Winter Patriot Community Blog

April 17, 2012 - Prisoners' Day is commemorated every year on April 17th. Today 1,600 Palestinian prisoners began an open-ended hunger strike that calls for better conditions in prison, including the right to family visits. Currently, there are over 4,500 prisoners behind Israeli bars, 203 of them being children and 6 women. Newly graduated student Ola Haniyeh is one of them. In the early morning hours of Monday March 26th, a large force of Israeli soldiers surrounded the Haniyeh house in Al-Bireh, located in the heart of the West Bank's capital city of Ramallah. After setting up a perimeter around the house, 12 well-armed soldiers kicked down the Haniyeh's door and entered the home. They broke the door. They didn't knock. They didn't ring. They broke the door and we found them in the middle of our bedroom," says 26 year-old Dima Haniyeh...

April 17, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri gets a press 'award' of sorts, we look at his long history of attacking the press since he became prime minister in 2006, the White House realizes (at least somewhat) that keeping Nouri happy won't hold Iraq together, corpses and bombings and shooting make it appear 2006 is stating a comeback, and more. In Nouri al-Maliki's Iraq, everyone's targeted and that includes journalists. Nouri has long been anti-press...

April 17, 2012 - The Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) has officially barred 10 contenders from running in upcoming presidential elections, according to Egypt's state news agency, MENA. Tuesday's decision confirms this past weekend's initial disqualification. The appeals of three main candidates were rejected Tuesday, seeing Khairat El-Shater - put forward by the Muslim Brotherhood as their candidate for May's presidential elections, ex-intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and Salafist preacher Hazem Abu-Ismail officialy disqualified from the presidency race....

April 17, 2012 - Air France demanded to know the religion of a passenger on a flight from Nice to Tel Aviv and removed her because she is not a Jew. The 15 April incident, confirmed by an Air France official, may violate international and European law by subjecting prospective passengers to illegal religious discrimination. Over the past few days, Israeli authorities have reacted to an effort by hundreds of European travelers to visit the occupied West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians by stationing hundreds of armed police and soldiers at the main international airport at Lydd, detaining and expelling travelers, and ordering European airlines to prevent boarding of travelers that Israel has placed on a political blacklist....

April 17, 2012 - Othman Ebrahim Assad Younus, a Palestinian prisoner serving four life sentences in Jalboue Prison in Israel, says he was raped by two of his jailors while in solitary confinement. Younus has yet to receive any treatment for injuries he sustained after being arrested by Israeli Special Forces. His family said he needs braces for his legs and arms and he needs psychological therapy following his brutal experience. In 1993, Younus became involved in the armed resistance against Israel after his father was killed when an Israeli colonist ran him over with his car, along with his sister and pregnant niece....

April 17, 2012 - Today the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about a horrific U.S. missile strike that killed dozens of civilians in Yemen. This was the Obama administration's first known missile strike in Yemen, carried out with one or more cruise missiles launched from an American warship or submarine on December 17, 2009. The U.S. military reportedly used cluster bombs, killing at least 41 people in the remote mountain village of al-Majalah in Yemen's Abyan province. The government was purportedly targeting "militants," but those killed include at least 21 children and 14 women. Entire families were wiped out. It is the worst reported loss of civilian life from a U.S. targeted killing strike in Yemen to date....

April 17, 2012 - Since November 2005, when the Washington Post first reported that the CIA had held "high-value detainees" in its "war on terror" in secret prisons in eastern Europe, and Human Rights Watch then revealed that prisons were located in Poland and Romania, concerned politicians and organizations have worked hard to expose the truth about these prisons (and another that was later discovered in Lithuania). No one in a position of authority in these countries admitted that these prisons had existed, but important work confirming their existence was done within the EU and the Council of Europe, and of great significance, in June 2006 and June 2007, were two Council of Europe reports (2007 PDF), and a European Parliament report, in January 2007 ...

April 17, 2012 - As an organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of Palestinian human rights, Al-Haq would like to take the opportunity of Palestinian Prisoners' Day to highlight the ongoing violation of the rights of Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisons, many of whom are interned without charge or trial. The continuing ill-treatment of some 4,600 political prisoners, which includes internment, the denial of family and lawyer visits, prolonged periods of isolation, and the lack of fair trial, has largely been overlooked by a wider international community that has grown more and more desensitised to such violations of international law....Today, some 1,200 Palestinian prisoners are beginning a mass hunger strike to protest their ill-treatment, poor conditions and Israel's illegal practice of internment....

April 17, 2012 - Marking the annual Palestinian Prisoners Day of 2012, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights releases the film. This short documentary addresses the issues of solitary confinement and other measures of inhuman and degrading treatment to which Palestinian prisoners are subjected in Israeli jails. The film further highlights the human rights violations related to family visits and the Israeli abuse of administrative detention...

April 17, 2012 - Today, 17 April 2012, marks the Palestinian Prisoners Day, which has been devoted by the Palestinian people to support the cause of Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails. Since 1979, Palestinians have commemorated this day, which marks the anniversary of the release of Palestinian prisoners in the first prisoner swap deal of 17 April 1974. This year, the Palestinian Prisoners Day comes at a time in which the suffering of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails doubles as a result of violations of their rights. These violations have recently peaked by the forcible transfer and deportation of prisoners, the latest of which was the forcible transfer of a female prisoner, Hanaa Shalabi, to the Gaza Strip on 01 April 2012....

April 17, 2012 -- Israeli soldiers shot and injured a Palestinian farmer on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said. Forces opened fire from an army watchtower toward fields in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, hitting Hasan Shenyo in the leg as he worked on his land, witnesses told Ma'an. Shenyo was taken to the European Hospital in Khan Younis with moderate injuries...

April 16, 2012 - Monday comes to a close with the fall of 55 martyrs, among them several children and women. There were 26 martyrs in Idlib, 11 in Homs, 9 in Hama, 5 in Daraa, 2 in Qamishly, 1 in Aleppo, and 1 in Douma in the Damascus Suburbs....Idlib: The regime's military has been shelling the city since dawn and are ongoing until now, despite Annan's deadline and the arrival of thel UN observers in Syria. The constant bombardment has resulted in the destruction of several buildings, including one building where residents were able to pull 21 corpses out of the rubble while dozens remain buried underneath. The families of the victims are burying their loved ones today in Hadiqut al-Bustan located in the al-Shamali Neighborhood... The Local Coordination Committees in Syria managed to document the names of only 20 martyrs because of the complete communications blackout. The city is in a dire humanitarian state after the continuous shelling and the complete cutoff of water and electricity...

April 16, 2012 - ...The "Palestinian Authority" has no authority over any significant matter. Control over borders is considered among the important measures of sovereignty. The Palestinians are not sovereign, nor do they have any citizenship rights in Israel. They are neither here nor there, but prisoners of a system that views them as enemies and doesn't offer them any future or hope. By refusing to allow members of the flytilla entry into the West Bank, Israel actually proved right their original claim: that the level of control Israel exercises over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories for nearly half a century makes the occupation is a unique phenomenon, well deserving of the world's attention....

April 16, 2012 - ...However it is Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye who is suffering the most for exposing the drone wars. In 2010 Shaye revealed that an airstrike that took place in al Majala, Yemen in December 2009 killing 14 women and 21 children was launched by US drones, not the Yemeni air force, thus embarrassing both the Yemeni and US authorities. Later, Shaye also interviewed AQAP leaders including Anwar Al-Awlaki challenging them about their methods. In August 2010, Shaye was kidnapped from his house by Yemeni security forces and disappeared for a month. He turned up in detention after being beaten and was sentenced to five years imprisonment for associating with terrorists. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have campaigned for his release, and it looked as though in February 2012 he was about to be freed. However a few days before Ali Abdullah Saleh, was forced to about to step down as President, Obama called him to "express concern" at the news that Shaye was about to be pardoned...

April 16, 2012 - ....These are coordinated attacks that went just as we planned," says Qari Talha, "This is only the start of what's in store this year and next for the Americans and [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai. We will show them our ability." Talha says the mastermind of the operation was Hajji Lala, the insurgency's shadow governor of Kabul and its eastern-front military chief. The attacks, which used suicide bombers and gunmen, had been in the works for months, according to Talha, bore striking similarities to last September's rocket and small-arms assaults on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters on Sunday. Once again the guerrillas took advantage of Kabul's recent growth, this time seizing not one but two high-rise construction sites and using them as platforms for the assault. The British and German embassies came under fire, as did the Afghan Parliament and Camp Eggers, a key Coalition base nearby. A separate assault took place in the eastern part of the capital, near military bases and the main prison....

April 9, 2012 - Syrian forces opened fire across two tense borders Monday, killing a TV journalist in Lebanon and wounding at least six people in a refugee camp in Turkey on the eve of a deadline for a cease-fire plan that seems all but certain to fail. A witness at the Turkish camp said he saw two refugees killed, although that account could not be independently confirmed...Turkish authorities said four Syrians and two Turks were wounded, including a Turkish translator who had entered the camp to try to calm an anti-Assad protest. But one witness, Tareq Abdul-Haqq, told The Associated Press by telephone from the camp that he saw two refugees killed in front of him...

April 9, 2012 - A week after her banishment to Gaza, Hana al-Shalabi spoke exclusively to The Electronic Intifada. She is currently at al-Quds hospital in Gaza, receiving treatment following her 43-day hunger strike against her detention without charge or trial by Israel that ended with her 1 April banishment to Gaza for three years. In her comments to The Electronic Intifada, al-Shalabi demanded that her lawyer clarify to her and to the public the controversial circumstances surrounding the deal to send her to Gaza. Al-Shalabi's account casts doubt on the claims that it was her "choice" and confirm that she may have received misleading information in order to induce her to accept the deal....

April 9, 2012 -- Israel's navy fired live ammunition at a fishing boat in the Gaza Strip on Monday, witnesses said. Several shells were fired into open areas off the Gaza coast, locals told Ma'an. An Israeli military spokeswoman said that a fishing boat had deviated from the designated fishing area, and after failing to respond to orders to return, warning shots were fired. No hits were identified and the boat returned to the designated fishing area, she added...

April 8, 2012 - Sunday drew to an end with 69 martyrs in Syria including several women and children, the martyrs are distributed as follows: 28 martyrs in Idlib, 10 among them were unidentified in the village of Sahel Roh, 19 matyrs in Homs, 12 martyrs in Hama among them 7 members of one family, 5 martyrs in Beit Jin in the Damascus Suburbs, two martyrs in each of Daraa and Deir Ezzor and a martyr in Hareitan in Halab... Damascus Suburbs: Beit Jen: 5 martyrs fell after regime forces stormed the city this morning... Idlib: 4 children between the ages of 8 and 17 were martyred in the village of Hadideh as a result of regime forces' shelling..Hama: Jreijes: 7 martyrs, among them 5 from a single family, fell due to the heavy tank shelling after midnight last night in the village amid a total communications blackout..Homs: Another massacre was committed by the regime's army in the Deir Baalbeh neighborhood, where 9 women and children were killed in the room of a house across the Faculty of Petrochemistry. They were then shot from close distance...

April 8, 2012 - In a first ever musical collaboration between South Africa and Palestine, South African band, The Mavrix, and Palestinian Oud player, Mohammed Omar, have released a music video called "The New Black". The song is taken from The Mavrix' upcoming album,"Pura Vida", due for release in June 2012. Written and composed by Jeremy Karodia and Ayub Mayet, the song was a musical reaction to the horror of the Gaza Massacre of 2008/2009 and then subsequently inspired by the book "Mornings in Jenin", authored by Susan Abulhawa. Mayet had penned the first lyrics in 2009 after the Massacre and the song went into musical hibernation. Having read the novel, "Mornings in Jenin", he then re-wrote the lyrics and the song evolved into its current version....