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.

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.

Palestinian ‘politicization’ of UN mission cited as reason for decision to block inspection of Old City

Times of Israel

In a last-minute about-face, Israel said Monday that it would not allow a UNESCO delegation to inspect Jerusalem’s Old City as had been arranged.

The visit had been heralded as a possible sign of a thaw in ties between Israel and UNESCO, after Jerusalem cut off contact with the UN body following its recognition of a Palestinian state in 2011.

A government official said the cancellation was due to Palestinian “politicization” of the UN mission contrary to the agreed parameters of the visit.

“The Palestinians were not respecting the understandings,” a Foreign Ministry source told AFP. “The visit was supposed to be professional, [but] they were taking measures that showed they were politicizing the event and not letting the delegation focus on professional sides of it.”

“Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki recently said they considered the mission a ‘commission of inquiry,’ and said they would discuss political issues with the mission,” the official said.

Israel announced in April that it would allow a mission from UNESCO to visit the Old City in May, in exchange for an agreement from the Palestinians to postpone a UN debate on five resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

At the time, Jerusalem also agreed to take part in a meeting in Paris of experts from the UN’s cultural body focused on the Mughrabi Bridge, the wooden walkway that leads to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall Plaza.

The visit was meant to put into effect a 2010 plan by UNESCO to safegaurd the Old City and its walls.

The deal was brokered with the help of the US, Russia, Brazil and Jordan and was hailed at the time as “a critical step forward toward depoliticizing UNESCO,” according to US envoy David T. Killion, quoted by the New York Times.

Cultural heritage has become a flashpoint for the two sides since the Palestinians were admitted to UNESCO, over US and Israeli objections.

UNESCO was the first UN organization to accept the Palestinian state as a member following the failed bid by President Mahmoud Abbas that year to achieve upgraded nonmember state status, a victory he achieved a year later at the UN General Assembly.

The organization lost an estimated $80 million per year in donations from the US following the admittance of the Palestinians.

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.

Father of  Mohammed  al-Dura said  report is Zio-Nazi false, calls for an international investigation over death of son.

jpost.com

Jamal al-Dura, the father of 12-year-old Gazan Muhammad al-Dura who became a symbol of the second intifada, is willing to exhume his son’s body to prove that Muhammad was killed, and that he was killed from bullets fired by IDF soldiers.

Muhammad al-Dura was allegedly killed by IDF fire during the second intifada as he crouched behind his father, crying, according to a report on French television station France 2. He became one of the most potent symbols of the second intifada for Palestinians, and footage of him cringing in fear and of his alleged death was broadcast repeatedly across the globe.

Jamal al-Dura spoke to the Israeli press on Monday morning following the publications on Sunday of findings of an Israeli committee that determined IDF fire did not kill or injure Muhammad al-Dura.

But Dura said he is not willing to accept the Israeli committee’s findings, and called for an impartial investigation.

“Are they willing to do an international investigation? Is Israel willing? I’m not saying the people of Israel, I mean the government, and IDF soldiers,” Jamal told Army Radio.

Dura claimed he had contacted Israel asking for such an investigation, but he has yet to receive an answer, leading him to accuse Israel of being afraid of such an inquiry.

“Israel now has a black stain on it in the eyes of the world,” Dura said, claiming the Israeli government is now lying in order to clear itself of all blame.

“The Palestinian Authority has Israeli bullets [from the incident]. I’m asking you why Israel did bulldoze all of the walls there, at [Nezarim] junction. They’re trying to erase everything,” he accused.

When asked by Army Radio when did Muhammad die, Jamal insisted his son died on the spot. “In my opinion, he died on the spot. Yes, yes, he died next to me. If Muhammad didn’t die, who injured me?” he asked.

When presented with the findings of an Israeli doctor that operated on him and determined his scars predated the incident, Jamal dismissed it as lies. When pressed further, he avoided answering the question. “You can ask my lawyer in France. He’ll tell you. Me, I’m not allowed to talk about this. At court, he will talk about it,” he said.

Dura further said he never received compensation – not from Israel nor from the Palestinian Authority – for the death of his son, that he claims is buried in al-Bureiz refugee camp.

Despite the lack of official recognition, Dura says his son is viewed as a martyr in Gaza. “Muhammad is not just my son, he’s the son of the entire Palestinian nation.”

By: Lauren Booth Publication; OnIslam.net

It’s been exactly a year since I was last in Gaza.

In that time another terrible attack has been unleashed by the Israeli military and government on the trapped Palestinian populace.

On my previous visit, months after Egyptians elected the Muslim Brotherhood to power, there was little sign to the visitor of any real easing of the punitive behavior of officials at the Rafah crossing, towards Palestinians, wishing to travel to and from their homeland.

What changes would I see this time?

The team I work with at Peace 2012 stack our boxes of stationary and children’s toys onto trolleys at the dreaded crossing. ‘Dreaded’ because it has for decades been a symbol of the Mubarak regime’s ruthless willingness to carry out the dirty job of persecuting Palestinians at the behest of the Israeli government.

I remember feeling dumbfounded on my first visit to Gaza in 2006.

On hearing Gazan’s mutter bitterly that it was ‘better’ to fall into the hands of the Israeli soldiers, than Mubarak’s boot boys. ’You expect things from your enemy but the violence of your brothers – this hurts in another way’ I heard many times.

Outside the Egyptian terminal, the same anarchy as always – a sea of clawing hands grabbing at our cases and boxes. Not to help us, certainly not! The hands here hijack your bags, walk them a hundred paces then menace you into paying as much as 60 US dollars, forcing a loud, near violent exchange, before we give up shouting and empty our wallets – of much much less! Same old, same old!

Instead of a mocking faux interrogation (as in years gone by), today, all is tea and coffee pleasantness. Assurances are given that Palestine is at the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.

I am hoarse with shouting; ‘this is NOT Islam’ to the bemused, couldn’t-care-less, muggers.

In 2008, I joined the 1.8m Gazans experiencing the realities of the siege, when I was refused exit via Egypt or Israel for a month. I visited Rafah some six times trying to gain freedom, to return to my young children in France. Each time I was mockingly refused by the Mubarak team in the offices.

Today, something strange… After our thirteen assorted packages pass through the security scanner, our Palestinian co-worker, Yasser, walks briskly over and says ‘the officials want to see us all in the office, sister.’

‘Here we go,’ I unconsciously reach towards my bag for my copy of ‘Fortress of the Muslim’ for prayers to recite asking Allah to grant calmness and patience.

Inside the office sit the same man and the woman I faced in 2008 during Mubarak’s reign.

‘La Illaha IlAllah’ I whisper under my breath.

Instead of a mocking faux interrogation (as in years gone by), today, all is tea and coffee pleasantness. Assurances are given that Palestine is at the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.

And, with no hassle at all we reach the final passport and visa ‘check.’ I feel faint, with gratitude to Allah. Not for myself and my own momentary discomforts this border, but for the thousands and thousands of Palestinians whose entry to return from the rest of the world may (may) now become near to what passes for normal in Egypt.

No more sitting on cases with sobbing, thirsty, children for 18 hours. No more hospitalizations from heat stroke in stalled buses. No more mocking loathing from the officials at Rafah – can it be?

Hard politics on the ground in Cairo is beginning to force hearts to soften in some old regime hot spots. Benefits are beginning to be felt.

Through the Dusty….

All I can focus on is the peaceful, rustic beauty of the sea and the humble villages.

Other changes are easy to see as we travel towards Gaza city through the dusty, bustle of Rafah. It is early evening and what passes for rush hour. Donkeys and carts and lads on speedy Chinese motorbikes trot along or throttle past.

We move at a leisurely speed through Khan Younis, along the blue rimmed coastline. ‘Unspoiled’ a travel agent could optimistically describe the make shift huts of retrieved wood and giant palm leaves on the empty beaches. ‘Undeveloped’ a real estate agent would shudder, more accurately.

Gone are last year’s fuel queues which stretched for miles from every available pump as the supply of gas from Egypt simply dried up. But gone too are many of the family cars. Automobiles are expensive to run here and costly to mend properly. Parts come through the few remaining tunnels and although available are marked up with the ‘bak shish’ (tips) demanded by professional smugglers the world over.

Tonight all I can focus on is the peaceful, rustic beauty of the sea and the humble villages.

Gaza casts her gentle charms around me.

The next morning, I wake up in brother Yasser’s house to find that he, his wife and baby asleep on sofa cushions on the floor, having given their bed up for visitors.

In the children’s room his five girls aged from 15 to five years old are asleep with the light on. It is a bright energy saver bulb and in the dawn light blinds me. How do the girls sleep with that on, I wonder? They are also still in their clothes from the night before. I put this down to the hard-days travel we had just endured and a very late night packing gift boxes for poor children.

Before breakfast I shower and grimly note the array of Israeli hair products I will have to use. In the UK we can boycott such things but here…

Over breakfast Amal, the children’s mother, sighed as she opened the milk.

“Israeli’ she said pointing to the lettering on the front. The Israeli Occupation government has since its creation, assured itself of a captive consumer base – literally.

With strategic trade borders under occupation control, importing goods in a regular, structured way has proved difficult to impossible for the Palestinians in Gaza.

The famous painter Layla Shawa, once told me, how she remembered the ruthless and deliberate way the Occupation forces had time and again targeted Gazan orange groves – razing them to the ground – during her youth in the fifties and sixties.

Today, the luscious crop is enough for locals only with export having long ago failed. Meanwhile Jaffa oranges, from the famous Palestinian village occupied by Jewish terrorists in 1948, is now an internationally recognized brand worth billions.

Milk

Milk from Al Khalil, Hebron, is for six Shekels. That’s a 50 per cent mark up on every carton for the Occupation economy.

Milk is the staple that mothers here give their numerous children every morning in a traditional attempt to nourish bones and help them grow. Also, as far as I see it is the only drink during the day, that children, rich or poor, receive, which is not sugar laden (more of that later.)

Amal brought me another identical carton of milk ‘Falistini’; she smiled proudly. Same packaging, same product – different producers… Yet milk from Israel is far more prevalent in Gaza due to the siege which stops ease of inter Palestinian trade. And what about the costs, the same surely? No. Israeli milk costs nine Shekels here per carton.

Milk from Al Khalil, Hebron, is for six Shekels. That’s a 50 per cent mark up on every carton for the Occupation economy. Sweet, easy, business…

Coca Or Pepsi

We move, move, move, back and forth across Gaza, trying to see as much as possible whilst we are here. Stopping to visit families benefitting from our projects in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahial; every impoverished, blast-pounded family has certain similarities.

One of the most instantly visible problems is health and diet. Particularly worrying is the prevalence of fizzy drinks and sodas that have crept, like a silent cancer, into the households of the already minerally malnourished.

Every cement bare room we enter, Coca Cola or Pepsi, is glued to the hands of the barefoot children. There is no lower age limit for these liquid time bombs… Babies, barely 18 months old, sip cola to the ‘Aww! Isn’t that cute’ sad-smiles of the mothers.

These tins of sugar death are seen as the children’s only ‘treat.’

This is not a problem (as in the West) of lackadaisical parenting, however. It’s another major symptom of the rapid decimation of the traditional, diet, of Gazans.

In 1948, tens of thousands of refugees from Palestinian lands were forced into the tiny Gaza strip as a result of Jewish terrorism.

Almost overnight the natural abundance of fruit and vegetables produced by this majority farming community became a shortage. The population leapt as a result of internally displaced refugees from around 60,000 in early 1948, to some 200,000 a matter of months later.

To add to this demographic Nakba (catastrophe), in 1970 the Israeli government gave the go-ahead for the renewal of a defunct Jewish colony right at the heart of Gaza, called Kafr Darom. This was the forerunner to the infamous Gush Katif settlement- the first of many ‘Israeli’ agricultural vulture projects in the Gaza area.

This major colonization controlled prime Gazan land, the area’s main aquifers, and approximately one-third of the total Gaza coastline. Thus vegetable produce, herb growth, farming and fishing were badly reduced for the Palestinian populace. The best production was stolen for the Jewish-only community and exported.

In 2004, just months before the infamous colony was removed, the agricultural production of Gush Katif represented some 10% of all agricultural production raised in ‘Israel’, plus 65% of its organic export industry; 45% of tomato exports and 95% of Israel’s cherry tomato exports.

Total annual revenues for the occupation of this colony alone, were around $60-70 million, revenue that belonged to the people of Palestine but, like a healthy diet was denied them.

Citrus fruits, olives, almonds, vegetables, strawberries, flowers and field crops were traditionally the most successful here.

However, nowadays, the agricultural sector encounters a plethora of destructive factors. During my visit, Palestinian farmers in Gaza, regretfully, set fire to three tons of herbs, set aside for export to Europe. Due to yet another prolonged closure of the crossing into Israel, (over which they have no say whatsoever), the produce is burned.

Source: http://www.onislam.net/english/family/muslims-4-humanity/462693-from-egypt-to-gaza-the-gate-and-the-key.html

“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