Israel's own criminal investigations into its conduct during the Gaza invasion in the summer of 2014 may bypass the ICC's own investigations

A school near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus has been repeatedly attacked by Israel.

On 4 February, Israeli forces fired sound bombs into a secondary school serving the Palestinian villages of al-Lubban and al-Sawiya. A flimsy excuse was given to justify this assault on the right to education: Israeli settlers had alleged that pupils from the school had thrown stones at them.

Two members of the US Congress have introduced a bill that would turn a giant trade deal between the EU and US into a devastating weapon against the people of Palestine and all those seeking justice alongside them. Together with the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that is currently under negotiation, the proposed bill would compel all 28 EU member states to crack down on European groups participating in the growing movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In order to combat the increasing isolation of Israel in global public opinion, European governments would effectively be turned into police agents for the US state.

After several hours of debate on Tuesday night, the student government at the University of Toledo in Ohio shut down a hearing on a resolution to divest from firms abetting Israel’s crimes.

Just before the vote was to take place by the student senate, the university’s Student Judicial Council, part of the student government, announced that it had ruled a resolution calling for divestment “unconstitutional” on the grounds that it was “discriminatory” and “one-sided.” The ruling allowed no recourse or debate and the entire vote was then scrapped.

As The Electronic Intifada reported, the university administration had insisted that discussions relating to the resolution be conducted in a secretive manner.

Northwestern University’s student government passed a divestment resolution early Thursday morning after more than five hours of hearing and debate. The resolution calls on the university to pull its investments from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation.

Israel’s hardline right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman plans to introduce a bill into the country’s parliament, the Knesset, which would implement the death penalty for Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli lockup.

Maj. Gen. Danny Efroni says internal investigation of Gaza war is ‘sufficient’ to forestall one by international tribunal

A group of Israeli settlers from the Asfar (Metzad) settlement, to the east of the town of Al Shuyoukh, uprooted 550 olive tree saplings on Tuesday night and ran away.

Activist Ahmed Halayka said that the land is owned by Abdel Kader and Moussa Abu Shanab Al-Ayayda and located in the area of Zaafaran, where the Asfar settlement was established.

The land's owners, Al-Halayka noted, were shocked yesterday morning to see their trees, which had been planted around a week earlier, uprooted.

At the Unviersity of Toledo in Ohio tonight, student activists will argue in favor of a resolution to divest from US companies profiting from Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.

But the university administration is mandating that they must do so in a “closed meeting,” preventing both the resolution’s supporters, opposition and the general public from hearing presentations to the student government.

The resolution voting process will also be done by secret ballot, meaning that the student body won’t be able to know how their representatives voted on the resolution.

The Palestinian ministry of information strongly denounced Israel’s channel 7 for fabricating claims about some of the journalists that had been killed by the Israeli army during the last war on the Gaza Strip, and described its report as “misleading.”

Israel’s channel 7 claimed in a recent report that eight of the journalists who were killed during Israel’s last military operation in Gaza were working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The information ministry said in a press release on Sunday that the channel’s claims about the journalists was an exposed attempt by the Israeli government to shirk its responsibility for the crimes its army had committed against the journalists in Gaza.

Canada has formally opposed Palestinian attempts to join 15 different United Nations treaties and conventions — a position that puts the federal government on the wrong side of history and at odds with its citizenry, the Palestinian envoy in Ottawa says.

Life rolls on not in any monotony but in the crazy waves of ups and downs and scenarios reminiscent of ancient Greek tragedies. We take the punches, resist the evil acts of some, act to help where we can, accept the things we cannot change and try to change those we can. That is life.

Israel has shortlisted over 20,000 Palestinian homes for demolition in East Jerusalem al-Quds, reports the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

The barbaric, merciless terror bombing the Jewish state of Israel carried out against the Palestinian people trapped in the Gaza Strip last summer resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 people. The victims of this cold-blooded and calculated murder spree were largely innocent civilians - women, children, and the elderly.

I was born in Israel and it was many years before I realized that Israel was Palestine. I was relatively patriotic. I was looking forward to serving in the army and then I grasped that there was little truth in the Jewish historical narrative. I then gathered that I was living on someone else’s land. At the same time I discovered the saxophone. By the age of 30, I left Israel and never went back.

They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel’s summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas.

Under the rules of war, homes are considered protected civilian sites unless used for military purposes. Israel says it attacked only legitimate targets, alleging militants used the houses to hide weapons, fighters and command centers. Palestinians say Israel’s warplanes often struck without regard for civilians.

Freezing cold winds, rain and threats of snow is what Jerusalem is experiencing today. That’s fine for those living in homes or apartments, but what about those living in tents or on the street? Even worse than the storm itself are the ongoing illegal activities of zionism in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, Sheik Jarrah in particular. The evictions from private homes continue due to the implementation of lebensraum; Israel’s ‘final solution’ in motion … a policy that is supposedly opposed to by the West and the EU, but still in motion nevertheless.

Hardline supporters of Israel are expressing joy over the death of 26-year-old humanitarian aid worker and sometime Palestine solidarity activist Kayla Mueller, who was killed while in captivity of Islamic State last week.

Islamic State (also variously abbreviated as IS, ISIS or ISIL) claimed that Mueller died in a Jordanian airstrike in Syria coordinated with the United States.

Although it has yet to verify the circumstances, the US government on Tuesday confirmed that Mueller was killed, prompting an outpouring of tributes from people around the world lauding her humanitarian activism.

But for Israel’s most hawkish supporters, Mueller’s solidarity work with Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation made her unworthy of sympathy and even deserving of death.

The lack of campaign-trail focus on making peace with Israel's enemies seems to bode poorly for negotiating prospects after the March 17 election. Palestinian leaders say they expect tough times ahead.

"Neglecting relations with the Palestinians is dangerous. It indicates what will happen after the election, especially if we have a right-wing coalition," said Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister. "This means that the coming period will be very difficult."

Not all conservatives used the death of American hostage Kayla Mueller to highlight the brutality of the Islamic State — some decided to focus their disgust on the 26-year-old's humanitarian work for Palestinians.

"No tears for the newly-departed Kayla Mueller, the ISIS hostage whose parents confirmed today that she is dead," conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Tuesday, under the headline, "Kayla Mueller: Dead ISIS Hostage Was Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch."

"Mueller was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel," she wrote.

Schlussel condemned Mueller's humanitarian work in the "so-called 'West Bank'" to prevent the demolition of "terrorists' 'houses.'"

The first-ever Palestinian embassy in Western Europe has opened in Sweden on Tuesday evening, the Swedish prime minister’s press service said. President Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in Stockholm for the event.

The short documentary “Khelil Helwa (Hebron is Beautiful)” follows a young boy from Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood as he goes about his daily life, uncovering the matrix of Israeli military control that defines every aspect of life in the occupied West Bank.For Palestinians, the footage may at first appear somewhat unremarkable, and the scenes of soldiers barking orders and even arresting the film’s 15-year-old star, Awni Abu Shamsiya, are heart-breakingly familiar.But for Israeli-American filmmaker Yuval Orr, it was the hope of showing the footage to Israeli audiences that motivated production.

This holiday has its origins not in the Bible, but rather in the Mishna, which was written in the early 3rd century CE. It is primarily an agricultural holiday, as evinced by its other name, New Year of Trees.

This holiday is celebrated in the midst of the rainy season (late January or early February). It was originally a holiday with halakhic (Jewish legal) significance, as it was used to mark the age of a tree for the purpose of harvesting and tithing its fruit – tithes that were given to the priests who served in the Temple and did not own any land.

The campaign for divestment from companies that assist and profit from Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights took a big step forward in California this weekend.

The board of the University of California Students Association (UCSA) passed two resolutions at its 8 February meeting in Los Angeles urging university governors to divest from companies including Boeing, Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard that make weapons and systems Israel uses to commit violations of Palestinian rights.

Her home, where she lived with her husband and eight children, was hit by four missiles fired by an Israeli drone during the first week of the Israeli attack. “Only two of them exploded,” she said. “If the others had blown up, we’d have all died.”

Not everyone survived. Her eighteen-year-old daughter Amal, who was disabled and unable to walk, died on 17 July, four days after their house was struck.

The University of California Student Association (USCA) voted Tuesday in favour of divestment from companies "engaged in the systematic violation of Palestinian rights in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip."

The motion was adopted 9-1, with 6 abstentions.

In a farewell speech, outgoing UN Special Coordinator for the so-called “Middle East peace process” Robert Serry has warned the apartheid state of Israel that continued settlement building in the West Bank was killing any remaining chances for the two-state solution.

Serry said the killing of the two-state solution strategy would transform Israel into a bi-national state.

Israeli leaders, with the exception of some isolated voices, scoffed at Serry’s remarks, with some spokespersons calling these remarks “stale and stupid.”

A Palestinian civil society coalition has slammed Canada’s “unconditional” support for Israel, saying the Ottawa government is complicit in the Tel Aviv regime’s occupation and aggression against Palestinians.

British TV Station Uses Gaza Backdrop in Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis Interview on Holocaust

The largest Palestinian civil society coalition has condemned Canada’s escalating “disinformation campaign and repressive measures against the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.”

“Rather than seeking to hold Israel to account for its war crimes during the recent military assault on Gaza and its intensified colonization of the occupied West Bank,” the Canadian government “is further deepening its collaboration with Israel’s occupation and launching a shameful, propagandistic attack on free speech in the process,” Rafeef Ziadah, a member of the Boycott National Commitee (BNC) secretariat, said in statement.

Among the dead were children, and the atrocity — or “error” as the Israeli military would later call it — portended what would become one of the deadliest tactics of the fifty-day assault: destroying Palestinians’ homes.

A new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem examines how Israel came to permit the widespread targeting of homes last summer. The report concludes that Israel violated international law but suggests it may not have violated its own policies.

BBC Question Time with guest George Galloway was an excellent opportunity to witness and assess, the vile, violent and ruthless Zionist community living in our midst. The Jews who heckled Galloway yesterday may have lived in this country for generations, but they have clearly failed to adopt British manners or the spirit of democracy into their behaviour.

MP Galloway went out of his way to distinguish between Israel and Zionism on the one hand, and Jews, Judaism and Jewishness on the other. However, the North London Jews in the hall made it clear that this distinction didn’t apply to them. They made it obvious that, for them, Israel is the ‘Jewish State’ and being Jewish, Israel is their State.

Guardian Executive Editor Jonathan Freedland repeated the exact same line, he asked Galloway to exercise responsibility and not to criticise Israel for what it is because the Jews are sensitive and fearful. For Freedland, the continuum between the Jew and Israel is undeniable.

Both the left and the right are correct in what they say about each other; but both sides are also mistaken and misleading.

This video shows Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank city of Hebron attacking a peaceful demonstration against a visit by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on 2 February.

What a huge diplomatic achievement: Israel has succeeded in getting the Canadian law professor William Schabas to resign from his post as head of a UN inquiry panel into potential war crimes in Gaza.

Through persistent surveillance, Israel’s intelligence and propaganda branches revealed that Schabas had once received a $1,300 fee from the PLO. Conclusion: he sold his soul to the devil. The ref sucks. Q.E.D.

One needs a great deal of chutzpah and arrogance to dig anew into the pasts of Israel’s critics in an effort to assassinate their character, as in the case of Richard Goldstone, merely because they dared to criticize the state. As far as Israel is concerned, the fate of anyone who criticizes the country is sealed. He’s an anti-Semite, anti-Israeli, greedy or driven by ulterior motives.

In November, members of the Kimberley Process (KP), meeting in plenary in South Africa, squandered what was probably their last good opportunity to ban the sale of all blood diamonds, including cut and polished blood diamonds which are an important source of funding for the nuclear armed regime in Israel which stands accused of the crime of apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The governments with a vested interest in the diamond industry, that set up and control the KP, failed to amend the definition of a “conflict diamond” which is restricted to “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments”. All other diamonds associated with human rights violations evade the KP regulations.

International human rights law expert Professor William Schabas was appointed to chair a three-person panel. His special focus is genocide.

On January 30, Israel's Geneva-based UN envoy, Eviator Manor, outrageously accused him of a "blatant conflict of interest."

A typical Israeli stunt. Demanded his immediate dismissal. Months earlier, Israel refused to cooperate with HRC's investigation. Outrageously called it a "kangaroo court" proceeding.

Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on April 1, announced UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday. The Palestinians will be able to sue Israel for war crimes, a move the Israeli administration has consistently opposed for decades.

On Monday February 2nd, I returned to Nottingham to answer critics who accused me of all sort of things…

First, I went to Five Leaves Bookshop to confront my defamer Ross Bradshaw who led the campaign against me in Gedling ten days ago. Bradshaw gave rather feeble and defensive responses. I’ll soon publish a video of this discussion.

That night I presented my thoughts and addressed the accusations made against me. The event was filmed and the video is posted below. My opponents had been invited to join the event and debate me but they failed to show up.

Has an Israeli war criminal been given a veto on what aid may enter Gaza?

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Yoav Mordechai, a major-general who took part in the 2009 attack against Gaza, had been invited to the European Parliament. Following complaints by Palestine solidarity activists and some of the parliament’s own members, Mordechai’s scheduled appearance was cancelled at the last minute yesterday.

He did, however, meet representatives of the European Union’s 28 governments.

It is both grotesque and logical for these diplomats to host Mordechai.

A group of sixty-three members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from across the five biggest political blocs in the parliament have called on European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to suspend the EU-Israel “association agreement.”

The association agreement facilitates largely unrestricted trade between the EU and Israel, allowing Israel to participate in a wide range of the EU’s programs. It also permits Israeli arms companies to receive EU funding.

The MEPs argue that allowing the agreement to stay in place despite Israel’s recent massacre of Palestinians in Gaza “sends Israel the message that its violations of basic principles of human rights will be tolerated.”

Israel pretends its society is a normal, US-style melting pot, but there are only two problems – there is nothing remotely “normal” about Israeli’s societal composition and, furthermore, the pot’s ingredients, by policy design, have yet to melt. The destructive societal divisions amongst Israel’s population shines through during every election; this time around is no different. While Israel’s nearly five-decade military occupation of Palestinians is slowly, but surely, ripping Israel out of its global comfort zone, not one electoral contender has peeped a word about how the occupation will come to an end.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called for scrapping a U.N. commission, which is tasked with investigating potential war crimes committed last summer in Gaza, after the inquiry's chief resigned amid accusations from Israel that he was biased against the country.

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the prospect of a close contest in the upcoming Israeli elections. To compensate for his failing approach to politics – increased defense spending, austerity, constant war and conflict, with absolutely no prospects for peace – the Israel leader is trying to start tertiary problems around him.

An Iranian charity distributes food among poor and homeless Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip, Press TV reports.

The Iranian charity organization, Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, distributed thousands of packages of foodstuff among impoverished and homeless Palestinian families in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“Imam Khomeini Relief foundation has provided generous support for the people of Gaza, especially those who lost their homes” in the latest Israeli onslaught on the blockaded territory, Wasim Wadeya from the charity organization said.

“This is a very important project when we provide warm meals for displaced families who have been living on canned or dried foods,” he added.

Yesterday in Nottingham, I delivered a talk about my views and my detractors. Here is a short segment about Dieudonné & Anelka. The full talk will be online very soon.

The head of a UN inquiry into last summer’s Israeli military offensive in Gaza has said he will resign after Israeli allegations of bias due to consultancy work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Flies buzz around the emaciated body of a lion as it decays in the sun; nearby the mummified corpse baboon lies on the ground- it's head still tilted up as though looking out of its enclosure, across from it a porcupine's brittle spines protrude from its lifeless body.

They are among the dozens of animals which have died at Khan Younis zoo in the impoverished Gaza Strip after they were left without food.

A justice group for Palestinians arrested in Israel has released an explosive report claiming that 40% of children detained by Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli police.

The US-Israel special relationship is acknowledged universally as the unswayable force of politics in the Middle East. The theme is confessed ritually by every US president and Israeli prime minister, who have all claimed, more or less, that "the bond between Israel and the United States is rooted in more than our shared national interests; it's rooted in the shared values and shared stories of our people."

Commitment to this article of faith is a litmus test for anyone hoping to exercise power in American politics. Minor deviations can and do have major political consequences, a fact acknowledged last year by the conservative American commentator Tom Friedman, who disclosed that the first President Bush paid a massive political price for standing up to Israel back in 1990; Bush asserted US foreign policy towards Israeli settlements by conditioning $10 billion worth of loan guarantees on a total cessation of settlement construction. He was not re-elected for a second term.

Israel’s foreign minister has described as "inevitable" a third war with Lebanon and a fourth aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip in the wake of a recent retaliatory attack by Hezbollah.

At the time, these ‘rescue’ missions were mired in controversy. Hailed by some Zionists as the inevitable homecoming of African Jews to the ‘birthplace’ of Judaism, to others it was a cynical ploy by the Israeli government to alter the demographics of Palestine. The airlifts were, literally, a means of importing Jews to the contested land en masse, no matter where they were from, in an effort to ‘improve’ the ratio of immigrant Israelis to native Palestinians. But now, twenty years on, how well have Ethiopian Jews assimilated into Israeli society? Has their communal story been one of success and full integration or have they been used primarily to boost Israel’s policy of colonising more of Palestine; to provide a ready pool of conscripts for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF); to provide a workforce for low-status manual labour; and to be treated like relative outcasts in the principally white Jewish community of Israel?

The Arab League warned that the separation wall built by Israel will devour fertile farmland in the West Bank province of Qalqiliya, within the framework of a systematic plan to take control of Palestine’s most fertile and strategically important lands.

Last night, the student government at the University of California at Davis voted in favor of a resolution to divest from corporations profiting from Israel’s occupation.

In a landslide vote — eight voting yes, two against and two abstaining — the student government at UC Davis recommended that the University of California system’s governing body divest from Caterpillar, G4S, Veolia Environment and Raytheon.

The divestment victory comes just months after the UC Davis administration appeared to be receptive to efforts by the Anti-Defamation League — a leading Israel lobby group — to treat boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts as “hostile events” that the university should deem security threats.

Publication of tenders for 450 new units over the Green Line will further isolate Israel, says State Department; U.K. also condemns the announcement.

No doubt another reason why Israelis fear Syriza so much. Tsipras has the nerve to wear the fearsome Palestinian scarf that strikes terror in the hearts of every Israeli. Can you imagine the uproar in Israel had he actually done something to help Palestinians?

The Israeli authorities on Friday published tenders to build 450 new illegal settler homes in the occupied West Bank, the head of an NGO that monitors settlement activity said, as Zionist settlers attempted to kidnap an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler in occupied East Jerusalem.

On Thursday November 6, a 34 year-old man with no affiliation to the University of Toronto furiously entered the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union office after hours. He stole a poster that read WARNING: THIS UNIVERSITY PROFITS OFF ISRAELI APARTHEID AND OCCUPATION. All attempts to calm him down failed. After stealing the poster he drove off, recording the incident with his phone. Campus police filed a report and said to notify them if the man returns. After a couple of weeks we put up another sign. The man came back. He forced his way into the student union. We tried to calm him down and initiate dialogue. The man replied with, “I’ll rip your fucking throat out” and “I have twelve guys on standby ready”—implying that he or other people will be back. He shouted that he use to be a part of the “israeli” military and regularly killed “terrorists”.

Surprise– ‘NYT’ publishes straightforward report on Israeli human rights violations in Gaza

A new traveling photography exhibition highlights the struggle of Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab (Negev) desert, located in the south of present-day Israel.

The photos — taken by youth in Bedouin villages — document the poor conditions in these communities. Unrecognized or underserved by the state, the villages lack basic infrastructure such as water, electricity, health care, schools and other services.

August 21, 2006
Israel is on a rampage. It has been raining death and destruction in Gaza for weeks. It pounded Lebanon into rubble. It, with the help of the US , resisted calls for an immediate cease fire. After the UN passed a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities, it went ahead and carried out a raid in Lebanon , in flagrant and clear violation of the cease-fire resolution, and Israel ’s Prime Minister has said such raids may well continue.

In the West Bank it carried out a raid in broad daylight as late as Sunday August 20 and grabbed from his Ramallah home Mahmoud-al-Ramahi, a senior Hamas member and secretary general of the Palestinian parliament. Just a day before Israeil soldiers swooped in on Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and seized him from his home, also n Ramallah. Israel presently holds five Palestinian Cabinet ministers and more than two dozen lawmakers. Almost all of Hamas West Bank leadership is now in Israeli custody.

An Israeli human rights group has accused the IDF of war crimes during last year’s Gaza invasion by launching airstrikes that intentionally targeted residential areas, killing women and children, while claiming that Hamas was hiding behind civilians.

As prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague are conducting a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories, the 49-page report by B'Tselem human rights group claims the allegations are true.

Click on Google today and you will be directed to stories and exhibitions about the liberation of Auschwitz 70 years ago. This week the entire Web is full of the same …. including one from the greatest profiteer of the holocaust himself.

But

What about the horrors of today? Where are those stories??

The United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to suspend its cash assistance programme in Gaza to tens of thousands of people for repairs to damaged and destroyed homes and for rental subsidies to the homeless.

A young Israeli soldier, fresh from the front, bluntly recounts the orders from above. “They never said, ‘Leave no one alive,’ but they said, ‘Show no mercy,’ ” he explains. “The brigade commander said to kill as many as possible.”

Another recalls encountering Arabs on rooftops. “They’re civilians — should I kill them or not?” he asks himself. “I didn’t even think about it. Just kill! Kill everyone you see.” And a third makes it personal: “All of us — Avinoam, Zvika, Yitzhaki — we’re not murderers. In the war, we all became murderers.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called on party activists Sunday to buy “thousands” of copies of the controversial “Mohammed edition” of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which they will then distribute to Israelis on a mass basis.

The United Nations has condemned Israel for illegally demolishing houses of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, leaving 77 people, over half of whom are children, homeless in three days.

With the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) acceptance of Palestine as a member, and its agreement to investigate possible Israeli war crimes during last summer’s brutal bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be having fits of rage. His puppet, the United States government, has also denounced the Court’s decisions, and Mr. Netanyahu has made the following bizarre statements:

* “It’s absurd for the ICC to go after Israel, which upholds the highest standards of international law. Our actions are subject to the constant and careful review of Israel’s world-renowned and utterly independent legal system.”

* “But this decision is even more preposterous given that Israel is legitimately defending itself against Palestinian terrorists who routinely commit multiple war crimes. They deliberately fire thousands of rockets at our civilians, while hiding behind Palestinian civilians whom they use a human shield.”

On Wednesday in Tel Aviv, a 23-year-old Palestinian man stabbed and injured as many as 12 Israelis who were riding a public bus during morning rush hour. No deaths were reported, although three people were hospitalized with serious injuries.

U.S. mainstream media coverage of this attack painted a picture of Israeli citizens living in fear of deranged Palestinian terrorists. The media rarely mentioned that Israeli forces have maintained a 48-year military occupation that profoundly impacts and virtually imprisons 4 million Palestinian men, women, and children in the West Bank and Gaza. The media also omitted significant information on Palestinians killed and injured by Israel during the period reported on.

Two weeks after his release from prison, ISM activists had the opportunity to sit with Aiman Awwad and his friend, Samer Zaqah, in their hometown of Awarta. Aiman was arrested in June 2004, at the age of 20, and released in January 2015, jailed for a total of ten and a half years in multiple Israeli military prisons. He was previously arrested at the age of 14, and shot in the leg by an Israeli solider.

A UN agency tasked with providing aid for Palestinians will suspend its activities in the war-torn Gaza Strip due to a lack of funds.

In a significant political and economic development, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Jan. 23 with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting came as a prerequisite to officially sign an investment agreement aiming to develop the Gaza offshore gas field in the Mediterranean Sea. It is only logical to assume that this step will raise the ire of Israel. The latter does not appreciate the role Russia plays in the region, especially since Israel has never come to an agreement with Russia.

For the past two decades Israeli-born, UK-based saxophonist, author and political provocateur Gilad Atzmon has matched his incendiary playing and controversial opinions with a relentlessly questioning attitude to the establishment and his own identity. With 15 albums to his name – backed by his rip-roaring Orient House Ensemble – Atzmon’s latest, The Whistle Blower, is perhaps his most compelling to date, his garrulous playing both mesmerising and melancholic by turns. Stuart Nicholson discovers the outspoken polymath is still searching for answers in today’s polemical maelstrom through passion, humour and politics

Sami Ziadna, who died as a result of excessive tear gas inhalation on Sunday night, was the fiftieth Palestinian citizen of Israel to be killed by Israeli police since October 2000.

Then, as protests spread throughout Palestinian communities in present-day Israel, thirteen unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed by police officers in the northern Galilee region. Since then, Palestinian citizens of Israel have endured ongoing police brutality.

An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians carry Israeli citizenship but dozens of discriminatory laws stifle their political expression and limit their access to state resources, including land and education.

Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabir on Wednesday, locals told Ma’an.

Israeli forces raided the neighborhood and surrounded a house belonging to Ulayyan Jalal Rabaya before a bulldozer destroyed the property.

Rabaya said he had begun renovation work on the interior of the house some months ago to live there with his fiance, who he is due to marry.

Jerusalem municipality workers posted a demolition order on the property last Monday saying that it lacked a building permit.

Two other house belonging to the Rabaya family are also slated for demolition, with a court decision expected Friday.

Israeli forces launched a major detention campaign in the northern West Bank refugee camps of Balata and Askar in Nablus district overnight, Palestinian security sources said.

More than 15 young men were seized after forces ransacked many houses.

Palestinian security sources told Ma’an that more than 20 Israeli military jeeps stormed Balata and Askar refugee camps near Nablus at midnight and broke into dozens of houses.

Locals said most of the houses belonged to Fatah supporters. Among those whose houses which were ransacked are Fayiz Arafat, Nasser al-Khatib Abu Aziz, Ahmad Naji Abu Hamada, Muhammad Abu Dari, Abu Mahyub abu Leil, Muhammad Abu Zaabal, Hatim abu Riziq, Talal abu Thira, Abu Hazim Kharma, Atallah Hashash, Bashir Hashash, Hasan Sharaya, Abu Nasim Arayshi and Mahir Ayyad.

Israel’s large Arab minority closed shops and schools from the northern Galilee to the southern Negev desert Tuesday as part of a daylong strike to protest against the death of two Arab men in incidents involving Israeli police.

The Security Council determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East. – United Nations Security Council Resolution 446, 1979.

For decades, Israel has never faced any international oversight, or recognized any international laws or UN resolutions regarding its illegal and violent occupation in Palestine.

Writer Ali Albunimah explains, “When your land has been occupied by a foreign army as long as your children have been alive, and this occupying army regularly brutalises and humiliates the friends and relatives of these children, stopping kids from confronting the invaders is naturally going to be very difficult. Convincing the Israeli adults in control of this weaponry in civilian areas that they should not be using it to kill children who are merely stone throwers should not be difficult. The statistics sadly tell a different story, of a deep-rooted Israeli contempt for the lives of Palestinian children that should inspire Western outrage.”

Israel said on Sunday it had cracked the first Islamic State cell on its soil, made up of seven Arab citizens who would be prosecuted on charges of planning attacks in the Jewish state and communicating with the insurgent group in Syria, Reuters reported.

"The defendants, including a lawyer who was representing himself in court, denied the charges of belonging to an illegal group, aiding terrorism and contacting foreign agents," a Justice Ministry spokesman said after a gag order on the case was eased.

Though members of Israel's 20 per cent Arab minority rarely turn to armed violence, many chafe at state authority and security officials worry about Islamist doctrines taking root.

Notice how the post-attack narrative has morphed from protecting freedom of the press and France from jihadists to protecting French Jews from Muslims and ridding Europe of anti-Semitism, which, according to Israeli PM Netenyahu, can only be accomplished by eliminating funding of the International Criminal Court so they can't try Israel for the massive number of war crimes it committed against Gaza and by letting European Jews and ONLY Jews, carry firearms?

Yes, that would work out splendidly, wouldn't it?

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird reaffirmed Canada's opposition Monday to a Palestinian attempt to pursue war crimes charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Speaking in Jerusalem, Baird said the Palestinians "made a huge mistake" by going to the ICC, an United Nations institution that Canada played a lead role in creating in the 1990s.

Israeli politicians are calling on the 122 member states of the International Criminal Court to cut its funding in response to the beginning of its inquiry into possible war crimes in Gaza last year.

The ICC announced Friday it would investigate "in full independence and impartiality" crimes that may have occurred in the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza in July-August 2014.

An attorney and international advocacy officer for Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine) says that 2014 was “devastating” for Palestinian children.

Whether they were killed, injured or left homeless and traumatized in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s summer attack, or whether they faced “increasing levels of violence [by Israeli forces] … at demonstrations [or] as part of military operations throughout the West Bank” including occupied East Jerusalem — especially during frequent arrest raids — Palestinian children were regular targets of Israel’s systematic violence throughout 2014, says Brad Parker of DCI-Palestine.

As the incitement to violence by Israeli leaders ramped up, so did racist attacks by Israeli citizens.

Dozens of Palestinian protesters in Ramallah have hurled eggs and shoes at the convoy of Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.

Baird travelled to the West Bank city today to meet with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki.

The protesters held signs reading: "Baird you are not welcome in Palestine."

Israel has expressed outrage over a move by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a preliminary investigation into Tel Aviv’s war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that he rejected the "scandalous" ICC decision, claiming the court has no jurisdiction over Palestine as it is not a state.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed or injured in Israel's war on Gaza last summer.

The Israeli military court in Salem, north of Jenin, has sentenced Palestinian cartoonist Mohammed Sabana to five months imprisonment on the charge of contacting “hostile parties”.

Family members told the PIC reporter on Saturday that the court passed the sentence on Friday and charged Sabana with making such contacts during his visit to Jordan.

They said that the charges were unfounded, adding that the sentence was illegal and proved the summary trials conducted against Palestinian citizens.

Al Jazeera has learned that the ICC chief prosecutor may be close to opening investigation into last summer's Gaza war.

Palestine representative to the United Nations Ambassador Riyad Mansour said the UN Security Council did not assume its responsibilities towards Palestine or implement its resolutions regarding the Israeli occupation.

"We should focus on applying the law and punishing those who violate it and remove any immunity from the occupation," Mansour said during a Security Council emergency meeting on the Middle East.

He stressed that achieving just and comprehensive peace requires the application of the United Nations resolutions about Israel.

Just two days before Palestinians commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, the names of two Palestinian cameramen targeted and killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza last November were dropped from a dedication ceremony held to honor “reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news” over the past year. The move followed an Israel lobby pressure campaign led by anti-Palestinian organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the American Jewish Committee, efforts that were openly supported by the Israeli government.

Political gadfly Jimmy Carter said on Wednesday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should probe Israel for possible war crimes committed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza following the Hamas rocket attacks. During an appearance on a television comedy show, the former American president --who in the past accused Israel of practicing apartheid and has showed his support for Islamist terrorist groups -- also blamed the Paris attacks on the Muslims' anger over the harsh treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupiers.

On January 2, Palestinian activists discovered the fields of Khirbet Twael where covered with different types of explosive devices. The discovery was made as they were implementing a land reclamation activity in the lands owned by many families from the villages of Aqraba and Khirbet Twael. They were planting olive trees to defend the lands from confiscation and as part of the annual activity to mark the foundation of the Jewish National Fund promoted by the StopJNF campaign.

In the document, written on 30 June 1976 when the crisis was still unresolved, DH Colvin of the Paris Embassy wrote that according to his source, "the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet.

"The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO's standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans."

Menachem Begin planned the destruction of the King David Hotel and the massacre of Deir Yassin. Ex prime minister, Shamir, was originally a member of the Jewish "terrorist" gang called Irgun, which was headed by none other than Menachem Begin. Shamir later moved over to the even more radical "Stern Gang," which committed many vicious atrocities.

Shamir himself has defended the various assassinations committed by the Irgun and Stern gangs on the grounds that "it was the only way we could operate, because we were so small. So it was more efficient and more moral to go for selected targets." The selected moral targets in those early days of the founding of the state of Israel included bombing of the King David Hotel and the massacre of Deir Yassin.