Three Injured at Bil'in Protest Commemorating Woman Killed by Tear Gas Last Week

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Saturday January 08, 2011 - IMEMC News

Dozens of people suffered from inhalation of tear gas fired by Israeli troops at a protest commemorating the death of Jawaher Abu Rahma last week by tear gas inhalation. Two of the protesters were rendered unconscious by the experimental gas, and one protest organizer was hit by a canister.

The protesters gathered around noon in the village of Bil'in, and held signs and pictures of 42-year old Jawaher Abu Rahme, who died from tear gas inhalation after a demonstration against the Wall last Friday. Her death put Bil'in into the headlines of major media -- something which none of the other 12 demonstrators killed in the last six years of non-violent demonstrations managed to do.

A number of Palestinians wore yellow stars saying, "Palestinian", reminiscent of the stars that Jews were required to wear by the Nazi regime in the early 1940s. They were joined by Israeli supporters who had to sneak into the West Bank by circuitous routes, as their presence in most of the West Bank is illegal by Israeli law.

Womens' organizations led the demonstrators from the center of the village toward the site of the Israeli electric fence construction, chanting slogans and carrying banners and flags. Israeli forces stationed at the top of a hill on the other side of the fence immediately began firing tear gas and other so-called 'non-lethal weapons', including rubber-coated steel bullets and sound grenades, into the crowd.

According to demonstrator Alice Rothchild, "Tear gas canisters were sometimes shot into the air, spiraling down to hit the ground creating a huge white cloud of gas. Sometimes the soldiers shot directly at protesters, I could see them crouching and taking aim. There was also a large white truck that repeatedly sprayed a huge arc of white liquid that smelled like a cross between skunk and feces and is apparently difficult to get off one’s body once sprayed."

One of the organizers of the non-violent movement in Bil'in, Eyad Bernat, was hit by a rubber-coated steel bullet, and Mustafa Shawkat and the wife of protest organizer Ahmed Abu Rahma were rendered unconscious by tear gas.

The non-violent weekly protest in Bil'in village has taken place every Friday for the last six years to challenge the Israeli Annexation Wall, the construction of which has seized over half the land area of the farming village to annex it to nearby Israeli colonial settlements.

A Thousand New Yorkers Gather to Remember Gaza Massacre

Tweet http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/photo-essay-remembering-the-gaza-blitzkrieg/

Close to a thousand people gathered under sunny skies on Broadway and 34th Street on Sunday to mark the 2nd anniversary of the Israeli massacre in Gaza where homes, hospitals, farms and schools were destroyed and over 1,400 people, including almost 500 children were murdered 2 years ago. Under sunny skies speaker after speaker spoke of the tragedy, and the fact that Gaza is not being allowed to rebuild, that murders are continuing daily, that people are starving, that their organizations would continue to support the Palestinian people, and that support for the Palestinian people was growing rapidly throughout the world. Many noted the complicity of the US government in the war crimes that took place in Gaza. One speaker told the crowd that an American boat, the Audacity of Hope, would be sailing in the next flotilla going in the spring and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb announced that she would be on that boat attempting to break the siege of Gaza.

After the rally the activists marched to the Israeli Consulate carrying their signs and flags, both American and Palestinian, chanting, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and “Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry. Palestine will never die.”

"Economic Hitmen" -- Good 2 min Video

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Fzm1hEiDQ

via Gilad Atzmon

"European Diplomats Recommend Punitive Action Against Israel"

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Palestine Information Center via Aletho News

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- European diplomats in Jerusalem have filed a report recommending that the EU takes punitive measures against Israel and recognize east Jerusalem as a capital for the Palestinians.

The diplomats, mostly general consuls to Jerusalem, after assessing the situation in the eastern part of the holy city called developments in the last few years "negative" in light of continued Jewish settlement activity, Palestinian home demolitions and evictions, and inequality in educational and medical services provided to the Palestinian makeup of the city.

The document says that the government's cooperation with such groups as the Elad settlement association in archaeological excavations in the Silwan district is conclusive evidence that Israel is backing settlement activity in east Jerusalem.

The European diplomats recommended that EU politicians boycott Israeli ministries beyond the Green Line and products from east Jerusalem and other settlements as well as blacklist "violent settlers" in European countries.

In a similar development, the EU consuls are proposing that international observers be assigned to monitor Israeli demolition operations targeting Palestinian-owned structures in east Jerusalem.

High-profile Israeli politicians have stated that Israel will not allow European observers to monitor demolitions in east Jerusalem.

The move came in the wake of the demolition of the Palestinian-owned Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah.

After Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, a government agency, the Custodian of Absentee Property, took possession of the building. In the mid-1980s, it was sold to a corporation owned by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, the financial angel of far-right Israeli groups intent on settling Jews in Palestinian neighborhoods inside and encircling the Old City.

Max Blumenthal on AJE on Israeli Loyalty Oath

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"In Wikileaks Fight, U.S. Journalists Take the Fifth" -- Nancy Youssef, McClatchy

Tweet http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/09/106445/in-wikileaks-fight-us-journalists.html

EXCERPT:

Assange supporters see U.S. journalists' ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now — writing news stories based on leaked government documents.

"Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington," said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. "There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism."

Woodward, who rose to fame by exposing the Watergate conspiracy that forced President Richard Nixon from office, told a Yale University law school audience in November that WikiLeaks' "willy-nilly" release of documents was "madness" and would be "fuel for those who oppose disclosure." But that appearance came before U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal probe against Assange. Woodward didn't respond to e-mails seeking comment.

Woodward's newspaper, The Washington Post, however, is one of the few that's editorialized against prosecuting Assange. "The government has no business indicting someone who is not a spy and who is not legally bound to keep its secrets," the Post said.

Assange increasingly has presented himself as a journalist in the weeks since Holder's threat to bring charges. He's the website's editor, and WikiLeaks publishes editorials.

Few could argue that WikiLeaks didn't perform journalistic functions in April when it released video taken from an Army helicopter of a 2007 incident where Army pilots fired on civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqis, including two employees of the Reuters news agency, and wounding two children. In addition to editing and captioning the video, WikiLeaks interviewed the Iraqi families about the incident. The release of the video, which Reuters had sought for years but had been denied, was widely covered by U.S. news organizations.

U.S. journalists have been far less zealous about WikiLeaks, however, in the ensuing months, as the Obama administration has mounted increasingly vocal attacks on the organization over three batches of leaked U.S. documents — military logs of events from the war in Afghanistan, including the names of Afghans who'd cooperated with the U.S.; initial incident reports from throughout the Iraq War; and most recently, thousands of diplomatic cables.

The problem with speaking up for WikiLeaks now, said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, one of the country's most prominent defenders of press freedom and one of the groups that backed WikiLeaks in its 2008 court case, is that she doesn't consider Assange to be a journalist.

Assange, she said, "has done some things that journalists do, but I would argue that what the New York Times does is more journalism. They vet the information. . . . They consider outside sources. They take responsibility. They publicly identify themselves. . . .They do some value added. They do something original to it," Dalglish said.

She added that part of her hesitation to back Assange is that the public knows so little about him and how he acquires information.

"Reflections on the Gaza Youth Manifesto" -- Max Ajl

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EXCERPT:

An older friend told me he thinks the manifesto will blow over. Maybe, but maybe not. To me, the manifesto is important because of what it conveys: frus­tra­tion, and a wish for change. No one writes such a dangerous manifesto just as catharsis, and the way it has moved through the English-reading Pales­tin­ian uni­ver­sity community cannot be read as just an upper-class fad, espe­cially since that community cuts across class and religious lines. I know kids from the camps who have enthused about the document, and religious people from poverty-struck families who have done the same. Frus­tra­tion with the political horizon is not restricted to the rich here, desperate to live debauched lives like their peers in the West. One student writes, “Our feelings of despair, irri­ta­tion and resent­ment are the same” as those who drafted the manifesto, admon­ish­ing them for not making it better. And it will be re-written. The authors have already released a clar­i­fy­ing statement. They are not dumb, and know which sparkles caught the eye of their tor­men­tors to the north and west, and it wasn’t the stuff about “fuck Israel.” Meanwhile, it has inspired debate—where’s the political vision? Where’s the call for tactical sol­i­dar­ity? Why no mention of BDS? Why the hint of nihilism?–and that’s good, because we never know which spark will set off fiery revolt, which enraged polemic will make people think through the steps required to get unity, something that won’t come from above–it’ll come from below. We cannot but barely directly affect the internal dynamics of mobi­liza­tion of Pales­tin­ian society. Those who care will critique, highlight, tend, support, fund, hope, struggle, and all the while, do our best to overthrow our own gov­ern­ments, the most important work we can do to support the people of Palestine, be they Hamas or Fateh or neither, keeping front and center that this is an anti-colonial struggle—the last one—and that while Gaza remains a ghetto we all live in a world of walls.

"The culture of the Israeli Army and the Murder of an Elderly Man in His Sleep"

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EXCERPT:

Devastating news today. By now, many of you might’ve heard about the 65-year-old elderly Palestinian man riddled with bullets while sleeping in bed. If not, here’s an excerpt from the New York Times:

HEBRON, West Bank — Israeli soldiers shot and killed an unarmed 65-year-old Palestinian man in his bedroom in this tense city early Friday, in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identity.

The man’s wife said he was sleeping and she was praying when soldiers burst into the apartment before dawn, entered the bedroom and immediately opened fire. Afterward they asked her for his identity card. She gave her account a few hours later, standing next to the bed, whose mattress, sheets and pillows were soaked in blood. The headboard, an adjacent wardrobe and the ceiling were also spattered with blood and bits of what appeared to be brain matter.

Israeli Soldiers Kill Palestinian, 65, in His Bedroom, New York Times

His name was Omar al-Qawasmeh and he was mistaken for a terrorist. His native tongue was Arabic, he had tan skin, he was Palestinian, and therefore he fit the criteria. But the Israeli army (which goes so far as to title itself the most moral army in the world) was searching for Wael, his nephew who has been involved in previous run-ins with Israeli law as an alleged militant.

The Israeli military expressed regret over the death of this elderly individual and promised an investigation. I try my best to refrain from being a cynic but I question the sincerity of the army’s response. I wonder how long it took for Ehud Barak to finally give in to mounting global and internal pressure before allowing a spokesperson to issue a semi-public apology. I call it "semi-public" because it wasn’t directed at the immediate victims of this tragedy; it was more of an announcement made to appease reporters and news agencies. The real victims continue to mourn Omar’s gruesome death.

I also question any potential investigation. Especially obvious since the Second Intifada, the term "investigation" has been used as an excuse to politely prolong a situation in the hopes that it might fizzle out and be forgotten. If this comes off as too pretentious of a claim, consider the following statistic as reported by Yesh Din, an Israel-based human rights group:

Up until 2010, no more than "six percent of investigations yielded indictments against Israeli soldiers who harmed Palestinians." (B’Tselem, another Israeli rights group has done extensive research on Israeli soldiers being cleared of having any responsibility in the deaths of unarmed Palestinian civilians. Read their publication Void of Responsibility here.

An investigation is not necessary. This was not collateral damage. This was not a botched operation. This was not the result of a Hamas rocket. This was not an accidental killing or a misfired weapon. This was murder. Omar was killed in cold blood while his eyes were closed, his head turned away, and his wife was praying.

"[Seattle] Jewish Leaders Ask Dow Constantine to Reinstate Anti-Israel Bus Ads"

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EXCERPT from article (letter sent to King County Executive):

Dear Mr. Constantine,

We are members of the Seattle Jewish community who have joined together to urge you to reconsider your decision to prevent the “Israeli War Crimes — Your Tax Dollars at Work” ads from being placed on Metro buses. Your statement that if the ads run there would be “an unacceptable risk of harm to or disruption of service” has baffled and alarmed us. We don't understand the rationale for your claims of harm and disruption, and we are alarmed by the sudden abrogation of the contract for the ads. This sets a dangerous precedent that baseless threats and bullying can, in the absence of principled arguments, set public policy.

We believe that a public airing of grievances is a requirement for a democracy to function. It leads to people feeling engaged and respected, thereby lowering, not raising, tensions and anger. It is when speech and facts are suppressed that people feel isolated and ignored. In this context your decision concerning the bus ads appears counter-productive to attaining your stated goals.

Your claims that these ads might prove disruptive or costly to King County are particularly ironic in light of our county’s history. It took over 20 years to change the logo of King County from a crown to the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., over the repeated objections as to the cost and “disruptions” such a change would entail. We believe that as King County Executive it is your duty to do what is right and principled, not just what avoids “disruptions.”

It is necessary to clarify what the bus ads are not. Since the ads state evidence-based claims (see below) they cannot, in and of themselves, be considered anti-Israeli (anymore than criticism of US policy is anti-American). Indeed, as outlined below, numerous Israeli organizations have made the same claims as regards war crimes. It certainly goes beyond reasonable discourse to label such ads as anything approximating “hate speech.”

The claim of “Israeli War Crimes — Your Tax Dollars at Work” is evidence-based and is therefore far from being inherently inflammatory or inaccurate since:

(1) Every internationally recognized non-governmental human rights organization (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Human Rights Council) that has investigated the 2008 Israeli assault on Gaza has come to the conclusion that there is abundant evidence of war crimes committed by Israel. So too have all the major Israeli human rights organizations (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, B'Tselem, Committee Against Torture in Israel, Yesh Din, Rabbis for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, and others). In fact, the most complete investigation to date (the 452 page September 2009 report from the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by the noted international Justice Richard Goldstone) goes further, stating that “From the facts available to it, the Mission is of the view that some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed.”

(2) The US provides Israel with F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, white phosphorus shells, GBU-39 guided bombs, controversial DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosives) shells, and a variety of other armaments at US taxpayer expense. Many of these armaments were used in the commission of war crimes (noted above).

Several organizations in the Seattle area (the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, along with the Seattle/Northwest chapters of the national groups the Anti-Defamation League, Stand With Us, and the American Jewish Committee) have exploited the fears of anti-Semitism and victimization to advance a very narrow agenda that has nothing to do with the safety and protection of the Jewish people and culture, but instead serves only to protect Israeli policies and practices that have denied basic human rights to Palestinians. These organizations do not speak for us, and in fact violate the long-standing Jewish traditions we hold most sacred, traditions that have guided us in our lives and careers: the values of justice and liberation. Labeling the bus ads as “anti-Israel,” “anti-Jewish,” or “hate speech” is an offensive tactic which should never be encouraged, and certainly not supported by echoing those claims or acting upon them.

The bus ads are not about singling out Israel, but rather about taking responsibility for our government enabling Israeli human rights abuses, through the supply of money, arms, and diplomatic cover. Indeed, Amnesty International has called for the international community to “act immediately” at the level of individual states “to suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions, as well as those which may be diverted, to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk that such equipment will be used for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law” (AI, July 2009 report).

In 2003, and again in 2005, ads were placed on Metro buses that protested the Iraq war. In the 2005 ads there was a graphic picture of an Iraqi child severely injured by an American cluster bomb. There were people who labeled those bus ads as anti-American, yet Metro ran those ads without incident. If we can question the use of US armaments by Americans, why can we not question the use of US armaments by the Israelis?

Finally, we note that if there are fears that ads addressing Palestinian war crimes, proposed by other organizations, might incite hatred or violence, then you should consider those ads on a case-by-case basis according to long-standing policy. It violates the most basic conditions for free speech to allow one person's speech to suppress another's.

We therefore request that you, as King County Executive, act in a manner consistent with supporting free speech, the legacy of the man King County is named for, and the highest ideals of Jewish culture: allow the bus ads to run, thereby allowing the public to question the human rights abuses committed in our name and with our tax dollars.

Alexander Cockburn on the Normalization of Torture in the U.S.

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EXCERPT:

Just over the edge of 2011, torture is now solidly installed in America's repressive arsenal. Not in the shadows where it used to lurk, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, conducted by the TSA's airport security teams. They complained of being groped around bosoms and crotches.

Covertly, there was always plenty of torture, just as there were assassinations. After World War Two, the CIA's predecessor, OSS, imported Nazi experts in interrogation techniques. But this was the era of Cold War competition: Uncle Sam the Good against the dirty Russians and Chinese. The US government would go to desperate lengths to counter accusations that its agents in the CIA or USAID practised torture.

One famous case was that of Dan Mitrione, working for the US Agency for International Development, teaching refinements in torture techniques to Brazilian and Uruguayan interrogators.

Mitrione was ultimately kidnapped by the Tupamaro guerillas and executed, becoming the subject of Costa Gavras's movie State of Siege. The CIA mounted major cover-up operations to try to discredit the accusations against Mitrione, quoted as having once told his students: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."

The American liberal conscience began to make its accommodation with torture in June 1977, which was the month the London Sunday Times published a major expose of the torture of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and the security agency, Shin Bet. Suddenly American supporters of Israel were arguing that certain techniques – sensory deprivation, prolonged stress positions while hooded, incarceration in ‘cells' the size of packing crates, etc – somehow weren't really torture, or were morally justifiable torture under the "ticking time bomb" theory.

Ahead lay the spectacle of Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, a supposed liberal defender of civil rights, recommending to Israel the notion of "torture warrants". The targets of the warrants would be "subjected to judicially monitored physical measures designed to cause excruciating pain without leaving any lasting damage". One form of torture recommended by the Harvard professor was "the sterilised needle being shoved under the fingernails".

With the Great War on Terror, launched after the 9/11 World Trade Center attack in 2001, torture made its march into the full light of day. Presiding over this journey was George Bush's secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

At Guantanamo Bay, it was Rumsfeld who gave verbal and subsequently written approval to torture suspects, using the notorious techniques of isolation, sleep deprivation and psychic degradation, with the Defence Secretary himself micro-managing the humiliations, some of them involving women's underwear.

In the case of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, there is again a trail of evidence showing it was Rumsfeld who personally decreed and monitored stress positions, individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, sleep deprivation and waterboarding.

One US army officer, Janis Karpinski, has described finding in Abu Ghraib a piece of paper stuck on a pole outside a little office used by the interrogators. It was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld, authorising techniques such as use of dogs, stress positions, starvation. On the paper, in Rumsfeld's handwriting, was the terse instruction, "Make sure this happens!!"

On the home front, torture as a drastic mode of social control flowered luxuriantly in the American prison system, whose population began to rocket in the 1970s to its present 2.5 million total. Informally, licensed male rape went hand in hand with increasingly sadistic solitary confinement and prolonged sensory deprivation – a condition in which some 25,000 prisoners are currently being driven mad.

Great Video of London Demo on Dec. 27th 2 Years After Cast Lead

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Oakland Community Still Working for Justice from Police Killings

Tweet http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/justice-for-victims-of-the-police/

OAKLAND, Calif.–On New Year’s Day, nearly 100 people gathered at the Fruitvale BART station to remember Oscar Grant III and other victims of police brutality.

Grant died in the early morning of January 1, 2009, after he was shot in the back by BART cop Johannes Mehserle. The incident was caught on several cell phone videos that showed that Grant was face down on the ground, with his hands behind his back, and was unarmed when he was shot.

“Two years ago Oscar Grant was murdered up there,” said Jack Bryson, father of Grant’s friends who witnessed the shooting. My spirits are low since the courts passed the unjust sentence.”

Since Grant’s death, a deeply committed movement has pressed for justice–with mixed results. Following a public outcry, Mehserle was arrested and charged with murder. After the trial was moved to Los Angeles County, Mehserle became the first California officer convicted of a wrongful on-duty shooting. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to two years with credit for time served.

He will most likely be released within the next few months.

“You always hope your children will bury you, you never imagine you’d bury your children,” said Wanda Johnson, Grant’s mother. “I hope there will be no more cover ups and the police take responsibility. My heart bleeds everyday.”

As if to remind us that Oscar’s murder was not an isolated event by a “bad apple” (the story advanced by the media and local politicians), five people have been shot to death by Bay Area police in the past two months.

In November, Oakland police shot and killed a local barber named Derrick Jones. Despite early claims by police, Derrick was unarmed and was shot from the front.

The killing sparked outrage by the community and led to several protests. Members of the Jones family attended the vigil to support the family of Oscar Grant.

“We’re trying to make people more aware about what has happened with these murders,” said Frank Jones, Derrick’s father. “We have to stop the killings, that’s the number one thing. We are waiting for city hall but nothing concrete has happened.”

Relations between police and the community are severely strained. The public’s expectation of police accountability is so low that Police Chief Anthony Batts actually asked the FBI to investigate the shooting of Jones. If federal investigators step in, they will join investigations already underway in the Oakland’s internal affairs unit, homicide team and the district attorney’s office.

In another case, an unarmed woman recently was shot dead by San Leandro police in Oakland following a car chase. Police said that they were pursuing a stolen car which led to a crash in a residential neighborhood. Allegedly, the woman was shot for fear she would use the car to assault officers and escape.

However, a witness interviewed by the San Jose Mercury News said, “They [the police] crashed the car and right away he said, ‘Get out, get out,’ two times, and then he started dumping the whole clip on her. He actually reloaded when he was done.”

Despite Johannes Mesherle’s wrist-slap punishment, the recent string of shootings by police and a heavy police presence at the New Year’s Day vigil (including over a dozen patrol cars and an armored personnel carrier), everyone in the crowd stood firm in their commitment to achieve justice.

“We’re gathered here to remember…and celebrate life,” said Cephus Johnson, Oscar Grant’s uncle. “This is a time of celebration, reflection, and to embrace each other.”

A common message that most speakers related at the vigil is their optimism that the struggle will continue.

“It’s good we still got people out here,” said Bryson. “We won’t let things fade away.”

Cephus Johnson added, “[The] community still standing gives us the strength to keep fighting.”

"One Family in Gaza" -- Jen Marlowe

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One Family in Gaza from Jen Marlowe on Vimeo.

Stand Up for Your Brother and Sister Activists!

Tweet Palestine, Israel, USA, Egypt, Tunisa: wherever people are trying to be in solidarity with dissidents from misguided government policies, they are under attack!!! Don't give in to fear. Continue to stand in solidarity with each other. Below, write an email to President Mubarak and the Prosecutor on behalf of brave activists trying to support the Coptic Christians in Egypt.

http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73610&s2=06

EXCERPT:

Eight young activists were arrested Tuesday the 4th of January 2011 from a solidarity gathering in Shubra. For hours lawyers and activists gathered yesterday in front of the North Cairo prosecution to demand the release of their colleagues. The eight activist were made to sign an acknowledgement today of their referral to an urgent trial tomorrow morning in the Rod El Farag court of demeanor, a procedure recently used by authorities against democracy activists Ahmed Doma (Justice and Freedom movement – Cairo) and Hassan Mostafa (Hashd movement – Alexandria) both of whom received a prison sentence of one month.

The eight activists were arrested from a solidarity gathering in Shubra, a neighborhood with Coptic majority, in the early hours of the 4th of January after being encircled by thousands of anti riot police and after violent clashes with police that resulted in several injured. Before the arrest the police would check the names of the protestors, permit the Copts to leave and keep who they believed were Muslim protestors inside the police cordon.

The violence against the solidarity movement following the massacre of the New Years' eve in Alexandria, which left an estimate of 21 dead, is an attack against several unified actions between Coptic and Muslim youth, which developed within the past days.

Charges facing activists include: Gathering, shouting, contempt of the constitution and law, destruction of public property, attack on 15 antiriot file and rank police, 4 officers, destruction of 11 police trucks, 9 private cars, two microbuses, two police pick ups as well as the pavement!!!!

Based on the charges facing the 8 activist, which do not need a comment regarding their absurdity, we can foresee that tomorrow's trial is meant as a harassment of the solidarity, who were planning, with hundred others, to attend the Coptic Christmas Mass tomorrow expressing their support of Egyptian Coptic citizens and demanding the trial of those responsible for the Alexandria massacre: Minister of Interior Habib el Adly, security director of Alexandria as well as demanding a unified law for places of prayer.

Several calls have been released for a gathering tomorrow in front of the court house demanding the release of the activists. Similar violence can be foreseen.

Urgent pressure is needed with the Public prosecutor, and the president of the republic for the immediate release of the activists and an investigation of the New Year's crime in Alexandria.

President of the Republic

Muhammad Hosni Mubarak
President of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: +202 390 1998
E-mail: webmaster@presidency.gov.eg

Egyptian Public Prosecutor

Counsellor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud Abdel Meguid
Dar al-Qadha al-'Ali
Ramses Street
Cairo, Egypt
Via facsimile: + 20 2 2577 4716

Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates Resolution- January 5, 2011 FBI Raids on Trade Union, Anti-War and Solidarity Activists

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The following solidarity statement was passed by the House of Delegates of the Chicago Teachers Union on January 5, 2011.

http://www.stopfbi.net/2011/1/5/ctu-resolution-fbi-raids-trade-union-anti-war-and-solidarity-activists

Whereas, early morning September 24 in coordinated raids, FBI agents entered seven homes of union workers and anti-war activists in Chicago and Minneapolis, confiscating crates full of computers, documents, cell phones, children’s drawings, photos of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and personal belongings. They handed out subpoenas to testify before a federal Grand Jury to 14 activists.

Whereas, 10 of the 14 people subpoenaed are union members and 2 are teachers with a long history of activism and leadership within their unions and local labor communities. One target of the raid was the home of Joe Iosbaker, chief steward and executive board member of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago, where he has led struggles at the University of Illinois for employee rights and pay equity.

Whereas, the FBI has a long history of violating peoples’ human and civil rights. During the 1960s the FBI COINTELPRO spied on and harassed civil rights and anti-war activists, including the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr .

Whereas, the grand jury for those subpoenaed is an unfair process where the defendants’ lawyers are not present, nor is the grand jury screened for biases. Similar to how teachers have a right to due process by their unions, these 10 union members and 4 other activists have a right to receive a fair judicial process.

Whereas, the nationally coordinated raids and fishing expedition is an assault on the First Amendment rights of every union fighter, solidarity activist or anti-war campaigner. This time the FBI is using the pretext of investigating "terrorism" in an attempt to intimidate activists.

Therefore be it resolved, that the Chicago Teachers Union supports the following demands:
1. Stop using the national security laws to intimidate people from using their 1st amendment rights.
2. Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, personal belongings, etc.
3. End the Grand Jury proceedings and FBI raids against trade union, anti-war and international solidarity activists

And be it further resolved, that the Chicago Teachers Union participate in the ongoing movement to defend our civil rights and civil liberties from FBI infringement; forward this resolution to the Illinois Federation of Teachers; and call on similar organizations at all levels to similarly oppose the witch hunt.

"Inspiration from Tunisia"

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZsCk6RdBCI

The video is in Arabic, but here is the PULSE site explaining what is going on.http://pulsemedia.org/2011/01/05/inspiration-from-tunisia/

Even without translation, you can tell what is happening. A woman is truncheoned and with blood streaming from her head, chants defiantly.

"Tears and Gas: a Call to Mobilise" -- Jesse Rosenfeld and Joseph Dana

Tweet http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73536&s2=04

"We are tying the connections between US aid and support for Israel in general and the suppression of Palestinian popular struggle," said Matan Cohen just after being released from jail in the early hours of Sunday morning.

EXCERPT:

Janaury 3, 2011

Getting nowhere at home, Israel's Palestine solidarity activists push a global call for action.

As 2010 came to a close in the West Bank under the regular, weekly cloud of teargas experienced among the villages bordering Israel's 1967 Green Line, 2011 started with the death of Palestinian woman from the village of Bi'lin and the arrest of 19 Israeli activists in the Tel Aviv area.

The new year is just days underway and already it is clear that this will be the year that building ethno-nationalist rhetoric and legislation turned into concrete action.

Since the election of the right-wing Netanyahu government, the weekly West Bank demonstrations in the town of Bi'lin have faced greater military repression, while the small but persistent radical Israeli left has moved from isolated protest to bringing the West Bank joint resistance model into Israel.

Following the killing of Bi'lin's first resident - Bassem abu Rahmah in 2009 - the continued jailing of village popular committee leader Abdullah Abu Rahmah, and a series of night time arrest raids without a murmur of protest from greater Israeli society, marginalised Israeli activists are now appealing outside their boarders and pushing forward the international boycott movement.

Tears and gas

After the announcement of the death of Jawaher abu Rahmah on the morning of January 1 from the complications of massive teargas exposure during the previous day's demonstration, hundreds of Israeli leftists descended on the the ministry of defence, blockading the main road in front of it.

Later that evening another group of 25 Israelis woke the US Ambassador at his home in Herzliya chanting, 'returning' empty tear gas canisters and condemning the supply of teargas and other weapons to Israel by American companies and the government.

The evening ended with eight people arrested at the road block (they were later released without charge) and an additional 11 in jail from the protest at the Ambassador's residence, facing a laundry list of charges including a weapons possession charge for the discharged teargas canisters.

The past months have seen an escalation in the crackdown on a small Israeli anti-occupation movement that has grown weary of engaging a public that is consumed by a mix of hyper nationalism and obliviousness to the reality of Israel's expanding occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza.

Sentenced to three months in prison on December 27 for participating in a cycling protest during the 2008 Gaza war, Jonathan Pollak is the latest target of Israeli campaign against those amplifying the Palestinian call for justice. Pollak, a veteran of Palestinian popular resistance and a spokesperson for the coordinating committee for popular struggles across the West Bank, is a founder of the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall - which has worked with Palestinian grassroots struggles since the Second Intifada.

"It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that will need to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza’s inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation," Pollak told his packed sentencing hearing in Tel Aviv.

Donning a t-shirt with the image of Black Consciousness movement leader and anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko, he defiantly challenged the legitimacy of the Israeli legal system while maintaining a calm demeanor.

Building on the sentiments that Pollak expressed, the January 1 demonstrations bypassed the Israeli public in favour of trying to bring international pressure on Israel for its violation of Palestinian rights.

Activists chanted 'fight back against apartheid' in English as they clashed with police in front of the international media in Tel Aviv. The English chants were escalated later in the evening when activists attempted to directly confront the American ambassador.

"We are tying the connections between US aid and support for Israel in general and the suppression of Palestinian popular struggle," said Matan Cohen just after being released from jail in the early hours of Sunday morning.

"Mondo Inferno: The Endless Echoes of America's WMD Atrocity" -- Chris Floyd

Tweet http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73579&s2=04

EXCERPT:

The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack. The Guardian reports:

A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.

The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. ... The findings are likely to prompt further speculation that the defects were caused by depleted uranium rounds, which were heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004.

... One case documented in the report is of a mother and her daughter who after the 2004 battles both gave birth to babies with severe malformations. The second wife of one of the fathers also had a severely deformed baby in 2009. "It is important to understand that under normal conditions, the chances of such occurrences is virtually zero," said Savabieasfahani.

...Birth-defect rates in Falluja have become increasingly alarming over the past two years. In the first half of 2010, the number of monthly cases of serious abnormalities rose to unprecedented levels. In Falluja general hospital, 15% of the 547 babies born in May had a chronic deformity, such as a neural tune defect – which affects the brain and lower limbs – cardiac, or skeletal abnormalities, or cancers.

No other city in Iraq has anywhere near the same levels of reported abnormalities. Falluja sees at least 11 times as many major defects in newborns than world averages, the research has shown.

The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010:

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

Summary of Weekend's Events Surrounding Bilin Demos from Electronic Intifada

Tweet http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11710.shtml

EXCERPTS:

Israeli solidarity with Bilin

In response to Jawaher's murder, on 1 January hundreds of people demonstrated across the street from Israel's ministry of defense in Tel Aviv. Protesters chanted "Israel is a police state" and called for an end to the occupation. For more than one hour, protesters successfully blocked a main street in Tel Aviv beside the ministry by sitting in it and blocking traffic. Eight protesters were arrested in the demonstration including Mossi Raz, a former member of the Israeli Parliament. All were later released without charge.

Later that evening, Israeli activists descended on the home of the US ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, in the northern Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. The activists "returned" loads of spent tear gas canisters collected in Bilin by throwing them into the ambassador's front yard. They also chanted, waking up neighbors, to demand a halt in US military aid to Israel.

Eleven demonstrators were arrested, including two women over the age of 60. They have been charged with illegal arms possession and will remain in jail until their hearing on 4 January. More actions are being planned by Israeli activists in response to the army's killing of Jawaher and in solidarity with Bilin.

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In 2009, leader of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Bilin, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, was arrested in his Ramallah home. Despite his recognition by the European Union as a "human rights defender," the Israeli occupation's legal system found him guilty of "incitement" and "illegal protest."

Abdallah has served his one year sentence in full, yet still sits in an Israeli jail cell because the state has filed an appeal asking for a harsher sentence. The judge has not given a date for his verdict on the appeal.

The sadness caused by yet another victim of Israel's occupation lingered in the air in Bilin on Saturday. However, the determination to continue the struggle was visible in the eyes of villagers as Jawaher Abu Rahmah was placed in the earth next to her brother. Leaders of various other popular committees in occupied West Bank villages like Budrus, Nabi Saleh and Nilin, attended the funeral in a show of support and unified solidarity to continue the demonstrations.

They vowed that the unarmed protests will continue despite knowing that the violent repression of the Israeli military will continue as well. The protesters of Bilin and other villages understand that both history and justice are on their side. They have embraced the tactic of unarmed resistance and have opened their struggle to any one willing to join in respect and solidarity, even to an increasing number Israeli Jews. Their moral clarity should be a model for international civil society, which now more than ever needs the support of the international community.

All “are equal in the eyes of the law?” Al-Arakib Activist Hit with 7 month Jail Sentence for…Operating Garage Without License

Tweet http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/12/all-are-equal-in-the-eyes-of-the-law-al-arakib-activist-hit-with-7-month-jail-sentence-for-operating-garage-without-license/#comments

Commenting on the conviction today of former president Moshe Katsav for rape, the current Israeli President Shimon Peres declared, “There are no two states of Israel, just one state. There are no two kinds of citizens here; citizens of only one kind exist in Israel — and all are equal in the eyes of the law.”

video in original here of Nuri el-Okbi who attempts to return to his family’s rightfully owned land near al-Arakib; his tribe was ethnically cleansed from the area in 1951

As Israelis celebrated the conviction of Katsav, the “eyes of the law” also focused in on a Bedouin activist named Nuri el-Okbi who heads the Association for Protection of the Rights Bedouins in Israel and who has tried to stop the ethnic cleansing of Al-Arakib, which has been marked as the site for the Jewish National Fund and GOD TV’s Forest of Hate. In a municipal courtroom in Ramle, el-Okbi was sentenced to seven months in prison and a 40,000 NIS fine by a Ramle municipal court judge. His crime? He operated a garage without a license (that was constantly denied to him by the municipality). The judge who sentenced him declared that lenient treatment of el-Okbi “would constitute a negative message to the public, and especially to the Bedouins.” In other words, the harsh sentence was directly not just at el-Okbi, but at all Bedouins living inside Israel — it was a collective punishment.

El-Okbi, who is 68 years old, collapsed upon the reading of his verdict and is now handcuffed to a hospital bed.