position:security guard

  • Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people

    Too often whites at discussions on race decide for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn. And it is their space. All spaces are.

    I was leaving a corporate office building after a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately. The audience for each session had been similar to the dozens I had faced before. There was an overrepresentation of employees of color, an underrepresentation of white employees. The participants of color tended to make eye contact with me and nod – I even heard a few “Amens” – but were never the first to raise their hands with questions or comments. Meanwhile, there was always a white man eager to share his thoughts on race. In these sessions I typically rely on silent feedback from participants of color to make sure I am on the right track, while trying to moderate the loud centering of whiteness.

    In the hallway an Asian American woman locked eyes with me and mouthed: “Thank you.” A black man squeezed my shoulder and muttered: “Girl, if you only knew.” A black woman stopped me, looked around cautiously to make sure no one was within earshot, and then said: “You spoke the truth. I wish I could have shared my story so you’d know how true. But this was not the place.”

    This was not the place. Despite the care I take in these sessions to center people of color, to keep them safe, this still was not the place. Once again, what might have been a discussion about the real, quantifiable harm being done to people of color had been subsumed by a discussion about the feelings of white people, the expectations of white people, the needs of white people.

    As I stood there, gazing off into the memory of hundreds of stifled conversations about race, I was brought to attention by a white woman. She was not nervously looking around to see who might be listening. She didn’t ask if I had time to talk, though I was standing at the door.

    “Your session was really nice,” she started. “You said a lot of good things that will be useful to a lot of people.”

    She paused briefly: “But the thing is, nothing you talked about today is going to help me make more black friends.”

    I was reminded of one of the very first panels on race I had participated in. A black man in Seattle had been pepper-sprayed by a security guard for doing nothing more than walking through a shopping center. It had been caught on camera. A group of black writers and activists, myself included, were onstage in front of a majority-white Seattle audience, talking about the incident. Fellow panelist Charles Mudede, a brilliant writer, film-maker and economic theorist, addressed the economic mechanisms at work: this security guard had been told that his job was to protect his employers’ ability to make a profit. He had been told that his job was to keep customers who had money to spend happy and safe. And every day he was fed cultural messages about who had money and who didn’t. Who was violent and who wasn’t. Charles argued that the security guard had been doing his job. In a white supremacist capitalist system, this is what doing your job looked like.

    Well, at least he was trying to argue that point. Because halfway through, a white woman stood up and interrupted him.

    “Look, I’m sure you know a lot about all this stuff,” she said, hands on hips. “But I didn’t come here for an economics lesson. I came here because I feel bad about what happened to this man and I want to know what to do.”

    That room, apparently, wasn’t the place either. According to this woman, this talk was not, or should not have been, about the feelings of the man who was pepper-sprayed, or those of the broader black community, which had just been delivered even more evidence of how unsafe we are in our own city. She felt bad and wanted to stop feeling bad. And she expected us to provide that to her.

    At a university last month, where I was discussing the whitewashing of publishing and the need for more unfiltered narratives by people of color, a white man insisted that there was no way we were going to be understood by white people if we couldn’t make ourselves more accessible. When I asked him if all of the elements of white culture that people of color have to familiarize themselves with just to get through the day are ever modified to suit us, he shrugged and looked down at his notebook. At a workshop I led last week a white woman wondered if perhaps people of color in America are too sensitive about race. How was she going to be able to learn if we were always getting so upset at her questions?

    I’ve experienced similar interruptions and dismissals more times than I can count. Even when my name is on the poster, none of these places seem like the right places in which to talk about what I and so many people of color need to talk about. So often the white attendees have decided for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn. And it is their space. All spaces are.

    One day, in frustration, I posted this social media status:

    “If your anti-racism work prioritizes the ‘growth’ and ‘enlightenment’ of white America over the safety, dignity and humanity of people of color – it’s not anti-racism work. It’s white supremacy.”

    One of the very first responses I received from a white commenter was: “OK, but isn’t it better than nothing?”

    Is it? Is a little erasure better than a lot of erasure? Is a little white supremacy leaked into our anti-racism work better than no anti-racism work at all? Every time I stand in front of an audience to address racial oppression in America, I know that I am facing a lot of white people who are in the room to feel less bad about racial discrimination and violence in the news, to score points, to let everyone know that they are not like the others, to make black friends. I know that I am speaking to a lot of white people who are certain they are not the problem because they are there.

    Just once I want to speak to a room of white people who know they are there because they are the problem. Who know they are there to begin the work of seeing where they have been complicit and harmful so that they can start doing better. Because white supremacy is their construct, a construct they have benefited from, and deconstructing white supremacy is their duty.

    Myself and many of the attendees of color often leave these talks feeling tired and disheartened, but I still show up and speak. I show up in the hopes that maybe, possibly, this talk will be the one that finally breaks through, or will bring me a step closer to the one that will. I show up and speak for people of color who can’t speak freely, so that they might feel seen and heard. I speak because there are people of color in the room who need to hear that they shouldn’t have to carry the burden of racial oppression, while those who benefit from that same oppression expect anti-racism efforts to meet their needs first. After my most recent talk, a black woman slipped me a note in which she had written that she would never be able to speak openly about the ways that racism was impacting her life, not without risking reprisals from white peers. “I will heal at home in silence,” she concluded.

    Is it better than nothing? Or is the fact that in 2019 I still have to ask myself that question every day most harmful of all?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/28/confronting-racism-is-not-about-the-needs-and-feelings-of-white-people
    #racisme #inégalité #subalternité #silence #pouvoir #trauma #traumatisme #safe_place #porte-parole #espace_public #parole_publique #témoignage #liberté_d'expression #Noirs #Blancs #USA #Etats-Unis
    #can_the_subaltern_speak?

  • Israeli TV journalist reacts to outcry after saying occupation turns soldiers into ’animals’

    Oshrat Kotler, who received death threats for her comment, says she can’t ignore ’heavy price that we are paying through our children for ruling over another people’
    Itay Stern
    Feb 24, 2019

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-anchor-reacts-to-outcry-after-saying-occupation-turns-soldiers-to-a

    TV journalist Oshrat Kotler on Saturday responded to the uproar she caused last week, when she said Israeli soldiers become “human animals” during their army service in the West Bank.

    “They send children to the army, to the territories, and get them back human animals. That’s the result of the occupation,” Kotler said last week following a piece on the five Israeli soldiers who were indicted for beating two detained Palestinians, which aired on her Channel 13 show, “Magazine.”

    On Saturday night she spoke again toward the end of the program to clarify her comments, choking with tears as she spoke.

    “Last week we broadcast here a very complex and painful report about the soldiers of the ‘Netzah Yehuda’ [battalion] who were involved in a series of harsh acts of violence,” she said. “For two weeks we investigated, filmed and edited, reporter Arik Weiss and myself, this report with the greatest caution because both of us understood that the matter was very charged and very hard to absorb.”

    Thousands of complaints were filed against Kotler, as well as death threats, after which Channel 13 decided to provide her with a security guard. Many politicians rushed to condemn her comments, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, both demanding she apologize.

    Kotler criticized politicians in the midst of an election campaign for making “cynical” use of her comments and portraying them out of the story’s context. “What I said here was directed only at the soldiers who violated the law and not toward IDF soldiers in general. They were spoken with great pain,” said Kotler. Channel 13 News came to her defense, saying she was allowed to express her opinion, even if it does not reflect the opinion of the entire editorial staff.

    “The purpose of the story, as was the purpose of my comments that followed it too, was to make us as a society to take personal responsibility for the actions of the soldiers of Netzah Yehuda, because it is impossible to accuse them of crossing moral and legal boundaries when we are the ones who put them in an impossible situation day after day,” she added. “The public criticism should not be directed at the soldiers, and it would be proper for the court to consider that and be lenient in their sentencing."

    • VIDEO. « Ils reviennent transformés en animaux. C’est le résultat de l’occupation » : une journaliste israélienne critique les soldats de Tsahal en plein direct
      Mis à jour le 22/02/2019
      https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/proche-orient/israel-palestine/video-ils-reviennent-transformes-en-animaux-c-est-le-resultat-de-l-occu

      Elle a prononcé ce commentaire après avoir évoqué le cas de soldats de l’armée israélienne soupçonnés d’avoir violemment frappé deux suspects palestiniens aux mains attachées et aux yeux bandés.

      Je vais continuer à parler dans cette émission. Vous ne me ferez pas taire." Le coup de colère, en direct, de la journaliste israélienne Oshrat Kotler a suscité une vive controverse, samedi 16 février, rapporte Haaretz. Elle a ainsi affirmé sur la chaîne HaHadashot 13 que le contrôle israélien de la Cisjordanie transformait les soldats en « animaux ».

  • Khashoggi Killing Detailed in New Book: ‘We Came to Take You to Riyadh’ - The New York Times

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/world/middleeast/khashoggi-killing-book.html

    By Carlotta Gall

    Jan. 17, 2019

    ISTANBUL — A new book written by three Turkish reporters and drawing on audio recordings of the killing of a Saudi expatriate, Jamal Khashoggi, offers new details about an encounter that began with a demand that he return home and ended in murder and dismemberment.

    “First we will tell him ‘We are taking you to Riyadh,’” one member of a Saudi hit team told another, the book claims. “If he doesn’t come, we will kill him here and get rid of the body.”

    Turkish officials have cited the recordings, saying they captured the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, in his Oct. 2 visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. And intelligence officials leaked some details in a campaign to force Saudi Arabia to own up to the crime.

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    But the new book offers the most comprehensive description to date of what is on those recordings. It sets the scene as a team of Saudi operatives lay their plans before Mr. Khashoggi arrives, and then recounts what happened next.
    A security guard at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul after Mr. Khashoggi was killed there.CreditChris Mcgrath/Getty Images
    Image
    A security guard at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul after Mr. Khashoggi was killed there.CreditChris Mcgrath/Getty Images

    The three journalists, Abdurrahman Simsek, Nazif Karaman and Ferhat Unlu, work for an investigative unit at the pro-government newspaper Sabah, and are known for their close ties to Turkish intelligence. They said that they did not have access to the audio recordings but were briefed by intelligence officials who did.

    A Turkish security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed separately that the details described in the book were accurate. The book, “Diplomatic Atrocity: The Dark Secrets of the Jamal Khashoggi Murder,” is written in Turkish and went on sale in December.

  • The fragility of Syrian refugee women in Turkey

    #Violence, #exploitation, #marginalisation: these are the challenges of a difficult everyday life for many Syrian refugee women in Turkey.

    Rima, whose name has been changed for security reasons, is a young Syrian woman. Until five years ago, she was living in Syria with her family. One day, a bomb dropped on their house, killing her husband and three brothers. After this unexpected tragedy, Rima, mother of three, left her hometown for Turkey. In November 2013, she started a new life with her kids in a refugee camp in the Turkish border town of Sanliurfa, one of the oldest Syrian refugee camps in Turkey.

    This was the beginning of new traumas. She accompanied her brother’s pregnant wife to the state hospital in Viransehir, a district of Urfa. There she was raped by a security guard and an interpreter. The attackers blackmailed her with videos and photographs. Rima was terrified, so she kept silent. In the following days the rape went on, and the number of attackers raised to seven. As a result of gang-rape, Rima was hospitalised for losing significant amounts of blood and taken to the intensive care unit. Luckily, she recovered. Now there is an ongoing investigation by Viransehir’s Public Prosecutor’s Office. Rima was brave enough to go to the Turkish police later. But not every Syrian refugee woman is.

    Endemic violence

    The June 2018 report “Needs Assessment of Syrian Women and Girls Under Temporary Protection Status in Turkey” by United Nations (UN) Women Turkey emphasises that Syrian refugee women are poorly informed about their rights to protection and the legal support services available to them. The same report shows that 73% of Syrian women are unaware of where to seek assistance related to violence or harassment.

    According to official statistics, by December 2018 more than 3,6 million registered Syrian refugees are living in Turkey. 45,7% of them are female and half of this female population is under the age of 18. Refugee girls and women, who are more vulnerable to exploitation, are subjected to all forms of violence in their daily lives. On the other hand, services for Syrian refugees in Turkey are largely gender-blind, leaving many problems unsolved.

    “I can’t recall a single Syrian refugee woman I have met who didn’t report violence. Marital rape is also very common, but many Syrian women don’t even define these experiences as abuse. They don’t even know that marital rape is a crime that will be punished”, says lawyer Gokce Yazar, a member of the Sanliurfa Bar Association Refugee Rights Commission.

    Polygamous marriages

    Volunteers in Turkey observe that child marriages and polygamous marriages are two major problems for Syrian refugee girls and women. Gokce Yazar, as one of the lawyers training Syrian women about divorce, continues: “How can women initiate divorce in a polygamous marriage? They can’t”.

    Polygamous marriages, outlawed in Turkey – unlike Syria, are not only present among the Syrian community in Turkey. It is not a secret that Turkish men, mostly in rural areas, are also illegally “marrying” Syrian women as their second or third wives.

    There are even websites promoting Syrian women for Turkish men. One of these websites, called “Syrian Women”, features several sexist stereotypes such as “What Syrian women want”. One of the sections on this so-called “marriage website” reads as follows:

    “There are many Syrian refugees in Turkey. In every city you can bump into a Syrian. Syrian women are fragile just like our women. Since Syrian women do not set a condition for legal marriage, you can live with them without marrying them".
    Forced into prostitution

    In addition to marriage cases, forced prostitution is another fundamental problem. Some Syrian women often become sex workers after escaping domestic violence. Some of them are forced into sex work by their partners. Others are exploited by gangs of human traffickers on the way.

    “In Viransehir, Syrian women are forced into prostitution just to get some milk or diaper for their babies”, says lawyer Yazar, adding that the Sanliurfa Bar Association is still receiving such complaints.


    https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Turkey/The-fragility-of-Syrian-refugee-women-in-Turkey-191805
    #réfugiés_syriennes #réfugiés_syriens #femmes #turquie #mariage_forcé #prostitution #asile #migrations

  • #Blackwater security guard convicted in 2007 Iraqi civilian massacre at third U.S. trial
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/blackwater-security-guard-convicted-in-2007-iraqi-civilian-massacre-at-third-us-trial/2018/12/19/e8b3d8ac-fd5f-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html

    A former Blackwater security guard whose 2014 murder conviction was vacated on appeal was convicted by a federal jury Wednesday, ending the Justice Department’s long pursuit of accountability for a 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Baghdad that drew international condemnation during the Iraq War, the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington said.

    A federal jury deliberated five days before finding Nicholas A. Slatten, 35, guilty of first-degree murder after a five-week trial in Washington, D.C.

    It was the third time since 2014 that Slatten was on trial over the deaths at a crowded traffic circle in Baghdad’s Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007.

  • Stop security guard and police violence! Justizwatch on the Bamberg police raid of Dec 11, 2018

    Statement by Justizwatch on the police raid in the AEO Bamberg (Bavaria, Germany) on the night of December 11, 2018

    18.12.2018

    A dispute between Eritrean asylum seekers and security guards in the AnkER Centre of Upper Franconia (AEO) in Bamberg (Bavaria, Germany) on December 11, 2018 shortly after midnight was followed by a large-scale, brutal police raid involving 100 to 200 police officers and the Special Deployment Commando (SEK). According to the police report, nine asylum seekers were arrested. Pre-trial detention orders were later issued against four of them. The accusations by the public prosecutor are severe: it investigates among other things because of attempted manslaughter and serious arson.

    The police and the public prosecutor’s office describe the asylum seekers as extremely violent: Allegedly they first attacked guards, then barricaded themselves in a building, set fire to an apartment and threw cobblestones at police officers. The media uncritically adopted this depiction. Hardly any journalist took the trouble to talk to the victims on the spot and to check the information provided by the police.

    However, talking to the affected Eritreans results in a completely different picture. They report that security guards attacked and severely beat them after a verbal dispute. This resulted in serious injuries, including broken teeth and a broken rib. The abuse by the guards continued even after the police had arrived on site. However, the police were not interested in the perspective of the asylum seekers, and simply arrested them.

    The incident follows systematic security guard violence in the camp that is known to both to the Bamberg public prosecutor and the AEO management. They know that employees of the company Fair Guards and its subcontractors founded a so-called “special team” in the summer of 2017. This team has been responsible for countless attacks against asylum seekers, especially Black men. Complaints by asylum seekers concerning these attacks to the AEO management and by former security employees against the main company Fair Guards have so far remained largely without consequences. Instead, the police and the prosecutor have criminalized the victims of such attacks in several cases.

    Most reports on the December 11 police raid in Bamberg also do not mention that after the arrest of the Eritreans, the police carried out a brutal raid in other AEO buildings. Civil servants violently destroyed the doors of unlocked apartments and searched the rooms of completely uninvolved residents. They took eight asylum seekers from Nigeria out of their beds at 4 a.m., handcuffed them and drove them, some still half-naked, to the police station – on the unfounded accusation that they had participated in the dispute between the Eritreans and the guards.

    We demand a complete investigation of the police raid on December 11, 2018 and a thorough examination of all the evidence in the Bamberg Security Complex.

    We demand that the role and complicity of the security company Fair Guards, the camp management and law enforcement be investigated.

    We demand an end to the constant police raids in the AnkER Centres that have no other purpose than to stage refugees as criminals and to intimidate them.

    We call for journalism that allows refugees to voice their views.

    http://cultureofdeportation.org/2018/12/18/justizwatch-on-the-bamberg-police-raid
    #police #violences_policières #Bamberg #Allemagne #réfugiés #migrations #médias #criminalisation #réfugiés_érythréens #demandeurs_d'asile #violence #Anker-Zentrum

  • Behind a Saudi Prince’s Rise, Two Loyal Enforcers - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-crown-prince-loyalists.html

    When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia convened an outdoor banquet this spring for his fellow Arab rulers, seated among the kings, princes and presidents were two friends with few qualifications other than their closeness to the young prince himself: a poet who has become known for orchestrating ferocious social media campaigns, and a former security guard who runs the Saudi sports commission.

    The two men had each played pivotal roles in many of the brazen power plays that have marked Prince Mohammed’s sprint to dominance of the kingdom — the ouster of the previous crown prince, the detentions of royals and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, the kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, and the kingdom’s diplomatic spats with Qatar and Canada. Even Saudi royals have come to fear the prince’s two friends — Saud el-Qahtani, 40, and Turki al-Sheikh, 37 — and the Arab potentates around the table could scarcely object to their presence.

    Lampistes ? #mbs #khashoggi

  • Just look at Ben-Gurion Airport - Opinion
    Haaretz.com | Gideon Levy | Aug 16, 2018 1:07 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-just-look-at-ben-gurion-airport-1.6384896

    Look at Ben-Gurion Airport, and see us. Nothing reflects Israel 2018 better than that entrance gate, the place Israelis hold most sacred.

    Elaborately designed, efficient, modern, with a semblance of the epitome of freedom – here the “open sky” is the limit – while under the magnificent columns and moving walkways the injustices fester, well hidden, as usual, behind screens. The Ben-Gurion we love so much is an airport of segregation, an airdrome partially in the Shin Bet’s control, including a thought-police station. Welcome arrivals and departures: Peter Beinart is not alone.

    It begins long before the entrance. About two million residents, some of them living on the very outskirts of the airport, see it from their window but cannot go near it, not to mention use its services. Their Jewish neighbors are allowed, but they themselves are prohibited. They’re Palestinians. Have you heard of any other international airport that is closed to some of the state’s residents solely because of their origin? If this isn’t the port of apartheid, what is?

    As the permitted ones drive up to the checkpoint at the entrance, the ceremony of opening the window and greeting the security guard, armed with a machine gun – the most racist procedure there is – takes place. Everyone cooperates with this sickening act, intended to hear the passengers’ accent and ascertain whether they are Jews or Arabs.

    The security guards know what they’re doing. They also know what they’re doing at the security examinations in the airport. Invasive, intrusive questions that have no place in a free country, that have nothing to do with flight security. Not everyone is subjected to this, of course. Profiling is the name of the game, intended to make it easy for us, the privileged Israeli Jews, and deprive and degrade all the rest. Security, hush-hush, don’t ask questions.

    And then the numbers with the different endings on the sticker attached to your passport, separating one traveler from another, on the basis of his origin, or the extent of suspicion he raises. There are numbers whose digital endings mean complete nudity in front of the male or female examiner. This does not apply to the Jewish Israelis.

    Most of the suspicions in Ben-Gurion Airport arise because of origin or ideological affiliation. An American of Palestinian origin – suspicious. A Jew is not, of course, unless he’s a leftist. There are no suspicions of right-wingers. There’s no chance that an racist evangelist from Alabama, an “Israel lover” and believer in Armageddon, could endanger anything. Only the Norwegian tourist who took part, bad girl, in a tour of Breaking the Silence, is jeopardizing the flight’s safety or the public’s security. Only the activist of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel is a potential plane hijacker, or a possible terrorist.

    No rightist supporter of the settlers, Jewish or Christian, has ever been held up at Ben-Gurion Airport and interrogated about his activity on behalf of the settlements, which are far more criminal than any demonstration, protest or act of solidarity with the Palestinians. Such a person, it seems, has yet to be born. In Israel, the fascist, even anti-Semitic, right is patriotic, and so it is in Ben-Gurion Airport too, the mirror of our homeland’s landscape.

    It will end only on the day Israelis are humiliated like that at the gateways to other countries. Until then the security excuse will be upheld and used for everything. And we haven’t yet said a word about the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Try once to think of the one standing in front of you or behind you in line, an Israeli Arab, director of a hospital ward or a construction worker. He has the same passport, the same citizenship as yours, in the nation-state of equality for all. Try to imagine the feeling of exclusion, the affront of deprivation. What does he say to the child who asks why we are here and they are there, how does he overcome the suspicious looks.

    On top of all this came the ridiculous, outrageous war on BDS, which turned Ben-Gurion border officials into duty officers of the thought-police. Beinart was its victim, but he’s a Jew and quite famous, so his interrogation was declared an “administrative error.” But this is no error: This is Ben-Gurion Airport. This is Israel. And now, to the duty-free shops.

    #BenGourion #expulsions #frontières

  • Arming Teachers Is Not a Good Option - Scientific American Blog Network
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/arming-teachers-is-not-a-good-option

    The FBI analyzed 160 cases of active shooters over the period from 2000-2013, and not one was stopped by a concealed carry permit holder who was not active duty military, a security guard, or a police officer. 21 were stopped by unarmed civilians.

    #armes #etats-unis

  • Israeli forces kill Palestinian teen after alleged stabbing near Hebron settlement
    Feb. 8, 2018 10:42 A.M. (Updated: Feb. 8, 2018 11:14 A.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=779826

    HEBRON (Ma’an) — A Palestinian teenager was shot dead by an Israeli security guard on Wednesday following an alleged stabbing attack in an illegal settlement north of Hebron.

    Palestinian officials identified the slain Palestinian as Hamzeh Youssif Zamaareh , 19, from the town of Halhoul north of Hebron.

    The Israeli army said in a statement that a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard in the Karmei Tzur settlement near Halhoul before another guard shot him dead.

    The injured guard was taken to hospital and was reported as only being lightly injured.

    Official Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces raided the Zamaareh family home following the incident, causing clashes to erupt with residents in the area. No injuries were reported.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Israeli forces detain father of slain Palestinian teen from Halhul, clash with locals
      Feb. 8, 2018 10:42 A.M. (Updated: Feb. 8, 2018 11:14 A.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=779832

      (...) Après l’attaque présumée, les forces israéliennes ont attaqué la maison familiale de Zamaareh et ont arrêté son père, Youssif.

      Le raid a provoqué des affrontements avec des jeunes qui ont lancé des pierres et peint des boîtes de conserve sur des véhicules militaires israéliens.

      Le Croissant-Rouge palestinien a signalé avoir traité 29 Palestiniens pendant les affrontements : sept ont été blessés par balles en acier recouvert de caoutchouc, trois ont été agressés et 19 ont souffert d’asphyxie au gaz lacrymogène.

      Le militant local Muhammad Ayyad Awad a déclaré à Ma’an que les soldats israéliens avaient arrosé la région de gaz lacrymogène et de balles en acier recouvert de caoutchouc, ajoutant que des forces avaient arrêté un adolescent identifié comme Khaldun Mansour Karajeh, 18 ans, après l’avoir agressé. (...)

  • After a dozen Gaza rockets in a week, Israel is being backed into a corner -

    Frequent rocket fire from Gaza would disturb the feeling of security and would put pressure on Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman to act more resolutely

    Amos Harel Dec 13, 2017
    read more: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.828581

    Since the evening of December 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, eight rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into the Negev region. At least three other rockets were fired from Gaza but fell inside Palestinian territory. This is the largest number of rockets fired at Israel since the end of Operation Protective Edge, the war that Israel fought with Hamas and its allies during the summer of 2014.
    To really understand the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    Israeli intelligence agencies attribute most of the rocket fire, if not all of it, to extremist Salafi factions that operate beyond Hamas’ direction. Israel has also identified preliminary steps taken by Hamas over the past few days to rein in the rocket fire, including the arrest of members of these organizations. In the past, the Hamas government in Gaza has known how to make the rules of the game that it has established with Israel clear to these smaller groups – and has adopted a harsh enforcement policy when it has understood that the rocket fire was endangering the stability of its rule in Gaza.
    This time, either the message was not received or was not properly understood. It appears that in Gaza Trump’s declaration was seen as an opportunity to let off steam and attack Israeli civilian population centers. The stage of the large demonstrations by Palestinians protesting Trump’s declaration is slowly coming to an end, without leaving much of an impression on the international community, or on Trump either.
    >> Three reasons we aren’t seeing a third intifada | Analysis
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    Now there is a shift to a different approach involving firing rockets from the Gaza Strip, a period during which one “lone wolf” terrorist attack also occurred, involving the stabbing by a Palestinian at the Jerusalem central bus station of a security guard, who was seriously wounded.

    The site in the Israeli border town of Sderot where a rocket fired from Gaza fell on Dec. 8, 2017.Eliyahu Hershovitz
    The Israeli response to the rocket fire from Gaza has been rather restrained so far. As has been its custom in the past, Israel has said that it views Hamas as the party responsible for violence coming from its territory – and has exacted a price from it by bombing Hamas positions and command headquarters. But the Israeli attacks have generally been carried out when the targets were empty, and the attacks have been planned in such a way as to limit the damage. In one case, last Friday, a member of the Hamas military wing was killed, and the Hamas leadership felt Israel had gone too far. For now, it seems that the Israeli leadership does not want to rock the boat to too great an extent in Gaza.
    The Israeli government’s problem is that it does not fully control of the situation. Continued rocket fire and “red alert” rocket sirens will exact a psychological price from the Israeli residents in the region near the Gaza border, who have enjoyed a relatively long period of quiet and a major influx of new residents, as a result of a building boom and government tax breaks for the region following Operation Protective Edge. The traumatic experiences of Protective Edge and other previous periods, during military operations in Gaza and between them, are still remembered quite well in Sderot, Ashkelon and the nearby collective moshavim and kibbutzim communities.
    Iron Dome anti-missile batteries intercepted two of the rockets fired over the past few days – and missed one rocket, which fell in a populated area in Sderot but did not cause any injuries. The Israel army made a change recently in how it calculates the area where the rockets are projected to fall (known as the “polygon”), thereby only requiring that alarms sound in a very small and more focused area, and limiting the disruption to local routines in border communities near Gaza. Nevertheless, rocket fire every day, or every other day, would disturb the feeling of security that had been restored with difficulty and would create pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to act more resolutely. The distance could be short from that to another round of violence.
    The latest tensions are occurring against the backdrop of the Israeli army’s announcement Sunday that it had successfully destroyed another attack tunnel dug well inside Israeli territory that was discovered along the border with Gaza, the second in less than two months. It appears, however, that Hamas’ actions are influenced first and foremost by another factor, its reconciliation agreement with the Palestinian Authority. So far the commitments included in the agreement have not been carried out. That’s the case when it comes to the opening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt and the resumption of funding for Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
    As far as Hamas is concerned, the bad news is coming from almost all directions: Trump’s announcement, the Israeli army’s success in locating attack tunnels and the difficulties with Palestinian reconciliation. If Hamas cannot deliver the goods to Gaza’s residents, who have been waiting with bated breath for a measure of improvement in their economic situation and freedom of movement, Hamas could well find itself dragged once again into an escalation with Israel – as it has acted in the past.
    This is the main worry keeping Israel’s senior defense officials and political leadership busy at the moment, and it explains the relatively restrained Israeli response – restraint that could end if the frequent rocket fire continues, and certainly if the rockets inflict casualties.

  • Israel-Jordan relations remain frozen as Jordan refuses re-entry of Israeli ambassador
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=778927

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Jordanian government is reportedly refusing to allow the return of the Israeli ambassador to the country, more than a month after an Israeli embassy security guard shot and killed two Jordanian citizens, Israeli news website Ynet reported on Thursday.

    Additionally, Ynet reported that relations between Israel and Jordan have remained frozen and no visas are being issued, meaning that “thousands of Jordanians and Palestinians living in Jordan who cannot enter Israel through the Allenby crossing” and “163 passports of Jordanian citizens waiting to receive a visa to Israel have been held in a safe of the Israeli embassy in Jordan.”

    Staff members of the Israeli embassy to Jordan, including the security guard who Ynet identified as Ziv Moyan — who killed Jordanian citizens Muhammad Zakariya al-Jawawdeh, 17, and Bashar Hamarneh in what Jordanian media and officials said was a professional dispute — had returned to Israel in late July, just days after high tensions following the shooting incident.

    According to Jordanian media, the Jordanian government had decided not to allow the Israeli ambassador to Jordan and the embassy staff to return to Amman until “gaining complete assurances” guaranteeing that Moyan would be prosecuted.

    Ynet reported that Jordan’s refusal to accept ambassador Einat Shlain’s return to Amman was due Shlain’s participation with Moyal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a celebratory reception upon their return to Tel Aviv.

    At the time, Jordanian news sites reported that Jordan’s King Abdullah had criticized Netanyahu’s welcoming home of the guard as “a political showoff,” saying it was "provocative and destabilizes security and encourages extremism in the region.”

    #Jordanie #Ziv

  • Hero of Israel
    Gideon Levy | Jul 27, 2017
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.803684

    Netanyahu, Einat Schlein, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan and Ziv, an embassy security officer, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, July 25, 2017. Haim Zach / GPO

    The new hero of Israel wears torn jeans, lives in a religious cooperative community in the south, has a girlfriend and he kills Arabs. Heroes of Israel have always killed Arabs, but sometimes they did so bravely; today they do so with rather pathetic cowardice. They’re scared of a teen with a screwdriver.

    The hero of Israel kills Arabs indiscriminately, including ones who are innocent or who did not deserve to die. The Israeli hero is a young man of principles, principles he absorbed while serving in the occupied territories. He learned dehumanization in the Givati Brigade and how to kill civilians in Operation Protective Edge. He learned that the first action to take against an Arab is always to shoot to kill; the alternatives can be considered later.

    He learned that it’s perfectly fine, even heroic, to kill an Arab, no matter why. He trained in the territories and put it to use in Jordan — what difference does it make, all Arabs are the same, whether on the east or the west bank of the Jordan River. His friends say he’s a “man’s man,” that this wasn’t his first time in a tough situation, like that teen with a screwdriver, and that he’s calm and considered. Imagine what might have happened if he weren’t. He might have killed five people, maybe 10.

    The hero of Israel killed civilians: a physician, for no reason, and a teenager who was assembling furniture and who threatened him with that doomsday weapon, the screwdriver, in the heat of some argument, not even an attack. The hero of Israel didn’t blink. A hero of Israel never counts to 10. He draws and fires. Two dead, two more kill notches.

    Our newest hero’s name is Ziv, but we can’t show his face. His blurred visage as he is embraced by the prime minister only adds to his aura. He replaces his predecessor, the more exalted Elor Azaria. The former killed a dying man, the latter killed two civilians. Don’t accuse him. That’s what he was taught to do in “tough situations” in the territories — to shoot and to kill. That’s what he was trained to be, a blind machine gun.

    He is considered a hero. No one would dream of seriously questioning him as a suspect, beyond the formality promised to Jordan, and it’s already been said it would lead to nothing. Perhaps he committed murder, or perhaps negligent manslaughter? Perhaps he violated the rules of engagement? How would we know? We won’t know. We don’t want to know. Instead of that, we got the prime minister’s unsurprising phone call to him. “Did you make a date with your girlfriend yet?” asked Benjamin Netanyahu in that fatherly manner reserved for heroes. After that came the brave embrace in his office. Look, Jordan, look, these are the heroes of Israel, your sister in peace, the killers of your citizens. And the Palestinians are accused of exalting terrorists.

    When a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in Naharayim in 2007, Jordan’s King Hussein cut short his trip to Spain and hurried to Beit Shemesh to kneel before the grieving families and beg forgiveness. He also visited the wounded and his kingdom paid compensation. But when an Israeli government security guard kills two Jordanians, at least one of them completely innocent, the Israeli prime minister won’t even consider apologizing. Condemnations we demand only from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. We can only fantasize about a condolence call or the payment of compensation. Why, who died, as the saying goes? Two Arabs, nothing more.

    King Hussein of jordan consoling an Israeli family whose daughter was killed by a Jordanian soldier during a class trip to Naharayim, 2007.Avi Ohayon / GOP

    Two dead Arabs, and a hero of Israel who returned home safely, overcoming his injuries. Ziv the hero will recite his version of events, and perhaps even return to service. Tens of thousands of young Israelis dream of being Ziv. They dream of serving in the territories in the occupation army, of abusing and killing Arabs, of traveling to India and to Guatemala before becoming embassy security guards. If they’re lucky, they might even get to kill some teenager with a screwdriver and a doctor who happened to be there, as in the good old days in Qalandiyah.

    Salute the heroes of Israel. They are the finest of our youth.

    #Jordanie #Ziv

  • Jordan demands Israel turn over embassy guard over deadly shooting incident
    July 24, 2017 5:37 P.M. (Updated: July 24, 2017 5:43 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=778321

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Jordanian government has reportedly issued a judicial order banning the Israeli security guard who was involved in a deadly shooting at the Israeli embassy in Jordan on Saturday night from leaving Jordan.

    Government sources told Ma’an that Jordan was demanding that Israeli authorities hand over the guard, who shot and killed two Jordanian carpenters in unclear circumstances, to Jordanian authorities for interrogation and legal procedures.

    Sources stressed that Jordan will “escalate diplomatic steps” if the guard was not turned in to Jordanian authorities.

    Israel has been refusing to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Convention, while all security personnel and diplomatic employees were confined to the embassy compound, according to reports.

    On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Israel had decided to immediately evacuate all Amman embassy staff, fearing that the incident would lead to riots and attempts to attack the embassy.

    On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter that he had spoken twice with Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Eynat Schlein overnight Sunday, and with the security guard.

    “I gained the impression that she (Schlein) is managing matters there very well. I assured the security guard that we will bring him back to Israel,” Netanyahu said, adding that “I told them that we are holding ongoing contacts with security and government officials in Amman on all levels, to bring the incident to a close as soon as possible.”

    #Amman #Ambassade_israélienne
    https://seenthis.net/messages/617083
    #Jordanie #Ziv

    • Reports: Israeli, US officials travel to Jordan to discuss Al-Aqsa, embassy security guard
      July 24, 2017 10:15 P.M. (Updated: July 24, 2017 10:15 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778330

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli media reported on Monday evening that during a “dialogue” between Israeli and Jordanian authorities, Jordan “did not condition the release of an Israeli embassy security guard back to Israel on the removal of the metal detectors at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.”

      Israel’s Channel 10 reported that the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the dialogue went “well,” and that United States envoy Jason Greenblatt would be heading to Amman from Jerusalem, where he arrived earlier Monday, “to convince the King to end the crisis of the embassy guard.”

      Earlier Monday, Jordanian government sources told Ma’an that the Jordanian government issued a judicial order banning the Israeli security guard who was involved in a deadly shooting at the Israeli embassy in Jordan on Saturday night that left two Jordanians dead, from leaving Jordan.

      Government sources said that Jordan was demanding that Israeli authorities hand over the guard, who shot and killed two Jordanian carpenters in unclear circumstances, to Jordanian authorities for interrogation and legal procedures.

      Sources stressed that Jordan will “escalate diplomatic steps” if the guard was not turned in to Jordanian authorities.

      Israel has been refusing to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Convention, while all security personnel and diplomatic employees were confined to the embassy compound, according to reports.

      Prior to Channel 10’s report, Israeli media had reported that Netanyahu would be calling the Jordanian King to discuss the issue of the embassy security guard, as well as the ongoing crisis surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where tensions have continued to rise since Israel installed metal detectors and security cameras inside the compound following a deadly shoot out at the holy site on July 14.

      Israeli media had reported that chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, Nadav Argaman was sent to Jordan, and that Israel would be removing all metal detectors and replacing them with thermal cameras, a report that could not be verified by Ma’an (...)

      .

    • Israel rules to replace contested Al-Aqsa metal detectors with ’smart’ surveillance
      July 25, 2017 11:03 A.M. (Updated: July 25, 2017 11:03 A.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778334

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Israeli security cabinet decided during a meeting late on Monday night to remove metal detectors, which had recently been installed at the entrances of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, only to replace them with more advanced surveillance technology in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem.

      Israeli authorities installed metal detectors, turnstiles, and additional security cameras in the compound following a deadly shooting attack at Al-Aqsa on July 14 — sparking protests from Palestinians, who said the move was the latest example of Israeli authorities using Israeli-Palestinian violence as a means of furthering control over important sites in the occupied Palestinian territory and normalizing repressive measures against Palestinians.

      In a statement, the security cabinet said it had “accepted the recommendation of all of the security bodies to incorporate security measures based on advanced technologies ("smart checks") and other measures instead of metal detectors in order to ensure the security of visitors and worshipers in the Old City and on the Temple Mount” — using the Israeli term for the Al-Aqsa compound.

      Religious leaders in Jerusalem were scheduled to hold a meeting Tuesday to discuss the new Israeli plan, as Islamic endowment (Waqf) official Sheikh Raed Daana told Ma’an that both religious leaders and the Palestinians wouldn’t accept any changes to the status quo.

      “We won’t accept cameras or (metal) posts,” Daana said on Monday evening.

      The plan will reportedly take up to six months to implement, and cost an estimated 100 million shekels ($28 million).
      (...)
      According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 1,090 Palestinians had been injured since July 14 during demonstrations which were violently repressed by Israeli forces across the occupied Palestinian territory. According to Ma’an documentation, 11 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed since July 14.

    • Israeli embassy staff, including guard who killed 2, leave Jordan amid investigation
      July 25, 2017 3:46 P.M. (Updated: July 25, 2017 7:54 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778337

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Staff members of the Israeli embassy to Jordan, including a security guard who killed two Jordanians, returned to Israel on Monday night after a day of tensions between the two countries over the deadly shootout.

      A Jordanian investigation into the shooting, in which Muhammad Zakariya al-Jawawdeh, 17 , and Bashar Hamarneh were killed, revealed that the deadly incident started off as a professional dispute, official Jordanian news agency Petra reported on Monday.

      According to Jordanian police, al-Jawawdeh had accompanied a relative delivering furniture to the security guard’s apartment in the Israeli compound in Amman, when an argument over alleged delays turned physical.

      Witnesses said that al-Jawawdeh attacked the Israeli security guard — whom Israeli media have referred to as Ziv — with a screwdriver, after which the Israeli shot at him and Hamarneh, the apartment building owner.

      Petra reported that the case had been referred to a prosecutor for further legal steps, as Jordan and Israel have sparred over whether the security guard should be handed over to Jordanian custody.

      Israel, meanwhile, has refused to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Conventions — a body of international law which Israel has been accused of regularly violating.

      Nadav Argaman, the director of Israel’s intelligence service, the Shin Bet, traveled to Jordan in an attempt to resolve the situation, whereas Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah over the case.

      The Israeli security guard thanked Netanyahu for helping him leave Jordan without facing interrogation or criminal charges.

      "I know an entire country stands behind us. You told me yesterday I’d return home, and you calmed me down, and then it happened. I thank you wholeheartedly,” Israeli news outlet Ynet quoted him as saying.

      Despite reports that Israeli authorities would remove metal detectors at the entrance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem in exchange for securing the return of the security guard, Netanyahu denied that such an agreement had taken place.

      #Ben_voyons

    • Tuesday, July 25, 2017
      http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2017/07/from-funeral-of-muhammad-jawawdeh-16.html

      From the funeral of Muhammad Jawawdeh, 16, who was shot by an Israeli embassy terrorist in Amman

      It says “death to Israel”.
      Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 8:38 AM

      ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
      Tuesday, July 25, 2017
      Netanyahu warmly welcomes the terrorist who shot a 16-year old Jordanian
      http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2017/07/netanyahu-warmly-welcomes-terrorist-who.html

      When will they stop teaching and practicing hate? Who will change their curricula?
      Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 11:17 AM

    • Investigation into Israeli embassy shooting completed
      http://petra.gov.jo/Public_News/Nws_NewsDetails.aspx?lang=2&site_id=1&NewsID=311051&CatID=13

      Amman, July 24 (Petra) — The Public Security Department (PSD), said Monday evening that the investigation launched into a shooting incident inside the Israeli embassy compound in Amman on Sunday was completed.

      A statement released by the PSD said the investigation was completed after collecting information from the crime scene and listening to a number of eyewitnesses, who were present at the scene.

      A PSD special investigation team has found that there was a prior agreement between people working in carpentry to supply bedroom furniture for an apartment rented by an Israeli embassy employee, the statement indicated, adding that two people came to furnish the bedroom of the Israeli employee’s apartment inside the compound.

      During the process, a dispute has erupted between one of the carpenters, who was the furniture shop owner’s son, and the Israeli diplomat. The two had a verbal argument as the Israeli diplomat claimed that there was a delay in completing the agreed upon work on time.

      The altercation escalated to physical confrontation where the carpenter attacked and injured the Israeli diplomat who in turn shot the carpenter and the apartment’s owner, who and the building’s doorman were present at the scene, the statement added, citing the testimony given by the other person who came with the carpenter.

      The team also listened to the doorman’s testimony, who corroborated the story as mentioned in the investigation.

      Then case has been referred to the competent prosecutor for further legal action.

      //Petra// AF

      25/7/2017 - 12:00:24 AM

  • Reports of ‘attempted security breach,’ 1 killed at Israeli embassy in Jordan
    uly 23, 2017 9:38 P.M. (Updated: July 23, 2017 9:47 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=778307

    Jordanian security forces blocking off roads leading to the Israeli embassy in Amman on July 23, 2017.

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Jordanian media reported on Sunday that the area surrounding the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman, had been shut down on Sunday evening following an ’attempted security breach’ which allegedly left one person dead and another injured.

    According to media outlet Ammon News reported that security forces had cordoned off the area, adding that one Jordanian was believed to be dead, while an Israeli was reportedly wounded.

    Meanwhile, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said that the incident was “under full censorship” — preventing Israeli media and foreign journalists with Israeli press cards from reporting on the event.

    “““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
    Israeli embassy security guard shoots, kills 2 Jordanians in Amman
    July 23, 2017 9:38 P.M. (Updated: July 24, 2017 11:50 A.M.)

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli embassy security guard shot and killed two Jordanians in Amman under unclear circumstances Sunday night, with Jordanian media describing the incident as a personal dispute and the Israeli foreign ministry saying the Israeli guard was defending himself from a politically-motivated attack.

    According to reports, two Jordanian carpenter workers had arrived to an apartment in the residential complex used by the Israeli embassy to replace furniture.

    An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement that one of the workers crept up behind the guard and began stabbing him with a screwdriver. The guard then opened fire, killing the alleged attacker, and also inadvertently shot the Jordanian owner of the building who was present at the scene, who later succumbed to his wounds as well.

    A third Jordanian worker was present at the scene, according to the statement, which was released Monday morning after the incident was put under a media ban by Israeli authorities overnight.

    The ministry’s statement said the Israeli guard was lightly injured in the incident, without elaborating on the nature of his injuries. Israeli news outlet Haaretz said he was injured when jumping back away from the Jordanian as he his cocked his weapon.

    The slain alleged assailant was identified as 17-year-old Muhammad Zakariya al-Jawawdeh, reportedly of Palestinian origin, who died after being shot twice. He had previously done maintenance work in the Israeli embassy and its residential compound.

    The Jordanian General Security Administration issued a statement, reportedly saying the circumstances surrounding the incident were still being investigated, and did not say that a Jordanian carpenter had attacked an Israeli.

    Later Sunday night, dozens of al-Jawawdeh’s family members gathered in Asharq Al-Awsat square in Amman to protest his death, demanding that the Jordanian government release all details of the investigation and punish the shooter.

    One relative told news cameras from private Jordanian outlet Ammon that the boy had went to the apartment to collect money in return for a bedroom set purchased by the Israeli guard, claiming that al-Jawawdeh did not realize the customer was armed or a Jewish Israeli.

    “He was a student on summer holiday. The boy went with the young guys to collect the money, and a heated argument broke out between him another young man there. We didn’t know they were armed, nor did we know they were Jews. If we knew they were Jews, we would have considered it dishonor that they visit our stores,” the man said.

    “What has happened is that our son had heated argument with the man. Regardless of whether he slapped you or you boxed him, how dare you in cold-blood cock your handgun and shoot the boy as if he was a cockroach?”

    The father also said in an interview with Jordanian television station Roya TV that his son did not know the nationality of the man who killed him and that he was a regular customer who bought furniture from them.

    However, Israeli authorities have been treating the incident as a possible attack in retaliation to rising tensions in occupied East Jerusalem.

    #Ambassade_israélienne #Amman #Jordanie #Ziv

    • Un Jordanien tué et un Israélien blessé à l’ambassade d’Israël en Jordanie

      La mise en place par Israël de détecteurs de métaux aux entrées de l’esplanade des Mosquées à Jérusalem-Est, gérée par la Jordanie, a engendré des violences meurtrières.
      Le Monde.fr avec AFP | 23.07.2017 à 21h31
      http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2017/07/23/un-jordanien-tue-et-un-israelien-blesse-a-l-ambassade-d-israel-en-jordanie_5

      Alors que la tension reste vive à Jérusalem-Est, secouée depuis une semaine par la crise de l’esplanade des Mosquées, Amman, la capitale jordanienne est à son tour visée. Un Jordanien a été tué et un Israélien grièvement blessé lors d’un « incident » survenu dimanche 23 juillet à l’intérieur de l’ambassade d’Israël à Amman, la capitale jordanienne, selon une source des services de sécurité jordaniens.

      Cette dernière n’a toutefois pas fourni plus de précisions et il n’était pas clair, dans l’immédiat, si l’« incident » est lié aux tensions à Jérusalem, les autorités jordaniennes n’ayant pas donné davantage de détails tandis qu’Israël n’a pas réagi.

      Les forces de sécurité jordaniennes ont encerclé l’ambassade d’Israël, située dans le secteur de Rabieh, dans l’ouest d’Amman, et se sont déployées dans les rues voisines, selon un correspondant de l’Agence France-Presse (AFP).
      (...)
      « Nous irons à al-Aqsa en martyrs par millions »

      Vendredi, plusieurs milliers de manifestants ont défilé à Amman et dans d’autres villes de Jordanie, à l’appel de la mouvance islamiste et de partis de gauche, pour protester contre ces nouvelles mesures.

      « Nous irons à Al-Aqsa en martyrs par millions », répétaient-ils entre autres, en référence à la mosquée Al-Aqsa s’élevant sur l’esplanade des Mosquées, troisième lieu saint de l’islam.

      ““““““““““““““
      Mis à jour le 24.07.2017 à 10h42 |

      L’un des fonctionnaires israéliens en poste à l’ambassade d’Amman, en Jordanie, a tué deux Jordaniens après avoir été victime d’une agression. Les faits se sont produits dans son appartement, à côté de l’ambassade. Responsable de la sécurité, il avait convié un menuisier jordanien pour effectuer des travaux, en présence du propriétaire. Le menuisier a attaqué le fonctionnaire avec un tournevis. Ce dernier a ouvert le feu et l’a tué, tout en blessant grièvement le propriétaire jordanien, qui est mort.

      Les Israéliens disent ne pas douter de la motivation idéologique de l’agresseur, qui serait liée à la situation à Jérusalem. Le gouvernement a voulu rapatrier l’ensemble de ses diplomates, mais a dû renoncer. La Sécurité générale jordanienne souhaite interroger l’Israélien impliqué. Or il jouit de l’immunité diplomatique, selon le ministère des affaires étrangères.

    • Jordanian killed in shooting incident inside Israeli embassy compound in Amman
      //Petra// AF // 23/7/2017 - 11:02:23 PM
      http://petra.gov.jo/Public_News/Nws_NewsDetails.aspx?lang=2&site_id=1&NewsID=310871&CatID=13
      Amman, July 23 (Petra) — Police said they are investigating a shooting incident inside the Israeli embassy compound in Amman, which left a Jordanian citizen dead and injured two others; a Jordanian and an Israeli.

      The Public Security Department (PSD) said a police forced rushed to the scene of the incident and evacuated the three for medical treatment but one of them, a Jordanian, was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

      The PSD added in a statement that preliminary investigations indicate that the two Jordanians had entered the embassy’s compound to do carpentry work.

      The statement said the PSD launched an extensive investigation into the incident and informed the Public Prosecution in order to find out all details and circumstances in accordance with legal procedures followed in such cases.

    • Diplomatic Crisis With Jordan: Embassy Guard Who Killed Assailant Prevented From Returning to Israel

      Israeli Embassy guard shoots and kills a Jordanian teen who tried to stab him, and another man; Israel decides to pull out its diplomats but halts the evacuation when Jordan insists on interrogating him
      Barak Ravid, Jack Khoury and Gili Cohen Jul 24, 2017 7:58 AM
      http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.803076

      An unusual security incident in which a Jordanian civilian tried to attack an Israeli embassy guard in Jordan on Sunday and was shot dead has become a diplomatic crisis. Jordan is barring the Israeli guard from leaving the country.

      On Sunday evening, following an emergency meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, it was decided to immediately evacuate all the staff of the Israeli embassy in Amman for fear that the incident would lead to riots and attempts to attack the embassy. However, the Jordanian authorities have refused to allow the security guard to leave the country and have demanded an investigation.

      Israel is currently refusing to allow an investigation of the security guard at this stage, claiming that the guard has diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention. The dispute over a possible investigation has led to the delay in the evacuation of the Israeli diplomatic team in Amman.
      (...) The guard at the Israeli Embassy in Amman was stabbed on Sunday by a Jordanian carpenter who was installing furniture in his apartment near the embassy compound. The Israeli security officer, who was lightly wounded in the incident, shot and killed the attacker. His landlord, who was also present during the incident, was also wounded during the incident and later died of his wounds.

  • Israeli forces shoot, kill Jordanian man in Jerusalem’s Old City after alleged attack
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=777036

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces shot and killed a 57-year-old Jordanian man near the Chain Gate in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem on Saturday after he allegedly stabbed and moderately injured an Israeli police officer, according to Israeli police.

    An initial statement in Arabic from Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri said that Israeli forces had “neutralized” a Palestinian attacker and “immediately pronounced him dead on the spot.”

    The Israeli police officer was reported to have sustained “medium wounds” from the attack and was transferred to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem for treatment, according to al-Samri.

    According to al-Samri, a Palestinian noticed a police officer walking in his direction, prompting him to “approach the officer quickly,” pull out a knife, and stab the officer. The police officer, she said, pulled out his handgun after being wounded and shot the Palestinian to death.

    Police forces found two knives on the slain Palestinian’s body, according to al-Samri.

    Al-Samri later released a statement identifying the slain man as 57-year-old Jordanian citizen who had he arrived in the country a week ago on a tourist visa.

    “““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
    (Updated : May 13, 2017 8:18 P.M.)

    Israel police identified the slain man as a 57-year-old Jordanian citizen who had arrived in the country a week ago on a tourist visa. Jerusalem-based news site the al-Quds Network said that the man, Muhammad Abdullah Salim al-Kisaji, was of Palestinian origin and from the occupied West Bank city of Jericho.
    (...)
    An eyewitness and local shop owner corroborated to Ma’an that he saw the assailant, who was wearing a black coat stab the Israeli policeman multiple times in the neck and face with a knife on the crowded street.

    “The injured officer fired heavily at the stabber and after he fell to the ground, a security guard escorting a group of settlers fired a bullet at the attacker’s head," the Palestinian witnesses, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

    Backup police officers arrived and one of them "hit the attacker with a plastic table while he was lying motionless on the ground,” according to the same witness.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Jordan condemns fatal shooting of knife assailant as ’heinous crime’
      May 14, 2017 12:42 P.M. (Updated: May 14, 2017 9:28 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777045

      JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — The Jordanian government said Saturday that it held the Israeli government responsible for the death of Muhammad al-Skaji, a Jordanian national, reportedly of Palestinian origin, who was shot and killed earlier in the day in occupied in East Jerusalem’s Old City, after he attacked an Israeli policeman with a knife.

      Spokesperson for the Jordanian government and Jordanian Minister of Media Affairs Muhammad al-Mumni condemned in a statement the “heinous crime” committed against al-Skaji and demanded that Israel provide all details surrounding the incident.

      He added that Jordan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry was following up on the details of the incident in coordination with the Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv.

      The remarks angered the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to mention that al-Skaji was killed for attacking and moderately injuring the Israeli officer.

      “It was outrageous to hear the spokesperson of the Jordanian government express support for the terror attack perpetrated today in Jerusalem by a Jordanian,” the statement said, adding that “it’s time that Jordan stops this double game. Just as Israel condemns terror attacks in Jordan, Jordan must condemn terror attacks in Israel.”

  • ’State of Jenin’: A Palestinian refugee camp raided by Israeli troops night after night - Israel News -
    Haaretz.com | Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 10, 2017 12:42 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.770743
    http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.770967.1486712382!/image/446912015.JPG_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/446912015.JPG

    After a soldier was wounded in Jenin, the IDF intensified its nighttime raids there. 
And when the Israelis don’t enter this West Bank refugee camp, the Palestinian security forces do.

    This is a type of anxiety that no Israeli civilian is familiar with: nights when sleep is marred by the noise of soldiers moving about, gunshots, armored vehicles outside the window, stun grenades and explosives in an adjacent alley. Night after night. Soldiers who storm the house rowdily, after blowing up the front door. Children who wake up in a fright to the sight of masked, heavily armed figures during dead-of-night kidnappings euphemistically called “arrests.”

    On one occasion during the second intifada, I slept over in the Jenin refugee camp. I’ll never forget the fear that seized me when soldiers raided it. It’s a particularly chilling experience in a densely crowded, yet determined and militant camp like that in Jenin. Last week, raids were carried out there almost every night. After a soldier sustained light to moderate wounds during one, the Israel Defense Forces ratcheted up even more the rate and intensity of its infiltration.

    Residents are convinced that on the night between Jan. 28 and 29, soldiers had come to avenge the wounding of their buddy and teach the camp a lesson it wouldn’t forget. “They came to kill,” people in the battered camp said this week, as they buried another of its sons, Mohammed Abu Khalifa, after he was killed by soldiers’ bullets on Sunday. He was buried in the cemetery of intifada victims at the edge of the camp, which, like Jenin itself, suffers from severe overcrowding.

    The young adults in the camp spend their days sleeping and their nights in wakefulness. They have no reason to get up during the day. They hang out in the meager café on the main street; some of them man observation posts at the camp’s entrances and instantly report every suspicious movement on Facebook. They also post real-time videos when the IDF enters. Facebook is the most widely used means of communication when it comes to warning about everything, including the arrival of Israeli troops. Of the Facebook groups in the camp, the best known is “State of Jenin Camp.”

    The soldiers usually show up at about 2 A.M. in armored vehicles, some of which look like civilian cars. They descend on foot from the hilltop where the houses are, and information about their whereabouts spreads like wildfire. By the time they reach the alleys below, half the camp is awake and young people are waiting for them with stones, pipe bombs and makeshift weapons. In contrast to the second intifada, when we met armed people at almost every street corner, there is hardly any standard-issue weaponry in evidence these days. The army uses tear gas, stun grenades and, of course, live ammunition.

    It’s not only the IDF that executes nocturnal raids. Similar operations are carried out by the forces of the Palestinian Authority, in coordination with the army. When the Israelis arrive, the PA personnel leave. The young people oppose them, too, but less intensely, and the mutual firing of weapons is mainly into the air. No one has been killed in the Palestinian forces’ raids of the past few months.

    In recent weeks, PA troops – who at one time were afraid to enter the camp – arrested 15 to 20 young people, taking them to Jericho for interrogation. The IDF arrested only four people in that period. No one from either group has been released yet.

    The same pattern played itself out last week: Almost every night, Israeli or Palestinian forces were in the camp. Never a dull moment. Last Thursday, an Israeli soldier was wounded. On the two nights that followed, the IDF entered in large numbers. On Saturday night, they didn’t arrest anyone – residents of the camp are convinced that they came not to detain people but to kill: They killed one young person and wounded four others.

    After a year in which no one was killed in the camp, they’re in mourning again here.

    Twenty-year-old Mathin Dabiyeh was in the café at the foot of the hill on that night. Now he hobbles about on crutches at the entrance to his house. At 3:15 A.M., after it was known that soldiers had entered the camp, he began to make his way home. The soldiers appeared opposite him in an alley, he recalls now. There’s no point asking him if he was carrying a pipe bomb or an improvised firearm, as I won’t get a straight answer. The soldiers shot him in the leg and he started to run up the alley, limping. The troops gave chase but he managed to elude them. A neighbor with a moped took him to the hospital just outside the camp’s entrance. The hospital’s ambulances don’t dare enter the camp when the IDF is present, so in most cases the wounded are taken out by local residents.

    The bullet lodged in Dabiyeh’s knee. His friend Aslam, who was wounded together with him, is still hospitalized; he was hit in the stomach. What will Dabiyeh do the next time soldiers enter? “I can’t run now,” he tells us, evasively. He wears a black knitted skullcap. His brother works as a security guard at the Jenin branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

    It all took place in the early hours of Sunday morning in the area between the buildings, next to the Queens’ Salon beauty parlor, which is now closed. According to eyewitnesses, IDF snipers positioned themselves on the roof of a house across from the beauty parlor, hiding behind a black plastic water container. The crying of an infant can now be heard from that house, which, like others nearby, is plastered with militant graffiti. The wounded men escaped through an alley at the end of which is an old poster with a photograph of Saddam Hussein. The home of Mohammed Abu Khalifa, who was killed in the incident, is located next to a mosque named for Abdullah Azzam, from the neighboring village of Silat al-Harithiya, who is said to have been a friend of Osama bin Laden.

    Narrow steps lead to a small, stark house, which is almost bursting with people. The last day of Mohammed’s life was his 19th birthday. In the evening he celebrated here with friends. There was a power outage, an almost-daily occurrence, so his friends played music from their cellphones. They drank juice. This is what a birthday party here looks like.

    The dead boy’s uncle, Jumaa Abu Jebal, who lost a leg in the IDF’s invasion of the camp in 2002, and his mother, Fatma, greeted us on our visit this past Monday. Mohammed dropped out of school in the 11th grade and began working with his father at his garage. After his friends left that night, we are told, he went to fix a car that had broken down in the camp. That was at about 10 P.M.

    An hour later or so, he returned home and went to sleep, his mother relates. At 2 A.M., friends knocked on the door. They came to summon him, after learning that soldiers were in the camp. Mohammed’s father forbade him to go out, but around 3, after his father went back to sleep, the teen snuck out of the house. That act cost him his life.

    His mother heard shots at about 3:30 – the shots that killed her son, a few dozen meters from his home. She learned from a Facebook post that Mohammed had been wounded – that’s how parents find out about their children’s fate here. She tried to get to the hospital, but was forced back home by the shooting. It wasn’t until 5:45 A.M., after the last of the troops had left the camp, that she could leave. Mohammed died before she and her husband reached the hospital; he had been struck by three bullets in the chest and one in the stomach.

    A week earlier, Israeli troops had entered this house in search of Mohammed’s uncle, Jumaa, who lives on the upper floor. A Shin Bet security service agent ordered the amputee to get dressed, but he wasn’t arrested. Jumaa is a Hamas activist.

    “This is the last time I’m coming here. The next time I’ll send a drone to liquidate you,” the Shin Bet man told Jumaa, who replied, “If you have anything [on me], take me.” To which “Captain Haroun,” as the agent styles himself, retorted, “You know what people around you are doing.”

    Jumaa, an affable, smiling man who’s married to an Israeli Arab woman from Haifa and speaks broken Hebrew from his years in an Israeli prison, is certain the Shin Bet man was referring to his nephew Mohammed.

    The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated this week, in response to a query from Haaretz: “On Jan. 29, explosive devices were thrown at IDF soldiers during activity in the Jenin refugee camp. The force responded with gunfire at those who were throwing the devices, as a result of which one of them was killed. The IDF enters the refugee camp in accordance with operational needs and with the aim of preventing terrorist activity in the area.”

    Not far from the house of mourning, on a wall in another home, is a photograph of Majd Lahlouh, who was shot to death after going out to confront soldiers in the camp in August 2013, at the age of 22. Beneath the photo lies his cousin of 23, Izak Lahlouh. He, too, was wounded that night last month, by a bullet that hit an artery his leg. He was told in the hospital that if his evacuation had been delayed by another few minutes, he would have died from loss of blood. Now he’s bedridden, keeping warm with blankets and watching television, with crutches by his side.

  • The incredible story behind the Syrian protest singer everyone thought was dead
    http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/syria-civil-war

    Vous avez aimé la Gay Girl of Damascus ? Voici maintenant Qashoush, le faux poète de la révolution égorgé par le régime ? (Il y a des travaux universitaires sur son oeuvre, en France !) Bientôt peut-être on connaîtra l’histoire de la petite Twitteuse (anglophone) d’Alep, et même peut-être celle des enfants aux ongles arrachés de Deraa. Ca nous rappellera les bébés dans les couveuses de Koweït City, entre autres. #propagande #syrie

    So how come a blatantly false story went around Syria and the world? “I don’t know who spread the rumour,” Farhood told me, with uncharacteristic irritation. “I hope I find him.” But it was someone from the Local Coordinating Committees, the new- media-friendly opposition outfits receiving ad hoc support from the US and other western governments, who was quoted in newspaper articles in support of the story.

    The Syrian conflict was the first real YouTube war, where much of what we see comes via the grainy lens of a smartphone. Early on in the uprising some of Syria’s activists had put their faith in it to get their message out. They were encouraged to do so by foreign governments and well-meaning NGOs. As the vogue for “media activism” in western capitals developed, scores of young Syrians were invited to Turkey and paid up to ten times the Syrian national wage to make new media against the Syrian regime. None of it did their revolt any good. The resulting wall of made-for-YouTube agitprop compromised many young politicos and distracted them from the hard work of persuading their fellow Syrians away from the devil they knew. And in the end, when faced with the might of the Syrian regime and war-hardened Islamists, it turned out to be a very weak weapon anyway.

  • Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian near Shufat checkpoint for alleged stab attack
    Nov. 25, 2016 6:20 P.M. (Updated: Nov. 25, 2016 6:32 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=774136

    JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli security guard Friday shot dead a Palestinian near the Shufat checkpoint in the Jerusalem area for allegedly attempting a stabbing attack on a group of Israeli security officers.

    Israeli police spokesperson, Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an that a Palestinian “approached [Israeli] security guards with a knife, and attempted to stab the guards.” Israeli forces responded with live fire. Israeli police later declared that the Palestinian had been killed in the alleged attack.

    Rosenfeld added in a statement that no Israeli security guards were injured during the incident.

    Witnesses told Ma’an that Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances rushed to the area following the incident. A Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson was not available for immediate comment on the incident.

    The slain Palestinian has not yet been identified.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (24 – 30 November 2016)
      http://pchrgaza.org/en/?p=8605

      During the reporting period, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child in Sho’fat refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem.

      In occupied Jerusalem, in excessive use of lethal force, Israeli forces stationed at Sho’fat checkpoint, north of occupied Jerusalem killed a Palestinian child. Israeli forces claimed that he attempted to stab an Israeli security officer with a knife he hid under his clothes. However, PCHR’s investigations refuted this claim.

  • Un Palestinien brandissant un couteau abattu à un check-point
    AFP / 22 novembre 2016 10h34
    http://www.romandie.com/news/Un-Palestinien-brandissant-un-couteau-abattu-a-un-checkpoint/755062.rom

    Qalandiya (Territoires palestiniens) - Un Palestinien a été abattu mardi matin au principal check-point séparant Jérusalem du nord de la Cisjordanie, a annoncé la police israélienne, affirmant qu’il avait brandi un couteau en direction d’un agent de sécurité posté au barrage.

    Un Palestinien a tenté de traverser le check-point en empruntant la voie réservée aux véhicules et s’est approché d’un agent de sécurité en brandissant un couteau. Le terroriste a alors été neutralisé et son décès a été constaté, indique dans un communiqué la porte-parole de la police israélienne Luba Samri.

    Aucun garde israélien n’a été blessé, a précisé la police, assurant que des mesures de sécurité continuent d’être prises pour empêcher des attaques.

    Le point de passage a été fermé par les forces de sécurité, a constaté une journaliste de l’AFP.

    Le Palestinien tué est Jihad Khalil , 48 ans, un habitant de Beit Wazan, un village du nord de la Cisjordanie, selon des sources sécuritaires palestiniennes.

    Le check-point de Qalandiya est le principal point de passage pour les Palestiniens entre Jérusalem et Ramallah. Cet axe est filtré par un checkpoint israélien aux allures de forteresse qui représente pour les Palestiniens un des symboles honnis de l’occupation.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Army Kills A Palestinian Man Near Jerusalem
      November 22, 2016 12:25 PM
      http://imemc.org/article/army-kills-a-palestinian-man-near-jerusalem

      Israeli soldiers shot and killed, on Tuesday morning, a Palestinian man at the Qalandia terminal, north of occupied East Jerusalem.

      The Palestinian Health Ministry said the slain Palestinian man has been identified as Jihad Mohammad Khalil , 48, from Beit Wazan village, west of Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank.

      Eyewitnesses said the soldiers shot and seriously wounded the Palestinian, after alleging that he tried to stab them, and he bled to death after the soldiers prevented Palestinian medics from approaching him.

      After shooting the Palestinian man, the soldiers closed Qalandia terminal, and prevented the Palestinians from crossing, while dozens of soldiers were deployed in the area.

    • Israeli guard kills Palestinian at Qalandiya checkpoint after alleged stabbing attempt
      Nov. 22, 2016 10:39 A.M. (Updated: Nov. 22, 2016 1:06 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=774076

      Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri confirmed shortly afterwards that the suspect was killed, saying “a Palestinian pedestrian approached a security guard in a path for vehicles welding a knife and was neutralized.”

      According to Al-Samri, the Palestinian approached the area where security guards were located at the checkpoint and, prompting the guards to ask for identification. A guard then noticed that one of the Palestinian’s hands was in his pocket, and the Palestinian then reportedly took out a knife and tried to stab him.

      Al-Samri added that the guard and the Palestinian engaged in a fistfight before the Palestinian was shot and killed.

  • Wilson Security paid guard to keep quiet about alleged sexual assault on Manus Island

    #Wilson_Security paid at least one Australian security guard to keep quiet about an alleged sexual assault of a local Manus Island worker, in a number of separate payments of up to $15,000 made by the company.


    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-07/wilson-security-paid-guard-quiet-about-alleged-sexual-assault/7576722

    #Manus_island #asile #migrations #réfugiés #viols #violences_sexuelles #corruption #privatisation

  • Release the Qalandiyah Video

    The refusal of police to release footage of the incident only increases fear that a crime was committed when two Palestinians were shot by security guards.

    Haaretz Editorial May 02, 2016 3:46 AM

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.717307

    What happened at the Qalandiyah checkpoint last Wednesday can’t stay in Qalandiyah. The killing of Maram Abu Ismail, a 23-year-old mother of two small children, and her brother Ibrahim Taha, 16, who, according to the Justice Ministry department for the investigation of police officers, were shot by security guards at the checkpoint, raises questions and serious suspicions.

    The refusal of the police to release video footage from the security cameras at the scene – which they should have done immediately to remove any doubts – only increases the fear that a crime was committed at the north Jerusalem checkpoint.

    The police claim – that the video is needed for the investigation and cannot be released – contradicts their behavior in similar instances in the past, when police spokesmen hastened to release security camera footage when it served police purposes. The public has the right to know why and how the siblings were killed, and if it was indeed an unavoidable killing of assailants who threatened the lives of policemen and security guards at the checkpoint.

    The two Palestinians approached the Qalandiyah checkpoint on foot, in the lane designated for vehicles. The two raised the suspicion of policemen, who called on them to stop. According to police, at a certain point Abu Ismail took a knife out of her bag and thrust it toward the policemen. According to the Justice Ministry department, a policeman standing at the checkpoint then followed arrest procedures by firing in the air, but the shots that killed the siblings were fired by security guards standing nearby. The police argue that two more knives were found on the siblings’ bodies.

    Palestinian eyewitnesses describe a decidedly different sequence of events. They say that a policeman or security guard fired at the woman from a distance of some 20 meters (65 feet), proof that she was no danger to anyone. According to this testimony, the brother tried to pull his sister back to save her, and either police or security guards then shot and killed him as well. If these testimonies are correct, there was no need to kill the two siblings. Witnesses also said Palestinian medical personnel were not permitted to approach the two.

    The doubts and suspicions can only be dispelled by the footage from the checkpoint’s security cameras. That’s why the police must release it immediately. If the double killing was indeed necessitated by the circumstances, the police must prove this quickly. If this was another case of unnecessary execution, those responsible must be prosecuted.

    The case of Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who shot a subdued and wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron in March, proved how important exposing the truth through video documentation can be. The details of this new incident cannot be hidden on the pretext of an investigation, which may take time. The truth about what happened at Qalandiyah must be disclosed immediately.

    #Maram_et_Ibrahim
    http://seenthis.net/messages/483882

  • Germany: neo-Nazis and the market in asylum reception | Institute of Race Relations
    http://www.irr.org.uk/news/germany-neo-nazis-and-the-market-in-asylum-reception

    It is not surprising that the security industry, and especially the industry of policing asylum seekers, attracts neo-Nazis and members of extreme right-wing organisations.[12] First of all, there is the psychological aspect. As Eick explains, ‘there is the widespread (and not unfounded) assumption that you can behave like Crocodile Dundee if you work for a private security company … the authoritarian nature of this line of work is attractive to neo-Nazis’. Furthermore, employment as a security guard at a refugee reception centre grants direct and intimate access to asylum seekers, quite literally giving would-be attackers the keys to their victims’ doors. In its annual report in 2002, the intelligence service of Saxony-Anhalt warned of attempts by militant neo-Nazi organisations such as the citizen’s militia Selbstschutz Saxony-Anhalt (Self-protection Sachsen Anhalt, SS-SA) to seize control of the security market. The group described itself as a ‘non-commercial association of skilled persons, who in their spare time execute security and order services’ and had actively sought out security contracts over the internet.[13]

  • Liberal, Harsh Denmark
    Hugh Eakin

    A cartoon published by the Danish newspaper Politiken showing Inger Støjberg, the country’s integration minister, lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-­seeker as an ornament, December 2015
    Anne-Marie Steen Petersen

    1.
    In country after country across Europe, the Syrian refugee crisis has put intense pressure on the political establishment. In Poland, voters have brought to power a right-wing party whose leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, warns that migrants are bringing “dangerous diseases” and “various types of parasites” to Europe. In France’s regional elections in December, some Socialist candidates withdrew at the last minute to support the conservatives and prevent the far-right National Front from winning. Even Germany, which took in more than a million asylum-seekers in 2015, has been forced to pull back in the face of a growing revolt from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party and the recent New Year’s attacks on women in Cologne, allegedly by groups of men of North African origin.
    And then there is Denmark. A small, wealthy Scandinavian democracy of 5.6 million people, it is according to most measures one of the most open and egalitarian countries in the world. It has the highest income equality and one of the lowest poverty rates of any Western nation. Known for its nearly carbon-neutral cities, its free health care and university education for all, its bus drivers who are paid like accountants, its robust defense of gay rights and social freedoms, and its vigorous culture of social and political debate, the country has long been envied as a social-democratic success, a place where the state has an improbably durable record of doing good. Danish leaders also have a history of protecting religious minorities: the country was unique in Nazi-occupied Europe in prosecuting anti-Semitism and rescuing almost its entire Jewish population.
    When it comes to refugees, however, Denmark has long led the continent in its shift to the right—and in its growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy. To the visitor, the country’s resistance to immigrants from Africa and the Middle East can seem implacable. In last June’s Danish national election—months before the Syrian refugee crisis hit Europe—the debate centered around whether the incumbent, center-left Social Democrats or their challengers, the center-right Liberal Party, were tougher on asylum-seekers. The main victor was the Danish People’s Party, a populist, openly anti-immigration party, which drew 21 percent of the vote, its best performance ever. Its founder, Pia Kjærsgaard, for years known for suggesting that Muslims “are at a lower stage of civilization,” is now speaker of the Danish parliament. With the backing of the Danish People’s Party, the center-right Liberals formed a minority government that has taken one of the hardest lines on refugees of any European nation.
    When I arrived in Copenhagen last August, the new government, under Liberal Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, had just cut social benefits to refugees by 45 percent. There was talk among Danish politicians and in the Danish press of an “invasion” from the Middle East—though the influx at the time was occurring in the Greek islands, more than one thousand miles away. In early September, Denmark began taking out newspaper ads in Lebanon and Jordan warning would-be asylum-seekers not to come. And by November, the Danish government announced that it could no longer accept the modest share of one thousand refugees assigned to Denmark under an EU redistribution agreement, because Italy and Greece had lost control of their borders.
    These developments culminated in late January of this year, when Rasmussen’s minister of integration, Inger Støjberg, a striking, red-headed forty-two-year-old who has come to represent the government’s aggressive anti-refugee policies, succeeded in pushing through parliament an “asylum austerity” law that has gained notoriety across Europe. The new law, which passed with support from the Social Democrats as well as the Danish People’s Party, permits police to strip-search asylum-seekers and confiscate their cash and most valuables above 10,000 Danish kroner ($1,460) to pay for their accommodation; delays the opportunity to apply for family reunification by up to three years; forbids asylum-seekers from residing outside refugee centers, some of which are tent encampments; reduces the cash benefits they can receive; and makes it significantly harder to qualify for permanent residence. One aim, a Liberal MPexplained to me, is simply to “make Denmark less attractive to foreigners.”
    Danish hostility to refugees is particularly startling in Scandinavia, where there is a pronounced tradition of humanitarianism. Over the past decade, the Swedish government has opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, despite growing social problems and an increasingly popular far-right party. But one of the things Danish leaders—and many Danes I spoke to—seem to fear most is turning into “another Sweden.” Anna Mee Allerslev, the top integration official for the city of Copenhagen, told me that the Danish capital, a Social Democratic stronghold with a large foreign-born population, has for years refused to take any refugees. (Under pressure from other municipalities, this policy is set to change in 2016.)
    In part, the Danish approach has been driven by the country’s long experience with terrorism and jihadism. Nearly a decade before the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015, and the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris in November, the publication of the so-called Muhammad cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had already turned Denmark into a primary target for extremists. Initially driven by a group of Danish imams, outcry against the cartoons gave strength to several small but radical groups among the country’s 260,000 Muslims. These groups have been blamed for the unusually large number of Danes—perhaps as many as three hundred or more—who have gone to fight in Syria, including some who went before the rise ofISIS in 2013. “The Danish system has pretty much been blinking red since 2005,” Magnus Ranstorp, a counterterrorism expert who advises the PET, the Danish security and intelligence service, told me.
    Since the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, the PET and other intelligence forces have disrupted numerous terrorist plots, some of them eerily foreshadowing what happened in Paris last year. In 2009, the Pakistani-American extremist David Headley, together with Laskar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist organization, devised a meticulous plan to storm the Jyllands-Posten offices in Copenhagen and systematically kill all the journalists that could be found. Headley was arrested in the United States in October 2009, before any part of the plan was carried out; in 2013, he was sentenced by a US district court to thirty-five years in prison for his involvement in the Mumbai attacks of 2008.
    In February of last year, just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a young Danish-Palestinian man named Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein tried to shoot his way into the Copenhagen meeting of a free-speech group to which a Swedish cartoonist, known for his caricatures of Muhammad, had been invited. El-Hussein succeeded in killing a Danish filmmaker at the meeting before fleeing the scene; then, hours later, he killed a security guard at the city’s main synagogue and was shot dead by police.
    Yet many Danes I talked to are less concerned about terrorism than about the threat they see Muslims posing to their way of life. Though Muslims make up less than 5 percent of the population, there is growing evidence that many of the new arrivals fail to enter the workforce, are slow to learn Danish, and end up in high-crime immigrant neighborhoods where, while relying on extensive state handouts, they and their children are cut off from Danish society. In 2010, the Danish government introduced a “ghetto list” of such marginalized places with the goal of “reintegrating” them; the list now includes more than thirty neighborhoods.
    Popular fears that the refugee crisis could overwhelm the Danish welfare state have sometimes surprised the country’s own leadership. On December 3, in a major defeat for the government, a clear majority of Danes—53 percent—rejected a referendum on closer security cooperation with the European Union. Until now, Denmark has been only a partial EU member—for example, it does not belong to the euro and has not joined EU protocols on citizenship and legal affairs. In view of the growing threat of jihadism, both the government and the opposition Social Democrats hoped to integrate the country fully into European policing and counterterrorism efforts. But the “no” vote, which was supported by the Danish People’s Party, was driven by fears that such a move could also give Brussels influence over Denmark’s refugee and immigration policies.
    The outcome of the referendum has ominous implications for the European Union at a time when emergency border controls in numerous countries—including Germany and Sweden as well as Denmark—have put in doubt the Schengen system of open borders inside the EU. In Denmark itself, the referendum has forced both the Liberals and the Social Democrats to continue moving closer to the populist right. In November, Martin Henriksen, the Danish People’s Party spokesman on refugees and immigration, toldPolitiken, the country’s leading newspaper, “There is a contest on to see who can match the Danish People’s Party on immigration matters, and I hope that more parties will participate.”
    2.
    According to many Danes I met, the origins of Denmark’s anti-immigration consensus can be traced to the national election of November 2001, two months after the September 11 attacks in the United States. At the time, the recently founded Danish People’s Party was largely excluded from mainstream politics; the incumbent prime minister, who was a Social Democrat, famously described the party as unfit to govern.
    But during the 1990s, the country’s Muslim population had nearly doubled to around 200,000 people, and in the 2001 campaign, immigration became a central theme. The Social Democrats suffered a devastating defeat and, for the first time since 1924, didn’t control the most seats in parliament. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the ambitious leader of the victorious Liberal Party (no relation to the current prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen), made a historic decision to form a government with support from the Danish People’s Party, which had come in third place—a far-right alliance that had never been tried in Scandinavia. It kept Fogh Rasmussen in power for three terms.
    From an economic perspective, the government’s embrace of the populist right was anomalous. With its unique combination of comprehensive welfare and a flexible labor market—known as flexicurity—Denmark has an efficient economy in which the rate of job turnover is one of the highest in Europe, yet almost 75 percent of working-age Danes are employed. At the same time, the country’s extraordinary social benefits, such as long-term education, retraining, and free child care, are based on integration in the workforce. Yet many of the qualities about the Danish system that work so well for those born into it have made it particularly hard for outsiders to penetrate.
    Denmark is a mostly low-lying country consisting of the Jutland Peninsula in the west, the large islands of Funen and Zealand in the east, and numerous smaller islands. (It also includes the island of Greenland, whose tiny population is largely Inuit.) The modern state emerged in the late nineteenth century, following a series of defeats by Bismarck’s Germany in which it lost much of its territory and a significant part of its population. Several Danish writers have linked this founding trauma to a lasting national obsession with invasion and a continual need to assert danskhed, or Danishness.
    Among other things, these preoccupations have given the Danish welfare system an unusually important part in shaping national identity. Visitors to Denmark will find the Danish flag on everything from public buses to butter wrappers; many of the country’s defining institutions, from its universal secondary education (Folkehøjskoler—the People’s High Schools) to the parliament (Folketinget—the People’s House) to the Danish national church (Folkekirken—the People’s Church) to the concept of democracy itself (Folkestyret—the Rule of the People) have been built to reinforce a strong sense of folke, the Danish people.
    One result of this emphasis on cohesion is the striking contrast between how Danes view their fellow nationals and how they seem to view the outside world: in 1997, a study of racism in EU countries found Danes to be simultaneously among the most tolerant and also the most racist of any European population. “In the nationalist self-image, tolerance is seen as good,” writes the Danish anthropologist Peter Hervik. “Yet…excessive tolerance is considered naive and counterproductive for sustaining Danish national identity.”
    According to Hervik, this paradox helps account for the rise of the Danish People’s Party, or Dansk Folkeparti. Like its far-right counterparts in neighboring countries, the party drew on new anxieties about non-European immigrants and the growing influence of the EU. What made the Danish People’s Party particularly potent, however, was its robust defense of wealth redistribution and advanced welfare benefits for all Danes. “On a traditional left-right scheme they are very difficult to locate,” former prime minister Fogh Rasmussen told me in Copenhagen. “They are tough on crime, tough on immigration, but on welfare policy, they are center left. Sometimes they even try to surpass the Social Democrats.”
    Beginning in 2002, the Fogh Rasmussen government passed a sweeping set of reforms to limit the flow of asylum-seekers. Among the most controversial were the so-called twenty-four-year rule, which required foreign-born spouses to be at least twenty-four years old to qualify for Danish citizenship, and a requirement that both spouses combined had spent more years living in Denmark than in any other country. Unprecedented in Europe, the new rules effectively ended immigrant marriages as a quick path to citizenship. At the same time, the government dramatically restricted the criteria under which a foreigner could qualify for refugee status.
    To Fogh Rasmussen’s critics, the measures were simply a way to gain the support of the Danish People’s Party for his own political program. This included labor market reforms, such as tying social benefits more closely to active employment, and—most notably—a muscular new foreign policy. Departing from Denmark’s traditional neutrality, the government joined with US troops in military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq; Denmark has since taken part in the interventions in Libya and Syria as well. (In his official state portrait in the parliament, Fogh Rasmussen, who went on to become general secretary of NATO in 2009, is depicted with a Danish military plane swooping over a desolate Afghan landscape in the background.)
    Yet the immigration overhaul also had strong foundations in the Liberal Party. In 1997, Bertel Haarder, a veteran Liberal politician and strategist, wrote an influential book called Soft Cynicism, which excoriated the Danish welfare system for creating, through excessive coddling, the very stigmatization of new arrivals to Denmark that it was ostensibly supposed to prevent. Haarder, who went on to become Fogh Rasmussen’s minister of immigration, told me, “The Danes wanted to be soft and nice. And we turned proud immigrants into social welfare addicts. It wasn’t their fault. It was our fault.”
    According to Haarder, who has returned to the Danish cabinet as culture minister in the current Liberal government, the refugees who have come to Denmark in recent years overwhelmingly lack the education and training needed to enter the country’s advanced labor market. As Fogh Rasmussen’s immigration minister, he sought to match the restrictions on asylum-seekers with expedited citizenship for qualified foreigners. But he was also known for his criticism of Muslims who wanted to assert their own traditions: “All this talk about equality of cultures and equality of religion is nonsense,” he told a Danish newspaper in 2002. “The Danes have the right to make decisions in Denmark.”
    3.
    Coming amid the Fogh Rasmussen government’s rightward shift on immigration and its growing involvement in the “war on terror,” the decision by the Danish paperJyllands-Posten in September 2005 to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad seemed to bring into the open an irresolvable conflict. In the decade since they appeared, the cartoons have been linked to the torching of Western embassies, an unending series of terrorist attacks and assassination plots across Europe, and a sense, among many European intellectuals, that Western society is being cowed into a “tyranny of silence,” as Flemming Rose, the former culture editor of Jyllands-Postenwho commissioned the cartoons and who now lives under constant police protection, has titled a recent book.1 In his new study of French jihadism, Terreur dans l’hexagone: Genèse du djihad français, Gilles Kepel, the French scholar of Islam, suggests that the cartoons inspired an “international Islamic campaign against little Denmark” that became a crucial part of a broader redirection of jihadist ideology toward the West.
    And yet little about the original twelve cartoons could have foretold any of this. Traditionally based in Jutland, Jyllands-Posten is a center-right broadsheet that tends to draw readers from outside the capital; it was little known abroad before the cartoons appeared. Following reports that a Danish illustrator had refused to do drawings for a book about Muhammad, Rose invited a group of caricaturists to “draw Muhammad as you see him” to find out whether they were similarly inhibited (most of them weren’t). Some of the resulting drawings made fun of the newspaper itself for pursuing the idea; in the subsequent controversy, outrage was largely directed at just one of the cartoons, which depicted the Prophet wearing a lit bomb as a turban. Even then, the uproar began only months later, after the Danish prime minister refused a request from diplomats of Muslim nations for a meeting about the cartoons. “I thought it was a trap,” Fogh Rasmussen told me. At the same time, several secular Arab regimes, including Mubarak’s Egypt and Assad’s Syria, concluded that encouraging vigorous opposition to the cartoons could shore up their Islamist credentials.
    Once angry mass protests had finally been stirred up throughout the Muslim world in late January and early February 2006—including in Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan—the crisis quickly took on a logic that had never existed at the outset: attacks against Western targets led many newspapers in the West to republish the cartoons in solidarity, which in turn provoked more attacks. By the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in early 2015, there was a real question of what Timothy Garton Ash, in these pages, has called “the assassin’s veto,” the fact that some newspapers might self-censor simply to avoid further violence.2 Jyllands-Posten itself, declaring in an editorial in January 2015 that “violence works,” no longer republishes the cartoons.
    Lost in the geopolitical fallout, however, was the debate over Danish values that the cartoons provoked in Denmark itself. Under the influence of the nineteenth-century state builder N.F.S. Grundtvig, the founders of modern Denmark embraced free speech as a core value. It was the first country in Europe to legalize pornography in the 1960s, and Danes have long taken a special pleasure in cheerful, in-your-face irreverence. In December Politiken published a cartoon showing the integration minister Inger Støjberg gleefully lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-seeker as an ornament (see illustration on page 34).
    Explaining his own reasons for commissioning the Muhammad cartoons, Flemming Rose has written of the need to assert the all-important right to “sarcasm, mockery, and ridicule” against an encroaching totalitarianism emanating from the Islamic world. He also makes clear that Muslims or any other minority group should be equally free to express their own views in the strongest terms. (Rose told me that he differs strongly with Geert Wilders, the prominent Dutch populist and critic of Islam. “He wants to ban the Koran. I say absolutely you can’t do that.”)
    But Rose’s views about speech have been actively contested. Bo Lidegaard, the editor of Politiken, the traditional paper of the Copenhagen establishment, was Fogh Rasmussen’s national security adviser at the time of the cartoons crisis. Politiken, which shares the same owner and inhabits the same high-security building as Jyllands-Posten, has long been critical of the publication of the cartoons by its sister paper, and Lidegaard was blunt. “It was a complete lack of understanding of what a minority religion holds holy,” he told me. “It also seemed to be mobbing a minority, by saying, in their faces, ‘We don’t respect your religion! You may think this is offensive but we don’t think its offensive, so you’re dumb!’”
    Lidegaard, who has written several books about Danish history, argues that the cartoons’ defenders misread the free speech tradition. He cites Denmark’s law against “threatening, insulting, or degrading” speech, which was passed by the Danish parliament in 1939, largely to protect the country’s Jewish minority from anti-Semitism. Remarkably, it remained in force—and was even invoked—during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. According to Lidegaard, it is a powerful recognition that upholding equal rights and tolerance for all can sometimes trump the need to protect extreme forms of speech.
    Today, however, few Danes seem concerned about offending Muslims. Neils-Erik Hansen, a leading Danish human rights lawyer, told me that the anti–hate speech law has rarely been used in recent years, and that in several cases of hate crimes against Muslim immigrants—a newspaper boy was killed after being called “Paki swine”—the authorities have shown little interest in invoking the statute. During the cartoon affair, Lidegaard himself was part of the foreign policy team that advised Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen not to have talks with Muslim representatives. When I asked him about this, he acknowledged, “The government made some mistakes.”
    4.
    Last fall I visited Mjølnerparken, an overwhelmingly immigrant “ghetto” in north Copenhagen where Omar el-Hussein, the shooter in last year’s attack against the free speech meeting, had come from. Many of the youth there belong to gangs and have been in and out of prison; the police make frequent raids to search for guns. Upward of half the adults, many of them of Palestinian and Somali origin, are unemployed. Eskild Pedersen, a veteran social worker who almost single-handedly looks after the neighborhood, told me that hardly any ethnic Danes set foot there. This was Denmark at its worst.
    And yet there was little about the tidy red-brick housing blocks or the facing playground, apart from a modest amount of graffiti, that suggested dereliction or squalor. Pedersen seems to have the trust of many of his charges. He had just settled a complicated honor dispute between two Somalian families; and as we spoke, a Palestinian girl, not more than six, interrupted to tell him about a domestic violence problem in her household. He has also found part-time jobs for several gang members, and helped one of them return to school; one young man of Palestinian background gave me a tour of the auto body shop he had started in a nearby garage. (When a delegation of Egyptians was recently shown the neighborhood, the visitors asked, “Where is the ghetto?”)
    But in Denmark, the police force is regarded as an extension of the social welfare system and Pedersen also makes it clear, to the young men especially, that he works closely with law enforcement. As last year’s shooting reveals, it doesn’t always work. But city officials in Copenhagen and in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, describe some cases in which local authorities, drawing on daily contact with young and often disaffected Muslims, including jihadists returning from Syria, have been able to preempt extremist behavior.
    Across Europe in recent weeks, shock over the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees has quickly been overtaken by alarm over the challenge they are now seen as posing to social stability. Several countries that have been welcoming to large numbers of Syrian and other asylum-seekers are confronting growing revolts from the far right—along with anti-refugee violence. In December Die Zeit, the German newsweekly, reported that more than two hundred German refugee shelters have been attacked or firebombed over the past year; in late January, Swedish police intercepted a gang of dozens of masked men who were seeking to attack migrants near Stockholm’s central station. Since the beginning of 2016, two notorious far-right, anti-immigration parties—the Sweden Democrats in Sweden and Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands—became more popular than the ruling parties in their respective countries, despite being excluded from government.
    Nor is the backlash limited to the right. Since the New Year’s attacks by migrants against women in Cologne, conservative opponents of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy have been joined by feminists and members of the left, who have denounced the “patriarchal” traditions of the “Arab man.” Recent data on the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, who in January were polling at 28 percent of the popular vote, shows that the party’s steady rise during Sweden’s decade of open-asylum policies has closely tracked a parallel decline in support for the center-left Social Democrats, the traditional force in Swedish politics. Confronted with such a populist surge, the Swedish government announced on January 27 that it plans to deport as many as 80,000 asylum-seekers.
    As the advanced democracies of Europe reconsider their physical and psychological borders with the Muslim world, the restrictive Danish approach to immigration and the welfare state offers a stark alternative. Brought into the political process far earlier than its counterparts elsewhere, the Danish People’s Party is a good deal more moderate than, say, the National Front in France; but it also has succeeded in shaping, to an extraordinary degree, the Danish immigration debate. In recent weeks, Denmark’s Social Democrats have struggled to define their own immigration policy amid sagging support. When I asked former prime minister Fogh Rasmussen about how the Danish People’s Party differed from the others on asylum-seekers and refugees, he said, “You have differences when it comes to rhetoric, but these are nuances.”
    In January, more than 60,000 refugees arrived in Europe, a thirty-five-fold increase from the same month last year; but in Denmark, according to Politiken, the number of asylum-seekers has steadily declined since the start of the year, with only 1,400 seeking to enter the country. In limiting the kind of social turmoil now playing out in Germany, Sweden, and France, the Danes may yet come through the current crisis a more stable, united, and open society than any of their neighbors. But they may also have shown that this openness extends no farther than the Danish frontier.
    —February 10, 2016

    #danemark #migrations #asile #réfugiés

  • Palestinian shot dead after reported stab attempt on soldiers near Beit El
    Feb. 26, 2016 5:22 P.M. (Updated: Feb. 26, 2016 7:18 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=770456

    BETHELEHEM (Ma’an) — A Palestinian was shot dead Friday after reportedly attempting to stab Israeli soldiers stationed near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, the Israeli army said.

    An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an: “A Palestinian assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab soldiers stationed at a security crossing.” Forces on site then “thwarted the attack,” opening fire and killing the Palestinian, the spokesperson said.

    The death was confirmed by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which identified the Palestinian as Mahmoud Muhammad Ali Shalaan , 17, from the village of Deir Dibwan east of Ramallah.

    No Israelis were injured in the incident.

    The incident comes shortly after an Israeli security guard was stabbed several times and critically injured inside of the illegal Maale Adumim settlement overnight Thursday by a Palestinian who reportedly fled the scene.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Un Palestinien tué après avoir tenté de poignarder des soldats israéliens
      AFP / 26 février 2016
      http://www.romandie.com/news/Un-Palestinien-tue-apres-avoir-tente-de-poignarder-des-soldats-israeliens/680427.rom

      Ramallah (Territoires palestiniens) - Un Palestinien a tenté de poignarder des soldats israéliens vendredi à un barrage militaire installé à l’entrée de Ramallah en Cisjordanie occupée, avant d’être tué, a indiqué l’armée israélienne.

      Des sources au sein des services de sécurité palestiniens ont précisé que le jeune assaillant, identifié par le ministère palestinien de la Santé, comme Mahmoud Chaalane , 17 ans, originaire du village de Deir Debouan, proche de Ramallah, avait également la nationalité américaine.

      Lorsque le jeune homme s’est approché du check-point dit DCO, emprunté par diplomates, journalistes et quelques Palestiniens possédant un permis spécial, les forces (armées) ont déjoué l’attaque en tirant vers l’assaillant et en le tuant, a indiqué l’armée israélienne.

      Ce barrage gardé par des soldats israéliens, qui se trouve non loin de la colonie de Bet-El, était fermé vendredi en début de soirée, a constaté un journaliste de l’AFP.

    • New call for US investigation into killing of Palestinian-American teen in West Bank
      Israel/Palestine Wilson Dizard on September 6, 2016
      http://mondoweiss.net/2016/09/killing-palestinian-american

      (...) AFSC is calling on Sen. Patrick Leahy and others in congress to follow through on the concern they expressed to the State Dept. earlier this year concerning the American child’s death. The United States failing to sanction Israel for its actions against American citizens usually takes the form of finding little help from the U.S. consulate, sometimes as border officials are denying them entry at the border. Less usual is the death of an American citizen thanks to weapons American tax dollars helped purchase.

      The advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace also called for an investigation.

      “We don’t know the circumstances relating to Mahmoud’s death. But we can, and we should. Mahmoud was a U.S. citizen, yet not one public official at the White House or State Department has publicly called for an investigation into his death,” JVP wrote in an email.

      Family members and witnesses tell Haaretz that they do not believe the boy was doing more than trying to cross a checkpoint in a place under military occupation, a sometimes deadly ordeal. A witness said he saw the soldier shoot Shalaan in the back. His family maintains he was not inspired by politics of any stripe and planned on returning to the U.S.

      His family first found out of his death after photos surfaced on Facebook of the boy’s body lying, bleeding, on the ground for two hours.

      “The United States has an obligation to investigate Mahmoud’s case and dozens of other apparent extrajudicial killings committed by Israeli forces since last October with the assistance of U.S. tax dollars,” the AFSC statement reads online, accompanied by a form allowing supporters to sign their names.

      “This killing should be investigated, both because Mahmoud deserves the same protections as any other U.S. citizen, and because he was likely killed with weapons subsidized by U.S. tax dollars,” the letter adds.(...)