Spanish Foreign Minister arrives in Gaza

EXCLUSIVE IMAGES

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo arrived Tuesday in the Gaza Strip through Erez crossing with Israel on a few hours' visit to the embattled enclave, a Palestinian official said.

Garcia-Margallo "aims to get acquainted with the impact of the recent Israeli offensive in the coastal enclave and hold talks with chief of UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA Pierre Krahenbuhl," Maher Abu Sabha, head of the Palestinian border authority, told The Anadolu Agency.

The top diplomat arrived in Ramallah on Monday, where he met with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

The visit comes as part of a regional tour for the Spanish minister to get familiar with the "status quo" in the Middle East, a statement by the Spanish Foreign Ministry said earlier.

In November, the Spanish parliament called for recognizing Palestine as a state.

MEMO Photographer: Mohammad Asad

Source : https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/16311-spanish-fm-arrives-in-gaza

JEWISH SETTLERS STORMED SECONDARY SCHOOL IN OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Approximately ten Israeli settlers stormed Wednesday a secondary school in Tur neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem and fired tear gas and sound bombs into it under Israeli police protection.

Head of the follow-up committee in Tur neighborhood Mufid Abu Ghannam confirmed that ten Jewish settlers stormed the school Wednesday afternoon while the students were leaving their classes.

The students panicked at the attack and started shouting and screaming, forcing the settlers and soldiers to withdraw from the school amid heavy fire of tear gas bombs.

Israeli forces, in their turn, fired heavy volleys of live bullets into the air to scare the students, he added.

Beit Orot settlers have twice tried to break into the school on previous days; however the local residents confronted them and forced them to withdraw, Abu Ghannam pointed out. 

Meanwhile, Israeli forces stormed under heavy tear gas bombs the nearby girls' elementary school under the pretext of looking for a wanted person.

Source : http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=69650

Israel sexually abusing child prisoners frequently in closed prisons

Israel campaigns to block UN human rights findings on Gaza onslaught

Horror in Gaza

Press TV 14 Jan — Israel has launched a campaign to block a UN inquiry into Tel Aviv’s human rights violations during its 50-day bloody war on the blockaded Gaza Strip last summer. Israel is directing its diplomats to ensure that a majority of 47 countries on the UN Commission of Inquiry on Gaza do not support an investigation into the latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian land, the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. The campaign aims to get “as many countries as possible – with the hope that at least 24 will not approve the committee’s findings – to either vote against, abstain or not show up [for the vote],” the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs told the representatives abroad in a cable. Part of the campaign against the UN commission is to discredit its head, Canadian lawyer William Schabas, who has accused Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression against Palestinians. The UN body is due to present its findings on the Gaza war to the UN Human Rights Council in March. A vote on the findings will be held a few days after the report is submitted.

 See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/campaigns-findings-onslaught#sthash.YmlNda4u.7fVUzbFS.dpuf

The death of Tom Hurndall

The International Solidarity Movement today remember Tom Hurndall, ISM volunteer who 12 years ago on 11th April 2003 was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper.

The Israeli army were invading the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip when Tom and other ISM volunteers saw a group of children in a street where snipers were firing. Witnesses say that bullets were shot around the children, who were paralysed by fear and unable to move – Tom pulled one child to safety, but as he was returning for a second, he was shot in the head by a sniper.

He went into a coma and died nine months later on 13th January 2004. He was 22 years old. Today, on the day he was shot, we pay tribute to Tom’s bravery. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as we think Tom would have wished.

“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.” – Tom Hurndall.

Source : International Solidarity Movement

             

SHAMELESS !

Source : Ireland - Palestine Solidarity Campaign 

www.ipsc.ie

I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

 

With all the never ending rants of how Islam doesn't allow free speech, and the West simply being built upon it, things have gotten ugly - fast. With absolute hatred bubbling, the state of things have become immensely worrying.

I'm simply going to be honest here and say that I'm not one who appreciates the comparison of one brutality and murder with another, but in this case, I think it has become a necessity.

In the year 2014 alone, 17 journalists, ones whom have actually done their jobs as it entails (that needs to be said simply because in a time like today, one has a better chance of finding flying unicorns, than finding a respectable and true journalist), had been murdered in Gaza.

SEVENTEEN.

How many people have heard of them? How many people even knew they were brutally killed? Does one journalist suddenly become less worthy than the other, simply as how the lives of Palestinians has seemingly become worthless when compared to their neighbors?

...Just because?

What about THEIR right to freedom of speech? Their families' rights? Their children's? If we want to argue, and stand for something, don't stand for one.

Stand for all.

1. Hamid Abdullah Shehab - "Media 24"company.

2. Najla Mahmoud Haj - Media Activist.

3 Khalid Hamad - The "Kontnao" Media Production company.

4. Ziad Abdul Rahman Abu Hin - al-Ketab satellite channel.

5. Ezzat Duheir - Prisoners Radio.

6. Bahauddin Gharib - Palestine TV.

7 Ahed Zaqqout - Veteran Sports Journalist.

8 Ryan Rami - Palestinian Media Network.

9 Sameh Al-Arian - Al-Aqsa TV.

10 Mohammed Daher - Editor in al-Resala paper.

11. Abdullah Vhjan - Sports Journalist.

12 Khaled Hamada Mqat - Journalist, Director of Saja News website.

13. Shadi Hamdi Ayyad - Freelance Journalist

14 Mohammed Nur al-Din al-Dairi - Photojournalist, Palestinian Network.

15. Ali Abu Afesh - Doha Center for Media.

16 (Italian Journalist) Simone Camille - Photographer, Associated Press.

17. Abdullah Fadel Murtaja.

See those names?

They are the 17 journalists that were killed.

Stripped off their rights to report,

To speak,

To breathe.

I've made no mention of faiths, nor have I listed them down in this post, because simply, it's something that doesn't matter.

People of all backgrounds and all faiths, are being murdered for what they do. By devils who believe that their acts, are for, and by the sake of their religions.

The only difference, is that one gets away with it, and the other doesn't.

So as we mourn over the 12 lives of the Charlie Hebdo Attack, let us mourn for these 17 journalists too.

What happened in Paris had been an act of absolute barbarity, one to be condemned to the highest degree. Just as how it should be, for every other brutality.

May peace and justice come to them, and all those they have left behind.

I am not Charlie Hebdo, I am Humanity.

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/fila-magnus/charlie-hebdo_b_6440050.html

Related : http://stateofblood.blogspot.com/2014/08/these-17-journalists-were-killed-by.html

This photo shows a journalist killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza on July 30, 2014.

Italian Journalist, killed in Gaza