Human Rights

NOVANEWS   Stop the Brutal Transfer of Bedouins, Citizens of Israel   Yeela Raanan, Jan. 18th, 2011. The Israeli Governments' actions in El Araqib right now are new and terrifying… In a nutshell: On Sunday and again on Monday the police helped the JNF people in "clearing out the area", which included beatings, bullets, injured, arrested: both of the village and activists, leaving several activists in jail overnight, some people injured and in hospital, the police remained in the village "clearing out" the rubble for hours, thus the village people for most of the day were "imprisoned" in the village cemetery. We have not witnessed this level of violence against Israeli citizens in the past few decades. And so far there is silence, and the Government of Israel knows it may continue... For p...

NOVANEWS   Israel National News reports that “Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed several hundred feet into Gaza Tuesday afternoon and killed one terrorist after a bomb exploded near an Israel patrol vehicle at the Gaza separation/security barrier.” I know that this isn’t true, because I know who they killed: Amjad Sami Za’aneen. I know because I got a call from his relative Saber Za’aneen earlier today that there had been an incursion in Beit Hanoun, and because my friends went to the hospital to go interview his family members. They said he’d been collecting rocks with friends in the buffer zone when an Israeli tank unloaded a shell at them. It blew a hole in his abdomen so big he didn’t even make it to the hospital before he died. The murderers’ newspaper says: “it is widely known that...

NOVANEWS Thousands of Israelis rally in defence of human and civil rights Tel Aviv sees largest demonstration in years as people protest against parliamentary investigation into funding of rights groups  Harriet Sherwood in Tel Aviv guardian.co.uk  16 January 2011 Israeli and Palestinian flags are waved by thousands of activists from leftwing groups at a rally in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP Thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv at the weekend in the biggest demonstration for years to protest against a series of attacks on civil and human rights organisations and a rise in anti-Arab sentiment. Under the banner of the "Democratic Camp", a coalition of organisations and prominent individuals, the marchers heard speakers lambast the Israeli government, singling...

NOVANEWS Exclusive Interview: JNF demolishes village for the 9th Time More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy? By Jesse Bacon Bulldozes from the Jewish National Fund demolished the Bedouin village for Al-Arakib for  the  ninth  time yesterday and today. They also demolished the village’s olive groves the  week of Tu  Bshvat,  which  celebrates the flowering of trees so they can grow a forest named after a Fundamentalist Christian TV channel and foreign ambassadors. The visitors were held in the village’s grav- eyard while the demolition took place, with much more force than usual. The Only  Democracy?  spoke  with  Roii Ball, an Israeli activist with the joint groupTarabut-Hithabrut: Arab–Jewish Movement for Social & Political Change, who ha...

NOVANEWS please give this wings. From Hithabrut-Tarrabut Movement press release:   Monday, January 17 2011     On Sunday, January 16th, 2011, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) accompanied by a heavy police presence destroyed the Bedouin village of Al Araqib for the 9thtime since its total destruction in July 2010. During the village's destruction the police forces used large amounts of violent force, including sponge bullets (a police method of crowd dispersal) which injured eleven of the residents, one of them in his eye.   This time it seems that the ILA has decided to expel the residents once and for all. This is corroborated by statements made by Shlomo Zeiser, the ILA officer in charge of inspection, in an interview with the "Walla" news website: "In addition to the ongoing work, ...

NOVANEWS GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, TOM HURNDALL AND PALESTINIAN CHILDREN SHOT IN THE HEAD   By Alison Weir in Counterpunch   Tom Hurndall Shot in the Head by Israeli Sniper There is something particularly horrifying when someone is shot in the head. Perhaps it’s the gruesome image, the destruction of the brain, the clear intent to kill. The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is made even more nightmarish by the location of her devastating injury. Those of us who focus on Israel-Palestine are acutely aware of this horror. Several years ago, I was researching the cause of death of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces during the first months of the Second Intifadah, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. As I counted up the numbers, I was chilled t...

NOVANEWS   Martin Luther King Jr. said: “There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression.” When is a person’s home not his/her castle? When Israel wants this home, so they destroy the home and take the land. On 13 December 2010, Israeli bulldozers, flanked by hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces, demolished seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lydd, a city a few miles east of Tel Aviv. Photostory, The Electronic Intifada, 6 January 2011 On 13 December 2010, Israeli bulldozers, flanked by hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces, demolished seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lydd, a city a few miles east of Tel Aviv. The demolition, which took several hours, subsequently displace...

NOVANEWS In Israel, which is also known as the only democracy in the Middle East, human rights websites as well as the websites of some extreme right-wing organizations cannot be accessed from Ben-Gurion, the country’s only international airport. By Neve Gordon in The Nation Imagine a college student returning to her university after spending Christmas break at home. At the airport she logs on to the Internet to double check some of the sources she used in her final take-home exam for the course “Introduction to Human Rights.” She gets online and begins to surf the web; however, she soon realizes that the websites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are blocked. She calls the service provider’s 800 number, only to find out that all human rights organizations’ websites have i...

NOVANEWS     Muhannad is a Palestinian artist who resides in Alazzeh refugee camp in occupied Palestine. However, he originates from the southern Palestinian village of Biet Jibrin, which has been ethnically cleansed by the Israeli Zionist troops in 1948. “Don’t beautify the Apartheid wall”, a quote by Alazzeh for an interview on the role of Palestinian and international artists and his views on the segregation wall built around the West Bank. Al Azzeh was born in September of 1981 to Othman Alazzeh, an Arabic literature teacher and Amal Alazzeh. Since he’s shown an interest in Art and painting at the age of 10, his parents got him to participate in ‘Alwan’ (meaning colours in Arabic) workshop in Jerusalem, where he learnt and developed his talent at a young age and then publish...

Buy The Goldstone Report Nation Books has just published our new book -- The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, which is an abridged copy of the UN report accompanied by a dozen essays, exploring the political, legal and social legacy of the report and the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009. The book comes out at an important new moment in the history of the conflict, with the collapse of talks between the two sides, and growing international calls for accountability for Israel’s conduct in the occupied territories.   A diverse group of leading commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is assembled here. Our forward Is from Justice Goldstone’s longtime friend,   Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Our introduction, wh...