‘CIA response to Assange assassination FOI on Scribd.com:
This is a final response to your 11 October FOI Act request for all copies of all records current or previous plans to assassinate Julian Assange. The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is protected from disclosure. Therefore your request is denied.’
The convoy’s aid cargo was expected to arrive in Gaza later in the day, after travelling separately from Syria to Egypt by boat. … Egyptian authorities had prevented several activists from entering Gaza at the Rafah border crossing. … The boat is carrying $US1 million worth of medicine, foodstuffs and toys as well as four buses and 10 power generators for hospitals, Palestinian officials said.
Egyptian authorities have prevented an Asian convoy’s ship carrying humanitarian aid and activists from reaching the Gaza Strip.
The ship has not allowed to dock at the Egyptian port of El Arish.
The vessel, which is part of a sizeable pro-Palestinian relief mission, is said to be carrying eight activists as well as $1 million worth of relief supplies for the Israel-blockaded Gaza Strip.
“Egypt still didn’t allow the aid ship to dock. It is 50 hours,” dpa quoted the activists as saying on Monday, noting that they are in a “bad situation.”
UPDATE
@Asia2Gaza 8 activists suffered 65 hours on #Asia2Gaza aid ship until #Egypt allowed ship to dock by receiving 10000$ bribe! #
In Kensington, England, protestors draw attention to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
The water quality control authority in the Gaza Strip said that more than 90% of the Strip’s potable water was contaminated, warning of a serious threat to lives of the Strip’s inhabitants.
The report published on Monday said that the Palestinian citizens were increasingly using home desalination and purification systems especially with the high concentration of chlorine in the water wells.
It noted that the sewage water, agricultural chemicals, and “dangerous waste” spewed by the former Israeli settlements in the Strip were contaminating the underground water reservoir.
The report said that the people in Gaza consume 170 million cubic meters of the underground water per annum with no equal natural feeding of the water wells due to the scarcity of rain.
Israel’s Civil Administration patrols on Sunday delivered 17 demolition orders to an extended family near the West Bank city of Jericho, residents said.
Members of the Az-Zayed family received orders to demolish a mosque, electricity infrastructure and tents north of An-Nuwei’ma village.
The electricity structures slated for demolition were recently installed by the Palestinian Authority at a cost of 79,000 shekels ($22,225)
North of Sheikh Jarrah, in Lafta village, the zionist oppressor demolished part of a Palestinian home, leaving a family of 9 to “live in one bedroom, one lounge and a corridor”.
Seyam told Ma’an a legal dispute began in 2004, when he received a demolition order which was frozen three times. The Jerusalem municipality said his license was conditional on submitting a plan for the surrounding area, which he could not afford.
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On Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished 11 structures in the At-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which authorities said were constructed without permits.
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Palestinians say it is virtually impossible to secure Israeli permission to build in East Jerusalem.
In late December, two Palestinian families destroyed their own homes in compliance with Israeli demolition orders.
Director of UNRWA Operations West Bank Barbara Shenstone said the families opted to demolish their own homes rather than wait for Jerusalem municipality to do so because a municipal demolition would cost them up to 120,000 shekels ($33,389).
“These condemnable acts have a devastating impact,” Shenstone said in a statement at the time.
“While children around the world are enjoying the holiday season in their homes, these children have suffered the trauma and indignity of watching their homes destroyed in the presence of their parents. It is extremely cruel and distressing.”
On 23 December, Maxwell Gaylard, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, offered his own condemnation after visiting the site of a home that had been demolished 24 hours earlier.
“The destruction of this home and the displacement of these people raises serious concerns with regard to Israel’s obligations under international law,” he said.
“These actions have a severe social and economic impact on the lives and welfare of Palestinians and increase their dependence on humanitarian assistance,” he added.
“The government of Israel must take immediate steps to cease demolitions and evictions in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.”
And from Bil’in, whose non-violent protesting inhabitants suffered a despicable attack by the Israeli Occupation Forces a couple of days ago, Mohammad Khatib writes:
“…my next letter will likely be written from inside a prison cell”
At the threshold of the New Year, I write to wish you a new year of freedom and liberation. This has been an unbelievable year for me in both highs and lows. A year during which I have witnessed how, despite repression, ordinary people all across Palestine take to the streets for freedom.
In my village, Bil’in, thousands of people marched on the Wall today to take it down. During the demonstration, one protestor, a 36 year old resident of the village, Jawaher Abu-Rahmah, was critically injured by severe tear-gas inhalation. She is currently hospitalized in Ramallah, unresponsive to medical treatment as the doctors are fighting for her life. [The morning after this was written, Jawaher lost her life. Cause of death: Poisoning from over exposure to CS gas.]
Bil’in has been struggling for almost six years against the Wall that was built on our lands. The illegality and absurdity of this wall has been recognized worldwide, and even by the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled it must be dismantled over three years ago. Yet the Wall still stands. We, the people of Bil’in, the people of Palestine, have waited enough. Today was therefore declared by the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements as the last day of the Wall. Together with our supporters, we managed to bring a substantial part of the wall down but we still have a long way to go.
On a personal note, the beginning of 2011 also strikes notes of fear. In just a few days, on January 3rd, 2011, my trial in front of an Israeli military court will draw into conclusion. Captain Sharon Rivlin, the soldier-judge presiding in my case, will hand down my verdict. If found guilty of “incitement”, my next letter will likely be written from inside a prison cell; If found guilty, despite having proved that evidence against me was falsified, I will proudly join my friend and comrade,Abdallah Abu Rahmah, who is now spending his second new year’s eve behind bars. PSCC’s media coordinator, my friend and brother in struggle, Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, will also be going to prison, again, for three months on January 11th, for protesting Israel’s siege on Gaza.
We are all facing tremendous challenges, as individuals and as a movement. It is our pride and strength that keeps us going. It is your support and involvement, which is becoming more crucial than ever. Join us – take our struggle forward, so that the year of 2011 will become an historical year of Palestinian liberation and a just peace.
To those who dwell in Palestine and Israel who oppose injustice and are working in solidarity to end Israel’s cruelty, salutations, and greetings to the people of the world who support their struggle. The appalling death yesterday of Jawaher Abu Rahmah from inhalation of tear gas fired by the Israeli Occupation Forces at a peaceful demonstration in Bil’in protesting the apartheid wall and Israeli land theft is an unwelcome beginning to the year.
An Israeli military statement issued Saturday evening said Palestinians initially reported that Abu Rahmah was released from hospital Friday and died at home. “Subsequently the Palestinians changed their version of events, claiming that she died in the hospital,” the statement continued.
A military spokesman did not immediately know who the Palestinians quoted in the statement were, but said he would look into it.
Bil’in popular committee spokesman Jonathan Pollak said the statement was a “shameless lie aimed at distorting reality.”
Abu Rahmah arrived at the hospital unconscious and doctors were unable to revive her, Pollak said. She did not die because of a lack of medical treatment, but because Israeli forces used a lethal tear gas banned in several European countries, he added.
More IOF lies have bubbled up through the zionist swamp. Jewish Voices for Peace @jvplive tweeted at the time from the protest : “One eye injury and jawaher – sister of bassem who was killed last year at a demo -was taken to the hospital for gas inhalation.”
Ali Abunimah @avinunu also notes on twitter: In report on Jawahir Abu Rahmah BBC World Service just lied that Israel’s wall is “built around the West Bank” (it’s built through it) #
Jawaher’s funeral:
Hundreds of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv also to protest Jawaher’s murder. Lisa Goldman, who was also present at the Bil’in protest, reports:
The demonstration to protest Jawaher’s death by tear gas asphyxiation was announced mid-morning on Saturday, via Facebook and Twitter. Despite the short notice, it attracted at least 200 people. The crowd was sufficiently large to block traffic across from the Ministry of Defense (Kirya) on Kaplan Street, a main traffic artery that connects to the Ayalon Highway.
Waving poster-size mourning posters emblazoned with photos of Jawaher Abu Rahmeh and carrying placards with slogans in Hebrew and English, demonstrators chanted in Hebrew: “Citizens, awake! Fascism is already here!” “Barak! Barak! Minister of Defense! How many demonstrators have you killed today?!” ; in English: “Apartheid! Fight back!”; and in Arabic: “Min Ghaza el Bil’in, hurra hurra Falasteen!” (from Gaza to Bil’in, freedom, freedom for Palestine).
Haaretz notes that former MK Musi Raz is “reportedly arrested and beaten by Israeli police” at the Tel Aviv protest against Jawaher’s murder.
Israeli activists protesting the killing of Bil’in’s Jawaher Abu Rahmah ‘returned’ spent tear gas canisters to the residence of the American ambassador to Israel late Saturday evening.
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The tear gas used by the Israeli forces in Bil’in is manufactured by Combined Systems Inc.; a United States company based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. This is the first protest where empty tear gas canisters have been returned to an ambassador’s home.
Approximately twenty five Israeli protesters gathered in front of the residence of American ambassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham around 1am local time. The protesters ‘returned’ loads of spent tear gas canisters collected in the West Bank village of Bil’in in protest of the murder of Bil’in’s Jawaher Abu Rahmah. The demonstrators also made noise throughout the Ambassador’s neighborhood informing residents of how American military aid to Israel is being used to kill unarmed and nonviolent demonstrators in the West Bank. They chanted, “one, two, three, four stop the occupation stop the war. Five, six, seven, eight end the funding (US) end the hate.”
Egypt yesterday gave permission for the Asia to Gaza Caravan — or Asia1 — to pass through Egypt to Gaza, according to Khaled Abdel Megid, a member of the Palestinian National Congress.
He said the Egyptian embassy in Damascus informed the convoy of the permit that allows only 120 activists entry to Egypt and then Gaza. It denied entry to 46 activists from Iran and Jordan.
Egypt will not allow 10 generators donated by the Iranians to enter to the besieged Gaza Strip. This will decrease the size of the humanitarian aid convoy to below 300 tons, which will be limited to food and medical aid in addition to toys, according to Abdel-Meguid.
The Asia to Gaza Caravan consists of approximately 160 people from more than 15 countries, including Iran, India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Kuwait. It was scheduled to reach Gaza by 27 December, in time for the second anniversary of Israel’s 22-day war on the Strip that started on 28 December 2008.
Approximately 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 5,000 injured or maimed in the three-week war. Half of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed and remains unrepaired as a result of Israel’s siege, which includes a ban on the entry of building materials into the Strip.
The time has come for justice, an end to the lies and crimes of those who consider themselves privileged and above others, who maintain their privilege by stepping on and stealing from those whom they oppress. Justice is for all, equal rights are for all. Please boycott, sanction and divest from apartheid Israel until the Occupation is ended and Palestinians have attained their just rights.
Happy new year to everyone! I am blessed with the best online friends one could imagine, sources of joy, knowledge and companionship largely absent from the elitist, white-privileged area of Queensland, Australia in which I live. Thank you 🙂
It may be a nonlethal weapon, but tear gas can have serious effects. A 2003 article published by four Israeli army doctors in Archives of Toxicology noted that CS gas — the type used by the IDF at these protests — causes tearing and burning for about 15 to 30 minutes, and this is lessened if people are moved into fresh air. The army has insisted on the safety of CS beyond these immediate effects. But the Israeli army doctors’ article noted, “At high concentrations, enclosed spaces, or prolonged exposures, severe side effects may occur and human deaths from lacrimating [tearing] agents have been reported.”
A 2009 article in the British Medical Journal came to similar conclusions, noting that tear gas is “not a gas at all, but a toxic chemical irritant.”
The scenario for the next round is unfolding in front of our eyes and it resembles depressingly the same deterioration that preceded the massacre of Gaza two years ago: daily bombardment on the Strip and a policy that tries to provoke Hamas so that more expanded assaults would be justified. As one general explained, there is now a need to take into account the damaging effect of the Goldstone report: namely the next major attack should look more plausible than the 2009 one (but this concern may not be that crucial to this particular government; nor would it serve as an obstacle).
Today, on the anniversary of the commencement of Israel’s attack of the people of Gaza, many of us reflect on the events of two years ago in mourning and regret that its criminal progenitors have eluded justice, courtesy of the largesse and impunity lent by Israel’s blinkered, biased imperial benefactor, the US and its bevy of colonialist toadies, including Australia.
Israel’s attack upon Gaza was met with a curious indifference by most of the so-called leaders of Western nations. As acting Prime Minister of Australia at the time, the ill-informed Julia Gillard refused to criticise, let alone condemn the actions of Israel. Supposedly speaking on behalf of the Australian people, she said: “Australia recognises the right of Israel to defend itself.” That comment was made on the third of January 2009, by which time it was widely known that 430 Gazans had already been killed and 2,300 wounded in 750 individual strikes carried out by air and by sea over the previous five days.
The Cast Lead massacre was committed with malice aforethought on an imprisoned Gaza population of 1.5 million people, 55% of whom were under the age of 18 years. Israel broke its truce with Hamas on November 5th, 2008 although there had been no actual Hamas rockets during the ceasefire. Nor had Israel cooperated with the spirit if not actual terms of the truce by easing its illegal blockade. Israel automagically, conveniently blames Hamas for any rockets fired from the oppressed Gazan sliver of land. In revenge, Israel inflicts ongoing indiscriminate collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza, whom it has now incarcerated for 1,293 days.
Yet the truce was working, as during the final couple of months, there were practically no rockets fired from Gaza at all. After breaking the truce ,.Israel refused to renew it, even though Hamas expressed its willingness to renegotiate provided the siege was eased. Israel attacked on the 27th December, 2008. During the 22 infamous days of Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed 1417 Palestinian people, 352 of whom were children.
Flaunting the Geneva Conventions, Israel fiendishly, illegally targeted and destroyed ambulances, hospitals, schools, universities, the sole electric power and sewerage plants, chicken farms, dairy farms, crops, trees, police stations, homes and whole villages. Israel made around 50,000 Gazans homeless during winter, then for 18 months after the end of its 22 day attack, malevolently disallowed materials for rebuilding to enter Gaza. Two years later:
Israel has so far only approved the import of materials for 25 UNRWA[2] construction projects for schools and clinics, a mere seven per cent of UNRWA’s entire reconstruction plan for Gaza. Even for these approved projects, only a small fraction of the required construction materials have actually been permitted to enter Gaza so far.
More generally, says the report, the UN has estimated that Gaza needs 670,000 truckloads of construction materials for housing alone in Gaza. An average of only 715 truckloads of construction materials have entered the Gaza Strip per month since the ‘easing’ announcement, says the report. At this rate, it would take many decades to build the needed homes. And because UNRWA has been unable to get construction materials to build new schools, 40,000 eligible children could not be enrolled at UN schools at the start of the new academic year.
“Only a fraction of the aid needed has made it to the civilians trapped in Gaza by the blockade”, said Jeremy Hobbs, Director of Oxfam International. “Israel’s failure to live up to its commitments and the lack of international action to lift the blockade are depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to clean water, electricity, jobs and a peaceful future.”
Altogether in the Occupied Territories, between 29th September, 2000 and 30th November, 2010, around 1313 Palestinian children have been slaughtered by Israeli security forces, according to B’TSelem.
According to an Al Mezan report from December 2010, over 21,000 people remain displaced two years after the end of Operation Cast Lead. Israel has committed more grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 147) as
careful documentation indicates that the IOF destroyed at least 1,723 shelters after the end of hostilities when they had come under Israel’s effective control. These shelters could not be deemed military objectives. Nor were they near any other legitimate military targets. Their destruction was therefore illegal, violating fundamental international humanitarian law principles, and amounting to war crimes.
Thanks to rejection by the credulous zionist sycophants in the US congress of the painstaking research within the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report into Cast Lead war crimes, Israeli war criminals responsible for the planning and execution of the heinous Cast Lead massacre still walk free, with no justice attained for, nor compensation paid to Israel’s civilian victims.
‘Despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.’
Though the resistance of Palestinians who endure it is unflinching, and international boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and occupation are flourishing, Israel’s pitiless, illegal siege remains.
Israel’s harvest from its vindictive, cruel folly is bitter – as Nelson Mandela said, “A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he’s locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.” Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their freedom. How much hatred, prejudice and narrow-mindedness imprisons Israel?
Palestinians deserve long overdue justice to be brought to their oppressors, for the hideous illegal siege to be lifted completely and for Israel’s aggression and expansionism to end. Join the #Gaza2 Campaign on twitter and post on your blog to remind the people of Palestine that neither they nor the calamities and evils inflicted on them during Operation Cast Lead by Israel and its collaborators are forgotten.
Presenting the work of India-based friend, Pranav Waghmare @pranav_waghmare, Freelance Cartoonist. Pranav believes in freedom of expression – he is not an actor or soldier, but a proud thinker. Enjoy!
