BRUSSELS (IPS) - Israel’s relations with the European Union were tense for most of 2009 — if newspaper headlines are to be believed. In the past week, a British court drew fierce criticism from Israeli politicians after it issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, following a complaint that she had authorized war crimes in Gaza. Read more about EU remains cozy with Israel, despite the headlines
New Profile, the feminist movement to civilize Israeli society, wrote Minister of Education Gideon Saar strongly condemning his recent instructions to prohibit its members’ participation in high school debates convened by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel on questions of human rights and freedom of expression. Read more about Israeli feminists decry militarization of Israeli education system
A new report by the Alternative Information Center aims to inform and empower the debate on an academic boycott by giving information not on the Israeli violence and violations of International law and human rights, but on the part in the Israeli occupation played by the very academic institutions in question, and how vulnerable are they to a possible boycott. Read more about Report: Israeli academic institutions' role in the occupation
Sixty-one years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Israel continues to pursue clearly discriminatory policies and practices and the violation of Palestinians’ human rights have persisted, and escalated. Israel’s persistent human rights violations would not be possible without the complicity or support of the international community. Read more about Palestinians still deprived of their fundamental rights
As part of a recent escalation of political arrests in the West Bank village of Bilin, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee, was arrested by Israeli soldiers. Abu Rahmah is a high school teacher in the Latin Patriarchate school in Birzeit near Ramallah and is the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee against the wall and settlements. Read more about Palestinian grassroots organizer arrested during Israeli military night raid
Occupation military forces raided several towns, villages and camps in the Nablus area on 9 December 2009, engaging in a mass arrest campaign targeting alleged members and supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, two days before the 42nd anniversary of the Front will be commemorated with large marches and activities throughout Palestine. Read more about Israeli forces mass arrest Palestinian activists
The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israel: "a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier"
Some 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel’s southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month’s ballot. The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israel denies Bedouin right to elections
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) released today [2 December 2009] a new report which exposes the shifts in Israel’s combat doctrine as evidenced in the prosecution of operation “Cast Lead” and from numerous public oral and written statements made by high ranking military officers and senior Israeli government officials. Read more about Report finds new Israeli war doctrine targets civilians
Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Palestinian Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Discrimination keeps Palestinian women out of Israel's workforce
