from South Lebanon

[RAMALLAH, 11 June 2009] – Today, DCI-Palestine is releasing a report which documents the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli army and police force – Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalised ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities.

The release of the report comes just days after an article was published in The Independent newspaper reporting the testimonies of two Israeli soldiers which detail the deliberate abuse of Palestinian children. One soldier is reported as saying that in an incident that occurred in a Palestinian village in March, he saw a lot of soldiers ‘just knee (Palestinians) because it's boring, because you stand there for 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up.’

The report published today contains the testimonies of 33 children, one as young as 10 years old, who bear witness to the abuse they received at the hands of soldiers from the moment of arrest through to an often violent interrogation. Most of these children were arrested from villages near the Wall and illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. There is evidence that many children are painfully shackled for hours on end, kicked, beaten and threatened, some with death, until they provide confessions, some written in Hebrew, a language they do not speak or understand.

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Franklin Lamb, Dahiyeh

Jimmy Carter and Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah meet on Hezbollah turf for dialogue

“I will try to get you off the US Terrorism list if you can arrange a meeting for me with Hassan Nasrallah”

Jimmy Carter reportedly joking to Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah at their 6/9/09 meeting

Some readers may recall a December 15, 2008 Report in Counterpunch entitled “Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter.. The former American President was in Beirut at the time to announce the Carter Center’s Election Monitoring project and was disappointed when Hezbollah’s Mohammad Raad told the media that the National Lebanese Resistance would not be meeting with him. Carter wrote in his December 19, 2008 Report to the Carter Center: “This (recent trip to Lebanon-ed.) was something like a presidential visit in that we had long conversations with top officials, cabinet members and delegations of the many political parties. Hezbollah refrained from meeting with us but expressed approval of our election monitoring”

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by Stephen Lendman

Following Israel's Operation Cast Lead, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documented the toll on Gaza's children and published it in May. It did so "in response to the unprecedented number of children who were killed (and injured) by (the Israeli Defense Forces) during the offensive on Gaza." According to international standards, the Convention on the Rights of the Child's (CRC) definition was used to apply to anyone under age 18.

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By Ramzy Baroud

His room is ready; the walls have fresh paint and my kids prepared a basket of chocolates and other treats to place beside his bed. They hung a poster on his door that has been decorated with colored pens and glitter that says “Welcome Shobhi!” I have taught them that “Sobhi” actually means the “morning light”, and that during his visit, he will not be treated as a visitor, but as a brother. They have compiled a list of fun places to visit, parks, the beach and maybe a ferry ride.

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By Khalid Amayreh

Journalist — Occupied Palestine

Obama ignored mentioning Israeli atrocities and occupation, more ominously, without even remembering international law, (Reuters photo)

It is hard to treat with indifference President Obama's speech in Cairo on 4 June, 2009.The speech itself seemed to represent an ostensible departure from the virulent anti-Islam rhetoric which very much characterized the general discourse of the former Bush administration.

Needless to say, the calumnies and canards concocted by Bush against the world's 1.5 billion Muslims; using the term "Islamofascists" and claiming that Muslims "hate our freedoms" effectively put the United States and Islam on a virtual collision course.

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By Kevin Zeese

Lawyers were the lynchpin if they had given real legal advice: torture is illegal under domestic and international law; there would have been no torture program.

Since filing complaints against 12 Bush-Cheney lawyers the case for disbarment has gotten stronger. More information is leaking out. And, more and more Americans from citizens to generals to a former president are speaking out. On June 10th, a coalition of hundreds of organizations filled an addendum to the complaints against these lawyers to highlight the new information.

The addendum included statements by two generals with first hand knowledge of what occurred in U.S. detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. General David Patraeus said on May 29th that the U.S. violated the Geneva Conventions in carrying out “enhanced interrogations.” On FOX TV, in response to a question about the controversial interrogation practices, Patraeus said:

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Mary Shaw

I was talking with a friend recently, and the subject of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) came up. This friend says he is pro-union, but opposes the EFCA because, he said, it would require workers to openly sign a petition for a union prior to a secret ballot election.

A minimum number of petition signatures would be required first, he said, to move the union possibility forward to the secret ballot election. He thought this additional step was unnecessary and not a good idea. He was pro-secret-ballot, but not for open signatures.

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Ismael Hossein-zadeh

On the US-Iran relationship, President Obama seems to be talking from both sides of his mouth. From one side we hear promising messages of dialogue and a “new beginning” with Iran; from the other side provocative words that seems to be coming right out of the mouth of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

For example, on the occasion of the Iranian New Year in March, while the President expressed willingness for “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect" he also warned Iran that it cannot "take its rightful place in the community of nations … through terror or arms.”

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By SATTAR KASSEM

Obama has come, Obama has gone and the theme is still the same: blood for bread is the magic solution for the Palestinian problem. You Palestinians must abide by the necessities of Israeli security the way Israel sees fit, if you want to sustain a shaky salary by the end of the month. The Palestinian must arrest his/her fellow Palestinian, or kill him/her for the bare subsistence salary to flow. Kill your Palestinian fellow brother or sister and be sure of receiving a loaf of bread next day.

The American policy toward the Palestinians is one of the most ruthless and merciless in the history of mankind. It recruits Palestinians, train them, equip them with lethal instruments through the stooge Arab regimes so as to fight those Palestinians who seek to regain their own liberty and liberate their occupied land. The US claims to be the champion of human rights and freedom at the very moment it carries mass massacres and pogroms directly or indirectly in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Kevin Zeese

On June 9, 2009, a broad coalition of organizations representing over one million members filed supplementary material with five state legal disciplinary committees in support of its complaints to disbar twelve Bush Administration lawyers who advocated the use of torture — John Yoo, David Addington, John Ashcroft, Douglas Feith, Alice Fisher, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Chertoff, Michael Mukasey, Michael Haynes, Stephen Bradbury, Jay Bybee, and Timothy Flanigan. This information includes:

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