Palestinian teen hit by Israeli car at checkpoint
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — A Palestinian teenager was struck and injured by an Israeli driver near an East Jerusalem checkpoint on Saturday morning, witnesses told Ma’an. Suleiman Abu Mahamid, 18, was waiting to catch a bus near al-Zayyem checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem when a private car hit him and fled the scene. Onlookers said the assailant was an Israeli settler using a road into the West Bank that is off limits to Palestinians. Witnesses from nearby East Jerusalem neighborhood Isawiya took the car number and photos of the incident, they said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=455984
One year after a 17-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli settlers as he farmed with his father in his West Bank village, his killers remain unpunished.
Attacks on Protests Against Land Theft / Land Theft & Destruction / Restriction of Movement / Apartheid
Dozens of Palestinians were reportedly wounded on Friday afternoon during Israeli military attacks on peaceful marches organized weekly in different West Bank villages.
Israel razed 17 Palestinian homes in the West Bank over the past week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian land said on Saturday.
The Israeli army is planning to build barracks for its intelligence in the Negev on the land of the unrecognized Palestinian village Mukaimen, the Arab center for alternative planning said.
The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has served demolition notices to two Palestinian homes in Ma’sara village, south of Bethlehem, local sources said.
Jewish settlers planted land belonging to the village of Sair to the north of al-Khalil, in the southern West Bank, in an attempt to take it over, claiming that it belongs to them.
IOA blocks travel of 40 Palestinians in one week
The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) blocked the travel of 40 Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan over the past week, Palestinian sources said.
Palestinian officials have rejected an Israeli border proposal that would reduce a Palestinian state to cantons within the West Bank, while Israel kept its illegal Jewish settlements, Palestinian sources said on Friday. A Palestinian delegation considered the verbal presentation by Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho to be a non-starter as it aims at creating a fenced-off territory that would preserve Jewish settlements.
Inhabitants of hamlet go on hunger strike to protest demolition of their homes
Inhabitants of Khirbat Al-Tawil hamlet south of Nablus city have gone on hunger strike for a single day on Saturday to protest Israeli occupation authority’s practices against them.
Some 130 rabbis send letter to chief justice, urging her to overturn decision to destroy West Bank outpost.
Just completed filming of ‘Remember Palestine’ at Press TV studio in West London. My guests today were Sharif Nashashibi of Arab Media Watch, Nathan Stuckey of the International Solidarity Movement and a furious sounding, Chris Gunness, Press spokesman for UNWRA.
Israeli Missile Targets Home in Ash-Shujaa’eya Neighborhood, Abu Mustafa shells Nahal Oz
Palestinian local sources reported that an Israeli missile targeted Saturday at dawn a home in the neighborhood of Ash-Shujaa’eya, east of Gaza. No injuries reported.
Occupation forces arrest three minors
IOF troops arrested on Thursday three Palestinian minors from the village of Menyah to the east of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.
IOF soldiers disguised as Palestinians kidnap Palestinian youth
IOF troops, disguised as Palestinians, on Thursday evening kidnapped a number of Palestinian youth from Esaweyyah village east of Jerusalem.
Occupation decides to keep lawmaker Tafesh in administrative detention
The occupation court of Ofer on Thursday sentenced Palestinian lawmaker Khaled Tafesh for Bethlehem to four months administrative detention without charges or proper trial.
The Irish FM visits Gaza, calls for end to blockade
The Irish Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore, on Friday visited the Gaza Strip entering the coastal enclave through the Beit Hanoun crossing to the north of the Strip..
A New Stage for West Bank Popular Resistance
Photos by Lazar Simeonov. In a hazy room, clouded with cigarette smoke and steam from hot syrup-sweat tea, residents of Kafr ad-Dik and its neighboring villages, along with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, excitedly gathered together waiting for the midday.
Video: 140 Israelis endorse Methodist church’s upcoming divestment resolution, Allison Deger
January 26, 2012. One more date in a long string of blown deadlines for the pathetic Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” overseen by that bizarre hybrid of fading or faded superpowers and multilateral organizations known as the Quartet. No wonder the Obama Administration has washed its hands of the effort and happily delegated this futile exercise to Jordanian auspices. For the last several weeks in Amman, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have held sporadic preliminary talks about holding talks to talk about “permanent status” issues. Heady and inspiring stuff.
We will not be intimidated: Video with Cindy Corrie backs Olympia Food Co-op fight against anti-boycott lawsuit, Ali Abunimah
Cindy Corrie is among several people appearing in a short video calling for solidarity with the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, Washington and condemning a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Co-op’s boycott of Israeli goods.
Israel to become biggest jailer of refugees
Lia Tarachansky reports from Israel. Knesset approves plan to jail asylum seekers for longest period of western world in biggest prison.
Hamas leader goes back to Jordan
The political leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, is due to visit Jordan, 13 years after it expelled Hamas leaders.
Canadian ministers object to participation of Hamas MPs in IPU meeting in Quebec
Two Canadian federal ministers have urged their country not to host a meeting for the international parliamentary union (IPU) in the event Hamas lawmakers attended the conference.
Election fever grips Israel as Netanyahu maneuver expected
His coalition is stable, but some think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek early elections to capitalize on his popularity before the U.S. presidential vote. Israel’s current coalition government is one of its most stable in decades, and the next scheduled national poll is nearly two years off. Yet election fever has gripped the country and some believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quietly preparing to call for an early vote, perhaps in the middle of this year.
Leap in number of Israelis studying in PA
Report published by Knesset Research and Information Center reveals some 1,300 non-Jewish Israelis enrolled in Palestinian higher education institutions. Main reasons: Difficulty getting accepted into Israeli colleges, language barrier.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4181944,00.html
Snake dies from baby’s bite
Infant who bit head off reptile winds up unscathed; ‘I screamed until neighbors came,’ horrified mom says.
Following a Palestinian appeal for UN recognition, US congressional funding for aid projects including a local version of ‘Sesame Street’ have been frozen.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/world/~3/aOwVL3qu_hU/Why-the-US-won-t-fund-Palestinian-Sesame-Street
AP – A suicide car bomber struck a Shiite funeral procession Friday, killing 33 people as suspected al-Qaida militants stepped up apparent efforts to provoke a counterattack by Shiite militias on Sunnis that could pave the way toward open sectarian warfare now that U.S. troops have left Iraq.
Deaths in attacks on Iraq’s Sunni districts
At least 17 killed in attacks across the country, including 10 in a bombing attack in Hamia area.
Bahraini forces injure 12 protesters
A dozen protesters in Bahrain have been injured during clashes between regime forces and anti-government demonstrators across the country.
Government doesn’t say how 18-year-old died in hospital, but an opposition leader claims cause of death was torture.
UN considers resolution on Syria
Days of tough talks loom before any vote is held as Russia says the proposed resolution crosses its “red lines”.
A growing number of activists in Syria are taking up arms to protect themselves from the government’s violent crackdown that has claimed thousands of civilians lives since March. They have begun setting up military councils in provinces across the country to create an organised command structure. And the Syrian National Council, a leading opposition group, says it will logistically back the armed uprising to prevent more civilians from being killed. Zeina Khdor reports from Beirut.
Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh arrives in the US to receive medical treatment for injuries he sustained in an assassination attempt last June.
A Jordanian political activist was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for undermining King Abdullah II’s dignity, after he set alight a picture of the monarch this month. ”The [military] state security court sentenced Uday Abu Issa, 18, to two years in jail. He has been found guilty of undermining the king’s dignity,” a judicial official said. Abu Issa had confessed to setting alight the picture after tearing it off a municipal wall in Madaba, south of Amman, saying he was upset over the death of a municipal worker who set himself on fire after his contract was terminated.
Dutch to ban Muslim face veils next year
Minority government set to prohibit niqabs and burqas and other forms of clothing that cover the face.
IAEA inspectors arrive in Tehran
International Atomic Energy Agency chief inspector Herman Nackaerts and his team have arrived in Tehran for a three-day visit to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran could ban EU oil exports next week
A law to be debated in Iran’s parliament on Sunday could halt exports of oil to the European Union as early as next week, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted a lawmaker as saying on Friday. ”On Sunday, parliament will have to approve a ‘double emergency’ bill calling for a halt in the export of Iranian oil to Europe starting next week,” Hossein Ibrahimi, vice-chairman of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying.
‘Iranian threat nothing more than bluff’
New York Times suggests that Israel’s senior officials have cast doubt on widespread assumption that military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off catastrophic set of events.
Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism – and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred, ready to close the Strait of Hormuz – the moment the West’s (or Israel’s) forces attack.
Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well. Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
HIGHLY INFORMED WESTERNERS AND IRANIANS KNOW THE WAY OUT OF THE NUCLEAR IMPASSE…BUT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WON’T TAKE IT
It is possible that there will another round of nuclear discussions between the P5+1 and Iran in the near future. Given the extent to which Israel, the United States, and America’s European partners are ratcheting up tensions over the nuclear issue, one hopes that additional talks would help the parties find a peaceful and productive […]
https://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/iran-sanctions-backlash.html
Gingrich’s Extremist Anti-Palestinian Stance Follows Millions from Casino Magnate Sheldon Adelson
Many analysts say Newt Gingrich’s recent rise in the Republican contest would have been impossible without the backing of one man: multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson and his wife have donated $10 million to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, which has run a series of ads attacking Gingrich’s opponent Mitt Romney. Gingrich has openly admitted Adelson’s support came down to a single issue: Israel. Gingrich has adopted the most extremist anti-Palestinian stance of the Republican presidential field, calling the Palestinians themselves an “invented” people. We speak with Gal Beckerman of the Jewish Daily Forward and Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York.
Adelson Casino Empire Investigated for Mob Ties, Prostitution, Richard Silverstein
Billionaire Gingrich backer Adelson regrets he served in US instead of Israeli military, Ali Abunimah
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife, has donated $10 million dollars in recent weeks to Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, has said that he wishes he had served in the Israeli army instead of the US military and that he wants his son to grow up to “be a sniper for the IDF.”
Robert Fisk: The present stands no chance against the past, Robert Fisk
The Palestinians are not only, it seems, an “invented people” – courtesy of Newt Gingrich – but the only Arabs on the Mediterranean not to enjoy a Spring or an Awakening or even a Winter.
Walking Through Shatila
Far from the opulent Golden Tulip hotel where I was staying in Beirut and a world away from the glittering shopping district of Hamra is Shatila, the Palestinian refugee camp where in 1982, Christian Phalangalists, with the tacit approval of Israeli forces who were then occupying Lebanon, murdered over a 1,000 men, women and children. It was more than a day after the killings, when the stench of rotting corpses brought journalists to the area, that the details of the events started getting reported. Little media attention is paid to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, home to over 300,000 people. These people are, to use Frantz Fanon’s phrase, “the wretched of the earth.” Wretched not because of the squalid conditions in which they live, but wretched because they have repeatedly been attacked, blockaded, and denied human rights. Yet they continue to resist, hope, and live with courage and optimism.
I had spent the prior month in Gaza and actually left Gaza to join the flotilla sailing from Greece. I was hoping to use my modest skills as an EMT in the event that Israeli naval forces began shooting people on board as they did in May 2010, when they killed nine people on board the Mavi Mamara. Many of these victims, including 19-year-old US citizen Furkan Doðan, were shot point-blank in the head. Doðan was shot five times from less than 45 cm (1.5 ft), in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. He was filming the attack when he was murdered. He was unarmed.
Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern
I was recently part of a fact-finding delegation to Palestine organized by the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The delegation was composed of concerned academics and scholars based in the U.S., including myself.[i] During our weeklong investigative trip, we were witness to multiple and varied testimonies to and clear evidence of the daily acts of violence, harassment and humiliation that Palestinians are subjected to, both massive and intimate. Individuals from several families living in Eastern Jerusalem told us their personal stories of being physically thrown out of their homes in the middle of the night, their houses pillaged and taken over by settlers (many of whom were only recently residents of the U.S.), their belongings strewn onto the streets only to be looted by morning, their children targeted to bear recurring nightmares of the punishing character of their eviction (being made to see, for example, the displayed burning of their dolls alongside that of their beds). For Palestinians who were already refugees from the 1948 territorial establishment of the Israeli state, they have been forced to become refugees several times over in their own cities and neighborhoods, repeatedly made homeless beside their own homes (their makeshift tents burned numerous times), as ever-expanding settlements cause their displacement and military-protected settlers relentlessly and with impunity inflict upon them small and traumatic forms of abuse and cruelty intended to make Palestinian life in the areas claimed and colonized by the Israeli state exceedingly painful and difficult, if not impossible.
The BDS news is very encouraging; the ongoing ethnic cleansing news is appalling; there is a great deal on Iran; and there are more items of interest.
Is it possible that Mondoweiss could syndicate this news feed and earn some income?
In refugee camp Shatilah women were chief victims along with animals. The story of King Saul’s god telling him to kill women, children, animals if they don’t turn over men is not supported by literature of time–Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Charon put the show on for first time. Israel also massacred all villagers in villages in Guat. at same time. Mayans hadn’t supported dictator planted by CIA. This made them “communists.” Again, Saul’s, Charon’s “god” pointed out the women if they didn’t turn the men out.