Watch: Israeli police brutalizing Palestinian man

Submitted by Jalal Abukhater on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 22:33

This video caught my attention this afternoon, but it sure isn’t an isolated incident against Palestinians in Israel.

In the video, Israeli police appear to be attacking and brutalizing a Palestinian man in Jaffa in order to evict him and his family from a vacant property in which they sheltered.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Sameer Kassem, the 34 years old man in the video, suffers two black eyes, a broken nose and a bruised rib following the incident, which was filmed by an activist and uploaded to the web on Thursday.

Israeli police assulted Kassem while he was holding on to his 4 years old daughter, Police later brutally assulted his wife and pushed her to the ground (seen at minute 00:30 in the video).
The attack by the police seems to be unprovoked, the Palestinian family doesn’t attempt to resist. This is one sided violence from the Israeli police.
The video speaks for itself, watch:

Earlier today, I read in Ha’aretz that doezens of settlers attacked an Israeli army patrol in the West Bank, the report continues:

Soldiers who were called to the scene were able to detain one of the attackers, but he managed to escape.

I am sure if it was a Palestinian in this case, it would be different and ugly. Even when a Palestinian man tries to defend his family from attacking settlers, he is killed by Israeli army.
Everyone in Israel enjoy equal citizenship, except if they were Palestinians or Non-Jews.

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Uprooted Palestinian

Seen in London!

Via FLC

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Gilad Atzmon: Supremacists on ‘The Wandering Who’

Two days ago I referred to a critique of ‘The Wandering Who’ written by Mark Gardner. Gardner is a rabid Zionist and Jewish supremacist who tends to conflate Jewish Nationalism (Zionism) with Jewish ethnicity. However, Gardner’s criticism of my book was, in the main, intelligent and fair, though certainly not free of error.

Yesterday, I found out that The Occidental Observer, a White Supremacist magazine, also published a lengthy review of ‘The Wandering Who’ written by Prof. Kevin MacDonald. Like Gardner, MacDonald also conflates Jewish ideology and culture with ethnicity. His most controversial claim is that a suite of traits that he attributes to Jews, including higher-than-average verbal intelligence and ethnocentrisms, have eugenically evolved to enhance the ability of Jews to outsmart non-Jews in the competition for resources while, at the same time, undermining the power and self-confidence of the white majorities in Europe and America who, he insists, Jews seek to dispossess. Just like Gardner, MacDonald produced an interesting text, though Macdonald’s was somewhat scholarly.

Although both are supremacist and ethnocentric thinkers, Gardner and MacDonald, seem to be in a kind of dispute. Zionist Gardner insists that ‘The Wandering Who’ contains elements of ‘cultural racism’ though he fails to inform his readers what ‘cultural racism’ is. As far as I’m concerned, cultural racism is a misnomer. Criticism grounded in the racial origin of a group is, quite simply and obviously, racist. But criticism levelled at the culture or the politics of a certain group is not. It is simply and literally political or cultural criticism. I suspect that Gardner attributed the notion of ‘cultural racism’ to my work because he could not find a single ‘racist’ element in my book or in any of my writing.
MacDonald however, is actually frustrated with the lack of any biological determinist or racist reference in my work. “Atzmon completely avoids any mention of modern population genetic studies that show conclusively that Jews are indeed an ethnic entity and that widely dispersed Jewish groups are more similar to each other than to the peoples they have lived among for hundreds or thousands of years. Instead he relies on Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People to argue that Jewish peoplehood is an invention of the 19th century resulting from the influence of German nationalism.”

MacDonald is right. ‘The Wandering Who’ is a study of Jewish identity politics and Jewish culture, it is not concerned with Jewish ethnicity or racial origins. In fact I don’t agree that Jews form an ethnic or racial continuum. But I would agree that, though Jews do not from a racial continuum, Jewish culture, politics and ideology are all racially oriented .

In ‘The Wandering Who’ I contend that there is enough in Jewish culture and ideology to explain the devastating continuum between hardcore Zionism, Israeli crimes and worldwide Jewish institutional support of these crimes. There is also enough in Jewish culture to explain why the Jewish ‘left’ is engaged in constant gate-keeping of the Palestinian solidarity movement and the anti Zionist discourses. The issue resides in the culture, not in the genes.

I believe that my writing produces a satisfactory critical argument of any form of Jewish politics, both Zionist and anti Zionist. But….it is done without a single reference to Jewish ethnicity, race or origin.

Yesterday evening I stumbled across these beautiful lines by Indian Guru Satya Sai Baba. If you really want to know what I think about race, ethnicity and origin, let Satya Sai Baba speak on my behalf.

"There is only one RACE

The race of humankind

There is only one religion

The religion of LOVE

There is only ONE language

the language of the HEART"

Sri Satya Sai Baba

You can now order Gilad Atzmon's New Book on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

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Yemeni Dedicates Nobel Prize to Arab Spring Activists

Local Editor

The peace activist Tawakul Karman, who was detained briefly during protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, told Reuters the peaceful revolution to topple him would continue. Karman is a mother of three who heads the human rights group Women Journalists without Chains. She has been a leading figure in organizing the protests against Saleh that kicked off in late January.

"This is a victory for the Yemeni people, for the Yemeni revolution and all the Arab revolutions. This is a message that the era of Arab dictatorships is over. This is a message to this regime and all the despotic regimes that no voice can drown out the voice of freedom and dignity," the 32-year-old mother of three said.
"This is a victory for the Arab Spring in Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Our peaceful revolution will continue until we topple Saleh and establish a civilian state."

Tawakul has been a key figure among the youth activists since they began camping out in an urban space dubbed 'Change Square' in central Sanaa in February demanding the end of Saleh's three-decade family rule.

She has often been the voice of the street activists on Arabic television, giving them on the ground reports of the situation at the square outside Sanaa University, where dozens of activists have been shot dead by government forces.

"This is a confirmation from the world that Yemen is on the brink of a new era, an era of freedom and equality," Karman said. "I dedicate this award to the Yemeni people and the youth of the Arab Spring, and to the Arab world and to every martyr who has died for freedom."

Yemen is an extremely conservative society but a feature of the revolt there has been a prominent role for women who turned out for protests in large numbers. The uprising has, however, been one of the least successful, failing to unseat President Ali Abdullah Saleh as the country descends into failed state status and armed groups take increasingly central roles.
Yemenis at the square reacted with joy at the news.

"Yemen will go down in history thanks to Tawakul Karman. She deserves the prize. She has kept fighting for the sake of her peoples' freedom," Abdulbari Taher, a protest leader told Reuters on Friday.

A government official also praised Karman's award, expressing hope it would lead to a resolution of a crisis that has ground Yemen's economy to a halt.

"I'm very happy with the news that she won the Nobel Prize and it's something that all Yemenis can be proud of," Deputy Information Minister Abdu al-Janadi told Reuters. "I hope this prize will be a step toward rationality."

Karman “started her activism long before the revolution took place in Tunisia and Egypt. She has been a very courageous woman in Yemen for quite a long time,” Jagland said.

No woman had won the prize since 2004, when the committee honored Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who died last month at 71. 2004 was also the last year the prize went to an African.


Source: Agencies

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Assad: If Ankara takes advantage of Damascus, Its Crisis Will Be Worse

Eslam al-Rihani

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad stressed Turkey has the same political, economic, and sectarian structure of Syria, thus it faces the same situation.

“If any country tries to take advantage of our issues, it will be influenced and its crisis will exaggerate,” Assad said to his visitors who met him during the last days.

“Although the situation in Turkey requires caution, but it has no great effects and repercussions, and does not present direct threat against internal situation of Syria,” Assad added.

Sources told Al-Manar Website that Lebanese politicians who recently met President Assad quoted him confident to the Iraqi role, however he had fraternal blame on Lebanon as a result of fund and weapons smuggling to the insurgents in Syria by some Lebanese groups, in addition to the serious sectarian incitement practiced by some parties. Moreover, Assad praised the cooperation of Lebanese security apparatus in confronting this phenomenon, particularly the army and the intelligence services.

During the meeting, Syrian President categorized Gulf States into three, some of positive performance in dealing with Syria, some are submissive to the American will, and the rest have misty and ambiguous role like the Saudi Arabia, the same sources noted.

Visitors of President Assad reported he expressed concerns about the threat targeting innocent Syrian civilians via IED planted in populated areas. This led Assad to issue direct orders for Syrian security apparatus to be cautious and spare no effort to prevent such incidents from recurring. Nevertheless, “what relieved Al-Assad is that Syrian security forces are used to this kind of wars and can retain control of the situation,” cited the sources to Al-Manar Website.

Touching the tense situation in Resten and Homs, Assad stressed that the only reason of the absence of complete calm in these regions is that “the Syrian army is keen not to cause loss of civilian lives. Its main goal is focused on precise and determined operations against insurgents. This is what is delaying the process of decisiveness.”

According to Syrian President, this way in dealing with the crisis has led to a positive popular reaction which made the people certain that those are only insurgents, answerable to the west.

"The more convinced the people becomes, the easier the work of the security services will be,” Al-Assad concluded to his visitors.