When will world leaders show “cruel racists” zero tolerance?
Stuart Littlewood
…The news this week that three British medics are on hunger strike in Egypt makes the cruelty point clear enough to those who have so far been blind and deaf to it. They are protesting against being refused entry into Gaza for a humanitarian mission to set up a cardiac surgery unit at the al-Shifa hospital and help train medical students and junior doctors there. But the team have been denied access through Rafah by Egypt since 4 May. “We are on hunger strike until they let us through,” says Omar Mangoush, a cardiac surgeon from London. “There are loads of people with heart disease in Gaza. They can’t get out to Egypt and they can’t get out through Israel.” He took a month’s holiday from work to go on this charity-based mission. So who are the mental retards responsible for this outrage? …
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Media Ignores Real Controversy Behind Torture Photos; They Show Prison Guards Raping Children
Paul Joseph Watson
The real reason behind Obama’s reversal of a decision to release the torture photos has been almost completely ignored by the corporate media – the fact that the photos show both US and Iraqi soldiers raping teenage boys in front of their mothers. The Obama administration originally intended to release photos depicting torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of May, following a court o rder arising out of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit first filed by the ACLU in 2004…
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The Israeli Murderer Who Eats Chocolate While Killing Children
Kawther Salam
After the return of the delegation of the Federation of Austrian-Arab Doctor from their visit to Gaza, where they could see the devastation and destruction left by the Israeli war machine during the so-called “Operation Cast Lead”, a meeting was held in Vienna where Dr. Tarek, who was in the delegation, told his colleagues about his observation in Gaza. He described his feelings during the visit in such awful words that they can not be described in an English language. He said, that he felt death inside him during his visit to Izbat Abed Rabbo, a small village of farmers near Beit Lahia in the north-east of Gaza Strip. He said that the smell of death was suffocating when he saw the ruins of a big house and the pieces of an ambulance buried under it. In the windows of ambulance he saw some pieces of clothes of the medical team which was killed inside the ambulance while trying to get out victims of the Israeli bombing…
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Gaza: ower Struggle Killing Patients
By Mel Frykberg
The lives of hundreds of critically ill Gazans continue to be jeopardised by the power struggle between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, and political blackmail by Israel. Mohammed Zibdeh, 12, who has cancer of the brain is waiting in Gaza city for a permit to travel to Israel for advanced treatment. He is dependent on a ventilator connected to his throat for survival. last year Mohammed was able to secure a permit to travel to an Israeli hospital where he re ceived chemotherapy for his brain tumour, causing the tumour to shrink significantly. However, a power struggle between Fatah and Hamas over the issuance of exit permits for patients, and Israel’s reluctance to issue visas for Gazans on the basis of alleged security, means Mohammed has to now wait for a new permit to return to the Israeli hospital…
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Reports Say Obama Will Call for ‘Demilitarized’ Palestine
Land Swaps Would Aim for “Contiguous” Nation-State
Jason Ditz
Reports coming out of Israel today detail the so-called Obama-Abdullah plan, an initiative for Palestinian statehood created by President Obama and Jordan’s King Abdullah II. The hugely ambitious plan aims for an “independent, democratic and contiguous Palestinian state,” which would not have a military of its own and would be forbidden from entering into military pacts with other nations “for Israel’s security.”…
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Obama dealt Guantanamo setback
Aljazera.net
The US senate has denied funding for Barack Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre by January, voting instead to keep it running indefinitely. The senate voted on Wednesday to block any transfer of prisoners to facilities on the US mainland, saying they wanted to first see a detailed plan from the president on what would happen to the men. The crushing 90-6 bipartisan vote comes a day before Obama is scheduled to outline his plan for the 240 detainees still be ing held at the much-criticised detention centre…
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Six Hamas members seized by PA
Ma’an News
Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority forces seized six Hamas members on Wednesday night, the Islamic movement said. Hamas listed the arrestees in a statement: Sheikh Riyad Nasser, 32, from Deir Qaddis village near Ramallah, Emam Sheikh Muhammad Hassan Ad-Dahleh, 32, from Beituniya near Ramallah, Tha’er Saba’nah, from Qabatiya village near Jenin, Bilal Asef Abu Arrah, from Aqaba village near Jenin, Sameh Ayyad, from Nablus…..
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Palestinian lawyers condemn politically motivated arrests
Ma’an News
The legal community in Palestine is up in arms about continuous political detentions on the part of Palestinian Authority and de facto government security forces. In a statement sent to Ma’an, the Palestinian Legal Society said that “continuous political detentions” are “humiliating to Palestinian rights and will lead to the failure of the national dialogue.” “All human beings have the right to live freely and be safe, and political affiliation is a righ t for any Palestinian,” the statement went on to say…
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 20/2009 (14 – 20 May 2009)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (14 – 20 May 2009): Shooting: During the reporting period, 11 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children, were wounded by IOF in the West Bank, and a resistance activist and a farmer were wounded by IOF in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, 9 Palestin ian civilians, including 5 children, were wounded when IOF used force against a peaceful demonstration organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah. On 18 May 2009, two Palestinian workers were wounded when IOF troops positioned at a checkpoint near Hebron opened fire at a number of workers…
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No hope or change from Obama-Netanyahu meeting
Ali Abunimah
Seldom has an encounter between an American and Israeli leader been as hyped as this week’s meeting between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As expected, Obama committed himself to diplomacy with Iran and pledged an enormous effort to achieve a two-state solution. Netanyahu continued to incite confrontation with Iran and refused to commit himself to a Palestinian state. On the surface it may seem there are real differences and that the forces arrayed on each side — including the formidable Israel lobby — are gearing up for an epic battle to determine the fate of US-Israeli relations…
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Netanyahu: Jerusalem will never be divided or partitioned
Ma’an News
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on Thursday that all of Jerusalem will forever remain under Israeli control. Netanyahu made the comments during a speech marking the anniversary of the occupation of the eastern half of the Palestinian capital, according to Israeli news reports. “United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided,” Netanyahu said at the state ceremony…
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A misbegotten government
By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah
The new Palestinian Authority (PA) government which was sworn in Ramallah Tuesday, 19 May, is another prescription for failure. Hence, one would exaggerate little by saying that the new cabinet will be a deformed replica of the previous government whose main task was confined to carrying out instructions and orders from the American “High Commissioner” in the West Bank , Gen. Keith Dyaton. To begin with, the raison d’etre of the new government is to meet the requirem ents of the status quo. It will be utterly unable, even if willing, to advance Palestinian national interests because it has no sovereignty of its own and can hardly do anything worthwhile without Israeli approval. Indeed, it is an insult to language and common sense to speak of a genuine “government” under a sinister foreign military occupation when such an entity has no authority, freedom and sovereignty of its own…
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Ex-AIPACer Weissman comes out hard against military action in Iran
Daniel Luban
In March, former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield wrote a very interesting piece for the New Jersey Jewish News. In it, he revealed that although AIPAC publicly professed support for the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, it was secretly coordinating with then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and working behind the scenes to sabotage the process. By illustrating AIPAC’s willingness to work against the policies of both U.S. and Israeli governments when they proved insufficiently hawkish, Bloomfield noted, this information could “not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”…
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US keeps nuclear “don’t ask, don’t tell” -Israel aide
Reuters
The U.S. administration of President Barack Obama will not force Israel to state publicly whether it has nuclear weapons, an Israeli official said on Thursday. He said Washington would stick to a decades-old U.S. policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Obama’s bid to curb Iran’s nuclear programme through diplomacy has stirred speculation that, as part of a regional disarmament regimen, Israel could be asked to come clean on its own secret capabilities…
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