|
Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines ~ |
|
Ethnic cleansing/Settlement/Destruction of Land and Property
Demolition
orders issued south of Hebron
Hebron – Ma'an – Israeli authorities
handed demolition orders to five structures including Bedouin tents east
of Yatta, south of the West Bank city of Hebron, on Thursday, locals
residents said. Sources in the Yatta municipality told
Ma'an that Israeli forces raided the areas of Sha'b Al-Batam and Ma'een,
to the east, which is surrounded by the settlements of Eva Hal, Metza
Ya'er, and Sosya, where they handed over demolition orders.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=278693
Israeli military insists freed Palestinian is from
Gaza (AFP)
AFP - Israel freed a Palestinian prisoner in the Gaza Strip instead of
the West Bank because that is where he is from, contrary to what both he
and Palestinian officials say, the military said on Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100422/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictwestbankprisonerdeport
Gazan 'deported under new rules'
A
Palestinian prisoner blames a new Israeli military order on deportations
for his release to Gaza, not the West Bank.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/middle_east/8637986.stm
West Bank, Areas A - B - C
Israel has always been in the habit of changing its laws to suit its
colonial aims in all of historic Palestine (but specifically in areas it
has been occupying since the Partition of Palestine in November 1947) .
These aims centre around the one single core policy which lies at the
heart of the Zionist programme advocated by Theodor Herzl in 1897: the
establishment of a Jewish State in historic Palestine within 50 years.
This Zionist programme would eventually include the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine by way of expelling its indigenous Palestinian population and
the erasure of any physical presence they have.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/04/22/antoine-raffoul-as-simple-as-a-b-c/
Netanyahu insists on East Jerusalem building, hope
fades for two-state solution
Israeli Prime Minister insisted Thursday on continued settlement
building in East Jerusalem. Israeli expansion in the contested city is
one reason Palestinians are losing hope in the two-state solution.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/QRtuGarZRz8/
Netanyahu-insists-on-East-Jerusalem-building-hope-fades-for-two-state-solution
Activism/Solidarity/Boycott,
Sanctions
and
Divestment
Bil'in:
Yaffa
man hit with high-velocity canister
Bethlehem - Ma'an -
Witnesses saw a fellow protester struck in the head with a high-velocity
canister during the Friday protest against the separation wall in the
village of Bil'in. The man, identified as Imad Risqa, a Palestinian
citizen of Israel from the city of Yaffa, was transported to
hospital. An Israeli military spokesman said he was evacuated to an
Israeli hospital by a Magen David Adom ambulance, and said medics with
MDA described Risqa as "lightly injured."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=278772
Seven Injured in The
Weekly Nil’in Anti-Wall Protest
Seven local youth were
injured at the village of Nil’in, central West Bank during the weekly
anti wall protest on Friday.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58511
Villagers Near Bethlehem
Protest The Israeli Wall Built On Their Lands
Residents of Al
Ma’ssara village near the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem protest
on Friday midday the Israeli-built wall on their lands.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58513
Al Walaja Villagers
Protest The Wall Being Built On Their Lands
Around 200
villagers along with international supporters gathered in Al-Walaja
village south of Jerusalem on Friday to protest the Israeli wall being
built on their lands.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58512
Veolia tries to spin its involvement in the
occupation
By participating in the touring Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Exhibition, the French transnational company Veolia Environnement is
attempting to spin its image that has been tarnished by the exposure of
its involvement in the Israeli occupation. Adri Nieuwhof reports for The
Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11225.shtml
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, "Speaking Out
Against Israeli Apartheid" (Video)
We asked queers in our
city to tell us why they are against Israeli apartheid. Here's what they
said. . . . Editor's Note: QuAIA has come under attack by the pro-Israel
lobby and Toronto city bureaucrats: "An April 18, 2010 feature story in
the Toronto Star revealed that City of Toronto staff warned Pride
Toronto to ban activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA)
from the parade or face repercussions to its city funding" ("LGBT
Community Condemns Sponsor Interference in Pride Toronto," QuAIA, 20
April 2010). See, also, "Martin Gladstone's Campaign
of Lies and Defamation" (QuAIA, 30 March 2010); Daniel Dale, "City May
Cut Pride Funding over 'Israeli apartheid' Marchers: Bureaucrat Calls
Name of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid 'Very Problematic'" (Toronto
Star, 18 April 2010); Daniel Dale, "Anti-Israel Row Threatens Pride Week
Funding: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Violated Policy, City Says"
(Toronto Star, 19 April 2010); and "Readers Mull Pride Funding" (Toronto
Star, 22 April 2010).
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/quaia220410.html
Anti-Israel group could cost Toronto Gay Pride parade
its funding
Toronto officials are considering withdrawing funding from the city's
annual gay pride parade over the possible participation of an
anti-Israel group, the Toronto Star reported on Tuesday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164709.html
BDS is a long term project with radically transformative potential,
Ahmed Moor
I’m grateful to Jerry Haber for taking the time to
engage
me on the role of ‘liberal’ Zionists in the BDS movement. Sometimes
my tone borders on truculence, which is really just impatience. I’m
impatient for ‘liberal’ Zionists to discard the ‘Zionist’ and become
regular liberals like the rest of us. I think these are people who know
better, but cling to notions of racial dominance in an ill-got
geographical space for a variety of reasons.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/bds-is-a-long-term-project-with-radically-transformative-potential.html
Long Live Palestine 2 - Lowkey ft. D.A.M, The
Narcicyst, Shadia Mansour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6xPo6HzJ9Q&feature=player_embedded
Wiesel should stop offering celestial prescriptions for a city he
doesn’t live in
More than a hundred activists from the Sheikh
Jarrah movement
in Jerusalem published an open letter to Elie Wiesel in response to the
letter Wiesel published last week in the Washington
Post:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/wiesel-should-stop-offering-celestial-prescriptions-for-a-city-he-doesnt-live-in.html
Violence and Aggression
Veterinarians say harassed south of Hebron
Hebron – Ma'an – Specialists from the veterinary department of Hebron's
municipality were prevented from carrying out vaccinations on livestock
near Yatta on Thursday, they said. The team, including two
veterinarians, their assistants, and a driver of a red-plated car, were
stopped for more than three hours by Israeli forces in the area, and
ultimately forced to drag their equipment up a hill on foot, they said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=278677
Detainees
58 Detained, One Wounded
and 70 Dunams Drowned in Sewage
Thursday witnessed several
attacks carried out by Israeli soldiers and policemen leading to the
kidnapping of 58 Palestinians in the West Bank and in the 1948 areas,
while one fisherman was wounded in Gaza and 70 Dunams of farmlands were
flooded by Israeli Sewage.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58506
Imprisoning Palestinian Women, STEPHEN LENDMAN
A July 2008 Fact Sheet Series titled, "Behind the Bars: Palestinian
Women in Israeli Prisons" was jointly prepared by the Addameer Prisoner
Support and Human Rights Association, the Palestinian Counseling Center
(PCC), and Mandela Institute. Along with background information, it
covered Israel's obligations under international law, prison conditions
where they're held, medical neglect, and their educational rights
restricted or denied. Relevant International Laws Protecting Prisoners
and Civilians in Times of Conflict, Including Women
http://www.jnoubiyeh.com/2010/04/imprisoning-palestinian-women.html
Humanitarian
Issues/Human
Rights/Restriction of Movement/Siege
Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory 15-21 April 2010
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SKEA-84RHF6?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Israel Bars
Grand Mufti Of Jerusalem From Traveling
Israeli Interior
Minister, Elie Yishai, issued a decree on Thursday preventing Sheikh
Ikrima Sabri, the Imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and head of
the Higher Islamic Committee from leaving the country until September
27, 2010.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58509
Easing of Gaza blockade shows more can be done-UN,
April 22 (Reuters) - Israel's recent easing of its blockade of Gaza is
inadequate but shows restrictions could be lifted further without
compromising the Jewish state's security, the top U.N. official in Gaza
said on Thursday., Israel tightened controls on the Palestinian
territory three years ago after Hamas Islamists seized control there,
but in recent weeks has allowed in some goods it used to ban, such as
clothes and shoes, wood and aluminum.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22118549.htm
Easing Gaza's Blockade?
It is hard to imagine that more than 1,000 days have passed since Gaza's
borders were sealed in June of 2007. Sporadic Israeli air strikes still
traumatize families there. More than 1.6 million men, women and
children live in Gaza, which measures only about 25 miles long and four
to seven miles wide. That's twice the size of Washington DC with triple
the population. The comparison ends there. Gaza today is a humanitarian
and economic disaster.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill/easing-gazas-blockade_b_547065.html
Israel Is 62 Years Old And Its Indigenous Citizens
Still Have Second-Class Status
In Israel, the main factor that determines the right of citizenship is
"nationality" rather than the place of birth. Such nationality does not
apply to all the current residents of the Zionist state because it is
based on ethnicity, as stated in the Declaration of Independence and the
Law of Return issued in 1950. According to this racist law, Israel is a
national home for the Jewish people; all Jews, all over the world, have
the right to Israeli citizenship without any official fuss. Non-Jews are
not so privileged. Israel's Citizenship Act of 1952 prohibits any
Palestinians - even those born in the territory now called Israel - from
obtaining Israeli citizenship unless they were "registered" as such
before 1952. This law deprives all rights of citizenship to around 80%
of those who were driven from their homes in 1948 to make way for Jewish
immigrants; it also prevents them from returning to their land.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/middle-east/934-
israel-is-62-years-old-and-its-indigenous-citizens-still-have-second-class-status
Israel's
Arab
Helpers
Comment: Is Palestinian Fatah Spying for Israel?
Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas has again accused a senior
official of rival Palestinian group Fatah of spying for Israel. Speaking
last week from Gaza, Hamas official Mohammed Nazal said that Fatah
Central Committee member Mohammed Dahlan, who has been tipped for the
post of Vice President in Fatah-controlled Palestinian National
Authority, is actively gathering information on behalf of Israeli
intelligence. Nazal said Hamas received a tip-off about Dahlan from a
former security officer in the Palestinian National Authority, who
appears to have defected to Hamas.
http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/01-441/
PLC: congratulating the occupation equals
relinquishment of Palestinian rights
The PLC condemned the act of congratulating the Israeli occupation on
its 62nd anniversary by some Arab leaders saying that such an act
represents an abandonment of Palestinian rights.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/
Political
Developments/Diplomacy
Sunday Could Witness
Official Declaration Of Indirect Talks, Israel Says
Israeli
sources reported that this coming Sunday could witness an official
declaration for the beginning of American-mediated indirect
Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The sources expressed optimism that the
mission of U.S. Middle East Envoy, George Mitchell, have a good chance
to succeed while Israel will not be asked to declare settlement freeze.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58508
Haniyya: “Resumption Of
Talks Gives Israel A Cover-up For The Judaization Of Jerusalem”
Ismail
Haniyya,
Prime Minister of the dissolved Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip,
stated Thursday the resuming peace talks with Israel provides another
cover-up for what he described as the “Judaization of Jerusalem”.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58507
Netanyahu ready to agree to Palestinian state within temporary borders
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is amenable to an interim agreement in
the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian
state within temporary borders. Netanyahu considers such an interim step
a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was
created because of the Palestinian leadership's refusal to resume talks
on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insists on delaying
discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process,
and refuses to agree to a freeze on Jewish construction in East
Jerusalem.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164833.html
US says Middle East status quo can't last (AFP)
AFP - The United States said Thursday that the status quo cannot last in
the Middle East, in response to Israel's renewed refusal to halt
settlements as US envoy George Mitchell visited.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100422/pl_afp/mideastdiplomacyusstate
Spain urges Israel to support Mediterranean Union
(AFP)
AFP - Spain called on Israel Thursday to support the nascent
Mediterranean Union as well as efforts to reach peace in the Middle East
during a visit to Madrid by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100422/wl_mideast_afp/mideastspainisraeldiplomacymediterranean
Other News
Almost half of Americans feel Obama does not support Israel
American
voters
believe U.S. President Barack Obama is not a strong supporter of
Israel, a new Quinnipiac University survey revealed Thursday, also
showing a large majority of Jewish voters as disappointed with the
administration's handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164730.html
Netanyahu
isn't,
and never will be, a true leader
Bibi is deluding himself that Obama will not be reelected. But
even in the three years remaining in his first term the president can
impose uncomfortable sanctions on Israel - a step that should scare
Israel more than Iran. Bibi has not yet grasped that what the U.S.
administration wants is a change to the composition of the ruling
coalition in Israel. So long as Bibi does not replace Yisrael Beiteinu
and Shas with Kadima, there is no chance of moving in any direction. It
was in vain that my colleague wrote him an impassioned letter asking him
to show leadership. It surprises me that he was unable
to see that he does not have it. Netanyahu was not a leader during his
first term and he is not a leader now. He is simply incapable of being
one.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164842.html
Analysis/Opinion/Op-ed
"I am not a Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon, As`ad
AbuKhalil
I am not a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. UNRWA can go to hell. A
refugee becomes one by choice. The Zionist gangs could not intimidate us
in Palestine, despite their terrorism. We did not - like you claim- seek
refuge in Lebanon, but we were expelled from Palestine. We prefer the
thyme of Palestine to the cedars of Lebanon. We were uprooted from our
land with rifle butts. We came grudgingly, and some of us died of
heartache and thirst on the way. Refugee is a word invented by Zionist
propaganda and the propaganda of the gruesome Arab regimes. The goal is
to blame the Palestinian victim. I am a rebel, not a refugee, do you
hear me?
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-am-not-palestinian-refugee-in-lebanon_23.html
Hamas is accused of being moderate
Hard-liners in the Gaza Strip say the militant group has become too soft
on Israel now that it’s running a government and dealing with foreign
officials.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/L2pGptrS0ag/la-fg-
gaza-hamas-20100423,0,7420495.story
Right of return not negotiable
Washington insiders are now touting a misguided Obama-dictated plan to
solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Most recently, Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz took to the pages of The Washington Post
to float the idea of an imposed peace, which largely undermines
non-negotiable historic Palestinian rights. As a Palestinian, I believe
that any plan that seeks to sacrifice our inalienable human rights to
ensure race-based majorities in Israel will fail. Ahmed Moor comments.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11224.shtml
Goldstone criticises S Africa rabbi
Author of UN war crimes report hits back at "brazen" politicisation of
family event.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/africa/2010/04/2010422152450998328.html
Judge Goldstone to call SA Chief Rabbi a liar?
This is funny, funny coincidental rather
than funny funny. No sooner had I got the homophobic
email denouncing the rabbis that congratulated Goldstone than I got
one pointing to Judge Goldstone's letter to the South African newspaper,
Business Day, suggesting that South Africa's Chief Rabbi, Warren
Goldstein, is no fan of the commandment about not bearing false witness.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2010/04/judge-goldstone-to-call-sa-chief-rabbi.html
Goldstone: ‘I would dearly love to attend my
grandson’s bar mitzvah’, Philip Weiss
Wrenching letter from Judge
Goldstone to Business Day, a Johannesburg publication, on the dustup
over his grandson's bar mitzvah. (For background on Rabbi Warren
Goldstein's stiffnecked position, to which Goldstone refers, read
this).
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/goldstone-i-would-dearly-love-to-attend-my-grandsons-bar-mitzvah.html
Judt says Holocaust is exploited for ‘uncompromising
Israelophilia and… lachrymose self-regard’, Philip Weiss
Another fabulous memoir piece by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books,
this one on the sources of his own proudly nonreligious Jewish identity.
I gather his method of composition is oral, which you can see in the
way he circles his subject, but the thrust of the piece is a challenge
to "Israelophilia" and a call for a secular basis of identity engaged by
universal justice standards. Frankly I don't think Judt will reach the
masses with this one. The message is in the end too assimilationist--and
Jewish corporate
entities don't want to hear that, even as their children are gamboling
in western history as Judt is: "I don’t make a point of socializing with
Jews in particular—and for the most part I haven’t married them." Great
line.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/judt-says-
holocaust-is-exploited-for-uncompromising-israelophilia-and-lachrymose-self-regard.html
Leftists respond to Elie Wiesel: An occupied
Jerusalem can't be holy
Jerusalem must be shared by both
Israelis and Palestinians, a leftist activist group said Thursday, in
response to Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel's ad in the Washington Post
last week.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164718.html
Schakowsky says not a word about settlements in
gushing over Israel, Philip Weiss
A sign of how little the discourse has moved, here is Jan Schakowsky of
Ohio, a leftlib congresswoman, or so we like to think, she opposed
the Iraq war,
celebrating Israel on its founding day yesterday in the most
unreconstructed terms. The desert bloomed. A thriving democracy. Not a
word about Palestinian statelessness. On the left, it is common to hear
Jews in recovery talk about the trees they paid for in Israel as
children, and how they feel complicit in Palestinian dispossession as a
result and are making amends now. Notice that Schakowsky is still proud
of having planted those trees. I think this speech is also a sign of the
fact that Jewish identity cuts across party lines, and makes even libs
conservative. I know this is ceremonial boilerplate, still: Congress
will be the last place to wake up, I'm afraid, but twill happen.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/schakowsky-says-not-a-word-about-settlements-in-gushing-over-israel.html
Giraldi says senior Air Force adviser may have dual
loyalty to Israel, Philip Weiss
I don't understand why this isn't a scandal, why the mainstream is not
pursuing the obvious question here. Philip Giraldi reports
on Lani Kass, an Israeli-American who has an influential place in
the Defense establishment and the usual anti-Islamic ideas. And of
course Dennis Ross formerly of the Jewish People Policy Planning
Institute in Jerusalem is guiding our Iran policy, and Treasury
officials who crank up sanctions against Iran are friends of AIPAC.
It never ends. Bush Obama, same tune.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/giraldi-says-senior-air-force-adviser-may-have-dual-loyalty-to-israel.html
Rashid Khalidi: Under Obama ‘there has been no real
change in the fatally flawed policies of the U.S. in the region’
As Palestinians prepare to commemorate
the
Nakba
and Israelis celebrated their Independence Day, tension between the U.S.
and Israel over settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem
continues. To make sense of these and other developments, the Institute for Middle East
Understanding sat down in New York City with Professor Rashid
Khalidi of Columbia University. Khalidi is the author of six books on
Middle Eastern history including Palestinian Identity: The
Construction of Modern National Consciousness, The Iron Cage: The
Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, and most recently Sowing
Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. He
is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and a former adviser
to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid and Washington peace talks.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/rashid-khalidi-under-obama-
there-has-been-no-real-change-in-the-fatally-flawed-policies-of-the-u-s-in-the-region.html
The global politics of an Israeli-Palestinian peace,
Helena Cobban
I was just thinking a little more about the
global-political context within which any soon-foreseeable
Palestinian-Israeli final peace might be concluded... That was after
writing this
blog post yesterday in which I looked briefly at the question of the
international
auspices under which any peacekeeping/peace-monitoring force might be
deployed to the OPTs.
http://justworldnews.org/archives/003969.html
Daoud Kuttab: Has Obama Decided That the Netanyahu
Coalition Is the Problem?
An analysis of the most recent ABC TV interview with former US president
Bill Clinton reveals a fascinating development in Washington, DC. The
Obama administration has concluded who the culprit is in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is not the Arab side.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daoud-kuttab/has-obama-decided-that-th_b_546935.html
watching the invasion unfold
It was an early morning, farmers relieved to have harvested the 6 dunam
(1 dunam is roughly 1000 square metres) field of lentils planted 5
months ago in Al Faraheen borderlands. The village, east of Khan
Younis, includes land cut off to farmers by the Israeli-imposed “buffer
zone”. That technically 300 metre no-go zone stretching south to north
along Gaza’s border with Israel actually extends far beyond the few
hundred metres, up to 2 km in some areas where Palestinian civilians
have been shot, injured or killed, by Israeli soldiers while on their
land.
http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/watching-the-invasion-unfold/
Israel’s Messianic Terrorists
by Patrick Seale - Agence Global " In the Arab world, Islamic extremists
such as al-Qaida are pursued, jailed or killed. Two of Al-Qaida’s top
leaders were killed in Iraq this week. In Israel, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu has no wish or will to confront his home grown
terrorists. Indeed, representatives of the religious settlers sit in his
government."
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=39503
Clemons
suggests
that Schumer is representing Israel, not U.S., Philip Weiss
Great
post
by
Steve Clemons demanding
to
know if Chuck Schumer has ever sided with the U.S. against Israel.
"Has Chuck Schumer EVER Criticized Israel or its Leadership in the Way
He Just Unloaded on Obama?" Says that Schumer's tonguelashing of
the Obama administration for putting pressure on Netanyahu comes close
to sounding like he should be in the Knesset not the Senate.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/clemons-suggests-that-schumer-is-representing-israel-not-u-s.html
Why Obama's
Middle East Peace Plan Will Fail
To understand the present
conflict, one has to realize that until 1895 Jews and Muslims had lived
together in peace in Palestine for more than1200 years. After the Romans
expelled them in 70 A.D., Jews were not allowed to live in Jerusalem for
600 years, but when the conquering Muslim army took that city they
invited the Jews to return. And Jews and Muslims lived together in peace
for all those centuries until that way of life was destroyed by the
interference of Europeans and Americans.
http://www.counterpunch.com/chase04232010.html
Iraq
At least 50 dead in Baghdad attacks (AFP)
AFP - At least 50 people were killed in a series of car bombings on
Friday near Shiite mosques and markets in Baghdad, an interior ministry
official told AFP.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100423/wl_afp/iraqunrestbaghdadtoll
Thursday: 5 Iraqis Killed, 22 Wounded
At least five Iraqis were killed and 22 more were wounded in the latest
attacks. Two U.S. servicemembers were wounded as well, during a raid in
Anbar province that netted a suspected explosives expert. Military
officials, meanwhile, pondered the long term abilities of the Iraqi air
force. Also, a Navy SEAL was cleared of charges in a detainee abuse
case.
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2010/04/22/thursday-5-iraqis-killed-22-wounded/
Former Iraqi prisoners allege abuse
Al
Jazeera has obtained interviews with two men who allegedly were tortured
in the al-Muthanna air base prison in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The
former detainees said they were pressured, under the use of painful
techniques, to admit to crimes they had not committed. "Our hands [were]
tied and eyes covered so we couldn't see the torturers. The informants
were dictating to them that 'This guy did this, or did that'. And he was
swearing to God that this guy has performed that action," one of the men
said. "But we were all innocent."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHLa7C5FSOE&feature=youtube_gdata
Iraq airport reopens after Qaeda threat (AFP)
AFP - The airport serving Iraq's holy Shiite city of Najaf and used by
thousands of pilgrims reopened on Thursday after Al-Qaeda threats led to
its closure two weeks ago, a local official told AFP.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100422/wl_mideast_afp/iraqaviationsecuritynajaf
Lebanon
No sign Scuds moved to Lebanon: U.S. officials
(Reuters)
Reuters - Doubts are growing within the U.S. defense and intelligence
community about allegations that long-range Scud missiles from Syria
have been shipped to the Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring
Lebanon, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100422/wl_nm/us_syria_usa_intelligence
Lebanon lodges complaint with UN over Israeli
memorial (AFP)
AFP - Lebanon has lodged a complaint with the
UN Security Council over a memorial Israel inaugurated this week in the
disputed Shebaa Farms border region, the foreign ministry said Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100423/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonisraelmemorialun
Club Med cancels Lebanon cruise after Israel
passport-stamp row
PARIS: French holiday group Club Med
dropped a cruise to Lebanon on Thursday after angering Jewish groups by
banning passengers with Israeli passport stamps since Lebanese
authorities would not let them land in the country.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=114113
U.S. and other
world news
Bolivian President Evo Morales on President Obama:
"I Can't Believe a Black President Can Hold So Much Vengeance Against an
Indian President"
As the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba closes,
we speak to Bolivian President Evo Morales about the US decision to cut
off climate aid to Bolivia; narcotrafficking; the tenth anniversary of
the Water Wars in Cochabamba; the protest at the San Cristóbal silver
mine; and the contradiction between promoting the environment and
extractive industries—oil/natural gas exploration, mining.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/23/bolivian_president_evo_morales_to_president
What will would Iran do with nuclear weapons?
Probably nothing
Wouldn’t possession of an atomic bomb enable Iran to bully other
nations? Nuclear missiles did not do much for the old Soviet Union, even
enable it to bully its weak neighbor Afghanistan. Nuclear bombs haven’t
helped China bully anyone – Beijing still has little credibility in
Tibet, despite its fantastic edge in power.
http://blogs.reuters.com/gregg-easterbrook/2010/04/22/
what-will-iran-do-with-nuclear-weapons-probably-nothing/
Veil ban 'worrying trend' in Europe
Belgian lawmakers are set to vote on a proposed ban on wearing
face-covering veils in public, an issue that is dividing opinions and
forming policies across Europe. Khola Hasan, a representative of the
City Circle, a think tank that promotes the development of a distinct
British Muslim identity, said the ban is part of a worrying trend in
Europe. She told Al Jazeera that European Muslims are being criminalised
for issues that are not criminal. "The European convention on human
rights guarantees freedom of religious expression," she said. "For a
country to legislate how its inhabitants should dress in public is very
worrying. What sort of totalitarian states are we going towards to in
Europe?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHe1BfoaZz0&feature=youtube_gdata
Saudi Arabia: Free Forgotten Prisoners
(Washington D.C.) - Saudi prosecutors should immediately ensure that
prison authorities set free all prisoners whose sentences have expired,
Human Rights Watch said today.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/04/22/saudi-arabia-free-forgotten-prisoners
School or work
Trying to keep poor Syrian
children in education.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/middle_east/8631921.stm |
| For further information contact Shadi Fadda |
|
|
