From The Independent
The only point of ‘terror lists’ is to get those named a palace invitation
ROBERT FISK
Sunday 11 January 2015
When are we going to give up our infantile “terrorist” lists? The IRA were “terrorists”. So was the Irgun. So was EOKA. So was the Mau-Mau. And their leaders – every bloody one of them – met Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Think Begin, Makarios, Kenyatta. How long, I wonder, before Khaled Mashal of Hamas meets the old girl? Or Sayyed Nasrallah of Hezbollah?
You can’t help thinking that joining a “terrorist” list is almost guaranteed to get you an invitation to Buckingham Palace. And if the North Vietnamese could meet the Americans in Paris and Barack Obama can chat to the Iranian President on the phone, is it any surprise that Anas al-Tikriti – a caliphate-loving Iraqi Muslim with “close links to the Hamas terrorist group”, if you believe what you read in the papers – has translated for Obama himself when the then-speaker of the Iraqi parliament visited the White House
From PressTV
Israeli forces arrest Islamic Jihad leader in West Bank refugee camp
Israeli forces have kidnapped a leader of the resistance movement Islamic Jihad during separate overnight raids on a number of houses across the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israeli troopers detained 32-year-old Yasin Abu Lafah in Askar refugee camp, which is located on the outskirts of Nablus and more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of al-Quds (Jerusalem), early on Monday.
Israeli soldiers also stormed several Palestinian homes in Nablus and kidnapped a number of youths.
Three people were taken away in the city of Jenin, while three teenagers and two women were detained in al-Quds.
During recent months, Israeli forces have frequently raided Palestinians’ homes in the West Bank, arresting dozens of Palestinian people, who are then transferred to Israeli detention centers where they are kept without any charges brought up against them.
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From Ynet News
Obama, Netanyahu discuss Iran talks, Palestinian ICC move
US president tells PM the US opposes Palestinian move, underscoring that the PA is ‘not a sovereign state and does not qualify to join the court’.
US President Barack Obama spoke by phone on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and about the Palestinian move to become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the White House said.
Obama said he opposes the Palestinians’ move to join the International Criminal Court to pursue war-crimes charges against Israel.
From Ynet News
Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories surface after Paris attacks
ADL exposes US-based blogs, as well as international media outlets, claiming Jews are waging a war against Islam. In the wake of the terror attacks on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and a kosher supermarket in Paris, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says it has exposed several conspiracy theories promoted by anti-Semites and anti-Israel activists, as well as by some media outlets primarily in the Arab world.
US-based anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists blamed Israel for the attacks, claiming Jews were waging a war against Islam.
Mark Glenn, a virulently anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, wrote on his blog The Ugly Truth that “the massacre in Paris as (sic) yet another False Flag event aimed at re-igniting and re-invigorating Judea’s declared war against Islam.”
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
How Bibi Tried To Make Paris All About Him
By Lisa Goldman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at kosher grocery store in Paris / Getty Images
Israelis are having a hilarious time mocking their prime minister’s visit to Paris, with ironic tweets and Hebrew Facebook statuses galore.
For those who haven’t been following the story, Netanyahu crashed the national solidarity event despite President Hollande’s explicit request that he stay at home. Then, after the VIP reception at the Elysee Palace, cameras for a local media outlet caught him elbowing aside a female French minister as he tried to jump the queue for the bus that would transport the group to the starting point of the march. Finding himself relegated to the second row at the march itself, he shoved aside the president of Mali and inserted himself in the front row, one down from Hollande himself and within eyesight of Angela Merkel.
From the Jewish Daily Forward
#JeSuisBibi as Benjamin Netanyahu Jostles for Cameras
By Yossi Verter (Haaretz)
(Haaretz) — Just as you can sometimes identify Israeli tourists abroad by their loud voices, poor manners and gauche behavior, none of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who watched Sunday’s Paris rally on television had any problem locating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: smack in the middle of world leaders at the front of the marchers.
The terms that constitute guiding principles for the French people – façon and finesse – suffered their own terror attack on Sunday. There was nothing further from Parisian manners, refinement and style than the behavior of Netanyahu. Or maybe as he should now be called, Grayshirt Bibi.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Hollande asked Netanyahu not to attend unity march
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the site of the deadly Paris kosher supermarket attack less than a day after reports surfaced that the French president asked him not to attend the unity march.
Netanyahu on Monday met with French Jewish community leaders, calling the memorial service the previous night at the Great Synagogue in Paris “a moment of genuine Jewish solidarity” and the march through the streets of Paris “a moment of general solidarity with humanity.”
In defense of his attendance at the march, which featured dozens of world leaders, he said, “There is great significance in what the world saw, the prime minister of Israel marching with all the world leaders in a united effort against terrorism, or at least in a call for unity.
“This is something the State of Israel has been saying for many years. This is what we are saying here today with one simple addition: If the world does not unite now against terrorism, the blows that terrorism has struck here will increase in a magnitude that can scarcely be conceived. Therefore, I hope that Europe will unite. I hope that it will also take action.”
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From PressTV
Freezing temperatures threatening Palestinians’ lives in Gaza
A fierce storm that has plagued the Gaza Strip with bitter cold, rains and winds is threatening the lives of tens of thousands of the Palestinian people in the war-ravaged enclave.
The brutal cold has already claimed four lives, including those of three infants, in the past few days.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Health Ministry said on Sunday that a 3-month-old infant froze to death in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun in a shelter for those displaced by a devastating Israeli war in the summer of 2014. A one-month-old boy died at home in the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday. A 4-month-old baby also succumbed to the cold on Friday.
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From PressTV
Gazans suffering food insecurity due to Israeli policies
Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip are suffering from lack of food security due to Israel’s hostile policies toward the blockaded territory, Press TV reports.
According to the report, the recent Israeli war along with the Tel Aviv regime’s siege on the territory has worsened food insecurity in the Palestinian coastal enclave.
The report further says that nearly 70 percent of the Palestinians in the besieged area are suffering from lack of food.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in August that Israel’s offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip had adversely affected agricultural infrastructure in the coastal enclave and brought food production to a halt there.
FAO said that the Palestinian agricultural fields have become a main target in the Israeli attacks, and Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure, including many crops, greenhouses, trees, irrigation systems, animal farms, fodder stocks and fishing boats, has been destroyed.
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From PressTV
Israel keeps Palestinian inmates in cold weather as torture
The Palestinian Prisoner Society says Israel tortures the Palestinian inmates by putting them in outdoor detention amidst severe cold.
The group has filed an appeal with the Israeli High Court, calling on Israeli officials to provide adequate clothing and blankets for prisoners held in Israeli jails, as many of them are kept in outdoor prisons with no heat.
The appeal, which was rejected by the court, also included reports that Israeli interrogators use the practice as a form of torture.
According to the Palestinian prisoner groups, the move has put many prisoners at the risk of losing their lives or suffering severe frostbite due to cold, sleet and wind.
“The Israeli occupation is using the extremely cold weather to kill the Palestinian prisoners as its interrogators expose them to the cold weather in order to extract confessions,” said Issa Qaraqe, the head of the Palestinian committee for prisoners.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BBC reporter in Paris apologizes for saying ‘Palestinians suffer at Jewish hands’
(JTA) — BBC reporter Tim Willcox apologized after saying at the Paris unity march on television that Palestinians “suffer hugely at Jewish hands.”
Willcox, who works for BBC News and BBC World News, on Twitter Monday morning tweeted, “Really sorry for any offence cause by a poorly phrased question in a live interview in Paris yesterday – it was entirely unintentional.”
He was covering the unity march against terrorism in Paris on Sunday when he responded to a woman’s comments about the state of Jews in France, “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”
The Telegraph identified the woman as a daughter of Holocaust survivors.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Soldiers to protect Jewish schools in France
(JTA) — France will deploy soldiers at Jewish schools to increase security, the country’s interior minister said.
Nearly 5,000 security forces and police will help protect the country’s 700 Jewish schools, Bernard Cazeneuves said Monday during a meeting with parents at a Jewish school south of Paris near the site of last week’s deadly attack on a kosher supermarket, the French news agency AFP reported.
The promise of more protection came a day after French President Francois Hollande said in a meeting with French Jewish leaders in the wake of the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket that the country would move to protect synagogues and Jewish schools, including using the military.
Also Monday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the supermarket gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, likely had an accomplice and asserted that “the hunt will go on.”
