Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
A service of DavidDuke.com
From The Independent
From PressTV
Palestinian minors facing torture in Israeli jails: Lawyer
A Palestinian lawyer has slammed Israel for violating international conventions on children’s rights, saying the minors are being beaten and tortured in a “heinous” way by Israeli soldiers during interrogation.
Hiba Masal-ha, a lawyer for the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners Affairs, said Sunday that Israeli soldiers “violently” beat and torture teenage detainees during questioning.
According to Masal-ha, who visited 68 teenagers in Israeli’s Megiddo prison, minors were “terrified, threatened and blackmailed”.
Most of the abuses took place during questioning in al-Jalama interrogation center.
At least 182 Palestinian minors are reportedly locked up in Israeli jails, including 26 below the age of 16.
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From PressTV
BDS movement threatening Israel’s existence, Bibi says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Tel Aviv is being endangered by an international campaign to boycott the regime.
Netanyahu said at a meeting of his new cabinet on Sunday that the international campaign seeks to deny what he referred to as Israelis’ right to live in the territories they have occupied.
He further said that the international campaign to boycott Israel and Israeli-made products is aimed at blackening the regime’s name and delegitimizing its existence.
Bibi said Israel is being vastly singled out by the international community as world rights bodies continue to protest over its serious human rights violations. He further rejected the idea that Israeli regime is the“focus of all evil in the world”.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS Movement) is a global campaign which uses economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with the goals of the movement — the end of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land particularly through illegal settlement constructions in the Palestinian territories.
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From The Times of Israel
Iranian report: Israeli arms cache found in Saudi embassy in Yemen
Fars News Agency quotes unnamed Houthi sources saying they uncovered trove and US military plans at site
A number of Israeli-manufactured weapons were discovered in the Saudi embassy in Sana’a, the Iranian semi-official Fars News Agency reported Saturday, quoting unnamed Houthi sources.
The report, which was carried prominently in Hebrew media on Sunday morning, could not be independently verified.
The report did not identify specific weapons the Saudis are supposedly using in Yemen that would be supplied from Israel. Saudi Arabia purchases the bulk of its military arms from the United States.
Houthi forces, which the report refers to as Ansarullah, claimed to have overrun the embassy after driving 40 guards from the premises in retaliation for the Saudi-led assault on the Houthis.
The report also claimed that documents uncovered from the embassy revealed US plans to build a naval base at Yemen’s Perim Island (alternatively called Birim or Miyoun in Arabic) at the entrance to the Bab al-Mandeb strait of the Red Sea between Yemen and Djibouti, which the report falsely attributed to Saudi Arabia.
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From Ynet News
IDF combats social media mishaps among troops
New guidelines clearly define dos and don’ts for soldiers using Facebook, Twitter and even Whatsapp, and leave little wriggle room. The IDF is facing a new enemy – social media. Snap-happy soldiers are sharing the more sensitive aspects of their lives online, where not everyone watching is a friend.
Soldiers are updating their lives at the base, at home, on the bus, causing a major headache for the army when statuses, photos and videos go one step too far. Now the IDF has come up with guidelines designed to create order from the chaos – and make soldiers think twice before clicking “post”.
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From Ynet News
Kerry grounded after bike accident, but for how long?
Secretary of State to return to US after breaking his leg in France; accident means he misses key talks on Iran and Islamic State.
US Secretary of State John Kerry plans to fly to Boston Monday after staying overnight in a Swiss hospital to receive treatment for a broken leg incurred in a bicycle crash. It was unclear how long he will be grounded once he returns to the US.
Kerry, 71, a keen cyclist, was hospitalized in the Swiss city of Geneva — where he was meeting his Iranian opposite number Mohammad Javad Zarif — after the accident across the border in the French Alps. He fractured his right femur when he struck a curb with his bicycle and fell on a regular Tour de France route about 40 kilometers southeast of Geneva.
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From The Times of Israel
Instagram takes down Khomeini’s account
Photo-sharing social network deletes online memorial to founder of the Islamic Republic
The social media photo-sharing site Instagram blocked an account set up in memory of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian revolutionary leader who established the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to a Sunday report from Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.
The account, which Fars said had 100,000 followers, was established by adherents in memory of the deceased leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Just days before commemoration ceremonies scheduled for June 4 in Iran — to mark Khomeini’s death in 1989 — the account was closed by the operators of Instagram.
Although the Fars report said that Instagram had announced its intention to deactivate the account in an email, it did not give any details as to why the account, which was said to have had 500,000 photos and posts, was deactivated.
Instagram does not allow accounts in the name of deceased people, unless they’re registered as memorial accounts.
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From The Times of Israel
Netanyahu: Iran the ‘greatest threat’ to world peace
After meeting with German foreign minister, PM reiterates need for ‘better’ nuclear deal, Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as Jewish state
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday decried Iranian “aggression” across the Middle East, telling German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that an emerging nuclear deal should take into account not only Tehran’s alleged nuclear ambition but also its regional aspirations.
After noting that “the greatest threat to Israel’s security, to the stability of the region and to the peace of the world” was Iran’s alleged quest for nuclear weapons, Netanyahu pointed to an Iranian “campaign of aggression across the entire Middle East, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, around our borders on the Golan.”
Speaking at a press conference after his meeting with Steinmeier, the prime minister added, “Today, Iran is sponsoring terrorism across the globe beyond the Middle East, in the Middle East, but also in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas. Iran is building a vast infrastructure of terror.”
He said Iran is “conducting an unprecedented, I would say, conventional arms build-up. It’s developing a huge arms industry, which includes drones, rockets, precision guided missiles, submarines and satellites as well.”
Netanyahu said that he and Steinmeier had discussed “at some length” the stalled peace process with the Palestinians.
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From The Times of Israel
Russia said scaling back its support for Assad
According to a-Sharq Al-Awsat, Moscow has recalled over 100 experts and diplomats; refuses to repair Syrian fighter jets
Russia is gradually turning its back on Syrian President Bashar Assad, evacuating some 100 expert advisers and their families from Syria and refusing to repair regime fighter jets, an Arab daily reported on Sunday.
“Senior sources in the Gulf” told pro-opposition London-based daily a-Sharq al-Awsat that the change in Russia’s position toward the Assad regime stems from diplomatic pressure exerted by Arab Gulf states. It also comes as part of Moscow’s efforts to shake international sanctions imposed on it following a military confrontation with Ukraine, the sources said.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition sources told the newspaper that 100 of Russia’s top specialists have recently left the country through the Latakiya airport in northwestern Syria, and were not replaced. Russia has also downsized its embassy staff in Moscow over the past three months, manning its delegation with “essential staff” only.
Russia’s refusal to repair Syrian Sukhoi fighter jets has forced Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jasim al-Freij to travel to Iran last month in a bid to place diplomatic pressure on Moscow, the daily noted.
Russia has been one of Assad’s staunchest allies since the eruption of opposition protests in the southern city of Daraa in March 2011, which then evolved into a full-fledged civil war. Russia has supplied Assad with weapons and professional expertise, as well as diplomatic backing against anti-regime decisions in the UN.
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