Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
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From PressTV
ICC team to visit Israel to probe war crimes: Report
A delegation from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is set to travel to Israel as part of a preliminary investigation into the Zionist regime’s war crimes against Palestinians, sources say.
Palestinian sources, whose names were not released, said inspectors from The Hague-based court will arrive in Israel on June 27, the website of the Israeli Haaretz newspaper said on Thursday.
An unnamed lawyer representing the Palestinians said the planned visit is a good sign while a legal expert said the move demonstrates that the inquiry is being “taken seriously” by the international legal body.
The ICC prosecutor’s office, however, said in a statement that the visit was part of its routine examination process, adding, “As part of its preliminary examination activities, the Office of the Prosecutor conducts field visits as it has done in the past with other situations under preliminary examinations.”
Meanwhile, in a separate development on Thursday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki announced that he will travel to The Hague on June 25 to submit the Palestinians’ first report on Israeli war crimes.
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From PressTV
Gaza faces beach pollution crisis over Israeli blockade
The besieged Gaza Strip’s coastline is facing a pollution crisis as a result of the ongoing Israeli blockade against the coastal sliver, Press TV reports.
Authorities in Gaza say the flow of raw sewage into the sea on a daily basis as a result of power outages have contributed to the situation.
“The beach pollution is over 50 percent and the main reason for that is the pumping of raw and untreated sewage into the sea. We have a major problem dealing with raw sewage, because realistic sewage plans are not fully operational due to a lack of electricity, as a direct result of the Israeli blockade,” Gaza’s Environment Quality Authority’s Atteya al-Bursh.
He added that Tel Aviv has also prevented the construction of additional treatment plants.
Gaza has nine sewage discharge points along its 41-kilometer long coastline, which pump contaminants into the Mediterranean.
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From PressTV
Israel has arrested 95k Palestinian minors since 1967: Report
A Palestinian rights group says “up to 95,000 children” have been detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since 1967.
The Military Court Watch (MCW) released its report on Wednesday.
“Ill-treatment is still widespread, systematic and institutionalized” in Israeli jails, said the MCW’s report, adding that Israeli forces use “aggressive behavior, threats and violence” over the course of the investigation, “including threats to beat, rape, hold in solitary confinement, electrocute or shoot the minor.”
The MCW has submitted the report to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to investigate 200 cases of detained minors since 2013.
The report also added that a “significant number of minors” had been taken into custody when “terrifying military raids” by Israeli forces were carried out on their homes during the night.
Israeli forces routinely abduct Palestinians in the West Bank and put them behind bars based on the so-called administrative detention policy, which is imprisonment without trial or charge that allows the regime to imprison Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods of time.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jewish groups demand apology from NPR’s Rehm for Sanders’ loyalty question
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish groups demanded an apology from NPR host Diane Rehm for saying that Sen. Bernie Sanders has dual Israeli-American citizenship.
“Such a statement is not only factually incorrect, but has no place in such an interview,” the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, said in a letter Wednesday to National Public Radio. “It is deeply troubling to think that a well-respected media outlet like NPR would apparently rely on unsubstantiated information from the Internet in its preparation for a guest.”
The National Jewish Democratic Council also called for an apology.
Rehm hosts an interview show for NPR’s Washington, D.C., affiliate, WAMU. On Thursday, interviewing Sanders, the Vermont Independent who is a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, she said, “Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
No, Bernie Sanders does not have dual Israeli citizenship
UPDATE: Diane Rehm has issued an apology that Jewish groups have called inadequate.
Israel puts Jewish progressives like Bernie Sanders in a tough spot. On the one hand, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate feels pressure from some of those on the far-left to denounce Israel’s policies towards Palestinians. On the other hand, criticizing Israel does not go over very well in the world of American politics.
However, even though Sanders has defended Israel in the past and spent several months on a kibbutz in the ’60s, he definitely does not have Israeli citizenship – despite the fact that longtime NPR host Diane Rehm insinuated as much on Wednesday.
When Rehm said that the senator has “dual citizenship with Israel,” Sanders got understandably perturbed, perhaps because it taps into anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews having divided loyalties.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Israel denies link to computer virus used to spy on Iran talks
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel has denied reports that it is linked to a computer virus used to spy on European hotels hosting the Iran nuclear talks.
“The international reports of Israeli involvement in the matter are baseless,” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told Army Radio on Thursday, referring to findings by the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab ZAO first reported a day earlier by The Wall Street Journal. “What is much more important is that we prevent a bad agreement where at the end of the day we find ourselves with an Iranian nuclear umbrella.”
Kaspersky’s finding, according to The Wall Street Journal, said each of the unnamed hotels was targeted by a version of the Duqu virus, widely believed to be used as spyware by Israel, about two weeks before hosting the negotiations between Iran and world powers.
Following the release of the report, Israel’s deputy defense minister, Eli Ben-Dahan, denied its allegations, calling it “total nonsense.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Spain passes law of return for Sephardic Jews
(JTA) – Spain’s lower house gave final approval to a law offering citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews.
Under the law approved Thursday, the Spanish daily El Pais reported, applicants need not travel to Spain, as proposed in previous amendments that did not pass, but must hire a Spanish notary and pass tests on the Spanish language and history.
Applicants can study for the tests and take them at the facilities of the Cervantes Institute, a government entity that offers courses on Spanish culture and its language in over 20 countries, including Israel.
“The procedure for acquiring Spanish nationality regulated in this law will be electronic,” the law reads. “The request will be in Spanish and will be overseen by the General Directorate of Registrars and Notaries.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Poll: Half of Jewish-Israelis back segregated buses in West Bank
(JTA) — More than half of Jewish-Israelis support having separate Jewish and Palestinian buses in the West Bank, a new poll found.
The latest monthly Peace Index poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University’s Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution focused on attitudes toward Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the diplomatic arena and the Cabinet appointments in the newly formed governing coalition. The June 4-5 survey surveyed 600 respondents, Jews and Arabs.
Among the Jewish-Israelis, 52 percent backed separating Jewish and Palestinian passengers on West Bank buses, while 42 percent opposed such a practice. A segregated bus program was implemented in May but was ended within a day following domestic and international criticism.
The poll found that 69 percent of Jewish-Israelis characterized Israel’s international standing as “not good,” while 71 percent agreed with this statement: “The countries of the world make demands for moral behavior on Israel that they do not make on other countries that are in situations of conflict.”
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Israeli university, citing ‘religious character,’ bars LGBT pride event
(JTA) — Bar-Ilan University in Israel barred an LGBT student group from holding a gay pride event on campus.
The Tel Aviv-area university, which is public but has a religious mission and a disproportionately Orthodox student body, objected on religious grounds, according to a spokesman who cited the school’s “religious character” and the halachic prohibition on homosexual relations, Haaretz reported Wednesday. Bar-Ilan also refused to allow the group to publicize the June 22 event on campus.
Haim Zisovich, the university spokesman, said allowing a gay pride event would be comparable to permitting a program that encouraged pedophilia.
Omer Makhlouf, head of the LGBT Forum at Bar-Ilan, told the Israeli media that administrators on Tuesday denied his request to commemorate Gay Pride and Tolerance Month on the main quad of the campus. Makhlouf said he told the administrators that the group’s programming would be sensitive to the university’s religious character.
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From PressTV
Inferno reported near Israeli ‘nuke center’
An inferno has reportedly broken out in central occupied Palestinian territories near the reported site of Israel’s nuclear weapons production.
The fire engulfed the Rotem Amfert chemicals factory near the city of Dimona on Wednesday near the Negev Nuclear Research Center.
Israel is reported to be manufacturing its nuclear weapons in the Negev desert where, the Negev Nuclear Research Center, roughly 13 kilometers (eight miles) southeast of Dimona, is located.
No injuries have been reported in the incident. Local media said the blaze erupted after an ammonia tank caught fire.
Some 20 firefighters battled the flames. Everyone inside the factory, located in the city of Dimona, was evacuated and the area was cordoned off as firefighters continue to try and extinguish the blaze, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
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From The Times of Israel
Deputy defense minister denies Israel spied on Iran nuke talks
Eli Ben-Dahan calls Wall Street Journal report ‘nonsense,’ but admits that if it were true, he likely wouldn’t know
The number two official in Israel’s Defense Ministry denied Wednesday that the country spied on nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, but admitted he would not know about such a program if it did exist.
Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben Dahan was responding to a report earlier in the day alleging that a virus linked to Israel hacked the computers of the European hotels serving as venues for the ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers in order to gather intelligence on the closed-door talks.
In an interview with Israel Radio, Ben Dahan flatly rejected the allegations outlined in a Wall Street Journal report which claimed that Duqu, a computer virus widely believed to be used as spyware by Israel, targeted three unnamed hotels in the weeks leading up to the talks.
The deputy defense minister called the allegations “nonsense,” and assured the interviewer that Israel had other ways of gathering intelligence, and didn’t need to resort to hacking.
Shortly after, however, Ben Dahan conceded that if Israel’s intelligence services launched a covert operation of that nature he likely wouldn’t be informed of it.
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From The Times of Israel
Hamas blames PA for recent Gaza Strip bombings
In recorded confession, alleged operative says he attempted to carry out bombing unders orders from Ramallah
Hamas accused the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority of attempting to destabilize security in the Gaza Strip Wednesday, indicating Egyptian efforts to reconcile the rival Palestinian political groups may prove premature.
In a Wednesday afternoon press conference, Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bezem said security forces had arrested several individuals linked to the PA who he alleged were instrumental in carrying out a spate of bombing attacks in the coastal territory in recent weeks.
The accusations came hours after an Egyptian official said Cairo had been working to bring the rival factions toward a detente.
During the conference Hamas screened what they claimed was a recorded confession of one of the men involved in the attacks. In the video, Jabalya refugee camp resident Naim Abu Fol said he had attempted to carry out a car bombing in a Shejaiya neighborhood market, under the direct orders of Palestinian Authority officials.
Abu Fol said he had been recruited and funded by Mahmoud Habbash, religious affairs adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. He also said he had received operative orders from top Palestinian security official Sammi Nasman.
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