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Israeli Troops Loot Hebron Orphanage

Khalid Amayreh in Hebron, Palestinian Information Center 3/6/2008

Hundreds of Israeli occupation troops stormed a Palestinian orphanage and a boarding school in the southern West Bank City of Hebron early Thursday, looting large amounts of frozen food, dairy products, clothes, shoes, refrigerators and kitchen equipments, local officials and eyewitnesses said. The looted material were to be used to feed and cloth as many as seven thousand orphan girls and boys, many of them attending boarding schools run by the Islamic Charitable Society. According to neighbors, the looting operation started around midnight Wednesday when soldiers stormed the al-Harayek neighborhood in Hebron where the inventory department of the Islamic Charitable Society is located." They (Israeli soldiers) forced open the main gate and outer doors and then started loading everything on trucks they brought with them," said Muhammed Awwad, an official at the Society’s Inventory Department.

Vlinai Threatens "Holocaust" of Palestinians

On February 29th the Deputy Defense Minister of Israel Matan Vilnai threatened a "shoah" (holocaust) of Palestinians because of missile attacks against Israelis. The Middle East Crisis Committee issued a press release calling for US political, human rights and religious leaders to demand that his threat be condemned and that Vilnai be fired from the Israeli government.

Stanley Heller, MECC Chairperson said, "Vilnai's language and threat are vile, criminal and inexcusable. No one has a right to threaten genocide under any circumstances. Members of Congress, members of the clergy and people of good will should demand his immediate dismissal. Israel receives billions in US aid and would respond favorably to American sentiments of outrage."

"It is not just a question of words. Nearly every day the highest government officials of Israel are threatening a massive attack in the Gaza Strip. They react to Israeli casualties of missile attacks, but excuse all their own attacks on Palestinians most of which cause civilian casualties. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem since January 1 of this year, two Israelis have been killed by Palestinians. In the same time period 148 Palestinians (including 12 children) were killed by Israelis. The killing should cease on both sides, but the primary reason it doesn't is because the Israeli government refuses to have a cease fire with Hamas or even to talk with this group whose leaders are the elected leaders of the Palestinians."

On February 29th the Isaeli paper Ha'aretz reports that one-year-old Malak al-Kafarna died of a shrapnel wound to the head she suffered several hours earlier in a blast near her home in Beit Hanun, also in the north, Raed al-Arini, a doctor at Shifa hospital said. She was the second infant killed this week.

Three Trillion for Iraq/Afghan Wars

Yep, three trillion dollars, the expected cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That's the estimate by Nobel Economics Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. He's written a book about it along economist and former Commerce Department official Linda Bilmes called "The Three Trillion Dollar War". It came out February 28.

Read their article about their estimiate in the Times of London. On Feb. 29 Democracy Now devoted their program to the book.

London School of Economics Union Passes Divestment Resolution

On February 14 the Student Union of the prestigous London School of Economics voted a divestment resolution by a wide majority which resolved to:

1. Establish an LSE SU campaign to lobby the school and NUS to divest from Israel and companies that a) provide military support for or weaponry to support the occupation b) facilitate the building or maintenance of the illegal “annexation” wall or the demolition of Palestinian homes or c) operate on illegally occupied land and within Jewish-only settlements, with the goal of maintaining the divestment, in the case of said companies, until they cease such practices, and, in the case of Israel, until Israel stops its discriminatory regime and the oppression and colonization of Palestinians

2. Actively support and work with Palestine solidarity organisations such as “Jews for Justice for Palestinians” (JfJfP)[1], BRICUP[2], Zochrot[3], ICAHD[4], and PSC[5] that campaign to stop the occupation of Palestine and to end legalized racial and religious discrimination in Israel

3. Affiliate our Union to the “the international campaign to end the siege on Gaza” and engage in education campaigns to publicize the injustice of Israel’s discriminatory policies against the Palestinians and its illegal occupation [6]

(CONTINUED)

Protest Plans to Fire Palestinian Professor

Nizar Hassan, a renowned Palestinian filmmaker, and a fierce critic of Israel's brutal occupation, has been working at the Sapir College, Israel for a number of years. This is a school I have set up, so I know it rather well - it is the only school where such views were allowed to be heard, and a Palestinian filmmaker was employed in key position within Israel. Nizar has been crucial, both in his films and his teaching, establishing a deeper knowledge and understanding of Israel within Palestine, and vice versa. This he has done with sensitivity and a great sense of duty, and as such is a voice of sanity in the desert of the unreal, to paraphrase Zizek...

(CONTINUED)

Eyewitness to Nahr el Bared

I left Lebanon more than a week ago and am only now starting to find words. I have never before been in a place that has seen so much war. Occupation, yes. Injustice, yes. Death and destruction and uncertainty, perhaps. But something felt different about Lebanon. I have not wrapped my mind around it enough to feel confident that what I write will accurately represent my own thoughts, let alone the actual situation. But I do want to tell you about Nahr el Bared.

(CONTINUED)

15,000 Israeli Palestinians Protest Whitewash

About 15,000 people took part in the protest in Sakhnin in Northern Israel against the decision of the Israeli government to end an investigation into the brutal police attack in 2000 that killed 13.

On Friday Arab owned shops in the town of Sakhnin completely shut down while three quarters of stores in Nazareth also closed in protest.

The strike comes after Menahem Mazuz, the Israeli attorney general, announced on Sunday that there would be no legal action against police over the death of 12 Arab Israelis and a Palestinian in October 2000.

15 Year Prison Sentence

A special Palestinian Authority court in Hebron on Tuesday sentenced two PA employees to 15 years in jail for shooting dead two Israelis hiking near Hebron last month.

The two, 24-year-old Amar Taha, a Palestinian police officer, and 26-year-old Ali Dandanes, a PA court clerk, turned themselves in after killing Ahikam Amihai and David Rubin roughly three weeks ago.

Amihai and Rubin were Israel Defense Forces soldiers on leave from their units. They were hiking near Hebron when they came under fire from three Palestinian terrorists in a Jeep.

Family Asks for Release of Longest "Administrative Detainee"

The family of detainee Waleed Khalid Harb, 38, the director of Palestine Newspaper, from Iskaka village near the West Bank city of Salfit, appealed the International Journalist Union and Reporters Without Borders to intervene for his release, and for ending his solitary confinement.

The family stated that Harb spent nearly six years under administrative detention orders, without charges or trial, and a total of 12 years imprisonment. He has been barred from his visitation rights, and confinement to solitary, since ten months.

Harb is considered the oldest Palestinian administrative detainee.

The family called on International Human Rights organizations, and the Red Cross, to intervene and oblige Israel to end his solitary confinement.

It is worth mentioning that from his prison cell, Harb wrote several books and poems.

Israel, of course, is the "only democracy in the Middle East".

The email of Reporters Without Borders is rsf@rsf.org. Click here to send them an email.

Israeli Chief Rabbi Thanks Bush
for Iraq War

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked President George W. Bush for the US's military intervention in Iraq.

According to the Jerusalem Post he said, "I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq."

American Jews oppose the war by about 70%. Will any of their leaders criticize Metzger? Will Metzger pay a visit to a single family of the 4,000 Americans dead in Iraq?

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An Honest Account of the Withdrawal
from Gaza and Why the Rockets
Started up Again

As Israel talks about Hamas offer of a ceasefire and thinks only about its casualties in the mini-war with the Gaza Strip, Nehemia Shtrasler writing in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz reminds us of the real story behind the rockets flying into Sderot

Selected Past Headline Stories

February 22 The Man Who Should Win the Academy Award

January 1 Peace Activists Occupy Huckabee’s Iowa Campaign Office

November 24 Palestine Authority Doesn't Have the Right to Cut a Deal

October 30 Break the Siege

September 15 Cut and Run

September 13 Pentagon Will Take Out 1,200 Iranian Targets

August 20 European Union Turns off Gaza Electricty

July 12 Senate Supports Lieberman 97-0

July 6 - Is US Killing 10,000 a Month in Iraq...or is it More?

June 28 - Israelis Kill 11 in Gaza --- Katzav Cops a Plea

June 25 Lieberman Commits War Crime

June 1 Rabbi Uses Bible Story to Justify Carpet Bombing

May 20 Israelis Shoot Dead Fetus

May 2 Whistleblower Vanunu Found Guilty

April 8 Sanctions Working: Another Dialysis Death

March 31 Six Month Old Killed at Checkpoint

March 20 Tanya Reinhart has Died / 80% on Food Aid in Gaza

February 27 Nablus Raped Again

February 19 - Facing MECCA - Uri Avnery

More past headlines

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