Ze’ev Braude was filmed shooting at Palestinians. He was originally charged with intending to cause grievous bodily harm.

Haaretz:

Following the indictment, Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed off on a document guaranteeing immunity concerning sources of information for the Shin Bet, its modus operandi and the units and personnel operating within the framework of the organization.

Braude’s attorney Ariel Atari requested that the court instruct the State Prosecution to reveal the secret evidence in order to help Braude’s defense.

The prosecution argued that revealing the information would harm state security and added that if obligated to reveal the information, it would drop the charges against Braude.

And so the charges were dropped.

Another Haaretz article mentions early on that stones were thrown at Braude. But later on it says this:

During the evacuation of the house in Hebron, Braude approached the Matriya family residence, drew his gun and shouted at the family members to go inside, the indictment says.

Hosni Matriya, 44, went up to Braude and told to leave. Braude struck him and aimed his gun at him, said the indictment. Hosni’s father, Abed el-Hai, 67, walked up and asked Braude to leave. Braude pushed el-Hai. Other family members came to help push Braude away and he fired at them. The first bullet passed close to one man’s head and the second one hit Hosni’s chest. A third bullet hit el-Hai’s arm. El-Hai and two family members attacked Braude and stopped him from again firing his gun. They held him until Kiryat Arba residents arrived and took him away, the indictment says.

Hosni, who was shot in the chest, is awaiting surgery to take out shrapnel that remains around the wound. El-Hai, whose arm was broken, has been operated on twice and his arm has been set with screws.

The prosecution said that the evidence proves that “Braude initiated the incident at the plaintiff’s house, which was out of his way. During the argument with the plaintiffs he struck his fist into the face of one of them. At this stage none of the plaintiffs was acting violently. The father of the family wrestled with him to stop the shooting – during the wrestling the defendant shot him as well.”

In the view of one magistrate, those Palestinians who threw stones were dangerous vigilantes who should also have been arrested. Here’s the reference which Haaretz puts earlier in the article:

In her decision to release Braude [from police custody, before he was indicted], Magistrate Malka Aviv criticized police forces for not having arrested the Palestinians documented on the same video hurling stones at Braude.

This shouldn’t be funny, because the family concerned have felt the need to leave their home. But the story sounds absurd.

The BBC:

A family in Saudi Arabia is taking a “genie” to court, accusing it of theft and harassment, reports say.

They accuse the spirit of threatening them, throwing stones and stealing mobile phones, Al Watan newspaper said.

The family have lived in the same house near the city of Medina for 15 years but say they only recently became aware of the spirit. They have now moved out.

Did they recently buy a lamp?

Via Shalom Rav:

In response to the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, my dear friend and colleague Rabbi Brian Walt and I have organized a new initiative, Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza.

[...] Seeking “to end the Jewish community’s silence over Israel’s collective punishment in Gaza,” an ad-hoc group of American rabbis has called for a communal fast. Known as Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza, this new initiative will organize a series of monthly fasts beginning on July 16.

The project was initiated by a group of thirteen rabbis representing a spectrum of American Jewish denominations. The group’s website explains the religious meaning of the campaign: “In Jewish tradition a communal fast is held in times of crisis both as an expression of mourning and a call to repentance. In this spirit, Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza is a collective act of conscience initiated by an ad hoc group of rabbis, Jews, people of faith, and all concerned with (this) ongoing crisis…”

There are 112 signatures at the moment.

From Timesonline:

About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation’s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times.

[...] Mangala Samaraweera, the former Foreign Minister and now an opposition MP, said: “There are allegations that the Government is attempting to change the ethnic balance of the area. Influential people close to the Government have argued for such a solution.”

News of the death rate came as the International Committee of the Red Cross revealed that it had been asked to scale down its operations by the Sri Lankan authorities, which insist that they have the situation under control.

[...] Last night, the Red Cross was closing two offices. One of these is in Trincomalee, which had helped to provide medical care to about 30,000 injured civilians evacuated by sea from the conflict zone in the north east.

The other is in Batticaloa, where the Red Cross had been providing “protection services”. This involves following up allegations of abductions and extrajudicial killings, practices that human rights organisations say have become recurring motifs of the Sri Lankan Government.

[...] Aid workers and the British Government have warned that conditions at the site are inadequate. Most of the deaths are the result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, a senior relief worker said on condition of anonymity.

Witness testimonies obtained by The Times in May described long queues for food and inadequate water supplies inside Manik Farm. Women, children and the elderly were shoved aside in the scramble for supplies. Aid agencies are being given only intermittent access to the camp. The Red Cross was not being allowed in yesterday.

[...] Mr Rajapaksa is known for not tolerating dissent; a trait that human rights organisations say was demonstrated this week when five Sri Lankan doctors who witnessed the bloody climax of the country’s civil war and made claims of mass civilian deaths recanted much of their testimony.

The doctors said at a press conference on Wednesday that they had deliberately overestimated the civilian casualties. As government officials looked on, they claimed that Tigers had forced them to lie.

[...] =The doctors denied other former testimony, including the government shelling of a conflict-zone hospital in February for which there are witnesses from the UN and the Red Cross.

Sonia Robbins is consultant reconstructive surgeon from Britain. She has been to Gaza with the Free-Gaza movement, and also via the Erez crossing. Getting into Gaza was difficult since November, before the war actually broke out.

The BBC (Jan 2009):

There were 50 Egyptian doctors who were trying to cross on Tuesday along with a British consultant reconstructive surgeon, Sonia Robbins.

“I left Gaza in December and I have not been able to get back in since the war started,” she said.

“I usually cross at Erez on the Israeli side but since November they have not been letting humanitarian workers in.”

Dr Robbins admits there may be limited help that she can provide, with supplies running low in hospitals in Gaza, but that does not blunt her urgent desire to cross.

“I am not frustrated that I am stuck here, I am very angry. The Egyptians haven’t told me anything. Nobody has spoken to me, taken my papers, they have just told me to wait. Well I am sorry we shouldn’t be waiting, people are dying.”

Robbins is also part of a humanitarian mission organised by the French government. That humanitarian mission has been denied access to Gaza. The Guardian (yesterday):

The team, including three British medics, was turned back by Israeli border guards on Sunday and Monday. They say their mission is purely humanitarian, aimed to helping those in medical need, and some of whom were left injured and in need of surgery after Israel’s attack on Gaza earlier this year.

One of the Britons refused entry to Gaza, Sonia Robbins, who is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, said: “I don’t know why we are being refused permission to enter.

“The consequences are that patients will not be operated on, children will have to wait until next time for surgery, and that won’t happen until six months time.

“I think it is unacceptable to refuse a humanitarian mission.”

The team had tried to enter through the Erez crossing. Robbins said she had been allowed to work in Gaza before. She said the team of nine medics were concentrating on surgery to the upper limbs, and that their papers to gain entry into Gaza were all in order. She added the border guards had been courteous as they refused the medical team permission to enter Gaza, where as well as treating the injured, they would help teach Palestinian doctors.

The Daily Star:

A coalition of activists belonging to various Palestinian solidarity organizations are planning an international march in Gaza aimed at ending the blockade of the territory. The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.

“This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi,” said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the “Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza,” obtained by The Daily Star. “Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement,” it added.

The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. “We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade,” it said, adding that “We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign … If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed.”

Professor Norman Finkelstein, a political analyst and author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is one of the organizers of the march. “We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans,” he told The Daily Star.

Finkelstein hopes that large numbers of international activists and world leaders will attend the march, and as a result, prohibit a violent response from Israeli authorities. “If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens – Israel can’t shoot,” he said.

“The first formal organizational meeting of the coalition is set for July 13,” said Finkelstein. “We hope then to create an umbrella steering committee. Right now the working group consists of individuals who belong to organizations that have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as CodePink.”

Members of the coalition are now contacting Palestinian solidarity groups around the world in preparation for the march.

It will take time to see what this develops into.

(Via JSF).

John Hill made a film documentary about the 7/7 bombings. He used the nickname ‘Muad Dib’, taken from Dune and meaning ‘teacher’. The BBC has the story.

The official version says four British Muslims blew themselves up in the UK’s first suicide attacks, murdering 52 people and injuring 784 others.

But it took nearly a year for the official account to be published, and much of the evidence, such as CCTV and photographs, only came out slowly afterwards.

In that atmosphere conspiracy theories have flourished. A host of internet films now claim the government account is a deception.

If the official account is published too quickly, it’s obviously made up. If it takes too long, it’s obviously made up. Not an easy game to win.

Israel has stopped the latest boat sent from Cyprus by the Free Gaza movement. The BBC :

The US-based Free Gaza Movement has breached the blockade five times since August 2008.

Two other attempts by the activist group were stopped by Israeli warships during Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza in December and January.

[...] The Israeli military said the passengers and crew of the Greek-registered ship Arion would be handed over to immigration authorities in Ashdod, and its humanitarian aid cargo would be taken to Gaza by road after a security check.

[...] The British Foreign Office said on Tuesday it was aware of the situation and was trying to clarify the facts.

“We would be concerned if the stories of the Israeli Navy boarding the boat in international waters were true,” a spokesman said.

[...] “This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said [former US congresswoman] Ms McKinney in a statement.

“President [Barack] Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We’re asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”

From Haaretz:

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned.

MachsomWatch discovered the policy, which Palestinian workers confirmed to Haaretz.

The Defense Ministry stated in response that non-commercial quantities of food were not being limited. It made no reference to the issue of water.

The checkpoint, Sha’ar Efraim, is south of Tul Karm, and is managed for the Defense Ministry by the private security company Modi’in Ezrahi. The company stops Palestinian workers from passing through the checkpoint with the following items: Large bottles of frozen water, large bottles of soft drinks, home-cooked food, coffee, tea and the spice zaatar. The security company also dictates the quantity of items allowed: Five pitas, one container of hummus and canned tuna, one small bottle or can of beverage, one or two slices of cheese, a few spoonfuls of sugar, and 5 to 10 olives. Workers are also not allowed to carry cooking utensils and work tools.

MachsomWatch told Haaretz that Sunday, a 32-year-old construction worker from Tul Karm, who is employed in Hadera, was not allowed to carry his lunch bag through the checkpoint. The bag contained six pitas, 2 cans of cream cheese, one kilogram of sugar in a plastic bag, and a salad, also in a plastic bag.

The typical Palestinian laborer in Israel has a 12-hour workday, including travel time and checkpoint delays. Many leave home as early as 2 A.M. in order to wait in line at the checkpoint; tardiness to work often results in immediate dismissal. Workers return home around 5 P.M. The wait at the checkpoint can take one to two hours in each direction, if not longer.

The food quantities allowed by Modi’in Ezrahi do not meet the daily dietary needs of the workers, and they prefer not to buy food at the considerably more expensive Israeli stores.

[...] MachsomWatch activists said a security guard on duty told them the food restrictions were imposed due to “security and health risks.” However, at the nearby Qalqilyah checkpoint, which is still run directly by the IDF, workers have been allowed to carry through all the food items banned at Sha’ar Efraim.

Machsom Watch website — doesn’t display well in explorer 5.

Haaretz:

According to the conviction, Tamir’s teenage son drove a military-issued ATV on a dirt road and collided with a civilian car. Tamir paid the driver of the car NIS 1,000 not to report the incident and to cover repairs, but when the ATV was inspected by army mechanics, he was required to file a special report on the incident. In the report, Tamir claimed that he had driven the vehicle.

[...] In the course of the trial, Sgt. First Class Eliran Blutman, the Military Police investigator in charge of the Tamir case, testified he had been ordered by higher-ranking officers to manage the case in a “superfluous” way. Blutman said that although the suspicions against Tamir – false reporting of an accident, paying cash to the other driver and a delay in submitting the report – were all known at an early stage of the investigation, he did not investigate Tamir under caution and treated the case as a matter of accidental damage and removed Tamir’s name from the list of persons involved in the actual collision. He claims to have acted on the direct order of the commander of the CID Southern Command, Lt. Col. Sassi Megido. Blutman said he believed the order was given with the knowledge of the commander of the CID, Col. Meir Ohana.

Tamir himself testified that he had informed another senior officer, chief of Military Police in the Southern Command, Lt. Col. Yuval Shoan. If true, the two testimonies would imply that the case was not prosecuted for over a year although three senior officers knew Tamir had been party to an accident in which there was a suspicion of a false report.

Gideon Levy, at Haaretz:

It might be useful to recall who this Tamir is. From his stint as commander of the Golani infantry brigade – when his troops twice shelled the Jenin market (2002), killing several children, including two small brothers – to Operation Autumn Clouds in Gaza (2006) which he commanded, he has been responsible for wanton bloodshed, with at least half the 80 Palestinians killed on his watch being civilians. Nor should we forget the notorious shelling of the Gaza town of Beit Hanun under his command and responsibility (also in 2006), in which a volley of 11 unnecessary shells were fired at a residential neighborhood, in the wake of which the Israel Defense Forces of course blamed the cannon’s computer chip instead of the division commander, Chico Tamir.

[...] The accident form Tamir filled out is not the first lie, not the last and not the worst.

[...] A few days earlier, soldiers abused six Palestinian youngsters from the village of Wadi al-Shajneh for 14 hours nonstop, imprisoning and beating them until finally dumping them onto the road from a jeep at first light. One of the victims reported that his money had been taken, too. These young people were also innocent of any wrongdoing. The fact is that they were not officially arrested, and were not even interrogated. What did the IDF spokesman say in response? “Two Molotov cocktails were thrown at an IDF force … Six Palestinians who were identified in the vicinity were arrested by the force.” Say that again: “identified in the vicinity.” Again the question arises: If they threw Molotov cocktails, why were they released after their “Clockwork Orange” night? And if they did not throw anything, why were they detained, and above all, what is the spokesman protecting, and why?

(Via JSF).