Khader Adnan enters the 55th day of his hungry strike in Israeli detention, he has not been charged with anything
Israel military again delays action on Khader Adnan’s appeal as concern over hunger striker’s condition mounts, Ali Abunimah
Despite his grave medical condition after 54 days of hunger strike, Israeli military authorities have once again postponed action on Khader Adnan’s appeal against his four-month “administrative detention” – without charge or trial.
Tomorrow, Khader Adnan, now on his 54th day of hunger strike against an administrative detention order, will see an Israeli judge for a final military court appeal. Ma’an News Agency reported the ”special session” will take place in an Israeli hospital, where Adnan is currently shackled to a bed. In addition to the unconventional court session, yesterday Israeli authorities also unexpectedly granted Adnan a family visit, in which his wife described his physical condition as “horrifying.” Adnan is 33, a father of two, and his wife Randa is five months pregnant with their third child. He is a baker and is pursuing a Masters degree in Economics.
Lawyer of hunger striker Adnan refuses Israeli request to delay hearing
The Israeli prison authority asked for delaying the appeal hearing of prisoner Khader Adnan, on hunger strike for more than 50 days in an Israeli jail, and said his health deteriorated very badly.
Khader Adnan: 53 days on Hunger Strike
Yesterday also marked the first time Khader Adnan’s pregnant wife Randa and their two young daughters were able to visit him. Randa described Khader’s physical appearance as “horrifying”, and their four year old daughter asked why he looked like that and why he couldn’t come home.
Wife of hunger striker: Adnan enjoys high morale despite bad health condition
Wife of detainee Sheikh Khader Adnan said after meeting him in hospital that his morale was high despite his faltering health after 52 days of hunger strike.
TAKE URGENT ACTION: DAY 53 OF KHADER ADNAN’S HUNGER STRIKE
On the 17th of December 2011 (53 days ago), Khader Adnan began his hunger strike in protest of his ill-treatment in Israeli detention and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial (known as Administrative Detention). He is in danger of dying at any moment. His wife, Randa, who saw him for the first time since his detention today described his condition as rapidly deteriorating and that he has lost a third of his weight and his hair.
Tommy McKearney, one of the participants of the legendary 1980-81 Irish hunger strikes has sent a video message of solidarity to Khader Adnan and his family. Adnan, a Palestinian, has been on hunger strike ever since his 17 December detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-former-irish-hunger-strikers-message-khader-adnan-palestinian-prisoner-55
Ethnic Cleansing / Destruction of Homes & Property / Apartheid
Palestinian family forced to destroy their home
Palestinian family in Occupied East Jerusalem have until Friday to clear the rubble from their house which they were forced to destroy with their own hands.
http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/palestinian-family-forced-to-destroy-their-home-1.977935
Settlers take more land in occupied West Bank
Jewish settlers have seized a large area of the town of Yatta, south of the city of Hebron. The land grab is to expand an illegal settlement. The Yatta coordinator of the Popular Committees Against the Wall and Settlements, Rateb El-Jabour, told Quds Press that the settlers cordoned-off around 3,000 square metres in the early morning. This, he said, was a prelude to the land’s confiscation for expansion of a settlement near ancient Susya.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/3411-settlers-take-more-land-in-occupied-west-bank
The Bedouins of Al-Hadidiya have seen their tents demolished a dozen times since 2007. A community of about 12 families in the North of the Jordan Valley, Hadidiya was originally made up of shacks and animal shelters.
Jewish settlers confiscated three dunums of Palestinian land to the east of Yatta town, south of Al-Khalil, on Wednesday, local sources said.
Aqsa foundation warns of Israeli plan to expand Jewish neighborhood in J’lem
The Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage revealed an Israeli plan to expand the illegal Jewish neighborhood in the old city at the expense of lands belonging to the Armenian monastery.
Israel’s racist legislation deepens AKKA-The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, conceived as temporary legislation in 2003, prevents the unification of Israeli citizens with spouses that are from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israeli forces assault family, arrest their 13-year-old child
A large number of Israeli special forces broke into the home of a Palestinian family in Aisawiye village in occupied Jerusalem and arrested a 13-year-old minor.
Soldiers invade homes in Hebron’s Old City
Early on the morning of February 8, more than 20 Israeli soldiers and border police broke into at least 30 homes in the Old City neighborhood of Al-Khalil [Hebron].
Hundreds of Jewish settlers storm Nablus village
Hundreds of Jewish settlers stormed Sabastiya village to the north west of Nablus at noon Wednesday to visit a number of historical sites.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested two Hamas leaders from their homes in Tobas, to the north of the West Bank, at dawn Thursday.
Israeli police round up 21 Palestinian workers
Israeli police forces arrested 21 Palestinian workers from the Jenin province while working in number of villages in the Galilee on Thursday.
Rabbi calls for reoccupying Gaza, El-Arish
A well-known Jewish rabbi has called for reoccupying Gaza Strip and the nearby Egyptian city of El-Arish, claiming that they were part of Greater Israel.
Israeli Apartheid Week Trailer from Never Before Campaign
Please find below the link to the a video, a trailer, produced for the Israeli Apartheid Week activities set to be launched in cities all over the world during February. As usual, you feedback and assistance in distributing the video is much appreciated.
Palestinian youth to France: “Stop financing the killing of our people”
Two protests have been held today in Palestine to protest a French-Israeli military deal. A wide variety of youth organizations has organized the protests to oppose the French acquisition of $500 million worth of drones from Israeli Airspace Indistries. Some 30 people gathered in Jerusalem in front of the French consulate and only hours later some 50 people protested in Ramallah in front of the French cultural center. The activists targeting the French institutions to express their outrage against French complicity with the Israeli military and Israeli war crimes held up banners calling for an immediate military embargo against Israel and for a boycott of Israel. They shouted slogans denouncing this latest deal betwen Israel and the French government.
ISRAEL: The tribulations of being an Ethiopian Jew
TEL AVIV 09 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shai Siun became accustomed to being called a “nigger”.
Israel Seeking New Air Force Base in Cyprus
The Israeli government, under Benjamin Netanyahu, is about to initiate talks with Cyprus in order to establish an Israeli Air Force base in the country, while affirming Israel’s “outstanding” relations with Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus.
Bahrain Protesters Attacked, “US Assisting Regime Forces”
Bahraini regime forces attacked peaceful protesters amid a 10-day sit-in protest held near the capital. Meanwhile, activists accused the United States of assisting regime forces in their crackdown.
Reuters – The funeral march for Mohammed Yaacoub had barely ended last week when police and protesters faced off in the town of Sitra, an impoverished district of Bahrain that has borne the brunt of a year of unrest.
Jailed Bahraini activist renews hunger strike (Reuters)
Reuters – A jailed rights activist in Bahrain has gone back on hunger strike ahead of the February 14 anniversary of a pro-democracy uprising, the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said Thursday.
Iran: Arrest Sweeps Target Arab Minority
Iranian security forces arrested more than 65 Arab residents during security sweeps in Iran’s Arab-majority Khuzestan province since late 2011 according to local activists. The Iranian government should immediately charge or release those arrested. Authorities should also investigate reports by local activists that two detainees have died in Intelligence Ministry detention facilities in the past week.
MUNICH — The appeals to Israel by numerous European diplomats attending the Munich security conference last weekend have led to growing concern that Israeli plans to attack Iran are imminent. The very number of warnings to Israel, and the emphasis with which diplomats have expressed concern, suggests that Israeli plans to attack Iran are real […]
U.S. Most Powerful Bunker Buster Cannot Destroy Iran’s Nukes, Richard Silverstein
On April 10, 2002, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons, ‘Saddam Hussein’s regime is…developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked.’ A year later, Blair, enthusiastically joined a US-led coalition that launched an illegal war against Iraq. Their hunt for weapons of mass destruction was futile because no such weapons actually existed. The Iraq Survey Group, a 1,400 strong member organization set up by the CIA and the Pentagon, made every attempt to prove otherwise, but only came back empty-handed. In its final Duelfer Report, released in September 2004, the group “found no evidence of concerted efforts to restart the [nuclear] program.”
Iraq has executed 65 people so far this year
Iraqi authorities executed at least 65 people in the first 40 days of 2012 for various offences, including 14 on a single day, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Joe Stork, the group’s deputy Middle East director, said Iraqi authorities appeared to have given the “green light to execute at will”. The New York-based advocacy group said trials often violated international standards. Many defendants were unable to challenge the evidence against them, which may include coerced confession.
Saudi crackdown kills one, injures 14
Saudi regime forces have opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, killing one person and wounding at least 14 others.
Ban Ki-moon says bloc wants to send observers back with UN help as Syrian forces continued their assault on Homs.
Homs under fire as Syria battle rages
With President Bashar Assad refusing to cede power, U.S. options include arming Syrian rebels or looking the other way if others do. Some foresee a proxy war.
Russia has dismissed a forced regime change in Syria, stressing that Syrian people must decide about President Bashar al-Assad not the international community.
The warm welcome received by Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari’s UN speech over the weekend, among those who reject the Syrian opposition’s armed wing and its calls for foreign intervention, was not restricted to Syrians only.
A Struggle for Regional Supremacy: Syria Conflict Escalates as World Powers Debate Assad’s Future
Syria is seeing some of the worst violence of the 11-month uprising against Bashar al-Assad amid an ongoing international standoff over how to respond. Assad’s forces have launched what appears to be one of their fiercest assaults on the flashpoint city of Homs to date. Both the United States and Britain have closed their embassies in the Syrian capital of Damascus and withdrawn diplomatic personnel, citing safety fears. As the crisis escalates, Russia and China are facing criticism for blocking a U.N. Security Council resolution backed by the United States and Arab League calling for a political transition in Syria. To discuss the situation in Syria, we’re joined by Patrick Seale, a leading British writer on the Middle East and author of “Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East.” “It’s at least a two- or possibly a three-stage crisis. Internally in Syria, the situation is getting worse by the day,” Seale says. “At a higher level, there is a struggle between the United States, on the one hand, and its allies, and its opponents like Russia and China… Then there’s a third level, possibly, of Arab Gulf states like Qatar, for example, even Saudi Arabia behind it, who are obsessed and worried by Iran, and they think that Iran might stir up Shia communities in the region.”
In March 2011, I wrote a long piece on the military intervention in Libya in which I summarised academic research on intervention in intrastate conflicts. Since proponents of the responsibility to protect doctrine typically argue for it via an account of one or two notorious cases where we should have but failed to intervene, the debates typically overrate the lessons of those few cases and ignore all the rest. Consequently, I disregarded theoretical and anecdotal accounts of, or arguments for, military intervention and focused exclusively on empirical studies where the authors analysed dozens or hundreds of conflicts across the past century or more to calculate whether the consequences of such intervention are usually positive.
“Consider this paragraph from an article about Syria in The Times on Saturday by Nada Bakri, a Beirut correspondent: “A 34-year-old teacher from the Alawite sect said her life had changed in ways she never imagined. Six months ago, she started covering her head like Sunni Muslim women, hoping not to stand out. Her husband, an officer in the Syrian Army, rarely leaves his base to come home. She said she and their two sons had not seen him in months. A few weeks ago, her landlord, a Sunni, asked her to leave the house because his newly married son wanted to move in. ‘Sunnis have begun to feel empowered,’ the teacher said. ‘A year ago, no one would have expected this to happen.’ She had already made plans to return to her village.” With good reason. There is a lot of pent-up anger there.”
Radical Muslim Americans Pose Little Threat, Study Says
The study found that arrests of Muslim Americans in plots or violent attacks have dropped sharply since 2009.
A few days ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas head Khaled Mesha’al announced an agreement for a unified Palestinian government, whose task would be to facilitate general elections, and begin the rebuilding of Gaza. The deal puts unity between the two main Palestinian factions back on track, much to the chagrin of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
JustSalvos Censors Palestine Story
I recently witnessed a Christian social justice group, which I greatly respect, be successfully pressured into suppressing the issue of Palestine from their work. The episode raises broader questions about censorship and the concepts of ‘bias’ and ‘balance’. JustSalvos is an Australian organisation within The Salvation Army that seeks to raise awareness, and campaign on, social justice issues. Its website includes information on such issues as poverty, refugees and asylum-seekers, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, and the plight of Australia’s indigenous people. Visitors to the website can purchase Fair Trade products, and can also purchase products for disadvantaged people in developing countries, such as education tools, micro-financing kits, livestock, seeds, toys, and health supplies(1). JustSalvos also has a blog, and Facebook and YouTube pages. I have been a member of JustSalvos’ Facebook page for some time now, and wrote an article for their blog.
Modern Love: In Search for My Palestinian Family
It was during the First Intifada, in the spring of 1988, that I took a bus from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to find my real dad. Soldiers squatted on abandoned shop fronts with metal cages pulled around their faces, riffles to hand. They stared suspiciously as a waif-like English girl, all of seventeen, and her friend alighted from the bus to wander the barren streets, and disappear into the dust. “Please do not go,” my mother had pleaded from England. But there was no stopping me.
Since World War II, the impulse of the American foreign policy elite has been to intervene in trouble spots abroad and apparently let God sort out the consequences. The ill effects of such interventions are usually plain to see — if nothing else, after the episodes are over — but the arrogance of the elite […]
The progressive have a super editorial in this month’s issue about detention without charge and how degraded the judicial system of a country becomes when habeas corpus is dispensed with. Israel has been doing this for years. The notion of justice in Israel is essentially meaningless.