. . . Some 1,600 have been through American-financed courses in Jordan. In coordination with Israeli defense officials, Palestinian troops and police officers have taken over much of the patrolling in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and parts of Hebron.
Last month, as Israel carried out a war in Hamas-ruled Gaza, some in the Muslim world called on the West Bank to stage a violent uprising in protest. But while there were demonstrations, no such uprising occurred, partly because the Palestinian Authority troops maintained tight order.
. . . Alarmed by the increased sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the war, Abbas and his prime minister, Salaam Fayad, have instructed their various security forces to step up their crackdown on the Islamic movement in the West Bank.
In the past three weeks, more than 135 Hamas supporters and members have been rounded up. Among the detainees are journalists, university professors and students and preachers. In some cases, Hamas supporters who were released by the IDF were arrested hours later by the PA security forces.
The crackdown has also included intimidation of reporters and critics. Several Palestinian reporters have been "advised" by Abbas’s top aides not to report on the massive anti-Hamas crackdown. Samir Khawireh, a journalist from Nablus, found himself in a prison cell earlier this week for reporting about the torching of a car belonging to Prof. Abdel Sattar Kassam, a long-time outspoken critic of financial corruption in the PA.
Kassam has blamed Fatah militiamen of being behind the torching of his car. A Fatah leaflet distributed in the city later took credit for the attack. Kassam was recently arrested by PA policemen in Nablus on charges of "incitement" against the PA leadership.
Another reporter, Khaled Amayreh of Hebron, was arrested for 55 hours by PA security agents shortly after he appeared on a TV talk show where he allegedly expressed sympathy with Hamas.
[Khaled Abu Toameh, "Palestinian Affairs: Clamping down on critics," Jerusalem Post, Jan. 29, 2009.]
So much for democracy, when the people can go to the polling place to vote a corrupt regime out of power and establish freedom.
Unless they’re Palestinians.
Noooo. Is that the same Salaam Fayad that Witty keeps boosting as a prime example of the way for Palestinians to move forward? That just can’t be!
The same Fayyad who was never elected to any seat in the Palestinian parliament yet who somehow is now Prime Minister in an illegal government.
RE: “the training of Palestinian forces at a $21m US financed campus and operations camp in Jordan/the Palestinian security forces’ crackdown on protest in the West Bank during and after Gaza”
SEE: “British police and intelligence officers sent to tackle UK-funded torturers on West Bank”, By DAVID ROSE, 10/25/09, dailymail.co.uk
(excerpts) The Government is sending British police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers.
Their mission is to set up and train a new ‘internal affairs’ department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice…
…Yesterday a senior official from the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted for the first time that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August…
…The next step would be for officers from MI5 and MI6 to train the PA’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
‘Obviously police cannot train intelligence officers,’ Ms Arar said. ‘For that you need other intelligence officers. We need all the help we can get.’…
…In the region’s largest city, Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former Manchester academic who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to dailymail.co.uk
Wow, I bet the British are just loving getting tangled up in American international endeavors at this point. “Sure! Help us train the PA police! It’ll go over just as well as Baghram and Abu Gharib!”
This, and other stories like it, provide the evidence that leads many reasonable observers to the conclusion that Abbas and his PA is a puppet regime in the employ of Israel and the US to police the occupation. They get to wear the fig leaf of a “peace process”, to cover their treachery. This evidence is over-whelming. It is frustrated that any time we make reference to Abbas’s true affiliation, with words like puppet, our local zionist cop erupts in protest asking for more nuanced language, detailed argument and accusing the authors of some logical flaw or another.
Our local zionist wants the quisling in office so he can sign away the island for strings of beads.
Meanwhile, mass media set to become even more Jewish:
Regulators should block Comcast/NBC marriage
link to seattletimes.nwsource.com
“Meanwhile, mass media set to become even more Jewish:”
Yup, that’s what I hear, too! Christmas is being cut back to one 15 min. broadcast, and Hanukkah gets 24/8 coverage. Hours of prime-time programming are being set aside so obnoxious Jewish kids can come on national TV and brag about what they got for Hanukkah.
Look, America first, I’m not saying that’s a good idea. It’s pretty obvious the damage that kind of thing does. All it takes is one inadequate Christmas-morning haul while the Jewish kid down the street gets a dirt-bike, and before you know it you are calling your self “America First” and posting links about the Jewish take-over. Gentile parents, take warning!
I knopw, I know, America First, it’s a crime. For once in all of pre-recorded history, the Lord of Heaven impregnates a Virgin, and 15 min. is all they can spare, meanwhile, an ancient, and I might add, unsucessful) Jewish insurgency which developed an energy-saving technique gets all the glory. I mean really, who the hell even uses oil lamps anymore?
Christmas is being cut back to one 15 min. broadcast,
Oh thank God. I swear, if I have to hear one more Christmas song, I’m going to deck someone right in the halls.
Again, if you bother to read, they were NOT Bronner’s words but an anonymous military officer.
His reporting that term was likely staggering to him as well, which is a/the likely reason he reported it. Did you bother to read the article itself, the tone of it?
Is that distinction important to you as a journalist?
How many strikes?
Are these the characteristics of your brand that you wish to develop?
You know, if the Nazis had people like you blogging in their favor ahead of the Nuremberg trials, they might have gotten through it alright. You would have been a real asset to someone like David Duke, too, if you hadn’t been Jewish. Your capacity to fling false suspicion and innuendo like with the force and repition of a primate acting on his own feces is quite… remarkable.
Witty,
His reporting that term was likely staggering to him as well, which is a/the likely reason he reported it.
Stops second-guessing. You have no idea what Bonner means or thinks beyond his reporting. And he did not qualify the term. Neither can you.
Still waiting for any intelligent commentary on the recent announcements from Iran.
1. Announcement of rejection of Russian offer to process uranium exclusively for civilian use.
2. Summary by El Barradei that Iran has definitively NOT cooperated with the AIEA.
3. Announcement of 10 additional uranium processing plants under construction
BIG deals.
Oh my god, your right, Witty! We need to invade and occupy Iraq NOW! Oh… wait, sorry, Iran. We need to wage war on Iran now. My mistake, I forgot the rhetoric has been cut and pasted.
You know what would be a big deal? If Iran broke their treaty. They haven’t. You know what would be an even bigger one? If an actual rogue nuclear state like Israel were dealt with.
So why don’t you set up your own website and comment on the stuff YOU think is important instead of barging in on this one with demands that people talk about what you want to hear instead of the actual topic of the thread.
Read the report, first, Witty from the IAEA source.
link to iaea.org
“Still waiting for any intelligent commentary on the recent announcements from Iran.”
Why Richard?
I debunked and your pathetic arguments when you posted the questions in the other thread.
For your benefit.
“1. Announcement of rejection of Russian offer to process uranium exclusively for civilian use.”
What do you mean “exclusively for civilian use”? Iran has always mantained that it’s enrichment is purely for civlian use.
Secondly, the deal involves Russia passing the enriched uranium to France, who are then suposed to fabricate fuel elements. France have renegged on a simlar a deal previously, so there is no mystery to why Iran don’t trust them.
Iran have not actually rejected any deal. They proposed amendments which involved the exchange of runium in Iran, as opposed to Iran shipping out their urnaium supplies and waiting for the fuel elements to arrive a year later. Of course, Iran are wise to do so, seeing as the West could easily withold these stocks at any time. The West have already vilated the NPT, so what’s to stop them using blackmail?
The P5+1 rejected these amendments. So much for negotiations right Witty?
“2. Summary by El Barradei that Iran has definitively NOT cooperated with the AIEA.”
Wrong again. The IAEA have adopted the P5+1 proposal as a policy. El Barradei has said that the P5+1 will not accept Iran’s amendments, but Iran are not in violation of the NPT in any way, shape of form.
“3. Announcement of 10 additional uranium processing plants under construction”
First, Iran are perfectly within their rights under the NPT to do so.
Secondly, as David Albright pointed outt, Iran can’t do it anyway. They don’t have the money and the embrgo woudl prevent them acquiring the hardware.
link to news.yahoo.com
Iran also don’t have enough uranium to do it.
BTW Witty. Care yto comment about the fact that Israel has repeatedly refused to sign the NPT at all?
You know what really pisses me off, Witty? If we do end up in a war with Iran, three years from now you will be denying that you (or Israel) ever supported the rush to war. Just like with Iraq. And of course, like Citizen pointed out, it isn’t your children who will end up dead on the battlefield, it will be ours.
I do not support a rush to war in the slightest.
I support a rush to sobriety, to actual consideration of the reality.
Bullshit. You wouldn’t be lying about Iran, or what was being reported on it, or even bring it up at all on a thread where it has no relevancy, otherwise.
Israel has both nuclear weapons, no arms control treaty, and an established history of massacring civilians. If there’s any immediate threat to humanity, it’s your precious little vaterland. So do us a goddamn favor and stop trying to get Americans killed for your racist little wet dream.
I bring it up because it conflicts with your analysis that Iran is benign and that its actions relative to others (including Israel – maintaining proxy armies on its borders to pursue its agenda of removal of Israel from the political map).
There are always multiple options to consider.
You are considering none.
And, I bring it up on an unrelated thread, because Phil and Adam in their wisdom, didn’t consider the El-Barradei comment or the Iranian announcements worthy of their readers attention.
I’m amused by the fact that you go OUT OF YOUR WAY to protect the “free speech” of a private fundraiser for Israeli settlers — you know, the ones from Hebron specifically, have among the worst reputation, responsible for pogroms against Palestinians, which you claim you object to — and then, on an article about the trampling of rights by the Palestinian puppet politicians (pets of yours, ostensibly, with the way you gush about Fayad) who are imprisoning journalists, students, professors, etc. in the West Bank, and instead of dealing with an actual suppression of democracy — because of course you don’t want to confront it when it damages Palestinian democracy and makes Israel’s position stronger — you feint toward Iran.
Wittypocrisy.
And you keep playing with phantom Iraqi — oh, whoops, Iranian nuclear weapons instead of confronting the REAL violator of nuclear arms proliferation, ISRAEL.
And incidentally? Your son is right about Zionism. I’m glad he’s smarter than his father.
You’re ranting again.
You imagine much (prejudices), and don’t imagine enough (multiple proposal and perspective).
You can’t even put two sentences together without a blatant hypocrisy? Seriously? I imagine much, and don’t imagine enough?
So go away and start your own blog and comment on the announcements YOU t hink worthy of attention instead of parasitizing this one and hijacking the readers that Phil has drawn here and you do your best to drive away in disgust.
Shameless.
“And, I bring it up on an unrelated thread, because Phil and Adam in their wisdom, didn’t consider the El-Barradei comment or the Iranian announcements worthy of their readers attention. ”
Why would they? El-Barradei’s comments mentioned nothing about Iran producing nukes or even vilating the NPT, which Israel of course, refuse to sign.
NYT had another “good news” – that’s Swiss ban on mosque minerats, without mentioning some of the dirty hands behind the ‘Islamophobia’.
Some readers might not understand why Swiss People’s Party is so itchy of the Muslim minority? Well, the arrest and jailing of Swiss journalist Frank Brunner in Geneva on March 5, 2009 could shed some light. Frank Brunner accused of anti-Semitism by the Swiss Jewish Lobby (CICAD) for his criticism of Israel’s Nazi tactics against Gaza people during the 23-day war.
In April 2008, Israel, the US, and SVP condemned the visit of Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to Islamic Iran.
In April 2009 – American Jewish Congress criticized Swiss president Hans Rudolf Merz for shaking hand with Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad during the UN Conference on Racism. It’s interesting to note that AJC initially opposed the creation of the Zionist entity in 1948.
Stop Switzerland going Islamic
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Muslim! In Europe, it’s the new “Jew.”
Some of the election posters were forbidden as racist.
Pingback: Bromwich on Bronner’s shocking euphemism