September 29, 2009, DCI-Palestine submits to UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Photo: Palestinian children walk along the Israeli apartheid wall in Palestine.

On 29 September 2009, DCI-Palestine submitted 11 cases to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The cases arise out of three incidents where the Israeli army entered Palestinian villages in the middle of the night and rounded up children en masse, accusing them of throwing stones at the Wall and settler by-pass roads in the West Bank.

The first incident occurred in the village of Tura al Gharbiya, near Jenin, in the early hours of 19 January 2009. Units from the Israeli army took children as young as 12 years old from their homes and interrogated them in the village youth centre before transferring them to an interrogation and detention centre. The children report being beaten and threatened into providing confessions stating that they threw stones at the Wall.

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guardian.co.uk Thursday 24 September 2009.

Photo: Masser Israel’s apartheid wall in occupied Palestine.

Spain’s government today said it had expelled a group of Israeli scientists from a state-funded solar energy competition because they were based in occupied areas of the West Bank.

The decision to expel the team from the Ariel University Centre of Samaria from Solar Decathlon Europe, an international competition involving 20 universities, provoked angry reactions in Israel.

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Campagne de Boycott – Désinvestissement – Sanctions au Forum social québécois

Samedi 10 Octobre 9h00 à 17h00
UQAM, 315 Ste-Catherine est
local R-M 120
Montréal, Québec

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Hour by Stefan Christoff, September 17th, 2009.

Photo: Valerian Mazataud. In Montreal Mohammed Khatib speaks to the media.

Eyewitnesses on the ground in Bil’in, Palestine, recount that in the early morning hours of Sept. 16, Israeli occupation forces seriously beat Palestinian community member and activist Mohammad Khatib during a nighttime military raid on civilian homes in Bil’in.

“As Israeli soldiers came into Bil’in, Mohammad came over to the soldiers who were raiding a civilian home without pretext and threw him down on the ground and began beating him,” outlines Israeli human rights lawyer Emily Schaeffer who represents Bil’in village.

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Press release, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine 22 September 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills Israel’s apartheid wall in the Palestinian West Bank.

The University Center of Ariel in Samaria (AUCS) has been excluded from the Solar Decathlon, an international university competition promoting sustainable architecture.

The self-styled AUCS, claiming to represent Israel, though situated in the illegal settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank, was one out of 20 architecture teams short-listed from university entries last April to compete for the Solar Decathlon-Europe 2010. The Spanish Government together with the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid organizes this most prestigious competition for sustainable architecture in the world.

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Daily Star by Matthew Mosley, Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi Antennas in the sky in Beirut, Lebanon.

BEIRUT: “We’re a growing family,” says Zeid Hamdan, describing the Lebanese underground music scene. “Audiences have been following us since the beginning and they see constant progress. They see that we’re serious about the music. Now a whole new generation of teenagers is becoming interested in what we do.”

If Hamdan gets his way, underground music will soon break into the light of mainstream media attention. One half of the defunct band Soap Kills and one third of cult rockers The New Government, Hamdan has fought to promote the alternative scene on various fronts. Now, with “The Road to Kfifane,” he is presiding over a music festival dedicated solely to Lebanese talent.

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Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009. Palestine’s first BDS prisoner of conscience!

Photo: Israel’s apartheid wall in Palestine.

On Tuesday, September 22, Mohammad Othman (33 years old)—a Palestinian human rights activist and advocate of the non-violent civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)—was arrested by Israeli authorities at the Allenby Crossing, the border terminal between Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territory. He was returning from a trip to Norway—where he had been promoting BDS—when he was detained, arrested and then moved to a prison where he is being held for a military hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

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September 21st, 2009 Haaretz

Photo: Palestinian holds Israeli military shells in Gaza.

United Nations investigator Richard Goldstone, whose commission of inquiry found Israel guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Strip, said Monday that Israel Defense Forces soldier and officers must be held accountable for any violations to military standards.

Goldstone’s findings outraged Israeli officials across the political and military spectrum, who accused the former South African judge of bias and failure to sufficiently recognize as war crimes Hamas’ rocket fire during the winter offensive.

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Richard Falk, Electronic Intifada, 22 September 2009.

Photo: Palestinian youth hoist flag admidts rubble in Gaza.

Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the United Nations fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza war of last winter.

Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being “deeply charged and politically loaded,” and was overcome only because he and his fellow commissioners were “professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation,” adding that “above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war,” as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones. The four-person fact-finding mission was composed of widely respected and highly qualified individuals, including the distinguished international law scholar Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics. Undoubtedly adding complexity to Goldstone’s decision is the fact that he is Jewish, with deep emotional and family ties to Israel and Zionism, bonds solidified by his long association with several organizations active in Israel.

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Haaretz by Udi Aloni, September 22nd, 2009

Photo: ActiveStills Palestinians trying to reach Jerusalem during Ramadan.

Jewish international celebrities, from Jerry Seinfeld to Sacha Baron Cohen, have come out once again, riding the horses of glory, to save Israel from the cruel enemy, that is to save her from us, those fighting for human rights.

They have published a counter-declaration to the Toronto declaration. The latter, of which I am a co-drafter along with Naomi Klein, John Greyson and others, protests the cooperation between the Toronto Film Festival and the rebranding of the State of Israel as an enlightened democratic state (instead of an occupying state).

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