NOVANEWS
- US military officers taught to target civilians and wage ‘total war’ on Islam
- Right of Return key goes on tour
- Rejecting boycott, Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier prepare for Jerusalem International Writers Festival
- ‘NYT’ exposes pattern of Ultra Orthodox community covering up sexual abuse, punishing accusers
- Netanyahu gets special audience on nuclear talks
- The media Israel complex
- ‘Follow the money’ rule suddenly applies when the issue is gay marriage
- Under mounting pressure from hunger-strikers and UN protest, Ban Ki-moon criticizes administrative detention (but weakly)
- New ‘Via Dolorosa’: Palestinian patients face ordeal trying to reach East Jerusalem hospitals
- Nowhere to go — Jahalin Bedouin homes slated for destruction outside Jerusalem
US military officers taught to target civilians and wage ‘total war’ on Islam
May 10, 2012
Alex Kane
The slide above was one of many anti-Muslim presentations US military officers sat through (Picture via Wired)
Over the past decade, fringe ideas about Muslims and Islam have seeped into law enforcement agencies across the country. Now we know the details about what some members of the US military have been learning about Muslims. It’s not pretty.
Wired’s Spencer Ackerman first broke the story last month, when he revealed that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered a thorough review of the entire military to ensure that anti-Muslim ideas were not being taught to soldiers. The order from General Martin Dempsey was issued after an anti-Muslim course was found to have been taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Virginia.
Today, Ackerman and Noah Shachtman published an extensive story in Wired detailing the exact contents of the course, titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” It’s been taught since 2004 by Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, who is still working at the college currently.
Wired has published some of the documents used in the course. Among the lectures military officers heard was a presentation by Dooley in which he suggested that Saudi Arabia should be threatened with starvation and that the historical precedents of Hiroshima and Dresden should be considered to deal with holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Dooley also said that the Geneva Conventions were “no longer relevant or respected globally” because of the “current common practices of Islamic terrorists” and that “total war” should be waged on Islam.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling for the Defense Department to dismiss Dooley. “It is imperative that those who taught our future military leaders to wage war not just on our terrorist enemy, but on the faith of Islam itself be held accountable,” Nihad Awad, CAIR’s director, wrote in a letter to Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense. “If left uncorrected, the biased, inaccurate and un-American training previously given to these officers will harm our nation’s security, image and interests for years to come.”
Dooley, who has worked at the Joint Forces Staff College since August 2010, began his eight-week class with a straightforward, two-part history of Islam. It was delivered by David Fatua, a former West Point history professor. “Unfortunately, if we left it at that, you wouldn’t have the proper balance of points of view, nor would you have an accurate view of how Islam defines itself,” Dooley told his students. Over the next few weeks, he invited in a trio of guest lecturers famous for their incendiary views of Islam.
Shireen Burki declared during the 2008 election that “Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate.” In her Joint Forces Staff College lecture, she told students that “Islam is an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.” (.pdf)
Stephen Coughlin claimed in his 2007 master’s thesis that then-president George W. Bush’s declaration of friendship with the vast majority of the world’s Muslims had “a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine.” (.pdf) Coughlin was subsequently let go from his consulting position to the military’s Joint Staff, but he continued to lecture at the Naval War College and at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In his talk to Dooley’s class (.pdf), Coughlin suggested that al-Qaida helped drive the overthrow of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. It was part of a scheme by Islamists to conquer the world, he added. And Coughlin mocked those who didn’t see this plot as clearly as he did, accusing them of “complexification.”
Coughlin titled his talk: “Imposing Islamic Law – or – These Aren’t the Droids Your Looking For!”
Former FBI employee John Guandolo told the conspiratorial World Net Daily website last year that Obama was only the latest president to fall under the influence of Islamic extremists. “The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep,” Guandolo alleged. In his reference material for the Joint Forces Staff College class, Guandolo not only spoke of today’s Muslims as enemies of the West. He even justified the Crusades, writing that they “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.”
Ackerman has also exposed how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was teaching its agents incendiary ideas about Muslims and Islam. The Obama administration has since ordered a “widespread review of government counterterrorism training materials.”
As for the military, Ackerman reports that a senior officer will “investigate how precisely Dooley managed to get away with that extended presentation in an official Defense Department-sanctioned course. The results of that review are due May 24.”
Right of Return key goes on tour
May 10, 2012
Annie Robbins
What a fantastic idea!
A huge key that weighs approximately a ton and symbolizes the right of return for Palestinian refugees was transported from the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem to the Berlin Biennale in Germany.
The key, which is nine meters long and has inscriptions in several languages, started its journey in March when it was dismounted from its place on top of the camp gate.
The steel key was made by Palestinian refugees at the Aida Social Youth Center in Bethlehem. For center manager Monther Amayra, displaying the key in Berlin gives Palestinians a chance to communicate their aspirations to the world.
“This is an excellent opportunity for us as refugees and as the makers of the Right of Return Key,” he said.
“It is a major event expected to receive more than two million visitors who will be acquainted with the demands of the Palestinian people, on top of which is the right of return.”
The key is presented as “a symbol of peaceful resistance” while teaching Palestinian history. It has already been invited to tour other cities. Please bring the key to America!
(Hat tip Karen Platt)
Rejecting boycott, Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier prepare for Jerusalem International Writers Festival
May 10, 2012
Eleanor Kilroy
‘If a single dominant theme could be said to emerge more from the especially diverse program of the third Jerusalem International Writers Festival, which opens this Sunday night at Mishkenot Sha’ananim and runs through Friday morning, it’s evil’, writes editor of Haaretz Books, David B. Green. He specifies: ‘Nazism, Marxism, radical Islam, nationalism’.
A lesser evil, narcissism, may be a prerequisite for being a successful writer, so it is perhaps unsurprising that in his only response to a public appeal to boycott the International Writers Festival, British novelist Tom Rob Smith began by underlining his importance to the Hebrew-speaking Israeli public on his Facebook page:
As a writer I’m already highly engaged with my Israeli readers and have been for several years, my three novels are translated into Hebrew, I’ve celebrated their success, conducted interviews with newspapers, answered emails from readers – this visit is a continuation of my relationship with those readers and I’m looking forward to meeting some of them for the first time.
He had no answer for commenter and Israeli citizen from Jerusalem, Ofer N. who invited him to ‘By all means, please engage with your Israeli readers. Naomi Klein and Judith Butler have done that. But the writers’ Festival is an Israeli advocacy tool, sponsored by the highest echelons of Israeli corruption, apartheid corruption to be precise. You and other international friends will be rubbing shoulders and legitimizing people like Shimon Peres, a serial offender against elementary principles of human rights.’
The festival is sponsored by the Jerusalem Foundation which, together with the Jerusalem municipality and settler organizations, is responsible for projects of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. From their own documents:
The Jerusalem Foundation has pioneered much of the archaeological discovery and preservation projects including the City of David excavations, the major gates of the Old City Walls, the Tower of David Museum and much more.
This gives rather a different meaning to their spiel about how the Foundation’s work ‘touches every population – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – of every social group of every age, in every neighborhood of the city.’ Indeed, the impact is huge and devastating for non-Jews. As War on Want recently reported:
Seven new demolition orders have been issued in the Palestinian town of Silwan. Israeli officials, accompanied by soldiers, sealed off part of Silwan’s al-Bustan neighbourhood on Tuesday while they issued the demolition orders to several homes and businesses. Residents have been given 30 days to appeal.
These new demolition notices come on top of 88 demolition orders already out on homes in the area. The bulldozers can come at any time, and the population lives in fear of imminent eviction. Children in Silwan often take their favourite toys to school, in case their homes are demolished during the day.
The planned destruction of al-Bustan is to make way for a ‘City of David’ tourist site. The tourist industry is a particular flash point, and tensions are running extremely high in East Jerusalem. The new demolition orders in Silwan come on top of the Jerusalem authorities’ announcement that they will build 1,100 new hotel rooms in East Jerusalem in Givat Hamatos, another Palestinian site over the Green Line, and the recent founding of a new settlement in nearby Beit Hanina.
Tom Rob Smith continued, ‘I have no idea what topics of conversation will arise during my sessions. No one at the festival has given me any instructions, or made any demands – I can speak freely.’ This appears to be corroborated by Uri Dromi, director of the Mishkenot Sha’ananim cultural center who was forced to issue a press statement denying the embarrassing assertion of festival director Tal Kremer just one day earlier that “in light of what happened with Nir Baram, we asked this year’s authors to give us the text of their speeches.”
Other writers targeted by the boycott call, including Tracy Chevalier, are attempting to ‘balance out’ their naïve endorsement of Israeli state apartheid policies by asking Dromi to facilitate meetings with Palestinian authors in Israeli occupied territory, according to Ynet. This is in spite of a further fact they seem to be ignorant of – that the General Union of Palestinian Writers are active members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).
Palestinians artists and intellectuals do not exist to help ease the consciences of international guests of the Israeli state and agonised Israeli liberals who just want to be ‘better’ soldiers. It is extraordinary to see the number of pitiful appeals by Jewish Israelis targeted by the boycott for ‘support’ and ‘understanding’ from the international community, whilst insisting they cannot give up the privileges they enjoy in an ethnocracy. The BDS campaign asks international artists to ignore these ‘shoot and cry’ Israelis, set aside their own egocentric and private concerns or interests, and stand on the side of the oppressed.
‘NYT’ exposes pattern of Ultra Orthodox community covering up sexual abuse, punishing accusers
May 10, 2012
Philip Weiss
The Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal turns out to be epochal: it is having salutary effects across society in institutions that have covered up abuse– at university athletic programs, for instance. Now the New York Times is exposing patterns of covering up sexual abuse inside the community of a quarter million ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. This is great reporting by Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera:
Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses….
“There is no nice way of saying it,” Mrs. [Pearl] Engelman [mother of sexual abuse victim] said. “Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful.”
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg of Williamsburg, for example, has been shunned by communal authorities because he maintains a telephone number that features his impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew and English imploring victims to call 911 and accusing rabbis of silencing cases. He also shows up at court hearings and provides victims’ families with advice. His call-in line gets nearly 3,000 listeners a day.
In 2008, fliers were posted around Williamsburg denouncing him. One depicted a coiled snake, with Mr. Rosenberg’s face superimposed on its head. “Nuchem Snake Rosenberg: Leave Tainted One!” it said in Hebrew. The local Satmar Hasidic authorities banned him from their synagogues, and a wider group of 32 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and religious judges signed an order, published in a community newspaper, formally ostracizing him. “The public must beware, and stay away from him, and push him out of our camp, not speak to him, and even more, not to honor him or support him, and not allow him to set foot in any synagogue until he returns from his evil ways,” the order said in Hebrew.
“They had small children coming to my house and spitting on me and on my children and wife,” Rabbi Rosenberg, 61, said in an interview….
“If a guy in our community gets diagnosed with cancer, the whole community will come running to help them,” [Rabbi Tzvi Gluck] said. “But if someone comes out and says they were a victim of abuse, as a whole, the community looks at them and says, ‘Go jump in a lake.’ ”
Netanyahu gets special audience on nuclear talks
May 10, 2012
Ira Glunts
Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Affairs Chief, visited Jerusalem yesterday to consult with Benjamin Netanyahu about the Iran negotiations. Ashton is a key player in the nuclear talks. Apparently presenting an Israeli united front, cabinet ministers Ehud Barak, Avigdor Lieberman and Netanyahu’s new coalition partner, Shaul Mofaz of Kadima, also attended the meeting. According to Haaretz , Netanyahu repeated his government’s rigid view:
During the meeting, the Israelis presented a rigid set of demands for the Iranians, a senior Israeli official said. Netanyahu and the three ministers told Ashton that Israel’s position leading up to the Baghdad talks is that the talks will be considered as progress only if they would yield an Iranian guarantee – with a clear timetable – to halt uranium enrichment, to remove all enriched uranium out of Iranian soil, and to dismantle the underground enrichment facility in Fordo, which is near Qom.
How appropriate is it for Ashton to travel to Israel in order to brief the Israeli Prime Minister? After all, Israel is not an official party to the talks and has made it known that it is hoping that the diplomatic effort will fail. Considering the enmity between the Israelis and Iranians, it is doubtful if these public consultations will inspire trust in Tehran.
The Ashton trip to Jerusalem was apparently arranged by Yaakov Amidror, who last week toured European capitals consulting with officials involved in the negotiations. Apparently, one of the results of his tour was convincing the EU foreign policy chief to come to Israel.
The Israeli demand that Iran not be permitted to enrich uranium even at lower levels is probably a deal breaker. Iran has always insisted that it be permitted to enrich at least at low levels while it has agreed to stop enrichment at higher levels. The optimism that was generated after the initial round of the talks was reported to be based on a framework of allowing Iran to enrich, but only at lower levels. The actual six power position on Iranian uranium enrichment is not clear.
The initial round of the current talks was all about building confidence, according to officials. I wonder how the recent insertion of the Israelis into the mix is going to affect Iranian confidence concerning the trustworthiness and reliability of the Western powers.
If the leaders of the six powers cannot stop the Israelis from making provocative statements geared to sabotaging the talks, the Iranians may conclude that these same world leaders could not prevent Israel from vetoing any agreement by initiating a unilateral attack.
May 10, 2012
Philip Weiss
I was shocked to hear this promotion of the Israeli Technion — which is partnering with Cornell to develop a new high-tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the East River opposite Manhattan — on WNYC radio yesterday. It’s by Stan Alcorn. I suppose we should be grateful to the reporter for reporting how much the Technion has depended on money from American Jews. But evidently our countries are now joined at the hip. Alcorn also focused on the role of military innovation in fostering the Technion, thanks to IDF veterans with mad skills. Good times.
The history of the Technion can be traced back to money from New York City.
The Technion was founded in 1912 with a donation from New York financier and philanthropist Jacob Schiff….
One hundred years later, the relationship between the Technion and New York continues.
The school’s operating budget comes from the Israeli government, but two-thirds of all private fundraising come from the U.S. – and the biggest donor region is the New York metro area, according to Melvyn Bloom of the American Technion Society, an affiliated fundraising organization.
The results can be seen on the Israeli campus: The computer science building is named after New Jersey payroll processing mogul Henry Taub. The Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute is named after a New Jersey philanthropist who made his money from Russ Toys, famous for its teddy bears. [Berrie foundation is in part dedicated to American Jewish continuity via a connection to Israel]
Local donors are excited about the Technion’s arrival in New York, and see it as an opportunity to replicate the innovation they see in Israel.
“It is like transferring something from one petri dish to another,” said Angelica Berrie, Russell Berrie’s widow and the head of his eponymous foundation.
But the role of the Technion in innovation may be inflated, some say. It is a part of Israel’s start-up ecosystem, but not necessarily the primary driver.
“It may be that the people who chose the Technion above other institutions in New York thought that because the Technion was in Israel and Israel is extremely entrepreneurial, Technion caused entrepreneurship,” said Dan Isenberg, writer and founder of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project. “It’s an optical illusion.”
‘Follow the money’ rule suddenly applies when the issue is gay marriage
May 10, 2012
Philip Weiss
I rage at the media for failing to scrutinize the role of conservative Jewish contributions as a factor in Obama’s collapse on the occupation and threats to Iran, two questions that affect world peace. Because the media ignore that ancient command of American political corruption: Follow the money. Well, here is Andrew Sullivan being interviewed by Audie Cornish on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, about President Obama’s declaration in support of gay marriage.
CORNISH: It’s also been noted that a lot of the big-money donors in the Democratic Party are gay and lesbian. And you’ve suggested that maybe this all just has to do with money. And do you still feel that way?
SULLIVAN: I told you how I feel. Analytically, I do think, look, we’re talking about politics here. And I do think that with Wall Street being less generous than they were in 2008, gay donors and gay support is actually critical to fundraising. And I think many leading gay activists just told the White House quite clearly that if you were not do to this, then their support would not be forthcoming, especially after he declined to enforce an executive order banning discrimination against homosexuals in federal contracting.
So – but I didn’t see that today. I mean, I’ll see the whole thing tonight. I didn’t see it today. I saw today the man I watched for five years now. And that is whom I heard in, as long ago as 2007, tell the mother of a gay son, I want your son to be equal and to have every right that a heterosexual has. I think getting past the M-word for him was a struggle. I don’t he’s alone in this. And I don’t think it’s crazy for people to feel this way. But I think he’s evolved as Americans have evolved, suddenly rather quickly. And I think this is how it happens, suddenly rather quickly. What seemed unthinkable becomes obviously right.
Under mounting pressure from hunger-strikers and UN protest, Ban Ki-moon criticizes administrative detention (but weakly)
May 10, 2012
Allison Deger
Video by Scott Campbell/Angry White Kid.
Following 23 days of open-ended hunger strike by more than 2,500 prisoners, yesterday Palestinians fed up with the lack of support to their cause shut down a United Nations building in Ramallah.
From 7:30 am to 5 pm approximately 50 protestors blocked the entrance to the UN Ramallah Common Premises building and called for the international organization to take strong measures in condemning Israel’s use administrative detention and lack of human rights for prisoners. UN staff were spotted leaving the building around 8:30am, and the building remained closed for the remainder of the day.
Palestinians locking down the UN in Ramallah. (Photo: Scott Campbell/Angry White Kid)
While the facility was shut down, demonstrators denounced the UN in both English and Arabic, chanting, “UN chose a side! Human rights or apartheid.” And event posters reflected a similar sentiment, reading “UNFAIR, UNJUST,” and “Your Silence = Death Sentence.” Palestinians for Dignity, the youth who organized the event, are angered by the UN’s lax response to the hunger strikers, the largest strike since October 2011. The UN has “done nothing. It hasn’t spoken not one word on the prisoners,” said protestor and activist Linah Alsaafin. At the time of the direct action, the UN and Ban Ki-Moon had yet to make a public statement regarding the prisoners and their demands for treatment in accordance to international law.
(Photo: @ANimer)
After today’s demonstration, the UN issued a statement with indirect quotes by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, made via a spokesperson. Ki-moon urged “all concerned to reach a solution without delay.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the importance of averting any further deterioration in the condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody who are on hunger strike, and urged everyone concerned to reach a solution to their plight without delay.
‘The Secretary-General continues to follow with concern the ongoing hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, in particular those held in what is known as administrative detention,’ according to information provided by his spokesperson.
‘He stresses the importance of averting any further deterioration in their condition,’ the spokesperson added. ‘He reiterates that those detained must be charged and face trial with judicial guarantees, or released without delay.’
In response, Palestinian organizers of the UN action wrote a public letter to Ban Ki-moon:
We note with disappointment your silence ever since this protest movement began in December 2011 with Khader Adnan’s arbitrary arrest and subsequent hunger strike. This stands in stark contrast to your vocal and persistent remarks in support of formerly incarcerated Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Though Shalit has been released, Palestinian prisoners are still suffering under the so-called ‘Shalit Law’, which imposed harsher measures on their conditions of detention.
We remind you of your responsibilities as Secretary-General of the UN. We invoke the norms of international law that guarantee basic rights to Palestinian prisoners, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture and the World Medical Association Malta Declaration on Hunger Strikers.
We urge you to take a firm and vocal position in opposition to Israel’s abuse and violation of Palestinian prisoners’ rights and encourage, through UN mechanisms at your disposal, measures of accountability for these violations. We urge you to take an official position in line with the Palestinian prisoners’ demands and to encourage member states to stand against these gross human rights’ violations. We await your urgent response.
Read the full letter by Palestinians for Dignity.
Kindergarteners protest in Gaza with signs stating, “No to solitary confinement,” “Freedom and dignity for Palestinian political prisoners,” “Our little heart and minds are with you.” (Photo: Joe Catron)
Meanwhile in Gaza, a demonstration was also staged in the protest tent, the site of daily dissidence in support of the hunger strikers. Over 100 children led today’s protest. Blogger Shahd Abusalama attended the event. Her account:
This morning was very eventful one in the Gaza sit-in tent. As I arrived around 10:00 am, more than a hundred kids, each about four years old, entered the tent. They looked very beautiful and innocent. They came from Gassan Kanafani’s kindergarten carrying signs like ‘I want to hug Dad,’ ‘I want Dad to be free,’ or ‘Freedom for Palestinian political prisoners.’
They didn’t fully understand why they were there, but their participation put smiles on the faces of the hunger strikers and the detainees’ families, who joined their soft voices while chanting along with them: ‘Free, free Palestine!’ All generations united their voices to call for the victory of our political prisoners’ battle of dignity, which continues for the 23rd day
Palestinians demonstrating in Jaffa on May 7, 2012. (Photo: Shady Khafaga)
Meanwhile, inside of Israel’s prisons outcry persists. Since April 17, 2012 when the hunger strike began, the number of participants has jumped to 2,500 strikers, with some outlets reporting 3,000 strikers. And almost daily additional groups join the cause. These strikers are noted for their diverse composition, reflective of all sectors of Palestinian society. They span party affiliation, gender and even nationality. Last week a group of 40 Egyptians in an Israeli prison entered the strike. Their demands include an end to solitary confinement, reinstatement of family visits and access to high school and university education.
Yet for detainees on strike, fasting is but one difficulty. Israel applies punitive measures to strikers, which has brought up charges of collective punishment for their use of daily raids by “special forces,” transfers to other prisons, axed family visits, and fines. Detainees who banged on their jail cells in support of the hunger strikers today where charged a fine 450 Shekels.
New ‘Via Dolorosa’: Palestinian patients face ordeal trying to reach East Jerusalem hospitals
May 10, 2012
Kate
and other news from Today in Palestine:
Land, property theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Restriction of movement
Settlers cut hundreds of trees in Nablus area
NABLUS (WAFA) 9 May – Jewish settlers Wednesday cut down hundreds of trees in the Nablus area and chased shepherds away from their pastures, according to a local activist. Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlers’ activities in the north of the West Bank, said settlers from the illegal settlement of Tapouch, built on land belonging to the village of Jamaeen, cut down and set on fire 250 trees in the village. [also in Yasouf village, acc. to PIC]
In nearby Bourin village, settlers cut 17 trees while forcing shepherds to leave pastures in the villages of Aqraba and Yanoun.
In the village of Sabastia, also in the Nablus area, Israeli forces demolished a tin shack used by a local villager
link to english.wafa.ps
Israeli army demolishes three buildings near Bethlehem
BETHLEHEM (WAFA) 9 May — Israeli army bulldozers demolished early Wednesday three buildings in the West Bank village of Housan, west of Bethlehem, said local sources. Head of the village council, Jamal Sabatin, told WAFA that a large force with bulldozers raided the village and demolished three buildings after blocking all roads leading to the site. He said that one of the buildings was demolished by the Israeli army for the third time in one year.
Sabatin said that not only Israeli soldiers demolish houses but they also seize land, uproot trees and prevent farmers from accessing their land.
link to english.wafa.ps
Israeli authorities demolish building in East Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 9 May — Israeli authorities demolished an under-construction house in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina on Wednesday morning, witnesses said. Forces blocked off the Al-Mouroha district and broke into the house, demolishing its foundations, the owner Waleed Sadeq Idkedek said. Idkedek said the demolition took place without prior warning, and called on human rights organizations and the Red Crescent to intervene in the continuous forced displacement of Palestinians in Jerusalem.
link to www.maannews.net
Outpost advocates pursue price tag demolitions in court
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 9 May by Charlotte Silver — A tiny village of Palestinian families in the southern West Bank has had an unwelcome visitor in recent months. “He comes with small weapons and his camera, sometimes with armed forces, sometimes with settlers,” Susiya resident Nasser Nawaja says. The armed visitor is Ovad Arad, the Judea and Samaria Director of Regavim, an Israeli non-governmental organization. Arad’s job is to roam the West Bank photographing Palestinian buildings for the group’s legal petitions, which demand the Israeli government expedite their demolitions. Susiya, a hamlet of 350 people, including 120 children, is now at immediate risk of forced displacement as a result of Regavim’s petition, the United Nations humanitarian affairs office says.
link to www.maannews.net
Bedouin land and culture threatened by Israel’s plan for resettlement / Phoebe Greenwood
Tel Aviv (Guardian) 9 May — A stench of rubbish wafts over the Palestinian town of As Sawahirafrom the al-Abdali dump. The vast tip sprawls over an excavated hillside on the outskirts of the town and receives a constant stream of trucks carrying waste from nearby Jerusalem. Israeli authorities are proposing to relocate 2,300 Bedouins from the surrounding hills to this site as part of their push to resolve “the Bedouin problem”. Simultaneously, plans are proceeding through the Israeli parliament this month to move a further 90,000 Bedouin from their ancestral land in the Negev desert in Israel’s south to government-planned townships.The Israeli administration argues that a move to purpose-built communities will lift the indigenous population from unacceptable depths of poverty. Across Israeli-controlled territory, Bedouin communities argue that their culture, along with centuries-old ties to land, is being swept aside to make way for Jewish expansion.
link to www.guardian.co.uk
Victory for the Ruweidi family and for Silwan
Rabbis for Human Rights 8 May — We congratulate the Ruweidi family, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center and Peace Now on this victory –Last evening, on May 7th,2012, a ruling was delivered from the District Court inJerusalem concerned the case of the Ruweidi family from Silwan. The Court accepted the Ruweidis’ claim that their house is not ‘absentee property,’ as the JNF-KKL/Himanutah, together with the extreme right wing settler organization ELAD, have sought to prove in court over the past two decades. The JNF-KKL/Himanutah’s claim was based on a single, falsified declaration by a Palestinian man with no connection to the family or to Silwan, who claimed that the house’s owner died in Jordan (at a time in which Jordan was an enemy country to Israel), and therefore, according the Absentee Property Law, the State can wrest control over the property … It is important to note that the Sumarin family remains under threat of eviction by the JNF and its partners, through the Absentee Property Law. We call, again, on the JNF to cancel all efforts to take over the Sumarin property.
link to rhr.org.il
‘Back-to-back’ procedure: Patients at checkpoints / Tamar Fleishman
Palestine Chronicle 9 May — The detainment of a person that is being transferred by an ambulance to one of the six Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, until the completion of the bureaucratic procedures, falls under the euphemistic title of: “co-ordinations”. These entail nothing more than the authorization of the secret services that grant the patient permission to pass through the checkpoint, but they are only the first step on the Via Dolorosa unfolding before the patient until he does (or does not) arrive at his destination … According to the regulations of the occupation, only one person is allowed to escort the patient. A woman’s “dangerousness assessment” is lower than a man’s. That is why in most cases a woman (a mother or a wife) would receive a permit to escort the patient on his way to the hospital, while a man (a father or a husband) would be rejected. But this right as well, as limited as it already is, doesn’t obligate the authorities. The common argument is: “prevented”, and it holds more power than the right for an escort and therefore annuls it. I was once present when a baby of seven months, sedated and on life support, was being transferred on her own. Her tiny body lied inside an intensive care unit and a doctor that was summoned was striving to keep her alive. “Where are the parents?” I asked the ambulance driver whom I knew. “They are prevented passage” he replied.
link to www.palestinechronicle.com
In turnabout, Netanyahu urges ministers to find way to leave Ulpana intact
Haaretz 9 May — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backtracked and asked ministers to consider crafting bills to prevent the demolition of the Ulpana neighborhood in the Beit El settlement.
link to www.haaretz.com
Violence / Raids / Detentions
Activist in Nabi Saleh loses eye as Israel escalates repression
PNN 9 May — The second anniversary of the start of the popular resistance by the people of Nabi Saleh, located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah, was marked by the brutal injury of young Mustafa Abdul-Razzaq al-Tamimi, 27, who was shot in the face at less than 10 meters. This occurred while the UN Special Rapporteur for the Freedom of Opinion and Expression was visiting the village. Al-Tamimi was seriously wounded in the head by a tear gas canister fired by the soldiers directly at him from a close distance. From the impact of the gas bomb, his face was split, losing a large amount of blood before being transferred by car to the hospital. The ambulance was stopped at the Nabi Saleh checkpoint by the occupation forces for 30 minutes. Subsequently he was flown for treatment at an Israeli hospital in Tel Aviv…
The repression of today’s protest lead to the injury of six other people. A cameraman from Palestine TV, Najib Fraona, and Ahmed Abdullah Khreish were both hit by rubber bullets. Wa’de Tamimi was hit by a tear gas canister that fractured his foot and a girl, Nissan Tamimi, was shot with a tear gas bomb that broke her hand. Fadel al-Tamimi was wounded by a rubber bullet in his ear and another one in his foot. Muhammad Abu Samra was wounded by a rubber bullet in his ear. Additionally, dozens of people suffered from tear gas suffocation. In response, the people of the village of Nabi Saleh attacked the Israeli military tower at the entrance to the village of Nabi Saleh and broke the main gate that closes the entrance to the village, venting their anger at the injury of Mustafa and others.
link to english.pnn.ps
IOF launch military drills in Dura town, terrorize citizens
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 9 May — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) carried out Tuesday evening military exercises and helicopter landings in different area of Dura town in Al-Khalil city and terrorized its Palestinian residents. Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (