Ya’alon still in New Zealand

Ya’alon still in New Zealand, despite arrest warrant for war crimes

Despite reports to the contrary, former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Lieutenant General (res.) Moshe Ya’alon remained in New Zealand after a warrant was issued for his arrest for alleged war crimes, he said Friday. The charges have since been dropped.

UN Human Rights Violations

Draft resolution on human rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent one in Northern Gaza and the assault on Beit Hanoun

Source: United Nations Human Rights Council

Date: 14 Nov 2006

The Human Rights Council,

Affirming the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civil Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem,

The War for Israel`s Soul

September 29, 2008 – By: Weiss, Philip

Further evidence of the war within Israeli society: The tragedy of the occupation has brought about  “an unprecedented number of young people who are choosing to go to jail rather than serve in the Israeli army,“

says a Refuser Solidarity group. And the government of Israel is trying to shut down New Profile, a leftwing feminist group that supports these young “shirkers,” New Profile reports. The group describes the spiritual despair that the occupation, and the Nakba before that, has caused inside Israel.

And mentions soldier suicides as the leading cause of death:

• Four generations and over six decades of repeated, unending “military solutions” have engendered an expanding movement of young people who experience and express excruciating inner struggles and rifts in face of the legal duty to serve. …
• For some young people, [these crises] involve highly dangerous levels of personal distress and indeed, in recent years, suicide has claimed the lives of more Israeli soldiers than all other causes-of-death combined.
• Rather than listening to the voice raised by these future citizens, rather than fathoming the social change it reflects and responding with changed, innovative policies, Israel ’s state institutions have chosen to wage a “war” against these youths and the developments they represent.

It Can Happen Here! by Uri Avnery

It Can Happen Here!

September 30, 2008

The German name Sternhell means “bright as the stars.” The name fits: the positions of Professor Ze’ev Sternhell indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe bomb at the entrance of his apartment, and he was lightly injured.

The choice of victim seems surprising at first. But the perpetrators knew what they were doing.

• They did not attack the activists who demonstrate every week against the Separation Wall in Bil’in and Na’alin.
• They did not attack the leftists who mobilize every year – this year, too – to help the Palestinians pick their olives near the most dangerous settlements.
• They did not attack the “Women in Black” who demonstrate every Friday, or the women of “Machsom Watch,” who keep an eye on events at the army checkpoints.
• They attacked a person whose entire activity is in the academic field.