The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.

In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. (full article…)

China will oppose discussing the Goldstone report at the United Nations Security Council, Chinese members of parliament told a delegation of visiting Israeli officials in Beijing on Wednesday. (full article…)

One of the taboo topics in the American media is how the U.S. Government routinely violates the principles we espouse for, and try to impose on, the rest of the world. We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims; we demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible “crimes against humanity” by our allies; we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks, etc. etc. (full article…)

The council has a long history of focusing on Israel, while ignoring human rights abuses in other member states like China and Saudi Arabia. (full article…)

The abstaining countries included: Bosnia, Burkina-Faso, Cameron, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, South Korea, Slovenia and Uruguay. (full article…)

MK Danny Danon attacked the Goldstone report during a speech in Knesset Wednesday and ripped up a synopsis of it. (full article…)

About 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer harm as a result of unsafe abortions in countries with restrictive laws on ending a pregnancy, according to a report. (full article…)

Amnesty International has condemned the execution of Behnoud Shojaee, a 21-year-old Iranian, at Tehran’s Evin Prison at dawn on Sunday, for a murder he was accused of having committed when he was 17. (full article…)

According to the latest figures compiled by DCI-Palestine from sources including the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and temporary Israeli army detention facilities, the number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and detention centres inside Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory at the end of September, was 326. (full article…)

“A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long,” Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor, told the UN Human Rights Council.

“The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence.” (full article…)

“No arrest warrant has been issued, and in any event, he has immunity due to his being a minister in the government,” the bureau said in a statement. “Therefore, his program will continue without disturbance.” (full article…)

More than 80 refugees were killed in a government raid against a camp in north Yemen where Shi’ite rebels are challenging President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a camp source and news reports said on Thursday. (full article…)

PCHR and B’Tselem based their tallies on painstaking field research. (There are some small discrepancies between them. But most can be explained by differences in the definitions used.)

The Israeli government, by contrast, has not revealed the methodology by which – without having any access at all to surviving family members or local officials on the ground – it felt able to compile its much lower tally. (more…)

“In terms of reports on Israel, HRW has a very serious bias and lack of credibility,” said Gerald Steinberg, who is president of of NGO Monitor and a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. “They handle Israel differently than other countries because they have people writing the reports who operate with a lack of expertise on human rights and international law and with a great bias against Israel.” (more…)

According to the B’Tselem data, 773 of those killed did not take part in the hostilities, 320 of whom were minors under the age of 18 and 109 were women (above the age of 18). The rest of those killed were 330 armed combatants, 245 Palestinian policemen – most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of the police station – and 38 others whose participation in the hostilities could not be determined. (more…)

Every crime recorded… though when the organization I used to work for (the Palestinian Center for Human Rights) published similar figures within weeks of the massacre, it was shrugged off by the international community. This was the single bloodiest episode in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, apart from Israel’s 1982 invasion and aerial bombardment of Lebanon.

The first detailed casualty figures from an Israeli human rights organisation since the war ended puts the number of children under 16 killed in the offensive at 252 as opposed to the 89 cited by the military. B’Tselem says its fieldworkers gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 of the children. (more…)

“There is a war being waged against us in the legal sphere. Its aim is to delegitimize Israel and to create deterrence against a possible use of force in Gaza and Lebanon again,” a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post. (more…)

“Such a pattern of continuing blockade under these conditions amounts to such a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions as to constitute a continuing crime against humanity,” Falk said in a statement released in Geneva. (more…)

Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles

“People who order or inflict torture cannot be exonerated, and the roles of certain lawyers, as well as doctors who have attended torture sessions, should also be scrutinized,” Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement dedicated to victims of torture. (more…)

The army and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) shackle Palestinian security detainees as a form of torture and abuse, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI) charged in a report issued early Tuesday morning. (more…)

Gaza: No right to life

In letter to defense administration heads Yesh Din reports of alarming increase in number of attempts to uproot or damage Palestinian farmers’ trees as part of settlers’ efforts to ‘achieve political goals through terrorists acts’ (more…)

Bahaieddin Hasan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, described the address as “superficial” and devoid of details. “There didn’t appear to be any concern for either democratic reform or human rights,” he was quoted as saying in the Friday edition of independent daily Al-Dustour. “This came as a major disappointment.” (more…)

Obama is not a man of courage: if he was politically courageous, he would have said that Al-Azhar under the rule of Nasser was a force of progressive thought, enlightenment, state feminism support, and quasi-secularism. Under American puppets, Sadat and Mubarak, Al-Azhar became a force of obscurantism, fanaticism, misogyny, religious intolerance, and violence. Al-Azhar does not deserve any praise whatsoever. The Copts, Freethinkers, and women all sufferes because of rulings from Al-Azhar. Ideas of Al-Qa`idah and religious fanaticism’s in general should be blamed on that obsolete institution which serves as a tool of the dictators in Egypt. His reference to the early roots of Islam in America is so disingenuous: he has one bland quote from John Adams and leave out various expressions of bigotry against Muslims by founding fathers. And he then condemns (unspecified) Western stereotypes of Muslims and then matches them with what he calls Muslim stereotypes of America as empire. But those two are not symmetrical: American stereotypes of Muslims are racist and essentialist, and the notion that the US is a war mongering Empire is shared by none Muslims and Muslims alike around the world. (more…)

US President Barack Obama met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Thursday as he continued his trip to the Middle East.

Amnesty International has documented a series of human rights violations in Egypt. It is particularly concerned about the extension of the state of emergency and the planned new anti-terrorism law, which seeks to grant security forces emergency-style powers.

Counter terrorism continues to be used to justify human rights violations, such as administrative detention lasting in hundreds of cases for more than a decade, prolonged incommunicado and secret detentions, torture an unfair trials before emergency and military courts.

US involvement in these practices has extended to “renditions” by US intelligence services to Egypt, making it a key transit and destination country for the interrogation or indefinite detention and torture of terror suspects. (more…)

President Obama should not have decided to come to Egypt. The visit is a clear endorsement of President Hosni Mubarak, the ailing 81-year-old dictator who has ruled with martial law, secret police and torture chambers. No words that Mr. Obama will say can change this perception that Americans are supporting a dictator with their more than $1 billion in annual aid. The Western press is clearly excited about Mr. Obama’s “significant” choice of Egypt, and his destination, Cairo University, which the news media seem to consider a symbol of enlightenment, secularism and freedom. The truth is that for years, Cairo University students have been demonstrating against the rising cost of education, demanding the university subsidize expensive text books, only to be rebuked by the authorities, who claim no funds are available. Yet the university somehow managed to find the money to polish up the building dome that will shine above Mr. Obama’s head when he delivers his address. As for the other host of the president’s visit, Al Azhar University, one of its students, Kareem Amer, is languishing in prison after university officials reported his “infidel, un-Islamic” views to the government, earning him a four-year sentence in 2007. In advance of the visit, Egyptian security forces have rounded up hundreds of foreign students at Al Azhar. We do want allies in the West, but not from inside the White House. Our real allies are the human rights groups and unions that will pressure the Obama administration to sever all ties to the Mubarak dictatorship. Their visits to Egypt are more meaningful, even if unlike Mr. Obama, they do not get a lavish reception. (more…)

But on human rights, I fear he will disappoint: I asked him straight whether Hosni Mubarak (the Egyptian leader for 28 years!) was an autocrat. Mr Obama told me he was a force for stability and good. (more…)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we always raise democracy and human rights. It is a core pillar of American foreign policy. And I think that there is a great awareness on the part of the Egyptian Government that with young people like this and with enhanced communications, it is in Egypt’s interest to move more toward democracy and to exhibit more respect for human rights. And so we’re going to continue to engage in that dialogue. (more…)

US President Barack Obama had thought he could clean up the Bush administration’s questionable human rights legacy on his own terms. Recent decisions regarding Abu Ghraib pictures and military tribunals show that he was mistaken. His message of “change” is at risk. (more…)

During their examination of Israel, the 10 experts presented allegations that Israel was running a “Facility 1391″ in an “undetermined location within Israel which is not accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross or detainees’ lawyers or relatives.” (more…)

Throughout my career, I have been proud to have worked on human rights and against torture around the world. (more…)

War Crimes Against Children: new report on the 313 children killed during Gaza offensive

Human rights advocates and legal scholars fear that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may resurrect the military commissions designed by his predecessor to try Guantanamo detainees after Obama’s 120-day moratorium on proceedings expires on May 20. That possibility appeared to move a step closer to reality when Guantanamo’s chief judge refused to delay a May 27 pretrial hearing for Ahmed Al-Darbi, 34, a Saudi Arabian accused of providing material support for terrorism and participating in a conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes. (more…)

When the 192-nation General Assembly meets next week to elect 18 new members to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC), most of the candidates will win their seats without breaking a political sweat because of the almost entirely non-competitive nature of the vote. (more…)

The clown of Jordan is very concerned about torture… in the United States. (more…)

At least three dozen detainees who were held in the CIA’s secret prisons overseas appear to be missing – and efforts by human rights organisations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful. (more…)

Palestinian sources reported Friday that a local demonstrator was killed after being hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a protest against the separation fence in the West Bank village of Bilin. (more…)

After Tristan Anderson, an American demonstrator, was seriously injured by an Israeli tear-gas canister last month, Israel denied the weapon that tear-gas canisters were being used as weapons. But as the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem points out, “Firing of this kind has already resulted in injuries, some grave, to dozens of Palestinians and Israeli and foreign citizens.” This is the daily reality of life under Israeli brutality…

“The release of CIA memos on interrogation methods by the US department of justice appears to have offered a get-out-of-jail-free card to people involved in torture,” Amnesty International said. “Torture is never acceptable and those who conduct it should not escape justice.” (more…)

The Israeli military attacked civilians and medics and delayed – sometimes for hours – the evacuation of the injured during the January war in Gaza, according to an independent fact-finding mission commissioned by Israeli and Palestinian medical human rights groups. (more…)

On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee. (more…)

Israel was very quick to close the case on allegations of “serious misconduct” during its recent massacre in Gaza.

Earlier this month, several Israeli soldiers revealed the permissive atmosphere towards killing Palestinian civilians during Israel’s invasion. Among other shocking revelations, one soldier recounted the intentional shooting of an unarmed woman and her two children. Commenting on the incident, another soldier elaborated:

“What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. (more…)

Concluding that the testimonies were “based on hearsay” and had been “purposely exaggerated,” Israel’s head military prosecutor closed the whirlwind investigation and that is apparently as far as the case will go…

Of course, the investigation was a sham — as Israel’s military investigations almost always are. It ignored scores of evidence that illegal orders were given to Israeli soldiers in Gaza… not to mention the liberty some members of the IDF took to destroy civilian property and scrawl racist remarks on the walls of Palestinian homes. But, no… Zionist brutality is just “hearsay”.

According to the Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem:

The speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that the very opening of this investigation was merely the army’s attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity during Operation Cast Lead. (more…)

If there is a single act that characterizes the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, it is waiting: waiting in lines to pass through the hundreds of checkpoints scattered across the West Bank, waiting for Israel to issue an identification card, waiting for permission to travel to the next village or out of the country, waiting for loved ones languishing in Israeli prisons to be released — waiting for peace, waiting for justice.

And for nearly two months, I found myself sharing the experience of waiting — for Israel to allow me into Gaza.

Last year, I spent an extended period of time in Gaza working with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), helping them to document human rights abuses in the occupied territories. But the abuses I documented then now seem tame in comparison to the recent heights of atrocity Gaza has endured.
(more…)

Witness reports taken by HRW describe the killing of a bank manager, his wife and two of their children in their car during white phosphorus shelling in the Tel-el-Hawa area of Gaza City on 15 January. According to a Palestinian journalist, Fathi Sabbah, whose own building in the area came under attack, when ambulances came to take the bodies away from the partly melted car, they found “only a few bones” of the four occupants. The report quotes another witness, Muhammad Al Sharif, as saying that a piece of a skull and some teeth lay beside the car. (more…)

Since the beginning of Operation “Cast Lead” at the end of 2008, there has been a sharp rise in reports of violence perpetrated by security forces against Palestinians in the West Bank. During this nearly three-month period, B’Tselem documented 24 cases in which police officers and soldiers beat Palestinians, using rifle butts, clubs and other means of injury. 16 of the cases were especially serious and their victims suffered heavier injuries. (more…)

Israel Defense Forces soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a group of UN human rights experts said Monday. (more…)

Anti-Arab verbal and physical attacks inside Israel have spiked in the wake of elections held earlier this year in which right-wing parties made major gains, a human rights group said on Sunday.

The Mossawa Centre for the Rights of Arab Citizens in Israel has documented 250 incidents of aggression against Arab Israelis since the start of the year, compared to 166 in all of 2008, the group said in a report. (more…)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the Gaza Strip last week, called for a “full investigation,” Amnesty International is accusing Israel of “war crimes,” and Louis Michel, the EU’s commissioner for aid to developing countries, says: “It is evident that Israel does not respect international humanitarian law.” (more…)

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Sanctions Torture (more…)

“I do not know of any military that is more moral, fair and sensitive to civilians’ lives than the IDF,” he said. (more…)

They had just gone a little distance when there was an explosion. We were hit. We fell down, and I couldn’t see or hear anything. Then I started hearing again. I heard combat helicopters and gunfire, and I didn’t know where they were firing. Husam, Mahmoud, and I stayed where we were for about an hour, maybe more. Then the daughters of our neighbors came and took us into one of the houses. My father and uncle came there and took us to an ambulance. They told me that Husam had been killed and Mahmoud was wounded. My eyes were hurt, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to see again. (more…)

In February 2005, Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz and Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon adopted the recommendation of a team appointed to analyze the matter, headed by Major General Udi Shani, that the policy should be terminated. The team found that house demolition does not serve to deter and causes greater damage than benefit. The team’s findings undermined the claim of deterrence that Israel had argued for many years.

Despite this, yesterday Israel sealed parts of the Abu Dahim house, as stated above, which is home to the parents, brothers and sisters of ‘Alaa Abu Dahim. The floors that were sealed were a residential floor, on which the perpetrator, his parents and one of his brothers lived, and the basement floor, which has apartments for rent. (more…)

The three week long shooting-fish-in-a-barrel exercise killed, on the Palestinian side, 280 children and minors, 111 women, and 503 male noncombatants. Gaza police accounted for 167 of the dead; can you just read off Gaza police as “Hamas militants”? Or were they traffic cops & etc.? The Palestinian Center for Human rights estimated that the Israelis killed 223 Hamas guerrillas. In other words, if this count is correct, the Israelis managed to kill more children than real militants. (more…)

“Judicially speaking,” Nowak told the German broadcaster ZDF, “the United States has a clear obligation” to prosecute Rumsfeld and Bush for ordering interrogation methods at Guantanamo that contravened a UN convention on torture.” He added that there were publicly available documents “that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld.” (more…)

The “arrest order” for Barak, for instance, states: “On December 27, 2008, the suspect ordered an aerial assault on all of Gaza’s population centers. The assault included hundreds of sorties by fighter jets that dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on residential areas of Gaza, which led to the deaths of 1,200 people – men, women and children. Some 5,300 people were wounded and hundreds of thousands became refugees. On December 10, 2008, a formal complaint was filed against Ehud Barak to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland … on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity because of the siege of Gaza.” (more…)

Asked about the “most outrageous” incident he had witnessed, Ging said: “The dead children.” (more…)

“It’s not an executive order closing Guantanamo Bay, but a halt to the trials for 120 days.” (more…)

“Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate,” Donatella Rovera, a Middle East researcher with Amnesty International, said in a statement. “Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime,” she said. (more…)

A few minutes later, soldiers arrived at the house and called on the father of the family to step out. As ‘Attiyah a-Samuni approached the door, one of the soldiers ordered him to raise his hands and then, without warning, the soldiers opened fire and killed him, in front of his family. They then continued to shoot into the room in which the family was gathered, injuring several members. (more…)

International Humanitarian Law represents a bare minimum, a threshold which, in the interests of humanity, must not be crossed. It is apparent that IOF have systematically and repeatedly violated this humanitarian threshold, and in doing so are committing war crimes against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The 194 High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions – virtually the entire international community – have a legal obligation to ensure respect for the Conventions in all circumstances. They have a further legal obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and to bring them to justice; before their own courts if necessary. (more…)

47 Palestinians killed during reporting period, including 40 civilians:

Victims include 11 Children and 3 Women:

Overall Gaza death toll mounts to 983, including 673 civilians, of whom 225 are children:

IOF continue to fire incinerating bombs across the Gaza Strip:

IOF continue to destroy houses and raze agricultural land, forcing families to flee their homes; (more…)

Children pay price of Gaza war

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected the criticism, saying Washington was “proud of our record on promotion of human rights”. (more…)

“On an inter-governmental level, the war crimes process is essentially subject to geopolitical control, which means in practice that the criminal wrongdoing of the most powerful [the U.S. government] and its closest friends [Israel] get a free pass,” Richard Falk, a professor of international law and a U.N. human rights expert, told IPS.

Despite widespread condemnation, this practice of “geopolitical impunity” is likely to shield Israel from formal scrutiny with respect to the alleged crimes of war and crimes against humanity associated with its military operations in Gaza since Dec. 27, he added. (more…)

A Palestinian besieged in the Khuza’a area, in south-eastern Gaza, reported today that Israeli soldiers shot a woman waving a white flag and civilians who were fleeing a bombed house on army orders, killing at least three and wounding others. (more…)

The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. (more…)

Bush reveals that he personally authorized torture on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. (more…)

Khaled had ridden his bicycle to the place, but before he managed to get there, the planes bombed again. Shrapnel from the second missile struck Khaled and he fell from the bicycle. Other people were injured. After that, everybody thought the bombing had ended. Two people came to help Khaled. Shortly after that, another missile was fired. Khaled was killed immediately, along with one of the two people who were trying to help him. The other person, Abu Laftah, was injured and is still in hospital. (more…)

Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel’s military has fired artillery shells with the incendiary agent white phosphorus into Gaza and a doctor there said the chemical was suspected in the case of 10 burn victims who had skin peeling off their faces and bodies. (more…)

Israel appears to be using WP as an “obscurant” (a chemical used to hide military operations), a permissible use in principle under international humanitarian law (the laws of war). However, WP also has a significant, incidental, incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire. The potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza’s high population density, among the highest in the world.

Human Rights Watch believes that the use of WP in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life. (more…)

Resolution 1860 continues the trend recently favored by the mainstream international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to equate the clearly disproportionate suffering of the occupied and the occupiers, the victims and the perpetrators of war crimes. For instance, the resolution emphasizes that “the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected,” as though Palestinian civilians and Israeli civilians have somehow been under the equivalent threat during this war. The figure of over 4,000 dead and wounded in Gaza compared to a dozen Israelis—mostly soldiers—makes this equivalence morally irresponsible to say the least. (more…)

“After January 20 I’m going to have plenty to say about the issue, and I am not backing away at all from what I said during the campaign, that starting at the beginning of our administration, we are going to be engaged effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflict in the Middle East,” he said. (more…)

Obama is already proving to be a political coward on this issue. Should we take bets on his outlook after the 20th?

“I am appealing to political leaders here and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this,” he said, speaking at Gaza’s largest hospital. “They are responsible for these deaths.” (more…)

In rhetoric reminiscent of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in 2006, Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have denied that the Palestinians of Gaza are facing a humanitarian crisis. The evidence shows otherwise: as of January 2, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), “80% of the [Gazan] population cannot support themselves and are dependent on humanitarian assistance. This figure is increasing. According to the World Food Programme, the population is facing a food crisis [with] food shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk, canned foods and fresh meats. The imports entering are insufficient to support the population or to service infrastructure maintenance and repair needs. The health system is overwhelmed having been weakened by an 18-month blockade [and] utilities are barely functioning: the only electric power plant has shut down [leaving] some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza [without any] electricity at all due to the damage to fifteen electricity transformers during the air strikes. The water system provides running water once every 5-7 days and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage and is dumping 40 million liters of raw sewage into the sea daily. Fuel for heating . . . and cooking gas are no longer available in the market.” (more…)

B’Tselem received the testimony of Ahmad Sanur, the owner of the truck bombed. Sanur claims the truck was carrying oxygen canisters used for welding, not Grad rockets. B’Tselem field worker took photos of oxygen canisters left on the site of the bombing. (more…)

Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice almost everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable – indeed, for some, it’s an act of heresy – to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor. This double standard must end. (more…)

I believe the Israeli airstrikes are clear violations of international humanitarian law. While the Palestinian rocket fire against civilian targets in Israel may be illegal, that does not give Israel the right to violate the Geneva Conventions. The airstrikes represent:

¶Collective punishment (the civilian population is being punished for actions of a few militants).

¶Unlawful attack on civilians in a protected population (the strikes are targeting civilian areas, Gaza being one of the most densely populated areas in the Middle East).

¶Disproportionate military action (Israel has destroyed the entire security infrastructure of 1.5 million people).

In addition, earlier Israeli actions, like the closing of Gaza’s borders, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel, so ambulances can’t respond to the injured, hospitals can’t adequately receive or treat the wounded, and doctors are unable to provide sufficient medical care.

Israel is using F-16 fighter jets and weapons provided by the United States. We must stop military aid to Israel.

Phyllis Bennis

Washington, Dec. 29, 2008

The writer, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of a book about understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Israel prevents toddler in need of surgery from returning home from Gaza to West Bank (more…)

The following intervention was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on 30 December 2008:

Dear Member State of the UN Human Rights Council,

Representing the Palestinian human rights community, we write to you with an urgent request for intervention by the UN Human Rights Council to put an end to the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) as a result of the Israeli occupying forces’ ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip. At least 310 persons, including 37 children, have been killed and more than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured. The civilian population of the occupied Gaza Strip will inevitably continue to suffer heavy losses without the external intervention of the international community; this is confirmed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s assertion that this is a “war to the bitter end.”

Grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention amounting to war crimes, have been committed, including, willful killing and the extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. Furthermore, the continuing collective punishment of the Gaza Strip has left medical services unable to deal with the increasing number of victims. (more…)

The weeds are already growing rampant at the notorious “Camp X-Ray,” and President-elect Barack Obama plans to shut down the entire detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Now the Pentagon is inviting journalists to tour the camp one last time.

One would imagine a trip to the world’s best-known and most notorious prison could be an unpleasant experience. Everyone knows the horror stories from Guantanamo: how the prisoners were chained on the flight to Cuba, and how they arrived at the camp half-frozen, their eyes blindfolded and completely disoriented. They didn’t know where they were at the time, and many of them are still there today, in the prison where the United States keeps its terror suspects.

A special group recently embarked on a trip to Guantanamo that would prove to be significantly more comfortable. The group met at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington in the early morning hours, where a North American Airlines charter flight was already waiting. The destination, with the airport code NBW, well removed from the rule of US constitutional law, is known simply as GTMO in military slang. The boarding pass was first of many amusing souvenirs of the trip. (more…)