Child dragged out of his house by his throat as Israel demolishes homes near Qalqiliya

On Monday 05 December 2011, the Permanent Military Court in Gaza held the ninth session in Gaza City to consider the case relating to the death of the Italian solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrigoni. Lawyers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) attended the session in their capacity as legal representatives of the Arrigoni family.

Festival organizers attributed Milani’s departure to her father’s ill health, but Tehran newspapers claimed that Milani left the festival due to political pressure from Iranian elements.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/south-african-activist-palestine-casts-light-our-own-history/10658?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29#.Tt19NGOIm0s

Breaking the Silence: An interview with Yehuda Shaul
“If you don’t look nice, you don’t spend too many hours in front of the mirror,”  says Yehuda Shaul,  one of the founders and Executive Directors of Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence. “What we demand of our society is to look in the mirror, so no wonder no one likes it.” Breaking the Silence was founded in 2004 by Israeli soldiers and veterans who collect and publish testimonies from soldiers who have served in the West Bank,Gaza and East Jerusalem since September 2000.  They also hold lectures and conduct tours inHebronand the South Hebron Hills area “with the aim of giving the Israeli public access to the reality which exists minutes from their own homes, yet is rarely portrayed in the media.”

http://palsolidarity.org/2011/12/breaking-the-silence-an-interview-with-yehuda-shaul/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29

 

 

Israeli ministers prickle at Clinton critique
US secretary of state’s concern over gender segregation and limits on NGO funding called “totally exaggerated”.

 

 

Israel trades $100 million in frozen PA funds for nuke-ready submarine, Allison Deger
This week, the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reports Israel’s change in heart to release the $100 million in frozen tax revenue, was a result of Germany withholding the sale of a nuclear-capable dolphin submarine to Israel. Netanyahu stated the rational for releasing the funds was a result of the PA halting their statehood efforts at the UN, and the lack of feasible reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. However, the German report calls the release of funds a pre-approved condition to the submarine sale.
https://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/israel-trades-100-million-in-frozen-pa-funds-for-nuke-ready-submarine.html

Abbas aide: PA won’t yield to ‘extortion’
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Authority “will not yield to extortion,” presidential adviser Nimir Hammad said Tuesday of threats by Israeli officials to withhold Palestinian money again. Hammad’s comments followed reports in Israel that the government would refuse to pay Palestinian tax revenues if the PLO applied again for full UN membership.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=442488
 

Palestinian reconciliation has failed to advance despite a recent meeting between Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal and Fatah leader President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah official said Monday.  The official, who participated in the meeting but spoke on condition of anonymity, told Ma’an the talks were promising but said bold decisions were needed to implement the reconciliation agreement signed in May.   He said party leaders must agree on a date to release all prisoners held for their political affiliation, reopen all institutes closed due to the feud and issue passports to people in Gaza who have been unable to apply for them because of the division. 

 

 

 

 

 

A strong Islamist showing in Egypt’s election need not be cause for panic, Issandr El Amrani
It is depressing Islamists have garnered such support, but all is not lost if the Muslim Brotherhood is serious about democracy. The results from the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections paint a fairly clear picture: Islamists will be a majority in the next parliament, led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party (FJP), and Salafists have exceeded expectations to be, perhaps, the second party in Egypt.

 

 

 

 

The uprising in Syria along with the murder and rape of a Lebanese woman, has ignited yet another round of anti-Syrian hatred and suspicion among pro and anti-regime forces in Lebanon.

 

 

Burhan Ghalyun went, in a matter of months, from categorically rejecting international military intervention, to saying that outside non-military intervention is acceptable, to saying that he won’t talk about the kind of outside military intervention that he is seeking.  This interview with Hariri rag, Al-Mustaqbal, says it all.  The fact that he chose the Hariri rag to express his views on Syrian and Lebanese matters really says it all, and also exposes the regional and international network of alliances (financial and otherwise) binding the the lousy Council that he heads.  It is a sad ending for the career of a man who once was courageous.  Notice that this man who only months ago kept insisting that he won’t in any way allow the Lebanese internal politics to burden him or to influence him, is now speaking like a fellow March 14 figure.  I never thought that I would find Burhan Ghalyun sounding like Ma`mun Humis (a stooge of Hariri family).  And you want me to support such a lousy council?  Syrian National Council is to revolution what Salam Fayyad is to liberation, or what Sa`d Hariri is to nuclear physics, or what Saudi Arabia is to feminism.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/12/burhan-ghalyun-completes-circle.html

The Plot Thickens: Ghalyoun’s “Ill-Conceived” Statements in the WSJ Interview, Bassam Haddad
Leaving the problematic statements about Iran and Hizballah aside, in who’s interest is it for the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) to talk about how the (possible) future Syrian leadership will or will not pursue its right for restoring it’s occupied Golan Heights territory from Israel? Is this what occupies the minds of protesters who are being shot daily by the Syrian regime? Is this something that will give them an edge in their pursuit of their basic political and other rights inside Syria? Even if statements about the Golan are appropriate, why should such declarations let aggressors off the hook so prematurely, so unnecessarily, so irresponsibly, and so recklessly, by emphasizing ill-conceived “liberal” and “feel-good” language? And where did all this positivity suddenly emerge about Syrian-Western relations?

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3398/the-plot-thickens_ghalyouns-%E2%80%9Cill-conceived%E2%80%9D-statem
 

Hezbollah chief makes rare public apperance
Hassan Nasrallah attends Beirut rally, telling supporters group is “increasing in numbers and in weapons”.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/12/2011126101958234404.html

Hezbollah’s Nasrallah speaks in rare appearance
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance in Beirut on Tuesday to mark the Shia holy day of Ashoura. Nasrallah has made few public appearances since the month-long war with Israel in 2006 fearing he might be assassinated. “I wanted to be with you for few minutes…to renew our pledge and for the world to hear us,” Nasrallah said after he was seen walking through the crowd. From the podium Nasrallah added that his public appearance was a message to anyone who thought they could “threaten us.”
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/hezbollahs-nasrallah-speaks-rare-appearence?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AlAkhbarEnglish+%28Al+Akhbar+English%29

 

 

Iran’s armed forces shot down an American drone Sunday after it violated Iranian airspace, officials in Iran’s military told state television. ”An advanced RQ-170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran’s armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran’s armed forces,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. According to Iranian officials the unmanned American drone entered Iranian airspace to spy on Iran’s nuclear activity.

It’s been over a decade since American graduate student and activist Dan Walsh conceived the Palestine Poster Project Archives. His early, more modest efforts had Walsh exhibiting hundreds of Palestine posters online. But since 2009, his fledgling collection – which served as a component of his Master’s thesis – has become a veritable archive of 6,000 posters and counting.

 

There are good NGOs and bad NGOs in Tel Aviv’s eyes. The new Likud-Yisrael Beitenu NGO funding legislationis aimed at the bad ones. Bad ones criticize the Occupation. Good ones help it along. This bill will limit and tax foreign governments’ funding for Israeli NGOs, yet it is not a sweeping measure that will affect Israeli nonprofits’ funding from other sources (or from the Israeli government itself). It is targeted at left-wing organizations, particularly those that provided information for the Goldstone Commission – its supporters openly admit this. Israeli officials also do not want to create a wide-ranging law that could impact right-wing charitable organizations.Tel Aviv increasingly depends on these groups, and their U.S. donors, to help subsidize and, most importantly, legitimize the Occupation.

If you want to check on the pulse of Israeli fashion–that is the “fashion” of Israeli racism–you can do no better than study MK Danny Danon’s legislative agenda.  I don’t usually write about individual bills since there are so many far-right imbeciles who must have their say and they come up with more nonsense than you can shake a stick at.  But for MK Danon, for whom Matan Lurey has developed an apt moniker, ‘MKKK,’ I make an exception.

 

How many of us, when we learned about Lynsey Addario’s humiliation–which was rightly condemned by the New York Times, Time magazine, and Tablet– thought of Palestinian women and wondered how many countless others had been similarly violated? Excuse the repetition, but it’s worth quoting Dahlia Scheindlin: The fact is this happens all the time… with no editor to write the IDF and stand up for them.