Posted on April 30th, 2009 by Marian Houk
On Friday, on the southern border of Gaza, not far from the Mediterranean coast, young men are dumping wheelbarrows full of reddish-brown sand onto makeshift new dunes on the edges of what just happens to be the well-defined district of the famous smuggling tunnels.
We are on the Gaza side of Rafah,
The sand is [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions, UN Security Council
Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Marian Houk
From a link in a post on Angry Arab’s blog here dated 6 July 2008, I found this appalling item on Uri Avnery’s Gush Shalom website, a translation of an article from Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper of an interview with someone without any experience who drove a D-9 bulldozer in Jenin (Palestinian) Refugee Camp [...]
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Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Marian Houk
On Israel’s Independence Day, according to the Jewish calendar, today, there was a total closure of the West Bank, with certain exceptions, including journalists.
Despite the 45-minute wait just to enter the Qalandia checkpoint from Jerusalem, caused by extra “security” measures — and tightened restrictions at several checkpoints along the way — I went [...]
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Filed under: International Law, Iran, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council
Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Marian Houk
This is the day that Israel marks as its Memorial Day, or Remembrance Day.
Haaretz reported that “The total number of those who have been remembered by this Memorial Day is 22,570 [n.b., mainly fallen soldiers but also civilian victims of terror attacks]. The dead who are counted date from 1860, when Jews first settled outside [...]
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Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on April 27th, 2009 by Marian Houk
For the first time ever,maybe, Israeli flags are flying from the lamp posts in the West Bank along the Palestinian Road 60, from just outside the settlement of Adam up to the illegal outpost of Migron. They were put there to mark celebrations for Israel’s 61st Independence Day, just the way they were put [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, International Law, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on April 27th, 2009 by Marian Houk
A NYTimes oped piece today suggests that “Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies [on harsh interrogation techniques -- meaning torture] . Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated [...]
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Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Iraq, Torture, USA
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Marian Houk
Yes.
It emerged last week that in July 2002, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had authorized waterboarding of al-Zubayda, a Palestinian-born suspected member of al-Qayda captured in Pakistan in March 2002 — who then may have implicated “the mastermind of 9/11″ under torture, while recalling something he had watched on Al-Jazeera television.
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney was [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Torture, USA
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Marian Houk
The fiancé of imprisoned Iranian-American freelance journalist Roxana Saberi — who was convicted of espionage after a one-day trial and sentenced to years in jail — has written an open letter calling for her release. The fiancé, a prominent Iranian Kurdish filmmaker, Bahman Ghobadi, wrote, among other things, that “She was always busy [...]
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Filed under: Iran, Journalism and Journalists, USA
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Marian Houk
ABC news reported a couple of days ago that “The surviving Somali pirate suspect from the attack on the U.S. flagged merchant ship Maersk Alabama sobbed in a Manhattan courtroom today where a judge determined that he will be tried as an adult. There is still some confusion over the actual age of Abdulwali Muse, [...]
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Filed under: International Law, International Tribunals, Law of the Sea Convention, Somalia, USA
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Marian Houk
On 22 April, the IDF released a report on “the conclusions of five investigative teams assigned to investigate events relating to the conduct of IDF soldiers during Operation Cast Lead”.
Unsurprisingly, after a thorough investigation of “a number of issues which were brought to general attention (by, amongst others, international organizations and the international and Israeli [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Palestine & Palestinians
