Head of the Al-Maleh Village Council, Mahdi Daraghmeh, reported that the colonists fenced off several dunums of Palestinian land in the Wadi Al-Faw area and planted olive trees, in an apparent prelude to taking over the land.
Colonists’ attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the northern Jordan Valley have intensified in recent weeks. The attacks included physical assaults, home raids forced displacement of Palestinian herders and attempts to steal livestock and destroy property.
(14. Januar 2016)
Die „Partnerbefrager“, wie sie im internen Jargon genannt werden, saßen nicht nur in der Zentrale der Hauptstelle in Berlin, sondern auch in den Außenstellen Zirndorf, Nürnberg, Wiesbaden und Friedland. So konnten amerikanische und britische Dienste ungehindert auch ohne die Aufsicht des BND Flüchtlinge befragen.
(February 7, 2025)
Dear Secretary Noem, Secretary Hegseth, and Secretary Rubio:
We write on behalf of the undersigned immigrants‘ rights and civil rights organizations to request immediate access to the noncitizens transferred from immigration detention facilities in the United States and currently detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Since February 4, 2025, the government has transferred nearly two dozen noncitizens to Guantánamo, without providing any information about their circumstances or the government’s legal authority for these unprecedented actions. The government has also announced that it is planning to send tens of thousands of additional immigration detainees to Guantánamo in the near future.
The Constitution, and federal and international law prohibit the government from using Guantánamo as a legal black hole. We therefore request that the government provide our organizations access to the noncitizens detained at Guantánamo so that those individuals will have access to legal counsel, and so advocates and the public can understand the conditions
under which the government is detaining them. We also request basic information that the public has a right to know regarding the noncitizens being sent to Guantánamo and the government’s plans for them.
(…)
Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
Americans for Immigrant Justice
Amica Center
American Gateways
Center for Constitutional Rights
Haitian Bridge Alliance
Human Rights First
International Refugee Assistance Project
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the SF Bay Area
National Immigrant Justice Center
National Immigration Law Center
Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Texas Civil Rights Project
(February 9, 2025)
Fears are growing that the offshore U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are an ominous sign of what President Donald Trump has in store as he further disregards the rule of law and normalizes actions that previously would have been unthinkable or faces immediate, bipartisan opposition in Congress.
After the first pictures emerged Saturday of still unidentified persons transferred to the island from the U.S. mainland by immigration officials, progressive journalist Nathan Robinson was among those raising the alarm, accusing Trump of „building a concentration camp and deliberately putting it where it is hardest to monitor or enforce the law.“
(February 8, 2025)
On Friday a military cargo plane transported deportees from El Paso, Texas, to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They are among the latest arrivals in the Trump administration’s week-old migrant relocation operation.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, is the first senior member of the Trump administration to visit the migrant mission on the base.
So far, none of the first arrivals have been taken to an emerging tent city that has been set up for migrants. Instead, they have been housed in the military prison.
The Israel Prison Service gave the Palestinian union a vague response confirming the deaths of 34 workers who died inside detention centres under „mysterious circumstances or from heart attacks“.
Badarneh explained that until 7 October 2023, 18,000 Palestinians from Gaza were in Israel with work permits.
(June 1, 2016)
All sides have attempted to define the collective memory of the Vietnam War in ways that advance their current visions for global and domestic politics and superimpose them on the past. Think, for example, of the persistence of the “spit upon” or “baby killer” myths, or the claim that the antiwar movement “stabbed” soldiers “in the back” (even many of my students, born decades later, say these are the first things they think about when they hear “Vietnam War”).1 The continued influence of these myths has helped prop up consent for militarism at home and abroad. The story of GI protest during the war is an important counter to the conventional story, for it hits at the heart of some of the most emotive symbols in these political battles: the soldiers. It offers grounding for an alternative politics from the antiwar left. It is history worth knowing.
August 1964
False claims of North Vietnamese attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin lead to U.S. airstrikes and an escalating air war over the coming years that becomes the heaviest bombing campaign in the history of warfare, with more than 7 million tons of bombs and ordnance used against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
1965
Major escalation of U.S. ground troops begins.
January 1965
Lt. Richard Steinke becomes the first U.S. serviceman to refuse to fight after arriving in Vietnam. In November that year, Lt. Henry Howe of Ft. Bliss, Texas, attends antiwar protest in El Paso and is sentenced to two years hard labor.
June, 1966
Privates James Johnson, Dennis Mora and David Samis—the Ft. Hood Three—publicly refuse orders to Vietnam.
October, 1966
Capt. Howard Levy, MD, refuses orders to train Green Beret combatants at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.
December 1967
Andy Stapp and others at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, form the American Servicemen’s Union and organize chapters at dozens of military installations and ships.
Late 1967
Vietnam GI , one of the first known GI antiwar newspapers, begins publication. Hundreds of other GI papers appear throughout the military over the next five years. …….
Torture was recorded in civilian and military detention facilities across Israel, resulting in the deaths of at least 60 Palestinians in Israeli custody in less than 10 months.
The systematic nature
Meanwhile, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed that a quarter of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have been infected with scabies in recent months.
The findings contained in the report, which cited prison officials, were the result of a petition filed by human rights organisations. of the abuse across all facilities left “no room to doubt an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.
Sheinbaum made the announcement on social media Monday morning, roughly 12 hours before the tariffs were set to take effect. Trump and Sheinbaum spoke on Monday and agreed that Mexico will do more to combat drug trafficking into the U.S., and that the U.S. will step up efforts to block the flow of firearms into Mexico.
Sheinbaum also said officials with the U.S. and Mexico were beginning talks on wider trade and security issues.
Briefing journalists in New York on Friday, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said UN aid coordination office, OCHA, remained “deeply alarmed” by the worsening conditions for residents in norther areas of the occupied West Bank, as Israeli counter-terrorism operations continued for an 11th day.
“Nearly all of the Jenin refugee camp’s 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two month in the context of operations by both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli security forces.
A further Israeli operation is occurring in Tulkarm where aid partners report that over 110 families have been displaced from the refugee camp there.
In December, The Jerusalem Post published an investigation from Nicholas Potter, a “counter-extremism expert,” who falsely accused MintPress News of being part of a network of far-left, foreign government-funded outlets that push conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic extremism. The claims are untrue and are particularly ironic, considering the calls for the extermination and expulsion of Palestinians and Arab peoples the newspaper has published and because Potter is a German national whose job at the Post is directly funded by the German government.
The Jerusalem Post article attacked a series of MintPress investigations published late last year exploring the deep connections between U.S. media, the pro-Israel lobby, and the Israeli intelligence services. In this series, MintPress revealed that hundreds of former Israel lobbyists now work in top jobs in American corporate media, including for MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, and The New York Times. We also showed how former employees of an Israeli spying agency, Unit 8200, are trusted to write America’s news, including about Israel/Palestine – an enormous conflict of interest.
“Today, I’m also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said from the White House.
“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately.”
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re gonna send ’em out to Guantanamo,” Trump said. He said that he would soon sign an executive order directing federal officials to get facilities in Cuba ready to receive migrant criminals.
The Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs‘ Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners‘ Club accused Israeli authorities of not only killing detainees but also deliberately withholding information about the circumstances of their death and fabricating reports. Rights groups have extensively documented widespread abuses, including severe beatings, torture, food and medical deprivation, and sexual violence inside Israeli prisons.
Israeli military operations in the West Bank have claimed 884 lives since October 7, 2023, as reported by the Al Jazeera team on the ground on Wednesday.
I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue. And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.
A Palestinian medic assists a man using a wheelchair as residents flee the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, on 23 January 2025 (AFP)
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Israeli forces have imposed a complete siege on the Jenin refugee camp, deploying special units, drones and biometric and facial recognition systems to monitor and control the area.
Palestinians have been forcibly expelled from their homes as Israeli troops order them out via loudspeakers and air-dropped leaflets.
Salah, a Jenin camp resident, spoke to Middle East Eye about the terrifying scene as drones circled above their homes while Israeli troops, using loudspeakers, demanded that people leave.
The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies.
These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian.
(January 21,2024)
On the eve of his inauguration, Israeli settlers carried out large-scale attacks on the villages of Al-Funduq and Jinsafut, east of Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, setting fire to Palestinian homes, vehicles, and shops.
Earlier that evening, Israel shuttered dozens of checkpoints and entrances into the West Bank and carried out a massive campaign of arbitrary arrests, detaining over 60 Palestinians.
Israeli settlers also rampaged through several Palestinian towns in the West Bank on 19 January in a show of anger at the ceasefire deal in Gaza – which has so far seen the release of three Israeli captives in exchange for 90 Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the assault on Jenin would be “extensive and significant,” as the military erected new checkpoints across the West Bank.
The announcement, made during his victory rally in Washington, D.C., was met with thunderous applause from supporters.
„As the first step toward restoring transparency and accountability to government, we will also reverse the over-classification of government documents,“ Trump declared to a packed Capital One Arena. „And in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“
MEE is not aware of any evidence linking Assad’s departure to a deal with Israel. However, there have been reports suggesting that the former president shared sensitive military information with Israel in exchange for a guarantee of safe passage out of Syria.
Since the government collapsed, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syrian military positions nationwide and launched a ground invasion, capturing the entire buffer zone along the occupied Golan Heights and beyond.
The government, Hussem said, had the means to resist but chose not to, opting instead to flee and leave their officers to fend for themselves.
An Israeli rights group says Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital who was detained by Israeli forces during their raid on the facility in Beit Lahiya last month, is being held in a notorious Israeli military prison in the occupied West Bank.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), said the Israeli military confirmed in an email that Abu Safia was at Ofer Prison. A lawyer for Abu Safia’s family was told that he would not be allowed to see him until January 29, said a spokesman for PHRI, Ran Yaron, according to The Associated Press.
Eine neue „Division für Heimatschutz“ der Bundeswehr verstößt mutmaßlich gegen das Grundgesetz. Einem Einsatz der deutschen Armee im Inland sind enge juristische Grenzen gesetzt, aber das interessiert die Initiatoren des Vorstoßes und die großen Medien nicht.
The letters were sent by the CIO two weeks after it obtained warrants to search the presidential residence in Yongsan District, central Seoul, and take Yoon into custody over his short-lived imposition of martial law on Dec. 3.
A CIO-led attempt to execute the warrant on Jan. 3 failed in the face of resistance from a combined force of 200 PSS and military personnel who blocked investigators and police from gaining access to the presidential residence.
The fourth division will oversee Germany‘s domestic defense, including the protection of infrastructure such as ports, railways and supply and deployment routes, the reports said.
(January 10, 2025)
Das Luftsicherheitsgesetz gestattet es der Bundeswehr bisher nur, recht milde Mittel einzusetzen. So dürfen die Streitkräfte im Luftraum fliegende Objekte abdrängen, zur Landung zwingen, den Einsatz von Waffengewalt androhen oder Warnschüsse abgeben. Abschüsse zur Ergänzung polizeilicher Aktionen sollen nun vor allem infrage kommen, wenn ein katastrophaler Schaden oder Gefahr für Leib und Leben droht. Als Beispiele werden ein Flugzeug- oder Eisenbahnunglück, der Ausfall des Stromnetzes oder ein drohender Terroranschlag genannt
(December 3, 2024)
After South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in the country, thousands of protesters took to the streets alongside the leading opposition Democratic party, urging MPs to head to the national assembly and vote it down.
Following a dramatic night in which soldiers attempted to block MPs from entering parliament, lawmakers unanimously adopted a bill rejecting the martial law declaration, prompting the president to backtrack. Here is how the night unfolded in Seoul
(January 8, 2025)
Eighteen People Power Party (PPP) lawmakers who broke through police barricades to vote in favor of repealing martial law have since been labeled traitors. So too have the 12 alleged lawmakers who supported President Yoon‘s impeachment. Recently, acting President Choi Sang-mok faced similar accusations after appointing two Constitutional Court justices. But this raises a critical question: Who is betraying whom?
Without the actions of those 18 lawmakers, the PPP would remain tarnished by its complicity in shielding martial law. Without Choi’s decision, the impeachment trial could have descended into a legal quagmire, leaving the nation paralyzed.
The Ministry of National Defense reportedly conveyed to the Presidential Security Service (PSS) on Jan. 3 that deploying the 55th Guard Corps to block the arrest was inappropriate. On Thursday, the PSS reportedly responded that it „understood“ the ministry’s position.
A ministry official said soldiers from the 55th Guard Corps would not be deployed again to obstruct similar attempts to execute the president’s arrest warrant. However, the ministry clarified that it was not considering withdrawing the battalion from its assignment under the PSS.
Aoun’s election happened only after former Interior Minister Suleiman Frangieh, the main alternative candidate, withdrew and endorsed Aoun.
Electing a president requires a two-thirds majority of parliament, which was met after Frangieh’s endorsement gave Aoun the support of Hezbollah and Amal Movements. Many media reports see Aoun’s election as a sign of Hezbollah’s weakness, despite most Hezbollah MPs supporting him.
Securing 99 of the Lebanese parliament’s 128 votes, Aoun garnered widespread support across Lebanon’s political spectrum, despite initial reservations from Hezbollah and its allies.
While political statements from Aoun are rare, he recently emerged as the US and Saudi Arabia’s favoured candidate for the Lebanese presidency.
The local and international push gathered momentum following Israel’s two-month offensive in Lebanon last year, which killed over 4,000 people and displaced over a million.
After the explosion at the port of Beirut in 2020, countries friendly to Lebanon diverted their aid to the military, claiming that they only rely on the army to distribute it. Therefore, all the aid, estimated at tens of millions of dollars, was directed directly to the army and was at Aoun’s disposal and under his direct management. It appears that the military establishment has effectively managed the funds and has never experienced a shortage due to corruption.
The US has told Lebanese officials that Saudi Arabia is prepared to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to reconstruct their war-torn country if Lebanese army commander Joseph Aoun is elected president, one senior Arab official and one former senior US official told Middle East Eye.
“But what happened was that the Iranians told Bashar al-Assad, ‘we did not receive any signals to proceed with moving Iranian aircraft to the Hmeimim base [or to] fly through Iraqi airspace to land at the base,’” Saqr told Mazeej.
“The question was relayed to Moscow, but no answer came.”
When asked whether this was a “trick by Putin”, Saqr said there was “no other explanation”.
Saqr said the Iranians told Assad they sent a plane regardless through Iraq, but were warned by the US that the aircraft would be shot down if it continued.
In response to an official request submitted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Israel on behalf of his family to arrange a lawyer’s visit for him, “Mashlat” – the body responsible for coordinating with the army regarding the location of detainees and prisoners from the occupied Gaza Strip – stated that they have no indication of his arrest or detention of the Kamal Adwan Hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Despite clear documentation of his arrest, the Israeli army officially stated on Thursday, January 3, that “it has no indication of the arrest or detention of the Kamal Adwan Hospital Director.”
Residents in Tadamon said that executions in the area were common. In interviews in 2022, they described at least 10 other incidents of summary killings between August 2012 and January 2014 in Tadamon, Daraya, Moadamiya, and surrounding areas. This evidence suggests that other bodies were buried in and around the area. The area was also the site of armed clashes between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at numerous points between 2012 and 2013.
Human Rights Watch began investigating the massacre in October 2021, after receiving a leaked video discovered by a member of a Syrian militia on a laptop and handed to Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör, researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, and ARD, a German Public Broadcaster.
“This video, filmed by the perpetrators themselves who laughed as they killed their victims, shows the Syrian government’s callous disregard for people’s lives,” Zayadin said. “This massacre is just one horrific incident in a pattern of state violence and apparent war crimes.”
Iranian state television reported on the embassy incident, saying they did not believe the gunmen were affiliated with the wider rebel group that took the city. (…)
Russia‘s Foreign Ministry said in a Telegram post Sunday that Assad left Syria following negotiations with rebel groups, and that the long-time Syrian leader had left „instructions“ to „transfer power peacefully.“ The Russian ministry said the Kremlin was not directly involved in those discussions.
The unnamed officer made the remarks to Reuters on Sunday after reports said President Assad had flown out of Damascus for an unknown destination.
Meanwhile, the militants declared that they had captured the capital, announcing the fall of the Assad government.
Daraa and Quneitra are near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, where Israel said it was boosting its troop presence, and Jordan, which late Friday urged its citizens to leave Syria „as soon as possible.“
Iraq allowed hundreds of troops from the Syrian army in, some of them wounded, amid the offensive, according to two Iraqi security sources speaking to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The soldiers from President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces „have fled the front lines“ and entered Iraq through the Al-Qaim border crossing, said one senior security official, adding that „the wounded have been hospitalized“ in the area.
(01.12.2014)
5. In view of the heavy fighting, which was approaching close to the UNDOF headquarters at Camp Faouar and the mission’s positions in the central part of the area of separation, the Force Commander briefed both parties early in September on the Force’s plans to relocate its personnel and assets should the Nusra Front or other extremist fighters who posed a clear threat to the mission endanger the safety and security of the United Nations personnel. It should be noted here that from information posted on social media as well as in the course of its efforts to secure the release of the peacekeepers, the United Nations learned that its personnel had been taken and held by members of the Nusra Front. There were indications that the Nusra Front intended to detain additional UNDOF personnel and take from UNDOF more weapons and vehicles as opportunities arose. (…)
12. Crossing of the ceasefire line by civilians, primarily shepherds, was observed on an almost daily basis. On 24 October, United Nations observation post 73 observed 12 IDF soldiers who detained one civilian between the Alpha line and the Israeli technical fence south-east of the observation post and subsequently took him away. IDF informed UNDOF that they released the person within one hour at the same location. On 27 October, position 80 observed two IDF soldiers east of the technical fence returning from the direction of the Alpha line towards the technical fence. UNDOF observed IDF opening the technical fence gate and letting two individuals pass from the Bravo to the Alpha side. Following the evacuation of UNDOF personnel from position 85 on 28 August, UNDOF sporadically observed armed members of the opposition interacting with IDF across the ceasefire line in the vicinity of United Nations position 85.
(4.12.2014)
UN troops monitoring the 1974 ceasefire between Israel and Syria have witnessed interactions between members of the Israeli Defence Forces and the Al Nusra Front who have taken over a large part of the Golan Heights.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has denounced the “terrorist settler militias” responsible for violent attacks on two towns near Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian property and vehicles in what the ministry described as part of escalating daily assaults.
It attributed the settlers’ brazenness to the “glaring and unjustifiable failure” of the international community to intervene against Israeli aggression and killings in the occupied territory.
According to new data gathered by the left-wing Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee their homes since October 7 as a result of Israeli settler attacks. Of these, seven have been partially displaced — meaning the expulsion of at least one residential cluster, located several hundred meters away from the next — and 50 have been wiped off the map entirely.
The attacks, which came amid a surge in settler violence since the war in Gaza began, targeted multiple villages, including Beit Furik, just over five miles from the city of Nablus.
The Israeli military said settlers attacked the village after troops arrived to dismantle an unauthorized farming outpost near the settlement.
(2024-12-03 23:00:59 / Update: 2024-12-03 23:06:21)
Präsident Yoon Suk Yeol hat den Ausnahmezustand erklärt.
In einer dringenden Ansprache aus dem Präsidentenbüro in Yongsan betonte er am Dienstag, dass diese Maßnahme notwendig sei, um pro-nordkoreanische Kräfte zu beseitigen und die freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung zu schützen.
(December 3, 2024 4:07 pm CET)
Right after Yoon’s announcement, Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun called for a meeting of key commanders and asked the military to stay on emergency guard, Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
Martial Law Commander Army General Park An-soo announced that all media would now be under military censorship and that political activities are banned.
Kurdish forces have also made deployments, moving into Aleppo International Airport and other areas of the city, according to the Britain-based conflict monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
(November 8, 2024)
A well-known Israeli journalist and former soldier has offered the first apparent acknowledgement of wide-scale torture by his country’s military, describing “masses” of Palestinians who were left “lying… in handcuffs” while subjected to never-ending Israeli music at the Hakirya military compound. He referred to the facility as “some kind of house of horrors, with screams coming from all directions.”
Lebanese MP Hassan Fadlallah has said that Hezbollah is cooperating with the Lebanese state over bolstering the army‘s presence in the south, saying that the group has „no visible weapons or bases,“ AFP news agency is reporting.
According to the ceasefire agreement between the group and Israel which was implemented this morning, the Lebanese army can be the only armed presence in southern Lebanon.
CAIRO – 26 November 2024: Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration Badr Abdelatty reiterated Monday in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken the importance of empowering Lebanese state institutions, mainly the army so it would control the south.
The UN Interim Force Lebanon (UNIFIL) is also seriously concerned by numerous strikes on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) despite their declared non-involvement in the hostilities, he added.
The LAF have reported that at least 45 soldiers have been killed in recent attacks.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reported that an Israeli airstrike targeting an army position in the town of Sarafand killed three soldiers and injured 17 others, including civilians in the surrounding area.
Last week, the army announced, that two of its soldiers were killed in an Israeli strike on one a military post in the town of Kafra.
At least two Lebanese soldiers were killed and two others wounded in Israeli artillery shelling targeting a Lebanese army post in al-Mari, a responsible source in the Lebanese army intelligence told Xinhua.
The Israeli army has erased 37 towns and destroyed more than 40,000 housing units since the start of its deadly offensive on Lebanon last year, local media said on Tuesday.
The state news agency NNA said the destruction is concentrated in an area extending three kilometers deep from Naqoura to the outskirts of Khiam in southern Lebanon.
(November 1, 2024)
Israeli warplanes and ground forces have blasted a trail of destruction through southern Lebanon the past month. The aim, Israel says, is to debilitate the Hezbollah militant group, push it away from the border and end more than a year of Hezbollah fire into northern Israel.
Even United Nations peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in the south have come under fire from Israeli forces, raising questions over whether they can remain in place.
The attorneys highlight three categories of potential US code violations the DOJ could investigate:
– The killing of US citizens by Israeli citizens and soldiers in recent years (including Ayşenur Eygi, Kamel Ahmad Jawad, Jacob Flickinger, Tawfiq Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Omar Assad, and Shireen Abu Akleh).
– Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, assisted by US citizens and organizations.
– Evidence that Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and engaged in torture – including killing thousands of civilians, forcibly displacement and starvation, unlawful confinement, torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, and mass destruction of civilian property and infrastructure.
“Of course,” the attorneys note, “U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the more than 23,000 U.S. citizens currently serving in Israel’s armed forces, along with IDF members or other Israeli officials that travel to the United States.”
We write regarding the case of Dylan Collins, a U.S. citizen and journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) injured by Israeli tank fire on October 13, 2023. It has now been more than one year since Mr. Collins was injured in a targeted Israeli strike while on assignment for AFP. To date, Mr. Collins has received no explanation for the attack, and there have been no steps toward accountability. Given the inaction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the United States must open an independent investigation into this incident.
We previously wrote to the State Department regarding Mr. Collins’ case. On October 13th, Collins was part of a group of journalists covering the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The group was clearly marked as press and had selected an open and highly visible position on a hilltop near the Blue Line to minimize the risk of misidentification. The group was clearly visible to several Israeli military positions, as well as to an Israeli Apache helicopter and drone circling overhead. There were no Hezbollah positions in the vicinity. The group had been filming from the position for close to an hour when, despite these precautions, they were struck twice by Israeli tank rounds, followed by a sustained burst of .50 caliber heavy machine gun fire. Issam Abdallah, a Reuters journalist, was killed and six other journalists (from Reuters, AFP, and Al Jazeera) were wounded, one severely. Collins was the only American involved in the incident. The first tank round largely missed him, but he sustained shrapnel wounds to his face, arms, and back when a second tank round hit as he was applying a tourniquet to his colleague’s leg (despite Mr. Collins’ efforts, Ms. Assi lost her leg in the attack).
The U.S. attorney general is also facing internal pressure to investigate Israel‘s killing of Americans.
(October 10, 2024)
Lapid advocated regime change in Lebanon, saying, “the international community will need to appoint a sort of oversight committee for Lebanon to manage its civilian life for a set period until elections can be held and a new government can take control.”
Crucial to this effort would be the establishment of a collaborator Lebanese army loyal to Israel and its Western and Gulf allies.
(…)
Lapid claimed it would be easy to recruit Lebanese by paying soldiers in a new army $500 a month. New recruits would then be trained by French, Emirati, and US military officers.
The South Lebanon Army (SLA) was established by Israel in 1976 after the collapse of the Lebanese government due to civil war.
“Since October of last year, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has carried out more than 160 operations targeting the Israeli interior and the occupied areas in the Golan Heights, most of which Israel has not acknowledged for various reasons,” Kadhim al-Fartousi, a leader of Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhadaa and the group’s spokesman, told MEE.
“The resistance announces the operations it carries out as soon as they happen. The resistance did not announce this operation or claim responsibility for it as was reported,” he added.
“If we had carried it out, we would have announced it.”
A military official, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP this was the first response to Israeli fire since last October because the post had been “directly” hit.
It was the third such killing of a Lebanese soldier since the start of the escalation between the Iran-backed group and Israel on September 23.
(February 26, 2022)
Following the 2015 Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, Israel set up a „deconfliction mechanism“ with the big power to prevent them clashing inadvertently during Israeli strikes against Iranian deployments and arms transfers in the neighbouring Arab state.
„Our military officials discuss the practical issues of this substantively on a daily basis. This mechanism has proven to be useful and will continue to work,“ the Russian embassy in Israel said in a statement.
Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon have killed at least 1,030 people – including 156 women and 87 children – in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon‘s Health Ministry. For more information, Yuka Royer interviews Ettie Higgins, Deputy Representative at UNICEF, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Onlookers at the site Sunday clambered over large slabs of concrete, surrounded by high piles of twisted metal and wreckage. Several craters, likely used by rescuers to penetrate under the site of the explosion were visible, some of them apparently up to 30 meters (100 feet) deep.
A few Hezbollah workers were using a bulldozer to excavate around one of the craters, some of them apparently dug by rescuers to reach the dead. State security and investigators were nowhere to be seen.
(March 13, 1962)
c. Commence large scale United States military operations.
3. A „Remember the Maine“ incident could be arranged in several forms:
a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.
b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from the air or sea, or both. The presence of Cuban planes or ships merely investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack. The nearness to Havana or Santiago would add credibility especially to those people that might have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to „evacuate“ remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.
4. We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.
The terror campaign could be pointed at refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement, also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.
Military usage of remotely-controlled vehicles dates back to the first half of 20th century. John Hays Hammond, Jr., invented and patented methods for wireless control of ships starting in 1910. The Soviet Red Army used remotely-controlled teletanks during the 1930s in the Winter War and early stage of World War II.