Respect: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM – سلام القدس عليكم

The Rafah crossing. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS. RAFAH, Gaza, Aug 30 2012, 1st Published at Inter Press Service (IPS) -By Eva Bartlett “I waited from 10 am till 5 pm for my wife to cross from Egypt. She was among many hundreds who were coming into Gaza. Some waited since 6 am, some since the day before.” Jaber (who requested anonymity out of fear of future restrictions on his exiting Gaza) was relieved when, a few days before Eid holiday began on Aug. 19, his wife was able to cross from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. During the three days of Eid, the Rafah border crossing was closed in both directions. “Of course I was happy that my wife got through, but I was also disgusted at how Palestinians are forced to wait for, or are denied, the right to exit and enter our country.” On Aug. 25, the border opened anew, temporarily easing the worries of Palestinians in Gaza who feared the opposite outcome: indefinite closure. Maher Abu Sabha, head of Gaza’s border crossings, explained the …

In an interview that was broadcast Wednesday night on the Syrian channel, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said that his country was engaged in a regional and international battle, what is happening is neither a revolution nor a spring, it is about terrorist acts in every sense of the term.
Syria was targeted for its support to the resistance and its relation with Iran, “Syria does not need a green light neither from its friends nor from its enemies and opponents to defend its sovereign and national causes,” the situation is improving, settling it requires more time, because there is constant arming of militants in Homs specifically, adding that “we cannot separate the situation in Homs from that in other provinces.

Assad emphasized that “the Syrian media was able to strike real media empires that are not just supported financially but also politically, yet it can develop and become more successful.”

“we don’t respond to rumors because such rumors (about Assad and his fami…

Rachel Corrie and the Kosher Legal Stamp

Gilad Atzmon
Judge Oded Gershon’s ruling earlier this week that the state of Israel is not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie, came as no surprise. In fact it reaffirms everything we know about the Jewish state - its politics, legal system and spirit. Israel is surely a most peculiar state - it is impervious to ethical thinking and humanist thought.

Accordingly, Judge Gershon gave this week a kosher stamp to a cold-blooded murder and by so doing, he proved, once again, that Israeli criminal actions are consistent with the most vile interpretations of Old Testament and Talmudic Goy-hating.

As one would predict, Judge Gershon, restricted himself to legalism and litigation as opposed to ethical thinking - he actually blamed Corrie for not ‘behaving reasonably’. Yet, one may wonder what is this ‘reason’ or more precisely, what does an Israeli mean when he or she refers to ‘reason’.

Rachel Corrie was bulldozed to death by an Isra…

USA and the War on Terror

THEUS military announced on Monday that no criminal charges would be brought against the US marines in Afghanistan who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Nor, the military announced, would any criminal charges be filed against the US troops who "tried to burn about 500 copies of the Qur'an as part of a badly bungled security sweep at an Afghan prison in February, despite repeated warnings from Afghan soldiers that they were making a colossal mistake".
In doing so, the US military, as usual, brushed aside demands of Afghan officials for legal accountability for the destructive acts of foreign soldiers in their country.

The US instead imposed "disciplinary measures" in both cases, ones that "could include letters of reprimand, a reduction in rank, forfeit of some pay, physical restriction to a military base, extra duties or some combination of those measures". Both incidents trig…