via Israeli Rights groups sue Army over Illegal Sniping at unarmed Gaza Protesters (Video)
Category: Israel
WATCH: The settlers’ secret to coexistence in the West Bank
“If I need something fixed, an Arab comes and I host him,” one settler told Avi.
“I don’t have a lot interaction with them, except for when I’m shopping,” another said. “With the store staff and sometimes with the other shoppers.”
A orthodox seminary student said he sometimes even says hello to the Palestinian janitors who work at his yeshiva.
Some might say these relationships sound a lot like colonialism, but these Israeli settlers would argue otherwise.
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 2 May 2018
Shooting practice at an Israeli school: targets set up by police depicted figures wearing the Palestinian kuffiyeh headdress.
Israeli police planned to teach children how to shoot at Palestinians as part of a training exercise in a school.
The incident in the Menashe Regional Council, near Haifa in northern present-day Israel, was brought to light in recent days when Palestinian citizens of Israel took photos of what was happening.
Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament from the Joint Arab List, is demanding an investigation into the training sponsored by the Israeli police and the education ministry, which he said “prepares students psychologically to kill Arabs.”
One photo shows a person – most of their body blurred with a black marker – using a paintball gun to fire at cutouts of men and women wearing checkered kuffiyeh headscarves that are associated with Palestinians.
via Israeli police teach schoolchildren how to shoot Palestinians | The Electronic Intifada
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a notorious warmonger, serial liar and supremacist racialist who used to lead the closest thing Israel has to a fascist party until parties even more extreme got elected to parliament, is attempting to bamboozle the clueless Trump into getting on a war footing with Iran.
via Netanyahu: Don’t look here where we’re shooting children, look over there at Iran
Over the past month, Israel has slaughtered almost 50 unarmed Palestinians protesting the theft of their land and the oppression under which they live. Jakob Reimann explains.
via The Latest Gaza Massacre: ‘There Is No Better Life But For Dead People’ – New Matilda
The demonstrations, entering their fifth-week, have left a total of 45 Palestinians dead, with a reported 5,500 injured. There have been no reports of Israeli fatalities.
For years the Israeli censorship office, as it is called, has used tactics to try to punish journalists covering Israel’s occupation of Palestine. For example, Israel threatened to close down the BBC for its airing of a documentary on Israel’s nuclear weapons. Israel is now threatening to close down the offices of Al Jazeera for doing their job: reporting critically on Israel’s denial of freedom. The targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza is an extension of this: in the eyes of Israel’s military establishment there ‘are no innocents in Gaza’ including journalists.
At least 40 unarmed Palestinians — including two journalists — have been shot and killed by Israeli sharpshooters and snipers in the vicinity of the Gaza border fence since March 30, including two journalists. At least 1,500 others were wounded by sniper gunfire, according to the United Nations data from earlier this week.
via You’re far more likely to be killed protesting in Gaza than firing a rocket | +972 Magazine
More than 40 Palestinians have now been killed by Israeli fire in the March of Return protests.
Israel says many of the dead and wounded have links to the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza.
But the ongoing deaths in Gaza did not dominate debate in Israel this week.
What many were talking about was the decision of Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman.
While Israel was slaughtering 11 children a day in Gaza in summer of 2014, B’nai B’rith Europe sent a “solidarity mission” to the soldiers doing the killing. The Israel lobby group is now giving a “Human Rights Prize” to a high-profile EU official. (via Facebook)
A high-profile European Union official says she is “deeply honored” to receive an award from a group that supports Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and war crimes in Gaza.
Katharina von Schnurbein is receiving the “Human Rights Prize” from the European branch of B’nai B’rith, an international Jewish communal organization.
via Supporters of Israel’s war crimes give “Human Rights Prize” to EU official | The Electronic Intifada
What the world new but governments denied it was about oil (ODT)
April 24 marks the 15th anniversary of my initial entry into Baghdad as the senior oil advisor to retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, our US government civilian leader in Iraq. It was the beginning of my six plus years in Iraq working on the oil sector and denying the allegation that the Iraq war had an oil agenda. I can no longer refute such an allegation.
Was there an oil agenda for the Iraq war? If you had asked me that question four years ago, I would have said no, absolutely not. And, I said no on national television in 2014.
via Iraqi Oil for Israel? 15 Years later, new Light on the Iraq War
WHEN SNIPERS ARE VICTIMS OF BAD PRESS
Ahmed Abu Hussein was shot by Israeli snipers during a protest near the Gaza-Israel border two weeks ago. He was standing at a distance from the fence and was wearing a PRESS jacket.
Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Hussein is seen receiving medical treatment after being shot by an Israeli sniper during a protest on the Gaza border, April 13, 2018.Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Hussein is seen receiving medical treatment after being shot by an Israeli sniper during a protest on the Gaza border, April 13, 2018.
Ahmed Abu Hussein, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza who was shot by Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, died of his wounds on Wednesday at Tel Hashomer Hospital in central Israel. Abu Hussein is the second Gazan journalist to be killed by IDF snipers over the past month, and one of 40 Palestinians killed during the Great Return March protests.
via Second Palestinian journalist dies of wounds from IDF sniper fire | +972 Magazine
A soldier who killed a Palestinian teen has been praised as “excellent” and “conscientious” by an Israeli judge, who sentenced him to a mere nine months in prison.
This conclusion to the trial of Ben Dery for the cold-blooded killing of 17-year-old Nadim Siam Nuwara is another all too predictable episode of how Israel’s military investigation system whitewashes crimes against Palestinians.
“Despite clear and overwhelming video, spatial and sound forensic analysis showing Ben Dery intentionally killed Nuwara, he was charged with a lesser crime and a wilful killing was whitewashed into an accident,” Brad Parker, international advocacy officer for Defense for Children International Palestine, told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday.
“The lenient sentence announced today is not surprising and illustrates how pervasive and entrenched denial perpetuates impunity even where video evidence shows Israeli forces intentionally killing children.”
via Killer of Palestinian teen praised as “excellent” by Israeli judge | The Electronic Intifada
Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich published a tweet on 21 April calling for a Palestinian child prisoner to be shot.
Smotrich wrote that he was “very sad” that Ahed Tamimi is in jail because she “should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap.”
“That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life,” the lawmaker added, according to the newspaper Haaretz.
Smotrich is a member of the extreme right-wing nationalist party Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home).
He has advocated a plan for the expulsion of Palestinians that a noted Israeli Holocaust expert has described as potentially genocidal.
That expert also said that Smotrich’s values resemble those of the Nazi SS.
Smotrich was responding to Israeli journalist Yinon Magal, who wrote, according to Haaretz, “I’m watching this clip again and I am so glad that Tamimi is still in jail. Sometimes, it’s good that the mill of justice grinds slowly.”
via Israeli lawmaker stands by call to shoot Ahed Tamimi | The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 24 April 2018
This video shows Israeli occupation soldiers celebrating as they fire weapons at Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Madama, near Nablus, on 13 April.
It also catches them discussing the use of live ammunition against Palestinians who pose no threat, before censoring themselves because the exchange is being filmed.
via Video: Soldiers celebrate as they shoot Palestinians in West Bank | The Electronic Intifada
WHEN THE SNIPER BECOMES THE VICTIM
Education Minister Naftali Bennett claims 15-year-old Mohammed Ayoub wouldn’t have been shot dead by an Israeli sniper if he had been at school. Bennett’s comments reflect a reality in which Israeli soldiers kill with impunity.
via Blaming a child for the sniper’s bullet that killed him | +972 Magazine
But if, as many suspect, the alleged killers are agents with Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, they may never be found.
Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, say the engineer was assassinated.
Why is the European Union pretending not to see how Israel is deliberately killing civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip?
On Friday, Israel killed four more unarmed protesters, including 14-year-old Muhammad Ayyoub, and injured hundreds more.
This brought to more than 30 the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in its violent suppression of the Great March of Return rallies that began on 30 March and are planned to continue until Nakba Day, the 15 May commemoration of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The victims include four children and a journalist.
Thousands more have been injured, more than 1,600 by live ammunition that has caused devastating injuries likely to leave them with lifelong disabilities.
Two weeks ago, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor warned Israeli leaders that they could end up on trial for this violence against civilians.
But as I told The Real News on Friday, the coddling and rewards Israel receives, particularly from the United States and the European Union, means that Israeli leaders feel completely immune and are continuing to carry out these killings.
via How EU pretends not to see Israel’s calculated slaughter in Gaza | The Electronic Intifada
The US State Department doesn’t know whether there are civilians in Gaza or not.
This is terrifying – a new low for a department that may soon be led by CIA director Mike Pompeo – a supporter of torture.
The State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert was questioned by Said Arikat of the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds on 10 April: “Today, the Israeli minister of defense, [Avigdor] Lieberman, said – told The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper, that there are no civilians in Gaza. Do you have any comment on that?”
In one of the most disturbing responses given in recent memory by a State Department spokesperson, Nauert responded by saying, “I do not. I do not.”
Asked to look into whether there are civilians in Gaza, Nauert responded, “If I have an answer, I will give it to you, certainly.”
For the record, children comprise roughly half of Gaza’s population.
via US fails to acknowledge Gaza has civilians | The Electronic Intifada
An Israeli general has confirmed that when snipers stationed along Israel’s boundary with Gaza shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.
In a radio interview, Brigadier-General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel describes how a sniper identifies the “small body” of a child and is given authorization to shoot.
Fogel’s statements could be used as evidence of intent if Israeli leaders are ever tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
On Friday, an Israeli sniper shot dead 14-year-old Muhammad Ibrahim Ayyoub.
via Snipers ordered to shoot children, Israeli general confirms | The Electronic Intifada
Prominent Likud Party member of the Israeli parliament Oren Hazan, a former casino manager in Bulgaria, said,
“[She is] a Jewish Israeli, who on the one hand cynically uses her birthplace to advance her career and on the other is proud of the fact that she managed to avoid enlisting in the IDF [euphemism for the Israeli Army]. She’s an actress, but she is unworthy of any honor in the State of Israel . . . Sweetness can come from strength: I call on Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Shas) to rescind Portman’s Israeli citizenship. She left Israel at age four, and has no real connection to the State.”
Hazan denies that there are any Palestinians, and is notorious for harassing families of Palestinians going to see imprisoned relatives (some Palestinians have been imprisoned for writing poetry or for Facebook posts, while several hundred children are being held for acts of protest against the Israeli military). He told one bus full of relatives, that the garbage they called loved ones would never see the light of day:
4th Week
Ma’an News Agency | – – Gaza City (Ma’an) — Israeli forces shot and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian protester in Gaza on Friday afternoon, the second Palestinian to be killed during Friday’s
Muhammad Ibrahim Ayyoub, 14, shot in the head east of Jabaliya in northern Gaza on Friday, is the fourth child among the more than 30 Palestinians killed during protests since the rallies began on 30 March.
Israel kills child and crushes bones in Gaza
Some 70 percent of the Gazan population are refugees, meaning they, their parents, or their grandparents fled or were expelled from towns, villages, and cities inside the territory that became Israel in 1948.
Speaking to +972 Magazine before the first day of protest last month, one of the ‘Great Return March’ organizers, Hasan al-Kurd, explained that the plan was to set up camps between between 700-1000 meters from Israel’s border fence, outside the Israeli army’s unilaterally imposed buffer zone. In the weeks leading up to Nakba Day, there would be weekly marches as well as bicycle races and other events.
By mid-May, the Return March organizers hope that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will join.
via Israeli soldiers open fire on Gaza protesters fourth week in a row | +972 Magazine
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry explained Leclerc was turned back over his support of the pro-Palestinian boycott movement, which was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The decision not to let him into the country was made for a series of reasons in connection to his activity in the BDS movement and his promotion of boycotts against Israel,” reads the statement.
When Israeli Jews and Palestinians don’t all support their State they are threatened
Thousands of Israelis, Palestinians mark Memorial Day together | +972 Magazine
and
Are Israeli Jews beginning to accept the right of return?
“Anti-Semitism is distinct from other forms of racism because instead of looking down on other races as inferior, it directs the venom upwards, towards an imaginary and evil elite. The “evil” — ever malleable historically as Bolshevism, “rootless” cosmopolitanism, capitalism, globalism, Zionism — has a new potency in this anxious, reactionary moment.”Julie Szego
I don’t know whether Julie Szego is Jewish or not but she certainly seems lost. To her if you do or don’t mention Jews your anti-Semitic. If you do or don’t mention Israel your anti-Semitic, If you are a Jew or aren’t a Jew your possibly anti-Semitic. Apparantly Netanyahu like Corbyn is anti-Semitic but neither know they are but in Corbyn’s case it’s inexcusable, in Netanyahu he’s just confused.
As my father married a Shitzka it make me fully half or just my shadow anti-Semitic? Jews don’t recognize me Nazis do and I ‘m deplored at what the State Israel is currently doing while being able to say some of my best friends are Jews without fear of lying. What does Julie Szego say? “I don’t fear for the Jews. I fear for the world.” She says utterly nothing from her” I’m lost and alone” apartheid position of them and me which according to her makes me part of the World and her lamentably not. (OD comment)
“Criticism of Israeli use of live arms has come from within the country as well. On Thursday a group of former Israeli soldiers, members of the sniper teams, wrote in an open letter “we are filled with shame and sorrow… Instructing snipers to shoot to kill unarmed demonstrators who pose no danger to human life is another product of the occupation and military rule over millions of Palestinian people, as well as of our country’s callous leadership, and derailed moral path.”
Update: 6:35 pm
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza is reporting that 701 people have been injured during the Return March protests. 17 of those injured are said to be medical personnel.
Update: 5:30 pm
The Palestinian Ministry of Health is reporting that over 500 Palestinians have been injured during today’s protests, 122 by live fire.
via Israeli soldiers open fire on Gaza protesters third week in a row | +972 Magazine
Smearing Corbyn
The Jewish Labour Movement is one of the main organizations within Labour promoting claims that the party under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn has a major “problem with anti-Semitism.”
The group’s parliamentary chairperson Luciana Berger kicked off the current wave of the “Labour anti-Semitism” furore.
Rose herself has been running trainings on anti-Semitism to local Labour groups around the UK since 2016.
But many Jewish members of the Labour party do not accept the controversial definition of anti-Semitism offered in these trainings, which conflates hatred of Jews with criticism of Israel, or its state ideology, Zionism.
via Jewish Labour Movement worked with Israeli embassy spy | The Electronic Intifada
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently published an updated report on international arms transfers, showing Israel’s numbers continuing to grow. While SIPRI only tracks the sales of leading companies in the arms industry — and there are many more sales, deals, and trainings that go unrepresented in these figures — the statistics give us a glimpse into the trends of Israel’s military exports.
Israel’s arms exports: A decade of war and new markets | +972 Magazine
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via
The legs of two Palestinians were amputated on Wednesday after Israel refused to allow them to leave the blockaded Gaza Strip for treatment.
Human rights groups had appealed to the Israeli authorities to allow for the transfer of Yusif Karnaz, 20, and Muhammad al-Ajouri, 17, to a hospital in the occupied West Bank for surgery that would save their limbs.
via Palestinians lose legs as Israel punishes them by denying medical care | The Electronic Intifada
IT TAKES ALMOST 2 YEARS TO DEFEAT A LIAR WHO THEN SIMPLY WALKS AWAY IN SILENCE. A TYPICAL AND DAILY TACTIC BY ANDREW BOLT A MURDOCH MAN DO
The former Israel lobbyist and high-profile Labour lawmaker Ruth Smeeth has deleted a statement from her website which alleged anti-Semitism in Labour.
In one of the most high profile instances of the supposed “anti-Semitism crisis” in the UK’s main opposition party, Smeeth in June 2016 claimed she had been “attacked by a Momentum activist and Jeremy Corbyn supporter who used traditional anti-Semitic slurs to attack me for being part of a ‘media conspiracy.’”
Activist Marc Wadsworth had in fact neither said nor implied anything about Jews. Neither did he use the word “conspiracy.”
Smeeth did not reply to a request for comment. You can read the deleted statement in full below.
via Labour Israel lobbyist deletes anti-Semitic “conspiracy” claims | The Electronic Intifada
There is every reason to believe that Israel was behind today’s airstrike on a Syrian military base, and not the United States, as Syria at first claimed.
A Palestinian journalist covering the Great March of Return in Gaza died Saturday after being wounded by live Israeli ammunition Friday.
via Israeli Snipers assassinate one Palestinian Journalist, Wound 3 others | Informed Comment
I am generally wary of making any predictions but here’s how I see this playing out. The Israeli army will eventually come out with a statement about how it cannot reach any definitive conclusions about who shot Yasser Murtaja, or why he was shot, but it will be able to definitively conclude that the Israeli army doesn’t target journalists — so he surely was mistakenly hit. A tragedy that can be blamed entirely on Hamas. (Hamas is always to blame.)
But Murtaja was not the only journalist shot by Israeli snipers that day. Shooting one wrong person could conceivably be an accident. Six journalists shot on the same day suggests something more sinister.
Israel issues the Death Penalty for Civil Disobedience
It is impossible to know what will happen along the border with Gaza in the coming weeks. But one thing is certain: Israel will continue to respond with brutality and arrogance in the face of Palestinian nonviolent civil disobedience.
via Brutality is the only answer Israel has to Gaza’s civil disobedience | +972 Magazine
Israeli snipers kill at least seven Palestinians, wound over 300 others during the eighth day of the ‘Gaza Return March.’ Protesters attempt to block soldiers’ line of sight by burning tires.
via Israeli snipers open fire on Gaza protests second week in a row | +972 Magazine
Killing kids Israel claims it’s their right of defense
Israeli troops have shot dead seven Palestinian protesters and wounded at least 200 along the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinian medical officials say, raising the death toll to 27 in the week-long disturbances.
Key points1) 27 Palestinians were killed over the past week and at least 200 wounded Friday by Israeli gunfire
2) Israel has come under international criticism for its use of force
Israel said it acted in self defence and that many killed were militantsThey said the demonstrators, including two teenage boys aged 16 and 17, were killed at protest sites along the frontier during a round of daily demonstrations that began on March 30 and are known as “The Great March of Return”.
Andrew Bolt approves of this.
A total of 31 Palestinians have now been shot dead since the start of the protests on March 30, when tens of thousands took to the border area with Israel, demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
via Palestinian journalist dies after being shot by Israeli forces | News | Al Jazeera
“many 1000s of Gazans are ready to die as martyrs rather than submit to Israel’s policy of slow death; Israeli snipers will continue 2 kill Palestinian demonstrators in cold blood; US gov’t & news media have given Israel a green light.”
The US is fine with “rebels” like Al-Qaeda “protesting” in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed Palestinians protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are “inciting violence.”
During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent—by any means necessary—under the old pretext of “self-defense.”
On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.
Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.
Even the BBC, which is not generally known to report fairly on Palestine, noted: “The first to die was Omar Samour, 27 – a Palestinian farmer killed in Israeli shelling as he worked his land near Khan Younis early on Friday, before the protests began.”
Yet, according to Israel, this farmer was a “terrorist infiltrator,” the lexicon which Israel uses to whitewash its extrajudicial assassinations.
via Israeli violence against Palestinians will never end as a result of UN & US hypocrisy — RT Op-ed
Both before and after the confrontations, senior officials publicly said that soldiers stationed along the barrier that separates Gaza and Israel had orders to target “instigators” and those who approach the border. However, the Israeli government presented no evidence that rock-throwing and other violence by some demonstrators seriously threatened Israeli soldiers across the border fence. The high number of deaths and injuries was the foreseeable consequence of granting soldiers leeway to use lethal force outside of life-threatening situations in violation of international norms, coupled with the longstanding culture of impunity within the Israeli army for serious abuses.
He was detained during a 10 December protest in Bethlehem against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
According to Abdel Raouf, at least 10 soldiers rushed the crowd of protesters and grabbed him.
“One of the soldiers threw me to the ground, and another began beating me on my legs,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “I couldn’t walk for a month because I felt so much pain in my leg from the beating.”
Following his detention, the minor was brought to an interrogation facility in Israel’s Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Like all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gush Etzion is illegal under international law.
Hours of interrogations with Israeli authorities followed, Abdel Raouf told The Electronic Intifada, as Israeli officials accused Abdel Raouf of throwing stones at Israeli forces during the protest.
It was five hours before his father was called and told his whereabouts. Palestinian parents are frequently denied the right to accompany their children during interrogations conducted by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank.
13-year-old “leaves hell” of Israeli detention | The Electronic Intifada
This weekend in Gaza, Palestinians buried their dead after Israeli soldiers killed at least 18 Palestinian protesters and wounded hundreds more on Friday. About 30,000 Palestinians had gathered near the fenced barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, both protesting the stifling blockade on their territory and mourning the dispossession of their ancestral lands at the hands of the Israeli state.
As in many other Palestinian protests that take place in the occupied territories, most protesters were unarmed and nonviolent. Families picnicked in the shadow of the Israeli border and flew Palestinian flags. But like so many other Palestinian protests, this one ended in tears.
via For Israel, There’s Little Political Cost to Killing Palestinians
The Israeli army snipers who were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters last Friday at the Gaza border, killing 17 outright and wounding hundreds of others, were acting according to the contemporary script of Middle Eastern dictators.
The Israeli army initially admitted in a tweet that the tactic was premeditated and precise, but then deleted the tweet, as the Israeli peace group B’tselem pointed out:
via Shooting Protesters in Cold Blood: How Israel Became a Typical Middle Eastern Dictatorship
“Israeli soldiers have fired on Palestinians in Gaza for the second day running. Four young men were injured near the border, where 17 unarmed Palestinians were killed on Friday. Videos from Gaza show one protester being shot in the back while running away from the border with a tyre in his hand. Another man was shot while praying at the protest. The Israeli army is under increasing international pressure to explain why. Al Jazeera’s Alex Gatopoulos reports.”
via Gaza: Hundreds Wounded by live fire as Israeli Snipers Shot protesters in Back & while Prayer
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