Press TV reports: A senior Iranian official says Egyptian support for Israel makes Cairo accountable for any crime committed in the Gaza Strip. “Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing and tightened the siege (of Gaza),” said Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts, at Tehran’s Friday prayers. Tel Aviv placed the Gaza Strip under a blockade after the democratically-elected Palestinian government of Hamas took control
Press TV reports: Nearly one thousand Palestinian children are imprisoned by the Israeli regime, a spokesman of Palestinian prisoners’ affairs ministry says.The spokesman said Israeli forces have detained at least eight thousands of Palestinian children since the start of the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) in 2000. About one thousand of them are still in Israeli detention facilities, he added. Marking World Children’s Day, hundreds of Palestinians children on Thursday rallied
Unemployment. I thought I would never – ever- experience that. I had great Ivy League degrees, five languages, plenty of connections with the high and mighty and I was darn good at what I was doing. And then, one day, I got fired. Not for not doing my job, but for doing it. Doing it too well in fact. That story still cannot be told, but I will sum it
By Silvia Cattori via Information Clearing House Standing straight and tall, an impressive and deeply introspective man, Sami El Haj walks with a limp and the help of a walking stick. Neither laughter nor smiles light up the refined face of this man, old before his time. A deep sadness pervades him. He was 32 years old when, in December 2001, his life, like that of tens of thousands of
By Jonathan Turley, Lead Counsel to Dr. Sami Al-Arian In a set back for the government, Dr. Sami Al-Arian was granted bail by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema today. Over the objections of the government and the pre-trial services, Judge Brinkema agreed that Dr. Al-Arian was not a flight risk and no danger to the community. The government has suggested that it may now block release by having Immigration officials hold
By Alexander Cockburn for The Nation (thanks to M. for this article) There are few prospects in the justice system so grimly awful as when the feds decide never to let go. Rebuffed in their persecutions of some target by juries, or by contrary judges, they shift ground, betray solemn agreements, dream up new stratagems to exhaust their victims, drive them into bankruptcy, despair and even to suicide. They have
Jerusalem – The US political author and critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein was denied entry to the Jewish state on Friday, his lawyer said. Finkelstein landed at Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv in the early morning and was told by a representative of the ministry of interior that he would not be allowed into the country on ‘security’ grounds, attorney Michael Sfard told dpa. ‘This usually means a
It will be two years this June since the daring capture of the Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit by the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in the course of an attack on an IDF position near Gaza. Following this embarrassing incident, the Israelis tried everything they could, including the mass murder of civilians in Gaza, to force Hamas to release Shalit, but to no avail. Numerous diplomatic
Aijaz Ahmad: Wall meant to partition Sadr City’s residents is population control ahead of elections As violence continued in Baghdad’s Sadr City district on Friday, attention turned to the wall US forces are building through the neighborhood–a wall that is reminiscent of the one Israel built around the Palestinian territories, as well as US military tactics used during the Vietnam War. The Real News analyst Aijaz Ahmad says that the
source: Lenin’s Tomb (an excellent blog, check it out!) As Israel continues to build new colonies in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers stationed in the West Bank city of Hebron have confessed to numerous atrocities against Palestinian civilians. The full testimonies can be read here. Sometimes, what is striking is the pettiness of the causes that leads Israeli soldiers to behave like this. For example, one IDF soldier tried to
(re-printed by kind permission from the Prisoner of Starvation’s excellent blog) A couple months ago, I looked at 20/20’s exposé of the Bodies exhibits that are popping up all over the country. I didn’t think that the sordid alliance of corrupt officials of a repressive government and the greedy corporations buying bodies of tortured/executed political prisoners and putting on display could be topped in terms of macabre, but I was
By Oren Ben-Dor I have recently signed a petition that condemns the constant attempts to silence Gilad Atzmon (photo). The same petition also objects to the constant attempts to discredit and hinder the website that hosts, among others, Gilad’s views–Peacepalestine–one of the more enlightening internet platforms on Palestine. It would be an understatement to say that debating Gilad’s voice is supremely important. No thinking person could fail to be stimulated
by Jonathan Cook in Nazareth for Counterpunch Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicized remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for the Holocaust — was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip. More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli army’s longer-term strategy towards the Palestinians in the
The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? By Vicky Pelaez Global Research, March 10, 2008 El Diario-La Prensa, New York Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic
If anyone had any illusions that the United States were part of civilized mankind the Bush administration took the additional step of officially seeking the death penalty for 6 Gitmo prisoners. It’s not like the death penalty is anything new in the USA, nor is the USA the only country in the world which still has this uncivilized and useless practice (Japan, which otherwise appears to be generally civilized, just
Just listen to this loony: This is not just some smiling lunatic speaking, no, this is nothing less than Yona Metzger the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, i.e. the head of the largest most numerous group of religious Jews in Israel. And that gentleman calmly proposes to commit a major crime against humanity (deportation). Interestingly, in the Haaretz article about this interview the editors only report on Metzger’s crazy proposals,
Prison interrogation techniques in Israel: Now you are paralyzed, as we promised by Gideon LevyGlobal Research, December 14, 2007Haaretz “We have to make you do a little sports,” the Shin Bet interrogator said, launching four successive days of questioning accompanied by brutal physical torture. The result: Luwaii Ashqar can no longer stand on his feet. He sits in his wheelchair, dressed in a fashionable quasi-military suit, super-elegant, new Caterpillar-brand shoes
While terrorists can wound and disrupt our democracy, only we can kill it By Chris Hedges A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy. If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law could curb the despotism of the Bush administration,
Democracy Now! reports: On Visit to France, Donald Rumsfeld Hit with Lawsuit for Ordering, Authorizing Torture The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit. This is the fifth time Rumsfeld has been charged with direct involvement in torture since 9/11. We speak with two attorneys with the plaintiffs — Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner and Jeanne Sulzer of the
