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The report, ‘Shackling as a Form of Torture and Abuse’, based on the evidence of over 500 prisoners, was released in advance of the UN International Day in Support of Torture Victims Friday, Jun. 26. It follows a report published in May by the UN Committee Against Torture that had criticised the continued mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners by Israel. The UN report also condemned Israel’s refusal to allow access to a secret detention centre known only as ‘Facility 1391′. (more…)

The couple slept together and then he took her to an office in Tel Aviv, where Israeli security service agents apparently confronted her with a video of her in bed with the man, the prosecutors said. They threatened to pass the video back to her family unless she helped them and also apparently promised her 100,000 shekels (£15,500) if she would pass them regular information about a group of militants in Nablus. (more…)

After all, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assured President George W. Bush of his support for a Palestinian state in April 2004, he referred to Palestinians in the West Bank having what he called “transportation contiguity,” meaning tunnels beneath Israeli bypass roads to settlements that only Israelis could use. That constitutes a viable state? (more…)

“If you ask an Israeli, ‘are you in favor of equality for Arabs,’ they will say, ‘yes, of course.’ If you ask them are they in favor of throwing the [Arabs] into the sea, they say, ‘yes, of course.’ And it doesn’t feel like any contradiction to them.” (more…)

Israeli woman denied social benefits for visiting Palestinian husband. (more…)

Israel’s defence ministry has proposed legalising 60 existing homes at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, and building another 240 homes at the site, despite US calls for a halt to settlement growth. (more…)

“We as Palestinians have experienced political detention and abuse for 41 years under the Israeli occupation, and now we are doing it to ourselves.” (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…)

It apparently takes American pressure to get the Israeli military to allow 350 cows into Gaza today — the first in nine months. This, it should be noted, is for 1.5 million human beings. (more…)

When US President Barack Obama called on Palestinians to practice nonviolence, I laughed just like Mahmoud. Palestinians like Mahmoud have never needed to be told about nonviolence. The English word may be unfamiliar but the steadfast, daily acts of resistance known as nonviolence are nothing new. In the south Hebron hills, Palestinians face Israeli soldiers and violent Israeli settlers who are illegally expanding their settlements and attacking Palestinians, including children walking to school. In response to this profound injustice, Palestinians are organizing demonstrations, refusing to comply with military orders, filing complaints against settlers, and courageously working their land despite the risk of arrest and attack. They don’t need President Obama to tell them to practice nonviolence. (more…)

Canada’s chief diplomat in Israel has been honored at an Israeli public park — built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law — as one of the donors who helped establish the park on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. (more…)

Activists campaigning for an end to Gaza’s blockade by Israel will sail to the Hamas-run enclave from Cyprus despite the presence of the Israeli navy, they said on Thursday. (more…)

The people who are living in Tel Aviv want to be able to get on a bus safely, and get to where they’re going without worrying about any sort of bomb blast. And what are the people worrying about in the Palestinian areas? They want to be able to make sure their children have a bright future, a good education, and can actually realize their dreams. (more…)

Sure, Israelis are scared of bombs attacks and Palestinians are only concerned with the education of their children… And this is considered a radical position in the United States.

In his speech last Sunday, the prime minister failed to address the continual growth of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, where close to 300,000 Israeli settlers live. (more…)

East Jerusalem is on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (notwithstanding Israel’s illegal annexation of it) and the number of settlers expands to approximately 500,000 when you account for that. I’ve noticed recently that the media (on both sides) consistently ignores this fact.

If either party has a claim on protection from the other side’s violence, the Palestinians surely have the more reasonable claim. They have suffered by far the most violence in the long conflict. And Israel will certainly keep a massive margin of military superiority no matter what the future brings. Imagine the United States insisting that Cuba or Haiti must be demilitarized because its army might threaten the very existence of America. That’s how absurd this Israeli fear seems to most Palestinians. (more…)

Once again, most Israelis can snuggle up around what appears to be a daring and generous offer, but what is in fact, as usual, a compromise between the anxieties, the weakness and the self-righteousness of the center just-to-the-right and the center a-little-left. But what a great distance between them and the harsh demands of reality, as well as the legitimate needs and rightful claims of the Palestinians, now accepted by most of the world, including the United States. (more…)

The UN said 128 Palestinians, including 66 children and 34 women, were displaced from this agricultural land, deep inside the occupied West Bank and barely a few miles from the border with Jordan. Eviction orders still hang over dozens more farmers in the area, all of whom live close to three Israeli agricultural settlements which are among many built along the fertile Jordan valley. The demolitions drew little international attention: they happen often and these farmers are remote and poor, at the bottom of the Palestinian social scale. (more…)

Little wonder the Palestinians sounded sorely disappointed: Netanyahu gave no commitment to end the occupation, reiterated Israel’s determination to retain the whole of Jerusalem as its “united capital”, rejected any possibility of a compromise on Palestinian refugees, and even had fulsome praise for the Jewish settlers in the West Bank whom he called “Israeli pioneers”. (more…)

In addition to the relatively new condition (i.e., something Ben Gurion or Rabin never demanded) that the Palestnians accept not only recognize Israel’s existence (something the PLO already did back in 1988), but also recognize it as “the state of the Jewish people.” Moreover, after saying that neither side should “threaten its neighbor’s security and existence,” he insisted that the Palestinians agree to permanent state of abject vulnerability. Specifically, once the Palestinians agree to have no army, no control of their air space, and to forever forswear military treaties — then Israel “will agree to a real peace agreement.” (more…)

Netanyahu adopted the language of the day before yesterday. No Palestinian people, rather a “Palestinian population” that lives in Judea and Samaria. He invoked the infamous lexicon of Golda Meir, not of occupation rather “Israeli presence” in the West Bank.

There was also the repeated flight from the subject of final borders, the lack of even superficial reference to the road map peace plan, the repetition of “Jerusalem forever undivided,” the repeated claim that “they started it,” and the ridiculous, excessive demand that Palestinians recognize the Jewish state by one who has failed to recognize the Palestinians as a people. (more…)

“This particular settlement is not one that I envision ever being abandoned, or changed over into a Palestinian territory,” Carter said. “This is part of the close settlements to the 1967 line that I think will be here forever.” (more…)

The Land of Israel Faithful group said Monday it has a plan to construct 30 new outposts in the West Bank over the summer, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech a day earlier in which he said that no new settlements would be built and no additional land would be expropriated for settlement development. (more…)

A Hamas operative died in a Hebron prison overnight Monday after being interrogated by Palestinian Intelligence personnel. (more…)

As the day progressed Danny said he realized the scene he had witnessed was not an isolated incident. “It kept repeating itself. At one point I asked the people at the register if they really weren’t letting Arabs in and they answered straight out that they were not. One of the workers told me that the men just aren’t let in alone, but families are. I asked why and she said that they bothered the female tourists… she said there’s nothing that can be done, it’s just the way it is. (more…)

This speech was nothing new or interesting on Netanyahu’s behalf. The man is a racist and his speech reflected this very clearly. It was aimed simply at reassuring his fellow extremists in Israel (and in the settlements) that he is not about to “sell-out” to Washington. I won’t go into his ridiculous distortions of history because the are easily refuted by anyone with the most basic appreciation for the facts.

The thrust of his speech had to do with the Palestinians recognizing Israel—not merely as a state with an inherent right to exist (as Israel had previously demanded), but as a specifically Jewish state with a right to exist. The second point of his speech had to do with his vision for a Palestinian state, namely a demilitarized enclave subordinate to Israeli security needs.

To the first point, this is fluff. Israel is unprepared to recognized the West Bank as a specifically Muslim or Palestinian entity (and it shouldn’t in any case). But Israel cannot bring itself to recognize the basic right to Palestinian existence even without silly ethnic or religious predicates. So demanding the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel as a specifically Jewish state is intended simply to undermine peace negotiations by precluding discussion over the right to return for the 1948 refugees. After all, why should Israel negotiate over refugees if the Palestinians have themselves granted legitimacy to Jewish apartheid? So on the issue of recognition, Netanyahu has only further radicalized Israel’s position.

On the second point regarding Netanyahu’s vision of a Palestinian state, we can clearly see Bibi’s racist outlook. For him, any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized and subordinated to Israeli security interests. He did not mention Israel’s intention of holding onto the Jordan Valley… probably because his position has not deviated from Sharon’s. Israel will continue to surround the remaining fragments of the West Bank by securing the Jordanian border and controlling entry and exit rights to the region. As agreed under the Oslo Accords, Israel will retain the sole rights to Palestinian airspace and will likely continue to operate the heavily militarized Jerusalem-Allenby Bridge highway (which is blocked for Palestinian use).

But all this misses the main assumption upon which his arguments are based: Israel’s needs are fundamentally superior the needs of Palestinians. As the director of ADL Abraham Foxman remarked:

“[Netanyahu's] willingness to talk about a Palestinian state as long as it is based on Palestinian acceptance of the Jewish state and is demilitarized and no threat to Israel should now provide the framework for moving the peace process forward and for easing potential tensions between the U.S. and Israel,” said Foxman. (more…)

Given the stark disparity in the balance of powers, isn’t it intuitive to demand Israel demilitarize? Of course, this is not even up for discussion. The victims of colonialism must do as their imperial masters dictate. That a future Palestinian state could pose a real threat to Israel is laughable. Israel’s military dominance is so horrifically overwhelming, there is no question of Israel’s security being seriously challenged. But you have to understand that Israeli lives are more important than those of Palestinians and Netanyahu knows this very well. It is for this reason, he knows that his demands will be well-respected in the United States and much of the international community will also sympathize with his ‘reasonable’ appeal.

So in the end, we are left with a painful problem. 1,400 slaughtered Gazans cannot compete with a single injury from rocket-fire in Sderot (let alone a death). And a single Israeli soldier weighs more heavily on the hearts of the world than 10,000+ Palestinian prisoners ineligible for civil rights and held under military law, mostly without charges brought before them. In his speech, Netanyahu is able to ignore the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, to justify the ongoing oppression in the occupied territories and to blame the victims of imperialism for their suffering because he knows that in the scheme of things, Palestinian hopes for self-determination and peace come second to Israel’s right to colonization, dispossession and brutality.

Gaza: No right to life

A Border Guard officer who shot and killed a Wadi Ara man during a police chase in January 2006 was acquitted of manslaughter on Monday. (more…)

The poll also found that 58% of Israeli Jews back the continued expansion of West Bank settlements. (more…)

The prime minister’s declaration that Jerusalem will remain he “undivided capital” of Israel – only Israel – slammed the door before the entire Muslim world. And his Hebron is solely the city of the Jewish patriarchs; the Arabs have no such rights at all. The Palestinians can have a state, but only if those foreign invaders show us they know how to eat with a fork and knife. Actually, without a knife. (more…)

To be sure Verwoerd was correct. Both apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel were colonial, settler states created on the basis of the harsh dispossession of the land and birthright of the indigenous people. This is unblushingly documented in Israel’s case from the time of Herzl through Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan to Sharon et al. Both states preached and implemented a policy based on racial ethnicity; the sole claim of Jews in Israel and whites in South Africa to exclusive citizenship; monopolized rights in law regarding the ownership of land, property, business; superior access to education, health, social, sporting and cultural amenities, pensions and municipal services at the expense of the original indigenous population; the virtual monopoly membership of military and security forces, and privileged development along their own racial supremacist lines – even both countries marriage laws are designed to safeguard racial “purity”. The fact that the Palestinian minority within Israel is allowed to vote hardly redresses the injustice in all other matters of basic human rights. In any case those Palestinians allowed to stand for election to the Knesset do so on condition that they dare not question Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. (more…)

But this morning there’s no relief on the horizon for Palestinians hoping to ease their desperate housing shortage. Only a day earlier, employees of Jerusalem’s Israeli-run municipality handed house demolition orders to three more families in the Al-Bustan area of Silwan, which lies alongside Wadi Qadoum and abuts the walls of the Old City. All of the homes in Al-Bustan – 90 in total – are slated for demolition, despite ongoing negotiations between residents and City Hall. (more…)

After four pages filled with detailed charts of the number of grams and calories of every type of food to be permitted for consumption by Gaza residents (broken down by gender and age), comes this recommendation: “It is necessary to deal with the international community and the Palestinian Health Ministry to provide nutritional supplements (only some of the flour in Gaza is enriched) and to provide education about proper nutrition.” Printed in large letters at the end of the document is this admonition: “The stability of the humanitarian effort is critical for the prevention of the development of malnutrition.” (more…)

“We have been waiting for a permit from the Israelis to install a water network since 2000,” Dr. Amer Abu Farha, head of the village council told IPS. “But they refuse to give us one. We are also not allowed to dig deep wells or repair current wells. The Israeli settlements are allowed to dig wells far deeper than us, and to repair their other wells.” (more…)

Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children (more…)

[M]any settlers say the West Bank is Jewish land and if Palestinians want to live there they must abide by Israeli law. (more…)

Fine, then annex the West bank once and for all and give the Palestinians full rights as Israeli citizens. Oh, but this would end the Jewish demographic balance… Ok, then you have another choice: get out now.

Though Mr Deeb, 40, is not the self-pitying type, the reaction of his colleagues was understandable. For among the many thousands of Gazans bereaved by the war, few lives can have been as shattered as his. Alerted by phone, he had rushed back from work on the afternoon of 6 January to find the family home in Jabalya hit by two Israeli 120mm mortar shells in the same series of attacks that killed up to another 30 civilians outside the UN Al Fakhoura school a mere 100 metres away. The 11 dead included five of his six children, aged between four and 22, his wife, his mother, one of his brothers, two of his nephews, and a niece. (more…)

Former Gaza Division Commander Brig.-Gen Moshe “Chico” Tamir plans to appeal a military court decision on Thursday to demote him to the rank of colonel for permitting his underage son to drive an IDF dune buggy and attempting to cover-up a subsequent accident. (more…)

But for participating in the massacre of 1,400 Palestinians—now that’s a whole different story.

AP Edits Palestinian Suffering Out of Obama’s Speech (more…)

The security cabinet decided on Wednesday that any opening of crossings into the Gaza Strip would be linked to progress in the case of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit. (more…)

Yeah, and the rockets are tied to the 10,000 kidnapped Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli forces seized four Palestinian children during a raid the West Bank village of Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem early on Wednesday morning. (more…)

The years of closed borders has severely crippled Gaza’s health sector, denying patients vital medicines, replacement parts for hospital equipment, access to outside medical care, and preventing the entrance of outside expertise. Moreover, Gaza’s civilian infrastructure was devastated during Israel’s three week assault on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), making the treatment of patients within the tiny coastal territory near impossible. (more…)

[Israeli] military sources said that Monday’s incident was the most complicated one the soldiers have had to deal with since the end of Operation Cast Lead. (more…)

Israeli authorities ordered a Palestinian to demolish his own home in the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday. (more…)

Salah claimed that 120 mosques and dozens of churches have been razed since the State of Israel’s establishment, adding that new neighborhoods were established at sites previously used as cemeteries. (more…)

“We feel proud that we found a way to defy the situation,” said Najar. “It is difficult, but we must survive. When people see this collective punishment against them they have to find ways to live their lives.” (more…)

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a report confirming that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (more…)

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…)

“Our opinion is supportive of Obama’s interpretation of the road map, and that is, a freeze is a freeze,” Mr. Nir says. “A total freeze applies to everything, pending a final settlement of the conflict which will determine what Israel annexes.” (more…)

American “peace” organizations are no better than Israeli “peace” organizations. Look how it’s not even disputed that Israel will annex Palestinian land in any final settlement… I bet they will call it a “generous offer” when Israel decides to annex only the Ariel, Gush Etzion and Jerusalem settlement blocs as Israel has always said it will.

The so-called Israeli Regional Committee for Construction and Planning in Haifa, issued orders for the evacuation and demolishing 25 Arab stores in the Market area, near the main road of Wadi Ara, in Um Al Fahim Arab town. (more…)

He said about 150 Palestinians, some as young as 14, were bound, blindfolded and detained at the village school during the operation, which lasted from 3am to 3pm. He was told it was aimed at preventing village youths throwing stones against nearby settler roads. It was clear many of the people detained had done nothing wrong, but they were held to gather intelligence, he said. (more…)

Lt.-Col. Avinoam Stolevitch, commander of the 13th Battalion, told Army Radio that future assaults of this sort would put Hamas at risk of a second Operation Cast Lead. (more…)

One bill sought to prohibit marking the day Israel declared its independence as a day of mourning. A second prohibits negating the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The third bill would have required Israeli citizens, including Arabs of Palestinian descent, to sign oaths of loyalty to the state, its flag and national anthem, and to perform military or civil service. (more…)

Israeli forces on Monday killed four gunmen from Gaza who attacked an army patrol along the Gaza border in one of the most audacious raids since Israel ended its military campaign in the Palestinian coastal strip in January. (more…)

When has Isabel Kershner ever described Israeli attacks as “audacious”? Israeli attacks are always “anguished retaliation” in the Times…

GW Bush, Rose Garden, 24 June 2002: “It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve… My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security.”

BH Obama, Cairo University, 4 June 2009: “They endure the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable… The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.” (more…)

A Palestinian protestor was killed and another sustained wounds after being shot by Border Guard forces during an anti-security fence protest in Naalin, Palestinian sources said. (more…)

Palestinians families who suffered property damage during riots that followed 2008 evacuation of ‘disputed house’ to receive total of $63,000 restitution payments. (more…)

Of course, I didn’t expect much, but I found Obama’s brief remarks yesterday about the Palestinians extremely disingenuous and misleading. After pontificating to the audience in Cairo on the Holocaust (as if he were addressing a crowd of affirmed anti-Semites), Obama said the following about Palestine:

“[I]t is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation.”

Suffered in pursuit of a homeland? They had a homeland—and it was stolen from them in 1948. Let’s call a spade a spade. This was ethnic cleansing, not the “pain of dislocation” as Obama euphemises.

And why did Obama not mention Israel specifically in relation with the Palestinians’ suffering? Instead, your average viewer in the United States is justified in coming away with the impression that the occupation is prosecuted by some nameless evil. Everyone talks about a change in rhetoric from Washington, but I don’t see it. When it comes to the Middle East, the ritual transition of power called democracy in the U.S. causes a mere fluctuation in the degree of slavish support for the Zionist project.

Rabin, who had commanded the troops during the war and was about to head to Washington as Israel’s ambassador, did not want to return the West Bank to Jordan. He looked for a way to overcome the demographic problem: “We are not going to relocate half a million Arabs,” he said. Eshkol was dubious. “Will the new state have an army?” he asked. Rabin said it would have a police force, not an army. “Who determines that?” asked Eshkol. Rabin answered: “We do.” (more…)

Israeli Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a leading “three-state” advocate who was also featured at the Jerusalem conference in May, claimed that “the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is too small to create two viable states”. (more…)

The legendary rocker and co-founder of Pink Floyd says he would give a concert in a flash if Israel’s West Bank wall is torn down. Roger Waters made the promise Tuesday during a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp that is hemmed in by the separation barrier’s tall slabs of cement. The 65-year-old co-wrote Pink Floyd’s iconic “The Wall” album and performed music from it in 1990 at the site where the Berlin Wall once stood. Waters had harsh words for the West Bank barrier, which Israel says was built as a defense against Palestinian militants. The musician says the wall amounts to an oppressive grab of Palestinian land and that he hopes that “this thing, this awful thing, is destroyed soon.” (more…)

He added one point not often made: that it was hard to see a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem if Israel did not turn over the Jordan Valley to be part of a future Palestinian state. Refugees wanting to return might have nowhere else to go, he argued. (more…)

“During April four Palestinians, including two boys, were killed by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and another 145 were injured by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The number of Palestinians injured rose by 40 percent compared with the 2008 monthly average,” the report says. “We have noticed a significant increase in the incidents of both settler and soldier violence against Palestinian civilians since the new Israeli government took power at the beginning of the year,” says Ronen Shimoni from B’Tselem. “This is probably related to an increase in settlement activity in the West Bank as the rightist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to establish facts on the ground,” Shimoni told IPS. (more…)

Two founding members of what was once the largest U.S. Muslim charity were each sentenced to 65 years in prison Wednesday for funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (more…)

Khan: Leading governments have been distracted by the recession. Humanitarian crises, like in Darfur and Palestine, do not get the attention they deserve. The poorest are hardest hit by the economic crisis, but all the thought and investment goes to shore up the economy and the banking system in the West. Human rights are put on a backburner. (more…)

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekoro. (more…)

To visit their hundreds of relatives and friends living just a few hundred meters away in Hizma, located on the northern outskirts of the capital, members of the Khatib family must pass through a nearby checkpoint, thus crossing from area C (under full Israeli control) to the Palestinian Authority. However, family members are forbidden from moving freely within Pisgat Ze’ev, and are in essence “prisoners inside their own home.” According to them, any family member found outside the family compound will be sent to jail by Israeli authorities. (more…)

Carrying a white flag, Rawhiyya led a group of women and children out of the compound and into the village in the early hours of 13 January, according to residents and human rights groups.

She was shot in the head with a single bullet, independent testimonies confirm, and took 12 hours to die after a medic who tried to reach her also came under fire from Israeli forces. (more…)

There is ample reason for skepticism about whether Obama will really dare to stand up to Netanyahu. American politicians have about as much appetite for confrontation with Israel as they do for supporting world communism. (more…)

“An old man sat with his back to the village — he could not bear to watch it burn,” said Yisrael Cohen, a Jewish militia officer, recalling the conquest of an Arab village. “From a burning courtyard a young boy came running to me laughing; he wanted to play. He came up and I took him into my arms and he hugged me. What will I do with him, I thought. It was such a contradiction to what was going on around us.” (more…)

The New York Times is such a master at disguising Israeli crimes in a cloak of romanticism and feel-good nostalgia. You really have to give them credit. I mean, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians began months before the Arab armies invaded — entire families were killed, women raped, villages razed, hundreds of thousands forcibly expelled (not “evacuated” as the article claims) from their homes. But all this is irrelevant to the NYT… We are meant to empathize with this poor man who struggles with the difficult task of ethnic cleansing.

Israel allows only food, medicine and detergent into the Gaza Strip. Thousands of items, including vital products for everyday activity, are forbidden. Altogether only 30 to 40 select commercial items are now allowed into the Gaza Strip, compared to 4,000 that had been approved before the closure Israel imposed on Gaza following the abduction of Gilad Shalit, according to merchants and human rights activists. The number of items changes according to what is determined by The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. COGAT has refused the PA representative’s request for an updated list of the items permitted into Gaza in writing, and passes the information only via the telephone. Gaza merchants are forbidden to import canned goods, plastic sheeting, toys and books, although the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other aid organizations are permitted to bring them into the strip. (more…)

Hatim Abdul-Qader, Jerusalem Affairs advisor to the Palestinian Prime Minister, stated that the Ateret Cohanim Zionist group is planning, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality, to build homes for Jewish settlers on top of Palestinians homes demolished by the municipality. (more…)

Motorola, Caterpillar, Veolia, the Tesco supermarket chain, and other companies across the world that do business with Israel are suffering losses due to a global boycott in support of Palestinian rights. (more…)

The expulsion from Be’er Sheva in 1948 was enough for her. Now she lives by herself in what used to be the family goat pen (the goats fled or were killed: One hen survived and is still alive and pecking in the soil of the goat pen). She stores some of her possessions in a rusty bus that they dragged to the site a long time ago. She heats up tea on a bonfire. “You can see the ruins of the house, you can’t see the ruins in our soul,” says Hussein al Aaidy, a man in his 50s. He was a Fatah activist, a prisoner in Israel from the 1970s who was freed during the prisoner exchange deal in 1985. After his release, he worked at several jobs, so as to be able to build a house for his family. (more…)

Wrong. Instead, they went with a poetic Getty image: little children peaking over a little wall. How enchanting! (more…)

Israel has found a cheap and easy way to get rid of its waste, much of it hazardous: dump it into the West Bank. A few Palestinians can be bought, the rest are in no position to complain. “Israel has been dumping waste, including hazardous and toxic waste, into the West Bank for years as a cheaper and easier alternative to processing it properly in Israel at appropriate hazardous waste management sites,” Palestinian Environmental Authority (PEA) deputy director Jamil Mtoor told IPS. (more…)

During a Paris conference on gender and sexuality Friday Horowitz said, “I call on the Palestinian Authority from this conference to stop persecuting homosexuals. This situation is intolerable.” (more…)

He then added, “But Israel’s four-decades of brutality in the occupied territories is delightfully tolerable… Oh and there is also no such thing as homophobia in Israeli society. Thank you.”

Don’t you just love how the Israeli “left” never mentions the IDF’s practice of blackmailing Palestinian homosexuals with exposure if they refuse to collaborate?

Umm Abdullah cannot remember the last time she was able to feed meat to her eight children. She does know that for the past week the single meal she cooked for them each day consisted only of lentils. And that on one day, she had received aid coupons from the United Nations, which she subsequently sold to buy tomatoes and eggplant at the local market. (more…)

Today marks the 61st anniversary of the war that led to the creation of the state of Israel and which expedited the Yishuv’s plans for population “transfer”: a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from region. By the end of the war, approximately 750,000 Palestinian had either been forcibly expelled from their homes or fled the fighting. Today, the 1948 refugees remain stateless — scattered across the region from the squalid camps of South Lebanon to the ruins of Baghdad — and their descendants have expanded the number of registered Palestinian refugees into the millions.

Statelessness is violent. Stateless people have no rights that are actively enforced or protected. They have no embassy looking out for their welfare and are subject to any number of restrictions imposed by the host governments in the countries where they reside. That Israel has never considered the possibility of addressing the Palestinian refugee problem in any meaningful way has perpetuated the refugees’ plight and deepened their suffering. It is one of history’s great injustices and a lingering trauma that has defined the political identity of generations of Palestinians.

I believe that anyone who celebrates the creation and establishment of their own country simultaneously celebrates the injustices committed in order to make their state possible. When Americans celebrate July 4th, they tacitly support Manifest Destiny and the genocide of the Native Americans. Likewise, when Israelis celebrate their independence, they tacitly support the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

61 years of exile; 61 years without justice.

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

Poll: 58% of Israeli Jews back two-state solution (more…)

Oh yeah… and 82% of Israelis think Israel should have killed more Palestinians in Gaza during the slaughter there earlier this year.