Dr. Franklin Lamb | Salem News

Popular committees have appealed to both sides to observe a ceasefire within any Palestinian camp in Syria.

(HOMS Palestinian Refugee Camp) – Historically, Palestinian refugees, wherever they have sought temporary sanctuary following the ethnic cleansing of their country by the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise, and pending their return to Palestine, have insisted on avoiding local and international conflicts while seeking a modicum of interim civil rights from the host countries.

This was true in Jordan during the run up to Black September in 1970, at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil war in 1975, the 1991 Kuwait crisis, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and obtains especially today in the current crisis in Syria. For a number of reasons including poor tactical decisions by their leadership they have not always succeeded, and consequently they have paid s steep price in lives, jobs, housing and expulsions from host countries.

In Syria, both the largest Palestinian refugee camp, Yarmouk, with its 125,000 residents, and Khan al-Sheeh, the second largest of the 14 camps with 45,000 before the crisis but currently swelled by another 26,000 mainly from Yarmouk camp, have become virtual war zones with large sections of the camps being overrun by gunmen fighting in support of the “Free Syrian Army.” All but two of the camps in Syria have been infiltrated by opposition forces and consequently have been targeted by government forces seeking to destroy the rebels.

Courtesy: jahalin.org

At times the camp residents have resisted both sides by demanding that the camps’ normally strict neutrality be respected. Engaging initially in peaceful protects when outsiders invaded, some protests turned violent when their demands for camp neutrality were rejected.

Khan al-Sheeh, whose residents are from tribes and clans in northern Palestine, and who lost 22 camp residents to Zionist occupier gunfire during the May 2011 Nakba Day events on the Golan Heights, will be a formidable foe if they take up arms which they have not done for the past 33 years.

In January 2013, the Syria conflict entered into the camp when opposition forces — a combination of Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Nusra Front fighters — arrived and insisted on recruits, offering $200 per month cash, free cigarettes, a uniform, boots and of course an AK-47.

For the past five months, again like Yarmouk, Khan al-Sheeh and the other camps in Syria have been caught in the crossfire as opposition fighters try to advance toward the capital, while regime forces used cannons and rocket fire to block their advance, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries.

This week, so far in vain, the camp popular committees yet again appealed to both sides to observe a ceasefire within any Palestinian camp in Syria and also in Lebanon, the latter currently experiencing increased challenges for its 12 camps to stay out of the conflict.

Pressuring Lebanon’s camps to join Syria’s civil war

Lebanon’s widely respected independent leftist daily, As-Safir, has reported that veteran security and intelligence officers of the Lebanese security services are claiming to have information, but not precise details regarding number and location of “organized Takfiri (Sunni) networks” in Lebanon.

The head of one security service told As-Safir, “the monitoring of the terrorist networks cannot be very detailed since they are solely located in the Palestinian camps, mainly in Ain el Helweh.”

This statement, like others these days in the Lebanese sectarian media, appears intended to incite the public against the refugees, inducing them to join the fighting. Another officer, closely working on the Lebanese government “terrorism” file, claims, again without offering any probative or material evidence, that “the only serious faction in Lebanon right now consists of the Ziad al-Jarrah Units that are affiliated with the Abdullah Azzam battalions.” Both have some Palestinian gunmen.

Abdullah Azzam is the most experienced group and it is present in Ain el Helweh. The officer indicated that he agrees with the general theory that as long as the military situation in Syria remains unsettled, the Lebanese Palestinian camps are open to all possibilities, including Palestinian armed involvement.

Other calls are being heard from Beirut, Saida and Tyre in the south, and also up north in Tripoli for Palestinians to comply with the fatwas being issued for all Sunni to fight the Bashar Assad regime and to build a “Sunni army” patterned after the Lebanese civil war-era PLO forces. How significant is the sentiment favoring this dangerous call is unknown.

However, in all of the above noted areas, some Palestinians, mainly unemployed youngsters have been lured by offers of cash to take part in training, much like occurred before the 26 month old Syria conflict.

Palestinian refugees are being lured by FSA.

Some Salafist-jihadist types in Lebanon, especially near Tripoli’s Bedawi, and Nahr al Bared camps, as well as Ain el Helwe down south in Saida, are pushing among Palestinian youth the argument that if they join the war in Syria they will gain the internationally-guaranteed civil rights that all the other refugees receive except Palestinians in Lebanon.

Part of the argument being pitched is that they are not going to get even elementary civil rights in Lebanon from Israelis, the UN or the international community, and certainly not from the EU or the Americans. Palestinians in Lebanon’s camps are being lectured that they will get civil rights here only when they take them by force, which is their right and their jihadist religious duty.

These arguments will fail, with few exceptions, among the quarter million Palestinian refugees actually still in Lebanon, as they have in the past. But the Palestinians’ decent into deepening sectarian and religious divisions here in Lebanon is worrisome.

Scholars, political analysts and even elements of the National Lebanese Resistance are counseling that an effective, moral, religious, and political measure that could bring Sunni and Shia together in Lebanon, while thwarting the schemes being hatched to get the Palestinians involved in the Syrian crisis, would be for the Lebanese Parliament to use 90 minutes of its ample free time — in as much as the Parliamentary elections will not take place next month as scheduled — to address the issue of Palestinian civil rights in that country.

By using 20 minutes of the proposed 90, recommended by the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign here, Lebanon’s Parliament can, in one fell swoop, reach out to the Sunni community and the Christian community (about 90% of Palestinians in Lebanon are Sunni and approximately 10% Christian) by employing a quick and tidy yea-nay vote to repeal the 2001 racist law that forbids home ownership for Palestinian refugees here.

This law outlawing the home ownership civil right for Palestinians only, as expressed by the two initial sponsors still in Parliament, was only originally meant as a 2001 election year gimmick to garner anti-Palestinian votes and not ever intended to be implemented.

History teaches us that the 2001 law was in fact part of the anti-Palestinian “pay-back” for the PLO’s involvement in the fifteen-year Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). In what many Palestinians in the camps here objected to then and continue to view as a cataclysmic error, its leadership ignominiously withdrew from Lebanon in the late summer of 1982, under Zionist and Reagan administration pressure and false promises of an immediate Palestinian homeland.

With the remaining 70 minutes, the Resistance-dominated Parliament could reach out to the Sunni and Christian communities as noted above and grant Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the same right to work that every refugee everywhere has, including those in the apartheid state of occupied Palestine. The same right as everyone is immediately granted when their passport is stamped at any Lebanese border post.

US-born Naz Tytell  says  despite his  confession,  murder convictions didn’t take into account his mental state

Times of Israel

Jack Tytell, an American-born Israeli Jew who faces life in jail for the murder of Palestinians, appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

In his petition, Tytell said that in handing down his sentence the Jerusalem District Court had ignored evidence of his mental state, which affected his responsibility for his actions.

During a hearing earlier this year, the court rejected Tytell’s claim he was insane at the time of the murders, finding him accountable for his crimes, which he had confessed to committing.

Tytell was convicted in January of murdering two Palestinians and wounding two Israelis. He was sentenced in April to two consecutive life sentences plus 30 years’ jail time and was ordered to pay NIS 680,000 ($190,000) compensation to the victims’ families.

In April Tytell, in court to hear his sentence, expressed no regret and said he was “proud” of his actions.

Arrested in 2009, he admitted to carrying out at least seven terror attacks that killed two Palestinians and injured three over the course of 12 years. The 40-year-old Florida native also attacked Jews he suspected of missionary activity.

During his sentencing hearing in January, Israel’s state prosecution asked that the man dubbed the “Jewish terrorist” be locked up “until the end of his days” and said he ”trampled, in his actions, every possible value human society is founded upon.”

Tytell’s acts of incitement and calls to replace the State of Israel with a totalitarian Jewish monarchy, along with his encouragement of violence against those who didn’t share his views, were acts that “undermine the foundations of a democratic society,” prosecuting attorney Sagi Ofir said.

Racist Zionist confessed to racist aggravated assault of  Arabs, causing severe injury to one of them in August 2012 attack in Jerusalem; further plea bargains expected

ynet 

One of the teenagers involved in the August 2012 attack in Jerusalem’s Zion Square confessed in the course of a plea bargain to aggravated assault of Arab youngsters out of a racist motive.

During the incident, Jamal Julani, an Arab youth, was severely injured when a group of Jewish youngsters assaulted him and other young Arabs in two central Jerusalem locations.

On Sunday The Jerusalem District Court accepted the plea bargain signed with the minor, who also confessed to causing severe injury to Julani.

Following the attack, indictments have been filed against eight suspects on charges of inciting to violence and racially-motivated aggravated assault.

Another indictment has been filed against a teenage girl who allegedly incited the group to violence.

The indictments deal with two incidents which occurred on the same night, the first of which was the assault of a number of unidentified Arabs in Hahatulot Square, the second being the Zion Square attack.

According to the new plea bargain, the inciting to racist violence charge was removed from the minor’s indictment.

This is the sixth plea bargain signed with those involved in the affair, and further plea bargains are currently in process.

The first and the most lenient plea bargains, exposed by Ynet, changed the charges against two suspects from assault to incitement.

In the course of the other plea bargains, two other suspects confessed to aiding the aggravated assault and a third confessed to causing severe injury to Julani.

An additional plea bargain is expected to be signed soon with the teenage girl involved in the affair, who is charged with cursing Arabs and hitting Julani on the back of the neck. As part of the plea bargain, the girl will be charged with incitement to violence, aggravated assault and causing severe injury.

Times of Israel

A terrorist accused of planting a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv during last year’s Operation Pillar of Defense now claims that his confession was extracted under duress.

Muhammad Mafarji,18, confessed to the Shin Bet security service that he placed an explosive device on bus No. 142 on November 21. The bomb detonated near the Israeli military’s headquarters in the center of Tel Aviv, injuring 28 people.

Mafarji’s lawyer claimed that he was tortured prior to his confession, and that his interrogators deprived him of sleep and uttered threats of violence against him, Israel Radio reported Monday.

According to Mafarji’s indictment on multiple counts of attempted murder and aiding an enemy during wartime, he planted the bomb on behalf of Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, in order to help the group in its conflict with Israel.

Mafarji, a West Bank Palestinian naturalized through a family reunification procedure some 15 years ago, has Israeli citizenship and can therefore be tried in Israeli civil courts.

The three other members of his terror cell, all from the West Bank, were arrested in connection with the attack, including mastermind Ahmad Ahmed Moussa.

Mafarji told investigators that he met Moussa at Moussa’s supermarket in Beit Lakia in the Binyamin region. While out shopping Mafarji declared that he wanted to fight alongside Hamas in Gaza, and Moussa told him to come back later so that they could discuss the matter further.

When Mafarji returned, the two allegedly began to plot an attack. Moussa first told Mafarji to leave a bag on a bus as a test run, which he successfully completed.

The night before the actual attack the two discussed siding with Gaza, halting the IDF attacks on the coastal enclave, and avenging the death of Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari, who was killed in a drone strike that marked the onset of the Israeli campaign to curb rocket fire from Gaza. Moussa also allegedly questioned Mafarji about Israeli officials that he knew and promised to provide him with a gun so that he could kill Israelis.

Moussa prepared a bomb that could be detonated by cellphone and hid it in a bag of clothes. He then took Mafarji to the checkpoint at Harbata, where the teenager crossed from the West Bank into Israel to meet with the manager of the McDonald’s where he worked. As the two drove to work, Mafarji was said to have faked a phone call in which he claimed to learn that his mother was ill and that he needed to go back to her. After alighting from the vehicle with the bomb he took a bus to Tel Aviv.

Once inside the city he boarded a No. 142 bus and armed the bomb. When the bus reached the planned detonation point, Mafarji got off, leaving the device under the third seat. He quickly called Moussa to tell him the bomb was in place, whereupon the latter detonated the device via his cellphone.

After the explosion, Mafarji took a train back to Modi’in and calmly reported for work. He was arrested four and half hours after the attack.

Mafarji also told his interrogators that he intended to kill.

Security camera footage from the Savidor train station in Tel Aviv showed Mafarji after the attack walking calmly onto the train on his way to work at McDonald’s at the mall in Modi’in.

His lawyer claimed in January that Mafarji was an innocent teen who was manipulated.

** ed note–morons, idiots, one and all. There is only  ONE  entity  that  benefits from something like this, and it is Israel and her supporters around the world who thrive offof conflict amongst others which they set in motion.

The sad thing is that there will be a LARGE  number of  those within what we might call ‘white  nationalist’  circles who will see this as a great idea, too stupid to see that they are being played for fools by organized Jewish interests.

alyunaniya.com

In a letter sent via post to the Muslim Association of Greece yesterday, extremist-right party Golden Dawn threatened Muslims in Greece with bloodshed giving them a month time to evacuate the country.

According to the hard copy of the letter obtained by Alyunaniya.com, Golden Dawn gives Muslims of Greece until June 30 to evacuate the country or else they will start ‘butchering Muslims like chickens’. The threat appears authentic as the logo of the party was printed on the letter.

The Muslim Association of Greece in a statement condemned the letter stating that Muslims are ready to defend their faith.

“Every Muslim is any time ready and fearless to defend his faith, not caring for his life. Human dignity is challenged along with the sense of mutual respect and coexistence,” the Muslim Association said.

The Association called on the state to take action and ensure that all citizens of the country share equal rights under law.

Golden Dawn, whose logo is reminiscent of a swastika, gathered enough votes to win almost 20 seats in the Greek parliament. Members of Golden Dawn have been accused of carrying out acts of violence and hate crimes against immigrants.

In a related development, the Greek Ministry of Education announced last week that it will allocate the sum of EUR 946,000 to the Ministry of Growth to fund the construction of the controversial mosque in Athens.

The Greek government has stalled for over a decade the building of an official mosque leaving its 700,000 Muslims to pray in more than 120 basements and garages in Athens.

The mosque will have no minaret, in order to adopt to the surrounding environment and it will be built in the Athens neighborhood of Votanikos.

Earlier, Athens Mayor George Kaminis, a supporter of the controversial mosque that some critics such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party are trying to block has said that the pending opening of the first official mosque in Greece, being built in Athens by the government, will pave the way for more, as many as two or more in each district of the city.

Kawther Salam 

Defence for Children International Palestine - The boys live in fear with their attacker still on the loose.

Defence for Children International Palestine is deeply disturbed by the sexual abuse of two Palestinian children by an armed Israeli assailant dressed in a police uniform late April in the Jordan Valley.

The perpetrator, driving a white car with yellow Israeli license plates, approached the two boys, both 14, while they grazed their goats in a field, north of the West Bank city of Jericho, according to their sworn testimonies. With his firearm visible, they said, he ordered them to strip from the waist down and sexually assaulted them one at a time. The boys described the assailant as average height and build, black hair, in his 30s, with a mole on his left cheek. Their grandfather said the Palestinian Liaison Office submitted a complaint to the Israeli Police Internal Investigations Department.

“It’s been three weeks since these kids were sexually assaulted, and they live in fear with their attacker still on the loose,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at DCI-Palestine. “We urge Israeli authorities to carry out a swift investigation and apprehend the suspect before he attacks again.”

Israeli investigators met with the children and obtained their statements. The boys said they can identify their attacker in a lineup. They spotted him again a few days after he assaulted them in the same area, driving toward them with two other passengers. They immediately left their herd of goats unattended and hid until he drove away.

This is the first case DCI-Palestine has documented in which Palestinian children were sexually assaulted by an Israeli perpetrator in police uniform outside of arrest and interrogation. Since 2009, there have been at least 20 cases of children alleging sexual abuse and threats by Israeli interrogators.

In February, DCI-Palestine submitted a complaint to the Israeli Police Internal Investigations Department to investigate allegations of ill treatment during the separate interrogations of two Palestinian teenage boys at Ariel police station, including verbal abuse of a sexual nature against one of them. Those responsible have yet to be held accountable or brought to justice.

One of the victims accessing the water tank used for their goats in the area of the assault

On Tuesday morning, Israeli authorities destroyed two Palestinian homes in the Khellat al-Ein neighbourhood to the east of the old city of Jerusalem claiming they had been built without permission.

Witnesses said that large numbers of Israeli forces accompanied by two bulldozers approached the area at 6am and besieged the two houses.

According to witnesses, the Israeli forces got out of their vehicles, broke into the houses, evacuated them and then destroyed them.

Describing the cruelty of the Israelis, a female resident of one of the houses told the Palestinian news agency Safa: “While we were sleeping, they [Israeli occupation forces] broke into our house and asked us to leave immediately.”

“They did not did not give enough time for us to evacuate my grandmother and we were not allowed to take any of our property,” she added.

The owners of the two houses, who are staying in a makeshift tent, said that their houses were built twelve years ago. A destruction order was issued three years ago, but the strangest aspect of the whole matter is that they have been paying construction tax for the past six years.

The mother, Um Mahmoud, said that they were obliged to pay much money for illegal construction. The last sum they paid was NIS50.000 (£9.000). “None of this was considered,” she told Safa.

“What I have seen was like post-war footage rather than home demolition as the Hebrew media misleadingly describe it,” says the head of the Islamic movement in northern Israel Sheikh Raed Salah.

Salah’s remarks Sunday came during a visit to the Bedouin Negev village of Attir where Israeli municipal staff demolished 18 houses.

“Demolishing 18 houses, uprooting 460 olive saplings, cutting down olive trees and sycamore fig trees, destroying roads, power generators and solar cells is war in the full sense of the term,” Salah added.

He urged all Palestinian residents of the Negev and across Israel to visit the demolished village to see the truth firsthand.

Salah was accompanied by other members of the Islamic Movement in Israel. The delegation was welcomed by dignitaries from the Abu Al-Quian family whose houses were demolished.

“Nothing was left on the ground. They leveled everything cutting down trees and turning the place into debris. However, we will remain firm and our spirits are stronger than before,” said Hajj Shihdeh Abu al-Queian.

“Perhaps what we are watching now is the beginning of disastrous consequences of the Prawer Plan which is aimed at displacing our people from Negev indiscriminately,” said Sheikh Salah.

He added: “This plan is one of ethnic cleansing against our people in Negev.”

On May 6, an Israeli government committee approved a draft bill setting a framework to implement the evacuation of “unrecognized” villages, most of which existed before the state of Israel.

“The government approved a plan that will cause the displacement and forced eviction of dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Bedouin residents, dispossessing them of their property and historical rights to their lands, destroying the social fabric of their communities, and sealing the fate of thousands of families into poverty and unemployment,” said lawyer Rawia Aburabia of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

“All of this while the government simultaneously promotes the establishment of new Jewish communities, some of which are even slated to be built on the fresh ruins of Bedouin villages,” Aburabia said.

Al-Nakba Infograph by @visualizingpal