Israel demands retraction of UN Gaza war criticism

Three siblings from the Al-Samouni family. Goldstone's report said Israeli forces "killed 23 members of the extended Al-Samouni family" in one day of its devastating Cast Lead offensive on the coastal enclave

April 3, 2011

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel on Sunday demanded the retraction of a United Nations report deeply critical of its deadly 2008-2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip after the main author expressed regret over the conclusions.

South African judge Richard Goldstone had faced down enormous criticism in Israel at the time, much of it targeting his own Jewish ancestry, over the report which accused both Israel and the Hamas rulers of Gaza of potential war crimes during the 22-day conflict.

But in a surprise about turn on Saturday, he said his conclusions would have been different if he had been aware of additional information now brought to his attention.

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” he wrote in a commentary piece in the Washington Post.

The report’s findings had set the tone for widespread international condemnation of the Israeli assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza in which more than 1,400 people lost their lives, the vast majority of them Palestinians.

Israeli officials said the United Nations now needed to set the record straight.

“This is an extremely important development and right now we are multiplying our efforts to get this report rescinded,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told army radio on Sunday.

“I am going to give the issue my personal commitment,” Barak said, adding that he deeply regretted the “harm already done” by the Goldstone report.

He was echoing remarks made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late on Saturday.

“Goldstone himself has just confirmed what we all knew all along… I think our soldiers and army behaved according to the highest international standards,” the premier said during a brief televised address.

“We expect this farce to be rectified immediately.”

Netanyahu once again rejected the findings of the Goldstone Report, which came up with evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by both Israel and Hamas for targeting civilians.

The Israeli military did not deliberately target civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Netanyahu said, while Hamas fired at innocent civilians and did not conduct investigations.

The prime minister said the fact that long-time Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi — now facing an uprising in his country — was on the UN Human Rights Council that commissioned the report, made the findings especially dubious.

“There is no greater absurdity,” he said.

In his opinion piece in the Post, Goldstone said he now concurred with Netanyahu that the council had a “history of bias against Israel”.

“We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission,” Goldstone wrote.

A UN committee of independent experts that followed up on the Goldstone Report’s recommendations found that Israel “has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza.”

In contrast, Hamas leaders “have not conducted any investigations” into the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel that were its grounds for going to war.

Allegations of intentionality by Israel in turn were based on the death and wounding of civilians in situations where the UN fact-finding mission could not reach “any other reasonable conclusion,” Goldstone said.

He acknowledged that while some incidents were validated in cases involving individual soldiers, Israeli investigations found that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

Goldstone recalled one of the most serious incidents his team investigated — without Israel’s cooperation due to its allegations that the investigators were biased — when Israeli shelling of a Gaza home killed 29 members of the Al-Samouni family.

He noted that Israel’s investigation into the incident found the attack was apparently due to an Israeli commander’s misinterpretation of a drone image and that an officer was under investigation for having ordered the shelling.

“I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes,” Goldstone wrote.

Source

Related

• Never Cast Lead Again | Memorial Site
• Cast Lead in Pictures
• Cast Lead | The Massacre

• Goldstone’s Backtrack: Some points to remember | Mondoweiss | Apr 2, 2011
  
• Goldstone “apology” won’t make us stop talking of occupation’s crimes | +972 Magazine | Apr 2, 2011
  
• What the Goldstone op-ed doesn’t say | Mondoweiss | Apr 3, 2011

Spread for the sake of the Martyrs of this genocide!

Gaza Again Under Israeli Attacks

Due to increased violent and deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza below an overview of updates with related news which will be continuously updated.

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GAZA ATTACK March 22, 2011

Overview of Related News: http://wp.me/p16sn9-4BK
Live Updates P1: http://wp.me/p16sn9-4BE
Live Updates P2: http://wp.me/p16sn9-4D3
Live Updates P3: http://wp.me/p16sn9-4DQ

GAZA ATTACK March 21, 2011

Live Updates P1:http://wp.me/p16sn9-4yD
Live Updates P2:http://wp.me/p16sn9-4yK
Live Updates P3:http://wp.me/p16sn9-4yT
Live Updates P4:http://wp.me/p16sn9-4zc

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Confirmed Names of Martyrs

(List only displays the martyred since March 16, 2011 for a complete overview of this years shuhada go here)

Mohammed Jihad al-Halw, 11 years old, killed on March 22, 2011
Yasser Ahed al-Halw, 16 years old , killed on March 22, 2011
Yasser Hamed al-Halw, 50 years old, killed on March 22, 2011
Mohammed Saber Harara, 20 years old, killed on March 22, 2011
Adham Al-Hazareen, , killed on March 22, 2011
Sa’dy Halas, 23 years old , killed on March 22, 2011
Muhammad Atyeh Al-Harazeen, 27 years old, killed on March 22, 2011
Muhammad Abed, 31 years old, , killed on March 22, 2011
Mustapha Ahmad Sehwel, 5 years old, died 10 days after attack on on March 21, 2011
Imad Faraj Allah, 16 years old, died on March 20, 2011
Qasem Abu Eteiwi, 16 years old, died on March 20, 2011
Ghassan Fathi Abu Omar, 25, years old, died on March 16, 2011
Adnan Yousef Eshtewy, 23 years old, died on March 16, 2011

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ஜ۩۞۩ஜ

By Israeli Attacks March 2011 martyred Palestinians

انّا للہ و انّا الیه راجعون

May Allah Subhana wa Ta’ ala grant the Shuhada Jannatul Firdaus, and ease it for their families, loved ones and anyone around them. Allahumma Ameen ya Rabbil Alameen. ‘ Inna Lillahi wa ‘ Inna ‘ Ilayhi Raji’un, Allahu Akbar

ஜ۩۞۩ஜ

Hanukkah in March: Light a Candle for Gaza | Shalom Rav

 

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Last December, on the third anniversary of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Rabbi Alissa Wise and I submitted an article to the Washington Post in which we asked the public to mark this occasion by lighting a Hanukkah candle for Gaza. The piece was edited further and we were told that it would run in WaPo’s online “On Faith” section.

At the eleventh hour, one day before our piece was to run, we were asked to make some more substantive edits in ways that would have significantly altered the message of the article. Unlike the earlier changes, these weren’t editorial tweaks – they contained several all too familiar pro-Cast Lead talking points.

Alissa and I rejected the last minute demands, and offered even more links to substantiate our claims. In the meantime, Hanukkah came and went and ultimately the piece never ran.

Fast forward to last week: blogger Phil Weiss had learned about the whole sad story and wrote a short post about it on Mondoweiss. After reading it, I got in touch with him and gave him the full background. M’weiss posted the complete story today, complete with the text of WaPo’s censored version.

So click below to read the article that never saw the light of day. Not seasonally appropriate any more, but still sadly relevant.

Light a Candle for Gaza
By Rabbi Brant Rosen and Rabbi Alissa Wise

On the morning of December 27, 2008, the sixth day of Hanukkah, Israel initiated a massive military assault against Gaza with “Operation Cast Lead.” The name of the operation was a reference to a popular Hanukkah song written by the venerated Israeli poet Chaim Nachman Bialik: “My teacher gave a dreidel to me/A dreidel of cast lead.”

When Israel’s military actions ended on January 18, some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed. Among the dead were hundreds of unarmed civilians, including over 300 children.

Personal testimonies from the Palestinians who lived through Cast Lead in Gaza indicate the profoundly tragic consequences of Israel’s military assault. Here is one such account – excerpted from Amnesty International’s 2009 Report, “Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction”:

After Sabah’s house was shelled I ran over there. She was on fire and was holding her baby girl Shahed, who was completely burned. Her husband and some of the children were dead and others were burning. Ambulances could not come because the area was surrounded by the Israeli army.

We put some of the injured in a wagon tied to the tractor to take them to hospital. My nephew Muhammad (Sabah’s son) picked up his wife, Ghada, who was burning all over her body, and I took her little girl, Farah, who was also on fire. My nephew Muhammad-Hikmat drove the tractor and my son Matar and my nephews ‘Omar and ‘Ali also came with us and took the body of baby Shahed and two other bodies. Sabah and the other wounded were put into a car; other relatives were also leaving. We drove toward the nearest hospital, Kamal
‘Adwan hospital.

As we got near the school, on the way to al-‘Atatrah Square we saw Israeli soldiers and stopped, and suddenly, the soldiers shot at us. My son Matar and Muhammad- Hikmat were killed. The soldiers made us get out of the wagon. I ran away with ‘Ali and ‘Omar, who had also been shot and were injured. Muhammad, Ghada and Farah were allowed to go on but only on foot and the soldiers did not allow them to take the dead.

This Hanukkah, how will we Jews choose to commemorate a legacy such as this? Many of us will invariably retreat behind a veil of defensiveness, claiming Israel’s action was an appropriate, commensurate response to the threat posed by Hamas. Some of us might be troubled, but choose to look away from the hard and painful reality of this bloodshed. Still others may simply allow Gaza to become subsumed by the sheer volume of world crises that seem to call out for our attention.

This Hanukkah, however, we are asking the Jewish community to light a candle for Gaza.

After all, this is the season in which we rededicate our determination to create light amidst the darkness. And quite frankly, the time is long overdue for the American Jewish community to shine a light on the dark truth of “Operation Cast Lead.”

Indeed, we have been deeply complicit in keeping this truth away from the light of day. Two years later, Israel still refuses to conduct a credible, transparent and independent investigation of its actions in Gaza. The sole attempt at such a proper investigation, the Goldstone Report, was successfully blackballed and eventually quashed under a campaign spearheaded by the Israeli and the US governments – and largely supported by the American Jewish establishment.

This Hanukkah, we would also do well to shine a light on the larger context of the reality in Gaza. We cannot forget that Israel’s military assault occurred in the midst of a crushing blockade that Israel has imposed upon Gaza since January 2006.

As a result of this collective punishment:

– 80% of the Gazan population is dependent on international aid.

– 61% of the population is food insecure.

– The unemployment rate is approximately 39%, one of the highest in the world.

– Power outages usually last 4-6 hours a day and often longer.

– 60% of the population receives running water only once every 4 or 5 days, for 6-8 hours.

– 50 to 80 million liters of untreated or partially treated sewage are released into the sea every day.

– Approximately 90% of water supplied to Gaza residents is not suitable for drinking and is contaminated with salt and nitrates.

– 78% of homes with major damages from Operation Cast Lead have not been rebuilt.

Despite Israel’s claims to the contrary, its blockade remains very much in force. According to highly detailed research conducted by the Israeli NGO Gisha, Israel consistently lets through less than half of the required truckloads of essential goods mandated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Just weeks ago, European Union foreign policy chief Lady Catherine Ashton, speaking on behalf of all EU foreign ministers commented, “At the present time, we think that what’s happened with Gaza is unsatisfactory, the volume of goods is not increasing as significantly as it needs to.”

The most tangible way we can light a candle for Gaza is to support those who refuse to allow this crisis to remain the darkness. The most courageous example: the movement of civilian flotillas that seek to break the blockade with symbolic humanitarian cargo. The most recent flotilla tragically gained international attention last May when the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was seized by Israeli commandos in a raid that left eight unarmed Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American citizen dead. (A recent report on the assault by a UN fact-finding mission said Israeli soldiers used “lethal force” in a “widespread and arbitrary manner, which caused an unnecessarily large number of persons to be killed or seriously injured,” and “carried out extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law.”)

Despite this tragedy (or perhaps because of it), the flotilla movement is growing steadily. Here in the US, a group of peace activists is seeking to add the first American boat, “The Audacity of Hope,” which they intend to launch next spring as part of an international flotilla from over a dozen European, Asian and North American countries.

The US Boat to Gaza organizing statement asserts:

“The Audacity of Hope” will be a passenger ship with approximately 40-60 Americans on board including a 4-5 member crew and a small number of press and media professionals. We will not carry more than symbolic cargo: just as the students who sat in at Woolworth counters in the 1960s were not doing so because they wanted lunch, our voyage will be an act of civil disobedience and non-violent challenge to an illegal blockade rather than a mission to import humanitarian cargo. By the same token, one of our objectives will be to transport two Gazan graduate students who have been invited to visit and speak at a US university, but who have been prevented from leaving Gaza by the Israeli and Egyptian governments. Additionally, we plan to bring out Gazan products, which “Stand for Justice” is purchasing from a Gazan company.

For those who seek justice in Gaza, the courageous activists who are willing to put their own bodies on the line are immensely deserving of our support.

On Hanukkah, the festival that enshrines the ongoing human struggle for freedom, the season that seeks to shed light on the dark places of our world, it is time for us to stand in solidarity with all who are oppressed.

It is time for us to light a candle for Gaza.

Hanukkah in March: Light a Candle for Gaza | Shalom Rav.

Children and a world of fantasy in Palestine ..أطفال من الخيال فى فلسطين

YouTube – Children and a world of fantasy in Palestine ..أطفال من الخيال فى فلسطين.

Gaza minister: Children prove Gaza’s steadfastness

[ 27/01/2011 – 10:58 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– Gaza Minister of Culture Osama al-Issawi said the Palestinian government will continue to maintain Palestinian rights, and that Gaza’s steadfast children proved to the world that it remains strong despite challenges. Issawi praised the legendary steadfastness of children in Gaza who lost their parents during the late 2008 Gaza war. War-orphaned children, who met with minister at his Gaza headquarters, called for legal action against Israeli war criminals, a lift on the Gaza siege and freedom of movement.

Gaza minister: Children prove Gaza’s steadfastness.

Israel threatens to disconnect Gaza’s infrastructure

Published yesterday (updated) 24/01/2011 15:34

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie he was considering disconnecting the Gaza Strip from Israel’s electricity and water supplies.

The plan was originally proposed by Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in the summer of 2010. He suggested that the European Union help build a power plant, water desalination plant and sewage treatment facility in the Gaza Strip to make it self-sufficient.

Ma’an asked officials in Gaza what impact this would have on the coastal enclave.

Munthir Shublaq, director of the water supply network for the coastal cities, said Israel has already drastically reduced water supplies to the Gaza Strip. Israel provides 5 million cubic meters of water per year, while the average consumption is 180 million cubic meters. He added that recently, Israel further reduced the water supply to 3.2 million cubic meters annually.

Shublaq said this has left Gaza residents dependent on groundwater, which has become increasingly contaminated. At present, 95 percent is undrinkable, he said.

The excessive use of the supply forced sea water to move inland, raising the groundwater’s chloride concentration to 1000 milligrams per liter. The recommended concentration is less than 250 milligrams per liter, he added.

If Israel stopped supplying the Gaza Strip with water, Shublaq said, that would create serious problems in certain areas in the coastal enclave which depended on water from Israel. Water desalination plants must be urgently established, he said.

Meanwhile, if Israel disconnects the coastal enclave from its electricity grid, “Gaza will be destroyed,” said Kan’an Ubeid, chief of the Strip’s sole power station.

Without a connection to Israel’s power grid, Gaza residents would only have electricity once or twice a week. Around 60 percent of Gaza’s electricity supply comes from Israel and there is currently no alternative to the situation, Ubeid explained.

He was consulting Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah to look into other possibilities, he added.

“Egypt is still hesitating to include the Gaza Strip in the regional electricity project despite the fact that funding and land for the project is ready.”

Political analyst Ibrahim Abrash said Israeli threats to disconnect Gaza’s infrastructure were political, and a continuation of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Strip. He said former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began the process aiming to destroy the Palestinian national project.

However alternative supplies could be found, Abrash said, possibly in Egypt.

“Egypt is supplying Israel with electricity, so is it possible Egypt will refuse to do that for Gaza?”

Maan News Agency: Israel threatens to disconnect Gaza’s infrastructure.

Kai Wiedenhöfer’s The Book of Destruction: Gaza – One year After the 2009 War | Art and design | The Observer

Mosaic Rooms, London

• 
• Peter Beaumont
• The Observer, Sunday 23 January 2011
Jamila al-Habash, a 16-year-old student from the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza city was hit by a missile while playing on the roof of her house on 4 January 2009. One of her sisters and a cousin were killed in the same attack. The photograph is from the exhibition and book (published by Steidl) ‘The Book of Destruction’ by Kai Wiedenhofer. When The Book of Destruction, Kai Wiedenhöfer’s exhibition of photographs documenting the consequences of Israel’s war against Gaza, opened at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris late last year, two men wearing ski masks and motorcycle helmets tried to storm the building to damage the exhibits. An umbrella group of Jewish organisations in France accused him of “virulently anti-Israel views”. Others on the internet charged him with “fanning the flames of antisemitism”.

Kai Wiedenhöfer: Book of Destruction: Gaza – One Year After the 2009 War
by Kai Wiedenhöfer


The award-winning Wiedenhöfer, whose exhibition moves to London this week, is not unaccustomed to such charges and finds them ridiculous. They first emerged in 2005 during discussions with Berlin’s municipal authorities for a project – which never saw the light of day – involving affixing giant prints of Israel’s West Bank separation wall on to what remains of the Berlin Wall. During talks, a local politician informed him that the panoramic images in his book, Wall, which were to be used for the project, were “antisemitic photography“.

“I asked him to define antisemitic photography,” says Wiedenhöfer. “He replied that I had pictures in the book that showed Israeli soldiers being violent against Palestinians.”

Sitting in his bare Berlin apartment, Wiedenhöfer is suddenly animated and goes to fetch a copy from his bookshelf. “I know every picture in this book. There is not a single image of an Israeli laying a thumb on a Palestinian. So I said, ‘Show me!'” Wiedenhöfer flicks through the pages. “This is the only image of violence in the whole book – it’s an Israeli soldier removing Israeli peace protesters.”

Wiedenhöfer’s pictures are controversial because his three books – Perfect Peace, detailing Palestinian life between the two intifadas, Wall and now The Book of Destruction – focus almost exclusively on the Palestinian experience. Self-employed and funded often by grants, he is free from the requirement of television and print media to tell both sides of the story with equal weight, instead photographing what interests him, which has rankled deeply with some of Israel’s supporters.

Here, I believe, a disclosure is in order. I have known Wiedenhöfer, who was born in 1966 in a village near Stuttgart, for almost a decade. We first met and travelled together when covering Israel’s 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, dodging tanks in Bethlehem. Wiedenhöfer borrowed the title for his current exhibition from an article written by myself and my Observer colleague, photographer Antonio Olmos, about a list we came across of all of Gaza’s damaged buildings, a document we called “the book of destruction”.

Wiedenhöfer’s dedication, even in a profession that requires such discipline, is extraordinary. I recall running into him in Jerusalem almost five years ago when he was working on Wall. He was staying in a filthy, cell-like single-room dwelling owned by a monk, scattered with crucifixes and empty whisky bottles (the monk’s, not the teetotal Wiedenhöfer’s) because it meant he could come and go as he pleased and he wanted to capture the morning light. He took me on one of his early-morning outings, wandering beneath watchtowers full of armed soldiers to study how the light fell on concrete at different times, scrambling up ridges to find new viewpoints of the concrete barrier snaking among the hills and observe the pattern of daily life flowing around it.

If Wall was about separation, Wiedenhöfer’s new book and exhibition, funded by the Fondation Carmignac Gestion, is unquestionably about violence, documenting in almost unbearable detail the damage left after Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2009. Unpeopled images of ruined buildings, photographed with an architectural precision, are contrasted with portraits of equally ruined people with truncated limbs and scarred bodies. His human subjects look into the camera, seated in their own homes: women and children; the family of fighters and civilians – all displaying bewildering variations of traumatic amputation and burns.

The photographs of the ruined buildings supply their own taxonomy of the consequences of different explosive forces: houses brought down by mines rendered into bristling igloos of concrete; buildings pierced and burned by shells; walls perforated by gunfire. The result is a body of work that is anti-sensational but shocking in the directness with which it engages with violence.

“I wanted to make a record,” Wiedenhöfer says. “That’s all. I do not accuse Israel. If there is an accusation, it is in the record itself.” Therein lies the problem. He has come up against the increasingly prevalent desire of many within Israel and without to rule inadmissible any “record” that depicts what Israel or its defence forces do in a negative light, deploying an intellectual sleight of hand to suggest that all such criticism is designed to “delegitimise” the existence of Israel. That it is “antisemitism” of a new and sneaky kind.

The irony is that Wiedenhöfer had not intended to return to the subject of Israel and Palestine again after his books Perfect Peace and Wall. Indeed, his main interest these days is examining the nature of boundaries, particularly in areas of conflict or that have been affected by conflicts, something he is pursuing with the same single-mindedness he dedicated to documenting Palestinian life for almost two decades.

Wiedenhöfer insists that he could have done a similar study to The Book of Destruction in Afghanistan or in Iraq and that the real meaning of the book is the horrible “creativity” people use to hurt others. What really concerns him is the unwillingness of many photographers, and the media, to document the human consequences.

In part, he blames the constrained economics of the media today, which, he believes, has made many photographers take fewer risks, instead focusing on images they know will sell. “We see the same pictures all the time. A Palestinian child throwing a stone. A soldier surrounded by dust in Afghanistan. An IED exploding. But what does it show us of the true meaning of war?”

Peter Beaumont is the Observer’s foreign affairs editor. Kai Wiedenhöfer’s The Book of Destruction: Gaza – One Year After the 2009 War is at the Mosaic Rooms, London SW5, from Friday to 12 Feb; mosaicrooms.org. Funds raised through the exhibition will be used to support the individuals featured in his photographs. The book is published by Steidl/Fondation Carmignac Gestion on 6 June, £30

Kai Wiedenhöfer’s The Book of Destruction: Gaza – One year After the 2009 War | Art and design | The Observer.

Facebook’s New “Feature”| Customs Department => “Machsom Hasefer HaPaneem” Please Line Up and Hold your Passport Ready! | Muting Palestine Posters & Bloggers

Jan 21, 2011 by OccuppiedPalestine

Yesterday Umm Hajar’s Facebook page was disabled again. For the third time.

IMPORTANT UPDATE

Kindly notice, the pages seem to be visible on FB, but not accessible for Umm. She is receiving a lot of friendrequest which are send to the email linked to the account but is not able to access to post nor confirm. Appreciating all your support highly!

I express my concern about FB disabling the accounts for no reason. FB’s supposed to be a social site and it defeats the purpose of the service when the accounts of popular and active users are randomly disabled, thus cutting them off from their network of contacts and destroying irrevocably what they have spent months and/or years building up here: photo albums, notes, groups, personal updates via facebook mobile and all the information of a personal nature stored in the mailbox, etc.

Previously it was (and that page still is disabled) on Dec 4, 2010 a friend and brother created a cause for the disabling of the Facebook account of Umm Hajar and of all those sharing news about Palestine which seem to be continuous target of deactivating, muting, restricting ordisabling by Facebook, trying to mute the truth and freedom of speech or to show solidarity with all people victimized by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on ALL sides.

Below the appeal on the cause as posted by one of her Friends

http://www.causes.com/causes/554009-no-to-fb-disabling-the-accounts/about?m=9f362846

 

Her personal profile was disabled on Dec 3, 2010,no reason stated at all.

Almost 8 months daily work lot of hours, lost over 25.000 newspost (of already in media published newsitems..so nothing new) and contacts and messages of almost 5000 friends, groups, pages, notes, religious knowledgenotes/sites. Hence, even the Eid/Holiday cards she received are all gone.

She can use our help, to stay protesting for the cause (Peace for all!) please invite your friends to her pages.

In may 2010 She started resharing news for Palestine with 0 friends.
September 2010 She almost reached limit of 5000 so started new page
Oct 23, 2010 She reached 7456 people with the newsposts
1 Page was deleted, lost 2515 friends and started again
Nov 26, 2010 she reached 7882 people with the newsposts
Yesterday the personal profile was deleted, so – 5000
-25.000 newsposts, all notes, sources, personal and other mail about religion, the cause, and all information lost.

63 Years of Occupation, massacres and Al Nakba is enough. Share the word, the pictures and the news. Awaken the world in honour of the death of these massacres, may Allah Subhana wa Ta’ala grant the martyrs Jennatul Firdaus and protect our brothers and sisters in Palestine and elsewhere in the world, and all those living in oppression or violence or danger. Allahumma Ameen ya Rabb

Update from Umm Hajar: Friend Requests and Messages Blocked for 4 Days
To prevent you from contacting people against their wishes, your friend requests and your ability to send messages to strangers have been blocked for 4 days. Friend requests are more likely to be accepted when you send them to people you already know, such as classmates, friends, family and coworkers. If you use Facebook to communicate with strangers, they have the option to report that they don’t know you or to mark the communication as spam. If this happens repeatedly, you could be viewed as violating Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Than i got message had to agree all pending friend request or add will be blocked and pending ones deleted or i will be disabled again. So far suggested friends… even from FB itself….

Below a overview of the friends and disabled pages:

This is an overview of the results of daily updates posting about Palestine since May 2010, and how the pages and interested friends on non public (!) profiles get zapped all the time by discriminatory Facebook rulings:

To show the interest of Umm Hajar’s updates on her pages insights of her fanpage (Jan 15, 2011)

Over 1 Million views:

Emailing Facebook

So Umm send an email to facebook, not able to receive the by Facebook required code by SMS and sends them the phonenumber (which is wiped out of the image below) to verify. Also complaint about the previous disabled accounts.

 

Almost day later she recieves the message below, in which Facebook is demanding a FULL COLOUR COPY of ID/Passport, anyway, something issued by a GOVERNMENT and in full color as well:

 

Now. Privacy and law, copyrights on passports mainly prohibit making copies, definitely when it is not for own use, or for the purpose/use by governmental institutions or persons like notaries, solicitors, banks and government departments etc. These kinds of requests, or better mark them as “demands”, are even a violation of privacy, hence, full colour copies could be abused for fraude and so on.

Besides this. it seems that the policy of Facebook is quit discriminating, for no one gets these demands and loads of people use nicknames in stead of their own name, and no one is asked about their passport (in full color mind you!)

Last but not least, Facebook not seems be willing to answer the question in previous email about the blocks and deactivating of pages at all….

Maybe they should rename FACEBOOK into FAILBOOK

Update

Sunday, Jan 23, 2011
The Cause is updated with the next message: please send your request to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?i… NOT on the blocked page.
Her other page is visible to YOU, but she can not enter to confirm your requests…

http://www.causes.com/causes/554009-no-to-fb-disabling-the-accounts/about?m=9f362846

Flotilla planned to mark anniversary of deaths in Gaza waters

 

 

By The Daily Star |  Wednesday, January 19, 2011

BEIRUT: The exiled former Patriarch of occupied Jerusalem Hilarion Kabouji called upon all Arabs Tuesday to support an aid flotilla that could sail to besieged Gaza on May 31, 2011, to mark the first anniversary of deadly Israeli aggression against a similar convoy.

“We all know that Jerusalem is being Judaized, and its history and landmarks are being distorted, they are paying billions of dollars to Judaize  Jerusalem. We Arabs, what are we doing to spare Jerusalem these dangers?” he asked, adding that admiration for Jerusalem should materialize into action, “or else, it will be considered deception.”

“We have to work and make sacrifices,” he added.

Kabouji called upon Arabs to support “Freedom Flotilla II” which would sail to Gaza in a bid to break the maritime blockade on the enclave. Israeli commando units stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla on May 31, 2010 and killed nine Turkish activists.

Kabouji made his remarks in the Press Federation headquarters where a news conference was convened by the association “Viva Palestina – The Artery of Life,” which is headed by former British M.P. George Galloway.

The association announced that it would carry out a number of activities in support of Gaza, occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Palestinian cause.

Galloway and a number of individuals who were aboard the first Freedom Flotilla also participated in the news conference.

Kabouji said that when he was appointed a patriarch for Jerusalem in 1964, the Christians in the city constituted 25 percent of the population. “Today, they became one percent.”

Meanwhile, Galloway said the Viva Palestina association would participate in Freedom Flotilla II.

He called upon Arab states to secure ships for the flotilla. “Arabs own many ships … Is there a more noble cause to use these ships than granting them to the flotilla that will sail to Gaza?”

Galloway said the Israeli attack against the Freedom Flotilla did not scare any activist in the world.

“We are not afraid of you. We will return through land … and through sea, and we will prove this to you on May 31,” he said. – The Daily Star

 

The Daily Star – Lebanon News – Flotilla planned to mark anniversary of deaths in Gaza waters.

Amnesty International Marks Two-Year Anniversary of Gaza Conflict

Article Date:		23:32 2011/01/18
Article ID:		0084

London, January 18 (QNA) – Amnesty International said on Tuesday it was marking the two-year “anniversary” of the end of the 2008-9 Gaza conflict with a “global day of action” on 18 January calling for justice for the victims of the fighting. The global day is the launch of Amnesty’s two-month campaign ahead of the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in March, at which the UN is being asked to provide an international justice solution for the victims of the Gaza conflict, Amnesty said. In 22 days of conflict between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, hundreds of Palestinian civilians (including about 300 children) and three Israeli civilians were killed, with many others on both sides injured. The UK government has previously supported moves to ensure that preliminary UN investigations into the conflict are acted on, and Amnesty supporters are now pressing the Foreign Secretary William Hague to ensure that this happens. The organisation is calling on states at the UN’s Human Rights Council to agree a resolution that will refer the issue to the UN in New York – this could in turn trigger a referral to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. To coincide with its day of action Amnesty has released a new “Day In The Life”-style film showing the long-term effects of conflict in the region upon people on both sides of the conflict. In previous statements Amnesty urged Israel to lift the blockade on more than 1.4 million Palestinians cut off from the outside world and struggling with desperate poverty. Amnesty said that the blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately.” As the occupying power, Israel has a duty under international law to ensure the welfare of Gaza s inhabitants, including their rights to health, education, food and adequate housing, Amnesty said. (QNA) M T Z

 

QNA | News | Amnesty International Marks Two-Year Anniversary of Gaza Conflict.