A UN panel of experts called Friday on Israel to fall in line with international norms on civil rights and to take action against targeted killings, torture and impunity for security forces.

The UN Human Rights Committee also called for an end to the blockade of Gaza and questioned the independence of Israel's own inquiry into a naval raid on a Gaza-bound relief supply ship in which nine Turkish nationals dead.

After attending a workshop on developing curricula for nonviolence/popular resistance, I returned with a harrowing 12+ hour experience at the crossing from Jordan to the occupied Palestinian territories. This included being served with an order/warrant for an appearance at the apartheid colonial ‘security’ offices in ten days and rifling through the books I brought back. I recorded a 10 minute video telling of this experiences

The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police shows how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region

In the cool summer evening air of the Jerusalem hills last Tuesday evening, hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis descended on the small village of al-Walaja for a screening of the critically acclaimed documentary Budrus. The screening was jointly organized by Israelis and Palestinians who are working to non-violently resist the construction of Israel’s separation barrier on the village’s land.The screening bore special significance for the people of al-Walaja as the film follows the story of a West Bank village’s unarmed struggle against the construction of Israel’s separation barrier on its farmland and its subsequent success in having the route of the wall changed.

One of the neighbors reported that the residents of the neighborhood rushed to confront the Israeli assailants when women inside the house screamed for help, but the policemen encircled the house to prevent them from approaching.

Fatah official for Jerusalem Affairs Hatem Abdel Qader told Ma’an Radio on Thursday afternoon the the documents presented to police were fake. He said that the families who entered the homes were part of a Jewish group that lost a lawsuit in 1996, wherein they sought to take over the same home but failed to sufficiently prove ownership.

Palestinian defendants proved to an Israseli court that the home was owned by Kamal Handal and rented by Qarsh family, Abdel Qader said.

The Israeli parliament is considering several new laws that could seriously impact the ability of citizens to criticise the government, according to rights groups.

Human Rights Watch is reporting a crackdown on political activists who criticise Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu: Israel’s government will fall if settlement freeze continues

The Olympia Food Co-op’s decision to honor the international call for boycott of Israeli goods has inspired an inundation of phone calls, e-mails, and petition signatures supporting the solidarity gesture, including an endorsement from South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.

It's been one lie after another in the US media about the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound relief flotilla. No matter that the Israeli media views the whole incident as a debacle for Israel, in this country the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd is on overdrive defending the operation. As usual, facts don't matter to them.

Except they do.

These techniques are regularly used in attacks on protesters, most obviously in dramatic cases such as in the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa and the 1991 Dili massacre in East Timor. The same sorts of techniques are also found in all sorts of other injustices, including censorship, sexual harassment, police beatings, torture, war and genocide. Therefore, it is predictable that the Israeli government, in its attack on the Free Gaza flotilla, would use the same techniques - and that is exactly what happened.

The country is very beautiful, grand mosques and grand parks, good food, and friendly down to earth people. Many Arabs are here on vacations. Mosques are busy. The city is bustling. Everyone who finds out we are Palestinian is happy to see us. I can see why Turkish people mobilized the humanitarian aid ships to break the illegal siege on Gaza.

The same government that includes a call to end the blockade on Gaza, in practice aids in imprisoning the Gazans by preventing them from holding valid Palestinian passports.

“She came in through the front door and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited, all of the family saw this — her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house.”

London, July 26, 2010, Six weeks after the Freedom Flotilla ships were forcibly boarded in international waters, their passengers illegally jailed and the cargo impounded by the Israeli authorities, the office of the United Nations Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East (UNSCO) has promised to deliver the full humanitarian aid cargo to UN. agencies in Gaza.

To help the people of Palestine
we won’t buy grapefruit or Israeli wine
And if you’re wondering
what you can do:
please join the boycott
and help them too!

According to Shapira, it is permissible to kill a non-Jew who threatens Israel even if the person is classified as a Righteous Gentile. His book says that any gentile who supports war against Israel can also be killed.

Killing the children of a leader in order to pressure him, the rabbi continues, is also permissible. In general, according to the book, it is okay to kill children if they “stand in the way – children are often doing this.” “They stand in the way of rescue in their presence and they are doing this without wanting to,” he writes. “Nonetheless, killing them is allowed because their presence supports murder.

Let’s start with the guilty parties… the settler in the Occupied West Bank. We hear of the crimes committed in Gaza, but these often go unreported….

“In a democratic country, every person is allowed to participate in protests and political activities as he sees fit …. He does not owe anyone an explanation on his political positions or beliefs, and it is not possible to ‘call him to attention’ or take any kind of steps to give him the feeling that his political activity could be to his detriment.”

Unless that country happens to be Israel…..

Is this Israeli arrogance or are there genuine problems with, not only America’s military but culture as well? Are both true? How is being a Jew serving in Israel’s military, more conducive to protecting soldiers from combat stress? Why are Americans, in combat across the Middle East, fighting securing Israeli interests in the region, subject to much higher rates of Post Traumatic Stress than Israeli’s in action against their own citizens?

“The reality today is that the police can kill an Arab citizen in any circumstances and know that there is almost no chance they will pay a price. The safeguards are being stripped away.”

The international aid agency Oxfam demanded Monday that Israel compensate Palestinians in a northern Jordan Valley village after soldiers destroyed at least $29,000 of aid.

In a statement, the charity said villagers in Al-Farisiya were forced into poverty when soldiers demolished 79 structures in the village, including homes, stables, sheds, water tanks, two tons of animal fodder, fertilizer and wheat.

Shapira was arrested this past January for his alleged involvement in the torching of a Palestinian mosque in the village of Yasuf, but was later released.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that his country will not extend a 10-month slowdown in West Bank settlement construction that is set to expire in late September.

This week, the Israeli press reported that dozens of countries, mainly those orbiting the United States , which itself revolves in the Israeli orbit, agreed to cooperate in fighting “anti-Semitism” an “Holocaust denial.” The effort is apparently part of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s effort to improve Israel ‘s image, badly tarnished following Israel ‘s Nazi-like onslaught on the Gaza Strip more than a year and a half ago.

State-wide censorship of sexually explicit material on the internet. Laws prohibiting driving vehicles on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Women allowed to bathe in the Mediterranean only a few hours a week. The face of Baruch Goldstein on the 20 shekel bill. A national holiday celebrating our spiritual founding father, Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Israel's Ynet reported:

While Hamas continues to demand a full lifting of the blockade, the Gaza market seems to be doing alright. Gaza Mall, the first ever shopping center in the Strip was opened last Saturday with masses storming the new attraction.

The two-floor compound, each stretching over roughly 9,700 sq. ft, offers international brands as well as much-needed air conditioning. Tens of thousands of shoppers from Rafah to Beit Hanoun have already visited the site within a matter of days, making the center Gaza's new craze.

Our critique is offered at two levels: 1) theologically, challenging what we believe to be a distorted interpretation of biblical eschatology which transforms the Prince of Peace into a Vengeful Warrior God. 2) Politically, as we recognize that the theology shaped by this distorted view of scripture too easily morphs into a militaristic, anti-Palestinian, pro-expansionist ideology with negative consequences for all parties in the current conflict.

Mahmud Gnayem's cousin, Waji Ghanaim, who arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting, said that the car was parked on the side of the road at the time of the shooting, meaning the victim couldn’t have been running away from the police. The victim wasn’t armed, yet Mizrahi shot him to death. In 2009, Mizrahi was sentenced to a mere 15 months in prison. He appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, and said there that the shooting was intentional and that his life was not in danger during the event. Yet, he insisted he acted out of self-defense. For being illogical, his sentence was doubled to 30 months in July 2010. Yet, this is dirty cheap for a cold blood assassination. During all this time, Mizrahi hadn’t been relieved from his duties as policeman. Isn’t this entire event a bit strange?

The next time someone from the Zionist community talks of the Jews being ‘God’s chosen people’ and how we are all supposed to ‘bless them so that we will be blessed’ and why all the violence and suffering that has been inflicted upon the innocent of the Middle East is justified because of how favored these people are in God’s eyes, temper their delusion with just a few words from the Book of Jeremiah, part of the same ‘Bible’ they use in justifying Israel’s existence–

A coalition of US organizations is raising funds to send an aid boat to break Israel’s four-year siege of Gaza.

Jewish racism knows no boundaries. Though many people of many ethnic origins live between the river and the sea, the Jewish State is not exactly a multi- cultural society. The Israeli legal system is racist to the bone; it is a true mirror of Jewish supremacy and Talmudic tribalism. The Guardian continues to follow the astonishing story of Saber Kushour, a young Palestinian man who was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish Israeli woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.

There has been much ado in the Israeli press about a Palestinian man being charged with rape after the Jewish woman involved found out he was an Arab.

There was less ado about the fact that the man is married …. a fact that makes this incident quite ugly in my opinion. Does the sanctity of marriage mean nothing today? Are the vows one takes merely words?

This raises just one question: What would the court decide had a Jewish, married man falsely presented himself to a woman in order to get her into bed? For example, what if someone like that told a woman that he is a wealthy single man, while he was in fact poor and married? Would he too be convicted of rape?

That’s the only one way to describe the group known as ‘Christians United For Israel’

Two recent reports discuss it, a July Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-IL) one titled, "A Situation Report on Obstacles Facing Gaza Residents in Need of Medical Treatment," and a June one titled, "Who Gets to Go," jointly prepared by PHR-IL, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. All cite Israeli medical ethics and international law violations by discriminating on the basis of need, denying adequate treatment to seriously ill Gazans by:

-- preventing the restoration and development of the Strip's healthcare system; and

-- restricting travel to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, or neighboring countries for treatment.

Israeli soldiers attacked a group of local photojournalists in the West Bank last week as they were covering demonstrations in the area for three international news agencies, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

IFJ has learnt that three photographers were attacked by soldiers on Saturday as they covered a demonstration taking place in Beit Omar, near Hebron. They were Hazem Bader from French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters Abdul Rahim Al-Aqusini and Associated Press Abdul Hafiz Hashlamoun. One photographer said he was hit by a baton and the other lost his hearing after a stun grenade exploded near him.

Extremist Jewish settlers seized a land belonging to Palestinians coming from Bethlehem and Al-Khalil (Hebron), local security sources said on Saturday.

Three mobile homes were placed by settlers over a piece of land belonging to Palestinian citizen Abdulrahaman Sultan, in Bwaida in Al-Khalil.

The settlers did this under the supervision of Israeli soldiers, media and public relations department in the local police said.

Israel has rejected a decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the Israeli raid on a Gaza aid flotilla two months ago. Commandos stormed the ships as the vessels tried to run the Israeli blockade. Nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

Regular readers of this Blog should have a pretty good idea of where I stand on certain issues. In case you missed my views of the organisation known as J Street, they can be read HERE.

Today there was a piece posted at the Jerusalem Post, a piece written by zionism’s most prolific McCarthyite, denouncing McCarthyism. It’s funny to see how a twisted mind like Dershowitz’s operates. HERE you can find some of his latest McCarthyite tactics, and below is his tirade from today’s JP.

Slowly but surely, the ‘only Democracy in the Middle East’ is turning into the only fascist state in the Middle East.

Israel faces another disastrous report as an 'Independent and impartial' fact-finding team appointed by the UN Human Rights Council will look into Israel's 'violations of international law' during her commando raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship.

Seemingly the UN Human Rights Council wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed by Israel's own ‘truth finding’ missions. I guess that this is understandable. The Israelis should accept the UN concerns. It is very uncommon to let the murderer or the rapist investigate himself.

Dead children. Thousands of dead children. Tens of thousands of dead children, Hundreds of thousands of dead children. Mountains of dead children. Vast pestiferous slagheaps of dead children. This is what the world’s greatest democracy created, deliberately, coldly, as a matter of carefully considered national policy.

The Israeli government has refused to provide the United Nations assurance to discontinue its illegal usage of internationally banned white phosphorus bombs, which it used heavily in its latest war on the Gaza Strip, causing hundreds of Palestinian deaths, in addition to serious environmental damage.

She is now in a semi-critical condition in hospital, suffering extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and 'flechettes’ from a nail bomb that landed 100m away, causing internal bleeding to the chest, severe head trauma and nails embedded in her body. Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely populated civilian areas and SamahEid El-Massry is one of four children injured in the attack yesterday, July 21st.

Israel warned the United Nations on Thursday that two ships preparing to sail from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip to bring aid to the blockaded territory would not be allowed to reach their destination.

The United Nations Human Rights Council appointed a team of international experts on Friday to investigate Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla and called on all parties to cooperate.

Just last week the Board of Directors of the Olympia Food Co-op took the courageous step of instituting a boycott of Israeli goods, the first grocery boycott of Israel in the US. Already, there is a movement afoot to condemn the Co-op for taking this important stand. Board and staff are receiving aggressive emails and phone calls, and we need to show them that there is support for the boycott.

Through prophetic idealism, the handwriting is already on the wall, and walls cannot and do not last for eternity. And since prophetic idealism (or at least idealism) has not yet been declared a crime, in place of a wall there will only be wholeness and healing, restitution and truth, love and forgiveness, economic and political security, and unity and strength. “I have seen the future and it runs through here,” that is, the Israeli-Gaza/West Bank Walls and a new era of peace with justice.

Nearly 86,000 Palestinian students sat this year for the final high school unified matriculation exam (called Tawjihi) in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Today the results of the exams were released and they were phenomenal. It is a noisy day of celebration for thousands of people who worked very hard and achieved good results. There was no divisions here, the unified examinations were given in Gaza and the West Bank with cooperation of the ministry of education employees in both places and without political considerations.

A former Israeli lecturer has said the entity depends on wars for its existence, warning that the hostility only invites disaster for Tel Aviv.

It is only constant confrontations and standoffs which keep the Israeli society from falling apart, said Ilan Pappe, who used to work as a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa in northern Israel.

He also said that the current Israeli government is the result of a colonialist movement. Colonialists, who did not have a country anywhere across the world, were obliged to remain here.

Response to UN aimed at countering Goldstone Report includes list of rules of engagement that were altered. Many officers outraged, say report is exaggerated, unnecessary apology that will tie military's hands in future

With “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel seeming more and more like a dead end, many people around the world, including dissident Jewish voices, are turning to grassroots activism to pressure Israel to end the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

A declaration of loyalty to “a Jewish state” is not just a procedural matter. It implies, for Arabs or others, recognition of one’s inferiority vis-à-vis Jewish citizens of the state. Indeed, the ramifications of such recognition are enormous and far-reaching.

While the New York Times honed in on the irony of how a US government organ was facilitating the funnelling of private funds into activities and goals that ran counter to official US policy, and as significant as this is, the article failed to mention that the amount of private tax-exempt "donations" pales in comparison to the public funds that Washington has steadily poured into the Zionist project.

Amnesty International has today called on the Israeli authorities to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and other buildings in the West Bank, after a further 74 were destroyed in the Jordan Valley earlier this week.

A number of top ranking members of the Israeli military are expressing “outrage” at a pledge by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to curb the number of civilians killed in the next Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Ministry instructs Israeli ambassadors to ask senior American, UN, EU and Egyptian officials to pressure Syria and Lebanon to stop latest planned flotilla from sailing from Lebanon to Gaza.

Gaza Strip has been under siege since June 2007, when Israel declared it an "enemy entity". A group of international activists organized a siege-breaking movement, the Free Gaza movement. Thanks to their efforts, and despite the Israeli ban on foreign correspondents and humanitarian aid workers to cover and witness operation "Cast Lead" on the ground, a group of international volunteers: self organised members of the International Solidarity Movement were present in Gaza when the bombing started on December, 27th 2009. Together with two international correspondents from Al Jazeera International (Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros), they were the only foreigners who managed to write, film and report for several radio stations what was happening inside the besieged Palestinian strip.

The 'Maryam', an all-female Lebanese aid ship, currently docked in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli, is getting ready to set sail for Gaza in the next few days. The ship, which aims to break Israel's siege on the Palestinian territory, will carry about 50 aid workers, including some U.S. nuns keen to deliver aid to the long-suffering women and children of Gaza.

What we are dealing with in the case of Prof. Chomsky is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty parading as its opposite and the boycott issue has brought it to the fore.

Imagine this, imagine that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress negotiated a deal with the South African Apartheid regime and settled for a “two-state solution.” Imagine Mandela negotiating with the Apartheid regime a land deal in which less than 15% of current day South Africa went to the black South Africans, the remaining 85% to the inherently racist Apartheid government and its people.

With that in mind, I ask, is there any real difference between that scenario and the idea of a “two-state solution” today?

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decision granting $14 million for Gaza reconstruction efforts, Palestinian officials announced.

According to officials familiar with the incident, the Israeli government is continuing to hold three of the aid ships involved with June’s failed attempt to deliver humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip.

At least one Palestinian has been killed and eight others have been wounded in an Israeli attack in northern parts of the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses say.

It was not immediately clear why the Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians in the town of Beit Hanun near the Israeli border.

As the Israelis are becoming conscious of their inevitable tragic circumstances, a final desperate attempt to rescue the Zionist project has come to life. Astonishingly enough it is the Israeli right that is now pushing for ‘one binational State.’ It is pretty staggering to find out that while the Israeli so-called ‘left’ is locked within the 1967 territorial paradigm that is fueled by Judeo centric racial ideology, it is actually the hawkish Zionist thinkers who are willing to move the discourse forward.

Instead of talking ‘Peace’, Israel discloses its plans for their next war….

“The IDF has … implemented operational changes in its orders and combat doctrine designed to further minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian property in the future,” the report said.

He easily forgets that most Ashkenazi Jews are actually Russians, poles, and other East Europeans of Khazari origin, brought by Zionism to Palestine to live on land that belongs to another people. Besides, since when did God promise these racist thugs the land of Palestine?”

“Never Again” means never again to crimes against humanity and dehumanization anywhere in the world. Liberate all ghettos.

Q…
Why would a supposedly Pro Palestinian Blogger devote herself to the defamation of Jews involved in the Palestinian cause?

A…
They wouldn’t!

The person’s aim is openly to disgrace the entire cause and make it appear as if Palestinians and their supporters are anti Semites. This is not the case at all …. only the zionists themselves attempt to make that an issue. The aim may not be openly disgrace the cause. The problem is a confusion of issues to the point that one doubts what the aims are, because if they don’t have real arguments, they effortlessly fall into the same exact traps that the zionists do, using the same racial profiling techniques, and focus on the messenger and not the message.

The main focus of the talks in Cairo was to convince the Palestinians and Israelis to move from, until now, largely fruitless "proximity" or indirect talks to direct negotiations.

Direct talks were suspended in December 2008 when Israel launched its offensive against Gaza. The 2009 election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never a peace process enthusiast, made reviving direct talks all the more complicated.

“As far as I know – it concerns any Israeli products. We exempted “Peace Oil” – it’s a joint product produced by the Palestinian farmers. Any product that is made by the company that works to improve the conditions of the Palestinians will be exempted.”