Update Bahrain
Anonymous Fawkes Mask BANNED in Bahrain
Collective Punishment in Bahrain :Nightly Routine across Bahrain
Night after night in villages and towns across Bahrain the people are terrorized by the Obama Supported Bahraini and Saudi police and soldiers . The police use tear gas and flash bang and other ordinance supplied by the USA to show who's in control while the world turns away.
The Regime is punishing all Bahrainis who took part or were friends with or relatives or just neighbors of those who supported the Bahraini pro-reform uprising since the beginning of the Arab Spring Feb. 14, 2011.
But if Israel or the USA can be permitted to collectively punish whole populations (Palestinians, Pakistanis, Afghanistanis, Pushtun, Iraqis,Syrians,Libyans) for the actions of a few civilians or of a an allegedly rogue nation's government then why can't Bahrain.
The USA has helped over the last 12 years to legitimize such forms of collective punishment and now every little despot believes that the Americans by example have given them the Green Light to do as they please.
Today's Topics
* Issues Obama should keep in mind when visiting Israel-the plight of the Palestinians
* Human Rights violations by Israel
* Israel's Apartheid system - reminiscent of Jim Crow & The South African Apartheid system
* Obama's human rights record is pretty abysmal to say the least
Israel asserts its exceptionalism claiming the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Council has no jurisdiction over Israel. In other words investigations into human rights record of other nations is fine but no one has the right to investigate the human rights record of Israel.
ISRAEL Walks Out of UN Human Rights Council
Published on 20 Feb 2013
Israel decides it doesn't like the U.N.'s human rights council and boycotts it.
Even the New York Times chastises Israel for this action because it makes Israel look as if it had something to hide . And if Israel can refuse to take part in the Human Rights Council and ignore its recommendations this leaves the door open for other nations to do the same especially those with a dubious human rights record .
Israel Ducks on Human Rights, New York Times editorial ,January 30, 2013
...In May, Israel said it planned to stop participating because the council was a “political tool” for those who wanted to “bash and demonize” Israel. The council, whose 47 members are elected by the United Nations General Assembly, is clearly not without faults. More than half of the resolutions passed by the council since it started work in 2006 have focused on Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, and Israel is the only country that is a standing item on the agenda for the council’s biannual meetings.Going Against The Grain-Journalist Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations in The Occupied Territories Part 1.
The council hasn’t always been an effective human rights champion. But its record, including naming human rights rapporteurs for Iran and Sudan and supporting gay and lesbian rights, has improved since President Obama, reversing policy of the George W. Bush administration, had the United States join the council in 2009.
Human rights reviews are an important tool for judging all countries by universal standards and nudging them to make positive changes. By opting out, Israel shows not only an unwillingness to undergo the same scrutiny as all other countries, but it deprives itself of an opportunity to defend against abuse charges. The decision could also undermine the entire review process by providing an excuse for states with terrible human rights records — like North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe — to withdraw as well. It certainly will make it harder for Washington to argue for reviews when an ally rejects the process.
If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to avoid criticism by this move, it failed. Fortunately, there is still a chance to make the right decision. In an extraordinary move, the council agreed to give Israel until November to reverse course. Any new governing coalition that emerges from Israel’s recent elections should realize that there’s a cost to standing apart.
To some a hero to others a traitor to Israel
It is odd that Israel or America hasn't yet targeted Gideon Livy for being so outspoken about the suffering of the Palestinian People under the rule of the Racist Apartheid Israeli Regime.
Going Against the Grain Journalist Gideon Levy is arguably the most hated man in Israel for his reports on the occupied Palestinian territories. Al Jazeera World, Feb. 12, 2013
Gideon Levy is someone who evokes strong emotions from fellow Israelis.
The writer and journalist has made weekly visits, over the past three decades, to the occupied Palestinian territories, describing what he sees - plainly and without propaganda.
For some Israelis, he is seen as a brave disseminator of the truth. But many others condemn him as a propagandist for Hamas. And his columns for the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper have made him, arguably, one of the most hated men in Israel.
"When I joined Haaretz newspaper, I started to visit the occupied territories," Levy says. "I immediately realised this was what I wanted to do; to understand the brutality and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation."
"I figured out three things. First, this was the biggest drama facing the state of Israel. Second, this story was not being covered by the Israeli media. And third, this was going to be my life mission - to report about the Israeli occupation to Israeli readers who did not want to know what was really happening there."
Over the years, Levy's stories have shed light on the realities Palestinians face on a daily basis.
One of his earlier reports, 'Death of a baby' in 1996, told of an incident involving the Abu Dahouk family. They were stopped at a checkpoint on their way to a hospital. Israeli soldiers delayed the family including a heavily pregnant Fayzeh Abu Dahouk, who ended up delivering her baby in the backseat of the car.
The baby, who she hoped to name Yousef, died a couple of days later.
Levy wrote at the time: "Who the hell are they? Who are those soldiers who saw Fayzeh Abu Dahouk in pain as she delivered her baby in her brother-in-law’s car. Who are those soldiers who didn’t let her pass to reach the hospital?”
"Who are those soldiers who made Fayzeh have to wrap her baby in her clothes and walk two kilometres to reach the hospital?”
Levy's reports have told of young Palestinians gunned down by Israeli soldiers after being accused of throwing stones; the lack of retribution against soldiers who kill Palestinians in cold blood; and the plight of Palestinian farmers, who make their livelihoods from olive trees, but who have had them burned and destroyed by settlers time and time again.
How Israel legitimises torturing Palestinians to death Israel's policy of torture has left many dead and completely lacks accountability. by Charlotte Silver , Al Jazeera, Feb. 25. 2013
Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - and the day of his death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet's Kishon interrogation facility.
Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.
When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who leaves a pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular health.
What the final autopsy did find, however, was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.
The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel's Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel's prisons. According to the prisoners' rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.
The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 700 Palestinians lodged complaints with the State Attorney's Office but not a single one has been criminally investigated.
Writing in Adalah's 2012 publication, On Torture [PDF], Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, "The GSS's impunity is absolute."
Israel's High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.
In August of 2012, Israel's High Court rejected petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.
And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah's petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.
In May 2009, UNCAT condemned [PDF] Israel for exempting the Shin Bet's interrogations from audio and video recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the Knesset extended the exemption for another three years.
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