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(AP) – Since the summer, dozens of Palestinian and Israeli activists have been picked up, including those organizing weekly protests against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier as well as others advocating international boycotts of Israeli goods.
Some of the Palestinians were released without charge only after weeks and months of questioning.
The arrests come at a time of shifting tactics in the protests against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and annexation of east Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians want for their future state. Israel captured both from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
The violence of the second Palestinian uprising, with mass marches and violent attacks, has given way to carefully calibrated protests and legal action in which Israeli and Palestinian activists now often work together.
Palestinians and international protesters try to escape from teargas shot by
Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bil'in. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA
The main protest efforts are Friday demonstrations against the West Bank barrier in the Palestinian villages of Bilin and Na’alin and vigils in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, where Palestinians have been evicted.
There appears to be an increased police crackdown on the protests with greater numbers of activists being arrested.
In east Jerusalem, police have arrested some 70 demonstrators during marches in recent months, according to Israeli rights groups. At Friday’s protest, police arrested 17 Israelis, including Hagai Elad, head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
They were released 36 hours later by a Jerusalem court, which found the gathering to be illegal, but the arrests unnecessary.
Elad said the arrests represent a “dramatic increase in attempts to silence dissent” that he believes began during last year’s offensive in Gaza, when Israel arrested hundreds of anti-war protesters, mostly Arab citizens of Israel.
It began calmly enough with a march down the high street after midday prayers at the mosque. Palestinian villagers were surrounded by dozens of foreigners singing and waving flags. They turned and headed out to the olive-tree fields and up towards the broad path of Israel’s West Bank barrier. There, behind a concrete hilltop bunker, the Israeli soldiers looked down on them.
The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. “This land is a closed military zone,” an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. “You are not allowed near the wall.” Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.
It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil’in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel’s vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous.
On April 17, on the hillside at Bil’in, a Palestinian named Basem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was shot with a high-velocity Israeli teargas canister that sliced a hole into his chest, caused massive internal bleeding and quickly killed him. Video footage shot by another demonstrator shows he was unarmed, many metres from the barrier and posing no threat to the soldiers.
The Israeli military said it faced a “violent and illegal riot” and is investigating. On Friday the demonstrators at Bil’in wore Rameh’s image on T-shirts and carried it on posters.
Related diaries @BooMan …
One would not expect the American press to carry such a story, but that the Associated Press did suggest some progress in breaking through the censorship. Bil’in has been the center of weekly nonviolent protests for three or four years without a single mention here in America.
Israel in facist regime acting like facist regime shocker.
Israel wants lebensraum and it is going to take it and has a trained military to ensure no woman or child will get in the way, a propaganda and worldwide lobbyist apparatus to minimize any governmental or media opposition and an internal security system to ensure no local opposition.
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Israel Outraged by Organ-Stealing Accusations
“This is a mark of shame for all Swedish journalism,” said the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “Such harsh and terrible racist statements, which encourage hate crimes against Jews, must never be tolerated.”
The story dates back to the 1980s, and centers on the illegal harvesting of body organs by Israeli physicians. The crimes have come back to light after Chief Pathologist Dr. Hiss admitted to the thefts in an interview from 2000.
Israel Took Organs of Dead Without Permission
(ABC News) – A senior Israeli scientist has admitted that in the 1990s Israel routinely harvested organs from dead bodies without telling families.
The revelation came from an interview with Dr. Yehuda Hiss, former head of the country’s
Leopold GreenbergAbu Kabir forensic institute, which was broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 this weekend. “We started to harvest corneas….Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.” The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.According to the program, pathologists at the Abu Kabir institute also took skin, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli civilians and Palestinians. They often did so without seeking the permission of relatives.
The Israeli military confirmed the practice took place but said: “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.”
(IsraelNN.com) Sept. 26, 2005 – Prof. Hiss receive only a reprimand for his involvement in the unauthorized removal of parts from 125 bodies. Hiss was fired from his position as Director of the institute shortly after the courts became involved in allegations against him, but has remained the Chief Pathologist at the Institute.
Dr. Hiss’ name has turned up repeatedly in relation to controversial events in Israel’s history, including the investigations into the Israeli government’s involvement in taking Yemenite children away from their parents in the 1950s, putting them up for adoption and the telling the parents that the children had died.
Hiss has also been the subject of controversy regarding the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. The police were asked to investigate charges that Hiss altered Rabin’s wounds and submitted false evidence to the Shamgar Commission that investigated the killing.
Yehuda Hiss monthly salary NIS 66,614 ($17,965)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."