Palestinian shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza 1 day ago GAZA CITY (AFP) â A Palestinian civilian on a donkey cart was shot dead by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics and witnesses said. Hassan Abed, 60, was shot in Al-Qarara near the border fence between the Hamas-run territory and Israel, they said. An army spokesman said the report was being investigated. Two Hamas militants were also killed and a third seriously wounded in an explosion that rocked a position south of Gaza City used by the armed wing of the Islamist movement that runs Gaza. Hamas initially claimed the explosion was caused by an air raid, but later said the militants were killed "while carrying out a jihad mission." It gave no further details. A military spokesman said the Israeli armed forces were not responsible for the blast. Since Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks in late November at least 356 people have been killed in violence, most of them militants in Gaza, according to an AFP tally. In all, 6,319 people have been killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to a separate AFP count. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hExw9IefKVw7wyAEI54CmB_A52zA
Settlers attack international activists in Hebron Thursday March 20, 2008 20:30 by IMEMC News The Christian Peace Maker Teams (CPT) stationed in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, reported that two extremist Israeli settlers attacked on Wednesday two international observers who attempted to monitor the escort of Palestinian children to their school as the settlers continuously attack the children enroot to their schools. The CPT reported that the settlers had their faces covered, and used a slingshot to throw stones at the internationals. In its statement, the CPT said that Cassandra Dixon and Eileen Hanson were monitoring the escort of children from Tuba to At-Tuwani area, in the southern Hebron Hills, from a new location due to problems with the escort in recent weeks. The Israeli military escort has failed to accompany the children throughout the entire route as ordered, and settlers have threatened the children while they are coming and going from school. One of the settlers yelled threatening remarks at the children and hurled a rock at them. About twenty children from the villages of Tuba and Magayer Al Abeed walk to the elementary school in At-Tuwani each day. They are usually accompanied by an Israeli military escort past the illegal settlement outpost of Havat Maon. The Childrenâs Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, ordered the escort in 2004 after a series of settler attacks on the children. The most recent attack on the children was on April 7th, 2007, when settlers stole some of the childrenâs backpacks, and three of the children were injured fleeing the attack. The ages of the children in the school escort are between 6 and 12 years old. Also, the new gate on the road represents yet another expansion in the illegal settlement outpost of Havat Maon (Hill 833). Despite orders issued by the Israeli government calling for the removal of this illegal settlement outpost, to date no action has been taken toward its removal. http://www.imemc.org/article/53611
Israeli âCivil Administrationâ demolishes three Palestinian houses near Jerusalem Thursday March 20, 2008 20:52 by IMEMC News Bulldozers belonging to the so-called Civil Administration Office, which is under the Israeli army control in the occupied territories, demolished on Wednesday three Palestinian houses in two villages near Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished in Hizma village and one house was in Al Jeeb village. The first demolished house belongs to resident Saâid Arman, who was kidnapped by the army several months ago and is currently detained in Hadarim Israeli prison. The house is located close to the Hizma secondary School for Boys and is close to the Annexation Wall. The father of Saâid, Abu Thaher, said that he presented a construction license to the soldiers but they went on and demolished the house. The house was constructed five years ago and included four rooms, bathroom and a balcony. Abu Thaher lived in the houses along with his wife and four children. The family went into huge dept to build the house. Abu Thaher said that this demolishing is unjust and violates his right and the right of his family to build and live on their own land. He demanded the Palestinian Authority to intervene and to help him in rebuilding his home. The second demolished home belongs to resident Ahmad Al Nunu, and was built eight years ago. It included three bedrooms and other facilities. The third house belongs to resident Fawzi Kaâayna, located in Al Jeeb village. It included three bedrooms, a living room and other facilities. Al Kaâayna stated that he was at home with his wife, his mother and his sister when the army came and forced them out while shouting at them. His mother, Maisa, 56, was pushed on the ground by one of the soldiers and lost consciousness as she suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. The house was then demolished after workers who accompanied the army through the furniture out causing damage to most of it. http://www.imemc.org/article/53612
Israel to build new settler homes in West Bank: report A new expansion of a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank is set to start at the weekend, the right-wing Makor-Rishon Hatzofe daily reported on Friday. Continued Israeli settlement construction has been a major stumbling block for peace talks with the Palestinians, which have made little progress since they were revived in November. The mayor of the Efrat settlement in the southern West Bank is due to lay the cornerstone of the new neighbourhood on Sunday, the paper said. The project, which will consist of 54 residential units, was approved in principle by the Israeli government in 2003. Efrat, which has a population of 4,000, is part of the Gush Etzion block south of Jerusalem. In a separate development, four mobile homes were set up in the Tenne Omarim settlement, south of Hebron, with the approval of the Israeli defence ministry, to be used as temporary homes for Jewish families, public radio reported. Israel had pledged at a US-sponsored conference in November to abide by a five-year-old internationally drafted peace blueprint known as the roadmap, which calls for a freeze on settlement activity. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed earlier this week that Israel would continue to build settlements in annexed east Jerusalem. Israel considers the whole of Jerusalem, including the Arab eastern sector, which it captured during the 1967 Middle East war, its eternal, undivided capital, a claim not recognised by the international community. The Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state. The international community considers all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land to be illegal. Speaking in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized the continued settlement construction. "We are worried by the Israeli settlement activity and urge Israel to end it," Lavrov said at a news conference with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008032...r&printer=1;_ylt=AsnLNR.VsQaRWb05C9n1gc6bOrgF
Memorial to US Activist in West Bank 20 hours ago NABLUS, West Bank (AP) â The parents of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer, marked the fifth anniversary of her death Thursday by dedicating a small West Bank memorial. Corrie was 23 when she was run over by a 60-ton Israeli bulldozer in 2003 as she tried to prevent a Palestinian home from being demolished. The driver said he didn't see her, and the Israeli military ruled her death accidental. On Thursday, about 150 Palestinians and foreigners attended the memorial, gathering in a street in the West Bank city of Nablus, led by Corrie's parents, Cindy and Craig. Some held up photos of Rachel, who was from Olympia, Wash. Her parents have repeatedly returned to the Palestinian territories, including to the spot in the southern Gaza town of Rafah where she was killed. Cindy Corrie told the crowd that her daughter believed Palestine could be a "source of hope for people struggling all over the world." The parents did not say why they placed the memorial in the West Bank instead of Gaza. But Gaza is mired in violence and ruled by the militant Islamic Hamas, while moderate President Mahmoud Abbas administers the West Bank, which is relatively calmer. In a 2006 visit to Gaza, the Corries were apparent targets of an unsuccessful kidnap attempt by Palestinian militants. The couple unsuccessfully tried to sue Caterpillar Inc., the U.S.-based company that manufactured the bulldozer, seeking to hold the company liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations â the destruction of civilian homes. Israel has demolished scores of homes on the Gaza-Egypt border to broaden a military buffer zone it controlled. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, including the border zone. The U.S. government pays for all Caterpillar bulldozers sold to Israel. A U.S. appeals court ruled in September that the Corrie lawsuit presents foreign policy questions best left to the White House and Congress http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbOTxmSs1sc4bOlacmxVriai6arQD8VHC1TG0
UPDATE: Blake Murphy is deported to the US March 21st, 2008 | Posted in Press Releases, Reports, Bil'in Village, Photos Blake Murphy, an American activist from Bedford, MA, working in the West Bank, was beaten and arrested by Israeli army and police forces on Friday 14th March 2008. He has had to face a series of evidently false charges from the Israeli authorities due to his work supporting non-violent resistance to the occupation of Palestine. He was deported to the United States on Friday 21st March after a week in detention. While in custody, Blake has had many of his legal rights abused by the Israeli authorities. Blake was arrested while attending the weekly demonstration in the village of Biâlin, where the separation wall annexes much of the Palestiniansâ land. Blake was singled out for arrest during the demonstration by the Israeli forces. He was violently assaulted and pepper sprayed before being taken away and subsequently arrested. Blake was then beaten and abused by the soldiers while handcuffed. Upon arriving at the detention center, after being beaten and sprayed in the eyes with mace, Blake was interrogated while still recovering from the effects of the mace. The police only offered him water to rinse the mace from his eyes, which only makes the effects of the mace worse. There have been days when Blake has been given only bread as a meal. Injuries inflicted by Israeli solders on Blake Murphy were severe enough that he was taken to the hospital. He appeared in court on the 15th of March, where the judge prolonged his detention until the 18th March. He was told that he would have to reappear in court on the 18th. Blake was woken up on the 18th at 5:00am and taken from the detention center to the court. He was held there for 8 hours, three hours past the time he was told he would appear, locked in a room with only 8 chairs and 15 other people. At the end of this long day, Blake was informed that a mistake had been made and there had never been an appearance scheduled for him on that day. While in custody, Blake has been denied a translator in court, been brought before a judge without his lawyer being informed, and also been made to appear for a trial that was cancelled without him being informed. Blake Murphy had been working for the last 8 and a half months in the Palestinian Occupied Territories with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). For over 6 months he was working as the full-time media coordinator for the ISM and was therefore highly involved in supporting Palestinian non-violent resistance towards the occupation. It is for this reason that he was targeted by the Israeli authorities and has undergone such inhumane treatment. http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/03/21/blake-murphy-deported/
Past ISM campaigns have used the following tactics: * Acting as human shields to deter military operations, no matter what (terrorist safe houses, smuggling tunnels) the operations are targeted at. Some ISM volunteers object to the use of the term human shield to describe their work because, they argue, in a Palestinian context the expression more usually refers to forced use of captive Palestinians by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) when searching Palestinian neighbourhoods. * Accompanying Palestinians to minimize alleged harassment by Israeli settlers or soldiers, for example ensuring that queues at Israeli checkpoints are processed efficiently and providing witnesses and intermediaries during annual olive harvests, which they say are often disrupted by settlers. * Removing roadblocks. These are large unmanned mounds of earth and concrete on roads throughout the West Bank, and sometimes placed at the entrances of Palestinian villages by the IDF, thereby isolating those villages' inhabitants. * Attempting to block military vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers. * Violating Israeli curfew orders enforced on Palestinian areas in order to monitor Israeli military actions, deliver food and medicine to Palestinian homes, or escort medical personnel to help facilitate their work. * Interfering with the construction of the West Bank barrier and damaging the barrier. * Entering areas designated as "closed military zones" by the Israeli military. The latter is not really a 'strategy', but a prerequisite for ISM being able to conduct many of the above activities. Confronting and harassing Israeli soldiers is a constant activity of ISM volunteers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Solidarity_Movement an article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper asserts that ISM is "the 'peace' group that embraces violence" According to a 2003 profile of ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro in the Jordan Star, Shapiro "justifies the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel as long as it is targeting Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Various sources attribute to ISM the statement that suicide bombing is "noble". ISM was accused of being linked to the suicide bombers that attacked the Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003, killing three people. On March 27, 2003, Shadi Sukiya, who, according to Israel, was a senior Islamic Jihad member and participated in a number of thwarted armed attacks,[16][17] was arrested in a building in Jenin where the ISM, the Red Cross, and Médecins Sans Frontières rent offices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Solidarity_Movement
dddooo justifies the murder of Rachel Corrie by his zionist state Featured Story First Real News 24/7 Posting: November 27, 2003 BBC documentary proves Israeli army murdered Rachel Corrie by Christopher Bollyn The BBC has released a remarkable film about the killing of three international peace activists by the Israeli army in the occupied Gaza Strip. Documentary evidence provided in the film strongly suggests that the American Rachel Corrie - and two British activists - were murdered. Last spring, within a period of seven weeks, one British and one American peace activist were killed by the Israeli army in Rafah, a Palestinian town at the southern end of the occupied Gaza Strip. A second Briton was shot in the head leaving him brain-dead. In two of the cases the Israeli army is being blamed for murder; the third is considered "attempted murder." An Israeli military bulldozer crushed the 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was the first to die on March 16, as she tried to prevent it from demolishing a Palestinian doctor's home. British photographer Tom Hurndall, 22, was left brain dead after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier on April 11. British cameraman James Miller, 34, was shot by an Israeli sniper as he left a house with two other journalists on May 2. A recently released 50-minute "hard-hitting" program produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) investigated the three killings and provides crucial video evidence. "That's murder," an Israeli soldier said after viewing footage from the film, When Killing is Easy. When Killing is Easy was shown 4 times to a worldwide audience on the commercial BBC World television network on November 22 and 23. Some cable television viewers in the United States would have been able to view the program. The three international observers died, or nearly died, at the hands of the Israeli military between the middle of March and the first week of May. Hurndall was shot in the head as he took a Palestinian toddler, who had frozen under Israeli fire, into his arms. Today, Hurndall is brain-dead and is kept alive on life-support equipment. Tom's father, Anthony, is a lawyer in the City of London. After six weeks of investigation, Hurndall has come to the conclusion that the shooting of his son by Israeli forces is "a case of attempted murder. If Tom dies, and that is a likelihood, then it will be murder," he said. Jocelyn Hurndall wrote to The Guardian after an Israeli government check for about $12,000, sent to the Hurndall family to pay for "a fraction of the expenses incurred," bounced. When the check finally arrived after five months of negotiations with the Hurndall family, the Israeli government check was not "honored" by the Bank of Israel, Hurndall wrote. "Insufficient funds' was the reason given. According to evidence provided in Sweeney's film, the IDF report on the shooting of Hurndall is completely wrong about where he was, what he was wearing, and what he was doing when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head. "It is a mind-numbing task to understand the morality and to use the logic of the Israeli government," Hurndall wrote. "What hope do Palestinians have when such profound disregard and disrespect is shown to humanity, collectively and individually?" SILENCED WITNESSES The BBC film was produced by John Sweeney, whose article on the killings, "Silenced Witnesses," was published in The Independent (UK) on Oct. 30. "Making our film, When Killing is Easy, has been the most harrowing ordeal of my professional life," Sweeney wrote. "But it is vital that it is evidential - and that is really tough when the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have refused to speak to us." Rachel Corrie, the first of the three to die, was using her body to defend the home of Dr. Samir Nasser Allah from an American-made bulldozer used by the Israeli army to demolish the homes of Palestinians. Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). ISM members stand between the Israeli bulldozers and the homes that the IDF wants to flatten. Israeli bulldozers have razed thousands of Palestinian homes in the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The bulldozers are primarily made by the Illinois-based Caterpillar company. Tom Dale, an ISM eyewitness, had a clear view of the incident: "He [the driver] knew absolutely she was there. The bulldozer waited for a few seconds over her body and it then reversed, leaving its scoop down so that if she had been under the bulldozer, it would have crushed her a second time. Only later when it was much more clear of her body did it raise its scoop." "MY BACK IS BROKEN" "My back is broken," Rachel told Alice Coy, a fellow ISM activist who was with her. An Israeli pathologist, Dr. Yehudah Hiss, noted that Rachel appeared to have been run over by the bulldozer, Sweeney wrote. Hiss found the cause of death to be "pressure to the chest." Her shoulder blades had been crushed; her spine was broken in five places and six ribs broken. Her face was apparently slashed by the bulldozer blade. The IDF produced a report that says, "Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle." It added, "for good measure" Sweeney says, that Corrie was "hidden from view of the vehicle's operator." The footage seen in the BBC film proves these statements to be false. The family of Rachel Corrie believes the IDF report to "be a blatant fabrication," Sweeney wrote. The British cameraman James Miller was shot dead by an Israeli sniper as he left a house in Rafah with two other journalists on the night of May 2. An Associated Press TV News (APTN) cameraman filmed the entire scene. One of the three journalists held a white flag; Miller was shining a light on the flag and a third journalist held up her British passport. There was no shooting and the area was quiet as the audio track of the film clearly proves. The three had walked about 60 feet toward an Israeli armed personnel carrier to request safe passage to leave the area when the first shot was fired. "We are British journalists," Saira Shah cried out into the darkness. "Then comes the second shot, which killed James," Sweeney wrote. "He was shot in the front of his neck. The bullet was Israeli issue, fired, according to a forensic expert, from less than 200 meters [600 feet] away." The IDF maintains that Miller was shot during crossfire, although no shooting is heard on the APTN tape apart from the two shots fired from the Israeli military vehicle. When the APTN tape was shown to an Israeli soldier, who is shown in the film, he said the television team did not look like Islamic terrorists and concluded: "That's murder." http://www.realnews247.com/bbc_rachel_corrie_report.htm
His family say his diaries show he was clear headed and went with an open mind to Rafah, determined to draw his own conclusions about what was happening to Palestinian civilians. But he was deeply affected by the sight of a young boy he had photographed being shot in the shoulder. Eyewitnesses are said to have seen him pulling two Palestinian children to safety in Rafah when he was shot. San Franciscan Chris Brown was beaten by Israeli settlers with a bat and chains and his head smashed with a rock simply for walking Palestinian children to school. A British award-winning documentary maker shot dead in Gaza by Israeli army officer was murdered an inquest concluded today. James Miller, 34, was hit by a single sniper bullet in the neck after filming Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli tanks in Rafah. http://www.lifestyleextra.com/ShowS...adline=film_maker_murdered_by_israeli_soldier Yesterday a year ago an Israeli soldier shot my American friend Brian Avery in the face. Yesterday a year ago I stopped running, turned around, and saw Brian laying on his stomach faced down on a street in Jenin. Yesterday a year ago my white T-shirt turned red. Swedish human rights worker viciously attacked by Israeli settler