۱۳۸۸ فروردین ۴, سه‌شنبه

اسرائیل 'با زور' مانع برپایی جشن فلسطینیان می‌شود: BBC

آوی دیختر، وزیر امنیت عمومی اسرائیل به پلیس این کشور گفته با توسل به زور مانع از برپایی جشن های فلسطینیان در بیت المقدس و ناصره شود.
دولت خودگردان فلسطین قرار است امروز در بخش شرقی بیت المقدس جشن های فرهنگی فلسطینی برپا کند. این دولت گفته که این جشن ها هنری و آرام و به دور از خشونت خواهند بود.
به نوشته روزنامه هاآرتص، دولت خودگردان فلسطین می خواهد هواپیمای بی موتوری (گلایدر) را به پرواز در آورد و پرچم فلسطین را بر فراز دیوار غربی (ندبه) در بخش قدیمی شهر در هوا ترسیم کند. این جشن به منظور اعلام بیت المقدس به عنوان پایتخت فرهنگی جهان عرب در سال 2009 است.
محمود عباس، رئیس تشکیلات خودگردان فلسطین این جشنواره را از شهر بیت اللحم در کرانه غربی افتتاح خواهد کرد.
آقای دیختر به پلیس بیت المقدس دستور داده تا به هر طریقی مانع از برگزاری این جشنواره شود. نیروهای پلیس به بخش عرب نشین و قدیمی شهر اعزام شده اند تا مانع از آنچه اسرائیل "درگیری" می خواند، شوند.
محمد برکه، نماینده پارلمان اسرائیل از این اقدام وزیر امنیت عمومی کشور انتقاد کرده است. او به روزنامه هاآرتص گفته است این رویداد فرهنگی است.
آقای برکه افزود: " دولت فعلی اسرائیل نه تنها دشمن صلح، بلکه دشمن فرهنگ هم هست."
پلیس بیت المقدس گفته که قانونی را به اجرا می گذارد که طبق آن دولت خودگردان، حق برپایی هیچ جشنی را در بیت المقدس نخواهد داشت.
بیت المقدس شرقی در سال 1967 در جنگ اعراب با اسرائیل به تصرف اسرائیل در آمد. دولت اسرائيل در سال ۱۹۸۱ بيت المقدس شرقی را به خاک خود ضمیمه ساخت، اما جامعه جهانی این امر را به رسمیت نشناخته است.
فلسطینیان خواهان آن هستند که کشور مستقل آنها با پایتختی بیت المقدس شرقی شکل گیرد و نگران این مساله هستند که ساخت و سازهای اسرائیل، ارتباط میان بیت المقدس شرقی و کرانه غربی را قطع می کند.

Broadcast on Democracy Now!

Broadcast on Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/11/palestinian_lawmaker_mustafa_barghouti_on_the

On December 27, 2008, Israel Began One of the Bloodiest Attacks on Gaza Since 1948.
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January 12, 2009: Kucinich Cites Arms Export and Control Act in Decision to Vote Against House Measure Supporting Israeli Offensive








Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza


























Hermes 450 drone is workhorse for Israeli Defence Forces

guardian.co.uk
Hermes 450 drone is workhorse for Israeli Defence Forces
A Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle deployed by the US Department of
Homeland Security. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Its ability to fly almost autonomously and carry a wide variety of payloads has made the Hermes 450 a workhorse of the Israeli Defence Forces for the past 10 years. The drone, nicknamed Zik, or spark, by the Israeli airforce is easily recognisable from its 10.5m-wide, ruler-shaped wings, tricycle-style undercarriage and V-shaped tails.
It can take off from short runways or be fired into the air from a ground-based catapult and, once airborne, can be set to fly a pre-programmed route, leaving operators to focus on information relayed back by its onboard cameras and sensors.
The imaging systems are housed in twin domes on the underside of the fuselage.
Daytime and infra-red night video are standard, giving controllers around the clock, real-time video feeds. Most carry a laser rangefinder, automatic target tracking systems and laser illumination systems, which can highlight a target with a spot of laser light.
The high-quality cameras are stabilised and vibrations that could blur images being sent back to base are minimised further by powering the drone with a smooth-running Wankel rotary engine.
The drones are made of lightweight composites, but still weigh 450kg on take-off.
A standard Hermes 450 can fly up to 124 miles from its base, a range set by their need to maintain a line-of-sight datalink to send images and other information back. Flight tests have been completed on more advanced versions that send data back via a satellite communications module mounted over the wing. By adding an extra fuel tank as part of its payload, maximum mission times can be extended from 20 to 30 hours.
While the drones can reach an altitude of 18,000ft , they usually cruise at around 70 knots at 16,000ft, dropping to 10,000 feet to obtain video footage and still images.
A version of the Hermes 450 called Watchkeeper is being developed for the British military.
In June 2004, the US department of homeland security, customs and border protection used Hermes 450s to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border. According to Jane's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Targets, the aircraft clocked up 480 hours and prevented 11 drug-smuggling attempts and more than 780 attempts to enter the US illegally.
But of the Hermes 450s' more than 65,000 accumulated hours of flying around the world, the majority have involved missions flown by the Israeli military from Palmachim airbase near Tel
Aviv.

Israeli Soldiers Expose Atrocities in Gaza:Antiwar.com

Antiwar.com

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/kesskloch.php?articleid=14431


March 20, 2009

by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM – Based on testimony from Israeli soldiers who took part in the recent war in Gaza, Israel is being confronted directly with the serious charge that permissive rules of engagement allowed for the killing of Palestinian civilians and widespread destruction of Palestinian property.
The disclosures created a stir after first publication Thursday in a major front-page spread in the Tel Aviv daily, Haaretz. The charges are all the more telling in that they are based on first-hand accounts from dozens of combat soldiers who served in the war. Their testimonies were compiled by an academic college the soldiers had attended in a prep course before being drafted
.
This represents the first uncensored recording in Israel of what occurred within combat units which took part in what Israeli codenamed Operation Cast Lead. The picture drawn by the soldiers differs radically from the refined version of the war provided by military commanders to the public and Israeli media.
The report includes the testimony of one NCO (non-commissioned officer): "A company commander with 100 soldiers under his command saw a woman walking down a road some distance away, but close enough that you could've gunned down whoever you identified...She was an elderly woman – whether she raised any suspicion, I don't know
. But what the officer did in the end was to put men on the roof and with the snipers bring her down. I felt it was simply murder in cold blood."
As presented in the report, Danny Zamir, head of the army prep-course, who compiled the transcript of the testimonies, intervened:
"I don't get it – why did he have her shot?"
The soldier who witnessed the incident replied:
"That what's great in Gaza, you could say – you see someone walking down a track, not necessarily armed, and you can simply shoot them. In our case, it was an elderly woman. I didn't see her with any weapon. The order was to bring the person down, that woman, 'as soon as you sight her'. There are always warnings, and there's always the saying – 'it could be a suicide bomber'. What I felt was a lot of bloodthirstiness. Because, we weren't in many engagements, our battalion was only involved in a
very limited number of incidents with terrorists."
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 1,434 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive, 960 of them civilians, among them 288 children. Palestinians have spoken insistently of atrocities by Israeli troops and of random destruction of thousands of homes. Israel has brushed off the accusations and calls for investigations into "war crimes" committed during the war, dismissing it as "anti-Israel propaganda."
In the report, another infantry squad leader gave this account of an incident where an IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) sniper shot and killed a Palestinian woman and her two children: "There was a house with a family inside....We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it. A few days later there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.
"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One of the women and her two children didn't understand the instructions. They went to the left. No one told the sniper on the roof that they had been permitted to go, that it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he...he did what he was supposed to, like he was following orders."
According to the squad leader's account, "The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, they crossed the line he was told no one should cross. He shot them straightaway. In the end, what happened is that he killed them. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he was doing his job according to the orders he'd been given. The atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to...I don't know how to describe it...The lives of Palestinians, let's say, are very, very much less important than the lives of our soldiers. As far as they're concerned, that's the way they can justify it."
"I was in shock at what I heard," said Zamir in an interview on Israel Radio. "The incidents involving the killing of civilians are the most disturbing and need to be investigated. What I also found very distressing was how the norms of the army's code of conduct have been eroded and how widespread the aberrations are at junior commander level."
Zamir said the soldiers reported that officers never intervened when troops deliberately damaged property, harassed civilians or wrote "Death to Arabs" graffiti. The report also quotes individual soldiers reporting that, when they tried to remonstrate with fellow soldiers who were causing wanton damage, they were met with the response, "Because they're Arabs."
"This is not the Israeli Defense Forces that we used to know," said Zamir. Amos Harel, the Haaretz military affairs correspondent who broke the story, says the accounts have a ring of authenticity. "The soldiers are not lying, for the simple reason that they have no reason to do so. There's a continuity of testimony from different parts of the Gaza war zone. Read the transcript and you won't find any judgment or boasting. This is what the soldiers saw in Gaza."
Israel's army is a temple of social consensus and a national melting pot. It is one of the fundamental tenets of Israel's social fabric that the army does not commit war crimes, and operates according to "the highest ethical standards," even in war time. They call it
"purity of arms."
The accounts expose a dehumanizing view of 'the enemy' that seems to be more extreme than ever among Israeli soldiers. But the deterioration has been going on for decades – since Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands has meant that the Israeli army has been principally engaged in fighting guerrillas in civilian populated areas; this has included fighting two Palestinian Intifada uprisings and two wars in Lebanon, one against the Palestinian Liberation Authority and one against Hezbollah.
The report of what happened in Gaza was submitted three weeks ago to Israel's Chief of Staff, Lt.
Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi. The army says it will investigate the allegations thoroughly.
But Harel says that "if the army never heard about these incidents, it's a reasonable assumption that it didn't want to know. The soldiers describe the reality in combat units, from the level of company commander down. In debriefings, the participants usually include company commanders up. It seems that, except for isolated incidents, the rule is 'you don't ask, we won't tell.'"
Asked on Israel Radio to comment on the report, Defense Minister Ehud

:Barak stuck to the credo
"I only heard of the charges this morning. I'm convinced that the army will carry out a thorough investigation. There are always exceptions, but our army is the world's most moral. Our soldiers talk openly when they return home."
Moshe Negbi, a leading legal expert, told IPS that an independent inquiry was essential –
"not only for justice to be seen, but also as a most effective way of heading off increasing world pressure for a war crimes inquiry against the Israeli military."
Whether there will be a major public grappling within Israeli society that will press for such an inquiry is improbable. Ever since the beginning of the occupation more than 40 years back, and especially in the last decade since the Second Intifada, attitudes and public and political discourse in regard to the Palestinians, and to Arabs in general, have been degraded.

Police clash with Arab-Israeli residents;:guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 March 2009



guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 24 March 2009


Police clash with Arab-Israeli residents
Israeli riot police battled with residents in the Arab-majority town of Umm al-Fahm when trouble flared following a rightwing Israeli march in the town

Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza


Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza
Palestinians claim children were used as human shields and hospitals
Tuesday 24 March 2009 09.30 GMT
Article history
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Clancy Chassay investigates claims from three brothers that the Israeli military used them as human shields during the invasion of Gaza
Link to this video
The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged
war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.
A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target.
The testimonies form the basis of
three Guardian films which add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, including more than 300 children.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) refused to respond directly to the allegations made against its troops, but issued statements denying the charges and insisted international law had been observed.
The latest disclosures follow soldiers' evidence published in the Israeli press about the killing of Palestinian civilians and complaints by soldiers involved in the military operation that the rules of engagement were too lax.
Amnesty International has said Hamas should be investigated for executing at least two dozen Palestinian men in an apparent bout of score-settling with rivals and alleged collaborators while Operation Cast Lead was under way.
Human rights groups say the vast majority of offences were committed by Israel, and that the Gaza offensive was a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks. Since 2002, there have been 21 Israeli deaths by Hamas rockets fired from Gaza, and during Operation Cast Lead there were three Israeli civilian deaths, six Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian fire and four killed by friendly fire.
"Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure Israel's co-operation, and it's the only body that can secure some kind of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in Gaza investigating war crime allegations. "Without a proper investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'It's OK to do these things, there won't be any real consequences'."
Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from
three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them. "They would make us go first so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them," 14-year-old Al'a al-Attar said.
Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to tend to the wounded; sixteen were killed. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were damaged by Israeli bombs.
"http://static.guim.co.uk/static/71659/common/flash/brightcovewrapper.
Link to this video
In a report released today, a medical human rights group said there was "certainty" that Israel violated international humanitarian law during the war, with attacks on medics, damage to medical buildings, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and delays in medical treatment for the injured.
"We have noticed a stark decline in IDF morals concerning the Palestinian population of Gaza, which in reality amounts to a contempt for Palestinian lives," said Dani Filc, chairman of Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Guardian gathered
testimony on missile attacks by Israeli drones against clearly distinguishable civilian targets. In one case a family of six was killed when a missile hit the courtyard of their house. Israel has not admitted using drones but experts say their optical equipment is good enough to identify individual items of clothing worn by targets. The Geneva convention makes it clear medical staff and hospitals are not legitimate targets and forbids involuntary human shields.

Link to this video
The army responded to the claims.
"The IDF operated in accordance with rules of war and did the utmost to minimise harm to civilians uninvolved in combat. The IDF's use of weapons conforms to international law," it said. The IDF said an investigation was under way into allegations hospitals were targeted. It said Israeli soldiers were under orders to avoid harming medics, but: "However, in light of the difficult reality of warfare in the Gaza Strip carried out in urban and densely populated areas, medics who operate in the area take the risk upon themselves."
Use of human shields was outlawed by Israel's supreme court in 2005 after a string of incidents. The IDF said only Hamas used human shields by launching attacks from civilian areas. An Israeli embassy spokesman said any claims were suspect because of Hamas pressure on witnesses. "Anyone who understands the realities of Gaza will know these people are not free to speak the truth. Those that wish to speak out cannot for fear of beatings, torture or execution at the hands of Hamas," the spokesman said in a written statement.
However, the accounts gathered by the Guardian are supported by the findings of human rights organisations and soldiers' testimony published in the Israeli press.
An IDF squad leader is quoted in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz as saying his soldiers interpreted the rules to mean "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."
• This article was updated on Tuesday March 24 2009 to reflect changes made for the first edition of the Guardian newspaper.
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Series
Gaza war crimes investigation

Video
Gaza war crimes investigation: attacks on medics

آزادگان!! آزادگان!! Gaza war crimes investigation

آزادگان!! آزادگان!! برای درک فاجعه کشتار "غزه"، اين سه ويديو گزارش روزنامه گاردين را ملاحظه نماييد!!

Gaza war crimes investigation

Civilians, medics and investigators talk to the Guardian about allegations of war crimes during Israel's 23-day campaign in Gaz

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/gaza-war-crimes-investigation