THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Lawyers for a Palestinian who claims he was tortured in an Israeli jail are seeking a Dutch arrest warrant for Israel's former spy chief, a human rights activist today.
The lawyers are appealing Dutch prosecutors' decision not to investigate Ami Ayalon when he visited the Netherlands last May. Ayalon is a minister without portfolio for Israel and the former head of its Shin Bet security service, which is responsible for intelligence activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
This year, just as the solemn fasts of Ramadan ended and Islam rejoiced in its renewed connection with God by celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the Jewish people celebrated Rosh Hashana --the Jewish New Year-- and entered into the 10 Days of Awe and Returning to that same God. These 10 Days culminate with the holiest day of the Jewish year - the Yom Kippur fast (Oct. 9). That Jews and Muslims worldwide were concurrently celebrating their holiest days with prayers and acts of forgiveness gives us a ray of hope.
The October 3 debate
between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden was
disturbing for those of us hoping for a more enlightened and honest
foreign policy during the next four years. In its aftermath, pundits
mainly focused on Palin's failure to self-destruct and Biden's
relatively cogent arguments. Here's an annotation of the foreign policy
issues raised during the vice-presidential debate, which was packed
with demonstrably false and misleading statements.
Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word. "Palestine" and "Palestinians" - that most cancerous, slippery, dangerous concept - simply did not exist in the vice-presidential debate. The phrase "Israeli occupation" was mercifully left unused. Neither the words "Jewish colony" nor "Jewish settlement" - not even that cowardly old get-out clause of American journalism, "Jewish neighbourhood" - got a look-in. Nope.
Zeev Sternhell is careful about his choice of words when he
unhesitatingly calls the pipe bomb which exploded outside his front
door last week "an act of Jewish terrorism."
JERUSALEM - The outgoing prime minister of Israel,
Ehud Olmert, has said his country will have to withdraw from "almost
all" the land it captured in the 1967 war and divide Jerusalem in order
to agree long-awaited peace deals with the Palestinians and Syria.
GAZA CITY - So much is missing as you walk down the street along the shops of Gaza. Food and medicines kept out by the blockade enforced by Israel; but also newspapers once a part of the street landscape.
Al-Hayat-Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam, two newspapers loyal to Fatah, are not around any more. And for once, you couldn't blame the Israelis for censorship.
Of the two big Palestinian territories, Gaza is ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank by Fatah. Fighting between the two groups has led to a silencing of voices on both sides.
JERUSALEM - Desmond Tutu, the South African
Nobel laureate, said yesterday there was a "possibility" Israel had
committed a war crime when 18 Palestinians from a single family were
killed by Israeli artillery shells in Gaza two years ago.
Tutu
said the Israeli attack, which hit the Athamna family house, showed "a
disproportionate and reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life".
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian businessman was crossing the border from Jordan into an Israeli-controlled section of the West Bank not long ago, and he got to talking to a Canadian who was making the same trek.
After a while, the Palestinian began to muse about what he sees as the solution to the conflict between his people and Israel.
JERUSALEM - More than 400 would-be university students remain trapped in the Gaza Strip, unable to leave for studies abroad - including one accepted at Ryerson University - and now the Israel Broadcasting Authority is refusing to accept paid advertisements calling attention to their plight.
"There's a clause in the broadcasting authority's rules that allows them to refuse a paid ad if the issue is `politically or ideologically controversial,'" said Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli organization advocating freedom of movement for Palestinians.
