10:57pm ET, Gaza 5:57am: One Israeli warship coming to us very fast! We are in international waters, therefore they have no right to attack us. We are still sailing ahead.
10:59pm ET, Gaza 5:59am: They are opening fire across our ship! We are still sailing ahead.
The United Nations has warned that the demolition of the Palestinian residences by Israelis has been breaking the record for the past three months.
The prospect of increased settlement building in the West Bank prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a statement Monday saying that “the United States is deeply concerned by continuing Israeli actions with respect to settlement construction."
In a move akin to the four-year-long economic blockade against the occupied Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers have closed the six entrances to the village of 17,000 inhabitants and have imposed a widespread prohibition policy against all major imports and exports from the village -- including gasoline, produce, raw industrial materials and basic supplies. Ambulances have also been prevented from entering or exiting the village.
Lieberman said in a televised statement on Saturday night that Goldstone's recent statements implicitly disavowing the accusations in the report condemning Israel after the Cast Lead operation on Gaza was no surprise to him. He said the Israeli ministries of justice and foreign affairs and the office of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu had exerted ”great efforts” in that regard without the public knowing.
”There must be some decisiveness in the issues Israel has not abided by, such as the clause that states that Israel must maintain peace with countries that want [peace], which has not happened with Palestine, which has agreed to peace with Israel,” he said.
Alan Shatter was sworn in Wednesday as justice minister in a coalition of his center-right Fine Gael Party and the liberal Labor Party. He represents Dublin South, where most of Ireland's Jews live.
In an interview with the British magazine Defense News, IDF Spokesperson Avi Benayahu revealed he had recently flown to Britain using a pseudonym so as to avoid getting arrested and investigated for war crimes.
George W. Bush was forced to cancel a trip to Switzerland this week over concerns of protests linked to the Bush adminstration's treatment of detainees. Bush was to address a Jewish charity in Switzerland.
Bush spokesman David Sherzer said the former president was informed Friday by the United Israel Appeal that his Feb. 12 dinner speech in Geneva had been called off. Saturday's edition of the Tribune de Geneve quoted the Jewish charity's lawyer, Robert Equey, as saying the visit was canceled because of the risk that protests by left-wing groups could result in violence.
A judge for the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday ordered suspected Bosnian war criminal Aleksander Cvetkovic held in jail while the Israeli government attempts to extradite him to Bosnia to stand trial for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian Civil War. Cvetkovic obtained Israeli citizenship via marriage.
The former Israeli military officer wanted in Colombia on charges of training right-wing militias landed in Israel Frinday night after Russian authorities released him from prison. Klein, a former Israeli lieutenant colonel, was captured by Interpol in Moscow in August 2007 following a request by the Colombian authorities, who accuse him of training drug barons' private armies and paramilitary groups in the 1980s.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia cannot extradite Klein to Colombia, saying that he may face torture in the country, where he was sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison. Klein has said his extradition would mean a "death sentence."
In other news:
Dios Bendiga Israel – God bless Israel. This is not a statement many Israelis hear when traveling abroad. Except in Colombia.
MPs will vote today on the Police Reform Bill, which contains a plethora of proposals concerning election of police commissioners, setting up a police reserve force, alcohol licensing, drugs enforcement and banning permanent protests in Parliament Square.
But this massive Bill also contains one clause which has been inserted at the request of a foreign government (Israel).
Clause 151 would give the Director of Public Prosecutions a veto over whether an arrest warrant could be issued for war crime suspects.
This would essentially allow the government of the day a political veto over what is a legal question.
An Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed and another wounded in two separate but similar attacks in the capital, Tehran.
The scientists were targeted by men on motorbikes who attached bombs to the windows of their cars as they drove to work, officials said.
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the fraudulent evidence that is cited as proof Iran had a nuclear weapons program and how outdated missile schematics in the MEK (or Mossad)-sourced “smoking laptop” cast suspicion on the rest of the purloined (or fabricated) documents.
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos. [...]
Although the report's revelations and conclusions about the killing of Dogan and the five other victims were widely reported in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has appeared in US news media.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stood by his call for the establishment of an independent fact-finding committee to investigate the 9/11 attacks.
"An in-depth inquiry needs to be conducted into the incident," said the president at a gathering in the city of Abadan in Iran's southwestern Khuzestan Province on Monday.
"A tribunal should be set up where any [alleged] evidence and documents (on the 9/11 attacks) can be presented," President Ahmadinejad continued.
"Under the same excuse, all Muslims, revolutionaries and justice-seekers around the world were accused, and the fiercest propaganda campaigns were launched against hem," he noted.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, President Ahmadinejad highlighted.
The world is full of illusions that are used by the rich and powerful to manipulate and control the people. The greatest illusion, and the one with the most devastating consequences, is that the American people and the Israeli, and the British, and numerous others, vote in their governments and hold them to account. Those who really control the governments are those powerful few who control the banking systems, the major multi-national corporations and, of course, the mass media. If you look beyond the faces of the presidents, prime ministers and politicians you will see that these governments' policies remain virtually the same, no matter who is 'leading' these countries. These 'leaders' do not answer to the people they have pledged to serve; they answer to those who remain behind the scenes.
Human rights activists reach Hamas-ruled strip by sea, despite Israeli blockade.
Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel's strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory.
The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the 'Free Gaza' protest group not to breach the blockade.
Al Jazeera's Ashraf Amritti in Gaza said: "The arrival of these two boats is a very symbolic gesture for the Palestinian cause, to end the siege, end the occupation.In fact, those phrases are written across the peace boats which carry flags from more than 70 nationalities."
A demonstration was held outside the US Embassy in London on Sunday to call for the repatriation of Pakistani neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.
The demonstrators say Dr. Siddiqui was unjustly convicted of attempted murder at her trial in New York.
The sentencing of Siddiqui, who was accused and found guilty of attempted murder of US agents in Afghanistan in a controversial trial, has been postponed to next month.
Saddiqui's two youngest children, who were three months old and four years old when captured and taken into detention, are still missing.
A German court has released Uri Brodsky, an Israeli citizen suspected of being involved in the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Dubai, on bail.
Israel had repeatedly called on Poland to send Brodsky straight home, saying the suspect should stand before an Israeli court.
Analysts say if Brodsky was not an Israeli citizen and was a Muslim instead, the western media would have launched an all-out propaganda against him.
Israel's army chief has defended Tel Aviv's deadly attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in late May as 'proportionate and correct.'
Ashkenazi's claim that the flotilla activists initiated the attack comes as no guns were found aboard the ship.
Turkish post-mortem examinations have revealed that a total of 30 bullets were found in the bodies of the nine dead activists. One of the activists had been shot four times in the head.
Israel has threatened to pull out of a UN investigation into its May 31 attack on a Gaza-bound aid convoy as the international probe seeks to question Israeli soldiers.
Malaysian volunteer to Gaza claims arsenic poisoning of food by Israel military. Noorazaman Mohd Shamsuddin Lifeline For Gaza Malaysia Mission Chief speaks.
http://www.lifeline4gaza.org
Bethlehem - Ma'an - 24 June 2010 - The Free Gaza Movement says it will take the State of Israel to the International Criminal Court over last month's raid on an aid ship that left nine civilians dead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it.
On the night of Sunday, May 30, showing a terrifying disregard for human life, Israeli naval forces surrounded and boarded ships sailing to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. On the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos opened fire on civilian passengers, killing at least 9 passengers and wounding dozens more. Others are still missing.
New footage has emerged of the Israeli assault on a convoy of aid ships headed to Gaza in which nine activists were killed.
Kawther Salam - Truth About Israeli Massacre
Peace activists return from the Middle East having been aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. We witness their return and hear their message.
Osama Qashoo, an award-winning documentary film maker, describes events aboard the Mavi Marmara, and calls for further action.
