Roman’s Website

Representative Press Video

- “Jewish settlers ‘kill Palestinian’
A Palestinian shepherd has been shot dead by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian security and government officials. The young man, identified as Yehia Apa Riham, was among a group of shepherds grazing their flocks south of Nablus and near the Itamar settlement when they were attacked by the settlers, security officials said.” (Read more from aljazeera.net)

- “Olmert decries ‘evil wind of extremism’ in Israel
JERUSALEM - An ‘evil wind of extremism’ is threatening Israel’s democracy, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Sunday, after a pipe bomb attack wounded a professor critical of Israel’s settler movement. Olmert’s forceful comments came amid growing concerns in Israel about violence by hard-line radicals, including extremist West Bank settlers. Israeli defense officials and human rights groups have noted a rise in settler violence against Palestinian soldiers and Israeli soldiers in recent months. On Sunday, police were investigating the shooting death of a 19-year-old Palestinian shepherd whose body was discovered in ravine in a remote area of the West Bank. The shepherd’s relatives blamed Jewish settlers, but police said they were still investigating. Also, dozens of Israeli civilians entered the Palestinian village of Kufr Diek in the West Bank late Saturday, smashing the windows of several cars and homes, said the mayor, Jamal al-Diek.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

“‘We’ll resubmit it when Congress comes back, and we’ll have even more signatures,’ the resolution’s main author, New York Democrat Rep. Gary Ackerman, told the Washington Times, adding that the resolution currently has 270 co-sponsors, or some two-thirds of the House’s entire membership.

Still, the decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Read more at Haaretz.com

I would have loved to see Palin and Clinton side by side at an anti-Iran rally. It’d demonstrate the diversity of views among the Republicrats.

-”Army: Settlers have crossed red line
Senior IDF officers on Thursday lambasted the legal system’s inability to effectively crack down on radical West Bank settlers after a group of young far-right activists went on a rampage that culminated in an attack on an IDF position near Ramallah. . . . The reservists tried to fend off the attackers, who called the soldiers ‘Nazis.’ Earlier in the day, soldiers clashed with settlers near the settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus, after they began throwing rocks at passing Palestinian cars. . . . Two soldiers were wounded in the clashes - one with a fracture in his hand. The other soldier was treated at the scene after a settler’s dog bit him after being ordered to attack by his owner.” (Read more from jpost.com)

This is how humans behave when we’re certain we have God on our side.

-”Israel’s Dark Art of Ensnaring Palestinian Collaborators
Collaboration comes in various guises, including land dealers, who buy Palestinian-owned land to sell it to settlers or the Israeli government; armed agents who assist Israeli soldiers in raids; and infiltrators into the national organizations and their armed wings who foil resistance operations. . . . With hospitals and medicines in short supply, some patients have little hope of recovery without treatment abroad or in Israel. According to the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, the Shin Bet is exploiting the distress of these families to pressure them to agree to collaborate in return for an exit permit. Last month, the group released details of 32 cases in which sick Gazans admitted they were denied permits after refusing to become informants. . . . As with other occupation regimes, Israel has long relied on the most traditional way of recruiting collaborators: torture. While a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 banned torture, the evidence suggests the Shin Bet simply ignored the ruling. Two Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Hamoked, found last year that seven “special” interrogation methods amounting to torture are still being regularly employed, including beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation. Detention provides other opportunities for recruitment. In the past 17 years alone, 150,000 Palestinians have been prosecuted by the military regime. According to the Israeli group Yesh Din, 95 percent of these trials end in plea bargains, offering yet another chance to persuade a detainee to turn informant in return for a reduced sentence.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Sarah Palin Appearances Cancelled; Meets With AIPAC

Biden: Israel will be more protected with Obama

Okay, let’s say there are two countries which border one another, and one keeps getting smaller because its land is being confiscated by the other, should we be talking about the security of the country that’s shrinking or the one that’s growing? Should we be talking about the right to exist of the country that’s expanding at the expense of its neighbor, or about the rights of the one victimized?

Meanwhile: Israeli navy arrests three Palestinian fishermen in Gaza waters

“by Mel Frykberg

JERUSALEM - Israel has published tenders for the construction of 1,761 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers in occupied east Jerusalem alone, according to the Israeli rights group Peace Now.

The expansion plans come despite promises by the Israeli government at last year’s peace summit at Annapolis, Maryland (in the US) to freeze all settlement growth.

‘Once again this government has shown that its words and commitments are meaningless, and they have no intention of keeping to their word,’ says Peace Now.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stressed repeatedly that settlement construction or expansion in the West Bank is contrary to international law and Israel’s commitments under the ‘road map’ peace process.

The road map was a series of peace-building measures proposed by US President George W. Bush in 2002 and subsequently developed by the diplomatic Quartet of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the United States.

Ban Ki-moon further urged Israel to freeze all settlement activity and to dismantle outposts erected since March of 2001.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, normally a diehard supporter of Israel, also expressed her concern about the settlement building during her last visit to Israel several months ago.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

. . . but that doesn’t stop our government from giving tax breaks to organizations funding the settlements. (See Below)

AIPAC: The UN is irrelevant! Fire Ban Ki-Moon!

A better word for settlers is colonists.

“JERUSALEM, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians — yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations.

. . . .

Pro-settler groups say they are entitled to the tax breaks because their work is ‘humanitarian’, not political, and reject any comparison to Palestinian charities, some of which face U.S. sanctions over suspected links to Islamist groups like Hamas.

The full extent of tax-exempt U.S. funding for settlements is unclear because so many groups are involved and their spending practices are not always transparent. But a review by Reuters of U.S. tax records found 13 tax-exempt organisations openly linked to settlements that have raised more than $35 million in the last five years alone.

. . . .

In one example, when settlers took over a new building in the flashpoint city of Hebron last year, a tax-exempt New York organisation sprang into action to solicit funds for renovations to accommodate more families.

The Hebron Fund, which raises an average of $1.5 million a year to support Jewish settlers in the city, and other groups said they were as entitled to tax exemptions as other charities.

‘Are you saying you can get a charitable deduction for helping starving people in New York City but you can’t get a charitable deduction for helping starving people in Judea and Samaria,’ said Sondra Oster Baras, president of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, using an Israeli term for the West Bank. ‘That’s an argument that doesn’t make sense.’

. . . .

Ian Lustick, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, played down the chances the tax breaks will be rolled back. ‘It’s a political hot potato,’ Lustick said, citing the clout of U.S. pro-Israel groups to block any change.”

(Read more from alertnet.org)

SEE ALSO:

-Occupation by Another Name: Meron Benvenisti in an excellent article mentions the “success of the propaganda campaign known as ‘negotiations with the Palestinians,’ which convinces many that the status quo is temporary.”

Read more from Haaretz.com

-Israel fears scathing U.S. report on its West Bank policies. I’ll be very surprised if this report gets any press in the U.S.

-UN report: At 45%, Gaza unemployment is highest in the world.

-US Revokes Visas for Gaza Fulbright Students.

-Settler arrested in failed rocket attack on Palestinian town “Police said Sunday they have arrested a settler suspected of involvement in a failed rocket attack on a Palestinian village in the West Bank. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that police arrested Gilad Herman, a student at a Jewish seminary in the settlement of Yitzhar.”

-U.S. protests eviction of Arab family from East Jerusalem home Like many Palestinians, the Al-Kurds are now multiple-order refugees. They were kicked out of West Jerusalem in 1950. Three predictions: 1) The US media will continue to ignore the bureaucratic strangling of Palestinian populations. 2) The US diplomat behind this criticism will be blacklisted and never work in the Middle East again. 3) Whatever little press these stories get will be immediately countered. The issue will be reframed, accuser will become accused, like this.

-West Bank residents face severe water shortage as drought continues

-Olmert: Living with 270,000 Arabs in Jerusalem means more terror “Whoever thinks its possible to live with 270,000 Arabs in Jerusalem must take into account that there will be more bulldozers, more tractors, and more cars carrying out [terror] attacks,” Olmert said, referring to two incidents this month in which Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem deliberately plowed bulldozers into passing cars in the capital, causing casualties.” . . . therefore we should ethnically cleanse . . . I mean . . . um . . . terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.

-Israeli soldiers kill 11-year-old terrorist. See the full child-body-count here: rememberthesechildren.com.

-Cartoon: hypocrisy of Obama’s “These Walls Cannot Stand.”

-Pogrom against Palestinians “In some areas, like in the Hebron region, settler attacks have assumed pogrom-like proportions. What is particularly outrageous is that most of these attacks take place in full view of Israeli soldiers who watch passively as heavily armed settlers gang up on helpless Palestinian civilians. The latest acts of savagery included an assault on a Palestinian wedding party and the attempted lynching of an Arab boy near Hebron, an attack on a civilian car near Nablus that caused a massive brain hemorrhage to a 6-year-old girl who is now fighting for her life, beating up and stoning Arab children near Tuwwani in the southern West Bank and setting fire to Palestinian groves and fields in several parts of the occupied territories.”

-Activists try to break the siege of Gaza with sailing boats