mar — The Israeli authorities should immediately release a Palestinian detainee or charge her with a recognisable criminal offence and promptly try her, Amnesty International said amid fears that the woman could die in detention after 37 days on hunger strike. Hana Shalabi, 30, from the village of Burqin in the northern West Bank, is allegedly affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement but has never been charged with a criminal offence.
link to www.amnesty.org.uk
Health of Palestinian captive Bilal Diab deteriorates
JENIN (PIC) 23 Mar — Palestinian captive, Bilal Diab, from the city of Jenin, continues with his hunger strike for the 23rd consecutive day in Negev jail in southern Palestine. He is protesting the occupation’s policy of administrative detention years on end without charge or trial … The lawyer of the PPS quoted Palestinian captives in Negev prison as saying that Diab is not allowed to see his lawyer, that his situation is worsening and that the prison’s administration mistreats him deliberately because of his hunger strike.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Other political detention
Palestinian child provokes Zionist judge into leaving court
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 23 Mar — Palestinian child Ahmad al-Salibi provoked the judge of Ofer military court which was convened to look into his case and those of seven other children, all under 16 and all hail[ing] from Beit Ummar to the north of al-Khalil, when he said that he does not recognise the court or the Zionist entity and described them as a gang … When the judge heard these words, he got very angry and left the court room warning the boy that his punishment was going to be severe, according to those who attended the hearing. Salibi was arrested on 12 March in the town of Beit Ummar and was subjected to beating and “various forms of barbaric torture,” according to defence lawyers who said that signs of torture are still visible on his face and body.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Army detains a child at roadblock near Jenin
IMEMC 23 Mar — Israeli soldiers detained, on Thursday evening, a 12-year-old Palestinian child at a roadblock close to an illegal Israeli settlement, south of the northern West Bank city of Jenin. The Palestinian News & Info Agency, WAFA, reported that the child was identified as Mohammad Mo’ayyad Metani, 12, from Ya‘bod village, near Jenin. WAFA added that the child was held and interrogated by the soldiers for more than two hours before he was handed to the Palestinian District Coordination Office.
link to www.imemc.org
9 Palestinians seized in West Bank raids
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 23 Mar — Israel’s military arrested nine Palestinians overnight, an army spokeswoman said. Three people were seized in Hebron, two in Arrub, one in Beit Ummar, one in al-Mazraa al-Qibliya near Ramallah, another in Shuyukh al-Arrub south of Bethlehem and one in Abu Dis in the Jerusalem area, she said. The nine detainees were not immediately identified.
link to www.maannews.net
IOF soldiers arrest three Palestinian farmers at work
QALQILIA (PIC) 22 Mar — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested a family of three farmers while working in their land in Git village to the east of Qalqilia city on Thursday morning. Jewish settlers had earlier assaulted the farmers while at work in their field, which is near to Gilad settlement. Local sources told the PIC reporter that the 56-year-old father Ibrahim Khader and his two sons Samed and Asef were taken to an unknown detention center.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
IOF arrest 19 Quds University students in two months
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 23 Mar — IOF troops on Friday at dawn raided the home of Palestinian captive Muhammad Halaika who is serving a 22-year prison sentence in Ramon prison and arrested his 22-year-old son Munjed. The IOF transferred Munjed, who is a student at the college of Islamic Studies of the Quds University, to the Etsion detention centre to the north of al-Khalil … Sources at the college confirmed that the IOF arrested 19 of its students over the past two months, this is in addition to a number of students from the College of Engineering at the same university. The sources said that the campaign of arrests by the IOF seems to have been prompted by news that the Islamic bloc was planning to participate in Student Union elections at West Bank universities.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Center: Israel sentences detainee to 14 years
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 23 Mar — An Israeli court on Thursday sentenced Adham Talal Salameh to 14 years in jail, a detainees’ center reported. Salameh, 28, was detained in 2008 during a raid on his home in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. He is accused of affiliation with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and activities against the Israeli occupation, the Hussam center for detainees said. The center condemned the sentence and said the allegations were false.
link to www.maannews.net
Group says 15 prisoners hurt in scuffle with guards
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 22 Mar — Fifteen Palestinian detainees say they were injured in Jalbu prison after Israeli guards raided their cells and forcefully made them submit to DNA testing. Families of the detainees told the Palestinian prisoners society that the prisoners were handcuffed and forced to undergo the testing to which Israel is subjecting all its prisoners.
link to www.maannews.net
My friend’s daughters still wait! / Sam Bahour
ePalestine 23 Mar –Many of you have been following my reporting of the arrest of my friend Walid Abu Rass ( link to bit.ly ) who was taken from his home by Israeli occupation forces in the middle of the night on November 22, 2011 … His release date was set for yesterday, March 22, 2012. Like what usually happens to Administrative Detention prisoners, on the day of their release, an extension was made. Walid’s was for another four months! Again, with no reason why, no charges, no trial, no anything! Walid’s two beautiful daughters, Mays, 13 years old, and Malak, 4 years old, are crushed!!!
One person could end this nightmare today: Deputy PM & Minister of Defense Ehud Barak … Email: minister@mod.gov.il Write/call him directly or send a message via your local Israeli emba