Everyone knows a prisoner
Eva Bartlett, In Gaza
I visited Anwar in his Rafah home last week, 2 days after April 17th Palestinian Political Prisoners’ Day. Prison is a theme for all Palestinians living in occupied Palestine, whether they themselves have been abducted and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces, or whether someone in their family (a brother, father, son, daughter, mother) is being held in one of Israel’s prisons. So while the visit was to meet Anwar’s family, the prison theme was unavoidable. Anwar spent 3 years in an Israeli prison after taking his then 3 year old son, Yousef, to Egypt for treatment for his cerebral palsy. He, his wife and children ha’d spent 2 months outside of Gaza, but when they returned in June 2004, Anwar was hauled away to Israeli prison for 3 years…
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Top of the Heap: The Democrats’ Teachable Moment on Torture
Chris Floyd
Could it really have ended any other way? As the New York Times reports, Barack Obama and the Democratic Establishment are coming down hard and fast to quell any incipient movement toward accountability for the Bush Regime’s torture system. These “leaders” continue to advance the bizarre and bogus argument that the nation has too many “urgent priorities” to bother with following its own laws. Obama told the Democratic poobahs from Congress that a “ful l inquiry” into the torture system would “steal time and energy from his policy agenda,” the Times reports. But this argument — indeed the entire issue of some sort of “commission” to investigate the high crimes — is simply a cynical bait and switch…
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The Shamelessness of Jane Harman
She should have the decency to step down
Justin Raimondo
Confronted with clear evidence that she tried to obstruct justice in the case of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman — two former top AIPAC officials slated to go on trial for espionage on June 2 — Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, did what politicians usually do when forced to face unpleasant facts: she brazened it out. In a response to the Congressional Quarterly piece by Jeff Stein that has proved such an entertaining embarrassment, she brayed: “These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact. I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.” … The Shamelessness of Jane Harman
She should have the decency to step down
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Testimony: Settlers assault pregnant woman with sticks and stones, April ’09
B’Tselem
I am eight months’ pregnant. On Friday, 10 April, I took my sheep to graze in an area southwest of our village, not far from the cattle farm of the Ma’on settlement. I was with other women from the village, among them Amneh Sallem ‘Eid al-Hazalin and Khadrah Suliman al-Hazalin, and a group of children under the age of 15, among them Tareq Sallem ‘Eid al-Hazalin, 13, Musa Suliman al-Hazalin, 12, and ‘Omar Suliman al-Hazalin, 10…
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Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?
By JEREMY SCAHILL
There are not exactly throngs of Democratic Congressmembers beating down the doors of the Justice Department demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special Independent Prosecutor to investigate torture and other crimes. And now it seems that whatever Congress does in the near term won’t even be open to the public. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said this week that he prefers that the Senate Intelligence Committee hold private hearings. The chair of the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has asked the White House not to take any action until this private affair is concluded. She estimates that will take 6-8 months…
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Obama Rejects Truth Panel
Commission Would Have Investigated Abuses in Terrorism Fight
By Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane, Washington Post Staff Writers
President Obama rebuffed calls for a commission to investigate alleged abuses under the Bush administration in fighting terrorism, telling congressional leaders at a White House meeting yesterday that he wants to look forward instead of litigating the past. In a lengthy exchange with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama appeared to back away from a statement earlier this week that suggested he could support an independent commission to examine possible abuses, according to several attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss the private meeting freely. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, also seeking to clarify the president’s position, told reporters that “the president determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case” because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue…
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Video: Israel ‘fishing for spies’ in Gaza
AljaeeraEnglish
Human rights groups say Israel is preying on the sick and vulnerable in Gaza to coerce them into spying. Several fishermen tell Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin that they have been threatened with blackmail unless they agree to spy on Palestinian factions…
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Norway’s chief prosecutor considers Israeli war crimes case
Watan
After the filing on Wednesday of a war crimes case against Israeli leaders by a group of Norwegian lawyers on behalf of people and families affected by the war on Gaza the chief prosecutor said the complaint will be studied. “We will follow normal procedure, which means we will look through the complaint to determine whether or not to send it to the police to carry out a formal investigation,” Siri Frigaard, chief prosecutor at Norway’s National Authority f or Prosecution of Organized and Other Serious Crimes, told Reuters on Thursday. The complaint by Norwegian lawyers has been filed under a law which allows foreigners to be prosecuted in Norway over war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity even when the alleged criminal acts are committed outside the country…
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Must see video
Mazin Qumsiyeh
In this video tape shot April 17, Bassem Aburahma (nick named ElFeel, the elephant, for he was always thought of as a giant among his peers) is seen pleading with Israeli soldiers to wait (saying Raiga in Hebrew) as Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals protested the land confiscation and building of the apartheid fence on vilage land. The soldiers then shoot Bassem point blank with a high velocity gas grenade which kills him within five minutes..
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Leftists in Rafah criticize internal abuses of the people and say will not side with any party
PNN
High ranking member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Central Committee, Imad Abu Rahma, said from the southern Gaza Strip today, “The failure of the Palestinian dialogue will enhance geographical and political division, and will add an increase in violations and abuse of public liberties against our people in Gaza and the West Bank.” Abu Rahma was speaking during a political forum organized in R afah’s western district of Tel Sultan entitled, “Palestinian national dialogue to where?”…The PFLP official also criticized abuses of democracy and public freedoms, and the repression and torture taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, calling for an end to this issue in the next round of dialogue…
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Deeper than the Tunnels of Gaza
Zuheir Kseibati
There is no more prominent sign to the new chapter in Arab collapses than the Israeli spitefulness at the struggle between a major Arab country, Egypt, and Hezbollah, which considers itself the head of the resistance in the region. This is a prominent chapter in the struggle between the legitimate regimes and the resistance movements. No matter what explanation each side uses to justify its stance, this spitefulness doesn’t cost the Israelis anything. The Israelis are sittin g back, merely weeks after their vicious attack on the Gaza Strip, to watch a major legitimacy and the resistance party slide towards a confrontation that will only add more marginalization and divisiveness to the Arab reality, a confrontation that will deflect the Arabs’ attention away from what Israel is plotting under the reign of the ultra-extremists…
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Four injured, dozens suffer gas-inhalation in Ni’lin weekly protest
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Israeli soldiers violently attacked on Friday Palestinian and international peace activists holding the weekly nonviolent protest against the Annexation Wall in Ni’lin village, west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah. Four protestors were injured, and dozens were treated for gas inhalation. The protesters marched in commemoration of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah, 30, who was killed by the army during the weekly nonviolent protest last week in Bil’in village near Ramallah. Palestinian legislator, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, also participated in the protest…
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On denial
Marcy Newman, body on the line
Yet another example of why zionism = racism. Yesterday ma’an news reported that someone who merely mentioned the words Palestinian Nakba (the massive ethnic cleansing and the massacres perpetrated by Jewish terrorist militias that targeted indigenous palestinians) was fired from the israeli terrorist holocaust museum in al-Quds…
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Obama administration to release photos showing alleged abuses by U.S. troops
While fearing backlash, White House to release images in May
Peter Wallsten, Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes
The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 44 pictures will be released by May 28, making public for the first time images of what the military investigated at facilities ot her than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Defense Department officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos but said they are concerned the release could incite a Mideast backlash…
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