organization:international red cross

Driven to suicide in Tunisia’s UNHCR refugee shelter

Lack of adequate care and #frustration over absence of resettlement plans prompt attempted suicides, refugees say.

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/3/20/24cb13bc01964399b31204c721e72f34_18.jpg

Last Monday night, 16-year-old Nato* slit his wrists and was rushed to the local hospital in Medenine.

He had decided to end his life in a refugee facility run by the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, in Medenine. After running for two years, escaping Eritrea and near-certain conscription into the country’s army, making it through Sudan, Egypt and Libya, he had reached Tunisia and despair.

A few days later, Nato was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in #Sfax, 210km north of Medenine, where he was kept on lockdown and was frustrated that he was not able to communicate with anyone in the facility.

Nato’s isn’t the only story of despair among refugees in Tunisia. A female refugee was taken to hospital after drinking bleach, while a 16-year-old unaccompanied young girl tried to escape over the borders to Libya, but was stopped at Ben Gardane.

“I’m not surprised by what has happened to Nato,” a 16-year-old at the UNHCR facility told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.

“They just keep us here without providing any support and after we ... witnessed killings of our friends. We feel completely abandoned. We don’t feel secure and protected,” he said.

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The 30 to 35 unaccompanied minors living in UNHCR’s reception facility in Medenine share a room, spending their days remembering past images of violence and abuse.

“I cannot get out of my mind the picture of my friend dying after they pointed a gun at his temple. He was sitting next to me. Sometimes at night, I cannot sleep,” the 16-year-old said.
’They’re trying to hide us here’

The UNHCR facility in Medenine struggles to offer essential services to a growing number of arrivals.

According to the information given to Al Jazeera, the asylum seekers and refugees have not received medical screenings or access to psychosocial support, nor were they informed clearly of their rights in Tunisia.

“We feel they are trying to hide us here,” said Amin*. “How can we say we are safe if UNHCR is not protecting our basic rights? If we are here left without options, we will try to cross the sea.”

Amin, 19, has no vision of what his life will be. He would like to continue his education or learn a new language but, since his arrival, he has only promises and hopes, no plans.

The young people here find themselves having to take care of themselves and navigate the questions of what their future will be like, at times without even being able to reach out to their families back home for comfort.

“My parents are in Eritrea and since more than a year, I was able to speak with them only for three minutes,” said Senait*, a 15-year-old boy from Eritrea.

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Aaron*, a 16-year-old boy who has been on the road for three years and three months, has not been able to call his relatives at all since his arrival in Tunisia.

“Last time I have contacted them was in 2016 while I was in Sudan. I miss them so much,” he said.

Last week, many of them participated in a peaceful demonstration, demanding medical care, support from the UNHCR and resettlement to third countries.

Refugee lives in suspension

Nato, as well as a number of refugee minors Al Jazeera spoke to, arrived in Tunisia over the Libyan border with the help of smugglers. The same is true for hundreds of refugees escaping Libya.

Tunisia registered more than 1,000 refugees and 350 asylum seekers, mainly from Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia.

But the country has neither the capacity nor the means to host refugees, and because it doesn’t have a coherent asylum system, the refugees find themselves living a largely suspended life.

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Officially, refugees are not allowed to work and, therefore, there is no formal system of protection for those that do work.

Awate*, a 24-year-old man from Eritrea, had been working for nine days in a hotel in the seaside city of Zarzis when he was arrested and brought to a police station where he was interrogated for 30 minutes.

“They told me ’why are you going to work without passport?’,” he said, adding that he has not worked since.

The UNHCR in Tunisia is pushing alternatives, which include enhancing refugees’ self-reliance and livelihood opportunities.

A month ago, a group of 32 people moved out of the reception centre with an offer of a monthly payment of 350 Tunisian dinars ($116) and help to find private accommodation. Among them, nine decided to go to the capital, Tunis. The plan is confirmed for three months, with no clarity on what happens next.

Aklilu*, a 36-year-old former child soldier from Eritrea who took up the offer, is now renting a small apartment on the main road to Djerba for 250 Tunisian dinars ($83).

“Why should I be forced to settle in a country that’s not ready to host refugees?” he said. “They are thinking of Tunisia as the final destination but there are no conditions for it. The UNHCR is not making any effort to integrate us. We don’t get any language courses or technical training.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2019/3/19/e03a6d82e51a41d383978bf90a4f0c93_18.jpg

Reminder: Israel is still holding a Palestinian lawmaker as political prisoner indefinitely
Haaretz.com - Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar has been incarcerated in an Israeli jail without a trial for 20 months. Another period of ‘administrative detention’ will soon expire. Will she come home?
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 14, 2019 5:20 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-reminder-israel-is-holding-palestinian-lawmaker-as-political-priso

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.5688892.1550157544!/image/1018316866.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/1018316866.jpg

Ghassan Jarrar says his life is meaningless without Khalida. In his office at the children’s toys and furniture factory he owns in Beit Furik, east of Nablus, its chairs upholstered with red fake fur, the face of the grass widower lights up whenever he talks about his wife. She’s been incarcerated in an Israeli prison for 20 months, without trial, without being charged, without evidence, without anything. In two weeks, however, she could be released, at long last. Ghassan is already busy preparing himself: He knows he’s liable to be disappointed again, for the fourth successive time.

Khalida Jarrar is Israel’s No. 1 female political prisoner, the leader of the inmates in Damon Prison, on Mt. Carmel, and the most senior Palestinian woman Israel has jailed, without her ever having been convicted of any offense.

The public struggle for her release has been long and frustrating, with more resonance abroad than in Israel. Here it encounters the implacable walls of the occupation authorities and the startling indifference of Israeli public opinion: People here don’t care that they’re living under a regime in which there are political prisoners. There is also the silence of the female MKs and the muteness of the women’s organizations.

Haaretz has devoted no fewer than five editorials demanding either that evidence against her be presented or that she be released immediately. To no avail: Jarrar is still in detention and she still hasn’t been charged.

She’s been placed in administrative detention – that is, incarceration without charges or a trial – a number of times: She was arrested for the first time on April 15, 2015 and sentenced to 15 months in jail, which she served. Some 13 months after she was released from that term, she was again put under administrative detention, which kept getting extended, for 20 consecutive months, starting in mid-2017: two stints of six months each, and two of four months each.

The latest arbitrary extension of her detention is set to end on February 28. As usual, until that day no one will know whether she is going to be freed or whether her imprisonment will be extended once again, without explanation. A military prosecutor promised at the time of the previous extension that it would be the last, but there’s no way to know. Typical of the occupation and its arbitrariness.

In any event, Ghassan is repainting their house, replacing air conditioners and the water heater, hanging new curtains, planting flowers in window boxes, ordering food and sweets in commercial quantities, and organizing a reception at one checkpoint and cars to await her at two other checkpoints – you can never know where exactly she will be released. A big celebration will take place in the Catholic church of Ramallah, which Ghassan has rented for three days on the last weekend of the month. Still, it’s all very much a matter of if and when.

Reminder: On April 2, 2015, troops of the Israel Defense Forces raided the Jarrar family’s home in El Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, and abducted Khalida, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

She was placed in administrative detention. In the wake of international protests over Israel’s arrest without charges of a lawmaker who was elected democratically, the occupation authorities decided to try her. She was indicted on 12 counts, all of them utterly grotesque, including suspicion of visiting the homes of prisoners’ families, suspicion of attending a book fair and suspicion of calling for the release of Ahmad Saadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who has been in prison for years.

The charge sheet against Jarrar – an opponent of the occupation, a determined feminist and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee – will one day serve as the crushing proof that there is not even the slightest connection between “military justice” and actual law and justice.

We saw her in the military court at Ofer base in the summer of 2015, proud and impressive, as her two daughters, Yafa and Suha, who returned from their studies in Canada after their mother’s arrest, wept bitterly with their father on the back benches of the courtroom. No one remained indifferent when the guards allowed the two daughters to approach and embrace their mother, in a rare moment of grace and humanity, as their father continued to cry in the back. It was a scene not easily forgotten.

Three months ago, she was transferred, along with the other 65 female Palestinian prisoners, from the Sharon detention facility where she’d been incarcerated to Damon, where the conditions are tougher: The authorities in Damon aren’t experienced in dealing with women and their special needs, Ghassan says. The showers are separate from the cells, and when a prisoner is menstruating, the red fluid flows into the yard and embarrasses the women. But at the same time, he says, the prison authorities are treating Khalida’s health situation well: She suffers from a blood-clotting problem and needs weekly medications and tests, which she receives regularly in her cell.

“You are my sweetheart” is inscribed on some of the synthetic-fur toys in the production room in Beit Furik. There are dolls of Mickey Mouse and of other characters from the cartoon world, sporting bold colors, along with padded rocking chairs and lamps for children’s rooms, all designed by Ghassan and all bespeaking sweet innocence and creativity. He’s devoted much less time to his factory since his wife’s incarceration. Of the 19 employees he had, only seven remain, one of whom, a deaf woman, is his outstanding worker. It’s a carpentry shop, an upholstery center and a sewing workshop all under one roof. Ghassan sells most of his products to Israel, although he’s been denied entry to the country for years.

Now his mind is focused on his wife’s release. The last time he visited her in prison was a month ago, 45 minutes on a phone through armor-plated glass. During her months in prison, Jarrar became an official examiner of matriculation exams for the Palestinian Education Ministry. The exam papers are brought to the prison by the International Red Cross. Among others that she has graded were Ahed Tamimi and her mother, Nariman. Ahed called Ghassan this week to ask when Khalida’s release was expected. She calls her “my aunt.”

The clock on the wall of Ghassan’s office has stopped. “Everything is meaningless for me without Khalida,” he says. “Life has no meaning without Khalida. Time stopped when Khalida was arrested. Khalida is not only my wife. She is my father, my mother, my sister and my friend. I breathe Khalida instead of air. Twenty months without meaning. My work is also meaningless.”

A business call interrupts this love poem, which is manifestly sincere and painful. What will happen if she’s not released, again? “I will wait another four months. Nothing will break me. I don’t let anything break me. That is my philosophy in life. It has always helped me.”

Ghassan spent 10 years of his life in an Israeli prison, too. Like his wife, he was accused of being active in the PFLP.

In the meantime, their older daughter, Yafa, 33, completed her Ph.D. in law at the University of Ottawa, and is clerking in a Canadian law firm. Suha, 28, returned from Canada, after completing, there and in Britain, undergraduate and master’s degrees in environmental studies. She’s working for the Ramallah-based human rights organization Al-Haq, and living with her father.

Both daughters are mobilized in the public campaign to free their mother, particularly by means of the social networks. Khalida was in jail when Yafa married a Canadian lawyer; Ghassan invited the whole family and their friends to watch the wedding ceremony in Canada on a large screen live via the Internet. Ghassan himself is prohibited from going abroad.

During Khalida’s last arrest, recalls her husband, IDF soldiers and Shin Bet security service agents burst into the house by force in the dead of night. They entered Suha’s room and woke her up. He remembers how she shouted, panic-stricken at the sight of the rifles being brandished by strange men in her bedroom wearing black masks, and how the soldiers handcuffed her from behind. As Ghassan replays the scene in his mind and remembers his daughter’s shouts, he grows distraught, as if it had happened this week.

Not knowing know what the soldiers were doing to her there, and only hearing her shouts, he tried to come to his daughter’s rescue, he recalls. He says he was almost killed by the soldiers for trying to force his way into Suha’s bedroom.

After the soldiers took Khalida, preventing Ghassan from even kissing her goodbye, despite his request – he discovered his daughter, bound by plastic handcuffs. After he released her, she wanted to rush into the street to follow the soldiers and her captive mother. He blocked her, and she went to the balcony of the house and screamed at them hysterically, cries of unfettered fury.

Last Saturday was Khalida’s 56th birthday. It wasn’t the first birthday she’d spent in prison, maybe not the last, either. Ghassan’s face positively glows when he talks about his wife’s birthday. He belongs to a WhatsApp group called “Best Friends” that is devoted to Khalida, where they posted his favorite photograph of her, wearing a purple blouse and raising her arms high in the courtroom of the Ofer facility. The members of the group congratulated him. Umar quoted a poem about a prisoner who is sitting in his cell in complete darkness, unable even to see his own shadow. Hidaya wrote something about freedom. Khamis wrote a traditional birthday greeting, and Ghassan summed up, “You are the bride of Palestine, renewing yourself every year. You are the crown on my head, al-Khalida, eternal one.”

#Khalida_Jarrar

How cyber war affects #humanitarian aid
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-cyber-war-affects-humanitarian-aid-e4f88b8caa6d?source=rss----3a8144

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How Cyber War Affects Humanitarian AidCyberwar tips from the @SwiftonSecurity Twitter accountImagine a dramatic, airport novel, most communications are down, electric and water service intermittent, internet services like Snapchat and messenger applications, non functional. The term cyber warfare conjures up images of computers launching attacks against each other, interrupting the modern world. Imagining how one would affect current humanitarian aid operations, or the knock on crisis digital war could create has yet to be fully explored. The International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) spotting a need, ran a symposium on this and related topics with the Digital Do No Harm Conference in London 11–12 December 2018. An esteemed colleague brought me on board the working group for cyber (...)

#humanitarian-aid #cybersecurity #cyberwar #cryptocurrency

» Family Officially Informed About Their Son’s Death By Army Fire IMEMC News - June 5, 2018 11:53 AM
▻http://imemc.org/article/family-officially-informed-about-their-sons-death-by-army-fire

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The International Red Cross have informed a Palestinian family from Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, that their son is the young man who was shot and killed, Monday, by Israeli soldiers at the border fence, in southern Gaza.

The slain Palestinian has been identified as Ramzi Najjar , a relative and a neighbor of the Palestinian medic, Razan Najjar, 22, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces while helping treat wounded protesters, on Friday June 1st, 2018.

He was shot, on Monday afternoon, near the border fence, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, after cutting sections of the border fence. Other Palestinians, who were with Ramzi, managed to escape unharmed.

The Israeli army is holding his body and refusing to transfer it back to his family and claimed that the Palestinian “was carrying an axe to kill Israelis.”

His sister said that Ramzi was saddened and angered by the death of Razan, and that he was telling her about the great stuff Razan is doing, describing her as the angel of mercy, helping all the wounded, and her ongoing care, dedication, selfless giving and support to the injured Palestinians.

She added that her brother and friends were always present at the Return Camp, helping the people, bringing them water, and doing whatever we could to assist.

#Palestine_assassinée

« #Panama_papers » : Mossack Fonseca abuse du nom de la #Croix-Rouge pour cacher de l’argent sale
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/panama-papers/article/2016/04/10/panama-papers-mossack-fonseca-abuse-du-nom-de-la-croix-rouge-pour-cacher-de-

http://s1.lemde.fr/image/2016/04/10/644x322/4899540_3_2b3e_2016-04-10-cb7cc93-2836-1ekhf7l_570bed7394951661582989b316da5515.jpg

« Comme les banques et les instituts financiers sont aujourd’hui tenus d’obtenir des informations sur les bénéficiaires économiques finaux, il est devenu difficile pour nous de ne pas divulguer l’identité de ceux de la Faith Foundation. C’est pourquoi nous avons mis en place cette structure désignant l’International Red Cross. Comme ça, c’est plus simple. »

▻http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

A Palestinian Mother of Four, Shot 17 Times for Being a Bad Driver -
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Jan 02, 2016 4:24 AM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.694876
Mahdia Hammad was hurrying home to feed her baby. Border Policemen signaled her to stop, but she continued to drive, slowly. Then they sprayed her car with bullets.

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Here, next to the house’s fence, is where the car rolled to a stop after it had continued to move even though its driver was already dead. And here’s where the Border Policemen stood as they shot dozens of bullets into her car. It all happened on this normally quiet residential street at the edge of the town of Silwad, north of Ramallah. Only the shell casings still scattered along the side of the road and the fragments of the shattered windows of the Hyundai Lantra testify mutely to what happened here last Friday.

This is where Israeli troops killed Mahdia Hammad, a 40-year-old mother of four, the youngest a child of 10 months. In Israel it was claimed that she tried to run over the Border Policemen, who were standing in the street. Her husband claims that she was an inexperienced driver who was hurrying home to feed their son and was apparently rattled by the sight of the Israeli force and lost her head. One way or the other, nothing can explain the rage and lust to kill that seized the troops. They sprayed her car and her body with bullets in a frenzy of shooting that continued even after she was dead.

Together with Ashraf Idabis and Iyad Haddad – field-workers for the International Red Cross and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, respectively – we spent a few hours at the scene this week, taking testimonies from residents and passersby who witnessed the incident. The testimonies, which were given separately and were for the most part identical, raise two very disturbing questions: Why did Hammad keep driving after the police signaled her to stop? And why, since she was driving very slowly – about 20 kilometers an hour, according to all the eyewitnesses – without apparently intending to ram anyone, was she shot so many times, in what seems like an apoplexy of fury and craving to kill, including a “confirmation of kill” after the car had come to a stop. Is it possible that this woman, who hadn’t driven a car in over a year and was apparently rushing home to feed her baby, intended to perpetrate a ramming attack? Was killing her the only way to stop her?

An acrid smell of tear gas was still hanging in the air in Silwad, even midweek. There are demonstrations here on Fridays, opposite Highway 60 and the settlement of Ofra, not far from where Hammad was killed. The street running perpendicular to the site is blocked by a mound of dirt and strewn with stones and the remains of scorched tires. Hammad did not take part in the demonstrations. She was a housewife and mother; her husband, Adib, works as an inspector for a construction company.

December 25 started off as a routine day. The couple had breakfast together, after which Adib attended prayers in the mosque, followed by lunch. In the afternoon, Mahdia said she wanted to use the family car to visit her sister, Samira, who lives on the hill opposite Silwad, and bring her some firewood.

According to Adib, his wife had a driver’s license but rarely used it and hadn’t driven for around a year, since the birth of their last child. Mahdia promised to be back quickly, before the baby woke from his sleep, in order to feed him.

Now Adib is tormenting himself for having given her the car. He’s been left to take care of the children, along with their grandmother. Samira said afterward that her sister had been in such a hurry to get home that she didn’t even stay for coffee.

At 4:20 P.M., Adib heard the sound of distant gunfire. Suddenly filled with foreboding, he rushed out to the street. He phoned his wife, but she didn’t answer. He called her sister, who told him Mahdia had left for home a few minutes earlier. Then came a call from their eldest, Zakariya, 20, who asked his father who had been driving the family car. When Adib told him that his mother had taken it, he heard cries of anguish on the other end of the line. Weeping and shouting, Zakariya told his father that he had seen the bullet-riddled car from a distance and knew it was theirs – and now came the appalling realization that his mother was in the vehicle.

A relative, Yihyeh Mubarak, who lives in New Orleans, served in the U.S. Army in the Iraq war and returns to his hometown for a few months every year to work as a paramedic, immediately took Zakariya into his ambulance and gave him tranquilizers. Mubarak already knew Mahdia had been hurt badly, but the Border Policemen prevented him at gunpoint from approaching her car in order to take her to the hospital. He received her body, riddled with 17 bullets, that evening from the Civil Administration’s Beit El base – which was unusual, because Israel almost always delays the return of bodies of perpetrators of attacks – and took it to the hospital in Ramallah.

Mubarak is on the verge of tears as he recounts the day’s events. Never, he declares, has he seen such violent behavior by soldiers and police in the territories as during the past few months.

Back on the street of death, a mule is now tied up next to the spot from which the Border Policemen opened fire at Mahdia Hammad. She’d begun to drive up the street and in front of her a Mitsubishi jeep carrying construction workers who quickly turned around when they saw the Israeli troops ahead. They related that they had shouted to Mahdia to turn around, too, but she ignored them. Her window was closed and maybe she didn’t hear them. She went on driving.

From a distance of dozens of meters, a Border Policeman signaled her with his hand to stop, but she continued on, slowly.

The shooting started when she was some 20 to 30 meters from them. One witness said that a warning shot was fired into the air, but none of the others saw that. In any event, the volleys of rifle fire began immediately. According to one eyewitness, a policeman knelt on the ground and aimed his rifle at the car, while the others fired bursts of bullets. The testimonies indicate that there were about eight Border Policemen on the street. One person present related that he saw Mahdia raise her hand in the car, possibly to signal the policemen to stop shooting.

When the car came to a halt, another policeman emerged from the perpendicular street, thrust his rifle into the bullet-riddled car and fired another volley into Mahdia’s head, even though she was certainly dead by then. The troops then took the car and the body away and prevented everyone, including the ambulance driver, from approaching.

The Border Police spokesperson stated this week that its investigation revealed that, “the shooting took place during an attempt to run over Border Policemen involved in an operational action in Silwad. The terrorist, who saw that the forces were busy dispersing persons that were disturbing the peace, accelerated suddenly while swerving in their direction. The forces fired warning shots in the air but she kept moving toward them while accelerating her vehicle. The forces fired shots at the car to avoid being hit and immediately stopped firing when the danger had passed. The attempt to omit facts and twist the circumstances of the incident constitutes a futile effort to distort the truth.”

What actually happened? Did Mahdia understand that she had to stop? Did she try unsuccessfully to brake? Was she really trying to run over the policemen? Her husband says she suffered from hearing problems. He says she was a bad driver, and finds it impossible to imagine that she intended to run over anyone. She loved her life, he says, and most of all she loved Yihyeh, their baby.

The car has not yet been returned to him, nor has the computer that was in it, with all the construction plans he was working on.

The widower asks quietly, “How was the story presented in Israel? Do the Israelis know what happened? Did the way Mahdia died lead to a public discussion?”

We, of course, are ashamed to reply.

Hillary Clinton Is No Friend of Israel - Opinion - Israel News -
The Democratic presidential candidate’s love letter to Israel last week was simply embarrassing, and proves she is an obstacle to what is best for the Israeli state.

Gideon Levy 08.11.2015

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.684711

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Hillary Clinton’s election as U.S. president would ensure Israel’s continued decline and degeneration. And so she is not a friend, but an enemy. She must not be allowed to deceive and present herself as a friend of Israel, as she tried so ingratiatingly to do in an article published in The Forward (“How I would reaffirm unbreakable bond with Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu”) last week. The tear ducts were targeted as she wrote of how she assisted Magen David Adom in being accepted to the International Red Cross. But she and those like her – false friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.

Whether Clinton believes what she wrote or simply wanted once again to sell her soul for a fistful of dollars from Haim Saban and other Jewish donors, the result is extremely embarrassing. A love letter to Israel, the likes of which no U.S. statesman would ever write to another country. Americans believe “Israel is more than a country – it’s a dream,” she states. Most of the world calls it a nightmare, yet Clinton says a dream. What dream exactly? The dream of tyrannical control over another people? Racism? Nationalism? The killing of women and children in Gaza?

What happened to the Hillary Rodham Clinton who in her youth fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and as a lawyer specialized in children’s rights? Did she not hear what her dream state is doing to Palestinian children? What happened to the glorious career woman who was considered liberal and justice-seeking on her way up? Did she forget it all? Does money buy everything? Or, when it comes to Israel, do all principles suddenly change?

Did the former secretary of state not hear about the Israeli occupation? After all, she didn’t mention it once in her article. This is not the time or place to anger Saban. To Clinton, Israel is a “thriving democracy” and to hell with the violent and totalitarian regime in its backyard. And so Clinton is also an enemy of peace and justice. She doesn’t believe there has been the slightest damage to Palestinian rights. Israelis being stabbed in Jerusalem “appalls” Clinton. Palestinians being unjustifiably shot to death, meanwhile, fails to register with her. They will love her for that on Fifth Avenue. Religious figures who encourage killing are, of course, only Muslim; only Israeli security must be vouchsafed. The synagogues of Manhattan will love that, too. Clinton pledges to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during her first month in office. Also, that she will send a delegation of the U.S. Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to Israel. What for, exactly?

For Clinton, this isn’t “just about policy,” it is “a personal commitment to the friendship … and our vision for peace and security.” One could, of course, explain away this sorry, honey-dripped statement with the need to raise more money from Jews. But one cannot ignore the content. Clinton is a leading candidate to become the next president of the United States, and her commitment to the continued Israeli occupation and its funding has been proven in the past. The Palestinians are also reading her words. What are they supposed to think in the face of this one-sided extremism? What can they expect in light of such outright disregard for their fate? Hope for change, which has already taken a beating during President Barack Obama’s time in office, will not be able to rise if Clinton is president.

Most American Jews will support her, some because they think she is good for Israel. Well, dear brethren, she is not. A person who supports the continued occupation is like a person who continues to buy drugs for an addicted relative. This is neither concern nor friendship; it is destruction. Perhaps some ignorant Republican would be preferable in the White House after all. But, on second thoughts, he would surely be funded by Sheldon Adelson.

Déclaration de Laurent Fabius : « le roi d’Arabie séoudite ne mériterait pas d’être sur la terre » (OK, c’est pas vrai, je l’ai inventée).

Yemen ’already looks like Syria after five years of war’
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/11813169/Yemen-already-looks-like-Syria-after-five-years-of-war.html

Five months of war in Yemen has wrought destruction similar to that seen in Syria after five years, said the head of the International Red Cross on Wednesday.

Returning from a visit to the war-ravaged nation, Peter Maurer told the Associated Press that entrenched poverty, months of intensified warfare and limits on imports because of an international embargo have contributed to “catastrophic” conditions.

Cable 09TELAVIV1694_a : IDF TO INVESTIGATE COMPLAINTS OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT BY ITS FORCES DURING OPERATION CAST LEAD, 2009 July 30

▻https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TELAVIV1694_a.html

The allegations of criminal conduct by various organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross have been persistent since the conclusion of “Cast Lead” in January 2009. Individual Palestinians also testified to IDF abuses such as looting, beatings, vandalism of property and the use of the local population as human shields. But by far the strongest reverbration in Israel was that created by the Israeli organization “Breaking the Silence”, which collected testimony from 26 unnamed IDF soldiers. All of the soldiers had been involved in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, and testified to instances where Gazans were used as human shields, incendiary phosphorous shells were fired over civilian population areas, and other examples of excessive firepower that caused unnecessary fatalities and destruction of property.

et pour ce qui est des méthodes de la propagande militaire israélienne :

Brigadier General Avi Benayahu, the IDF military spokesman, is a seasoned player when it comes to handling the media. “Breaking the Silence” constituted a very different challenge, however, as the testimony was by Israelis who had served in the operation being criticized. Their allegations were not easy to dismiss, and Benayahu was careful not to refute them outright or imply that they were untrue or misleading. Instead, he pointed the finger at the methodology of the organization that had gathered their anonymous testimony, denouncing “Breaking the Silence” for making general allegations and failing to investigate the details. As part of his campaign to discredit “Breaking the Silence”, the IDF Spokesman claimed that it had been masquerading as a non-profit organization when in reality it was a registered (for profit) company, even quoting its putative registration number in a live interview with Israel Army Radio. ("Breaking the Silence" has not to our knowledge responded to the allegation. According to the media, the GOI has expressed its dissatisfaction with some European governments who have reportedly channeled funds to “Breaking the Silence.”) Finally, Benayahu lambasted the organization for failing to submit its report to the IDF with a sufficient delay ahead of publication — it gave 24 hours — so that the military could investigate the testimonies. In other words, the IDF was outraged that “Breaking the Silence” went public rather than give the IDF “first refusal” on a military investigation that is public only in terms of its findings.

#wikileaks #cablegate

#Gaza : International #Red_Cross abandons residents during #al-Shujaiyah massacre
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaza-international-red-cross-abandons-residents-during-al-shujaiy

http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/4cols/leading_images/370787-01-08.jpg

Displaced Palestinians from al-Shujaiyah neighborhood in the Gaza Strip rest on makeshift beds at the UN school where they and others have taken refuge after fleeing heavy fighting in their area, on July 21, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Marco Longari) Displaced Palestinians from al-Shujaiyah neighborhood in the Gaza Strip rest on makeshift beds at the UN school where they and others have taken refuge after fleeing heavy fighting in their area, on July 21, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Marco Longari)

The Gaza Strip’s ordeal under the onslaught of the Israeli bombardment has unmasked international organizations that hide behind the cloak of humanism and protection of human life. Saturday night, corpses and body parts littered the streets and (...)

#Palestine #al-shujaiyah_massacre #Articles #Israel