FROM HEAVEN TO EARTH
I WROTE ON MARCH 22ND 2011:
OBAMA'S WEAKNESS AND THE FASCISM OF THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAS DISOBEYED TO GOD ADONAY: ISRAEL.
TO BE CLEAR, I AM NOT RACIST OR ANTI-SEMITIC. THE USUAL ALLEGATION TO THOSE LIKE ME WHO DISAGREE WITH THE CHOICES OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT IS A WASTE OF TIME.
A GOLDEN MEDALLION WITH THE STAR OF DAVID AND A SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDELABRUM SHINES IN MY CHEST. ONE OF THOSE TYPICAL MEDALS HANDED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION GUARANTEEING, MORE THAN ANY REGISTER OF BIRTHS, THE JEWISH ORIGIN.
I AM A JEW AND SO I HAVE THE RIGHT TO CRITICIZE THE OMINOUS CHOICES MADE BY ISRAEL
I BELIEVE IN THE ONLY HOLY SPIRIT, IN GOD ADONAY WHO IS HIS MANIFESTATION AND IN THE LAW HE GAVE TO MOSES ON MOUNT SINAI. I AM ALSO CHRISTIAN AND WORSHIPPER OF THE SON OF GOD, JESUS CHRIST, WHO TEACHES LOVE AND TOLERANCE TO ALL MEN, BUT ALSO SUPREME JUSTICE.
THAT BEING STATED, LET'S COME TO THE POINT.
ISRAEL, THAT IS ITS PRESENT GOVERNMENT, NOT ALL THE PEOPLE - SINCE THERE IS EVEN AN OPPOSITION IN THE COUNTRY, EVEN IF SMALL - IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND RISKS TO TRIG THE THIRD WORLD WAR WITH THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, IF IT GOES ON WITH ITS NEFARIOUS AND WARMONGERING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.
WE HAVE TO TAKE NOTE OF THE CURRENT IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER, THE WEAKNESS OF PRESIDENT OBAMA AND MOST OF ALL, OF WHO REALLY COMMANDS THE UNITED STATES. JEWISH LOBBIES INSIDE THE AMERICAN AND WESTERN BANKS ARE THE REAL MASTERS AND IF THEY WILL NOT SOON TRANSFORM RADICALLY THE WARMONGERING POLICY IN A WISE AND RIGHTEOUS POLICY, THEY WILL BE GUILTY TO HAVE CREATED ANOTHER GOLDEN CALF AND SO THEY WILL BE THE CAUSE OF ANOTHER WRATH OF GOD UPON THEM, UPON THEIR CHILDREN, UPON OUR CHILDREN AND ALL HUMANITY. CLEARLY THIS THEOLOGICAL SPEECH IS NOT COMPREHENSIBLE TO LAYPEOPLE AND TO AGNOSTIC JEWS THAT WILL READ IT, BUT BEING THE MASTERS OF ISRAEL "BELIEVERS" IN THE TORAH AND IN CHRIST SON OF GOD, (BOTH MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS) I HOPE THAT MY APPEAL BE UPHELD.
WE PRAY AND HOPE IN FATHER ADONAY'S JUSTICE, WHO JUST LIKE IN THE BIBLICAL TIMES, TRIG HIS FORCES OF NATURE WITH A NEW FLOOD AND SEPARATE THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF TO RESTORE A NEW KINGDOM OF PEACE AND JUSTICE ON EARTH, HEADED BY HIS SON JESUS CHRIST.
EVERYTHING FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS ONES ALL OVER THE WORLD, EVEN IN ISRAEL, JEWS TOO, OF COURSE!
G.B.
Sant?Elpidio a Mare (Italy )
March 22nd, 2011
WATER WAR
By Paola Caridi
Israel and Palestine have been experiencing the worst drought for seventy years. And so the conflict between the two peoples becomes stronger. International organizations accuse: the partition of one of the most valuable resources of the Middle East is all for the benefit of the Jewish state.
Drought. The word has been avoided for years, but now it is no longer possible. For Israel and Palestine, this was the worst autumn for decades. The worst November since 1942, without a drop of rain for the entire month. The Sea of Galilee is at a very low level. The Israeli water authority is concerned that - if this continues - next August it can even reach the point of no return, causing irreversible damages to the water quality. And the troubles, then, would become very serious. Between November and December, it has not gone beyond lower share 214: dangerous number, because there are only 77 cm to reach what is called the point of no return. Yossi Guttman, the most important hydrologist of Mekorot, the company managing the precious resource, is clear: "We are facing a water system in a crisis of extreme measures. The situation is very serious." The storm that hit Israel and the Palestinian territories in mid-December, was not so useful.
Water, yes and lots. Water from the sky, at last, but after a summer with temperatures that topped 45 degrees and an autumn with a single rainy day. Water for which many prayers were said.
This year's crisis occurred after a decade already reported, in turn, as one of the driest. Just move a bit 'on the outskirts, in Jerusalem, to see yellowed parks and gardens, the parched earth. And then damages to the agriculture, those that common people realize as soon as they leave their house and go to the market.
"I had never seen anything like that," says Hamza, between his desks fruit in the Arab part of Jerusalem, "the price of tomatoes has doubled. Almost three euro per kilo." The water war, however, does not date from today: from full-blown drought, climate change affecting an area as delicate as this part of the Middle East, always short of water, with only a river worthy of the name, Jordan, in some places reduced to a trickle foul. And with a so singular lake like the Dead Sea, tourist destination highly profitable for both Israel and Jordan, but now overexploited. And with the desert areas that make water management a Sisyphean task. Water, eversince, means the management of power. Since the times of the Gihon Spring, which gave the water to Jerusalem for over 2000 years. And that it was necessary to protect not be defeated. Nothing has changed since then. Managing water means having an essential weapon to control territory and peoples. On both sides of the uncertain borders of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is confirmed by what has been happening in recent months between Israel and Turkey. Ariel Sharon, in 2002, had entered into a strong agreement, with the government in Ankara, twenty years, which would have calmed down a bit 'thirst for water in the country, with the purchase of 50 million cubic meters a year. The cargo ships filled with water, however, have never left the ports of Turkey, accomplice of the rise in the price of oil. Too much money, in short, for a load of water, one of the reasons of the agreement sabotage. Then, last year, after the affair of the Freedom Flotilla and the killing of nine Turkish citizens, on the road to Gaza, at the hands of the Israeli Navy, it was permanently blocked. The lesson, coming from Ankara water, means that Israel has to do the self-sufficiency water at home. But to pay for the crisis is not just the Israeli people, with increases already in progress that can be calculated, in the combined measure, up to 40 percent.
To pay for the water control by Israel, are mostly the Palestinians. Because water is one of the most
delayed point of the peace process. One of those which will be decided- if and when - in the final agreement.
Amnesty International denounces the Palestinians? extremely limited access to (their own) water resources, with a strict report, whereby the 450 000 settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, "use water in the same amount or even more than the Palestinian population consumes? estimated at 2 million and 300 thousand people. Not only that, Amnesty says, in over forty years of occupation of Palestinian territories "Israel has overexploited the Palestinian water resources, has overlooked the water and sanitation infrastructure in the territories, and used them as a dumping ground for its waste, causing damage to the groundwater and the environment. " Similar accusations were launched by the World Bank in 2009. The Mekorot (the Israeli water company), says the international financial institutions, provides the colonies on a volume that is estimated 75 million cubic meters a year, almost two thirds of which are produced by "40 springs controlled by Israel or by the settlers inside the West Bank ", that is the Palestinian home. Many of those sources, at least 25, says a survey of the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz", have even been turned into tourist attractions. Sources which can be visited, along with the colonies, but not all. Palestinians have denied access. Abu Youssef looks dejected the large blue plastic barrels that serve as reservoir of impoverished camp he is the ?Mukhtar? of, namely the old, the judge, the wise, the head. In those bins there is their drinking water because the water supply pipe has the same diameter of a barrel to water gardens. Neglected, forgotten by all, the Bedouin of the great Jahalin tribes, live and suffer in a wadi, in what would be called Fiumara in the south of Italy. Some wood and corrugated iron shack, downstream of a landfill that you do not know what's inside, but from whose miasma it is better to stay away. A Bedouin camp 30 kilometres from the Dead Sea, two from the Tomb of Lazarus, less than five kilometres as the crow flies from the Gihon spring that gave the water to Jerusalem. Above their heads, in the small Israeli settlement of Kedar, there is also a swimming pool. Same land. Contended. Just as the water.
ESPRESSO January 7, 2011
Israeli Soldiers Sexually Abuse Palestinian Children
by Stephen Lendman
Israeli Soldiers Sexually Abuse Palestinian Children
Israeli Soldiers Sexually Abuse Palestinian Children - by Stephen Lendman
On September 10, Israel's YnetNews.com headlined, "IDF sexually abused Palestinian children," headlining:
"Damning (September 9) CNN report cites uncorroborated sexual abuse charges of Palestinian children detained by IDF." Military officials refused to "respond to abuse charges as no details (were) provided," a spokesman saying "We cannot address general claims on the subject in the absence of a specific complaint. "CNN's report "featured an unidentified Palestinian boy claiming that IDF forces attempted to insert an object into his rectum," and that dozens of officers present stood around laughing while it happened. The network cited Defence of Children International (DCI) as its source, an independent NGO involved in promoting and protecting children's rights globally for over 30 years, founded on the date the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) passed 10 years later. In May 2010, it asked the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to investigate 14 cases of sexual assault or threatened assault it uncovered - committed by Israeli soldiers, interrogators, and police from January 2009 - April 2010. The abused children were from 13 - 16 years old, detained for offenses like stone-throwing harming no one.
DCI-Palestine expressed alarm about sworn affidavits children provided, explaining instances of sexual assault or threatened assault to obtain confessions. In 2009 alone, DCI reviewed 100 sworn affidavits attesting to the following:
-- 97% of children said their hands were tied during interrogations;
-- 92% said they were blindfolded or hooded;
-- 81% said forced confessions were made;
-- 69% said they were beaten or kicked;
-- 65% said they were arrested from midnight to 4AM;
-- 50% said they were verbally abused;
-- 49% cited threats or inducements;
-- 32% were forced to sign confessions in Hebrew they didn't understand;
-- 26% cited painful position abuse;
-- 14% were in solitary confinement;
-- 12% were threatened with sexual assault; and
-- 4%, in fact, were sexually assaulted.
It included grabbing boys by the testicles until they confessed, and threatening others as young as 13 with rape unless they admitted to "throwing stones at Israeli settler vehicles in the occupied West Bank."
DCI suspects these figures "may understate the extent of the problem," a conclusion substantiated in an earlier article titled "Palestinian Children Under Occupation," accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/07/palestinian-children-under-occupation.html
In its April 2008 report, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said over 7,000 children had been arrested since September 2000, the start of the second Intifada. About 360 were still held, some as young as 10, treated as harshly as adults, in violation of international lawrequiring special treatment for children. Of these, 145 had been sentenced, 200 awaited trial, and 15 were being administratively held without charge for offenses as trivial as stone-throwing. The report also said about 500 youths arrested turned 18 in prison. About 75 were ill and not treated, and nearly all had been tortured or abused by beatings, hooding, painful shackling, and sleep deprivation for several days in the shabeh position. It involves binding their hands and feet to a small chair, at times from behind to a pipe affixed to the wall, painfully slanted forward, hooded with a filthy sack, and played loud music nonstop through loudspeakers. The article includes more on their treatment during detention and under occupation, clear evidence of state-sponsored brutality, flagrantly violating international law, Israel's specialty. DCI-Palestine cited a 15 year old boy's experience after being arrested in September 2009 at 2AM at home: "While sitting on the ground near the truck, a person speaking Arabic approached me and grabbed my hands and ordered me to stand up and accompany him. He grabbed me so violently and pulled me. He forced me to walk with him for about 20 meters, and I could see from under the blindfold that we stopped behind a military jeep. He slapped me hard twice and grabbed my testicles so hard and started pressing them. Then, he asked me whether I threw stones and Molotov cocktails and I said I did not."
"He started shouting and saying 'liar,' your mother's c..t.' He started beating me all over my body and once again grabbed my testicles and started pressing hard. 'I won't let go of your testicles unless you confess,' he said to me. I felt so much pain and kept shouting. I had no other choice but to confess" to stop the pain. Every year, around 700 children are arrested, most for stone-throwing, then interrogated with no lawyer or family member present, prosecuted, and sentenced. Over 80% signed forced confessions, one-third written in Hebrew they don't understand. After conviction in military, not civil, court, most are imprisoned in violation of Fourth Geneva's Article 76. Its provisions include assuring "Proper regard... paid to the special treatment due to minors," one of many laws Israel violates, children abused like adults. When confronted with hard evidence, Israel denies it, saying it respects and observes international law, when, in fact, it's abusively and consistently in violation. On May 10, Haaretz writer Amira Hass covered the child abuse story, headlining "Over 100 Palestinian minors reported abuse in IDF, police custody in 2009," saying:
"69 minors complained of being beaten, four minors reported being sexually assaulted, and 12 said they were threatened with sexual assault." She added that most were intimidated, abused, and maltreated in custody, before and during interrogations. In addition, they got no food or water for many hours and were forced to name others to stop being mistreated. DCI-Palestine legal advisor Khaled Kuzmar said many parents don't complain to authorities, having no "confidence in the system that abuses them." It's true. Police and military officials rarely investigate, and when do it, absolve abusers, victims not Jewish afforded no justice. Like always, an IDF Spokesman dismissed "claims of deliberate deviation from procedures for arresting and interrogating minors, (saying their) arrests are carried out in keeping with international law; the arrests of suspects under 16 years old in the West Bank requires a military lawyer's approval... Minors are brought before a judge within a relatively short period. "He lied, including about quick resolution before a judge. In fact, children and adults are often held for weeks or months before appearing for trial or accepting a plea bargain, Israel's corrupted injustice system for anyone not Jewish - even children as young as 9 or 10.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
Source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/07/palestinian-children-under-occupation.html