100 DAYS OF BRUTAL ISRAELI INTIMIDATION AND EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS

Link

100 DAYS OF BRUTAL ISRAELI INTIMIDATION AND EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS

Israeli security troops forcibly detain a young Palestinian during clashes in the West Bank.

Executive Summary

It has been 100 days since grassroots, mostly youth-led protests broke out in Jerusalem, in reaction to increasing Israeli incursions into and restrictions on Islam’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. Since then, mass protests and individual attacks have spread across the West Bank and into Gaza and communities of Palestinian Israelis.

The story told primarily by the international media is one of Palestinian stabbers and Israeli retaliation in self-defense. However, as the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documents in this 100-day report, proven Palestinian attacks are relatively small in number and often committed by lone youth, while the number of arrests, harassment and executions committed by Israeli forces are increasingly excessive and disproportionate.

As such, the behavior of the Israeli military constitutes violations of international law, and thus Euro-Med demands that the United Nations and other international bodies, as well as governments doing business with Israel, act now to pressure Israeli authorities to stop the abuse of human rights and end the root cause of the unrest: its decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Executions and Injuries

This report covers the period between 1 October, 2015 and 8 January, 2016, relying on photos, videos and eyewitness testimony. Data collected indicate that 150 Palestinians, including seven women and 27 minors, were extrajudicially executed, with Israel refusing to release the bodies of 24 to their families. In contrast, 27 Israelis, including one woman, were killed by Palestinians.

In addition, 15,759 Palestinians were injured, 92 seriously—including 58 journalists and 103 emergency medical personnel. Among Israelis, 385 were injured, 33 seriously.

Arbitrary Executions

Two-thirds of Palestinian victims—95 of 150—were executed in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the border area of the Gaza Strip during protests or immediately upon detention. Many were killed merely on “suspicion,” including those falsely accused of trying to attack Israelis.

In mid-October of 2015, Euro-Med published a video recording showing eight Palestinians being arbitrarily executed by Israeli forces. The UN special rapporteur called on the UN to launch a special investigation into such extrajudicial killings.

Targeting of Medical Staff and Civilian Hospitals

Euro-Med Monitor documented 314 cases of Israeli assaults on Palestinian medical staff and civilian hospitals. Israeli forces attacked medical staff and ambulances 171 times during the 100 covered days; 16 physicians were prevented from providing necessary medical care to the injured.

In addition, Israeli forces stormed civilian hospitals nine times, allegedly searching for Palestinians who had committed illegal acts during protests. The most serious incident took place when tens of Israeli soldiers, disguised in plain clothes, stormed the Ahli Hospital in Hebron on 12 November 12, 2015—killing Abdallah Al-Shalalida and abducting his cousin. In a similar incident on 29 October, more than 60 Israeli soldiers broke into the charitable Al-Maqasid Hospital to break up a demonstration staged by doctors protesting the frequent Israeli storming of the hospital.

Discriminatory Treatment of Wounded Palestinians

Euro-Med has found that the Israeli organization Magen David Adom (MDA), recognized as an emergency medical aid agency by the International Committee of the Red Cross, frequently gives top priority to the treatment of injured Israelis, while neglecting critically wounded Palestinians. This discrimination is a blatant violation of medical ethics and the code of conduct to which all physicians ascribe.

In addition, in a number of incidents, Israeli soldiers dealt with wounded Palestinians inhumanely, allowing them to bleed for hours without providing medical treatment. In some of these incidents, soldiers interrogated Palestinians while they were bleeding on the ground.

Euro-Med contacted the administrators of Magen David Adom 30 days before issuance of this report, providing documentation of five cases in which its medical team failed to treat injured Palestinians on a timely basis. However, no response was received.

Demolition of Houses and Damage to Other Property

Euro-Med has documented 352 assaults on Palestinians and their properties. During the 100 days of the coverage period, 92 homes were demolished as collective punishment of families with relatives accused of attacking Israelis.

During the reporting period, the Israeli army stormed Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps 908 times and broke into Al-Aqsa Mosque 74 times.

Attacks on Israeli Individuals and Properties

Palestinians attacked Israeli individuals or property an estimated 227 times, ranging from knife stabbings to car rammings. The most common incident, however, was stone-throwing by Palestinian youth. These incidents primarily occurred around checkpoints and on streets linking Palestinian cities and villages. They resulted in the death of 27 Israelis, including one woman, and the injury of 385 others (33 of whom were seriously wounded).

Detention of Palestinians

Since the escalation of protests in October 2015, 3,401 Palestinians have been detained—58 percent more than during the same period the year before. About half of these detainees, 1,511, are minors. One in every 3 of these detainees was exposed to cruel treatment such as beatings, humiliation, hand-cuffing and blindfolding.

***


As an occupying power, Israel is obligated under Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure the safety and security of civilians from. Euro-Med now is communicating with the United Nations to urge it to launch a comprehensive investigation with the support of the Security Council or, if vetoed, the General Assembly. Signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention are obligated to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of crimes such as those described in this report.

The Anglo Connection: Why Do So Many Jewish Terrorists Come From the English-speaking World?

Link

The Anglo Connection: Why Do So Many Jewish Terrorists Come From the English-speaking World?

From the suspects in the Duma arson case to the revelers in the ‘wedding of hate,’ the ranks of Jewish extremist groups are filled with immigrants from the U.S. and other English speaking countries.

A screenshot from wedding video shows attendees brandishing weapons and a Molotov cocktail.

• We can’t end the desecration of Judaism without ending the occupation
• Israel Police detain man filmed dancing with gun in 'wedding of hate' clip
• The lawyer for Jewish terrorists who started out by stealing Rabin's car emblem

At the Petach Tikva Magistrate Court, where some of the key suspects in the latest wave of Jewish terror activity were having their remands extended this week, concerned family members huddled in the hallways while hearings were held behind closed doors.


A passerby paying close attention could not help but take note of the preponderance of English being spoken. And when not English, then American-accented Hebrew.


Is it pure coincidence that a disproportionate number of those taken into custody in the latest crackdown on Jewish extremism in Israel, as well as those cheering them on, are children of immigrants from English-speaking countries or immigrants who hold dual citizenship?

Take the fact that at least one of the key suspects in the arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that killed three members of the Dawabsheh family in July has an American parent and holds dual citizenship.


This 17-year-old, whose name has been barred from publication, grew up in the West Bank settlement of Tsofim. Another minor suspected of direct involvement in that attack is also reported to hold U.S. citizenship.


Take, for example, the fact that three other Jewish-Israeli terror suspects being held in administrative detention since the summer, even though they are not directly connected to the Duma attack, also hold dual citizenship. The most famous in the group is Meir Ettinger, the grandson of American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose mother immigrated to Israel from the United States and who grew up in the settlement of Tapuach, a bastion of right-wing extremism. (The racist Kach movement, founded by Kahane, is outlawed in Israel). The other two are Mordechai Meyer, the child of American immigrants from Ma’aleh Adumim, a large, relatively moderate settlement outside of Jerusalem; and Evyatar Slonim, whose parents are Australian.

Meir Ettinger, the alleged head of a group of Jewish extremists, appearing in an Israeli court, August 2015.

Finally, this week, another English-speaker – this one caught dancing with a weapon in a controversial wedding clip celebrating the Duma attack – was detained by security forces.


He is Daniel Pinner, a 50-year-old settler from the settlement of Tapuah, who immigrated to Israel from Britain many years ago.


And he was not the only English-speaker celebrating at that infamous wedding, where participants were caught on camera dancing with knives and guns, as one slashed a photo of the dead Dawabsheh baby. The bride, Roni Goldberg, is the daughter of American-born Lenny Goldberg, a former Kahane aide and author of “The Wit and Wisdom of Rabbi Meir Kahane.”


Here’s what Goldberg had to say this week in a column he published on the settler-run Arutz Sheva news service: “Not only don't I care about Duma, neither do the left or the Shin Bet.


“It's just a good excuse for them to harass and torture the hilltop youth they so despise for the Judaism that they represent,” he wrote, referring to the rogue group of youths who engage in illegal settlement activities.


When another daughter of his, barely a teenager then, sat in jail 10 years ago for blocking roads to protest the Gaza disengagement, he could hardly contain his pride. Back then he wrote on that same website: “Obviously, I am not a distraught parent over this. I'm pleased that she is occupied with this, and not with the trivial issues that concern most teenagers. I've educated them all their lives about the need for self-sacrifice for the Jewish People and the Land of Israel -- all, of course, in the comfort of our living room, or over a cholent on Shabbat. To behave as a worried Jewish mother/father now would be the most hypocritical thing of all. It would make a lie of all that I had preached. Besides, I feel guilty that I'm not doing it, so my kids might as well.”


Laura Wharton, an American-born political scientist who represents the left-wing Meretz party on the Jerusalem city council, is not surprised by the large number of children of English-speaking families among the terror suspects, noting that immigrants from these countries tend to be highly ideologically motivated, and are more likely to have radical extremists among their ranks. “I think in general people who immigrate to Israel from English-speaking countries, in fact from all wealthy countries, need a stronger incentive to make the move,” she says. “They also want to make their mark when they come here, for better or for worse.”


Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who has spent many years studying American immigrants living in the West Bank, believes the radicalism could reflect a failure to integrate smoothly into Israeli society. “I think it has to do with the fact that these people are not assimilated in the way that their native Israeli or perhaps other immigrant peers have managed to be,” she observes.

Photos of a one-and-a-half year old boy, Ali Dawabsheh, lie in a house that had been torched in a suspected attack by Jewish settlers in Duma village near the West Bank city of Nablus, July 31, 2015.

In some cases, she says, these teens may be acting out against their parents for not doing enough to make their mark on Israeli society. “It could be a rebellion against parents they thought had come to do some great ideological pioneering, but instead, turned out to be average suburbanites in places like Ma’aleh Adumim,” notes Hirschhorn, who serves as the University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford.


The author of the upcoming book “City on a Hilltop: Jewish-American Settlers in the Occupied Territories Since 1967,” Hirschhorn has concluded that roughly 60,000 American Jews live in West Bank settlements, where they account for 15 percent of the settler population.


The number of American immigrants living in Israel, including their children, has been estimated at about 170,000.


This is not the first time that U.S. citizens have been associated with or convicted of carrying out terror activities in Israel. In 1994, Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein, a physician from Kiryat Arba, massacred 29 Palestinians while they were worshipping in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Yaakov Teitel, originally from Florida, has been convicted of various acts of terrorism and hate crimes against Palestinians, homosexuals, Messianic Jews and left-wingers. Boston-born Baruch Marzel, a Kahane disciple, has a criminal record that includes assaults on Palestinians, policemen and left-wingers. Former New Yorker Ira Rappaport, a member of the Jewish Underground that emerged in the 1980s, was found guilty of involvement in a car bombing that left the former mayor of Nablus maimed.


Already back then, American immigrants had acquired a reputation as potential extremists.


Chaim Waxman, a retired professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Rutgers University, who has published extensively on immigration to Israel from the United States, recalls teaching a course at Tel Aviv University in the 1980s when reports about the Jewish Underground first started surfacing.  “I remember the students talking about those ‘crazy Americans,’ even though only one member of the Underground was an American,” he recounts. “But that is an impression that many Israelis have.”

Gaza enters 10th year of Israeli-led blockade

Link

Gaza enters 10th year of Israeli-led blockade

The start of 2016 sees the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip entering the 10th year of the Israeli-led and internationally-backed blockade of the territory, which is exacerbated by Egyptian support. The blockade started in the wake of the 2006 Palestinian elections, which the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, won with an overwhelming majority.

Local and international monitoring organisations described the Palestinian poll as one of the most transparent ever recorded. In Palestine, though, it is remembered with sadness as the election marked the internal political split and the start of the siege of Gaza.

The Israeli authorities closed all crossings into the territory, keeping only the Erez Crossing open for occasional pedestrian traffic (and it has been used to entrap people trying to cross), and Kerem Shalom for a few classified and highly-regulated goods. Egypt has been keeping the Rafah Crossing closed for most of the time. In 2015, the crossing was only open for 21 days; just 10,000 Palestinians were allowed through, among them pilgrims, patients and students.


The Israeli authorities imposed severe restrictions on patients and their companions travelling through Erez. Human rights groups have recorded the arrest of several patients or their companions while using the crossing into Israel. Attempts are made by the Israelis to blackmail people into becoming informers in exchange for being allowed to cross.

Gaza: The Brink of Collapse Triggers War

Quds Press has reported the chronic shortages of medicines and hospital disposables. The Palestinian ministry of health spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qidra, says that shelves are empty due to the restrictions imposed by the Israelis on people and goods going in and out of the coastal enclave.

Independent MP Jamal Al-Khodari, who has been heading a popular committee working to end the siege, told Quds Press that Israel has been trying to “legalise” the blockade and make it last as long as possible, using all means to do so.

The plight of the Palestinians in Gaza has aroused widespread popular support across the world and many attempts have been made to break the siege by sea. Although a few small boats made the trip in the first few years, later and more ambitious attempts were stopped in international waters by the Israeli navy, often violently. In May, 2010, for example, Israeli commandos intercepted the Freedom Flotilla. Nine Turkish citizens were killed in the assault and a number of others were wounded; one died in 2014 as a direct result of his wounds. The ships were towed into port in Israel and everyone on board was arrested.

During the siege, Israel has launched four major military offensives against the people of Gaza, in 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014; the latter was the most destructive. It lasted for 51 days and whole areas of Gaza were flattened by Israeli bombs; tens of thousands of people were displaced.

The strict siege and wars have shattered the Palestinian economy in Gaza, economic commentator Maher Al-Tabaa told Quds Press. “The unemployment rate in Gaza stands at 42 per cent, with the blockade deepening the economic crisis,” he explained. According to the International Monetary Fund, the unemployment rate in Gaza is the highest in the world and there are more than 200,000 unemployed people in Gaza.

Al-Tabaa warned that if the siege of Gaza continues, normal life would not be viable in the territory in 2016. Many international organisations have issued similar warnings due to the effects of the oppressive Israeli measures, which are regarded as collective punishment and are illegal in international law.

Read:

• UN stops cement supplies for 70 factories in Gaza
• Israel imposes new rules for taking goods into Gaza
• Turkey demands end of Gaza blockade to reconcile relations with Israel

Israeli Soldiers Shoot 7-Year-Old Palestinian Girl In Face For No Reason At All (VIDEO)

Link

Israeli Soldiers Shoot 7-Year-Old Palestinian Girl In Face For No Reason At All (VIDEO)

Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian child in the face while she played on the balcony of her family home in the West Bank, this month. The case exemplifies the growing and increasingly lawless violence meted out across the West Bank by Israeli occupation forces.

On Friday September 25, seven-year-old Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi was standing on the balcony of her family home in Kafr Qaddoum, when Israeli soldiers shot her in the face with a rubber-coated bullet. Maram is not the child of a suspected terrorist (and would not be “fair game” even if she were), she is the daughter of Nablus Police Chief  Colonel Abdul-Latif al-Qaddoumi.

Her father was home when the bullets were fired at his daughter and raced to his car with the girl in his arms, planning to take her to hospital for treatment. But as he drove from the house, Israeli forces opened fire on the vehicle. The pair were later taken to the Rafidia Governmental Hospital in Nablus with head injuries, where they remain in a stable condition.

The shooting comes amid a wave of Israeli reprisals against the town for its continued non-violent protests against the expansion of the Apartheid Wall which encircles and imprisons Palestinians, while cutting them off from their farms, workplaces and neighboring towns.

Israel has injured an average 39 Palestinian civilians every week of 2015, the vast majority of them injured at non-violent protests. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly deployed live fire on peaceful protesters. Amid growing international criticism, Israel has taken an astonishing approach to avoid future condemnation. Instead of ceasing to kill and injure unarmed civilians, they have instead opted to legalize such shootings.

“The Israel Police will be expanding their use of firearms against stone-throwers in the south of the country, as authorities struggle to contend with the rise of riots and violence,” Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday.

“Legal and police sources say that the decisions on how to deal with stone-throwers in Jerusalem will also be applied to rioters in the south, particularly those who throw stones at vehicles,” it adds.

But as Electronic Intifada points out, what Israel describes as “riots,” is all too often a peaceful protest against the illegal occupation and land confiscation in the West Bank.

To understand how the majority of Israeli citizens react to such shootings, we can look at the reaction to another shooting recently:


Electronic Intifada reports:

The status accompanying it says: “This is the only way it will work. You throw a rock? You get a bullet. Share it, friends!”

The post has been shared more than 3,000 times and hundreds of comments express sadistic joy at the sight of soldiers shooting a Palestinian who has no rights because he lives under military rule.

A common complaint is that the youth was not shot in the head or heart and killed outright.

“I’m proud of our warriors!” declares Angela Vainer. “What fun to see such a video,” writes Maria Kogan.

“Well done!!! Next time, hit the testicles,” suggests Karin Kazav.

Israel is becoming increasingly belligerent and they have been killing Palestinians in cold blood, outside any pretext of lawfulness. Whether a local lawmaker at a peaceful protest, a teenager throwing stones at tanks, a seven-year-old playing on your family balcony, or a toddler sleeping in your bed — you could be killed by an Israeli soldier or civilian with impunity.


There is no safe place for Palestinians in what has become Greater Israel. It is their very existence that so offends the racial supremacist, theocratic state of Israel. Until this rogue state’s backers in the U.S. and the West get on the right side of history, the Palestinians will continue to suffer this cruel and arbitrary punishment for being the “wrong” race, from point of view of their occupiers.

Netanyahu Proposes Revoking Residency Of 80,000 Palestinians From Jerusalem

Link

Netanyahu Proposes Revoking Residency Of 80,000 Palestinians From Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves

Israeli border police check Palestinian’s identification cards at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

The Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a recent Cabinet meeting, proposed revoking the residency rights of 80,000 Jerusalemites, which would mean that the people of Sho’afat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab, as well as other neighborhoods, would be cut off from the rest of Jerusalem.

The proposal was considered by the Israeli Cabinet in their recent meeting, but no decision was made.

Already, the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank have been severed from Jerusalem due to the Israeli construction of a massive Wall over the past 13 years. The Wall has annexed large sections of Palestinian land and made them a de facto part of the state of Israel, in direct violation of the responsibilities of an occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel’s government signed the Convention in 1957, requiring it to provide for the needs of civilian populations under occupation. The Convention also requires that an Occupying Power must not transfer any civilians into the land it has militarily occupied. But Israel has transferred over half a million people into settlements constructed on Palestinian land that was militarily occupied, then illegally seized, since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights began in 1967.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves. Now, under the Israeli Prime Minister’s proposal, residents of those enclaves would lose their residency rights altogether.

Israel has an identity card system for the residents of Jerusalem that is completely unique in the world. Jewish Israelis who live in Jerusalem or in paramilitary colonies in the West Bank are afforded full Israeli citizenship. But Palestinians who live on their ancestral land in Jerusalem are given a different kind of identity card, which ensures that they have far fewer rights than Jewish residents of the city.

If a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, for example, were to travel abroad for more than a year, Israel would consider that person to be an ‘absentee property owner’, and would seize their land and home and annex it to Israel, denying the Palestinian owner the right to return to their home. The rule only applies to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, and not to Jewish residents of the city.

According to the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahranoth, following the construction of new walls and barricades in recent weeks to further separate and segregate Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from Jewish residents, the Israeli Prime Minister told his Cabinet ministers, “We need to examine the possibility of canceling their [Palestinian Jerusalemites] residency. There needs to be a discussion about it.”

Some Israeli ministers voiced opposition to the plan, not because they were concerned about the Palestinian Jerusalemites losing their residency rights, but because they believe such a division would “give up territory” that some Israelis believe should belong to Israel.

That claim is based on a military takeover of the land by Israeli forces. Neither international law nor signed agreements recognize military takeover of land as a legitimate way of expanding state territory.

Israel “Violating Every International Law” with Use of Lethal Weapons against Palestinian Civilians

Link

Israel “Violating Every International Law” with Use of Lethal Weapons against Palestinian Civilians

The Israeli army is using very dangerous weapons, which can be lethal, to disperse demonstrators who are just demonstrating. The rules of engagement that the Israeli army is using against Palestinian demonstrators simply violate every international law.

First of all, Israeli forces use high velocity bullets, which have already caused at least 300 injuries and taken the lives of many people.

Second, they use what they call “rubber bullets,” but these are not rubber bullets at all; it’s a misconception or misrepresentation to call them “rubber.”

There are two types of rubber bullets. One is a cylinder, but inside it you have a very heavy metal. Usually when it is shot from a close distance it penetrates the body and frequently it penetrates the brain and becomes fatal.It is also very dangerous when it hits the eye. Many Palestinians have lost eyes because of these kinds of bullets.

The other type of bullet they call “rubber” is not rubber at all but a very heavy shard, and this shard is covered with a very thin piece of plastic. Again, this is very dangerous and responsible for very serious injuries and it is misleading to keep saying that it is “rubber.”

Third, recently, Israeli forces started using this kind of bullet in a big quantity, they are heavy metallic bullets which are usually used against animals, but now they are using them against Palestinians.

You have what they call 0.22 bullets. The 0.22 bullet is a very small bullet, but it’s very dangerous because when it hits a vital organ or a major vein it can cause bleeding to death.The so-called 0.22 bullet is used by snipers and it has been responsible for the death and injury of many people. Even B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, issued a statement saying that their use is illegal.

Then you have the sponge, and the sponge is dangerous because it has taken away already 13 eyes, including 7 children who lost their eyes.They also use tear gas bombs, and they throw them in very big quantities, creating what we call “closed room effect”, which could kill people because of suffocation.We have already lost three women in previous years because of tear gas, they suffocated from tear gas. Sometimes Israeli forces fire up to 50 tear gas bombs at once and that can also have long term effects.

When you throw tear gas to disperse the crowd you throw one, two, three tear gas bombs, not fifty.Tear gas is also very dangerous because it is a chemical and we don’t know the long term effects of using such chemicals. Many people including myself have had serious bronchitis and laryngitis because of this. We think that long term and repeated exposure could be risky to people’s health.

Some neighbourhoods like Al-Aida camp in Bethlehem are very close to confrontation areas andare routinely exposed to tear gas, so children, families, everyone breathes in tear gas around the clock. The furniture is full of it, the walls, the beds, everything.

Then they use stun grenades, and stun grenades are dangerous especially when they are thrown directly at people. Many people have had severe injuries because they have had stun grenades thrown at them directly, and when they explode they can cause serious injuries. Some people have lot their hearing because of stun grenades.Tear gas bombs also, the metallic ones are especially dangerous because sometimes the army uses them as bullets in the sense that they direct them at someone. One of the guys who died from this, his heart stopped beating when the tear gas bomb hit him.


You should not shoot people when they are very far from you and when they present no risk to you. They start shooting when they see people in the distance.