Israeli Settlers Are Burying Their Dead on Private Palestinian Land
Staggeringly disrespectful and selfish. WTF?! While you’re carrying your God’s will why don’t you try and be less evil about it?
Category: Middle East,
UN Security Council Passes Syria Cease-Fire After Hundreds Killed In Bombing Siege
The United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria, following one of the bloodiest weeks of aerial bombardment in the war that has devastated the country.
In the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a region called Eastern Ghouta, nearly 500 people have been killed in a deadly escalation by the Syrian government that began Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press. More than 120 of the dead are children, the group says.
The Security Council resolution aims to get humanitarian aid to Eastern Ghouta and other areas under siege.
hmmmm
Ahed Tamimi’s trial gets under way behind closed doors
Ahed Tamimi, 17, was arrested in December after a video of her slapping and hitting two Israeli officials outside of her house in the village of Nabi Saleh went viral. Her mother, Nariman, was arrested soon after.
Court proceedings began on Tuesday at Israel’s Ofer detention centre, with only family members allowed into the hearing after the judge barred reporters despite a request for a public trial by Gaby Lasky, the lawyer of the Tamimis.
…Amit Gilutz, spokesperson for Israeli rights group B’Tselem, said all of the practices being used against Ahed and Nariman “are completely routine” for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“The military courts themselves are one of the most injurious mechanisms of the occupation and are not designed to seek justice or truth, but to maintain the occupation,” Gilutz told Al Jazeera.
…Ahed has since become an icon for the 330 Palestinian children currently held in Israel’s prisons, and rights groups have demanded her immediate release.
“As an unarmed girl, Ahed posed no threat during the altercation with the two Israeli soldiers who were heavily armed and wearing protective clothing,” Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and Africa programme, said in a statement on Monday.
Mughrabi said Ahed had not done anything that could justify her continued detention and “the long, aggressive interrogation sessions she has been forced to endure”.
“Yet again, the Israeli authorities have responded to acts of defiance by a Palestinian child with measures that are entirely disproportionate to the incident in question,” she added.
…The village has also faced rising threats from settlers residing in Israel’s illegal Halamish settlement, located adjacent to the home of the Tamimi family.
Earlier this month, locals said Israeli settlers had snuck into Nabi Saleh in the middle of the night and sprayed graffiti around the village, including slogans such as “Death to Ahed Tamimi” and “There’s no place in this world for Ahed Tamimi”.
Ahed Tamimi’s trial gets under way behind closed doors | Palestine News | Al Jazeera
Not sure which is worse, being black in the US justice system or Palestinian in the Israeli court system. Either way, you’re pretty much fucked.
Military Trial Opens For 17-Year-Old
For many Palestinians, Tamimi is a symbol of resistance to a half-century military occupation that stands in the way of Palestinian independence and shows no sign of ending.
For many Israelis, Tamimi is a provocateur who goads soldiers on video and champions rock-throwing, influenced by relatives who have been involved in protests and attacks against Israelis.
Tamimi was arrested and indicted after a public outcry in Israel when a video of an altercation with the soldiers, posted by her mother, went viral.
…The altercation with soldiers happened shortly after Tamimi’s cousin was shot in the head with a rubber bullet during a demonstration as he climbed a wall of a complex that Israeli soldiers had commandeered, according to Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, who is a well-known leader of protests in his village.
Military prosecutors say Ahed Tamimi’s slapping, kicking and punching of soldiers was assault. Bassem Tamimi recently told NPR that his daughter’s confrontation is a natural reaction to a life of watching her relatives being arrested and killed.
…Human rights advocates, including Human Rights Watch, have criticized Ahed Tamimi’s pre-trial detention – now at more than 55 days. “Her case raises concern that Israel’s military justice system, which detains hundreds of Palestinian children every year, is incapable of respecting children’s rights,” the rights group stated.
Military Trial Opens For 17-Year-Old Palestinian Activist : The Two-Way : NPR
The United States isn’t perfect but at least awe aren’t Israel….
The slaughter in Syria should outrage us. Yet still we just shrug.
Sure, the government of Bashar al-Assad may have pounded the rebel-held area so hard that it killed 194 people in 40 hours, many of them children. It may have targeted seven hospitals in two days, repeatedly hitting medical workers as they sought to rescue the injured and dying. And yes, this may signal the escalation of a siege that has denied supplies to a population of 390,000 for months, squeezing them between bombardment and starvation. All that may be meticulously documented by the UN.
This bloodletting has gone on for seven years now, and for most of that time most of us – politicians, media, public – have looked the other way.
…What explains this global indifference? Partly it’s because those of us far away have our own, legitimate preoccupations. Trump and Brexit are not mortal threats on a par with the barrel bombs of Damascus, but they have convulsed America and Britain alike. In recent days, it has not helped that the very aid organisations we might ordinarily expect to sound the alarm about an emergency such as Syria have been shaken by scandal and forced to look inward.
Part of it, surely, is that it has just gone on so long. For seven years we have known that a civil war is raining horror on Syria, and we’ve got used to it. The sound of Syrian children choking to death has become the background noise of this decade. And, crucially, we don’t know what to do about it.
Sigh….
Haley snubbed by Palestinian leader at UN
Haley snubbed by Palestinian leader at UN – CNNPolitics
She does know what the word “diplomat” means, right?
Classless as per the usual for this administration, I guesss….
Police recommend indictments of Netanyahu
Israeli police on Tuesday recommended that Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on bribery and breach of trust charges in a pair of corruption cases, dealing an embarrassing blow to the embattled prime minister that is likely to fuel calls for him to step down.
Police recommend indictments of Netanyahu
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Female Journalists Had Obstructed View of Pence’s Visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem
Female Journalists Complain Of Obstructed View At Pence’s Western Wall Visit : Parallels : NPR
If any of this is a surprise to someone, that person is an oblivious idiot.
Chess champion to miss Saudi Arabia tournament over women’s rights
A two-time world chess champion has said she will not defend her titles at a tournament held in Saudi Arabia because of the way the kingdom treats women as “secondary creatures.”
…The sport’s governing body, Fide, had claimed a measure of success in persuading Saudi authorities to allow female competitors to compete in high-necked white blouses and blue or black trousers instead of full-body abayas.
However, for Muzychuk, it was not enough. “I am going to lose two world champion titles, one by one,” she wrote on Facebook. “Just because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. Not to play by someone’s rules, not to wear abaya, not to be accompanied getting outside and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature. Exactly one year ago I won these two titles and was about the happiest person in the chess world but this time I feel really bad. I am ready to stand for my principles and skip the event, where in five days I was expected to earn more than I do in a dozen of events combined. All that is annoying, but the most upsetting thing is that almost nobody really cares. That is a really bitter feeling, still not the one to change my opinion and my principles. The same goes for my sister Mariya – and I am really happy that we share this point of view. And yes, for those few who care – we’ll be back!”
Chess champion to miss Saudi Arabia tournament over women’s rights | Sport | The Guardian
Go, girl!
Tehran Police Say Women Will No Longer Be Arrested For Violating ‘Islamic’ Dress Code
On Wednesday, Tehran police announced that women will no longer risk arrest for breaching the country’s conservative interpretation of Islamic dress code, which includes a ban on wearing nail polish, heavy makeup or loose headscarves. Instead, violators will be ordered to take police-instructed classes on “Islamic values,” while repeat offenders could still be subject to legal action
Tehran Police Say Women Will No Longer Be Arrested For Violating ‘Islamic’ Dress Code | HuffPost
hmmm
The Power Politics Behind Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration
For Palestinians, Trump’s Jerusalem declaration ended all hopes that the long-moribund peace process might lead to an independent Palestinian state.
…In recent years, Abbas has satisfied all of Israel’s demands but has still been rejected by Netanyahu. And now, Trump’s declaration had exposed the hopelessness of the U.S. serving as a fair arbiter.
…The U.S., a sponsor of the Oslo Accords, has openly violated one of its paramount provisions: that the status of Jerusalem be decided in final-status negotiations. Any pretense of Trump’s impartiality is gone, and, no Palestinians will be waiting to hear the promised peace plan by Jared Kushner.
…Since returning home, in 1978, I have closely tracked the stream of legal changes that allowed Israeli settlements to develop near Ramallah and in numerous other parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I wrote extensively about Israel’s plans to annex the areas it occupied in 1967 by gradually extending Israeli laws to its ever-growing settlements. I firmly believed that if these violations of international law became known, Israel would no longer be able to carry them out. I was wrong.
…Gradually, during the early two thousands, the Israelis limited Palestinian access to Jerusalem by building the separation wall. They justified it as necessary to stop suicide bombings, but none of the restrictions were reversed when security conditions improved.
…It is important to remember that the Palestinians have consistently called for Jerusalem to remain undivided, and urged that when it became the capital of both states, Israel and Palestine, it would remain an open city. After a peace settlement, the city would serve as a model of coëxistence. Instead of furthering this objective, Trump and Netanyahu have condemned us, both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, to perpetual conflict.
The Power Politics Behind Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration | The New Yorker
Sigh….
Saudi Arabia Lifts Ban on Movie Theaters After 35 Years
Conservative Saudis and the country’s Islamic clerical establishment have typically frowned upon non-religious forms of entertainment, including cinema and music. Religious police still patrol shopping malls and gender segregation is enforced across the kingdom.
The government didn’t say whether the cinemas would have family-only sections, or different show times for men. Movies would be edited according to the “standards of the Kingdom” and would not “contradict with Sharia Laws and moral values,” according to a ministry statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Arabia Lifts Ban on Movie Theaters After 35 Years – Bloomberg
hmmmm
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