By Ashraf Ramela.. Egypt’s Black Bloc grew out of a struggle for liberation from an authoritarian system, only after non-violent civil efforts had failed. Not to be confused with America’s Black Bloc, which is friend to likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s Black Bloc is an enemy to their country’s new Islamist rulers and fights for democracy and legitimate government. (more…)
By Alan Baker.. Many issues will presumably accompany the upcoming visit to Israel by the foreign minister of Spain, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margolo. One of the central issues that will presumably accompany the upcoming visit to Israel by the foreign minister of Spain, José Manuel García-Margallo y Marfil, will be the minister’s curious, unprecedented and most irregular decision, dated March 14, 2013, as published in Spain’s official governmental publication, to open a Spanish consulate in Gaza, accredited to the Hamas administration. (more…)
By Ryan Jones.. While visiting Turkey on Monday (April 22, 2013), US Secretary of State John Kerry compared the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid to those killed in the recent Boston Marathon bombing. By extension, Kerry was comparing the Israeli military to terrorists. (more…)
By Simon Plosker.. Referring to the impact of Israeli air strikes on Gaza during November 2012′s Operation Pillar of Defense the BBC’s Wyre Davis wrote: “In the BBC Gaza office, that feeling was most tangibly felt on the first day of this conflict when Omar, the 11-month-old son of our cameraman Jihad Misharawi, was killed when a missile hit his home. It was a pointless, terrible tragedy that deeply affected Jihad’s colleagues who live and work here in these testing conditions.” (more…)
Palestinian terror groups operating out of the Gaza Strip on Thursday marked US President Barack Obama’s second day in Israel by firing four missiles at civilian targets in the southern Negev region. One of the missiles struck a house in the battered town of Sderot, causing damage but, miraculously, no injuries. Another rocket landed in an open area nearby, and the remaining two failed to clear the Gaza security fence. (more…)
The UN aid agency UNRWA has canceled a planned marathon in the Gaza strip following a ban on women runners imposed by the territory’s Hamas rulers. UNRWA, which assists Palestinian refugees and also sponsors and organizes the event, announced on Tuesday that plans for the April race have been scrapped. A statement from agency says that “this disappointing decision follows discussions with the authorities in Gaza who have insisted that no women should participate” in the marathon. (more…)
By Times of Israel Staff.. A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip at Ashkelon early Tuesday morning (February 26, 2013), breaking months of quiet between Israel and the Palestinian enclave.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for firing the rocket later Tuesday, saying it was retaliation for Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat’s death in an Israeli prison on Saturday. The terrorist group, associated with Fatah, had published a leaflet on Monday urging a harsh response against Israel for Jaradat’s death. (more…)
By Pinhas Inbari.. Zakariya al-Aga, the official in Fatah responsible for the Palestinian refugees, arrived in Damascus to conduct a series of meetings with officials of President Bashar al-Assad’s government on the plight of the Palestinian refugees caught in the crossfire between the regime and Salafist forces in various refugee camps and the Yarmuk refugee camp specifically, where al-Qaeda’s Nusra forces had taken over and turned the camp into an operations launching pad in the heart of Damascus. (more…)
By Eli Pollak.. The accepted mantra is that Israeli settlement policy in the disputed territories is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East. They are viewed as illegal and immoral having been established by an occupying force.
In fact, the West Bank and Gaza are not “occupied territories” in the legal sense. They were never part of an internationally recognized State. It was Jordan that occupied the West Bank in 1948 without receiving international recognition of the legitimacy of the occupation. (more…)
By Eli Hertz.. Background. The language of Article 49 was crafted in the wake of World War II and the Nazi occupation – an occupation that led to a war of aggression in which Nazi Germany attacked its neighbors with impunity, committing a host of atrocities against civilian populations, including deportation and displacement of local populations in occupied Europe. Millions were sent to forced labor camps and those of particular ethnic origin, most notably the Jews, were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. The drafters of Article 49 were concerned with preventing future genocide against humanity. (more…)
