Ukraine and Gaza are testaments to the criminality of Western regimes masquerading as democracies.
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Ten years on from the Maidan uprising in Kiev, the country of the Ukraine has descended into utter chaos, corruption, fascism, destruction and suffering. And yet the Kiev regime and its Western state supporters have the audacity to call the tragic, bloody morass “a decade of dignity”.
3 April 2021 — The Electronic Intifada
Spokesperson Ned Price attempted this week to clarify the State Department’s muddled language on the Israeli occupation. Reuters
Last year, presidential candidate Joe Biden personally intervened to keep the word “occupation” out of the Democratic Party’s platform regarding Israel.
5 September, 2010 — VTJP
News
International Middle East Media Center
Egypt To Host Second Round Of Talks
IMEMC – 5 Sep 2010 – Monday September 06, 2010 – 02:04, Spokesperson of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Husam Zaki, stated Sunday that Cairo will be hosting the second round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Barak: “Settlement Activities Likely To Continue by the End Of September”
IMEMC – 5 Sep 2010 – Monday September 06, 2010 – 01:42, Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, stated that Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied West Bank will likely continue after Israel’s “temporary freeze” on such activities ends by the end of September.
21 July 2010 — Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Press Release Ref: 62/2010
On the 20 of July, the State of Israel released a report, Gaza Operation Investigations: Second Update, which details Israel’s response to allegations of international law violations committed in the context of the 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip. The report serves to highlight the inadequacies inherent in Israel’s investigative system, and proves that Israel has failed to fulfil its international obligation to conduct genuine investigations and prosecutions following serious international law violations.
To-date, according to Israel’s report, only 4 criminal indictments have been issued: 2 for the use of a minor as a human shield, one in respect of the Abu Hajjaj white flag case (discussed below), and one for the theft of a credit card. A limited number of other cases, such as the attack on UNRWA Head Quarters, the use of a human shield, and the attack on the Al-Maqadma mosque, have resulted in wholly inadequate disciplinary proceedings. Israel has not analysed the majority of other reported incidents, and has closed a number of other investigations. In all cases discussed in Israel’s report there is significant evidence indicating the commission of international crimes.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) asserts that Israel has wholly failed to fulfil its obligation to conduct genuine investigations; the State’s efforts to date represent an attempt to shield the perpetrators from justice. Moreover PCHR has identified a number of inconsistencies in Israel’s reported findings. The following cases are illustrative of the ineffectiveness of Israel’s investigative system, and proved further proof that recourse must be had to mechanisms of international justice. Further details and analysis of the Israeli investigative and judicial system will be soon released in a forthcoming PCHR report.
2 June, 2010 — RT Top Stories
Thousands of people have taken to the streets of American cities voicing their outrage at Israeli flotilla raid and the response from the US and the UN.
A mass rally marched through the streets of Big Apple in support for Gaza.
Initially, the world’s condemnation was reserved for Israel. But soon after, hundreds of New Yorkers clogged the streets, taking equal aim at the United Nations.
‘The Security Council did not go far enough. The Security Council has to step up and act. Israel has simply thumbed their nose at the Security Council at UN resolutions. At UN statements. At UN activities. Israel’s acting as a rogue nation. The United States needs to step up,’ a protester told RT.
Instead, the United States stands alone – the only Security Council member not to have condemned Israel’s deadly raid on the humanitarian flotilla heading for Gaza.
The diplomatic split is being blamed by critics on a weak international position: a statement condemning those acts that result in death, but falling short of naming Israel.
The US wants Israel to conduct a transparent investigation but ‘that’s impossible,’ says rapper and activist Immortal Technique, who is among those galvanizing support for Palestinians.
‘The only way a transparent investigation, or an unbiased investigation, will happen is if it’s an independent investigation. Unfortunately the UN Security Council, without the United States, has no teeth. Is incapable of enforcing anything,’ he said.
‘When you show people that we’re willing to organize, and you actually start doing more things like this, it leads people to remember there’s still support in the street,’ he added.
Across from the Israeli consulate, protestors voice their fury over America’s soft, cautious rhetoric towards Israel.
‘I’d like to see them first right now condemn the murder. And admit and say it’s murder of innocent people on that humanitarian ship,’ a woman taking part in the protest told RT.
The US has expressed regret over the deaths and injuries, stressing that the facts surrounding Sunday’s incident need to be clarified. Yet the massive multi-ethnic crowd marched across Manhattan, demanding fewer words and more action.
‘There are people out here who care. And eventually it’s going to get to a point where most of the people, if not everybody, cares,’ an activist said in a note of optimism about the role of the protesters.
25 July, 2009 — Palestine Think Tank
Accusations of conspiracy to murder continue to reverberate across the Palestinian arena, threatening to break the Fatah movement in two, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
Farouk Kaddumi’s recent bombshell accusations that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan, had connived with Israel to murder late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continue to reverberate throughout the Palestinian arena.
The allegations made by the second highest-ranking leader of the Fatah organisation during an impromptu press conference in Amman last week, have overshadowed the Hamas-Fatah rift and even the standoff over Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. The increasingly ugly showdown between Fatah’s two divergent camps is already polarising the group at all levels, including the grassroots level, with activists pointing fingers of accusation at either Kaddumi or Abbas.
14 June, 2009
Upon returning home from Gaza, a friend commented, “It must have been horrifying seeing all the destruction.” And it was. The 22-day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip laid waste to an already ravaged territory.
The landscape is dotted with piles of rubble of bombed out buildings, the twisted iron and aluminum of destroyed factories, once green fields reduced to sand and dirt by Israeli tanks, apartments with 2 meter holes in the walls and toppled minarets of mosques turned to ruins.
But as devastating as bearing witness to the destruction was, it was the absurdities of the siege, the total blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt, that really affected me. Gaza itself remains frozen in time; for nearly five months after the ceasefire, aside from a few rare cases in which cinder blocks have been used to fill gaping holes in the sides of buildings, no reconstruction whatsoever has begun. The blockade keeps the necessary building materials out of Gaza.
Palestinian Mothers are thanking you for your great contributions to peace and understanding. We support your calls for common sense and reminding everybody of what we have in common of unconditional love for our children, we support your mission; your words healed some of our wounds.
Video: Seven Jewish Children A Play By Caryl Churchill
Allow me to join you.. And tell her that….
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Source: Palestine Think Tank
22 March, 2009
[Tikkun editor’s note: Whenever human rights violations have occurred, the Israeli propaganda machine in the US and Israel proclaim that Israel has “the most moral army in the world and adheres to a doctrine of “tehorat haneshek” (purity of arms) that is a higher standard than any other fighting force in the world. Yet Occupation always and inevitably undermines such intentions. And as Ethan Bronner documented in the NY Times on March 22, there is a significant voice of religious Jews who no longer believe that they have a moral obligation to treat Palestinians by such higher standards, and that group has increasing influence in the Israeli Army’s actual practice. Yet you don’t have to be a Jewish religious extremist to treat Palestinians harshly–the logic of Occupation itself pulls for a disregard for the humanity of the occupied by the occupiers. And now we have concrete proof–supplied by the soldiers themselves. And what will the Israeli propaganda machine do? What it always does–it will set out to attack those who have raised the issue rather than addressing the substance of the charges.]
IDF long age ceased being the “most moral army in the world”–says Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy
What shock, what consternation. Haaretz revealed grave accounts by officers and soldiers describing the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman was quick to respond that the IDF had no prior or supporting information about the events in question, the defense minister was quick to respond that “the IDF is the most moral army in the world,” and the military advocate general said the IDF would investigate.
The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit’s insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.” A “graduation” shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, “No matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it.”
Is Palestine enough of a state? This is what the International Criminal Court (ICC) must determine before it can consider charges of war crimes brought against Israel after its recent onslaught in Gaza. The scale of Israel’s 22-day military attack which claimed more than 1,300 lives, including hundreds of children, led to widespread accusations by international observers that Israel had committed war crimes. In February alone, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo, received over 200 appeals from Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs to investigate latest attacks in Gaza. The large number of Palestinian deaths, vast destruction of infrastructure and population centres, testimonies about indiscriminate attacks, and the use of experimental weapons created a humanitarian catastrophe which called into question the legality of the military operation. The ICC deliberations could potentially pave the way for putting IDF officers and military commanders involved in the operation in The Hague for crimes against humanity, setting an important legal precedent for the international court over the types of cases it addresses.
26 February, 2009
[Exclusive: The leader of Hamas in exile speaks. He announces an imminent conflict. That is because he says Tel Aviv is not interested in listening to Palestinians. And from America, the opening with Damascus was nothing but words. Conversation with Khaled Meshaal From the Italian news magazine L’Espresso. Translated by Mary Rizzo.]
“In the name of God, the clement, the merciful, I would like to ask the first question. Is it possible that after the war against Gaza and our heroic resistance, Israel still does not understand that the peace process cannot be done without Hamas…?”
19 March 2009
Israel’s army is accused of war crimes after more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the war on Gaza. In interviews published by a leading Israeli newspaper, Israeli soldiers say killing Palestinian civilians and destroying their homes was allowed in Israel’s rules of engagement during the war.
Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reports from Jerusalem.”
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.2241370
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17 March, 2009
2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel and the simultaneous destruction of Palestinian civil and political society. The two events are as intimately connected as two sides of a coin, yet each side offers a distinct narrative that remains at odds with the accounts of the other. Feelings of belonging and claims of ownership irrevocably separate, yet permanently connect Arabs and Jews in their struggle for a land that is called Palestine by one group and Israel by the other. Each of the two cultures wants to hold on to every inch of land claimed by its opponent. The Palestinians strongly feel that they belong to the land, while the Israelis insist that the land belongs to them.
The narrative of displacement and experiences in exile of the modern Palestinians remains relatively unfamiliar to most Westerners and especially to the majority of Americans. By contrast, Israel’s narrative of rebuilding a homeland for the Jews has been deeply imbedded in the Western psyche and continues to dominate the political discourse regarding the Palestinian / Israeli conflict. The documentary films we create at SittingCrow Productions explore the personal narratives and artistic expressions of Palestinians.
17 March, 2009
The Tesco 2 are Dee Murphy and Greg Wilkinson who kicked off a campaign to boycott Israeli goods by going into their local Tesco store, filling a trolley with dates produced on illegal Zionist settlements on the West Bank, taking them out without paying, tipping the dates on the ground and spraying them with red dye, then waiting for the police to arrest them. Dee is in court in early April. The police did not, for some unknown reason arrest Greg, but things have taken a turn for the worse as the following message I received from Greg last night shows…..
WASTING POLICE TIME
Police raided three houses yesterday and arrested two people – including me – on suspicion of ‘conspiring to commit racially aggravated criminal damage.’ They seized three computers and a lot of papers relating to Palestine/Israel affairs. They’ve kept my computer, which may mean they pick up some email addresses. Luckily the papers with addresses and phone numbers were out of the house by the time they searched it.
A combination of damage to fishing resources caused by the Israeli offensive, and a restriction on the zone in which Gazans are allowed to fish is reducing catches and adversely affecting people’s diets in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In January 2009 the Israeli authorities reduced the area in which fishermen can fish from six to three nautical miles from Gaza’s coastline.
In Rafah (southern Gaza) fishing has almost completely stopped due to the damage inflicted on fishing gear and boats during the 22-day war which ended on 18 January.
11 March, 2009
Since their occupation of Palestine in 1948 to establish illegal Israel in the heart of the Arab World until the present, Zionist Israelis had initiated seven wars against their Arab neighbors. Six of those were waged after 1967 to maintain their occupation of the rest of Palestine, Lebanese Sheb’a Farms, and Syrian Golan Heights; formally recognized by the international community as an occupation.
11th March, 2009
Gaza woke up this morning not to the sounds of F16s and the awful smells and white smoke of phosphorous bombs, but to the amazing sights of those ‘angels’ who have defied the odds to be with them in this time of great need.
Today Gaza is in celebration, you can see for the first time in a long while a smile on the faces of traumatised young children who cannot fathom what is going on around them.
It was a day also for George Galloway, the leader of Viva Palestina who addressed a rally in the centre of Gaza City. He reiterated that Ismael Hania is the only and legitimate elected leader of the Palestinian people.
George also said that there is a crisis in the Arab regimes, because their people and some of their officials, their officers at border controls all despise the siege on the people of Palestine.
He added that he would like to thank the Palestinians for the reception Viva Palestina received and for the opportunity to kiss this sacred land on the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet (PBUH).
Then he addressed the members of the convoy saying that, “You have now become heroes and legends. No one will ever forget you in Palestine. Your children and brothers will value your actions and will be proud of you.”
”My son Zein Eddine who is two, can see me now on TV from London and he is saying ‘LONG LIVE PALESTINE’ When he is a grown man, he will remember that his father decided to get to Palestine and that one day he will, with his own son, come back to Palestine and its capital Jerusalem.”
The convoy has been split into groups to allow them to move around war torn Gaza. They have seen at first hand the destruction of hospitals, schools, ministries and official buildings. They visited El salam neighbourhood, El Wafa hospital, the Islamic University and various sites.
They will tour the strip and assess what is urgently needed so that plans to follow on with further aid work can be considered on their return.
Last night, some members benefited from the hospitality of the Foreign minister. Everyone is overwhelmed by the welcome and generosity of the Palestinians considering they have been left with so little.
I am told that a large number of the Convoy will start leaving Gaza tomorrow. Apparently, the Egyptians have told them that the border may close and that therefore they may be stuck in Gaza for days.
Will keep you posted.
Prepared and translated by Farid Arada
More pictures have been uploaded on the website.
A day in Gaza – pictures from 10th March HERE
Viva Palestina arrives in Gaza
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign salutes the courage and tenacity of all the participants in the Viva Palestina Convoy which has broken the blockade of Gaza at the Egyptian controlled Rafah crossing.
Betty Hunter, General Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “This is a historic event which should shame both the British and the Egyptian governments for their complicity in the collective punishment of the Palestinian people of Gaza. It is yet another example of the growing support here in Britain for justice for the Palestinians despite our government’s cowardly acquiescence in the relentless Israeli propaganda which justifies its war crimes and illegal occupation.”
6 March, 2009
The Gaza donor conference concluded a couple of days ago in the Egyptian city of Sharm-El-Sheik and was attended by more than 70 countries, pledging more than $5 Billion, exceeding any and all expectations. Of course this sum of money and the US pledge of $300 million is dwarfed by the $30 Billion George Bush pledged to Israel in arms and weapons.
Nevertheless, I think the attendance and the generous amounts contributed shows finally how much the world cares about the people of Gaza and is an indirect indictment of the crimes committed by Israel during its 22 days of 24/7 assault on the Gaza Strip. Of course very few heads of states or government officials dare to criticize Israel as it went ahead with its war crimes on Gaza, but the world rallied around to bandage the wounds of the more than 1.5 million Palestinians who had to endure the most criminal war assault since the closing days of WWII perhaps with the exception of Israel’s summer war on Lebanon a couple of years ago when some 1.5 million cluster bombs, gift from George Bush to the Lebanese people, were dropped in the last 10 days of the war.
The New Dark Age 
