The Raw Story

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Palestinian children face psychological pressure to escape 'life' under Israel's genocidal occupation of their homeland

"We are all under unbelievable amounts of psychological pressure. If anyone breaks down and goes crazy in the street, no one will blame them," Belal El-Shafi, 24, from Nuseirat refugee camp told me. Married with one child, El-Shafi works as a dishwasher in the Lightroom restaurant in Gaza City though he has advanced training as a nurse. He earns a meager living that affords a single room and food for his family. "I want to leave Gaza but I would go with my own dignity," El-Shafi remarked. "We're not living - this is not a life."

As a foreign journalist, the process of exiting the Gaza Strip is a jarring one - not for the difficulty, but for the ease. Palestinian friends and colleagues of mine who live in Gaza are unable to leave the bombed-out ghetto - they are effectively sentenced to live and die in Israel's open-air-prison. In stark contrast, I seamlessly pass from the dense, rubble-covered cityscape of the Gaza Strip to unobstructed views of abundance in southern Israel - where many of my friends' relatives were expelled from several decades ago.

Since the conclusion of the summer's devastating war in Gaza, the pressure on residents to leave the rubble-covered ghetto has become unbearable. Between the slash-and-burn Israeli assaults - another of which appears to be inevitable - and the Israeli-Egyptian siege that suffocates the economy and severely restricts the entry of basic necessities, there is little hope among the 1.8 million Palestinians living inside Gaza.

Most of those who wish to escape the Gaza Strip will run up against the iron wall of Israel's siege. The Middle East's most well-armed navy maintains a blockade on Gaza's Mediterranean coast and the southern border is controlled by Egypt, which destroys the once-thriving tunnel economy that sustained life in Gaza. The northern and eastern borders are controlled by a system of concrete walls and fences that are lined with intermittent pillboxes mounted with remote control machine guns, surveilled by high-tech cameras and patrolled by trigger-happy soldiers.

"If I walk to close to the border, Israeli soldiers will shoot me," 18-year-old Ezzeldeen Awad Obaid said with a nervous laugh.

Indeed, Israel carries out what it has euphemistically termed a "distancing procedure," in which soldiers open fire on any Palestinian who walks within 300 meters of the fence. In practice, soldiers have frequently shot at Palestinians beyond that distance.

Against this severe reality, the desire to look elsewhere for a better future is ubiquitous, especially among young people. Some are torn between the desire for a decent livelihood and the urge to stay in Gaza as an act of resistance.

I met 18-year-old Yusef Abu Kader in a lot in Gaza City where he was collecting scrap metal that earned him a few dollars each day. "I'd leave Gaza in the morning," he told me without blinking.

I asked Abu Kader why he thinks Israel creates unbearable conditions that compel him to think about life abroad, however, he instinctively replied, "I will never leave Gaza. I'll never give it to the Israelis. This our land. This is our home."

In greater numbers than ever, Palestinians are risking their lives to flee the Gaza Strip through tunnels - sometimes with deadly outcomes. Hundreds of migrants drowned when rival smugglers attacked their boat this summer. The authorities of Egypt's junta have imprisoned hundreds of others before deportation back to the Gaza Strip.

In an email, the Israeli historian and professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter Ilan Pappe explained how these methods have been deployed for decades to advance Israel's colonization of Palestine:

"In many ways the Israeli brutality in Gaza is a unique case in the overall Israeli strategy since 1948, but only in its duration and intensity - not in the method," Pappe said. "A softer version of decreasing numbers of Palestinians in areas coveted by Israel is by strangulation - not with the same means employed in Gaza but through belts of colonization, or as it is called in Israel - Judaization - have led to immigration of Palestinians from the Galilee and parts of the West Bank."

The strangulation effect is felt by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip across the socioeconomic spectrum.

"The huge scale of destruction and killing has made life intolerable for a lot of people here. Anyone who has the chance to leave will understandably take it," Mohammed Suliman, a former researcher at the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights from Gaza City, explained. "If you are fortunate enough [to leave Gaza], people look at you with envy because you are a lucky person - a survivor."

Suliman, 25, earned a full-ride scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of South Australia beginning in the 2015 spring semester. Yet he will miss at least part of the semester due to a seemingly insurmountable myriad of travel restrictions imposed on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

After having earned a scholarship - no small feat in itself - Suliman must obtain a visa from the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv because there is no embassy in Gaza nor is there an embassy capable of providing a visa in the West Bank. In order to do that, he must mail hard copies of his transcripts to Australia. But there is no post office in Gaza. So his transcripts must be mailed from an office in Gaza to the West Bank and then to Israel, where they will finally be sent to Australia.

In order for Suliman's wife, Leila Najjar, 24, to obtain an Australian residency visa, the couple must prove that she has health insurance. But even after Suliman and Najjar managed to raise funds from abroad for insurance, the donors refused to send the money to Gaza because of the risk of being prosecuted for ties to terrorist organizations.

"After I get my visa, the real problem starts: How to leave Gaza." Suliman explained. "I am allowed to leave, but how can I practically?"

The only exits from Gaza are through Egyptian-controlled southern Rafah crossing or through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, both of which require lengthy application processes to travel through.

After General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi seized power in Egypt through a coup and a sham election, his regime embraced a policy of collective punishment to Gaza, strangling the coastal enclave from the south in hopes of toppling a government it viewed as the Palestinian cut-out of the Muslim Brotherhood. "They punish the people for the supposed mistakes of their government. I am someone who is paying the price for mistakes of political actors," Suliman said.

With the Rafah border closed except for rare instances, Suliman has no viable means of leaving Gaza. "I just have to wait and pray that it opens," he remarked. If the crossing does open - typically this happens for a few hours a day - he must have the right connection because of the sheer number of people.

"There are tens of thousands who want to travel - I'm not the only one," Suliman explained. Without a connection, he must book a day to travel two months in advance, which almost guarantees he misses part of the academic semester in Australia.

The other alternative for Suliman and Najjar is to travel through the Erez crossing in the north. Not allowed to travel from Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport, they would have to pass through Israel, the West Bank, to Jordan and finally to Australia. To cross Erez, Suliman has to apply to the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Gaza or a human rights organization.

"They told me, 'You can't just apply. What's your reason to come through Israeli land?'"

If Suliman receives a positive response from Israel - assuming there is no hold-up with Israeli intelligence and security - he then must apply for a travel permit from Jordan. Barring some small miracle, he is certain he will miss at least part of the semester.

"I can't complain because this is all I know," Suliman said with a look of resignation. "I just accept it and deal with it, you know?"

For the few lucky enough to leave Gaza, returning home after building a life abroad is an unknown. "I thought there would be no way for me to live away from Gaza forever but I don't really know what's going to happen," Suliman said.

Stories like Suliman's remind me the ordeals of countless Latin-Americans I met in the United States who migrated because of economic conditions with the intention of returning, yet after setting roots, never did. As an observer, I can't help but wonder if those who say they would return to Gaza might have different feelings down the road.

As arduous as his trip to Australia promises to be, Suliman is among the lucky ones. Though Gaza's population is among the most educated in the world, residents with advanced degrees in the arts and sciences are increasingly taking up menial jobs as waiters and taxi drivers. Since this summer's war, the unemployment rate has shot above 55%.

Khalil Hijazi, 24, studied physical therapy in Al-Azha University and completed a year-long internship in a hospital. After his internship ended, he received unemployment payment through the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) for three months.

During Israel's war on Gaza this summer, Hijazi volunteered at al-Shifa hospital for 30 days. After the war, he found it impossible to obtain work, even as a volunteer. He was thus forced to accept the humiliation of taking money from his parents to survive. Eventually, he took a job as a taxi driver.

Leaving Gaza remains a distant dream for Hijazi, who has never traveled outside. He is eager to get a master's in physical therapy in Egypt, then travel to Europe to make a living. But under the current conditions of siege and regular wars, his ambitions are obstructed.

Despite the unprecedented devastation of the summer war on Gaza, there are those who remain determined to stay in Gaza no matter the cost. "More people are deciding to leave for good because of this hell we're in," said 20-year-old Shaima Ziara. "But you'll find people who tell you 'no, this is our country.' We're staying here because it's our job to fight for it."

A senior at the Islamic University of Gaza, Ziara studies English Literature, a pursuit that she views as a form of resistance against Israel's colonial project.

"Communicating to the world is one of the most important forms of resistance," she said. "During the last war, we saw the world's reaction to the assault on Gaza. There were huge demonstrations around the world. This is something we did not see in the wars of 2012 and 2008/2009."

Ziara credits international displays of solidarity with Gaza to the embrace of social media platforms by Palestinians who have survived successive Israeli assaults and were able to provide a shocking portrayal of reality there. "We can give them another source of information other than the mainstream media that manipulates and twists the truth," she said. "We want to enable ourselves to defend it by any means possible - by education, improving our mentality and our abilities to communicate to the world our story."

Last month, a group of Palestinian children orphaned during the war on Gaza received permits to visit Israel, only to be stymied at the last minute by Gazan authorities at the Erez border crossing. The visit was hyped by Israeli government linked publicists as a humanitarian gesture towards the suffering population of Gaza. Yet as the Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah revealed, the children were being exploited as tools in a stunningly cynical government propaganda stunt that was deployed "to show a positive face of Israel" and "to gain points in the hostile world opinion." With little understanding of the scheme that they had been corralled into, their children returned to parentless homes with their trauma compounded.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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The Resident on Campus Security (ROCS) program - which allows police officers to live rent- and utility-free in trailers on Broward County Public Schools campuses - is coming under fire after an internal audit determined that the program is "not adequately supervised," "operating with an expired lease agreement," and that almost 91 percent of the emergency calls from ROCS campuses are answered by local police departments instead of ROCS officers.

The ROCS program was founded in the 1980s to address theft, vandalism, and trespassing on school campuses, but according to the school board's chief auditor, Patrick Reilly, even if it were adequately overseen, it would still be unnecessary.

"The existing technology of alarm systems and fire alarm systems, along with the implementation of single point of entry, surveillance cameras, [Broward District Schools Police Department] staff on call and an Alarm Monitoring Unit that monitors security alarms at all school sites 24 hours a day, 7 days per week," makes the ROCS officers an expensive luxury.

According to WPLG, the program is "in shambles."

The audit revealed that no data was compiled or maintained about the program since 2013, and that it has been operating with expired lease agreements since 2010. Moreover, ROCS management personnel had no means of determining whether the officers it oversaw complied with the terms of their agreement with their host school.

At one of the trailers, believed to be on the grounds of a Coral Springs elementary school, the officer moved out without notice - and rented it out to people without performing a background check.

Andrew Ladanowski, chair of Broward County Schools Facilities Task Force, told WPLG that "obviously, they couldn't provide anybody security on site. I don't think it's appropriate use of facilities - these trailers have taken valuable recreational space, and in some cases, created additional challenges to the facilities department when additional classrooms are required."

"The only beneficiary I see," he added, "is the freeloader living in these trailers."

The school board will meet on February 18 to discuss the future of the program.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko believes there cannot be a military solution to the ongoing conflict in the country's east, he told reporters in a recent interview with Western media.

Speaking to a small group of Western journalists, the Ukrainian president assured the press it was his strong belief that a "simple military solution of this conflict" does not exist.

Poroshenko maintained that Russian troops were involved in the fighting that has claimed more than 4,800 lives and wounded over 10,000 people. However, no evidence of this has been presented so far.

The president added it was necessary to continue dialogue with Russia and said he holds telephone talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, about once every two weeks.

Poroshenko alleged that sanctions against Russia helped Kiev break the ice with Moscow and bring it to the negotiating table.

"The most important thing is that sanctions [are] working," the president said, adding that restrictions were "not just bringing some problems to Russia," but is "an instrument" keeping it at the negotiating table.

Poroshenko was talking to journalists exactly four months after parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine's eastern provinces agreed on a road map for lasting peace. The deal was signed on September 19 in the Belarusian capital Minsk, with the mediation of representatives from Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

The Ukrainian also president claimed, "The Minsk agreement, actually, is my peace plan," despite militias in the east frequently accusing the government in Kiev of violating the truce.

The past few days have seen fierce clashes between the army and militia forces over the control of a crucial airport in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. The fighting marked a surged in violence that erupted in Ukraine after Kiev launched a military campaign in April to crack down on protesters who opposed the country's new government.

Comment: It's hard to believe Poroshenko is being truthful here, though it is possible: one the one hand he is under the control of his US/CIA masters, on the other he is essentially being strong-armed and threatened by the neo-Nazis that would have no problem ousting him in a third Maidan if he doesn't do what they want. Perhaps the utter fail that is the latest 'offensive' on Donetsk and Lugansk has finally pounded some sense into at least a portion of Kiev officials. After continuous violations of all previous ceasefires, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announced they are now "ready" to resume Minsk talks. In other words, Kiev thinks they can just bomb the hell out of Novorossiya, kill and torture civilians, when it suits them; but the minute they realize they stand no chance of military success, they tap out and ask for a ceasefire. These people have no shame.

Or perhaps the recent renewed bombing of civilians is what Poroshenko is alluding to. There is no military solution. There is only the 'final solution'.

Dashboard footage from a fatal police shooting in Bridgeton, New Jersey confirm eyewitness accounts that the victim was stepping out of the car with his arms raised when officers shot and killed him, the reports.

Police in Bridgeton pulled over the car in which Jerame Reid was a passenger on December 30th. Prosecutors said that "during the course of the stop a handgun was revealed and later recovered," but witnesses said that Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley opened fire and killed Reid as he was peacefully exiting the vehicle.

Tahli Dawkins told the that he watched the officers approaching the car yelling, "Don't effing move!" and that they opened fire without provocation.

Denzel Mosley told KYW-TV that Reid's hands were "in plain sight," and that the officers "were telling him, 'Get out [of] the car,'" then yelling "'Stop!' and they started shooting."

Ben Mosley - a retired sheriff's deputy - said that Reid may have attempted to get back into the car when the officers yelled the contradictory order to "Stop!" but that he did not believe that justified firing upon him.

"I saw a disarmed man go down to the ground and get shot," Mosley said. "That's exactly what I saw."

The video - obtained by the but not released to the public - confirmed these eye-witness accounts.

"Show me your hands. Show me your f - - hands," Days said, before quickly adding, "Get him out of the car, Rog[er Worley], we got a gun in his glove compartment."

After the gun is retrieved, Days continued to yell at Reid. "I tell you, I'm going to shoot you," he shouted. "You're gonna be f - - dead. You reach for something, you're going to be f - - dead."

Reid then attempted to exit the vehicle with his hands raised, at which point Officer Days yelled, "Don't you f - - move!" before he and Worley opened fire, discharging their weapons at least six times.

Conrad Benedetto, the attorney for the Reid family, said after viewing the video on Tuesday that "you see that there was no threat to the officer, and no weapons in the victim's hands."

Walter Hudson, chair and founder of the civil rights group the National Awareness Alliance, said that "the video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person. He complied with the officer and the officer shot him."

Watch the dashboard camera footage of the shooting below NJ.com below:

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Tuesday that she planned to sue Fox News after the network repeatedly reported that there were so-called "no-go zones" in the city where Muslims had taken control.

Although French law makes a successful prosecution more likely, here are a few of the times Fox News might have been taken to court in the United States over the years if the U.S had laws like France.

1. Bill O'Reilly demonized abortion Dr. George Tiller before he was killed in 2009

Salon wrote in 2009 that there was "no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly" than Fox News Bill O'Reilly. After years of being attack on air by O'Reilly, Tiller was killed by an anti-abortion activist in 2009.

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2. Glenn Beck declared that Obama is 'a racist'

"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Fox News host Glenn Beck said in 2000. "I'm saying he has a problem. He has a - this guy is, I believe, a racist."

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3. Fox News calls Mr. Rogers an 'evil, evil man'

In 2007, the hosts of claimed that PBS television icon Fred Rogers was an "evil, evil man" who had ruined "a generation of kids."

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4. Megyn Kelly: Santa Claus and Jesus are both white men

Black Santa Claus and black Jesus aren't known to sue a lot of people, but they really should have taken Fox News host Megyn Kelly to court for insisting that they were both white.

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5. Shepard Smith says Robin Williams was "such a coward" for committing suicide

Following the tragic death of Robin Williams, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith concluded that the actor had been "such a coward" for taking his own life. Smith later apologized.

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6. Fox News host tells Muslim religious scholar he can't write about Christianity

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski suggested that Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green interview with author Reza Aslan was the "most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done." For about 10 cringe-inducing minutes, Green hounded Aslan for being a Muslim and writing a book about Jesus.

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7. Keith Ablow: Michelle Obama 'needs to drop a few' pounds

Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow said that Michelle Obama was overweight and needed to "drop a few." But the Fox News Medical A-Team member has also called foran "American jihad," said same-sex marriage meant people would "marry their dog," and has repeatedly smeared transgender people. Ablow has been condemned by other members of the medical community.

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8. Sean Hannity promoted anti-government racist Cliven Bundy

Fox News host Sean Hannity hyped Cliven Bundy as an anti-government hero, and then tried to distance himself from the rancher when he turned out to be a huge racist.

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9. Fox News management urged staff not to report on climate change

In 2009, then-Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon advised on-air talent to express skepticism about climate change because of "the controversy over the veracity of climate change data."

4.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Eastern Turkey

Magnitude

ML 4.7

Region

Eastern Turkey

Date time

2015-01-21 13:58:03.4 UTC

Location

38.25 N ; 42.86 E

Depth

4 km

Distances

214 km N of Al Mawşil al Jadīdah, Iraq / pop: 2,065,597 / local time: 16:58:03.4 2015-01-21

53 km SW of Van, Turkey / pop: 371,713 / local time: 15:58:03.4 2015-01-21

15 km N of Bahçesaray, Turkey / pop: 3,731 / local time: 15:58:03.4 2015-01-21

Source parameters provided by:

Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute -- Istanbul, Turkey (KAN)

More information at:

Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, Earthquake Department Ankara, Turkey

Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute Istanbul, Turkey

free allocation to each inhabitant of the Far East of one hectare of land.

"The idea is correct and in the history of Russia was implemented in Siberia," said the head of state to the proposal of Deputy Prime Minister and presidential representative in the Far Eastern Federal district Yuri Trutnev.

Meanwhile, Putin warned that "modern agriculture, modern economics are a bit different, so you need to carefully evaluate it, need to consider all the details".

Trutnev reported to the President about the positive results of the development of the district in 2014, noting that it is "the beginning of a trend". As an example, he cited the increase in natural population increase by 1.1 thousand and a decrease of migration from the region" from 27 thousand to 20 thousand people.

"But it's still the beginning of a trend. So we want to offer for your consideration a measure, which, in our opinion, would help to reinforce this trend of the influx of people to the Far East," TASS quoted Deputy Prime Minister.

He said that now in the state ownership of the Far East there are 614 million hectares of land of different categories.

"We want to offer to establish a mechanism for free allocation to each inhabitant of the Far East and to everyone who would like to come to the Far East, of 1 ha of land that can be used for agriculture, to create a business, forestry, hunting", said Trutnev.

The Ambassador acknowledged that "there are difficulties in the allocation of land around major cities, "because there is a competitive environment, high infrastructure development which could be subject to corruption and abuse." He said that the area around the cities is only 1.18 percent of all land.

"We need to see where these lands are, what is their quality, whether 1 ha is enough in the Far East. And what should be the conditions for use, " said Vladimir Putin.

According to him, for example, "one can get the land, but not use it in the next decade".

"There are many questions that require further study," he said.

Trutnev said that all the issues will be worked out and proposals prepared. So, the government will separately determine the fate of the land around major cities. In addition, among the proposals is the provision of land for 5 years, and in the case of use then to secure this land for the owner, in the absence of use "to take it back".

"Obviously, we will limit secondary circulation from the point of view of the sale to foreign legal entities and individuals," announced another condition the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Raw Story

Focused on providing independent journalism.

Kiev orders crackdown on Russian TV channels

What I did after police killed my son

Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Palestinian children face psychological pressure to escape 'life' under Israel's genocidal occupation of their homeland

Audit finds police working on campus where they live rent-free ignoring over 90 percent of emergency calls

Revelation! Poroshenko finally admits there is no military solution to E. Ukraine conflict

Dashboard cam shows cops shooting unarmed man with hands raised

9 Fox News segments they would have been sued for if the U.S. had laws like France

4.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Eastern Turkey

Putin approves giving free land to Far East residents

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