Thursday, May 02nd
Last update07:18:00 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
Children are the worst affected by the Israeli attacks on Palestine, with 60 percent of them being anemic.
High on the meeting's agenda were attacks against health staff and ambulances in Palestine. The statement said that 38 health workers had died in the line of duty in the occupied territory while 2,149 ambulances were blocked entry. Ambulances were the main target of the Israeli forces with 36 vehicles vandalized and 143 damaged.
U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.
In 2004, AFP reported, “The U.S. government has knowingly violated conventions on war by subjecting our own troops and foreign civilians and soldiers to this weapon of mass destruction. The U.S. military should immediately stop using shells and armor made with DU, and a thorough and independent probe of DU’s environmental impact should be set up. Moreover, a comprehensive study should be funded to test civilians in Iraq.”
Bush also said in the interview that he had been aware of several meetings his national security advisers held to discuss "enhanced interrogation" methods.
Surely he is aware of the U.S. commitment to international treaties barring "cruel and inhumane" treatment of prisoners.
In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.
GUATANAMO BAY, Cuba — Osama bin Laden's driver appeared at his war crimes trial Monday looking disheveled and threatened a boycott when a judge postponed until June a hearing on whether his confinement was affecting his mental health.
Lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, of Yemen filed a brief in February protesting what they argue has been a protracted regime of virtual solitary confinement behind the detention center's barbed wire. Prison camp spokesmen say there is no such thing as solitary confinement at Guantánamo.
In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron.
Not every soldier serving in Hebron becomes an "animal". Iftach Arbel, 23, from an upper-middle class, left-of-centre home in Herzylia, served in Hebron as a commander just before the withdrawal from Gaza, when he thinks the army wanted to show it could be tough with settlers, too. And many of the testimonies, including Mr Arbel's, describe how the settlers educate children as young as four to throw stones at Palestinians, attack their homes and even steal their possessions. To Mr Arbel, the Hebron settlers are "pure evil" and the only solution is "to remove the settlers".
Page 190 of 194
