organization:army

  • GIPSA-lab invite Pablo JENSEN, directeur de recherche CNRS au Laboratoire de Physique de l’ENS de LYON pour un séminaire exceptionnel le 10 janvier 2019 à 10h30.

    The unexpected link between neural nets and liberalism

    Sixty years ago, Arthur Rosenblatt, a psychologist working for the army invented the perceptron, the first neural network capable of learning. Unexpectedly, Rosenblatt cites, as a major source of inspiration, an economist: Friedrich Hayek. He is well-known for his 1974 Nobel prize… and by his ultra-liberal stances, justifying the Pinochet coup in a Chilean newspaper: «Personally, I prefer a liberal dictator to a democratic government that lacks liberalism». This talk presents ongoing work on the link between Hayek’s ideology and neural networks.

    After a PhD on experimental condensed-matter physics, Pablo JENSEN worked for 15 years on the modeling of nanostructure growth. This lead to major publications in top journals, including Nature, Phys Rev Lett and a widely cited review in Rev Mod Phys. After these achievements, he decided to follow an unconventional path and switch to the modeling of social systems. It takes time to become familiar with social science topics and literature, but it is mandatory to establish serious interdisciplinary connections. During that period, he also had national responsibilities at CNRS, to improve communication of physics. This investment has now started to pay, as shown by recent publications in major interdisciplinary or social science (geography, economics, sociology) journals, including PNAS, J Pub Eco and British J Sociology. His present work takes advantage of the avalanche of social data available on the Web to improve our understanding of society. To achieve this, he collaborate with hard scientists to develop appropriate analysis tools and with social scientists to find relevant questions and interpretations.
    His last book : Pourquoi la société ne se laisse pas mettre en équations, Pablo Jensen, Seuil, coll. “Science ouverte”, mars 2018
    Personal Web page : http://perso.ens-lyon.fr/pablo.jensen

    Lieu du séminaire : Laboratoire GIPSA-lab, 11 rue des Mathématiques, Campus de Saint Martin d’Hères, salle Mont-Blanc (bâtiment Ampère D, 1er étage)

    #grenoble #neural_net #liberalism

  • A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?
    The New York Times - By David M. Halbfinger - Dec. 30, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/world/middleeast/gaza-medic-israel-shooting.html

    KHUZAA, Gaza Strip — A young medic in a head scarf runs into danger, her only protection a white lab coat. Through a haze of tear gas and black smoke, she tries to reach a man sprawled on the ground along the Gaza border. Israeli soldiers, their weapons leveled, watch warily from the other side.

    Minutes later, a rifle shot rips through the din, and the Israeli-Palestinian drama has its newest tragic figure.

    For a few days in June, the world took notice of the death of 20-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar, killed while treating the wounded at protests against Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Even as she was buried, she became a symbol of the conflict, with both sides staking out competing and mutually exclusive narratives.

    To the Palestinians, she was an innocent martyr killed in cold blood, an example of Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life. To the Israelis, she was part of a violent protest aimed at destroying their country, to which lethal force is a legitimate response as a last resort.

    Palestinian witnesses embellished their initial accounts, saying she was shot while raising her hands in the air. The Israeli military tweeted a tendentiously edited video that made it sound like she was offering herself as a human shield for terrorists.

    In each version, Ms. Najjar was little more than a cardboard cutout.

    An investigation by The New York Times found that Ms. Najjar, and what happened on the evening of June 1, were far more complicated than either narrative allowed. Charismatic and committed, she defied the expectations of both sides. Her death was a poignant illustration of the cost of Israel’s use of battlefield weapons to control the protests, a policy that has taken the lives of nearly 200 Palestinians.

    It also shows how each side is locked into a seemingly unending and insolvable cycle of violence. The Palestinians trying to tear down the fence are risking their lives to make a point, knowing that the protests amount to little more than a public relations stunt for Hamas, the militant movement that rules Gaza. And Israel, the far stronger party, continues to focus on containment rather than finding a solution.

    In life, Ms. Najjar was a natural leader whose uncommon bravery struck some peers as foolhardy. She was a capable young medic, but one who was largely self-taught and lied about her lack of education. She was a feminist, by Gaza standards, shattering traditional gender rules, but also a daughter who doted on her father, was particular about her appearance and was slowly assembling a trousseau. She inspired others with her outward jauntiness, while privately she was consumed with dread in her final days.

    The bullet that killed her, The Times found, was fired by an Israeli sniper into a crowd that included white-coated medics in plain view. A detailed reconstruction, stitched together from hundreds of crowd-sourced videos and photographs, shows that neither the medics nor anyone around them posed any apparent threat of violence to Israeli personnel. Though Israel later admitted her killing was unintentional, the shooting appears to have been reckless at best, and possibly a war crime, for which no one has yet been punished. (...)

    Rouzan al-Najjar, 20, was killed by an Israeli sniper on June 1 while she was treating the wounded at protests at the Gaza border.CreditIbraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
    #Razan_al-Najjar

  • The secret letter detailing Israel’s plan to expel Arabs, ’without unnecessary brutality’ - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-secret-letter-detailing-israel-s-plan-to-expel-arabs-1.6766389

    Contrary to its obligations, the archives does not explain in the file why documents have been removed from it and makes do instead with leaving a blank page on which is written only the word “classified.” Sheetrit’s censored letter mentions the Riftin report, which was the subject of an article by Ofer Aderet in Haaretz earlier this year (“Why is Israel still covering up extrajudicial executions committed by a Jewish militia in ‘48?”). Sheetrit’s letter, headed “Minorities in the State of Israel,” signals its theme. The writer warns, among other points, about “ theft and plunder [of Arab property] both by the army and by civilians […] violation of surrender agreements about preserving property [and adds that] the lust for robbery has turned the heads of army personnel .”

    Why were two documents suddenly censored after having been available to the public for years? Answers are not forthcoming. A few months ago, I wrote in these pages (“What is Israel hiding about its nuclear program in the ’50s?”) that in a great many cases, the state’s representatives who are in charge of releasing historical documentation (in this case, the chief press and media censor) do not distinguish between documents that may adversely affect state security and foreign policy, and those that may simply embarrass the state.

    The fact that, half a year after the end of the 1948 war, Ben-Gurion considered expelling thousands of Arabs from their homes is not very flattering (the more so because they were Christian Arabs, whose welfare would probably carry more weight in world public opinion). However, whereas the study of history is amenable (to a certain degree) to an individual’s choice, the uncovering of historical documentation should not be amenable to political considerations, must not become a privilege in a democracy and must never be susceptible to considerations that are not directly related to security.

  • » Israeli Court Sentences Mother of A Palestinian, Killed By The Army, To Eleven Months, For “Incitement”
    IMEMC News - December 16, 2018 12:48 PM
    http://imemc.org/article/israeli-court-sentences-mother-of-a-palestinian-killed-by-the-army-to-eleven-

    An Israeli court sentenced, on Sunday morning, the mother of a Palestinian, who was killed by the army last year, to eleven months in prison for what the military prosecution described as “incitement on social media.”

    Attorney Mohammad Mahmoud of the Palestinian Detainees’ Committee, said the court sentenced Susan Abu Ghannam to eleven months in prison, for posting statements on Facebook, after the death of her son.

    The court deemed the posts as incitement, and passed its sentence on the woman, from at-Tur neighborhood, east of Jerusalem’s Old City.

    She was taken prisoner last August, after dozens of soldiers and officers invaded her home, and conducted violent searches, leading to damage. (...)

    https://seenthis.net/messages/616536

  • I feel no sympathy for the settlers
    Beneath the veil of sanctimonious and hypocritical unity, and the media’s fake show of national grief to advance its own commercial goals, the truth must be told: Their tragedy isn’t ours
    Gideon Levy | Dec 16, 2018 2:32 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-i-feel-no-sympathy-for-the-settlers-1.6746199

    I do not sympathize with people who profiteer from tragedy. I have no sympathy for robbers. I have no sympathy for the settlers. I have no sympathy for the settlers not even when they are hit by tragedy. A pregnant woman was wounded and her newborn baby died of its wounds – what can be worse than that? Driving on their roads is frightening, the violent opposition to their presence is growing – and I feel no sympathy for their tragedy, nor do I feel any compassion or solidarity.

    They are to blame, not I, for the fact that I cannot feel the most humane sense of solidarity and pain. It’s not just that they’re settlers, violators of international law and universal justice; it’s not just because of the violence of some of them and the settling of all of them – it’s also the blackmail with which they respond to every tragedy, which prevents me from grieving with them. But beneath the veil of sanctimonious and hypocritical unity, and the media’s fake show of national grief to advance its own commercial goals, the truth must be told: Their tragedy isn’t ours.

    Their tragedy isn’t ours because they’ve brought the tragedy upon themselves and the entire country. It’s true that the main blame goes to the governments that gave into them, either eagerly or out of weakness, but the settlers cannot be absolved of blame, either. The extorter – and not just those who have given into extortion – is also to blame. But they are there, generations born on stolen land, children raised in an apartheid existence and trained to think it is biblical justice, and with government support. Perhaps we cannot blame those who are sitting on land usurped by their parents. But their tragedy is not ours because they exploit every tragedy to advance their aims in the most cynical of ways.

    When a baby dies they install trailer homes, when soldiers are killed defending them – they do not seek forgiveness from the families of these soldiers, despite their blame for the lives that have been cut short – they only present demands so as to whitewash their crimes. And with these demands the appetite for revenge grows: to imprison even more of their neighbors, to destroy their homes, to kill, to arrest, block roads and exact more revenge. And if that, too, is not enough, their own wild militias raid the Palestinians, throw stones at their vehicles, set their fields on fire and wreak terror on their villages. They are not satisfied with the collective punishment imposed by the army and the Shin Bet security service, exercised with cruelty and sometimes criminality. The settlers’ lust for revenge is never satisfied. How is it possible to identify with the grief of people who behave like that?

    It’s impossible to identify with their bereavement, because Israel has decided to avoid looking at all that is done there in the land of Judea. When you are capable of being indifferent to the execution of a psychologically impaired young man by soldiers, you can also be indifferent to the shooting of a pregnant woman by Palestinians. When you ignore the goings on at the Tulkarm refugee camp, you can also ignore what takes place at the Givat Assaf junction. It’s moral blindness to everything. Yesha isn’t here, that’s the price being paid for the lack of interest in what is going on in the territories and for ignoring the occupation, under whose sponsorship the settlements are based. Giant budgets are poured out there without any public opposition – so there is also indifference to the fate of the settlers and their tragedies. The piece of land they have taken over doesn’t interest most Israelis living in the land of denial, and that’s the price.

    We have no reason to apologize for the lack of interest and identification. The settlers have brought it on themselves. Those who have never shown any interest in the suffering of their Palestinian neighbors, which they have caused, those who preach all the time that the iron fist must always be tightened, to torture them even more – don’t deserve to be identified with, not even in the hour of their grief. I take no joy in their suffering but I have no sympathy for their pain. The real pain is borne by their victims, those who moan submissively and those who take their fate in their hands and try to resist a violent reality violently and sometimes also murderously. The Palestinians are the victims deserving of pity and solidarity.

  • Palestinian teen shot, killed by Israeli forces in al-Bireh
    Dec. 14, 2018 5:39 P.M. (Updated: Dec. 14, 2018 5:55 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782092

    RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces during clashes that erupted in the al-Jalazun refugee camp north of al-Bireh in the central occupied West Bank, on Friday evening.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that a Palestinian from the al-Jalazun refugee camp arrived to the Palestine Medical Center in a critical condition.

    Sources added that the teen was injured with live bullets in the abdomen.

    The ministry identified the killed teen as Mahmoud Youssef Nakhleh.

    Israeli forces opened fire at the teen from a very close range; from less than 10 meters away.

    Israeli soldiers attempted to detain Nakhleh afterwards, however, Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics were able to take him and transfer him to the Palestine Medical Center after having to quarrel Israeli soldiers for more than 30 minutes.

    Nakhleh was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • After Shooting a Palestinian Teen, Israeli Troops Dragged Him Around – and Chased an Ambulance Away

      A Palestinian from the Jalazun refugee camp was shot in the back and died after soldiers kept him from receiving medical care
      Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Dec 20, 2018
      https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium--1.6765800

      What goes through the head of soldiers, young Israelis, after they shoot an unarmed Palestinian teenager in the back with live ammunition, prevent him from getting medical treatment, move him around, putting him on the ground and then picking him up again – and chase away an ambulance at gunpoint? For 15 minutes, the Israel Defense Forces soldiers carried the dying Mahmoud Nakhle , pulling him by his hands and feet, it’s not clear why or where, before allowing him to be evacuated. They had already shot him and wounded him badly. He was dying. Why not let the Palestinian ambulance that arrived at the site rush him to the hospital and possibly save his life? Nakhle died from a bullet in his liver and loss of blood. He was two weeks after his 18th birthday, the only son of parents who are descendants of refugees, and he lived in the Jalazun refugee camp adjacent to Ramallah, in the West Bank.

      Nakhle was killed last Friday, December 14.

      Getting to Jalazun took a long time this week; it was a long and stressful trip. Overnight, terror attacks and other sights of the intifada had returned simultaneously: innumerable surprise checkpoints, such as we hadn’t seen for years; long lines of Palestinian vehicles, forced to wait for hours; drivers emerging from their cars and waiting in desperation by the side of the road, anger and frustration etched on their faces; roads blocked arbitrarily, with people signaling each other as to which was open and which was closed; some cars making their way cross-country via boulder-strewn areas and dirt paths to bypass the roadblocks, until those options, too, were sealed off by the army. And also aggressive, edgy, frightened soldiers, carrying weapons that threatened just about anyone who made a move near them.

      Welcome back to the days of the intifada, welcome to a trip into the past: Even if only for a moment, the West Bank this week regressed 15 years, to the start of the millennium.

      The wind blows cold at the Jalazun camp. A throng of thousands of children and teenagers is streaming down the road, heading home from their schools run by UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency. The two schools, one for boys and one for girls, are situated at the camp’s entrance, on both sides of the main Ramallah-Nablus road. We were here a year and a half ago, after IDF soldiers shot up a car stolen from Israel when it stopped outside the settlement of Beit El, spraying it with at least 10 rounds, and killing two of its passengers. About half a year ago, we returned to the camp to meet Mohammed Nakhle, the bereaved father of 16-year-old Jassem, one of those fatalities. The father cried through our entire meeting, even though this was a year after he had lost Jassem.

      Mahmoud Nakhle, who was killed last week, was a relative of Jassem’s.

      Last Friday, there was stone throwing in the valley between Jalazun’s boys’ school and the first houses of Beit El, across the way. The soldiers fired tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets at the young Palestinians. Quite a few of the camp’s residents have been killed at this spot, which has become a main arena of the struggle against the large, veteran settlement that looms through every window in poverty-stricken, overcrowded Jalazun, situated below.

      The stone throwing had slowed down in the afternoon and had just about stopped when an IDF force, arriving in two vehicles, began chasing after the youths, who were now on their way back to the camp, at about 4 P.M. The latter numbered about 15 teens, aged 14 to 18. Suddenly the soldiers started shooting, using live ammunition – even as calm was apparently about to be restored. A video clip, one of several that captured the event, shows the soldiers walking along the road and firing into the air.

      The wail of an ambulance slashes the air now, as we stand at the site of the incident with Iyad Hadad, a field investigator for the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem, who collected testimony from eyewitnesses. Nakhle chose to return home by way of a dirt path that passes above the camp. The soldiers ran after him and one of them shot him once, in the lower back. Nakhle fell to the ground, bleeding.

      The occupant of the first-floor apartment in the closest building in Jalazun, just meters from the site of the incident, heard the shot, the groans and a call for help. She assumed someone had been wounded, but wasn’t sure where or who he was. From her window she saw a group of soldiers standing in a circle, though she couldn’t see the wounded person who lay on the ground between them. A second eyewitness saw one soldier nudge Nakhle with his foot, apparently to see if the teen was still alive. They then pulled up his shirt and pulled down his pants, apparently to check whether the stone-throwing youth was a dangerous, booby-trapped terrorist. As the video accounts show, he was left lying like that, exposed in his blue underwear. The woman from the apartment rushed out to summon help, but the soldiers fired toward her to drive her off. One bullet struck her husband’s car.

      The soldiers lifted Nakhle up and carried him a few dozen meters from where he’d fallen, laying him down at the side of the road. One of the eyewitnesses related that they carried him “like you haul a slaughtered sheep.” The video clip shows them carrying him not in the prescribed way for moving someone who is seriously wounded, but by his hands and his feet, his back sagging.

      Before the soldiers shot at the first eyewitness – whose identity is known to the B’Tselem investigator – to scare her off, she shouted at them to let the wounded person be and to allow him to be taken to hospital in an ambulance. “Leave him alone, do you want to kill him… give him aid.” She also shouted at the soldiers that she was his mother – apparently hoping that the lie would stir pity in them – but to no avail. In the video shot by her daughter on her cell phone, the woman sounds overwrought, gasping for breath as she cries out, “In God’s name, call an ambulance!”

      After five to seven minutes, the soldiers again lifted Nakhle, once more by his extremities, and carried him a few dozen meters more, in the direction of the main road, and again laid him by the roadside. A Palestinian ambulance that had arrived at the scene was chased off by the soldiers, who threatened the driver with their rifles. As far as is known, the soldiers did not give Nakhle any sort of medical aid. The woman from the house again shouted, now from her window: “In God’s name, let the ambulance take him away.” But still to no avail.

      It was only after a quarter of an hour, during which Nakhle continued to bleed, that the soldiers allowed an ambulance to be summoned. A video clip shows Nakhle raising one hand limply to the back of his neck, proof that he was still alive. Half-naked, he’s placed on a stretcher and put in the ambulance, which speeds off, its siren wailing, to the Government Hospital in Ramallah.

      The teen apparently breathed his last en route, arriving at the hospital with no pulse. Attempts were made to resuscitate him in the ER and to perform emergency surgery, but after half an hour, he was pronounced dead. Dr. Muayad Bader, a physician in the hospital, wrote on the death certificate that Mahmoud Nakhle died from loss of blood after a bullet entered his lower back, struck his liver and hit a main artery, damaging other internal organs.

      A group of children is now standing at the site where Nakhle fell, practicing stone throwing on the way back from school. They hurl the stones to the ground in a demonstrative fit of anger. In the mourning tent that was erected in the courtyard of the camp, adorned with huge posters of the deceased, the men sit, grim-faced, with the bereaved father, Yusuf Nakhle, 41, in the center. Disabled from birth, he is partially paralyzed in his left arm and leg. We asked him to tell us about Mahmoud’s life.

      “What life? He hadn’t yet lived his life, they robbed him of his life,” he replies softly. Mahmoud attended school until the 10th grade and then studied electrical engineering at a professional college in Qalandiyah. He completed his studies and afterward a year of apprenticeship, and was waiting to find a job as an electrician. His father was waiting for him to help provide for the family. Yusuf is a technician at a pharmaceuticals company in Bir Zeit, near Ramallah. He and his wife, Ismahan, 45, have two more daughters, aged 14 and 4. Mahmoud was their only son.

      In response to an inquiry, the IDF Spokesman’s Office gave Haaretz the following statement this week: “On December 14, 2018, there was a violent disturbance adjacent to Jalazun, during which dozens of Palestinians threw rocks at IDF soldiers. The soldiers responded with demonstration-dispersal measures.

      “During the disturbance, a Palestinian holding a suspicious object approached one of the soldiers. The soldier fired at him. Later, it was reported that the Palestinian had been killed. The Military Police have launched an investigation into the incident. Upon its completion, the findings will be transferred to the military advocate general’s office.”

      The spokesman’s office did not respond to a question regarding the denial of medical assistance to Mahmoud Nahle.

      Last Friday, the hours passed normally in the home of Nakhle family in the Jalazun camp. Breakfast, a shower; the son asks his father if he needs anything before going out around midday. Never to return. At 4:30, Yusuf’s brother called to inform him that his son had been wounded and was in the Government Hospital. By the time his father arrived, Mahmoud had been pronounced dead.

      “We are human beings and it is our right to live and to look after our children. We too have feelings, like all people,” says Rabah, Mahmoud’s uncle, the brother of his father. Yusuf has watched the video clips that document the shooting and the hauling of his dying son dozens of times, over and over. Ismahan can’t bring herself to look at them.

  • Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian attacker
    Dec. 13, 2018 10:49 A.M. (Updated : Dec. 13, 2018 12:23 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782061

    RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — A 29-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces, on late Wednesday, near Surda village, north of the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah.

    The Israeli army announced that Saleh Amer Saleh al-Barghouth i, 29, a resident from Kobar village, in Ramallah district, was shot and killed by Israeli special forces.

    Earlier this week, al-Barghouthi carried out a drive-by shooting attack near the illegal Israeli settlement of Ofra, injuring seven Israeli settlers, including a 21-year-old pregnant woman, who was in critical condition and delivered the baby prematurely in an emergency procedure.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Undercover Israeli Forces Kill A Palestinian Taxi Driver Near Ramallah
      December 13, 2018 2:33 AM
      http://imemc.org/article/undercover-israeli-forces-kill-a-palestinian-taxi-driver-near-ramallah

      Undercover Israeli soldiers assassinated, on Wednesday evening, a Palestinian Taxi driver, near Surda village, north of the central West Bank city of Ramallah; the army claimed the Palestinian was allegedly “involved” in the shooting targeting colonialist settlers, last Sunday.

      The slain Palestinian has been identified as Saleh Omar Saleh Barghouthi , 29; eyewitnesses said he was driving his taxi when the undercover Israeli soldiers, driving an old commercial Mercedes, ambushed him, and opened fire at him, before abducting him while he was still alive, but severely injured and bleeding.

      The army later said the Palestinian died from his wounds in a hospital in occupied Jerusalem.

      Eyewitnesses said that the taxi remained in the middle of the road, after the soldiers shot Saleh, and added that a young man, identified as Wa’ad Barghouthi, tried to remove it from the road, but the undercover forces attacked and abducted him too.

      Eyewitnesses said the undercover soldiers instantly opened fire at the car after ambushing it, in what appeared to be a clear assassination, not an attempt to abduct and imprison him.

      The soldiers also abducted Ala’ Tarifi, who owns the Taxi company, when he tried to ask about Saleh’s condition.

    • B’Tselem investigation: al-Barghouthi was shot point-blank
      Jan. 31, 2019 12:01 P.M. (Updated: Jan. 31, 2019 12:01 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=782396

      JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — An investigation by B’Tselem found that, contrary to official Israeli statements, Saleh al-Barghouthi did not try to flee or run anyone over, nor could he have tried: two security vehicles were blocking the taxi he was driving at either end, and he was surrounded by some 10 security personnel who shot him point-blank – an operation resembling an extrajudicial killing. Official attempts to sanction the killing in retrospect ensure no one will be held accountable.

      A statement on the investigation said that “On 12 December 2018, at around 6:30 P.M., two Israeli security vehicles blocked the path of a taxi driving along the main road of Surda, a Palestinian village in Ramallah District. Driving the taxi was Saleh al-Barghouthi, 28, husband and father of a 5-year-old boy from the village of Kobar, which lies north of Ramallah. About ten personnel, including Special Police Unit officers, got out of the vehicles, surrounded the taxi and shot al-Barghouthi point-blank. They then pulled the wounded al-Barghouthi out of the taxi, handcuffed him and drove away with him. The IDF notified the family that al-Barghouthi had been critically injured in the incident and died in hospital. According to the Shin Bet (ISA), al-Barghouthi, who was an operative with Hamas’ military wing, was suspected of involvement in the drive-by shooting that took place on 9 December 2018 at the hitch-hiking post near the settlement of Ofra, north of Ramallah. Seven Israelis were injured in the attack, including Shira Ish-Ran, who was seven months pregnant and delivered of her baby in hospital. The baby boy, Amiad Israel Ish-Ran, died three days later.” (...)

  • Strong Economy Poses Recruitment Challenge for the U.S. Army – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/strong-economy-poses-a-recruitment-challenge-for-the-us-army

    The healthy state of the U.S. economy is posing a challenge for the U.S. Army, which is struggling to lure young people away from the hot job market and into military service.

    For the first time since the height of the Iraq War 13 years ago, the U.S. Army failed to reach it recruitment goals for the year, falling thousands of troops short of the target. The issue is especially troubling at a time when President Donald Trump is promising to expand the military.
    […]
    Foreign Policy: In September, the Army announced that it failed to meet its recruiting goal of 76,500 new recruits for fiscal year 2018 by 8.5 percent. What are you doing to beef up the Army’s recruitment numbers?

    [Army Secretary] Mark Esper ]a former defense industry executive]: We missed our numbers last year, but I was proud that we still put quality over quantity. Despite the miss, we actually had the highest retention rates in the last 10 or 11 years, and we recruited more soldiers, 70,000, than we did in that same time period.

    #moins_de_chômage_moins_de_recrues

  • » Israeli Soldiers Kill A Mentally Disabled Palestinian In Tulkarem– IMEMC News - December 4, 2018 10:25 AM
    http://imemc.org/article/israeli-soldiers-kill-a-palestinian-in-tulkarem

    Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded, on Tuesday at dawn, Tulkarem refugee camp, and Tulkarem city, in northern West Bank, killed a mentally disabled Palestinian, and injured several others.

    Media sources said the soldiers killed Mohammad Husam Abdul-Latif Habali , 22, from Tulkarem city, and injured another young man, after shooting them with live fire.

    They added that the soldiers shot Mohammad, who was mentally disabled, from a very close range, and that he died almost instantly, from gunshot wounds to his head and limbs.

    The soldiers also injured several Palestinians with rubber-coated steel bullets, and caused many others to suffer the effects of teargas inhalation.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Un Palestinien tué lors d’un affrontement en Cisjordanie
      Par Reuters le 04.12.2018 à 11h59 - (Nidal al Moughrabi ; Danielle Rouquié pour le service français)
      https://www.challenges.fr/monde/un-palestinien-tue-lors-d-un-affrontement-en-cisjordanie_629915

      TOULKAREM, Cisjordanie (Reuters) - L’armée israélienne a tué un Palestinien lors d’un affrontement mardi en Cisjordanie occupée, ont annoncé les autorités palestiniennes.

      L’armée israélienne a déclaré que ses troupes avaient ouvert le feu au cours d’une « émeute violente ». Elle n’a pas fait état de victimes.

      Selon l’agence de presse officielle palestinienne Wafa, les forces israéliennes sont entrées dans la ville de Toulkarem et ont fouillé plusieurs habitations. Un attroupement s’est alors produit.

      Une porte-parole de l’armée israélienne a déclaré qu’alors que ses troupes opéraient, « une violente émeute a été déclenchée au cours de laquelle des dizaines de Palestiniens ont lancé des pierres ».

      « Les troupes ont répondu par des moyens de dispersion antiémeute et ensuite par des tirs à balles réelles », a déclaré la porte-parole.

      Un jeune homme de 22 ans a été tué après avoir reçu une balle dans la tête, ont annoncé des responsables des services de santé palestiniens. (...)

    • Israel Said a Palestinian Was Killed in Clashes. A Video Shows He Was Shot in the Back
      https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-video-shows-palestinian-shot-in-the-back-contradicting-israeli-acc

      While the army says Mohammad Khossam Khabali was shot during violent clashes, video shows him walking with friends on a main street

      A video of the fatal shooting of a Palestinian shows that he was shot in the back and contradicts the Israeli military’s claim that the incident occurred during violent clashes. The army has opened an investigation into the shooting, which occurred Tuesday in the West Bank city of Tul Karm.

      A video of the incident aired by a local television station shows Mohammad Khossam Khabali,a 23-year-old who used a cane to help him walk, shot in the back as he walks with a group of other people in the city in the early morning hours.

      The video also shows Khabali standing with a group of friends prior to the shooting at the entrance to a restaurant. Khabali was critically wounded and taken to the Tul Karem hospital, where he was pronounced dead

    • Israël a dit qu’un Palestinien avait été tué au cours d’affrontements. Une vidéo montre qu’on lui a tiré dans le dos
      11 décembre | Jack Khoury et Yaniv Kubovich pour Haaretz
      |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
      https://www.aurdip.org/israel-a-dit-qu-un-palestinien.html
      Alors que l’armée dit que Mohammad Khossam Khabali a été abattu au cours de violents affrontements, une vidéo le montre marchant dans une rue principale avec des amis.
      Une vidéo du tir mortel sur un Palestinien montre qu’on lui a tiré dans le dos et contredit l’armée israélienne qui prétend que l’incident est survenu au cours de violents affrontements. L’armée a ouvert une enquête sur ce tir, qui a eu lieu mardi à Tulkarem en Cisjordanie.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=HjfzPgVtzwM


      Une vidéo de l’incident, diffusée par une station de télévision locale, montre Mohammad Khossam Khabali, 23 ans, qui utilisait une canne pour l’aider à marcher, frappé d’une balle dans le dos alors qu’il marche dans la ville au petit matin avec un groupe d’autre personnes.(...)

  • Pushing for an Israeli victory is the only way to end the conflict with the Palestinians

    Il faut lire ce point de vue d’un néoconservateur américain car il reflète une partie de la pensée de la droite pro-israélienne

    Lieberman and Bennett failed to impose a new paradigm on how to deal with Hamas, but more and more people in Israel are recognizing that compromises and concessions have only led to more violence

    Daniel Pipes SendSend me email alerts
    Dec 02, 2018 4:04 PM
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-an-israeli-victory-is-the-only-way-to-end-the-conflict-with-the-pa

    From a practical political point of view, Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and their idea to take a tougher stand toward Hamas just went down to defeat, if not humiliation. 
    That’s because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again showed his political skills; the first is now ex-defense minister, the second failed to become defense minister.
    >> ‘Get used to the rockets’: What Netanyahu should tell Israelis living near Gaza | Opinion
    From a longer-term point of view, however, the duo raised an issue that for decades had not been part of the Israeli political discourse but, due to their efforts, promises to be an important factor in the future: that would be the concept of victory, of an Israeli victory over Hamas and, by extension, over the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians in general.
    Victory – defined as imposing one’s will on the enemy so he gives up his war goals - has been the war goal of philosophers, strategists, and generals through human history. Aristotle wrote that “Victory is the end of generalship.” Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian theorist, concurred: “The aim of war should be the defeat of the enemy.” Gen. James Mattis, the U.S. secretary of defense, finds that “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.” 
    Palestinians routinely speak of achieving victory over Israel, even when this is fantastical: to cite one example, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called his Hamas counterpart, Ismail Haniyeh, after eight days of violence with Israel that left Gaza badly battered in November 2012 to “congratulate him on the victory and extend condolences to the families of martyrs.”

    Contrarily, in Israel, the notion of victory has been sidelined since at least the Oslo Accords of 1993, after which its leaders instead focused on such concepts as compromise, conciliation, confidence-building, flexibility, goodwill, mediation, and restraint. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immemorially articulated this attitude in 2007 when he stated that "Peace is achieved through concessions.”
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    >> Israel is incomparably stronger than Hamas – but it will never win: Interview with Hamas leader in Gaza
    his perverse understanding of how wars end led Israel to make extraordinary blunders in the 15 years after Oslo, for which it was punished by unremitting campaigns of delegitimization and violence, symbolized, respectively, by the Durban conference of 2001 and the Passover Massacre of 2002. 
    Such nonsense ended during Netanyahu’s near-decade-long term as prime minister, but it has not yet been replaced by a sturdy vision of victory. Rather, Netanyahu has put out brush fires as they arose in Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Syria, and Lebanon. While agreeing with the concept of an Israeli victory when personally briefed, he has not spoken publicly about it.
    Meanwhile, other leading figures in Israel have adopted this outlook. Former deputy chief of staff Uzi Dayan called on the army “to return the path of victory.” Former education and interior minister Gideon Sa’ar has stated that “The ‘victory paradigm,’ like Jabotinsky’s ‘Iron Wall’ concept, assumes that an agreement may be possible in the future, but only after a clear and decisive Israeli victory ... The transition to the ‘victory paradigm’ is contingent upon abandoning the Oslo concept.”
    In this context, the statements by Lieberman and Bennett point to a change in thinking. Lieberman quit his position as defense minister out of frustration that a barrage by Hamas of 460 rockets and missiles against Israel was met with a ceasefire; he called instead for “a state of despair” to be imposed on the enemies of Israel. Complaining that “Israel stopped winning,” Bennett demanded that the IDF “start winning again,” and added that “When Israel wants to win, we can win.” On rescinding his demand for the defense portfolio, Bennett emphasized that he stands by Netanyahu “in the monumental task of ensuring that Israel is victorious again.”
    >> Netanyahu’s vision for the Middle East has come true | Analysis
    Opponents of this paradigm then amusingly testified to the power of this idea of victory. Ma’ariv columnist Revital Amiran wrote that the victory the Israeli public most wants lies in such arenas as larger allocations for the elderly and unbearable traffic jams. Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg, replied to Bennett that for her, a victorious Israel means winning Emmy and Oscar nominations, guaranteeing equal health services, and spending more on education.
    That victory and defeat have newly become a topic for debate in Israel constitutes a major development. Thus does the push for an Israeli victory move forward.
    Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum think tank, which promotes Israel Victory, a project to steer U.S. policy toward backing an Israeli victory to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. Follow him on Twitter @DanielPipes

  • Engineered for Dystopia
    https://thebaffler.com/latest/engineered-for-dystopia-banks

    Engineering is full of authoritarians who, predictably, take all the wrong lessons from pop culture Some of the first people to be called “engineers” operated siege engines. A siege engine is a very old device used to tear down the walls of an enemy city. Depending on the century and the army it might have had a battering ram, a catapult, or even a simple ramp that would let soldiers jump over the walls. Engineering has long had a reputation as a “war-built” discipline, to borrow a phrase from (...)

    #algorithme #domination #démocratie #militarisation #solutionnisme #discrimination

    • On a glance :

      the mentality that corporate-led engineering accreditation organizations have fostered over the years.

      They are taught early on that the most moral thing they can do is build what they are told to build to the best of their ability, so that the will of the user is accurately and faithfully carried out. It is only in malfunction that engineers may be said to have exerted their own will.

      Technology is ordering our lives and inflicting stricter, more authoritarian modes of control. For the modal engineer, this is a good thing. It brings order to entropy, limiting individual autonomy in favor of systems performance.

      [The best would-be engineers] notice that the career fairs are dominated by military contractors and vigorously apolitical tech companies. They chafe at the needlessly imposed hierarchy and sacrifice-the-body-for-the-mind culture.

      Demanding recognition outside given categories, radically changing the environment a system must work in, and dismantling long-held practices and theories are equally frustrating for the aspiring dictator and the aspiring engineer. It is that tradeoff between latitude and freedom, as Kelly puts it, that is at the center of the authoritarian–neoliberal–engineer Venn diagram.

      there is something about engineering pedagogy that encourages authoritarianism.

      Those students who brave out the bait-and-switch still make up a diverse cohort but it is increasingly the case that the STEM fields are not only crowding out other subjects in curriculums, but are increasingly being lobbied for, to the disadvantage of other college majors

      Most of the talk of the liberal arts in technology rarely goes further than justifications for letting the children of petit-bourgeois parents major in literature.

      The subservient role of the critical disciplines to engineering, has left the door open for a particularly robust version of hegemonic ideology. That is, without conscious training in more critical fields of study, engineers interpret media as technocrats even in the face of obvious satire.

      The people at Axon (né TASER) have interpreted both of these movies as roadmaps for utopia, not obvious warnings of a path toward dystopia.

      The authors of the report [about the U.S. National Academy of Engineering’s report, Grand Challenges for Engineering] warned that the United States was in danger of experiencing the main plot of the film [Live Free or Die Hard}: a wholesale hijacking of the nation’s digital infrastructure.

      Perhaps, instead of such fictions, we should have more stories about engineers coming to terms with the consequences of their creations.

      [Instead,] Every time a new privacy invention is produced under the auspices of individual privacy, that technology is no doubt also useful to the powerful entities that we want privacy from.

      James Damore, the former Google engineer who wrote a memo decrying Google’s diversity initiatives as a “politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.” He was quickly fired

      Engineers need to think of their work as both a humble contribution to the ongoing social order but also as an imposition—as a normative statement with politics and consequences.

  • In video - Palestinian shot, killed for alleged attack near Gush Etzion
    Nov. 26, 2018 12:47 P.M. (Updated: Nov. 26, 2018 4:23 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=781903

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces killed a 32-year-old Palestinian paramedic, on Monday, near the Gush Etzion junction south of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, for allegedly carrying out a car-ramming attack.
    The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) confirmed that Israeli forces shot and killed Ramzi Abu Yabes, 32, a resident from the Dheisheh refugee camp and father of two children, while he was on his way to the southern West Bank city of Hebron for work.

    The alleged car-ramming attack injured three Israeli soldiers near the Karmei Tzur settlement, south of the junction.

    Medical crews also confirmed that one of the three soldiers suffered moderate injuries, while the two others suffered minor injuries.
    Israeli forces held a PRCS ambulance that was transporting Ramzi’s body and took his body by force in an Israeli miliatry vehicle to an unknown location.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Israeli Army Kills A Palestinian Near Hebron
      November 26, 2018 6:50 PM
      http://imemc.org/article/israeli-army-kills-a-palestinian-near-hebron

      Mohammad Sami al-Ja’bari, the deputy-head of the Emergency Department at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Hebron, told the Maan News Agency in a phone interview, that the PRCS received a call regarding a traffic accident near Beit Ummar, before the medics rushed to the scene.

      “After arriving there, the medics took the wounded Palestinian out of his car, and connected him to a cardiograph machine,” Al-Ja’bari said, “But the army stopped the ambulance, and took him away – we were not informed about any Israeli injuries until the soldiers asked us for neck braces.”

      The slain Palestinian is a father of two children, and was on his way to Hebron for work.

      It should be noted that Israeli forces frequently misclassify vehicle collisions between Palestinian and Israeli vehicles as ‘deliberate ramming attacks’, when many are likely accidents.

  • Communisme, Stalinisme, Socialisme, Fascisme, Collectivisme, Anarchisme

    Une fois n’est pas coûtume, je vais reproduire l’essentiel d’un débat qui s’est déroulé sur l’excellente liste de diffusion de géographie critique (dite liste des « crits »).

    From Dr Hillary J. Shaw
    Visiting Fellow - Centre for Urban Research on Austerity
    Department of Politics and Public Policy
    De Montfort University

    The problem with books is once you read them you can’t un-read them.

    European politics and history in the 20 C starts to look a little different once you read Hayek, F A (1971) The Road To Serfdom, Routledge, London UK From the first few pages of this book, "...Stalinism was described even by a friend of Lenin as ‘superfascist’, ‘more ruthless than fascism’, with similar opinions being expressed by British politician Chamberlain, and by British writer Mr F A Vogt (Hayek, 1971: 20-1). The vicious fighting in 1920s Europe between Fascists and Communists was precisely because ‘they competed for the support of the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic’ (Hayek, 1971: 22). One thing that all Collectivists share is intolerance for any dissenting, therefore threatening, opinions, rather like the strong religious factions of 16 century Europe..."

    Communism - http://fooddeserts.org/images/000Russia.htm
    WW2 - http://fooddeserts.org/images/050FraGermany.htm

    Un certain Reed (pas d’autres infos) répond :

    One thing that all Collectivists share is intolerance for any dissenting, therefore threatening, opinions... Then, One thing that all vulgar individualists share is a perfectly immoral disregard for mutual obligations... I’d say capitalism — marked as it is by market imperatives rather than opportunities — `is “collectivist” in the extreme, which is probably related to its tendency to decay into fascism.

    I also find it interesting that the anti-fascism of partisans is, in your formulation, pitched as a Bad Thing. Meanwhile, the inertia (or complicity) of liberals goes unmentioned.

    But, sure, the uses of Hayek are endless, as every anti-democratic and reactionary movement in the U.S. has thoroughly demonstrated, especially the anarcho-capitalist types who (surprise!) fly their black and yellow flags at the same rallies where the Klansmen and neo-nazis gather to cheerlead genocide.

    Hillary J. Shaw again en réponse :

    1) yes, capitalism, especially when globalised, can easily become ’Collectivist’, Totalitarian, even., Renarkably, even Adam Smith, way back in 1755, spoke of this tendency. And look now at the oligopolies we have in e.g. supermarkets, banking.

    2) Collectivism, generally, DOES demand uniformity of opinion - that’s almost a circular tautology. Can you give any major examples where it hasn’t - I’d love to know. And it was Hayek who used the term ’Collectivist’ for both Stalinism and 1940s fascism, by the way, not me.

    3) I said nothing about anti-fascism of partisans here, such ’partisans’ are often Communist in ideology, but may be ’anarchist’ leaning (although anarchism has often evolved into a very Collectivist socialism, ironically). As fighters against Naziism in the 1940s, they wree a great thing, as was anything that helped end Hitler’s tyranny and WW2.

    4) On this Hayekian analysis, the Klansmen, as neo-nazis, would be portrayed as Collectivist too - so if you percieve me as anti-Collectivist 9and I am no admirer of Stalin), then I must be (and indeed am) anti Klansmen too.

    Yes Hayek can be ’used for many things’ - but doesn’t that apply to almost all significant researchers, academics, in the social sciences and indeed beyond? Including for sure Marx, and probably Aadam Smith too. Does that mean we should ditch them, and the rest of these thinkers too?

    Noel Cass, de l’université de Lancaster :

    “anarchism has often evolved into a very Collectivist socialism, ironically”

    – just, no, Hilary.

    After socialist revolutions, anarchism has been crushed by authoritarian socialists. Please desist from sweeping political generalisations that just get up people’s noses.

    Hillary J. Shaw répond :

    Well yes and no. Only Wikipedia but seems to be broadly correct here

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

    While opposition to the state is central,[16] anarchism specifically entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of all human relations.[17][18][19] Anarchism is usually considered a far-left ideology[20][21][22] and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflects anti-authoritarian interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism, mutualism, or participatory economics.

    However....
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism#Spanish_Revolution

    In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land.[128] However, the anarchists were losing ground even before the fascist victory in 1939 in a bitter struggle with the Stalinists, who controlled much of the distribution of military aid to the Republicans cause from the Soviet Union. According to Noam Chomsky, "the communists were mainly responsible for the destruction of the Spanish anarchists. Not just in Catalonia—the communist armies mainly destroyed the collectives elsewhere. The communists basically acted as the police force of the security system of the Republic and were very much opposed to the anarchists, partially because Stalin still hoped at that time to have some kind of pact with Western countries against Adolf Hitler

    My point in the whole of this is that the Left is a very complex concept that can range from being as totalitarian as some fascist regimes (e.g in the case of Stalin) right through to more idealistic schemes that promote individual flourishing (e.g. some anarchists) - however those who create the latter such schemes, however well-meaning, must beware they do not lapse/evolve into/get taken over by the more collectivist / dictatorial ones.

    Antony Ince, géographe de l’université de Cardiff :

    First of all, Hillary, you are very nearly correct when you point out the Spanish Civil War. There was a faction among the anarchists who believed that it would be strategically useful to participate in the Republican government in order to enhance their influence, especially in the anti-fascist regions where they were less powerful.

    However, this did not necessarily involve a change of ideology; it was an effort - a flawed one, admittedly, spurred on by concerns of war - to instrumentally use state institutions to further the anarchist cause. As it happened, it didn’t end well.

    Second, I would like to emphasise that “collectivism” is not a singular term and is not owned by totalitarianisms such as Stalinism et al. To begin, fascism’s conception of collectivism is one of national unity, a cross-class alliance in the supposed interest of national ’renewal’ or ’renaissance’ that is only collective in the sense that a powerful central state is in control of the polity, and which often features some very crude forms of nationalisation. Soviet collectivism operates functionally in a similar way (as predicted by the anarchists long before 1917!), although its goal is oriented towards the elimination of class relations.

    Of course, in practice, it simply created a new class structure by occupying the same state institutions and relations of production as the old order and failing to eliminate capital when it had the chance.

    With regards to anarchism and collectivism, the story is different again. Aside from some streams of exclusively individualist anarchism influenced by the likes of Max Stirner, anarchism is more accurately described as “anarchist-communism”. It is a left-libertarian form of collectivism that seeks to respect individual agency while also promoting the virtues of co-operation (sometimes referred to as ’free association’).

    There are many examples of this, such as the regions controlled by the CNT in civil war Spain, the vast regions of Ukraine voluntarily collectivised along anarchist lines by the Makhnovists during the Russian revolution, and more recently the principles on which the Rojava region in Syria is managed. (Of course, there are the Zapatistas too, but interestingly it turns out that their form of agrarian anarchism emerged from libertarian Marxist ideas in the early 1980s). Anyway, for the most part, anarchist experiments have tended to end not by a drift towards authoritarianism but by annihilation at the hands of authoritarians.

    In Spain, of course the fascists were largely to blame, but also the USSR-backed Communist Party saw the anarchists as a greater threat to their prospects than Franco; for the Makhnovists, it was Trotsky’s Red Armies who ended their voluntary collectivism in the Ukrainian countryside. In Rojava, if their Bookchin-inspired libertarian municipalism doesn’t survive (which I sincerely hope it does!), it is likely to be at the hands of the proto-fascist Turkish state.

    So, let’s be a little more nuanced with the notion of ’collectivism’, what it means, and what values and organisational logics it embodies. There are multiple collectivisms, and they operate along as much an axis of authoritarian-libertarian as left-right.

    Noel Cass dans un dernier élan :

    I was tempted to shout “Remember Kronstadt!”, lob a grenade, and duck !!

  • Putin’s interests in Syria and Lebanon are limiting Israel’s military options
    Playing chess with Hezbollah is one thing. Trying to figure out what Putin wants, in Syria and perhaps also in Lebanon, even as Hezbollah is trying to manufacture weapons there, is a completely different challenge
    Amos Harel - Nov 18, 2018 9:39 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-putin-s-interests-in-syria-and-lebanon-is-limiting-israel-s-milita

    One reason for Israel’s exceptional caution in dealing with Hamas in the Gaza Strip is its growing concern over the northern front. Though it may sound like a threadbare excuse, this seems to be one of the considerations driving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide, time after time, to try to reach a cease-fire in Gaza.

    The problem Israel faces in the north, in a nutshell, is the real danger that its operational window of opportunity is closing. In recent years, Israel has exploited the upheaval in the Arab world to expand its offensive activity, most of which is secret.

    Via hundreds of airstrikes and special operations, the army and the intelligence agencies have worked to distance the danger of another war and reduce the enemy’s operational capabilities in the event that war does break out.

    In Syria and Lebanon, the campaign initially focused on preventing Iran from smuggling advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. But over the last year or so, a new mission has been added – preventing Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria. This peaked with a flurry of incidents between the Israel Defense Forces and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last winter and spring.

    A problem may also be developing in Lebanon. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Netanyahu warned of efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to set up missile production facilities in the Beirut area. Given the problems its smuggling operations had encountered, the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force apparently decided it had to shorten the distance between the manufacturer and the customer by moving its efforts to improve the accuracy of Hezbollah’s rockets to Lebanon.

    Netanyahu’s speech did its job. In the three days between that speech and the tour of Beirut the Lebanese government conducted for diplomats to rebut it, someone worked hard to get rid of the evidence. But over the long run, Iran seems unlikely to abandon this effort.

    What’s even more worrying is that Putin has recently displayed increased interest in events in Lebanon. In the worst-case scenario, the defensive umbrella — both real and symbolic — that Russia has spread over northwest Syria would be expanded to Lebanon, further complicating Israel’s calculus.

    Even now, at least according to Arab media reports, Israel hasn’t conducted an airstrike in Lebanon since February 2014, when the IAF, apparently pursuing an arms convoy that had crossed the border from Syria, bombed a target in Janta, a few hundred meters to the Lebanese side of the Lebanon-Syria border.

    Hezbollah, which was willing to pretend the spit was rain as long as its convoys were being bombed on the Syrian side, immediately responded with a series of attacks by Druze residents of the Syrian Golan Heights.

    The cell’s commander, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, and his successor, Hezbollah’s Jihad Mughniyeh, were both subsequently killed in attacks attributed to Israel. Since then, Israel has confined its attacks to Syria.

    But playing chess with Hezbollah is one thing. Trying to figure out what Putin wants, in Syria and perhaps also in Lebanon, even as Hezbollah is trying to manufacture weapons there, is a challenge of a completely different order of magnitude.

    Netanyahu was presumably hinting at this problem, among others, when he spoke about security considerations that he can’t share with the public, at the memorial for Paula Ben-Gurion earlier this week.

    #IsraelRussie

  • » Updated: “Seven Palestinians, One Israeli Undercover Soldier, Killed In Gaza”
    November 12, 2018 6:02 AM - IMEMC News
    http://imemc.org/article/six-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-by-israeli-gunfire-in-southern-gaza

    After undercover Israeli soldiers infiltrated into the Gaza Strip, on Sunday at night, and assassinated two senior leaders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, the army initiated a series of air strikes, the army fired missiles and shells to secure the retreat of its undercover soldiers, killing five other Palestinians. Hamas fighters exchanged fire with the soldiers killing one of them, Israeli sources have confirmed.

    Updated: The undercover soldiers were driving a Volkswagen car, and drove towards the home of Noureddin Baraka, in Bani Suheila area in Khan Younis, before stopping near the property, the al-Quds News Agency has confirmed.

    Fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades then noticed the car and stopped it near a kindergarten in Abasan al-Kabeera town, and asked the passengers to step out of the vehicle and show their ID cards.

    It added that the undercover soldiers, who were in the backseat of the car, then opened fire at the fighters, after realizing their cover-up has been exposed.

    Al-Quds also stated that some of the undercover soldiers were wearing veils, pretending to be women.

    The senior fighter, Noureddin Baraka, was instantly killed in the initial shooting, while other fighters called for help, before chasing the car that carried the undercover forces.

    The Israeli army, stationed across the perimeter fence, started firing shells at cars and Palestinians who chased the undercover officers’ vehicle, before it crashed against a wall, and then headed toward the perimeter fence.

    So far, the Israeli soldiers who was killed in the Gaza invasion, has only been identified as (Lt. Col. M.). The army is still keeping other information classified, but his family has officially been notified.

    The Al-Qassam Brigades said the undercover soldiers who infiltrated into an area, east of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, assassinated one of its senior leaders, identified as Noureddin Mohammad Salama Baraka, 37.
    (...)
    The Palestinians who were killed in the Israeli offensive have been identified as:

    1 Noureddin Mohammad Salama Baraka , 37.
    2 Mohammad Majed Mousa al-Qarra , 23.
    3 Khaled Mohammad Ali Qweider , 29.
    4 Mustafa Hasan Mohammad Abu Odah , 21.
    5 Mahmoud Atallah Misbih , 25.
    6 Ala’eddin Fawzi Mohammad Fseifis , 24.
    7 Omar Naji Musallam Abu Khater , 21.

    It is worth mentioning that al-Qarra just got married a few days ago. Both Baraka and al-Qarra are senior leaders of the al-Qassam Brigades.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Opération israélienne à Gaza : sept Palestiniens et un Israélien tués
      12.11.2018
      https://www.laliberte.ch/news-agence/detail/operation-israelienne-a-gaza-sept-palestiniens-et-un-israelien-tues/463355

      Des échanges de tirs ont opposé dimanche des soldats israéliens et des combattants du Hamas dans la bande de Gaza. Ils ont coûté la vie à sept Palestiniens et un soldat israélien, menaçant de raviver les tensions dans la région.

      Les brigades Ezzedine al-Qassam, branche armée du Hamas, ont affirmé qu’il s’agissait d’une opération des forces spéciales israéliennes, qui avaient tenté de s’infiltrer à l’est de Khan Younès, dans le sud de l’enclave, à bord d’un véhicule civil.

      Selon un responsable du Hamas, un groupe d’hommes armés appartenant au mouvement islamiste a été visé par des tirs provenant d’une voiture appartenant aux forces de sécurité israéliennes. Les membres du Hamas ont alors pris en chasse le véhicule, rapporte ce responsable.
      Missiles et roquettes

      Durant la course poursuite, des avions israéliens ont tiré plus de 40 missiles dans le secteur de l’incident, ont rapporté des témoins. Ils ont tué quatre autres personnes, sans qu’on sache s’il s’agit de militants armés. Des sources médicales palestiniennes ont pour leur part affirmé qu’au moins sept personnes ont trouvé la mort, dont deux commandants du Hamas nommés Nour Baraka et Mohammad Al-Qarra.

      L’armée israélienne a pour sa part indiqué dans un communiqué qu’"un officier a été tué et un autre a été légèrement blessé" lors de l’opération. Elle avait auparavant fait état d’un « échange de coups de feu » "au cours d’une opération (militaire israélienne) dans la bande de Gaza".

    • Gaza : Israël bombarde, assassine, terrorise
      Hind Khoudary & Mohammed Asad – 12 novembre 2018 – Middle East Eye – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine
      http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/gaza-israel-bombarde-assassine-terrorise

      Une mystérieuse fourgonnette Volkswagen a attiré l’attention des combattants de la brigade al-Qassam, déclenchant une fusillade puis une poursuite à travers le sud de Gaza.

      Sept Palestiniens, dont un commandant de la branche armée du Hamas, et un soldat israélien ont été tués dimanche dernier après l’entrée d’un commando sraélien dans la bande de Gaza, probablement pour la première fois depuis la guerre de 2014.

      L’objet de ce raid, qui a provoqué une poursuite, un sauvetage par hélicoptère et des heures de frappes aériennes israéliennes, restait un mystère, tandis qu’il suscitait de nouvelles violences, le Hamas lançant des roquettes en représailles sur le sud d’Israël, au milieu des frappes aériennes sur Gaza lundi soir.

      Cette tournure inhabituelle des événements, ont déclaré les habitants de la ville de Khan Younès, dans le sud du pays, a commencé vers 21 heures dimanche soir, lorsque plusieurs membres des Brigades Izz al-Din al-Qassam – la branche armée du Hamas – ont aperçu un bus Volkswagen stationné dans une zone isolée et ont été rendus méfiants.

      Un combattant palestinien a raconté à Middle East Eye que Nour Baraka, commandant de terrain âgé de 37 ans, et son assistant ont intercepté le véhicule et demandé aux passagers de montrer leurs papiers d’identité. Des coups de feu coups ont alors été tirés, sur le site d’informations israélien Walla.

  • Trump border wall construction underway in #Chihuahuita in Downtown #El_Paso

    Construction of the border wall in the Chihuahuita neighborhood of Downtown El Paso continued Wednesday beneath the Stanton Street International Bridge. The U.S. Border Patrol announced Friday that the new wall would replace existing fencing south of Downtown El Paso and that construction would begin Saturday as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order authorizing construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
    The wall starts in Chihuahuita and continues east for four miles. Chihuahuita is El Paso’s oldest neighborhood, with about 100 people currently living in the area. The southern boundary of the neighborhood is the border fence separating El Paso from #Juárez.

    The existing fence will be removed, and an 18-foot-high steel bollard wall will be constructed in its place. The construction project is expected to be completed in late April. The estimated cost for the project is $22 million.


    https://eu.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2018/09/26/trump-border-wall-construction-underway-downtown-el-paso-texas/1437573002
    #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #mexique #usa #Etats-Unis

    • Border Wall Gate Construction Begins Friday

      Construction of several border wall #gates along the Rio Grande Valley border is set to begin Friday.

      U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a contract to #Gideon_Contracting LLC in early October.

      The agencies approved over $3.5 million for the San Antonio-based company, which is set to install the first seven border wall gates and includes options for four additional gates.


      http://www.krgv.com/story/39562919/border-wall-gate-construction-begins-friday

    • TPWD: Border wall will be built on #Bentsen State Park property in Mission

      The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has confirmed the border wall will be built on #Bentsen_State_Park property in Mission.

      The department wrote several letters to Customs and Border Protection on their concerns on the border wall, even suggesting an alternative design.

      According to Josh Havens, spokesperson for Texas Parks and Wildlife he says since the federal government has federal domain over the park, construction will go as planned.

      Bentsen State Park is considered to be one of the top bird watching destinations in Texas.

      “At first, we came for three or four days. Last year, we came for seven and this time we are coming for eight days,” said Charles Allen, who has been visiting the park for several years now.

      Allen says the border wall would be a setback for the park.

      “It would really be a disaster for the plants and the butterflies and for people who come to visit,” stated Allen.

      CBP announced the construction of the border wall on the IBWC levee earlier this month.

      The levee stretches through Mission and lies on park property.

      “The federal government has confirmed with us that the initial six miles, I believe, of the construction of the wall is going to go across the levee that is at Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park,” said Havens.

      According to Havens, the construction will split the park into two, separating the main visitor center from the rest of the park.

      CBP plans to clear out 150 feet south of the levee for the construction, according to Havens.

      “The native plants here have some purpose either a butterfly or several butterflies, or moths or some other birds or other larger animals,” said Allen.

      Havens says they are aware of the ecological importance the vegetation of the park has and is planning to work with CBP on minimizing the vegetation loss.

      Still park visitors feel there should be something else done to protect the park.

      “I hate to see them tear this park in half can there be other way to be done? I’m sure there are options,” mentioned Larry McGuire, a winter Texan who visits the park.

      According to Havens, it is way too early to tell if the park will close after the construction of the border wall.

      They will have to gauge visitation after construction to determine that.


      https://valleycentral.com/news/local/tpwd-border-wall-will-be-built-on-bentsen-state-park-property-in-miss

  • What’s Driving the Conflict in Cameroon?
    Violence Is Escalating in Its Anglophone Regions.

    In recent months, political violence in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon has escalated dramatically. So far, at least 400 civilians and 160 state security officers have been killed in the conflict between the government and an armed separatist movement that, just two short years ago, started as a peaceful strike of lawyers and teachers. How did such upheaval come to a country that has prided itself for decades as a bulwark of stability in a region of violent conflict? And why has it escalated so quickly?

    THE ROOTS OF THE VIOLENCE

    The Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon have a special historical legacy that sets them apart from the country’s other eight regions: between 1922 and 1960, they were ruled as a British trust or protectorate while the rest of the territory was administered by France. This is why today, 3 million residents of the Northwest and Southwest regions—roughly 20 percent of the Cameroonian population—speak primarily English, not French. These two regions also use their own legal and educational systems, inherited from the British, and have a unique cultural identity.

    Many analysts argue that the current conflict stems from the intractable historical animosity between Cameroon’s Anglophones and Francophones. Yet if that is the case, it is strange that the violence is only occurring now. Why not in 1972, when Ahmadou Ahidjo, the first president of Cameroon, ended the federation between the Anglophone and Francophone regions, forcing the Anglophones to submit to a unitary state? Or in 1992, when current President Paul Biya held Cameroon’s first multi-party elections, and narrowly won a heavily rigged contest by four percentage points against Anglophone candidate John Fru Ndi? Furthermore, if differences in identity are the primary driver of the conflict, it is quite surprising that Cameroon—one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa—has largely avoided ethnic conflict.

    Most Anglophones themselves say that they would be happy to put their national identity above their linguistic one if they weren’t systematically neglected and repressed by Cameroon’s central government. According to a survey from the Afrobarometer, an independent polling and research network, when asked whether they identify more as Cameroonians or more with their ethnic group, the vast majority of respondents in the Northwest and Southwest regions said they identified with these categories equally. Less than five percent said they identified more with their ethnic group. Nonetheless, members of this population have long felt themselves to be treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Anglophones who go to the capital city of Yaoundé to collect government documents, for example, often report being ridiculed or turned away by public officials because they cannot speak French. Separatists argue that this mistreatment and discrimination by Yaoundé, and Francophone Cameroonians more broadly, is grounds for secession.

    Yet regional neglect and mistreatment are not enough to explain the current wave of violence. If they were the root cause, then we should also be seeing separatist movements in Cameroon’s North and Far North regions, where state violence has become endemic in the fight against Boko Haram over the past four years. Moreover, in the North and Far North regions, the poverty rate is higher (more than 50 percent in each, compared to 15 percent in the Southwest and 25 percent in the Northwest) and state investment in public goods such schools, health clinics, and roads is lower than anywhere else in the country.

    To be sure, the Anglophones’ unique linguistic and cultural identity has played a role in the rebellion. But in order to understand why the escalating violence is taking place where and when it is, we must consider not only the Anglophone regions’ exceptional political isolation and relative economic autonomy from the rest of Cameroon, but also the increasing impatience of Africans living under non-democratic regimes.
    WHY THE ANGLOPHONE REGIONS?

    Biya, who last month won his seventh term in office, has been in power since 1982, making him one of the longest ruling leaders in the world. In fact, Cameroon has only had two presidents since gaining independence in 1960. Because the country’s median age is 18, this means that the majority of Cameroonians have only ever known one president. Yet the decline of Africa’s strongmen over the past two decades—most recently Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso, Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, and even Jacob Zuma in South Africa—has made Biya’s continued rule increasingly untenable. Democracy may have begun to lose its appeal in many parts of the world, but it remains important to most sub-Saharan Africans. Many Cameroonians with an education and a smart phone consider their president’s extended rule increasingly illegitimate. The political tide currently washing away the strongmen of Africa has made this moment an exceptional one for mobilizing people against the regime.

    In spite of these democratic headwinds, Biya has managed to maintain his legitimacy in some quarters through his cooptation of Francophone elites and control of information by means of the (largely Francophone) state-owned media. He has masterfully brought Francophone leaders into government, offering them lucrative ministerial posts and control over various government revenue streams. Importantly, he has not been excessively repressive—at least not before the current outbreak of violence—and has gone out of his way to uphold the façade of democratic legitimacy through holding regular elections, allowing a relatively unfettered (although weak) independent media, and having a general laissez-faire attitude toward governing.

    The state media and elites within the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement are stalwart defenders of the president, operating whole-heartedly on the fictitious assumption that the regime is democratic. Many Cameroonians, especially those isolated from independent media, opposition parties, or information from outside of the country, earnestly believe this narrative. Another survey by the Afrobarometer conducted in 2015 before the outbreak of violence, showed that the presidency is the second most trusted institution of the state, after the army. It also showed that only ten percent of Cameroonian respondents believe that their country is not a democracy.

    In contrast, the Anglophone regions’ relative distance from both Biya’s networks of patronage and influence and the Francophone state media puts them in a unique position to see the autocratic nature of the regime and rebel against it. Although 75.4 percent of Francophone Cameroonian respondents said they trust Biya “somewhat” or “a lot,” in the Afrobarometer poll, only 45.5 percent of Anglophones felt the same way. Part of the reason for this is easier access to criticism of the Biya government. In electoral autocracies, opposition parties are often the only institutions that consistently voice the view that the regime is not truly democratic. The strongest opposition party in Cameroon—the Social Democratic Front (SDF)—is headquartered in the Northwest region, thus further exposing Anglophones to narratives of state repression. Other parts of Cameroon do not have occasion to become as familiar with opposition party politics. In the most recent 2013 elections for the National Assembly, for example, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement ran completely unopposed in 13 of the country’s 83 electoral districts.

    In comparison to other parts of the country, such as the north, Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are also more economically autonomous from Yaoundé. They have a robust cross-border trade with Nigeria, successful plantations in the Southwest, and fertile farming land. They are not overly-reliant on the export of primary resources, such as oil or timber, which funnels through state-owned corporations. And they are not as poor as, for example, the northern regions, which face chronic food insecurity. The Anglophones thus have not only the will, but also the resources to rebel.

    THE SUCCESSION QUESTION

    Unfortunately, an end to the crisis is nowhere in sight. Last month, Biya won his seventh term as president with 71.3 percent of the vote. The already unfair election was marked by exceedingly low participation in the Anglophone regions—just five percent in the Northwest—due to security fears. Meanwhile, Biya has responded to the separatists with an iron fist. He refuses to negotiate with them, instead sending in his elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (trained by the United States and led by a retired Israeli officer), which has now been accused of burning villages and attacking civilians in the Northwest and Southwest. But as long as the violence does not spill over into the Francophone regions, the crisis will likely not affect the president’s legitimacy in the rest of the country. Moreover, Biya remains staunchly supported by the West—especially France, but also the United States, which relies strongly on Cameroon in the fight against Boko Haram. The separatists, meanwhile, remain fractured, weak, and guilty of their own atrocities against civilians. Apart from attacking security forces, they have been kidnapping and torturing teachers and students who refuse to participate in a school strike.

    It is extremely unlikely that Biya will make the concessions necessary for attacks from separatists to stop, and the fluid nature of the insurgency will make it difficult for state security forces to end the violence. The scorched earth tactics on both sides only work to further alienate the population, many of whom have fled to Nigeria. It seems likely that a resolution to the crisis can only happen once the questions of when Biya will step down and who will replace him are fully answered. Right now, there is only unsubstantiated speculation. Many assume he will appoint a successor before the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2025. But if there are any surprises in the meantime similar to the military move against Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the popular uprising against Compaoré in Burkina Faso, a transition may come sooner than expected. A post-Biya political opening might provide a way for Cameroon’ s Anglophones to claim their long-awaited autonomy.

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/cameroon/2018-11-08/whats-driving-conflict-cameroon?cid=soc-tw
    #Cameroun #conflit #Cameroun_anglophone #violence #différent_territorial #autonomie

  • Gazan succumbs to wounds sustained by Israeli live ammunition
    Nov. 4, 2018 3:38 P.M. (Updated: Nov. 5, 2018 11:50 A.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=781690

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A Palestinian succumbed to his wounds, on Sunday, that he had sustained earlier after he was shot and critically injured by Israeli live ammunition along the borders of the besieged Gaza Strip.

    Medical sources at the Soroka Medical Center confirmed that the Palestinian died due to being shot and critically injured by Israeli forces.

    The Israeli army issued a statement, on late Saturday, regarding the incident and said that the Palestinian was shot and injured after he allegedly crossed the security border fence with Israel.

    The identity of the Palestinian remained unknown.

    #Palestine_assassinée

  • In Sri Lanka, old land issues and a new prime minister highlight post-war traumas

    Sri Lanka’s civil war ended nearly a decade ago, but Maithili Thamil Chilwen’s barren plot of land still resembles a battlefield.

    There is only a mound of dirt where her home once stood in Keppapilavu village in the country’s northeast; the rest is just dirt, gravel, and broken shards of doors and windows from her demolished home.

    Sri Lanka’s military occupied thousands of hectares of land during and after the country’s bitter 26-year civil war, which came to a brutal end in 2009 when the military crushed remaining Tamil fighters here in the north. Almost a decade later, rights groups say reconciliation between the country’s majority Sinhalese community and its Tamil minority is at a standstill, and occupied land is one glaring example.

    Thamil Chilwen, an ethnic Tamil, said the military seized her property at the end of the war. It took almost nine years, until earlier this year, for the military to give it back. But by then, her home and fields were destroyed.

    “We were happy when the military told us we could go back to our land. But when I saw the state of the land, I had to cry,” she said.

    The military has been slow to return land to civilians, or to even acknowledge just how much territory it still occupies. It’s symptomatic of wider post-conflict fissures across the country: rights groups say Sri Lanka’s government hasn’t taken significant steps to address rampant war-era abuses – including enforced disappearances and thousands of civilian deaths in the conflict’s final months.

    Hopes for national reconciliation took another blow last week when the country’s president, Maithripala Sirisena, abruptly appointed the controversial former leader who oversaw the 2009 military offensive, Mahinda Rajapaksa, as prime minister. The surprise move has locked Sri Lanka in a political crisis: the ousted prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has vowed to stay in office; government ministers who support him have denounced his dismissal as “an anti-democratic coup”.

    Human Rights Watch said any return to office for Rajapaksa raises “chilling concerns” for rights in the country. Rajapaksa is accused of widespread rights abuses, particularly in his role overseeing the military offensive that crushed the Tamil insurgency.

    “The current government’s failure to bring justice to victims of war crimes under the Rajapaksa government reopens the door for past abusers to return to their terrible practices,” said the group’s Asia director, Brad Adams.

    For most Tamils, a return to their ancestral land is one key part of finding justice, says Ruki Fernando, a Colombo-based rights activist who has documented war-time disappearances.

    More than 40,000 people remain displaced since the end of the war, mostly concentrated in the Tamil heartlands of northern and northeastern Sri Lanka.

    “It’s about culture and religious life. It’s where they buried their ancestors,” Fernando said. “It’s their identity.”

    Alan Keenan, a Sri Lanka analyst with the International Crisis Group, says land is among a range of issues that have largely gone unresolved over the last decade.

    “Most Tamils don’t feel that they have gotten as much they were promised in terms of dealing with the legacy of war, having their land returned, discovering the fate of their tens of thousands of missing relatives, having crimes committed by the military addressed judicially,” Keenan said. “For a whole range of things, they think they didn’t get what they were promised.”
    Reparations

    Estimates for the amount of land occupied by the military vary wildly. The military last year said it had returned roughly 20,000 hectares of private and state land in the north. In a report released this month, Human Rights Watch said the government claimed the military was occupying about 48,000 hectares of private and state land in the north and east.

    Rights groups say the military has converted some of the occupied land into for-profit businesses. They have set up plantation farms, restaurants, and even resorts catering to tourists, in addition to large military bases.

    An army spokesman did not respond to IRIN’s requests for comment. But in an interview with the Indian newspaper The Hindu this year, Mahesh Senanayake, the Sri Lankan army chief, said 80 percent of occupied land has been returned. He claimed the military had been the only organisation capable of running key services in the north after decades of war.

    “The government machinery was not functioning for decades,” he said. “There was a big gap and our services are needed to address it.”

    Early this month, President Sirisena ordered the release of all civilian land by the end of the year. However, rights groups say such promises have gone unfulfilled for years.

    Sirisena was elected in 2015 on the back of a reformist agenda to boost reconciliation between the divided Sinhalese and Tamil communities. When he came to office, Sirisena broke from his predecessor and promised to set up a national truth commission, an office to investigate missing persons, and provide reparations for war-era abuses.

    The government has held public consultations to solicit feedback on reconciliation, and legislated the creation of an office for reparations. But rights groups say progress has been achingly slow, even before last week’s political crisis. The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism last year said government actions on transitional justice have “ground to a virtual halt”.

    Analysts say Sirisena has been reluctant to push a reform agenda too forcefully in the face of resurgent Sinhalese nationalism. Rajapaksa, the former president, is popular among Sinhalese nationalists; the political party he leads nearly swept local elections held in February, seen as a bellwether for the current political mood in the country.

    “The government is afraid the Sinhala constituency will be unhappy that they are giving back the land, that they are shrinking the footprint of the military,” Keenan said.

    In a country that has held an uneasy peace since the civil war’s remarkably violent end in 2009, there are signs of discontent. A Tamil nationalist party, the Tamil National People’s Front, also made significant gains during the February elections here in Sri Lanka’s north, where it took control of the two largest councils in populous Jaffna district.

    In Keppapilavu village, an army tank sits outside an imposing military base surrounded by tall cement walls. A few metres away, a group of men and women have held a protest for the last year, under tents made of tin and tarpaulin.

    Arumuham Weluthapillayi, a Hindu priest, started the protest last year with other displaced families. He says half of his land is still occupied by the army – in addition to homes, places of worship, schools, a cemetery, and numerous shops around the village.

    This area was once a stronghold of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. But nine years after the insurgency was routed, Weluthapillayi says he can’t understand why the army hasn’t left.

    “The war is over,” he said. “There are no security issues. Why are they still here?”

    https://www.irinnews.org/news/2018/10/30/sri-lanka-old-land-issues-and-new-appointment-threaten-reconciliation
    #Sri_Lanka #COI #terres #tamouls #déplacés_internes #IDPs #dédommagement #indemnisations #Keppapilavu

  • You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) - Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth
    https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/youll_never_get_rich

    You’ll Never Get Rich was the first of two films made by Fred Astaire at Columbia, and also the first in which he was paired with his favorite female dancing partner—not Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, but Rita Hayworth. Fred and Rita play a team of Broadway dancers whose partnership is abruptly rent asunder when Fred is drafted into the Army.

    On se moque parfois de la propagande soviétique, mais ce #film offre plusieurs scènes de danse à couper le souffle…

    celle-ci par sa grâce
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shB0LDTvMY4

    et celle-ci par son absurde #militarisme (et virilisme)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIS8P7TPKLs

  • » Updated: “Palestinian Shot Dead Allegedly After Attempting To Stab A Soldier”
    IMEMC News - October 22, 2018 12:18 PM
    http://imemc.org/article/palestinian-shot-dead-after-allegedly-stabbing-israeli-solder

    In Hebron Monday morning, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian, Moammar Arif Refa’ey al-Atrash , 42, who the army claimed had tried to carry out a stabbing attack on soldiers stationed near Ibrahimi Mosque, lightly wounding one soldier.

    According to the Israeli Army’s official statement, “An assailant attempted to stab a soldier adjacent to the Cave of the Patriarchs, (The Ibrahimi Mosque) lightly injuring him. The soldier and other forces at the scene, responded with live fire”.

    A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance rushed to the scene, but the soldiers refused to allow the medics to approach the Palestinian.

    #Palestine_assassinée

  • » Palestinian Killed as Israeli Military drops Multiple Bombs in Gaza
    IMEMC News - October 17, 2018 9:47 AM
    http://imemc.org/article/palestinian-killed-as-israeli-military-drops-multiple-bombs-in-gaza

    The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said one Palestinian, identified as Naji Jamal Mohammad Za’anin , 25, was killed when the Israeli missiles struck a site in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. The Palestinian was from Beit Hanoun, also in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

    The Israeli airforce dropped bombs in several parts of Gaza Wednesday morning, wounding 14 Palestinians in addition to killing Za’anin, including six schoolchildren, in Deir al-Balah city, in central Gaza, before they were rushed to the Al-Aqsa Hospital.

    The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said the army targeted three of its centers in several parts of the Gaza Strip.

    The first center, Abu Jarad, south of Gaza city, and the second, al-Waha, west of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, and the third in the Zeitoun neighborhood, in the center of Gaza city.

    The army later fired more missiles into areas in Rafah, in southern Gaza, and another site of the al-Qassam Brigades in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. In addition, the Israeli Air Force fired missiles into agricultural lands in the az-Zanna area, in Bani Suheila town, east of Khan Younis, and a near the seaport, west of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

    For its part, Egypt started contacting Palestinian officials in Gaza, and Israeli officials, in an attempt to mediate an prevent a further escalation in the area.

    The bombs were dropped on Gaza after unknown Palestinians fired a rocket into Israel Wednesday morning, causing no injuries.

    Abu Mujahed, the spokesperson of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, said in a statement that no Palestinian resistance groups were involved in the firing of the rocket – and that all the armed Palestinian resistance groups are always willing to claim responsibility if they ever do fire rockets.

    The statement was made after discussions with the representatives of all the Palestinian armed resistance groups.

    #Palestine_assassinée

  • » Bulldozers Resume Demolition of Khan al-Ahmar
    IMEMC News - October 16, 2018 8:00 PM
    http://imemc.org/article/bulldozers-resume-demolition-of-khan-al-ahmar

    Israeli occupation bulldozers resumed work on Tuesday, at Khan al-Ahmar village, to the east of Jerusalem, leveling land around and inside the village, apparently in preparation for its removal.

    Activists on a 24-hour vigil, at the Palestinian village, to ward off Israeli attempts to destroy it and displace its residents, said that the bulldozers arrived early at the site and resumed leveling the land and opening roads to facilitate entry of army units, when the time comes to destroy the village, which could happen at any time, now, after the Israeli High Court gave the army the green light to destroy it.

    The bulldozers carried out some work in the village on Monday, during which activists and residents confronted the Israeli soldiers providing protection to the bulldozers.

    Several Palestinians were injured and few others detained, according to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency.

    #Khan_al-Ahmar

  • Sri Lanka: Government Slow to Return Land. Create Consultative Process to End Military Occupation

    The Sri Lankan government has yet to fully restore civilian ownership of land and property nearly a decade since the end of the civil war in 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Progress, particularly since the election of a new government in 2015, has been hindered by broad military claims of national security and the lack of a transparent process.

    The 80-page report, “‘Why Can’t We Go Home?’: Military Occupation of Land in Sri Lanka,” details security force occupation of land both during and after the armed conflict. It identifies the lack of transparency and due process, failure to map occupied land, inadequate support to affected people and communities, and prolonged delays in providing appropriate reparations for decades of loss and suffering. The military has also used some confiscated lands for commercial profit rather than national security and returned damaged or destroyed property to owners without compensation.

    “All those displaced during Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war are entitled to return to their homes,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director. “Despite repeated pledges by the authorities, the military has been frustratingly slow to restore land to its rightful owners.”

    The report is based on over 100 interviews between August 2017 to May 2018 with members of affected communities, activists, local officials, and lawyers. It looks into cases of military occupation and land release in 20 areas in six districts, primarily in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

    The three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka ended with the decisive defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009. Large areas, including those previously held by the LTTE in the north and east, came under military control. At the end of the war, some 300,000 people ended up in a military detention camp.

    While the administration of then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa released some land to its original owners, the military retained control over large areas for military but also non-military purposes, such as agriculture, tourism, and other commercial ventures.

    The new government, led by President Maithripala Sirisena, took some steps to release civilian land held by the security forces. At the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2015, the government promised to address conflict-related issues, including returning land to its original owners. However, the government’s response has fallen far short of its promises. On October 4, 2018, the president ordered the state to release all civilian land by December 31, 2018.

    The military has also retained control of land it previously announced it would return. For instance, in April 2017, the navy responded to protests by displaced communities from the Mullikulam area in Mannar by announcing it would release 100 acres of the land that security forces had been occupying. More than a year later, people are still waiting.

    “Now there is no war,” said Francis Crooss, a village elder. “It’s now peacetime. So why can’t we go back home?”

    State agencies have exchanged properties without releasing the land to civilians. In Pallimunai in Mannar, land belonging to residents displaced since 1990 was occupied first by the army and then the police. At war’s end, the police promised to release their land and homes, but instead, the navy took control.

    “We’ve been made refugees in our own village,” said Helena Perera, one of the residents.

    All three major ethnic communities in the country – the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims – are affected by military occupation of land in the north and east. However, the vast majority of cases impact the Tamil community.

    Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases in which properties were destroyed while held by the military after the war, including Hindu temples, churches, mosques, and Buddhist shrines.

    Government authorities have also carried out land grabs since the end of the war. In July 2010, the military forcibly evicted residents of Ragamwela, Panama, in southeastern Ampara district. In November 2011, 200 soldiers arrived in Ashraf Nagar village in Ampara district and demanded that all its occupants leave. In such cases, the security forces set up military camps or used the land for other purposes, including commercial use.

    The government’s failure to establish a uniform policy on resettlement remains a critical problem, Human Rights Watch said. Some displaced families did not receive proper resettlement assistance when they returned to formerly occupied lands. The government transferred others from displacement camps, but they then entered into other forms of displacement, such as living with friends and relatives, or moving to other camps closer to their original properties, which the military still occupied. Those resettled more than once were denied full resettlement assistance when their land was eventually released.

    A 70-year-old fisherman from Myliddy said his family had moved 24 times in 27 years until the military released his property in July 2017. But without resettlement assistance, he is severely in debt. “We hope the government will at least help us restart our lives this one last time,” he said.

    Partial releases pose particular problems for returnee communities. Military control of neighboring areas hinders access to services and jobs, and heightens fears of surveillance and harassment by soldiers.

    Establishing ownership of land where multiple displacements have occurred over decades is difficult, Human Rights Watch said. But instead of leaving it exclusively to the military, the government should urgently set up a transparent and consultative process, including displaced communities, to establish land claims and restore civilian ownership.

    “The government has adopted an arbitrary, piecemeal approach to land returns, which is fomenting deep distrust among communities wary that the military is still in charge,” Ganguly said. “It should address rights violations and provide remedies to end the distress of those who have long suffered because of the military’s occupation of land.”


    https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/09/sri-lanka-government-slow-return-land
    #terre #Sri-Lanka #guerre #conflit #occupation #occupation_militaire #retour #rapport #IDPs #déplacés_internes #réfugiés #restitution_des_terres

    Lien vers le rapport:
    https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/09/why-cant-we-go-home/military-occupation-land-sri-lanka