Human Rights

NOVANEWS Early in the morning of April 9th 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Nazi Menachem Begin) and Nazi Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a beautiful Palestinian village with cut stone houses located on the west side of Jerusalem. It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of the State of IsraHell. The village lay outside the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish state; it had a peaceful reputation; it was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Palestinian militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv andJerusalem, and with the knowledge of the mainstream Zionist defence force, Nazi Haganah, it was to be conquered and held.   In spite of being better armed, the two Zio-Nazi g...

NOVANEWS Zio-Nazi deserter, Eden Natan-Zada opened fire on a bus in Shfaram in 2005, killing four people and was subsequently beaten to death by an angry crowd. Haaretz Families of the victims of the 2005 attack on the Druze village of Shfaram by IDF soldier Eden Natan Zada petitioned the High Court on Wednesday against the State Attorney’s Office asking to reopen the investigation into the incident. A nineteen-year-old IDF deserter who lived in the West Bank settlement of Tapuach, Natan-Zada arrived in Shfaram’s Druze neighborhood and opened fire with an IDF M-16 rifle on a bus, killing a bus driver and three passengers. After the attack, Natan-Zada was beaten to death by an angry crowd. Seven indictments on charges of attempted murder were served on suspected perpetrators of the lynch,...

NOVANEWS The following is a testimony of one of the women, out of the 23 activists, who were arrested in this week’s Nabi Saleh demonstration (above video). This demonstration was the first after Mustafa Tamimi’s murder. It was extremely brutal, which is a relative term, considering the continuous repression that the demonstrations against the apartheid wall face, and the village of Nabi Saleh in particular. Out of the 23 activists, many were physically assaulted while handcuffed behind their backs, as Mohammed Khatib, one of the leaders of the Bil’in popular committee, describes in his own testimony. Mustafa Tamimi’s sister, Ola, who was prevented from being with her brother as he took his last breaths, was pepper sprayed in the eyes, from a few centimeters away. And another handcuffed ...

    Dear All, I have just been released from jail, after three days inside. I was arrested last Friday, together with 22 others, in the village of Nabi Saleh, during a demonstration commemorating the murder of Mustafa Tamimi. Our arrest took place as we peacefully protested near the entrance to the Jewish-only settlement of Halamish, which is built on lands stolen from Nabi Saleh. Minutes after we got to the gate, Israeli Border Police officers moved in to remove us from the scene. Palestinians, Israeli and international activists, we were all shackled and dragged away into military jeeps that transported us to the adjacent military base, which is in fact part of the settlement. In the military base, still shackled, I was assaulted by a settler who hit me in the face, leav...

NOVANEWS Pam Bailey Loai Odeh (left) with Samer Abu Seir On 19 December, the second and last group of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for a captured Israeli soldier is expected to be released. The 550 men slated for release will at long last taste freedom after years — for some, decades — behind bars. Their stories will likely be similar to the 447 freed in October. While imprisoned Israeli authorities did virtually everything to obliterate the detainees’ moorings to reality and their connections to their culture, families and fellow prisoners — from prohibiting visits for months at a time, to forcing repeated moves to disrupt any new-found friendships, to imposing solitary confinement, sometimes for years at a time. Some prisoners crack. One freed prisoner I met d...

NOVANEWS Nora Barrows-Friedman  For nearly a year and a half, the Bedouin villagers of al-Araqib in the Naqab (Negev) have been incessantly brutalized by the Israeli government and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in an ongoing, broad-daylight ethnic cleansing operation. The village has been razed to the ground approximately thirty times since July 2010, and yet, as The Electronic Intifada has reported, the villagers — who are Israeli citizens — remain steadfast by rebuilding, regrouping and resisting after each demolition. Focusing especially on the courage and determination of al-Araqib’s women, young and old, as forefronts of the resistance, the new documentary film Sumoud (steadfastness in Arabic) offers a valuable glimpse into the daily struggle of villagers to hold ont...

NOVANEWS Reserve Zio-Nazi army colonel in Nazi Unit 504 provided information about interrogation methods and torture allegations against an interrogator known as Captain George. Haaretz New revelations have come to light on the methods of Unit 504, the Intelligence Corps unit in charge of interrogating prisoners. The methods became public following claims of torture by Iraqi refugees questioned in Israel and by Mustafa Dirani – a captor of Israeli airman Ron Arad. Arad went missing during a mission over Lebanon in 1986, while Dirani was affiliated with a Lebanese Shi’ite militia and was captured by Israel in 1994. A reserve army colonel in Unit 504 who is only identified by the Hebrew letter Het provided information about the interrogation methods in general, and about torture allegation...

NOVANEWS US/Alabama: ‘No Way to Live’ Under Immigrant Law Repeal Act That ‘Attacks Every Aspect’ of Unauthorized Immigrant's Life DECEMBER 14, 2011 An unauthorized immigrant who has lived in the US for 12 years sits with her US citizen grandson in her Mexican restaurant. Alabama’s new immigrant law could prevent her from renewing her business permit when it expires next year. Listen to their stories: "No Way To Live" Many of the unauthorized immigrants we met and their families are deeply attached to the state. Their children are obviously affected, but we also met a teacher who fought back tears as she described her students’ fears, a minister who lost 75 percent of his congregation, and a Latino permanent resident who was stopped by a st...

NOVANEWS Brooklyn-based “Hebron Fund” supports Nazi groups attacking Palestinians Salon.com On the June 18, 2007, a nonprofit organization called the Hebron Fund held a fundraiser on a cruise ship in the Hudson River to support Israel settlers’ occupation of a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron. Some 250 people paid a minimum of $65 each for the “Cruise ‘n’ Schmooze.”  The proceeds went to support the settler who had taken the property from the Rajabi family, who denied the settlers’ claims that they had legally purchased the home. A year and half later, Israeli police using stun grenades carried out a government order to evacuate a group of some 100 settlers hunkered down in the four-story hilltop. The house had become the center of a crisis when the Israeli governm...