Israeli Soldier Abuses Palestinian Child at Protest of Illegal Occupation

Watch the video, the abuse happens after the 5:14 mark.
With the Palestinians it's protests that occur almost daily in different parts of the illegal occupation that is militarily defended by Israel and get's away with it's crime based on defense, yet their are only defending an illegal occupation. Which is also illegal, but mass media picks and chooses what is right and wrong and thus Israel can get away with whatever it can, if not for social media things would not come to light about Palestinians abused by Israel. In a story relating to a recent protest in which a young man 12 years old, hand in a cast also was in a choke hold by israeli soldier under the claim of that BOY is a ROCK THROWER and needs to be arrested.

Palestinians in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh have held a weekly demonstration to protest the Israeli occupation that has confiscated village land for a nearby Israeli settlement. These protests don't usually make international news. But last week's was different. Friday's demonstration in Nabi Saleh escalated into a violent confrontation between an Israeli soldier and a young child — all caught on camera by the press who had attended the protest. The result was a video of an IDF soldier placing an 11-year-old child in a chokehold, holding a gun near his head, and then sitting on him as he screamed in fear and pain. This isn't the first time something like that has happened in the West Bank. But with this video of a panicking soldier crushing a screaming child beneath him

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On Friday, during the latest Nabi Saleh protest, small clashes broke out between the protesting villagers and Israeli soldiers, as they often do. An 11-year-old Nabi Saleh boy named Mohammed Tamimi, whose left arm was in a cast, did something to anger one of the Israeli soldiers. The Israeli military says the boy was throwing stones; Tamimi's family denies this. But whatever sparked it, the soldier began to chase the boy, which is when the boy's father switched on a camera and captured the moment. In the video, the soldier throws himself on Tamimi, putting the boy in a headlock and holding him over a rock as he screams for help. There is a moment, at 1:06 in the video, when the soldier holds his rifle next to the boy's head and, disregarding the most basic weapons safety training, places his finger over the gun's trigger. Thankfully, after a moment he slings the rifle behind his shoulder, but then tries to wrestle and carry the boy off. After a short struggle, the soldier places his hand around the back of the child's neck and pushes his face into one of the rocks. Read Full Article - http://www.vox.com/2015/8/31/9233243/israel-nabi-saleh-video

What will it take for Israel to get out of the occupied territories ? because it seems their terrorism on innocent people, elder and child has no limits. It's crazy as the politician cry the Palestinians want to wipe us off the map, it's they who are doing the wiping of Palestinians. What do you feel ? Share your thoughts.

Palestine and the Egyptian revolution: a view from Gaza

When I was asked by a solidarity activist about the impact of the end of the Mubarak regime on the Gaza Strip, my immediate answer was that it would definitely mean the end of the deadly siege that has been imposed on Gaza since 2006. Yet, we in Gaza are still waiting.

The deposed Egyptian regime made it its duty to make sure that the Palestinians of Gaza be kept within the walls of the Israeli-guarded concentration camp. The foreign minister of the former regime, Ahmed Abou Elgheit, in whose presence Israel's winter December 2008-January 2009 war on Gaza was symbolically declared by the presence in Cairo of his then Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni just days before the attack, became obsessed with "breaking the bones of those who trespass against Egypt's national security."

He was referring to the starving children, men and women of Gaza who, in an act of unprecedented heroism in January 2008, tore down the wall on the Egypt-Gaza border and flooded the streets of the Egyptian town of al-Arish to buy food, milk and medicine, and then went peacefully back to their homes. The old regime's spokespersons and political analysts shamelessly made it their duty to demonize Gazans in order to justify the closure of the Rafah Crossing, the only official border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Accusations of "terrorism,""vandalism" and "threats to national security" were thrown around.

So fearful of his Gazan neighbors was Egypt's ex-minister of interior Habib el-Adly, who is now behind bars, that he indulged in the hysterical charge that the recent popular Egyptian revolution was caused by "some Hamas infiltrators." The same ruthless minister had also accused Palestinians from Gaza of being behind the bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve, which killed 21 persons. Indeed now it is el-Adly himself, and Egypt's state security police, who are under suspicion and investigation of carrying out that and other sectarian attacks.

The Egyptian revolution has brought that political farce to an end. No one can deny that this uprising is a social revolution par excellence, one against corruption, despotism and tyranny. But this is Egypt after all, the heart of the Arab world, the pole of pan-Arabism. If Egypt revolts, then the Arab world holds its breath: the repercussions are immeasurable and will be felt for decades to come.

But Egypt itself is also "haunted" by the Palestinian question. One here tends to disagree with the prevailing view that the Tunisian revolution was the only catalyst inspiring the revolt in Egypt. This ahistorical approach ignores some social and geo-political facts about the cumulative nature of the factors leading to revolutions. The protests and strikes by workers at Mahalla undoubtedly played a crucial role in revolutionizing Egyptian consciousness, a consciousness that is known to be characterized by a very rich legacy of rebellions against oppression.

And the Mubarak regime relied heavily on tools of oppression provided by the United States. Not a single pro-democracy movement in the Arab world had been supported by the US, hence the confusion and contradictory statements made by US officials about the Egyptian revolution. It is, then, a revolution for democracy, personal and collective dignity, and against notorious levels of corruption and nepotism.

And yet, no matter how much the Mubarak regime and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority tried to silence and suppress the links of sympathy and affinity between the Palestinian and Egyptian peoples, these links have always been there.

And here is where I part company with those analysts who take the great Tunisian revolution as the catalyst behind the Egyptian uprising. When one-third of the Palestinian people -- those living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank -- went to the polling stations in 2006, and voted against the Oslo accords and the racist two-state solution, and against the deformed mini-Arab regime to be created by these accords, in what most international observers considered the most fair and transparent elections to take place in the Middle East, bringing Hamas into office, questions were raised about the long-held orientalist idea of the incompatibility of democracy with Arab culture.

In a revealing climb-down from his June 2009 Cairo speech, US President Barack Obama has since spoken of democracy without ever affirming the right of the Palestinians to freely choose their leaders. But more serious debates and soul-searching questions had started in the Arab world itself, especially in the surrounding countries: if Palestinians, under occupation, could vote freely, why not us, then?

Needless to say, the outcome of the 2006 Palestinian elections was not what Israel, the US and their Arab allies were hoping for. Hence the imposition of an unprecedented tight siege on Gaza, out of existential fear of the spread of real democracy a la Latin America -- a democracy in which people are free to elect parties whose ideologies do not necessarily coincide with US and Israeli interests.

The fiercest rejection came from so-called "moderate" Arab regimes headed by the deposed Egyptian government. Israel decided to close the six gates to Gaza, and the Egyptian regime followed suit by closing Rafah, the only exit Gaza has to the external world. This blockade has, so far, caused the death of more than 600 terminally-ill individuals whose lives could have been saved had they been allowed entry into Egypt, not to mention the devastation it has caused to Gaza society and economy in so many ways.

But the siege failed to force the Palestinians of the Gaza open-air prison to surrender, leading Israel to launch the genocidal war that was foreshadowed by Livni's presence in the heart of Cairo. None of the objectives of the war were achieved, to the dismay of "moderate" Arab regimes.

After the war, Egypt began to build with American supervision a monstrous underground steel wall blocking tunnels beneath the border, the only lifeline Palestinians of Gaza managed to create.

Attempts by the Egyptian regime to cover its collusion with Israel and the US were, alas, supported by the Palestinian leaderships' acceptance to start endless rounds of national dialogue in Cairo, again, sponsored by the Egyptian government. The failure of the Palestinian leaderships of all factions to dissociate themselves from the Egyptian regime and stick to the demands of the Palestinians of Gaza by declaring that, after the end of the war on Gaza, any national dialogue should be held in Gaza as long as it is under siege, helped, indirectly, to prolong the Egyptian regime's life.

This is a reflection of the elitist nature -- not to say short-sightedness -- of the Palestinian leaderships with their long-held belief that ties with regimes, rather than popular forces and civil society, are the way forward. Hence the suppression of all signs of solidarity with the Egyptians in both Ramallah and Gaza in the early days of the revolution.

The Mubarak regime did not only close the Rafah crossing and erect the Wall of Shame, but also prevented any sign of solidarity and support coming from international solidarity activists determined to break the siege. The Viva Palestina convoy and the Gaza Freedom March were treated brutally by Egyptian security.

The only way for some supporters to reach Gaza was by sea, and nine Turkish activists lost their lives as a result of the cold-blooded massacre committed by Israel last May aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

But the question raised was about Egypt's indirect responsibility: had the crossing been open for all, those nine precious lives would have been saved. The massacre led to the Egyptian decision to "partially" open the Rafah gate without ending the siege altogether. This step, ironically, coincided with Israel's decision to "ease" the blockade by allowing more Swiss chocolate into Gaza!

The Egyptian people, with their lively grassroots movements, youth, syndicates and unions watched helplessly and with dismay as their Palestinian brethren endured a siege that UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, described as "a prelude to genocide," with the complicity -- if not direct participation -- of the Egyptian regime. But they also saw Palestinian steadfastness in the face of this assault.

The Egyptian regime's complicity undoubtedly played a crucial role in radicalizing Egyptian consciousness. The catalytic nature of Mubarak's collusion with Israeli oppression has, for understandable reasons, been ignored by mainstream media. The concept of dignity, collective and personal, as we grew up understanding it, was inspired by the fiery sayings of the late Egyptian revolutionary leader Gamal Abdel Nasser after the 1952 revolution against a corrupt monarch, King Farouk, and his allies, British colonialism.

The slogan "Raise your head, brother, for the age of subjugation is over," formed not only modern Egyptian consciousness and sense of national dignity, but that of the entire Arab world, in general, and of Palestinians in particular. Moreover, Palestine, for most Egyptians, is part of Egypt's national psyche, a deep wound that is yet to heal, in spite of all the babble about "peace" and "reconciliation," a fundamental part of the national self.

That, however, was supposed to change with former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's gamble -- the 1979 peace treaty with Israel -- that left Egypt firmly in the American camp. Official Egyptian discourse laid the blame for many of Egypt's problems at the door of Palestinians, hence the unprecedented maltreatment of Palestinians, Gazans in particular, at the hands of Egypt's notorious state security. No wonder, then, that the last decision taken by the deposed government was to ban all Palestinians from entering Egypt.

Now the question that begs for an answer is about the future of the Egyptian-Palestinian relationship. The Rafah Crossing is "partially" open for a few passengers but no goods, food or medicine are allowed. Some Palestinians are turned back every day, and the decision taken by the previous government not to grant Gazans entry via Cairo airport is still in force. The sentiment on the streets of Palestine has, naturally, been supportive of the revolutions in the Arab world and this is in spite of the position taken by the two controlling parties in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to ban all solidarity demonstrations.

Radical change in Egypt should mean radical change in Palestine as well: a pro-Palestine Egypt should mean the end of the siege. But when will we see that? Is it too much to ask? Do we have to "understand" the difficulties the new rulers of Egypt have to deal with, while we are starving and still besieged in Gaza? If this is the case, why do we, Palestinians of Gaza, have to pay the price? Are all other Egyptian crossings and border posts "partially" open like the Rafah gate? And are we, by posing such questions, still considered "a threat to Egypt's national security?"

Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza's al-Aqsa University and a policy advisor with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11874.shtml

Aid groups fear Gaza food situation after crossing closed

Israel’s official permanent closure of the Karni crossing on the Israel-Gaza border, announced March 2, will make the delivery of food aid to Gaza more difficult, according to U.N. agencies assisting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

More than half the population in the Gaza Strip is estimated to be “food insecure,” a term used by aid and development agencies to refer to households that often experience undernourishment and lack access to regular food supplies.

The closure of Karni will also add 20 percent to the cost of aid delivery, said Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, in Jerusalem. The UNRWA is currently facing a budget deficit of more than $50 million, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA’s, news service IRIN reported.

Some 750,000 Palestinians receive UNRWA food assistance in Gaza, out of about 1 million refugees living in the territory.

Karni, controlled by Israel, is the only commercial crossing with the facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter Gaza. Closed to truck traffic since June 2007, the conveyor belt had been operating to transfer grain until Israeli authorities announced its complete closure March 2.

Kerem Shalom, a smaller commercial crossing at the southernmost point on the Gaza-Israel border, lacks the facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter Gaza, according to OCHA. It is now the only point where humanitarian and commercial supplies can enter Gaza.

“Kerem Shalom crossing does not have the capacity to meet Gaza’s needs, and there must be more than one operational crossing to import humanitarian and commercial supplies for Gaza’s 1.5 million people,” UNRWA spokesman Gunness told IRIN. “Forcing humanitarian organizations through the bottleneck of Kerem Shalom will do little to relieve the humanitarian suffering of the people of Gaza.”

Source http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=aid-groups-fear-gaza-food-situation-after-crossing-closed-2011-03-09

Defending Palestinian solidarity - Aljazeera News

The Electronic Intifada, the online publication about Palestine that I co-founded in 2001, finds itself at the centre of a storm as a pro-Israel group applies pressure to have a grant from a Dutch foundation withdrawn.

This assault on our freedom of conscience is about much more than our website. It is part of a well-coordinated, escalating Israeli government-endorsed effort to vilify individuals and cripple organisations that criticise Israel's human rights record and call for it to respect Palestinian rights and international law.

The latest salvo came in a scurrilous article in The Jerusalem Post based on allegations from a group called NGO Monitor, accusing The Electronic Intifada of "anti-Semitism" - without citing a single example from the almost 12,000 articles we have published. The Electronic Intifada has responded to NGO Monitor's accusations. Of course the charge of "anti-Semitism" has long been a weapon in the hands of Israel's apologists when they cannot find a factual basis to challenge the site's reporting and analysis.

NGO Monitor zeroed in on a grant The Electronic Intifada has received from the Dutch foundation ICCO, which is itself subsidised by the Dutch government. Since 2006, this grant has made up about a third of The Electronic Intifada's budget (our total expenses were around $180,000 in 2009 as our public filings show and the majority of our funding comes from donations by our readers).

In published comments, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said he would investigate the matter personally. MP Geert Wilders, Europe's most prominent Islamophobic politician, who has said he is proud to be compared to Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, also took aim at The Electronic Intifada in an interview with Israel's Haaretz.

It is clear that by attempting to starve us - and other organisations of funds - NGO Monitor is trying to silence us. That The Electronic Intifada, a publication run by a handful of people, finds itself under sustained assault, only demonstrates the impact that independent online media have had by consistently reporting stories and providing analysis that mainstream media have sidelined.

While NGO Monitor poses as an independent watchdog, it is in fact an Israeli organisation with close ties to Israel's radical West Bank settler movement, the government and military, and is supported by notorious purveyors of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda in the United States such as Daniel Pipes and Rita Emerson (who along with her husband Steven Emerson has been at the forefront of Islamophobic campaigns).

Before attacking The Electronic Intifada, NGO Monitor made its name going after Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and distinguished Palestinian human rights organisations among dozens of others. Notably it has launched a McCarthyite war from within against Israeli human rights groups and foundations such as B'Tselem, HaMoked and the New Israel Fund. Indeed, by its own indiscriminate definition, NGO Monitor could well be considered "anti-Semitic" as it spends so much effort attacking Israelis and Jews around the world, especially Zionist ones, who argue that Israel would be more viable if it had a higher regard for human rights. NGO Monitor, while calling for transparency from others, remains opaque about its own funding sources.

While NGO Monitor has been in business for years, its latest tactics fit into the strategy outlined by the Reut Institute, an influential Israeli think-tank that earlier this year called for Israel and its advocates to wage war against so-called "delegitimizers." Reut defined virtually the entire global Palestine solidarity movement, especially the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions modelled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle, and those who call for a one-state solution, as an "existential threat" which has the potential to rob Israel of its remaining legitimacy and bring about its collapse.

On its website, the Reut Institute called for Israel's intelligence agencies to use possibly criminal "sabotage," and for pro-Israel groups to "attack" activists all over the world in "hubs" such as London, Madrid, Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area. After The Electronic Intifada raised the alarm, the Reut Institute sanitised its website, although a copy of its original document remains on The Electronic Intifada, along with our report.

Reut's call to "delegitimize the delegitimizers" and "name and shame" human rights activists has now become Israeli government policy. As part of its failed efforts to bribe Israel into renewing a largely fictitious moratorium on West Bank settlement construction, the Obama administration even promised, as Haaretz reported, to lend Israel support in the battle against "delegitimization."

Focusing on "delegitimization" rather than trying to change Israel's atrocious behaviour, has also become the central strategy of Israel lobby groups in the United States. In October the Jewish Federations of North America - an umbrella for 157 major pro-Israel organisations - and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs launched a $6 million initiative called the "Israel Action Network" to fight "delegitimization," especially boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Source ALjazeera : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/2010126104756228834.html

My thoughts.
The Palestinians as well thousands others along their side will always fight the oppressive Israeli state. It's not hard to see the complete stress facing Palestinians on daily lives and more people will continue to join the Palestinian solidarity. It does not matter what the NGO monitor does.

People who support Palestine are no different then the people who supported to end the Nazi aggression on the Jews, being a humanitarian will never change regardless of color or nationality.

We saw the world end the apartheid in south Africa and it will be broken in Zionist Israel.

Indictments in Gaza War Are Announced

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had indicted “a number of” officers and soldiers for their actions during Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, including a staff sergeant accused of deliberately shooting at least one Palestinian civilian who was walking with a group of people waving a white flag.

The announcement came nearly 18 months after the end of the war, and on the day that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met President Obama in what many saw as a fence-mending visit after months of strained ties. A spokesman for the Israeli military denied any link between the timing of the announcement and the prime minister’s trip.

According to the army statement, the chief military prosecutor has decided to take disciplinary and legal action in four separate cases, including some already highlighted by human rights groups and by a scathing United Nations report on the war. The report, by a committee led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, was published in September 2009 and pointed to evidence of possible war crimes.

The offensive came as a response to years of rocket fire against southern Israel from Gaza, and after Hamas, the Islamist militant group, won elections in 2006 and took full control of Gaza in mid-2007. Up to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the war.

Israel refused to cooperate with the Goldstone mission, arguing that the mandate was biased from the outset, and it rejected the report. It also resisted calls by Israeli and international human rights organizations for an independent Israeli investigation outside the military framework.

The staff sergeant accused of killing at least one civilian faces a manslaughter charge. Beyond that, the military said a battalion commander was indicted on suspicion of deviating from “authorized and appropriate” army behavior and from an Israeli Supreme Court ruling when he authorized a Palestinian man to act as a kind of human shield by entering a house where militants were sheltering in order to persuade them to leave.

The Goldstone report accused Israel of several cases of using Palestinian civilians as human shields during the Gaza war, a practice forbidden by the Supreme Court. The Goldstone report stated that such practices violated international law.

In a third case, the chief of staff ordered disciplinary action against an officer who ordered an aerial strike on a militant involved in launching rockets. The man was standing outside the Ibrahim al-Maqadma mosque, the army said, and the shrapnel caused what it called unintentional injuries to civilians inside. The Goldstone report said that an Israeli projectile struck near the doorway of the mosque, in northern Gaza, during evening prayers, killing at least 15 civilians who were mostly inside.

The military said that the officer had “failed to exercise appropriate judgment,” adding that he would not serve in similar positions of command in the future and that he had been rebuked.

In addition, the chief military prosecutor ordered a criminal investigation by the military police into an airstrike on a house that held about 100 members of the extended Samouni family in Zeitoun, a district of Gaza City.

That case stirred particular outrage around the world as Palestinian paramedics were prevented by Israeli forces from reaching the house for days after the strike. Red Cross officials then publicized their discovery of four emaciated Samouni children who had been trapped in the home with their mothers’ bodies. In all, up to 30 Samounis died.

The white flag episode has been widely publicized. According to Palestinian witness testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch, the Goldstone mission and others, a group of 28 Palestinian civilians from two families set out on Jan. 4, 2009, in the Juhr al-Dik area, south of Gaza City, trying to evacuate the area after their homes were shelled.

According to the witnesses, the group was fired on from the direction of some Israeli tanks. They said that Majida Abu Hajjaj, in her 30s, was killed while waving a white flag. Her mother, Rayya, was also fatally shot.

The Israel military said that it had been unable to match the testimonies of the Palestinians with those of dozens of soldiers and commanders questioned, but that the soldiers testified that on Jan. 5, 2009, a man was shot and killed in the same location.

The military determined that “the two events are apparently one and the same,” and that after reviewing the evidence, the military advocate general, Maj. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, ordered that a staff sergeant be indicted on charges of manslaughter by a military court.

“This decision is based on evidence,” the military said, “that the soldier, who was serving as a designated marksman, deliberately targeted an individual walking with a group of people waving a white flag without being ordered or authorized to do so.”

In Gaza on Tuesday, Majed Abu Hajjaj, the son of Rayya and a brother of Majida, said that the opening of the military investigation was “an achievement in itself,” but he expressed doubts that the soldier would receive adequate punishment.

He added that the soldier’s imprisonment would not be enough. “What about the chief who refused to let us evacuate the bodies, and the driver of the bulldozers who buried them near the house and kept them there until the end of the war?” he said. “All of those should be prosecuted.”

Earlier this year, the military said it had reprimanded a brigadier general and a colonel for the firing of artillery shells that hit a United Nations compound in Gaza, and two Israeli staff sergeants were charged with instructing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open several bags the soldiers suspected were booby-trapped during the war. Another soldier was convicted of stealing a Palestinian’s credit card.

The military says that more than 150 cases have been examined since the campaign, and nearly 50 criminal investigations have been started.

Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza.

Source

Gaza Massacre dec 28 2008

Here as the children lay dead, so many out there trying to justify the actions against the innocent children dead.

more destruction, more death, more to die later, i guess the end is near, when there are no more to kill and finally will have peace.

Maybe the Israeli bombs did those children a favor by killing them now before they grow up in poverty and starvation.

Maybe those who dropped those bombs will go straight to hell.

All I know is this when faced with God and God brings forth the children killed and that child asks the pilot of commander or whoever, WHY DID YOU KILL ME ?

You better have a better answer then Hamas placed rocket launchers next to your house, because it wasn't the Hamas rockets that killed them, it was the planes with their bombs.

So sad, so tragic, Murder justified.

source

Sallam alaykum all
Please share with your friends, May Allah bless you and add to your hasanat