Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Europe raises pressure on Israel to stop settlements (Reuters)

More pressures to halt the settlement expansion but will this help the Peace process?
Who knows? But we just have to start somewhere...in this case IS side. Will Ne agrees? Guess not...then what?

Europe raises pressure on Israel to stop settlements (Reuters)

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Germany, France and EU president Sweden on Tuesday joined Western nations pressing Israel to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank under a U.S.-led effort to resume stalled peace talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has resisted international calls to freeze building in occupied territory, seemed to show a sign of flexibility as a newspaper reported a secret plan to remove two dozen unauthorized settler outposts.

Israel has long pledged to dismantle hilltop outposts that it never approved, but has continued building larger settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, land it captured in a 1967 war, and where Palestinians want to build a future state.

Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he would not resume peace talks with Israel, stalled since Israel elected Netanyahu, a right-wing settler champion in February, unless all settlement construction stopped.

In Berlin, Ruprecht Polenz, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, was quoted as saying Israel ran the risk "of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state" if it did not stop the construction.

Polenz, head of the German parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, further told the Rheinische Post daily that "Israel is overlooking the fact that neither Palestinians nor Arab states will agree to a solution without East Jerusalem."

The French Foreign Ministry summoned Israel's ambassador, Daniel Shek, in Paris, to protest against a planned Israeli housing project for East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its capital and which Palestinians also seek to make their capital.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem shortly after its capture, in a move never recognized internationally.

THOUSANDS THREATENED WITH DISPLACEMENT
European Union president Sweden urged from Stockholm that Israel refrain from demolishing homes in East Jerusalem where thousands are threatened with displacement.

Jerusalem has emerged as a focal point of the settlement controversy since Israeli officials accused the U.S. State Department on Sunday of telling Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, Israel should suspend plans to build about 20 housing units in the city's eastern sector.

The United States has never confirmed it made this demand, but Netanyahu rejected it in televised remarks to his cabinet, a move analysts saw as capitalizing on broad popular support in the country for Israel's continued control of the disputed city.

Israel shut a hotel fair in East Jerusalem in the latest of several Palestinian cultural events it has disrupted in recent months saying an interim peace deal permits it to bar the Palestinian government from holding events in the city.

"They want us to leave Jerusalem, but we will not," Rafiq al-Husseini, an aide to Abbas, said.

Neither Netanyahu's office nor the Israeli army would comment on a report in the respected Haaretz daily that the military was preparing to "forcibly evacuate 23 illegal outposts in one day," in a plan drawn up with Netanyahu's knowledge.

The same Haaretz columnist disclosed plans to remove troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip before that pullout occurred in 2005.

Separately, a report by the Macro Center of the Israeli European Policy Network said settlements were receiving a larger share of government funding than municipalities inside Israel, and the settler population was also growing three times as fast.

"While Israeli municipalities as a whole receive 34.7 percent of their income from (the government) and obtain another 64.3 percent from their own income, settlement municipalities obtain 57 percent from the (government) and only 42.8 percent from their own income," the report said.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin, Niklas Pollard in Stockholm, Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, and Douglas Hamilton and Ali Sawafta in Jerusalem)
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Are Israeli courts staffed by Nazi judges? (PIC)

Who to trust? What to believe?
It is all superficial but wasted sacrifices. Word is against word & it can be further manipulated by the color of your skin. This is the reality...

Are Israeli courts staffed by Nazi judges? (PIC)

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Just as anti-Semitism became official policy in Germany in the mid 1930s, it is seems hostility toward Arabs, including Israel’s own 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, is becoming a de facto official policy of the Israeli state.

This ominous orientation is being constantly promoted by a number of manifestly racist cabinet ministers and Knesset members who declare openly that their aim is to make everyone in Israel “submit to the Jewish nature of the state.”

The brash racism is now permeating through the entire apparatus of the Jewish state, from the police, to the justice system, to the army, to the educational system and, of course, the media.

Last week, Israeli courts showed off their racist credentials when two Israeli settlers, a murderer and a would-be murderer were acquitted of murdering a Palestinian and seriously wounding two others.

In the first case, a West Jerusalem judge acquitted a Jewish settler named Ze’ev Braude who had shot and seriously injured two unarmed Palestinians in al-Khalil ( Hebron ) several months ago.

The settler was caught on video shooting at the two Palestinians who were pleading to Israeli troops to stop rampaging settlers from attacking their homes and families. The settlers were vandalizing Arab property and trying to set homes on fire in protest against the evacuation by the army of Jewish squatters who had seized an Arab building a few years earlier.

Braude’s lawyer reportedly asked for “classified information” which he said would help clear his client of any wrongdoing. However, instead of meeting the lawyer’s request, the attorney-general decided to drop all charges against Braude. Thus the would-be killer, who had shot and seriously injured two innocent Palestinians, was effectively declared innocent.

In the second case, a Jewish farmer by the name of Shai Dromi was acquitted of manslaughter by a Bir al Saba’a (Beer Shiva) court despite damning evidence indicting him.

In 2007, Dromi shot and killed a Bedouin “infiltrator,” claiming that he was trying to steal his livestock.

Racist system

One doesn’t have to be a great expert on Israel to be able to describe the Israeli justice system as inherently racist, being based on religious-ethno centricism.

Indeed, had the victims been Jewish, there is not the slightest doubt that the perpetrators would have been given harsh prison sentences, without a chance for parole for decades.

However, in a state that murders innocent children at will “for self-defense” and lies as often as it breathes, this type of justice ought to be viewed as being within the normal order of things.

Indeed, Israel itself, one might argue perfectly rightly, is a crime against humanity, having been created on the ruins of another people, the Palestinians.

Hence, it is only “natural” and “normal” that Israeli courts would deal with utmost flaccidity and utter leniency with Jewish perpetrators of crimes as long as the victim is not a member of the “holy tribe.”

This tradition goes back to the establishment of Israel more than 62 years when a given Jewish murderer of a Palestinian was fined a dime on the ground that the life of a non-Jew wasn’t worth more than a dime.

A few years ago, an Israeli soldier who was serving in southern Gaza murdered a Palestinian school child, Iman al Hums, as she was going to school.

The soldier, dubbed Captain R. shot and seriously wounded the young girl, and as he saw her agonize and wallow in pain, he walked toward her, empting an entire magazine of bullets into her tender body to make sure that she was dead and didn’t pose a threat to his life.

The practice is still widely practiced in the Israeli army and is known as “verifying the kill.”

The reaction of the Israeli justice system to this event was very telling, indeed.

For instead of prosecuting and punishing the murderer, the Israeli army actually awarded him thousands of dollars in damages he claimed he deserved because his reputation was tarnished by the media.

Westerners, especially North Americans, who have been consuming Zionist lies for decades may be prompted to think that the above-mentioned cases are an aberration and in no way represent Israel’s general behaviors.

However, the truth, which Israel and her supporters strive to hide from the eyes of the world, is that the Israeli justice system is inherently and profoundly racist, to put it mildly, especially when non-Jews, particularly Palestinians, are involved.

In recent years, hundreds of settler judges and others affiliated with extremist terrorist Jewish groups, such as the Kahana group, Gush Emunim and Chabad infiltrated the Israeli justice system.

These people are indoctrinated in the Nazi-like ideology that Jews are genetically and humanly superior than non-Jews and that Jewish lives are worth more than non-Jewish lives.

Hence, when a Jew and a non-Jew appear in court, the Jewish judge feels obliged to take all these considerations into account and refrain, as much as possible, from passing stiff punishments against Jewish defendants.

This is often done by meticulously searching for or even concocting extenuating circumstances, or by finding a procedural loophole, that would make the judge seriously reduce the proscribed punishment for the Jewish defendant or acquit him of any wrongdoing.

Israel claims to be a western country, a democracy and a state where the rule of law is upheld.

Well, this trinity of lies should be obvious for anyone who has had the opportunity to know Israel first-hand.

But, there is always a certain level of “veracity” in these claims. In Israel , the rule of law is indeed upheld just as the rule of law was also upheld in Nazi Germany .

But the question remains, what laws are exactly being upheld?
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Sunday, July 19, 2009

Netanyahu rejects US calls to halt east J'lem project (Ynetnews)

Both sides are speaking their own terms. Up to date, there is no official terms coming from the Pal side as part of Peace process. Is the call to halt J'lem project merely from US as the Peace negotiator?

Netanyahu rejects US calls to halt east J'lem project (Ynetnews)

Prime Minister responds to US State Department demands to halt construction of
hotel in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood; says 'Our sovereignty in Jerusalem is
indisputable... I wish to make this clear - the united Jerusalem is the capital
of the Jewish people in the State of Israel'
The US has demanded that Israel suspend a planned project in east Jerusalem, senior Israeli officials said Sunday - the latest sign of a deepening conflict between the two allies over Israeli settlements.

The officials confirmed that Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department over the weekend and told that the project being developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz should not go ahead.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss with the media diplomatic flaps with the US. Spokesmen for the US Embassy and the Jerusalem municipality had no comment.

The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Israel Radio and Army Radio reported Sunday that the US has summoned Oren and demanded that planning approval for the project be revoked,

The project is being developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz and is near Israel's national police headquarters. The radio reports said Israeli planning authorities have approved the project.

In response to the demands Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting, "Our sovereignty in Jerusalem is indisputable. We can't agree to such a demand in east Jerusalem."

"I wish to make this clear – the united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel," he added.

The project in question is the construction of the Shepherd Hotel in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

"Israel is building in Jerusalem and will build in the future. The Israeli enforcement and planning bodies are in charge of this. This is private land. Up until now, there has been no criticism of Israel in Washington over construction in Jerusalem," a top government source said.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also commented on the demand, calling it "unthinkable".

"There are many Arab families that build homes in the Neve Yaakov and French Hill neighborhoods. I have never heard any remarks on this matter, neither from the United States, nor from Europe," he said.

"This is not an isolated distant Palestinian neighborhood. Should we of all people discriminate against Jews? This is unthinkable," he added.

'US demands prove dangers of settlement talks'
However, other sources said it would be unwise to get into a dispute with the Americans over the matter at such a sensitive time.

One source said, "It would be best if all involved, including the Jerusalem Municipality, demonstrate restrain in order to find an educated solution that is acceptable to all parties in the settlement issue."

Minister of Information and Diaspora Yuli Edelstein said such a demand to halt the construction of a project just meters from the Hebrew University "proves how dangerous it is to get dragged into talks of a settlement freeze".

"Such talks will lead to a demand to completely freeze our lives in the entire State of Israel," he added.

MK Ofir Akunis, head of the Likud's response team said, "There is a broad consensus in the Israeli public around Jerusalem's unity as the eternal capital of Israel.

"All countries of the world should understand that attempts to endanger Jerusalem's unity and Israel's sovereignty in it, will be rejected immediately."

Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz said the demand "proves that whoever demands a settlement freeze in Judea and Samaria will eventually also demand construction be frozen in the government offices in Sheikh Jarrah.

"I invite the US administration representatives to visit my office in Sheikh Jarrah, so they can witness Israel's sovereignty in the united Jerusalem".

Earlier Sunday it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scheduled meeting with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell was postponed at least until the end of the month.

Another meeting between the two, which was set to take place in Paris last month, was also cancelled.

Mitchell was originally due to arrive in Israel on Sunday and later hold meetings with senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah. Jerusalem did not state the official reason for the delay, but some officials suspect it relates to the fact that the Netanyahu and Obama administrations have yet to resolve their differences on the issue of settlement expansion in the West Bank.
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