From PressTV
Israeli forces kill Palestinian Bedouin in Negev
At least one Palestinian man has been killed and dozens more injured by a group of Israeli forces who attacked a funeral for another Palestinian in the town of Rahat.
Sami Ibrahim Zayadna, 45, died on Sunday after inhaling teargas fired by Israeli police in the Negev town.
Violent clashes erupted after Israeli police entered a cemetery as mourners were burying a 21-year-old Bedouin, Sami al-Jaar, who had been shot dead last week in the same town.
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From PressTV
Israel to award 53 soldiers, officers for Gaza war
Israel has decided to present 53 soldiers and officers with awards over their involvement in the war on Gaza last summer that left thousands of Palestinians dead or injured.
According to Israeli media, the regime’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, has approved the awards on the basis of recommendations by a military committee headed by Brig. Gen. Harel Knafo.
A Tuesday military announcement said several army units will receive “citations of merit” and medals of “appreciation” over their role in the war.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Senator Threatens Aid Cut to Palestinians Over ICC ‘War Crimes’ Case
Lindsey Graham ‘Offended’ by Complaints Over Gaza War
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
Lindsey Graham, part of a seven-member delegation of senators visiting Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said existing U.S. legislation “would cut off aid to the Palestinians if they filed a complaint” against Israel.
At a news conference in Jerusalem, Graham called the Palestinian step “a bastardizing of the role of the ICC. I find it incredibly offensive.”
From PressTV
Israeli troops force old Palestinian women to leave home
Israeli troops have evicted two elderly Palestinian women from their home and sealed off their property in the occupied West Bank.
According to locals, Israeli forces raided the home of Zuheira Oweida Dandis, 80, and Amal Dandis, 52, in al-Khalil (Hebron) on Monday, forcing them to leave.
Israeli forces claimed that the move was for security reasons, without giving further information.
On Sunday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians and injured at least 22 more during clashes in the town of Rahat in the Negev desert.
The violence broke out during a funeral for Sami al-Ja’ar, a young Palestinian Bedouin who was shot dead by Israeli forces near a junction between the cities of Bethlehem and al-Khalil on January 14.
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From PressTV
EU appeal of terror blacklist ruling immoral: Hamas
The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, says the European Union’s appeal to keep it on the bloc’s terrorism blacklist is “immoral.”
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Monday that the 28-member bloc’s foreign ministers decided to appeal a ruling by an EU court last December that Hamas must be removed from its terror list.
The General Court of the European Union said in a statement on December 17, 2014, that the original conclusion of the movement was based not on reliable sources, but conclusions from the media and Internet reports.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on Monday slammed the EU decision and said, “The European Union’s insistence on keeping Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations…reflects the EU’s total bias in favor of the Israeli occupation.”
“It provides it [Israel] with the cover for its crimes against the Palestinian people,” he added, AFP reported.
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From PressTV
Rights group says year 2014 was toughest for Palestinian children
An independent non-governmental organization (NGO) has described the year 2014 as the toughest for Palestinian children, as the Tel Aviv regime continues its aggression against Palestinian kids on a daily basis in an attempt to intimidate the families under occupation.
According to Switzerland-based Defense for Children International, Israeli rights violations led to numerous fatalities, injuries as well as psychological trauma among Palestinian youngsters last year.
The NGO further pointed to Israel’s summer 2014 military aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip, as well as the detention and fatal shooting of children in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as flagrant violations of children’s rights.
The rights group added that the Gaza war left more than 480 children dead and thousands of others injured, and the offensive contributed to making 2014 the worst for Palestinian children.
The latest Israeli war on Gaza, which started on July 8, ended on August 26 with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The onslaught killed at least 2,140 Palestinians and injured thousands of others.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Europe’s Jews and Muslims Need a Strong Left — Now More Than Ever
Only Way To Counter the Nationalist Far Right
By Ari Paul and Michael Brooks
It’s not easy to be a Jew or Muslim in Europe these days. French Jews are still reeling from the Charlie Hebdo and kosher grocery store attack, with their Muslim counterparts facing a spate of hate crimes aimed at them and an expected surge of support for the anti-Islamic (and historically anti-Jewish) National Front, now the country’s third largest party.
The outlook for Jews and Muslims across the continent as a whole doesn’t look much better. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army, it appears that a political appetite is growing for the worst of Europe’s political impulses. The anti-Semitic Jobbik Party continues to be popular in Hungary, forcing the ruling Fidesz further to the right. An anti-Islamic movement has picked up frightening steam in Germany. Last year observers were shocked by the stunning success of far right parties in European Union elections. The institutional and ideological consensus that has driven the largely peaceful (Venus politics that American neo-cons mock) in Europe since the creation of the modern European community is under threat from political parties that embody its most ugly history.
Its no secret that the economic crisis and the failed and brutal policies of austerity have led to a populist moment in Europe. While the far right shows the dangers of a social populism of xenophobia and bigotry, the crisis has also spurred the the creation of a number of anti-austerity leftist parties that have northern European powers crowing about an anti-capitalist insurgency that could bring down the existing economic order. But it precisely the staggering unemployment, the loss of social benefits and the widening wealth gap that has left the far-right make immigrants as the scapegoat. The anti-austerity leftist parties might make the austerity addicts EU bureaucrats scared, but it is precisely their bold post-Cold War left politics that will save modern Europe. In fact the robust democratic left has always been Fascism most powerful and effective foe in Europe.
From PressTV
Israeli PM to launch media campaign against ICC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to wage a media campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda following the court’s decision to investigate Tel Avis’s crimes in Gaza.
Netanyahu made the decision during a meeting at his office on Sunday, attended by Israeli minister for military affairs Moshe Ya’alon and other senior officials, Israel’s newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday.
An unnamed official said after the meeting that Tel Aviv’s campaign is aimed at foiling the Hague-based court’s decision to launch a preliminary investigation into Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.
The move came following a Friday announcement by Bensouda that her office intends to conduct an “analysis in full independence and impartiality” of war crimes carried out by Israeli military forces, including those committed during its Gaza offensive last summer, in which nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed.
More than 11,100 others, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people, were injured in the Israeli offensive.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Alan Gross Will Be Michelle Obama’s Guest of Honor at State of the Union
Spotlights Release as Spark for Ending Cuba Impasse
(Reuters) — Alan Gross, the Jewish aid worker whose release from a Cuban prison helped pave the way toward restoring diplomatic ties with the communist nation, will be among First Lady Michelle Obama’s guests for Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
Gross and his wife Judy were reunited late last year, after Pope Francis helped play a major role in securing his freedom as part of a prisoner exchange.
Obama later credited the historic exchange as the catalyst that led the U.S. to chance its stance toward Cuba, breaking a more than 50-year impasse between the two nations.
