They Came for the Children

Report on native Canadian abuse

A commission examining Canada's policy to separate indigenous children from their families says the abuse created a legacy of turmoil. From the country's formation in the 19th Century until the 1970s, the children had to attend schools where they were stripped of their identity. Many of the 150,000 children also suffered physical abuse from the staff at the church-run boarding schools.

An interim report says children left the schools "as lost souls".

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, They Came for the Children, says their lives were "soon to be cut short by drugs, alcohol and violence". It concludes that the schools were an assault on indigenous children, their families, culture and their nations.

Native Canadians remain among the poorest members of society, with many still living on reserves. The commission was formed as part of a landmark settlement in 2006 that included more than C$2bn (£1.3bn) compensation for surviving former children and their families. It has already taken 25,000 statements from survivors, visited about 500 communities and has heard from about 100 former school employees. The schools were set up to assimilate native children into Canadian society. More

 

Israeli Forces Destroy Hundreds of Olive Trees and Two Wells in Surif

24 FEBRUARY 2012 In the early hours on February 23, 2012, a combined group of Israeli settlers and soldiers came to Surif, a Palestinian village near the Separation Barrier in the southern West Bank, and cut down 700 trees and destroyed two water wells.

Surif, a large community of 17,000 Palestinian residents, routinely faces large scale acts of destruction and harassment from Israeli settlers and soldiers.

In this attack, Israeli Forces entered the area between the hours of 2am and 6am and cut down 400 olive trees and 300 apricot trees belonging to Ishaq Abdel Fatah Al Qadi.

Ishaq and his family are counting on the support of solidarity activists all over the world in order to buy and plant new trees in his field so that they can support themselves off of the land as they have done for decades. More

The Myth of Israel's Liberal Supreme Court Exposed

Little more than a decade ago, in a brief interlude of heady optimism about the prospects of regional peace, the Israeli Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings that, it was widely assumed, heralded the advent of a new, post-Zionist era for Israel. But with two more watershed judgments handed down over the winter of 2011-2012 the same court has decisively reversed the tide.

Palestinians, both in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel, will pay the biggest and most immediate costs of the new decisions. In one, the Supreme Court has created a new concept of “prolonged occupation” to justify further Israel’s denial of basic protections to the Palestinian population living under belligerent military rule. In the other, it has upheld the right of the Israeli state to strip the Palestinian minority inside Israel of one of its fundamental rights of citizenship.

Both of these new rulings threaten to unleash a torrent of more aggressive legislative and administrative measures against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line that separates the Occupied Territories from Israel proper, as the center of political gravity in Israel drifts steadily rightward.

Activist Reputation

The judicial mood of today is a far cry from the high spirits of the late 1990s, when the Supreme Court was led by Aharon Barak, feted by his counterparts in the United States as a paragon of enlightened liberalism. Barak is widely credited with entrenching in Israeli jurisprudence the philosophy of “judicial activism.” In practice, Barak’s activism meant that he reserved to the Supreme Court the right both to interpret the law creatively when it lacked clarity and to weigh critically and, if necessary, strike down measures passed by the Knesset when they conflicted with one of Israel’s 11 Basic Laws.

Israel lacks a constitution, but Barak had sought inspiration for what he and others termed a “constitutional revolution” in two liberal Basic Laws passed in 1992 -- one on Freedom and Human Dignity, the other on Freedom of Occupation. He treated these laws as akin to a bill of rights.

It was Barak’s activist Supreme Court that in 1999 -- belatedly, after years of petitioning by human rights groups -- found against the common practice of torturing Palestinian prisoners. The judges prohibited the Israeli security services from using “moderate physical pressure,” as Israel termed it, except in cases of Palestinians who were “ticking bombs,” that is, detainees believed to be withholding information needed quickly if lives were to be saved.

And it was a similar activism held responsible in May 2000 for a court decision in favor of the Kaadans, a Palestinian family with Israeli citizenship that had been barred five years earlier from Katzir, a rural community in northern Israel. Katzir’s admissions committee had justified the family’s exclusion on the grounds that it -- like nearly 700 other such communities -- was intended for Jews only. Describing it as “the most difficult decision of my life,” Barak ordered Katzir to reconsider the Kaadans’ application for admittance. More

 

Palestinians Hear the Water

JERUSALEM, Feb 21, 2012 (IPS) - After a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision allowed Israeli companies to maintain quarrying and mining activities in the occupied West Bank, local human rights groups and activists say the decision has opened the door dangerously to Israel’s pillaging of other Palestinian resources.

"On its face, the new rule allows the occupier (in a long-term occupation) to make endless use of the variety of objects found in the occupied territory," Israeli human rights group Yesh Din stated. "To pump its water sources, to transfer its archeological artifacts to elsewhere outside the territory, to use areas within it for garbage disposal, to sell public real estate, and more."

In late December of last year, the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed a petition put forth by Yesh Din, challenging the legality of Israeli mining and quarrying operations taking place in the occupied West Bank.

The court argued that the laws of occupation change when the occupation is long-term; in other words, the powers of an occupying power can expand, while the prohibitions against it become increasingly flexible, in a long-standing occupation.

The court also inferred that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had consented to the quarries’ operation, since the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement, which was meant to expire in 1999, left the quarries under complete Israeli control in Area C of the West Bank. Shutting down Israeli quarrying activities would harm the local Palestinian population, the court added, since the industry employs Palestinian workers.

On the ground, however, the ruling has left Palestinians concerned that Israel’s illegal exploitation of other resources in the West Bank, including water, will now be viewed as legitimate.

"This law is dangerous. We are talking about one of the main humanitarian needs: water. I don’t think that anybody, any law, any state, has the right to steal one of the main necessary needs for people," said Fathy Khdirat, a Palestinian resident of Jordan Valley and coordinator of the Jordan Valley Solidarity campaign. More

 

Khader Adnan: His life is in our hands , Noam Chomsky

Speaking today to Gaza TV News, Professor Noam Chomsky issued the following statement on the plight of Khader Adnan, and Israel’s policy of “Administrative Detention”.

Israel’s policies of administrative detention have been an international scandal for decades. The crime is dramatized, tragically, by the hunger strike of Khader Adnan, now chained to his hospital bed and facing death because, in his words, “my dignity is more precious than food.” His life is in our hands, and there is no time to lose. Noam Chomsky More

February 20th 2012

 

A U.S. double-standard for Bahrain?

MANAMA, Bahrain - Screaming at the riot police, dozens of women dressed head-to-toe in black excoriated the police for dragging away a teenage boy.

The police, dressed in shiny white helmets and black flak jackets, held their billy clubs in check. A policeman with a megaphone finally dispersed the crowd, threatening them with jail if they stayed.

The boy was allegedly picked up by plainclothes officers for organizing a protest.

"Welcome to living under a dictatorship," said a young Bahraini-American, an architect from Ohio who was back in Bahrain for the one-year anniversary of the uprisings here. Those uprisings didn't result in a regime change, the way many of the protests in the Arab Spring did, but they did raise an uncomfortable but important question for the United States: How long can the U.S. keep close ties with a regime that kills and tortures those who protest their rule?

At least 35 people were killed during protests in February-March 2011, according to Amnesty International. More than 20 have died since then in the ongoing protests; dozens of people have been reportedly tortured.

The protesters are mainly Shia Muslims, who make up 70 percent of the population but are shut out of almost all government posts. The Sunni al Khalifa family has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years, with King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa holding nearly complete control of the country. More

 

Palestinian child used as human shield by Israeli Army