Oh dear more illegal collective punishment. We do not stand a chance of real peace and goodness if we continue to turn a blind eye to this evil. The racist policy of this country, and its open-air concentration camps must be stopped. The IDF soldiers are racist to the core and assign a value of 0 to anyone else's lives but theirs. Bottom line, when you are taught as a child that you are superior to EVERYONE else, you are certain to commit evil against them. This is dangerous extremism at work, and a culture of hatred. This threatens our freedoms. ------------------------------------------------- Oct 27, 2007 17:12 Gov't to discuss Hamas in Gaza; power cuts to be implemented this week By JPOST.COM STAFF Print Subscribe E-mail Toolbar The government will discuss steps in which it plans to deal with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip during Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, Israel Radio reported. According to Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, cuts to the Strip's fuel and electricity supplies will be implemented either on Sunday or Monday after the court system gives its authorization. The decision to carry out the cuts was another stage in disengaging from Gaza and was not a part of any "punishment policy," Vilani told Israel Radio. http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&ned=ca&q=gaza+++power
More brutal human rights abuses. The monsters assign a value of ZERO to anyone else's life. That's why they have no problem spying on the USa, israel spys are often caught here, or say, destroying the USS Liberty. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oct. 27, 2007, 10:13PM Israel accused of recruiting the ill to be informers Rights group says trading medical aid for Gaza info crosses the line By DION NISSENBAUM Mcclatchy-tribune TOOLS Email Get section feed Print Subscribe NOW Comments Recommend KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP â Yasser Hiyya didn't know why he was always so weak and tired until this summer, when doctors discovered a small hole in his heart. Israel gave Hiyya permission to leave the Gaza Strip last month and cross Israeli territory for immediate surgery in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. But when he arrived at the Israeli border crossing, he learned that there was a catch. In a daylong interrogation, Hiyya said, Israeli intelligence offered him a deal: Tell us about your brother, a wanted militant, and we'll let you enter Israel for the operation you need. When Hiyya refused, they turned him away. Human rights groups charge that Hiyya's case is one of nearly a dozen they've documented in which Israelis allegedly have tried to recruit ailing Palestinians as informers in the low-intensity war with the militant Islamic group Hamas. Looking for collaborators Since Hamas won control of Gaza in a mid-June military rout of its rival, the secular group Fatah, Israel has worked to isolate the coastal strip and its 1.5 million residents. About the only people allowed out of Gaza these days are Palestinians who need emergency medical care. Now, the rights groups charge, Israel is trying to turn them into collaborators. "To prey on the most vulnerable is not only unlawful, it's also despicable," said Fred Abrahams, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who documented some of the Gaza cases. "It's a slow tightening of the noose, and people are dying." Since June, at least five Palestinians have died after being denied permits to leave Gaza for emergency medical treatment, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli human-rights group that's working to help patients in Gaza. Disputed allegations Israel's General Security Service, better known as the Shabak, declined to discuss any of the cases or its strategy for collecting information, but it rejected allegations that it's refusing to let critically ill Palestinians out of Gaza for treatment unless they became informants. "The GSS's policy regarding giving exit permits is not dependent on consent to become a collaborator," the service said in a prepared statement. If and when Palestinians are turned away, the agency said, it's because Israel has concerns about their links to terrorists. It's not clear how many people have been allowed out of Gaza. On average, about 700 sick Palestinians have been given permission to leave Gaza each month since Hamas took control, according to the World Health Organization. But fewer than 200 people were allowed out of Gaza during the last two weeks of September, when Hiyya was trying to leave, according to WHO figures compiled from Israeli reports. Hiyya, 37, ran into problems because one of his younger brothers is a leading Fatah militant in Gaza. Hiyya said he had never spent time behind bars and had kept clear of his brother's affairs, something his Israeli interrogator refused to believe. For 12 hours on Sept. 18 at the Erez border crossing, Hiyya said, he was taken to a below-ground interrogation room, strip-searched and grilled about his brother. Fight for life His interrogators called him a liar and accused him of helping his brother hide rockets that were to be launched into Israel. Hiyya tried three times in September to get to the West Bank for his surgery. Each time, even though he had written approval, he was turned back. Doctors in Gaza so far have been unable to help him. "If I don't get to Nablus for my treatment, then I will die," he said. "I'm afraid. My soul is valuable to me." Bassam Wahedi got permission for emergency eye surgery in Israel to save his sight. Wahedi, 28 and a journalist, said he, too, was strip-searched at Erez and taken to an underground interrogation room with a two-way mirror on the wall. Wahedi said his interrogator offered to send him to a better Israeli hospital if he agreed to collect information on militants firing rockets at Israel. "You will never leave Gaza unless you support us and help us," Wahedi said his interrogator warned. Like Hiyya, Wahedi refused the offer. "It would be a huge betrayal if I wanted to save my eyes and give information to Israel," Wahedi said.
Another example of israel speading "democracy". Like I said, they assign a value of ZERO to any other person, especially one who dares challenge their supremist views. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Intellectual terrorism For the sake of free speech, British organisations should confront pro-Israel bullies, not appease them. By Ghada Karmi 10/26/07 "The Guardian" --- - The newest and least attractive import from America, following on behind Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Friends, is the pro-Israel lobby. The latest target of this US-style campaign is the august Oxford Union. This week, two Israeli colleagues and I were due to appear at the union to participate in an important debate on the one-state solution in Israel-Palestine. Also invited was the American Jewish scholar and outspoken critic of Israel, Norman Finkelstein. At the last minute, however, the union withdrew its invitation to him, apparently intimidated by threats from various pro-Israel groups. The Harvard Jewish lawyer and indefatigable defender of Israel, Alan Dershowitz, attacked the topic of the debate as well as the Oxford Union itself. In an article headlined "Oxford Union is dead", he accused it of having become "a propaganda platform for extremist views", and castigated its choice of what he termed anti-Israel and anti-semitic speakers. Yet Dershowitz could have restored the balance as he saw it; he was the first person invited by the Oxford Union to oppose the motion but he declined due, as he put it, to "the terms of the debate and my proposed teammates". Dershowitz's article attacking the Oxford Union appeared in the Jerusalem Post in Israel and Frontpage magazine in the US. [Because of British defamation laws Cif has been advised not to provide a link - Ed.] Dershowitz and Finkelstein were protagonists in a much-publicised academic row in the US, though it is unclear whether this has any relevance to the Oxford Union spat. In solidarity with Finkelstein and to oppose this gross interference in British democratic life, the three of us on the "one state" side - myself, Avi Shlaim, of St Anthony's College, Oxford, and the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe - decided to withdraw from the debate. This was not an easy decision, since the topic was timely and necessary given the current impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, where innovative solutions are in short supply. Dershowitz and the other pro-Israel activists may rejoice at their success in derailing an important discussion. But it is of little comfort to those of us who care about freedom of speech in this country. Last May, Dershowitz interfered in British academic life when the University and College Union voted overwhelmingly to debate the merits of boycotting Israeli institutions. He teamed up with a British Jewish lawyer, Anthony Julius, and others, threatening to "devastate and bankrupt" anyone acting against Israeli universities. In another example of these bullying tactics, the Royal Society of Medicine, one of Britain's most venerable medical institutions, came under an attack this month, unprecedented in its 200 year history. It had invited Dr Derek Summerfield, a psychiatrist (who has also documented Israelýs medical abuses against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories), to its conference on Religion, Spirituality and Mental Health. The RSM was immediately bombarded with threats from pro-Israel doctors demanding Dr Summerfield's removal on the grounds that he was Ãpoliticalý and biased, and that the RSM's charitable status would be challenged if he remained. Intimidated, the RSM asked Dr Summerfield to withdraw, although they later reinstated him. The power of the Israel lobby in America is legendary. It demonstrates its influence at many levels. Campus Watch is a network that monitors alleged anti-Israel activity in US academic institutions. The difficulties of promotion in the US for scholars deemed anti-Israeli are notorious. The notable Palestinian academic, Edward Said, was subjected to an unrelenting campaign by pro-Israel groups at Columbia University with threats on his life. His successor, Rashid Khalidi, is the current object of the same campaign of vilification and attack. Finkelstein himself has been denied tenure at his university and everywhere else. The authors of a recent study of the Israel lobby's influence on US foreign policy have been called anti-semites and white supremacists. Former president Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: peace not apartheid, has earned him the label of "Jew-hater" and Nazi sympathiser. The British publisher, Pluto Press, is likely to be dropped by its American distributors, the University of Michigan Press, because pro-Israel groups accuse it of including "anti-Semitic" (ie pro-Palestinian/critical of Israel) books on its list. Such activities are familiar in the US. People there are hardened or resigned to having their freedom of expression limited by the pro-Israel lobby, and the threats of Dershowitz would cause no surprise to anyone. But Britain is different, naively innocent in the face of US-style assaults on its scholars and institutions. No wonder that those who have been attacked give in so quickly, nervous of something they do not understand. The UCU leadership, shocked and intimidated by the ferocious reaction to the boycott motion from pro-Israel groups, resorted to legal advice to extricate itself and announced in September that a call to boycott Israeli institutions would be "unlawful". The Oxford Union jettisoned one of its participants rather than stand up to the threats of its critics. The RSM tried to distance the offending speaker from its conference to protect itself from abuse. All this is understandable, but it is exactly the wrong response. Appeasing bullies like Dershowitz will not stop them. It will rather encourage them to go further. The question is, do we in this country want a McCarthyite witch hunt? If not, then we must confront the bullies and expose them for the intellectual terrorists they are, bent on destroying the values of a free society. To do otherwise will invite the fate of all repressed people, cowed and intimidated, hating their tormentors, but too afraid to say so
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490596&in_page_id=1770 The arrival yesterday of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on a state visit has already generated more than the usual share of hypocrisy from both sides of a relationship built not on affection but on oil and commerce. Even before he set off from Riyadh, the King chided our security services for allegedly ignoring Saudi warnings about the imminence of the 7/7 London bombings and for being half-hearted in combating terrorism. Since Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most potent force behind global terrorism, promoting a deeply fundamentalist strain of Islamic theology worldwide, this must be one of the most hypocritical statements of all time. But bizarre claims have come from our side too. Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells has spoken of the 'shared values' between our two countries. What shared values? Was he thinking of Riyadh's 'Chop-Chop Square' where adulterers and thieves lose heads or arms under the kingdom's brutal Sharia law? Was he referring to the scores of Saudi political dissenters executed and tortured every year? Perhaps he meant the Saudis' treatment of women who are, in effect, kept under house arrest, banned from driving or leaving their home without a male guardian and made to dress 'modestly' - in other words covered from head to toe. He presumably did not mean Tony Blair's suppression of a corruption probe into British Aerospace's alleged bribery of the ruling dynasty to secure a multi-billion arms contract. In the coming days, the Saudis will claim that both Osama Bin Laden and the 15 Saudi 9/11 hijackers had no deeper connection to the culture and mores of the kingdom than that they were born and educated there. Just as they did unconvincingly after 9/11, the Saudis will trumpet their new-found resolve in combating domestic terrorism, while promoting the idea of a UN centre to co-ordinate information on international threats and touting their peace plan for the Middle East. Gordon Brown will make emollient noises in return for what will inevitably be further lucrative contracts. British exports to Saudi are worth £3.5 billion annually and our financial interests there amount to £7 billion. But all of this polite verbiage conceals stark realities. For the truth is that for nearly three decades now, the Saudis have been exporting their indigenous extremists all over the world. It was in 1979 that Saudi fundamentalists - fuelled by mass unemployment as well as the vast wealth, corruption and hypocrisy of the royal dynasty - stormed and occupied the holy shrine at Mecca, killing and capturing hundreds of pilgrims. The Saudi authorities retook the mosque but they placated the growing unrest by introducing a religious crackdown and ensuring that strict Islamic codes were enforced. They also encouraged fundamentalists to find trouble elsewhere - to go to Afghanistan and fight the atheist Soviets, even providing them with cheap flights and cash for weapons. In this way, the authorities played a major role in financing what coalesced into Al Qaeda, whose leader, Bin Laden, is the spoilt scion of the largest Saudi construction firm. So keen have they been to bury this connection that London's libel courts have been used to obliterate an academic book called Alms for Jihad for daring to broach this subject. Equally disturbingly, Saudi Arabia has used its vast oil wealth to purvey on a global scale the austere Wahhabist strain of Islam on which the Saud dynasty's legitimacy rests, but which poisons young minds and fuels murderous anti-Jewish and anti-western resentment. Saudi money talks in poorer countries, which is why, wherever you go, from Egypt to Ethiopia, the Gulf Arabs are bitterly resented. Observing a couple of them last week knocking back doubles in the bar of a luxury Cairo hotel I can see why - and that is before they go to the call-girls and casinos, as they routinely do in Mayfair and Monaco. In Ethiopia, the Saudis have built hundreds of mosques, giving its poor citizens bribes of £300 a time to convert to Islam. In neighbouring Somalia, a failed state which Islamist extremists are endeavouring to take over, Saudi-style religious police - the Mutawiun - now patrol the streets looking out for such dangerous manifestations of western culture as Barbie dolls. Far more serious inroads have been made by Wahhabists through the thousands of madrassas they have established in Pakistan and the pasatrens in Indonesia, the two most populous Muslim states. Instead of a decent school system which might equip boys and girls for gainful employment, these religious seminaries teach them rote learning of the Koran and a host of noxious attitudes. In case anyone imagines that these are faraway places about which we care nothing, the Wahhabists have been hyper-active closer to home. A shocking report by the Policy Exchange think-tank reveals that the Saudis are behind a range of extremist texts that are openly available in a quarter of the British mosques surveyed. Instead of claiming that our commercial links with Saudi Arabia trump everything else, we need a much more sober analysis of the costs and benefits of our relationship. This should begin with our insistence that the Saudis take full responsibility for the export of extremists and the hateful propaganda that has a detrimental impact on our Muslim youth. We should also demand total transparency regarding the origins of so-called charitable funds that wash in here and elsewhere from the kingdom. Since Saudi Arabia practises absolute intolerance toward other faiths - notably Christianity - it is unacceptable that there should be no reciprocity regarding their capacity to build ever larger mosques here, while the mere ringing of a church bell in Jeddah or Riyadh is forbidden. Finally, it is incumbent on any members of the British Establishment, notably the Church of England and the Royal Family, to inform themselves about who they are extending the hand of friendship to in the interests of a wishy-washy ecumenicism and a shared interest in horses. Our Government should make it very clear that we are no longer prepared to have friends who act like two-faced enemies.
Wave hi to your "allies"! spying on the usa ....................................... Posted: November 02, 2007 AIPAC trial ruling: Bring on the top government officials If you're a government official and met with Steve Rosen or Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC employees that have been charged with conspiracy to communicate information relating to national defense, you should expect to be called to the witness stand. If you met with other AIPAC people, but not with these two - you might be off the hook, but probably not. Even if you didn't talk with AIPAC officials, but rather with other officials who talked about AIPAC, there's a reason to let the defendants ask for your testimony. That is, in short, what Judge Ellis has decided in his ruling on the requested list of witnesses that includes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs Marc Grossman, senior advisor to the secretary of state David Satterfield, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith and others. The reasoning behind the subpoena of each official is sealed, but the ruling is clearly in favor of the defense. The defense will probably try to make sure that even those who were not aproved today for some reason, will be eventualy part of the list (they include general Anthony Zinni, ambassador Dennis Ross, former National Security Council official Bruce Reidel, ambassador to Turkey, Mark Parris - they met with the defendants in person, so why they were denied is quite hard to understand). (I wrote about the AIPAC trial quite a lot. For background you can read: Did the government pressure AIPAC to stop paying Rosen's and Weissman's legal fees? Is it possible to support both AIPAC and its former lobbyists? The AIPAC case and the humble pie) The "defendants are entitled to show," writes the judge, "that, to them, there was simply no difference between the meetings for which they are not charged and those for which they are charged, and that they believed the meetings charged in the Indictment were simply further examples of the government's use of AIPAC as a diplomatic back channel." Rosen and Weissman claim that "the testimony of these persons will negate the government's contention that the information defendants obtained and disclosed was NDI [National Defense Information] by showing that this information was neither closely held by the U.S. government, nor were the disclosures of this information damaging to the U.S." They also claim that the meetings with the requested officials will demonstrate that they "did not have the requisite mental states necessary for convictions." They said that the U.S. government's use of AIPAC for "back channel" purposes "may serve to exculpate defendants by negating the criminal states of mind the government must prove to convict defendants of the charged offenses". The government, explains Judge Ellis, was reluctant to let its officials testify in this case for three principal reasons: First, "conversations with current or former government officials not listed as overt acts in the Indictment are irrelevant to the defense" - an argument he rejects on the basis that "circumstantial evidence can be probative of the lack of criminal intent." Second, "conversations to which neither defendant was a party cannot be relevant to defendants' states of mind" - an argument the judge partially excepts because "this testimony may be presented by the AIPAC employee who had the conversation with the government official and relayed the contents to defendants." However, even in such cases, the official's account might be necessary for "corroboration or to rebut any government evidence attacking the AIPAC employee's testimony." Third, "where a current or former official would testify concerning meetings other government officials [other than the testifying witness] had with AIPAC, such testimony would be inadmissible hearsay." Judge Ellis does not accept this argument, writing that "such testimony may not be hearsay" and that "if a hearsay objection might be appropriate, it is premature at this stage in the proceedings." This, in sum, is a very good day for the defendants, and also for journalists hoping for an interesting showdown between the defense and the government. It is not as good for the prosecution or for AIPAC. The testimonies of these officials will shed light on AIPAC's practices, and since lobbying is not a pretty business, AIPAC can't benefit from such confrontational trial
Maybe just as well but not as often. The repercussions of sin in the Muslim world are pretty drastic. On the other hand a lot of activities Muslims regard as sinful we non-Muslims think of as mere misbehavior; a lot of the behaviors Muslims regard as normal we regard as sinful if not downright criminal ( eg. their treatment of women ).
So much for them being a 'democracy' that spreads freedom. ________________________________________ UN official says Israel's siege of Gaza breeds extremism and human suffering By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem 11/23/07 "The Independent" -- - A senior United Nations official has issued an unprecedented appeal to British MPs to use their influence to try to alleviate the impact of "indiscriminate" and "illegal" Israeli sanctions in Gaza which display "profound inhumanity" and are "serving the agenda of extremists". In one of the strongest attacks on recent Israeli strategy issued by a senior international official, John Ging, Gaza's director of operations for the refugee agency UNRWA, said that "crushing sanctions" imposed since the Israeli cabinet declared the Strip a "hostile entity" in September had contributed to "truly appalling living conditions." Mr Ging said the measures had been justified as protection from what he fully acknowledged were rocket attacks "terrorising" the Israeli civilian population within range. The rockets have killed two people this year and injured 99 others. But citing cuts in fuel and planned cuts in electricity along with closures which have had "an atrocious" impact on Palestinian medical care, "destroyed" Gaza's economy and threatened already "Third World" water and sanitation, he told the Britain-Palestine group of MPs: "This presupposes that the civilian population are somehow more capable of stopping the rocket fire than the powerful military of the occupying power. "My message ... is that not only are these sanctions not working, but because of their profound inhumanity, they are counterproductive to their stated purpose and while Gaza is not yet an entity populated by people hostile to their neighbour, it inevitably will be if the current approach of collective punitive sanctions continues." Mr Ging, whose agency is responsible for 70 per cent of Gaza's 1.5 million population, said that over the past two years "every hopeful opportunity has been irrationally dashed and followed by even worse circumstances". He added that Gaza's civilian population expected more of Israel and the international community, who regularly expressed concern about their humanitarian plight but "to no avail". Mr Ging, whose message is reinforced by a letter warning of the "increasingly desperate situation" in Gaza from major aid agencies in today's Independent, said 649 Palestinians had been killed this year, including 63 children. The figure includes more than 330 killed in internal fighting. Mr Ging added that UNRWA was unable to provide more than 61 per cent of the necessary calories to refugees. "At present we do not have sufficient funding to provide just one high nutrient biscuit to 200,000 children in UN schools." Israeli officials cite signs of a decline in Hamas's popularity as evidence that the sanctions are working. But Mr Ging said the "human suffering and misery for the entire civilian population in Gaza was creating fertile ground for the extremists". The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights says that 11 patients have died since last month because their treatment was blocked or delayed. At least 800 more are being denied treatment abroad. Click
You mean, something like, pointing the soles of ones feet at someone(even unintentionally) , Vs, the saudi judiciary sentencing a gang rape victim to 200 lashes and 6 months imprisonment,for being in the presence of non-related males, that sort of thing?