MalarkyNews

The Washington Post has picked up an article written by Ben Hubbard for the Associated Press about the misery that is Qalandia checkpoint.   Apparently, Ben spent five days there, early in the morning when Palestinians with permits are being treated not unlike animals as they try to get to work.

Thousands — no, millions, upon millions of words have been written about this shame.  We have written about it repetitively — just enter the word Qalandia in the search box on this page, and the stories will pop up.

But, nothing changes.  If anything, it simply gets worse.

[UPDATE: Also see Amira Hass' article published in Haaretz here: "Israel calls the checkpoint a 'terminal' and relates to it as an existing, legal border between the State of Israel and the Palestinian entity. For Palestinians, the Qalandiyah checkpoint is a physical representation of the fact that for most of them, East Jerusalem has become as far away as the moon. Most of the people who pass through Qalandiyah are Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. A minority are West Bank residents who have temporary permits to enter Israel".]

The AP story published in the WPost is entitled Checkpoint misery epitomizes a Mideast divide, and it is posted here.

This is the AP photo used to illustrate the article in the Washington Post – it was taken 15 Dec 2009:

Please note that the AP reporter who did the story wrote only about the pedestrian passage.  Crossing with a car is a different and separate nightmare, for those who are allowed.

Please note that this is only about Qalandia checkpoint, and not about the main checkpoint at Bethlehem, which, if anything, may be worse, or about the Erez crossing into Gaza.

It is not about the checkpoint on Road 443 that I was shocked to see had Palestinian men stuffed into wire-caged walkways at 4 am last Thursday after passing military inspection, but before boarding white Ford Transit vans for transportation to their jobs in central Israel.

Please note that the crossing times listed for each day the reporter was at this checkpoint — which Israeli forces like to call a “border crossing” — are just for the crossing time only, and not for the difficult transportation that comes before and after the crossing.

Please also note that every Israeli in uniform at this place is carrying at least one big gun, and that there are military reinforcements always at the ready in the immediate enclosure, and more are not far away.

The AP article reports that “The journey to Jerusalem, for tens of thousands of Palestinians [daily], begins in a dank, trash-strewn hangar. They move through cage-like passages and 7-foot-high turnstiles to be checked by Israeli soldiers from behind bulletproof glass. The soldiers often yell at them [only in Hebrew, of course, and in a muffled and incomprehensible way] through loudspeakers. They [the Israeli soldiers] are supposed to work in pairs to speed the lines through, but sometimes one of them is asleep, his feet on his desk. The Qalandia crossing, say the Israelis, is where potential attackers are filtered out before they can reach Jerusalem on the other side. Palestinians say it’s a daily humiliation they must endure to reach jobs, family, medical appointments and schools. This main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem is one of the rawest points of friction between Israel and the Palestinians, a symbol of the day-to-day bitterness that grinds between the two sides as the U.S. struggles to relaunch peace negotiations. Since taking office last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has eased Palestinian movement inside the West Bank, but not into Jerusalem … Qalandia [is] the only way for 60,000 taxpaying [legal and official Jerusalem] residents [whose homes, by Israeli military design, are now behind -- or on the West Bank side -- of Qalandia checkpoint and The Wall] to reach their city. They too must line up along with tens of thousands of West Bank residents to enter Israel for work – provided they are patient, have permits, and don’t arouse suspicion” … And God help them if they do, because there is nobody who can help them…

The article reports that “The AP reporter saw soldiers sleeping in their booths four times during five days at the crossing. When told about it, Maj. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said he was ’surprised’ …” though nobody would be who has ever been at a checkpoint when there were only Palestinians and internationals present, but no higher Israeli officer.

The article reports that “The line takes Abu Jalil into a 15-foot-long cage of metal bars, barely wide enough for a large man or high enough for a tall man to stand upright. At the far end, a turnstile clicks open, letting about 10 people through at a time before clicking shut again. Once inside: another line to another turnstile, this one leading to a window where Israeli soldiers check IDs. Abu Jalil waits, then a worker at the front of the line gets turned back. He tells the others they can’t carry lunches through, so Abu Jalil and others with lunches change lines, starting again at the back. It’s a common problem. Sometimes, certain lines accept only certain IDs, but the workers don’t know that until they reach the window. A soldier may close a window without announcing it, leaving people waiting in vain. There is no supervisor or hot line they can take complaints to.

The article reports that one 70-year-old Palestinian woman who returned after living in the U.S. for 11 years (there are many Palestinian West Bank residents who have American citizenship) said to the AP reporter that “I made the biggest mistake of my life in coming back here … This the worst place I’ve seen in my life”..

It may not be the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s truly awful, something to be avoided, if possible, at all costs. It’s really, really bad…

Article from UN-Truth read more here

Demonstrators dressed and made up as the underdog blue Nav’i people from Pandora in the film Avatar participated, as shown here, in the now-traditional Friday demonstration against eviction of Palestinian refugees from the homes built for them in the 1950s by UNRWA in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, when this area was under Jordanian administration.

And, here (as we reported yesterday) are the other blue people who turned out to demonstrate earlier on Friday, in the West Bank village of Bil’in, where the protest was directed against The Wall being constructed by the Israeli military — in this case, on confiscated Palestinian land — in order to separate areas of Palestinian and Israeli population.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

It was a busy night for IDF forces operating in the West Bank overnight on Wednesday: they conducted a number of raids, including the home of the PA security officer who stabbed and killed an IDF soldier at the Tapuah junction south of Nablus. Two brothers of the attacker were taken away for questioning (though the IDF has suggested that the PA might be allowed to do its own investigation, but it is not clear if the PA will have access to these two suspects…)

It will be recalled that just after Christmas, following the shooting death of an Israeli settler driving on a road between nearby settlements, the Palestinian Authority (PA) rounded up some 150 Palestinians for questioning, but the IDF raided the home of three suspects in and around Nablus a couple of days later — and none of the suspects were taken alive. They were all shot and killed, some in front of their families. The IDF said the suspects were behaving in a threatening manner, but witnesses said otherwise. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has called for an official investigation.

On the same night, last Wednesday, as Ma’an News Agency reported, “Three other raids occurred in the West Bank between midnight and sunrise, targeting Palestinians from the Ramallah and Bethlehem governorates. Twenty-one of those detained were taken from the Jalazon Refugee Camp near Ramallah in a mass raid of the small area [n.b. - Jalazone Refugee Camp is right outside the Beit El settlement, guarded by the Beit El military base, and a few young adolescents have been shot by Israeli security over the past year for approaching too close, or on suspicion of "planning attacks"].

The Ma’an report continues –
“Those taken were identified as:
Muhammad Rebhi Masaroh, 18
Zeidi Mahmud Abdul Rahim Zed, 17
Malek Rabah Mamoun Nakhleh, 20
Muhammad Khaled Mahmud Nakhleh, 16
Yassen Ahmad Nakhleh, 16
Hussein Theeb Sharaikeh, 15
Naser Kamal Ahmad Sharaikeh, 15
Khaled Marwan Dalabsheh, 17
Mahmud Ramadan Sharai’a, 16
Muhannad Ramada Alayan, 18
Ahmad Hussein Theeb Sharaikeh, 15
Khaled Marwan Misbah Dalabshehm, 16
Ahmad Khaled Wasfi Sa’adat, 16
Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Nakhleh, 16
Ahmad Mahmud Khalil Nakhleh, 15
Muhammad Mahmud Abdul Aziz Zeid, 16
Mu’aied Mahmud Fouzi Nakhleh, 16
Hussein Khaled Al-Areesh, 18
Ahmad Muhammad Sha’ban Ghazawi, 17
Amr Zuher Dar Awwad, 16
Mahmud Ramadan Sanad, 16
In, addition, the Ma’an report says, in Bethlehem, “forces detained Mahmud Jamal Mustafa Masalmeh, 25, and Omar Jalal Khalil Shalsh, 16.
This Ma’an report is published here.

So, the question now is: are these kids still being detained? Where? Have they seen a lawyer? How are they being treated?

And that wasn’t all.

The offices of Stop The Wall campaign in Ramallah were raided from 1 to 4 am the same night. And, the wife of the Mayor of nearby El-Bireh was also detained, apparently on suspicion of supporting Hamas, as her husband reportedly does.

And, as Iraeli journalist Lisa Goldman noted in a tweet on Twitter: “In daring night-time op, IDF raids ISM offices in Ramallah, confiscating T-shirts & bracelets engraved w/ ‘Palestine’.” Her tweet links to this story by Nir Hasson in Haaretz yesterday here, which notes that it was the second, yes, second IDF nighttime raid in a week on the same ISM apartment — yes, it is apparently an apartment.

It was also on Wednesday.

The earlier raid was on Sunday. One of the inhabitants who was present both times — and who was not detained, because his papers were in order, unlike the case of two of his female colleagues who were hauled away in the earlier raid — said that the IDF soldiers did not even knock! They used a crowbar to break open the lock on the door, and barged in. The door had not been repaired after the first raid, so the IDF didn’t even have to break in the second time — they just barged in through the broken door. This person told me that computers and videos and documents were also taken the first time, and one or two computers were seized again the second time

The two women who were hauled off in the first post-midnight but pre-dawn raid were not immediately deported — as happened to another ISM volunteer, Eva Novakova of the Czech Republic, who was seized from her apartment at the very center of Ramallah, just off Manara Square, and taken almost directly to the plane at Ben Gurion airport around 11 January. The two women seized this week were able to appear before a judge, who ordered them released on bail while they deal administratively with their visa situations — however, they were banned from returning to the West Bank…

Haaretz identified them, in the Nir Hasson article, as Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of Australia.

As Haaretz noted in its article, “ISM, founded soon after the second intifada began in September 2000, is a very small group. It usually has less than 20 activists in the West Bank at any one time. Nevertheless, it has been heavily involved in anti-Israel protests, and is currently active in the demonstrations against house demolitions in East Jerusalem as well as the protests in Bili’in and Na’alin. It also has four activists located in the Gaza Strip. Two ISM activists have been killed while protesting, Rachel Corrie in 2003 and Tom Hurndall in 2004; two others have been seriously wounded”.

Earlier in the Second Intifada (and particularly from 2003 until 2005, in particular), everyone suspected of being an ISM activist was particularly singled out for special treatment, long detentions, invasive searches, and the lit, at Ben Gurion Airport. Until very recently, the situation had improved for everybody at the airport. But, it appears to have deteriorated again, with the recent crack-down that started in December, and intensified in January, and continues today.

It appears that with each raid, the IDF is refining its techniques, as some of those targetted have the opportunity to be hauled before Israeli judges, who then object to this or that tactic, to make their raids comply with Israeli law …

Then, on Thursday, as Ma’an News Agency reported, “Israeli forces entered Barta’a Ash-Sharqiya village Thursday before sunrise and handed five families demolition orders for their homes and agricultural buildings in area west of Jenin.  Member at the Barta’a village council Tawfiq Qabha said that the forces overran the village and woke five families in the middle of the night, pounding on doors and handing over warnings that homes would soon be demolished” …  This report is posted here.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

It’s Friday, and Palestinian TV is showing the Friday prayers at the El-Bireh mosque, right next to downtown Ramallah.

(Ramallah and El-Bireh are two separate cities that have grown conjoined — they have separate institutions but are one urban area.)

Last Friday, Palestinian TV was here as well, because this mosque is right next door to the hall where the Palestinian Journalists Union was holding a General Assembly and preparing for the first elections in some 20 years, so the live coverage simply moved next door…

On Monday, the wife of the Mayor of El-Bireh was arrested by invading Israeli forces — she was suspected of doing something in support of Hamas. She may still be in Israeli detention. The Mayor, her husband, is a Hamas supporter, if not member. This week, the Friday sermon is overtly political. And, there are more men in Islamic dress (like the Tahrir crowd, or some supporters of Hamas though they are usually more conservative). It seems to be an effort to reconcile, rather than divide.

The sermon it is about this land, this country, about Jerusalem, about faith. Israel — yes, “Israel” — is mentioned two or three times. One people, one authority, and so forth. Quds, and Palestine. And the community of believers around the world (the Muslim Ummah).

The expressions on the faces of the men present are amazing — rapt attention, much more involved and reactive than the previous Friday sermons I’ve watched recently. The eyes are engaged, many mouths curved in small not-quite-smiles.

At the end of the sermon, prayers — not unlike those I’ve seen in St. George’s Episcopal Anglican Cathedral in East Jerusalem — for those who have died, for the elimination of checkpoints and closures, for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and more.

Then the collective Friday prayer is performed. (There is a brief pause to arrange a sound difficulty, while everybody is patient. Then the recitation of the Fatiha begins solemnly, and all present intone “Amin” at the end.)

**************************

UPDATED: It’s Friday – Part Two: Palestinian Television is now showing the weekly demonstration against The Wall in Bil’in – a rural area west of of Ramallah. Because it’s rural, The Wall is in the form of a double wired fence with barbed wire rolls, and a dirt road in between for Israeli patrol cars.

It looks like a countryside festival, at first — a slow procession of people walking on foot up a rural road in the sunshine with green all arouns and almond or fruit trees in blossom. Then, a cloud of white tear gas appears in the middle of the procession. There is a liesurly retreat. The Israeli soldiers are relaxed. A few are already positioned in the dirt track in the middle of the The Wall/fencing. Others, with vehicles, and camoflague netting, are waiting just behind, on a small hill top.

It’s just the beginning.

Demonstrators (a handful) are near the gate. Some sit down. There is a group of photographers. Suddenly, a big volley of tear gas, directed at the gate, but some shots are flaring — curving clouds of white in a fine trail before hitting and releasing a big cloud — much further up the road where the demonstrators are retreating.

There is a man in a wheelchair in the front lines — he seems to be a Palestinian, maybe early middle-aged.

There are also a group of blue people, with theatrical blue face paint and clothes, and paper ears. One of them carried a Palestinian flag, and was later affected by tear gas. I realize from the Palestinian TV evening news that these demonstrators are making reference to the new film Avatar, where the blue (Nav’i) people of Pandora successfully resist a far more advanced and powerful colonizing people.

Then, I found a photo on the Mondoweiss blog, apparently originally from the Daily Telegraph:

The worst action usually comes later in the day, when younger boys begin throwing stones, and the soldiers’ lose their temper.

This Friday is the first, following an IDF announcement in mid-week that it was beginning work to re-route The Wall — fence, here — following a Supreme Court decision two-and-a-half years ago. According to a press release from the Popular Struggle Committee, headed by Mohammed Khatib, “preliminary infrastructure work to reroute the barrier in accordance with the ruling has finally began. Since the ruling, the state has twice been found in contempt of the court, for not implementing the decision”.

As a result of the Supreme Court decision, about half of the Bil’in village lands that were confiscated by the Israeli military as a buffer zone to protect nearby expanding Jewish settlements were not needed for that purpose, and were ordered returned to Bili’n. So far, despite the start of something this week, that has not happened.

Khatib himself said, in a statement in the press release, that this new development would not stop the demonstrations: “The Supreme Court had already ruled this should happen almost three years ago and it should not have taken so long. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason that this is finally happening now are the five years of persistent struggle and the scarifies the people of my village have made. While we are happy for the lands that do return, we do not forget the lands and crops that remain isolated behind the Wall. Our struggle will continue until all of our lands are returned and the Occupation is over.”

UPDATE: The IDF is now reporting that “riots are taking place there” — and it’s only 2:00 pm.

**************************

Coming up: the Sheikh Jarrah gathering — at about 2:30 this afternoon, Jerusalem time … UPDATE: It seems to have passed well. The group of largely Israeli demonstrators was shown on the Palestinian TV news Friday night…

**************************

UPDATE: According to Ma’an News Agency, “The Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli citizen and anti-wall movement organizer, was detained in the Ramallah-area village of Dir Nezam during a protest there. He was reportedly being held on the pretext that he violated an army order and entered Area A, a West Bank designation off-limits to Israeli citizens. Residents of Dir Nezam are joined by international peace activists each week”. This report is posted here.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

(1). The Israeli Air Force attacked the Yasser Arafat International Airport in the Gaza Strip, very near the Kerem Shalom crossing at the tri-point where the boundaries of Gaza, Israel, and the Egyptian Sinai meet.  The only Palestinian airport has been out of commission since its runways were dug up and other damage caused following the capture of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid near the same point.  (The airport was completely destroyed by the Israeli Air Force once earlier, at the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada.)  Why would the IAF attack an already damaged-beyond-use airport?

(2).  A Palestinian Authority Security officer reportedly stabbed an Israeli soldier through the open window of the jeep the Israeli was riding in at the Tappuah junction checkpoint south of Nablus.  The Israeli soldier is also reportedly a settler who lived in the area.  He was stabbed in the heart, and his jeep overturned as he tried to veer away from the attack.  He was evacuated for medical treatment in an Israeli hospital, but has since died.  Was the PA security officer off-duty?  Was the Israeli soldier off-duty?  Did they know each other?  UPDATE: The latest report indicates that they have the same family name.  UPDATE TWO: It has just been reported (just before 20h00 Jerusalem time) that Israeli military bulldozers have already demolished the attackers home… UPDATE THREE: Reuters has reported that Israeli military spokesman Major Peter Lerner said that the two men had “no prior connection”, despite the similiarities in their family names.  UPDATE FOUR (following day): the Jerusalem Media Communications Center (JMCC) which reported yesterday that the house of the attacker had been demolished by IDF military bulldozers has now issued a correction, advising that there has not been a house demolition, but noted that six family members of the attacker have been arrested. UPDATE FIVE (this is the news business): Ma’an reported Thursday that only two family members were detained (though a total of 26 people — including 21 from the Jalazone Refugee Camp outside of Ramallah — n17 of them were under the age of 18 — were arrested in the West Bank in the middle of the night). But, YNet’s Ali Waked reported that “According to the Palestinians, during the raid on Mohammad Khatib’s home in the West Bank Palestinian village Yabed, which took place during the early hours of Thursday morning, six of his relatives were arrested, and computers were confiscated. It was further reported that the IDF soldiers ordered the Khatib family to evacuate the home ahead of its demolition”. Ali Waked’s story can be read in full here.

(3.) Since publishing his stories about revelations from a disgruntled Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence agent (Fahmi Shabaneh, who headed the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA’s General Intelligence Service, or GIS,who is also a lawyer, and who lives in East Jerusalem), the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has keep up the pressure, until the stories got proper attention.  Today, nobody here was interested in anything else.  Last night, Israel’s Channel 10 TV apparently showed pictures from the sex tapes that the disgruntled PA intelligence agent had kept.  Everybody here knows who is the senior PA aide shown on those sex tapes.  According to the stories published by Abu Toameh, the disgruntled PA intelligence agent said he had been given instructions to carry out that raid by Tawfik Tirawi, the former head of the GIS, who was fired last year by the Palestinian President, but who was elected a few months later to the Fatah Central Committee at the long-awaited Fatah Sixth General Conference in Bethlehem last August. Tirawi, however, has denied giving any such orders to Shabaneh.  The Presidential aide shown on the sex tapes, who (like the disgruntled PA intelligence agent) is also a resident of Jerusalem, is still in office.  Today, the JPost reported that the disgruntled PA intelligence agent gave PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) two weeks to fire all those involved in the “corruption” cases he knows about, or he will go public with much worse material.  This evening, the JPost is reporting that the PA has issued an arrest warrant for the disgruntled PA intelligence agent — but the warrant cannot be served, because the agent is living in Jerusalem, under Israeli control.   It was the disgruntled PA intelligence agent’s anger that apparently convinced him to go public, after his uncovering of the “corruption” went unremarked in Ramallah — and his subsequent arrest by Israeli authorities (for spying on Israel, blackmailing the Presidential aide shown on the sex tapes, and other charges which have mostly all been dropped .  He is still confined to house arrest, banned from travelling to the “West Bank”,  and accused of membership in a PA military/security organization that he says employs about 1200 East Jerusalemites.  On 31 January, the JPost ran a second story from the disgruntled PA intelligence agent who said that he knew he was about to be killed for his revelations, and he had already bought his own grave, and his own headstone — which he has already inscribed with his name, and only the date of his death is left to be filled in. The PA has issued an arrest warrant for the disgruntled PA intelligence aide — who lives in (East) Jerusalem, so the arrest warrant is not executable…

(4).  Clashes continued for a third day at the miserable checkpoint at the entrance to the Shuafat Refugee Camp, where Israeli Border Police had massed vehicles apparently in an attempt to dissuade clashes…

Article from UN-Truth read more here

There has been more or less non-stop construction at the major Qalandia (Kalandia) checkpoint for several months.

The plans have not been publicly announced or published.  The tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of people who cross Qalandia daily never know in advance what is about to happen, or what is going on.

Information such as this is not a courtesy afforded to people under occupation.

A circle was constructed within the last year just on the Ramallah side of Qalandia checkpoint — which Israeli officials refer to as a “border crossing”, although it is not one of Israel’s officially-listed international crossing points.

This traffic circle was slightly bizarre in that the lane of car traffic coming into Ramallah from the Jerusalem area was funneled into the circle counter-clockwise, while traffic coming from Ramallah into the Qalandia car-parking area was also directed into exactly the same lane.  Drivers just had to work it out for themselves (as we have written before, there is NO civilian or military traffic control on either side of the Qalandia crossing, where there is major traffic passing every single day).

Now, as part of the mysterious new construction that has been going on for over a month, the circle has been cut off just at the left side, although the same cross-direction traffic (incoming from Jerusalem to the south, and drop-off and arrival car-park traffic from Ramallah to the north) has to pass on the right side.

Once you get through that cross-traffic, now, there is suddenly a line of border police vehicles and border police personnel with big black automatic weapons in their arms, and a road block.

There are no signs explaining what is happening, and absolutely no instruction about where to go, except the soldiers with the guns.

Behind them, bulldozers and construction vehicles can be seen at work, day and night — but there is NO explanation.

One night recently, coming from Jerusalem, I was surprised, just after passing through the stress of the checkpoint, by being confronted with a blocked road and armed soldiers.  I had no idea what to do, and tried to continue along the side.  (Once through the checkpoint, there are no street lights, and it was totally dark.) An Israeli border policewoman flagged me down — but, luckily, she was helpful, and polite.  She had no idea, herself, what I should do, because she had never ventured more than 50 meters (if that far) to either side of where she was standing.  But, talking to her, I was able to calm down and stop panicking, and realized I might try to go to a second traffic circle on the other side of the Qalandia car park.  That worked.

Last night, my friend and colleague Yasmine was leaving Ramallah after working with the editor and director of a film she is producing.  She hadn’t passed that way recently, and had absolutely no idea that there was construction underway at Qalandia.  She ran into the blocked road, the military vehicles parked across the road, and the armed soldiers.  But they were not so polite.  They both pointed their guns directly at her, and told her to go, go, go.  “Where?” she asked, “Where?  There are no absolutely no signs indicating where to go”.   They kept pointing their guns, then they motioned with one free arm as their other arm kept a firm hold on their weapon.  “Over there, just go…”

That is one small part of what it means to be under occupation.

And it is not nice.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

What happens when Israeli Border Police decide to stage a massive raid — looking for “tax delinquents” as well as “illegal West Bank worker” — in Shuafat Refugee Camp (the only Palestinian refugee camp inside the boundaries of what Israel unilaterally defined as the “Greater Jerusalem Municipality” in 1967?

The legal residents of the camp have Jerusalem IDs. But, in recent years, Israel has unilaterally decided to exclude it and close it off from Jerusalem by the construction of The Wall around three sides of Shuafat refugee camps — it is now only freely open to the West Bank.

And, an awful Israeli military checkpoint has been put at the main entrance into Shuafat Refugee Camp. Now, children needing to get to school in the morning, and adults needing to get to their jobs, all have to pass out of the camp through this prison-like checkpoint. The traffic jam, and the stress, are terrible — every day, day in and day out — imposing great stress on people who are technically residents of Jerusalem but who have become de facto West Bankers…

Though they still have to pay their Jerusalem taxes!

The CNN team in Jerusalem took some good footage under near-battle conditions, and the video can be seen by clicking on the link: here.

A few hours earlier, and not very far away, the Israeli military raided Ramallah/El-Bireh, and arrested the wife of the mayor of El-Bireh, apparently because of alleged activities on behalf of Hamas. And other Israeli military units raided the offices of the Stop the Wall campaign, carrying out a three-hour search operation, and carrying away documents, computers, videos and other materials found in the office.

And, still other units of the Israeli military raided another area of Ramallah and arrested two young women who were said to be members of the International Solidarity Movement. The two women were seized — in Ramallah — for overstaying their Israeli visas, and then taken to the Israeli military detention center in Ofer (still in the West Bank). Luckily, they had a lawyer who was able to take their cases before the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered their release on bail while they contest their pending deportation. However, they are banned from returning to their apartment in Ramallah…

Article from UN-Truth read more here

What has been revealed is not new, and it is not a surprise.  It is no longer a shock, but it is still sickening.

There are many who will, nonetheless, argue that this is distorted and not true — who will hurl accusations and denunciations, and try to damage those who collect this testimony as well as those who report it.

But, these are stories that have been told, and must be faced: the Israeli group of veteran members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Breaking the Silence has just published a new collection of testimony from women — soldiers, military policewomen, and female members of the Border Police — recounting what these women say is routine, habitual, “normal” and expected mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and at the Erez crossing into the Gaza Strip.

According to an article published on the Israeli YNet website, the testimony shows that female soldiers are not more “sensitive” than their male counterparts.

To the contrary, and by their own testimony, the women have sometimes been quite remarkably cruel.

Breaking the Silence says, in an introduction to this new collection of testimonies, that its goal is “to stimulate public debate about the moral price that Israeli society as a whole has been paying in which young soldiers face a civilian population on an everyday basis and control its live” — in other words, about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

Breaking the Silence states that “In contrast to widely-held beliefs, the mosaic of testimonies that only continues to expand proves that we are not dealing with a fringe phenomenon that touches only the bad apples of the military, but a gradual erosion of ethics in the society as a whole … This is an urgent call to Israeli society and its leaders to wake up and evaluate anew the results of our actions“.

This 136-page report comes just as the Israeli Government reported to UNSG BAN Ki-Moon on the results of the Israeli military internal investigations (some of which are still continuing) into the conduct of its forces during a massive Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip just over a year ago.

Some testimony collected by Breaking the Silence about what happened during the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was included in the Goldstone report, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which presented nearly 600 pages of collected evidence, and called on both Israel and the Palestinians to conduct their own impartial and independent investigations into what happened.

Haaretz reported today that “In the report that Israel handed to the UN on Friday, it emphasized that its system of investigating alleged war crimes is comparable to the systems adopted by other democratic nations. ‘To date’, the Israeli report states, ‘the IDF has launched investigations into 150 separate incidents arising from the Gaza Operation. Of the 150 incidents, so far 36 have been referred for criminal investigation. Criminal investigators have taken statements from almost 100 Palestinian complainants and witnesses, along with approximately 500 IDF soldiers and commanders’.” This Haaretz report is published here.

[A few days ago, Haaretz reported that "Israel's response to the UN is expected to include a progress report on the IDF's
investigations into 140 incidents that occurred during Operation Cast Lead. Of these, 35 were investigated or are being investigated by the IDF's Criminal Investigations Division. About 8 Gazans testified at the Erez checkpoint in connection to the incidents, with the
mediation of international humanitarian organizations. In the wake of the Goldstone report, which dealt with more than 30 incidents, the IDF initiated 11 CID investigations. Two of them turned out to be different reports of the same incident and were closed when the Military Advocate General's Corp concluded that no crime was committed. The other nine cases are still being investigated". That Haaretz report was published here.]

Since publishing testimonies from soldiers who participated in the unprecedented Gaza military operation that lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, Breaking the Silence has been subjected to criticism because it operates, in part, on funding from foreign donors — the innuendo is that the funding comes from outsiders who have an anti-Israel agenda.

The Goldstone report itself has collected a significant number of reactions of outrage from writers and commentators around the world eager to defend Israel, and in support of statements from Israeli military commanders defending the IDF as the “most moral army in the world”.

Breaking the Silence states right up front that, indeed, the European Union and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation have sponsored this new collection of testimonies.

These testimonies are the first with a specific gender perspective, gathered from direct interviews with female soldiers.

The YNet article, published Friday 29 January, reported that the stories from women soldiers “include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up”.

YNet added that “In the framework of the latest project, Breaking the Silence gathered the testimonies of more than 50 female soldiers who served in various posts in the territories … ‘The girls have greater difficulties in telling the story, because they’re the minority to begin with’, the organization’s director Dana Golan says … ‘We discovered that the girls try to be even more violent and brutal than the boys, just to become one of the guys’, she said”.

Here are a few highlights from testimonies reported in the YNet article:

“Some of the gravest stories come from Hebron. A Sachlav female soldier [Sachlav Military Police are a unit of the Army, or IDF] female soldier spoke of one of the company’s hobbies: Toy guns. ‘Those plastic pellets really hurt… we had a bunch of those… you’re sitting on guard and ‘tak‘ you fire at a kid, ‘tak‘ – you fire at another kid’ … Some of the testimonies from Hebron deal with the difficult position the soldiers find themselves in, between Palestinians and settlers – who they say are even harder to handle. Some of the female soldiers were shocked with the level of violence the settlers’ children used against the Palestinians. ‘They would throw stones at them, the Jewish kids’, a Nahal female soldier said, ‘and the parents would say anything… you see this every day’ … Doesn’t it seem strange to you that one child throws a stone at another child? ‘Because the one child is Jewish and the other is Palestinians, it’s somehow okay… and it was obvious that there would be a mess afterwards. And you also don’t really know which side you are on…I have to make a switch in my head and keep hating the Arabs and justify the Jews’. Another female Sachlav soldier told the story of the time an eight-year-old settler girl in Hebron decided to bash a stone into the head of a Palestinian adult crossing her passing by her in the street. ‘Boom! She jumped on him, and gave it to him right here in the head… then she started screaming “Yuck, yuck, his blood is on me“. The soldier said the Palestinian then turned in the girl’s direction – a move that was interpreted as a threat by one of the soldiers in the area, who added a punch of his own: ‘And I stood there horrified … the Arab covered the wound with his hand and ran’. She recalled another incident with the same child: ‘I remember she had her brother in the stroller, a baby. She was giving him stones and telling him: ‘Throw them at the Arab’.”

“Another female soldier’s testimony, who served at the Erez checkpoint, indicates how violence was deeply rooted in the daily routine: ‘There was a procedure in which before you release a Palestinian back into the Strip – you take him inside the tent and beat him … it’s not something you do everyday, but sort of a procedure. I don’t know if they strictly enforced it each and every time … it took me a while to realize that if I release an illegal alien on my end, by the time he gets back to Gaza he will go through hell … two or three hours can pass by the time he gets into the Strip. In the case of the kid, it was a whole night. That’s insane, since it’s a ten minute walk. They would stop them on their way; each soldier would give them a ‘pet’, including the commanders’.”

” ‘There’s a sense of violence’, a border policewoman in the Jenin area [in the northern West Bank] said. ‘And yes, it’s boring, so we’d create some action. [In the collection of testimonies, it actually says this: Testimony 16 - "There is still an air of violence and yes, ‘things get boring so let’s invent an incident.’ Breaking the Silence: What do you mean?
Soldier: I don’t know, make up an incident. Get on the radio and report: Stones have been thrown at me on this street. And then you detain someone and start questioning him. Eventually he’s released, or not, depending on the person who invented this incident, if he’d identify him or not. There was this (Border) policewoman who’d say, I’m bored, let’s say someone is throwing stones at me. She’d be asked, who? “I don’t know, some two guys in grey shirts, I didn’t see exactly.” So two guys in grey shirts would be caught, and she’d be asked: “These guys?” Naturally, when they’re caught, they’re beaten up too. “These guys?” “No, I don’t think so.” Well, there you have a whole incident. People got beaten up. And nothing had happened there that day".

"A female Seam Line [meaning, right next to The Wall -- now there are Seam Line areas on both sides of The Wall] Border Guard spoke of the chase after illegal aliens: ‘In half an hour you can catch 30 people without any effort’. Then comes the question of what should be done with those who were caught – including women, children, and elderly. ‘They would have them stand, and there’s the well-known Border Guard song (in Arabic): ‘One hummus, one bean, I love the Border Guard’ – they would make them sing this. Sing, and jump. Just like they do with recruits… The same thing only much worse. And if one of them would laugh, or if they would decide someone was laughing, they would punch him. Why did you laugh? Smack… It could go on for hours, depending on how bored they are. A shift is eight hours long, the times must be passed somehow’.”

“Even small children did not escape arbitrary acts of violence, said a Border Guard female officer serving near the separation fence: ‘We caught a five-year-old…can’t remember what he did…we were taking him back to the territories or something, and the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said ‘don’t cry’ and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile – and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? ‘Don’t laugh in my face’ he said’.”

” ‘Crossing the checkpoint, it’s like another world… Palestinians walk with trolleys on the side of the road, with wagons, donkeys… so the Border Guards take a truck with the remains of food and start throwing it at them… cottage cheese, rotten vegetables… it was the most appalling thing I experienced in the territories’.”

“Other testimonies raise concerns as to the procedures of opening fire in the territories, particularly crowd control weapons. A female Border Guard detailed to protocol she called ‘dismantling rubber’ – the dismantling of rubber bullets from clusters of three to single bullets, and peeling the rubber off of them. She also said that, despite the clear orders to fire in the air or at the demonstrators’ feet, it was common procedure to fire at the abdomen. A female Border Guard officer in Jenin spoke of an incident in which a nine-year-old Palestinian, who tried to climb the fence, failed, and fled – was shot to death: ‘They fired… when he was already in the territories and posed no danger. The hit was in the abdomen area, they claimed he was on a bicycle and so they were unable to hit him in the legs’. But the soldier was most bewildered by what happened next between the four soldiers present: ‘They immediately got their stories straight… An investigation was carried out, at first they said it was an unjustified killing… In the end they claimed that he was checking out escape routes for terrorists or something… and they closed the case’.”

The YNet article on the new collection of testimonies is here.

In addition, these accounts are taken from the report itself:

Testimony 10
Name: *** – Rank: First Sergeant – Unit: Oketz (search dogs) – Location: General

Breaking the Silence: You spoke earlier about the attitude of soldiers at the checkpoint.
Soldier: I’m an outsider there, since I don’t do routine security patrols, I don’t do eight-hour shifts at the checkpoint, I don’t do all of that. So in a way I’m more objective at the checkpoint, I regard myself less as someone who’s really getting burnout from being there so much and is sick of it all, seeing all that really takes place at the checkpoint, sees more Arabs and responds accordingly. There were many guys there, especially at checkpoints with Border Patrolmen and such and you’d see how they talk. You’d tell them: Okay they’re Arabs, but still these are humans… Total disrespect. They’d make fun of them, harass them.

Breaking the Silence: For example?
Soldier:Nothing specific, just a general dismissing

Breaking the Silence: Was your dog ever used to humiliate Palestinians?
Soldier:To humiliate them? I was told to “come, scare them.” I didn’t agree, it seemed unreasonable to me. If it’s just to stand there at the checkpoint, say after the dog has worked really hard and it’s tired, and I know it wouldn’t smell anything, and still I stand by for deterrence. But not to deliberately scare Arabs.

Breaking the Silence: I know that being inspected by a dog is humiliating.
Soldier:No, it wasn’t… The problem is that people were very sensitive about dogs. They said, I’ll open up the whole car for you, just don’t bring the dog in. Because they (Muslims) see it as a really unclean animal. But we wouldn’t use dogs on the people themselves, we’d just check their belongings. After all, it’s just a car, what’s a car? I mean, just the vehicle. Not their person. And we’d try not to dirty up stuff, if possible, inside the car. Still, it’s an inspection you have to carry out. (…) Or, say, until I realized this, there were vehicles where soldiers would tell me, “Go on, check it.” And there wasn’t too much stuff inside. I said, Listen… “Check it, check it.” And it was just someone the soldiers wanted to harass, so they used me for this and it took me a while until I realized this. At first I couldn’t figure out why they were sending me to these people.

Testimony 22
Name: *** – Rank: Sergeant – Unit: Sachlav – Location: Hebron
Soldier:Our girls got rather polarized, on both sides of the spectrum. Some came out and said plainly: ‘Enough, I’m no combatant, I’m cut out to be a secretary,’ and that’s what they became. There was one who was re-assigned as a driver and was just driving the company Jeep. She didn’t do guard duty, she handled no one, she was always there in the Jeep with the commanders. Others went psycho, and became worse, tougher than the guys.

Breaking the Silence: What does that mean?
Soldier: An Arab says something to her that he shouldn’t, for example – she calls some four guys from her company to come handle him. A Safari-load of guys comes down to beat him to a pulp, and then she detains the Arab.

Breaking the Silence: Do you recall a specific incident?
Soldier: I’ll tell you an interesting story. I was standing in the post and we were about to be replaced, one of the girls there was very extreme in her views and stuff. And it was this time, I don’t remember exactly why but we were on alert, with a bullet in the chamber. We had to be on standby with a bullet in the chamber the whole time. Gun cocked, bullet in the chamber and a finger next to the trigger. Not on the trigger. And then there was this boom, we heard a shot and of course I was on patrol so we ran
over to see what happened, and there’s a girl-soldier standing like this, facing an Arab bleeding on the ground, and she says something like: “He tried to attack me. He tried to attack me.” We look at him and he’s shot in the belly, and we tell her – I mean
he has a bullet hole in his stomach – we ask her: What did he do? How did he attack you? What do you mean he tried to attack you? The soldier who was there with her was all confused and didn’t know what to say: “Whatever she says, whatever she says.” Something like that. This all happened when I was already there for quite a while. And she told some story about her asking him for his ID and he wouldn’t show it, and then he attacked her and somehow she tried to get away and turned around and shot him in the belly, something of that sort. You look and see an Arab who’s been shot at point-blank range and he’s holding his ID. And you say to her: Listen, this is impossible. Your story just doesn’t add up. And what happened to that other soldier that he’s so afraid to talk? Then there were inquiries and stuff. Apparently she had asked to see his ID and he approached to hand it to her and he got too close
– that’s what came out in the last briefing we had. She then shoved him off with her rifle and a bullet shot out right in his belly. Now, first thing we hear, instead of ‘Oh no! What have I done!’ – we hear her saying “He tried to attack me.” This girl finally admitted he really got too close to her, and the bullet was already in the barrel and she shoved him away in the belly so he got shot in the belly.

Breaking the Silence: She admitted it?
Soldier: Yes. Eventually, at the inquiries she did. And she was not prosecuted, I think. She left that company. She was kicked out. Yes, she was re-assigned to the Military Police. That was her punishment.

Breaking the Silence: What happened to this person?
Soldier: I don’t know. He was driven away in a Palestinian ambulance… This incident shocked me. A girl shoots a guy in the belly and the first thing she says is ‘he attacked me.’ What did the guy attack you with? His ID? He was holding his ID, what did he attack you with? (…) I remember that right after that soldier shot the Arab in the belly and we all got there, I kept asking her: What do you mean, what did he try to do to you? And everyone – at some point suddenly the commander who was with me, who got there very quickly, said to me: “What do you want? What is this? Just stop it! Stop asking her what she means! Enough of this!  what’s there not to understand?” And I said, okay.… That was the greatest fear, to end up in jail because of them, because of the Arabs. I’ll go to jail because of them? So I’ll shoot a guy in the belly, I’ll spit in his face, but never get caught. I think that this determination ‘never to get caught’ really shows that what I’m doing is wrong – so I mustn’t get caught. It pretty much says that, I think. It means everyone was pretty much aware of what went on there, and that it’s not right.

Breaking the Silence: But people did it all the time.
Soldier:Yes.”

The YNet article on the new collection of testimonies is here, and the full document of new testimonies from women soldiers collected by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence is here.

There are more stories published in this testimony — three more of them can be followed below:

continue reading...

Article from UN-Truth read more here