The lawyer for an Australian woman who was arrested in
the West Bank says her detention is part of a campaign by the Israeli Government to silence pro-Palestinian foreigners.

Israeli soldiers arrested 22-year-old Bridgette Chappell in a pre-dawn raid and she is now being held in an immigration jail in Israel. The Government says she overstayed her visa.

This week the editors of The New York Times's sprang to the defense of Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner following weeks of controversy over his son's service in the Israeli Defense Forces. Public editor Clark Hoyt praised Bronner's track-record at the Times, in his February 6th column but nonetheless concluded that "covering Israel's conflict with a son in uniform might be cause to reassign even a superb reporter." The Times' Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a response that "the editors discussed the situation and sees no reason to change Bronner's status as bureau chief."

Arab states set to force debate that would bring Gaza war crimes claims before international court.

The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York said on Saturday.

A decision to bring the report on last year's Gaza war before the court would follow a debate in the UN General Assembly over Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's response to the document last week.

Indications of fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election, together with large-scale street demonstrations, have led to claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not actually win the election, and that the majority of Iranians perceive their government as illegitimate and favor regime change.

An analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public from three different sources finds little evidence to support such conclusions.

Ramzy Baroud’s “My Father Was A Freedom Fighter” is more than a book, it is actually a masterpiece. In an overwhelmingly evoking personal style Baroud manages to bring to light the history of the Palestinian people and their battle with Israel and Zionism. Through the story of the Baroud’s family the book outlines every event in the history of the conflict and reflects on the way it transformed the Palestinian reality.

A pair of trousers catches fire in an aeroplane close to Detroit and missiles rain down on Yemen. Is this is what is called the butterfly effect? For Mohammed Hassan, the terrorist threat is only an excuse. In this latest chapter in our series "Understanding the Muslim world", our specialist explains what is really at stake in Yemen: i.e. undermining democracy in the Gulf in order to keep control over its oil

Palestinian militant group Hamas has demanded the European Union work to prevent Israeli security services from using EU passports to carry out "targeted assassination" attempts after the killing of one of its leading members in Dubai.

Have we discussed the Goldstone Report lately? Well yesterday the highly anticipated Israeli internal investigation into the findings of the Goldstone Report were delivered. This of course was the result of the U.N. mandated investigation into Operation Cast Lead...

WEBMASTER COMMENT: If you use the WOT security plugin you will get a notice that "readers" (meaning the Megaphone people) have given this site the worst possible security rating possible. I ignored the WOT warning and checked the page out, and other than stating things Israel does not want you to hear I did not encounter any problems with the linked story. Israel is apparently hijacking WOT to use as a censorship tool, and so I can no longer recommend WOT for Firefox.

"To shoot an elephant" is an eye witness account from The Gaza Strip. December 27th, 2008, Operation Cast Lead. 21 days shooting elephants. Urgent, insomniac, dirty, shuddering images from the only foreigners who decided and managed to stay embedded inside Gaza strip ambulances, with Palestinian civilians.

Saudi airstrikes continue to target northern Yemen despite Houthis pledging to meet the key condition of not attacking Saudi Arabia set by the Yemeni government.

Houthi fighters said Tuesday that Saudi warplanes had been bombarding the country’s north, including the Al-Saqin district.

According to the fighters, Saudi forces poured rockets and artillery shells on border areas.

You hear it often said that once the Zionists invaded Palestine they “made the desert bloom” – history,on the other hand, documents a fairly different picture when it comes the region, pre-occupation.

These men,women and children had their own lives and their own stories which shall not be forgotten, regardless of how hard Zionist occupiers try and pretend that they did not exist.

If you make a point of highlighting and discussing all of the things we should all know about Israel, the Goldstone Report is the gift that keeps on giving. Seems like there is always something new to report...

Part of the testimonies is regarding “extra efforts” that female soldiers should conduct in order to be recognized and accepted by the fellow male soldiers.
Another soldier said that she saw a fellow female soldier humiliating Palestinian residents “in a way that cannot be described by words”, and added that “you have to see it to realize how she behaves, how she humiliates the Palestinians without caring about anything”.

“Everybody is doing that”, the soldier added, “Soldiers and senior officers, nobody objects”.

At least eighteen Jewish settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, attacked Tuesday Palestinians in the West Bank village of At-Tuwani in the southern hills of Hebron.

Should the Palestinians agree to a land swap they would be undermining not only their rights but also any chance for peace.This is because Israel is likely to use the land swap to:

- Deny that the 4 June 1967 lines are the basis for drawing the borders of a future Palestinian state. Israel will use these lines only as a basis for determining the "size" of the land that the Palestinians should receive in compensation.

- Annex areas in the West Bank and carve off lands within or close to Jerusalem, along with land rich in ground water.

- Annex the so-called "large settlement areas", which were created originally as a means of dissecting the West Bank and deterring the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

A rally of Jewish leaders took aim at Target stores Thursday for selling a globe that omits the name Israel but instead labels the region Palestine.

I think anytime Osama bin Laden speaks it is newsworthy and he just released an audio tape. The recording was released in Arabic and directly to the Al-Jazeera news channel, a Middle Eastern news network...

Troops serving in Israel Defense Forces combat units will be allocated land upon discharge from military service, a new government initiative revealed on Monday stated.
Land will be allocated in the Galilee, the Negev desert, the Jordan valley and the Golan Heights - with the result that the move is likely to be seen as a continuation of the government's controversial policy of encouraging Israeli Jews to reside in rural regions with large Arab populations.

''How can you divide one small village between two countries? This would be a very bad situation for us to be in.''

In 2000, Israel withdrew all its troops from southern Lebanon to the UN-determined ''Blue Line'', which put half of Ghajar in Lebanon.

EDITED: Where the hell is Syria in all this??

Troops serving in Israel Defense Forces combat units will be allocated land upon discharge from military service, a new government initiative revealed on Monday stated.

In last-ditch efforts to renew peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, US President Barrack Obama's special envoy on Sunday met Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, even as his mission has been stalled over Israeli settlement constructions in the East Jerusalem.

Obama's special envoy for Middle East George Mitchell, has extended his stay and met Netanyahu after the Palestinians refused to return to the negotiating table.

The Saudi Arabian government has listed new casualties in its war with the Houthis of Yemen after 20 dead Saudi soldiers were found near the border...

A desert people have developed a new weapon that uses sound instead of bullets. But this time, it will be used to control crowds instead of fighting giant worms or devious members of House Harkonnen.

The Israeli Defense Ministry has contracted for the production of sonic-boom stun-guns called "Thunder Generator cannons," which they hope to use in crowd-control situations.

Hostility toward local and international human rights groups operating in the Zionist entity mounted in 2009 because of their reports on Operation Cast Lead, Human Rights Watch charged in its annual world report, released Thursday.

“Local and international human rights groups working in Israel have experienced a more hostile climate than ever before after documenting abuses committed by Israel, as well as Hamas, during the December 2008-January 2009 fighting in Gaza and Israel in connection with Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza,” wrote HRW executive-director Kenneth Roth in his introduction to the 612-page report.

In recent weeks Israel has escalated its practice of assassinations in the West Bank and Gaza. At the end of December, Israeli special forces broke into the Nablus homes of Anan Subih, Raed Surkaji, and Ghassan Abu Sharekh and killed them.

Official Israeli sources linked the three to the killing of Israeli settler Meir Avshalom Hai who was killed while driving to the illegal outpost in which he lived. The killings are the latest in Israel’s long-time practice of assassinations, illegal under international law. Many contradictory reports have surfaced over the December 26 assassinations. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky spoke to the families of two of the killed.

While media reports from Haiti expressed amazement at Israel’s well-equipped medical delegation to the quake-stricken nation, some critics have warned against organ theft. The Israeli medical team dispatched to Haiti has set up a field hospital in the tremor-battered Caribbean country, winning Western media praise for doing what even their American peers have not yet managed to accomplish.

Paul J. Balles considers the USA’s use of the so-called “war on terror” as a cover for US state-sponsored terrorism against anyone who stands in the way of Washington’s global hegemonic ambitions or even questions US or Israeli policies.

On the eve of a four-day visit to the United States, hawkish Likud MK Danny Danon on Monday launched a blistering assault on President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, declaring that he would give Obama "a failing grade" for his first year in office.

"I would give Obama an 'F' for serious lack of knowledge or understanding on topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said Danon, speaking to The Jerusalem Post ahead of his US trip.

It is our duty to remember and remind the world that the Palestinian freedom fighter is a man, a woman, like any other. He loves his family. She loves her country. They seek a better future. They are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of justice and freedom. They waited for the world to lift the blatant injustice that has befallen them since 1948. They expected the world to understand when they took up arms to lift this injustice themselves.

This has been a quick response and all of those who have been helping, donating and providing assistance should be commended. The United States has been a big pusher of a lot of this, the US news media has basically become a 24 hour ad like the ones you see asking for donations to help the orphaned children. Israel has been a big medical supplier and it has not gone unnoticed by the media either.

But, what happened during these disasters?

At the beginning of the new year, German weekly magazine Der Spiegel ran a controversial report claiming that the Lebanese movement Hezbollah was involved in drug trafficking to finance its “terrorist operations against Israel”. The article proceeded to allege that individuals involved in the cartel had contacts with the central nexus of the resistance movement including its Secretary-General. Needless to state, no factual evidence was cited in support of the claims as in the case of a growing list of previous smear-campaigns.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the West plans to occupy the Middle East under the pretext of establishing democracy in the region. "They are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and interfering in Pakistan and Yemen under the pretext of establishing democracy," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the southwestern province of Khuzestan on Thursday.

"They claim that they want to establish freedom and human rights but this is a big lie,"

The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.

An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.

Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.

Jonathan Cook assesses the significance of new Israeli missile systems designed to shoot down short-range rockets. He argues that the real significance lies in the fact that Israel is tightening the screw even further on Gaza and sending warning signals to the West Bank in order to force a total Palestinian submission.

”The increasing isolation of Gaza – and the ratcheting up of pressure – is designed to send a message to Gaza: that Hamas has nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from resisting Israel’s occupation, and that ordinary Gazans should turn their back on the Islamic movement.

Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, has made a formal apology to Ankara over his 'discourteous' conduct during a meeting with Turkey's ambassador to Tel Aviv in a row over a Turkish TV series.

"It is not my way to disrespect ambassadors' honor and in the future I will clarify my position in a diplomatically acceptable manner," Ayalon said in the statement.

A two-day exercise simulating a response to a biological warfare attack will begin Wednesday in the Dan region. The exercise, which will be the largest of its kind in Israel's history, will be carried out in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Holon, seeks to evaluate the ability of the Home Front, medical services, rescue teams and municipal authorities to respond to conditions created by a biological catastrophe caused either by terrorists or by some kind of accident.

“We know Hezbollah is growing stronger with Syria's help, and occasionally with Iran's assistance,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during a tour of the northern border on Tuesday.

"Should the (security) situation deteriorate, we'll hold the Lebanese government and all those who help Hezbollah responsible," said Barak at an Israeli occupation army outpost overlooking south Lebanon's villages.

Paul J. Balles argues that post-9/11 arbitrariness and blind revenge by the USA lay behind acts of counter-vengeance by Al-Qaeda and likeminded groups, the latest of which was the attempt by a Nigerian man to bomb an American airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

”What was the post-9/11 madness but blind revenge? What were the lockups at Guantanamo but revenge? What is joining Al Qaeda but revenge? Is revenge a legitimate response to an attack on America? Why isn't it equally appropriate for those who have suffered sadistic American brutality?”

As Egypt stoops to the ultimate collusion with Israel and the West to starve Gaza by banning future humanitarian aid convoys, Stuart Littlewood advises Viva Palestina to deal directly with Gaza: “A large armada of boats led by a multi-faith alliance demanding freedom of the seas and the right to an armed escort, could be the best vehicle.

”Yes, the REAL international community – that’s ordinary folk like you and me and Viva Palestina and everyone and his dog around the globe – are finally beginning to assert themselves against the corrupt power freaks that strut the world stage.”

I'm puzzled by the current onslaught of self-proclaimed Liberals who hail Obama as their deliverer from Bush-era persecution, subjugation and degradation - the current state of the United States screams a more foreboding sense of reality comprised of nothing more than teleprompted mirages ballooned into creation via empty rhetoric and unsubstantiated promises of change.

Now not all Liberals are 'die-hard' Obama supporters but those who voted for the capricous phony have begun to admit they are 'upset' with Barack Obama. At the start of his seemingly diplomatic advent into power he claimed that Bush-era stratagem would be put to rest yet reality cries out something elusively different - this claim was a vehement and blatant lie.

This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a “pre-emptive” military measure to “prevent” Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties – unfortunate victims in an otherwise “just cause” to bring a “hardline regime” to abide by “international norms”. This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly – the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth.

Uri Avnery considers the USA’s ill-conceived adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their disastrous outcomes, and predicts a similar catastrophe if Washington embarks on another misguided adventure – this time in Yemen.

”Terrorism is nothing but an instrument of war. It is used by organizations that are vastly different from each other, which are fighting in vastly different countries for vastly different objectives. A war on ‘International Terror’ is like a war on ‘International Artillery’ or ‘International Navy’...

Extraordinarily, the US is making exactly the same mistake as in Iraq and Afghanistan

Stuart Littlewood pays tribute to the generous-heartedness, human decency and sense of honour of the courageous men and women of the Viva Palestina aid convoy, who made it to Gaza despite the dirty tricks, meanness and brutality of Egypt’s senile Pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak, and his goons.

”Mubarak’s misdeeds have shamed the Egyptian people and indeed all Arabs, and will be written indelibly into the history of the Middle East. Who would have thought that a man of his experience would visibly stoop so low as to invite wholesale ridicule and disgust?”

The Viva Palestina international aid convoy has reached the besieged Gaza Strip, despite the treachery of the senile Pharaoh, Husni Mubarak, the brutality of his treacherous police and the deafening silence of a listless population.

We salute the brave internationalists whose determination, courage and steadfastness has shamed the senile Pharaoh Mubarak and his barbarous, treacherous goons in the army and the "security" apparatuses.

It has been a long, arduous and frustrating journey but one that will have a lasting imprint on the minds of everyone with a conscience.

Call for urgent action

* Contact the Egyptian Embassy
* Contact the British foreign secretary and the BBC

On the night of 5/6 January Egyptian police again delayed the Viva Palestina aid convoy carrying much needed aid from reaching the people of Gaza. Having agreed to Egyptian demands whilst being stranded in the port of Aqaba [in Jordan] some seven days ago, convoy leaders agreed to re-route their journey after receiving guarantees from the Egyptian authorities of a safe passage to Gaza.

Christopher King argues that rather than slavishly pimp for the US and cheer “its reflex to bomb and shoot everything in sight” in Yemen, he should instead try to win the hearts and minds of Yemen’s destitute people by helping to develop their economy and thereby give them a stake in peace.

The British premier’s office says that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama have agreed to fight what they call terrorism in Yemen and Somalia.

The UK and the US have agreed to fund a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle what they deem the rising threat from the country.

The US has been involved in war in Yemen by sending its special forces to train the Yemeni military and conducting air raids in both northern and southern parts of the Middle Eastern country...