Category: Hate

Israel-Palestine war: Israel shut down NGO for reporting rape of teenager, ex-US official says

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-ngo-shut-down-reporting-sexual-assault-ex-us

***Serious topic and tripper warning for sexual abuse and rape of minors***

Recently the Anti-Defamation League, the Israeli government, and main stream media especially CNN has been pushing hard the narrative that Hamas sexual abused / raped some women they captured.  When several people condemned Hamas and then also condemned Israel for doing it to Palestinian prisoners, the show’s hosts tried to quickly shut down the criticism of Israel and again tried to focus on only the events done by Hamas.  I have been posting for years the abuse and mistreatment of the Palestinian prisoners who are often held without charges for long periods of time, especially minors who are not allowed to contact parents or family.  Often the family are not told their children or other members have even been detained.   Remember for Palestinians there is no due process, no civilian courts.   They are under military rule.  I did a search for Israel prisoner abuse, and these are some of the first things that the search displayed.  Notice they are about sexual abuse and rape, and the majority of the victims are boys.  In one UN article I read, sexual torture and rape of men as old as 40 has been reported and verified as credible, and as young as 15.  We don’t know if there are younger victims who have not come forward.   Hugs.  Scottie

Since the Second Intifada, in 2000, when DCIP began tracking Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military, Israeli forces have detained, interrogated, prosecuted and imprisoned approximately 13,000 Palestinian children.

Each year, the Israeli military detains between 500 and 700 Palestinian children.

NGO Defense for Children International’s offices were raided after they reported the sexual assault of a 15-year-old by an interrogator while in Israeli custody
 
Former US State Department official Josh Paul resigned over sales of arms to Israel in October (Social media)
 
By Katherine Hearst
Published date: 5 December 2023 15:08 GMT | Last update: 2 days 21 hours ago

Israeli authorities banned a Palestinian NGO after it reported the rape of a Palestinian child by Israeli forces to the US State Department in 2021, former official Josh Paul said in a CNN interview on Monday.

Paul, who resigned in October in protest over arms sales to Israel, said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour that Israeli forces had raided Defense for Children International- Palestine’s offices and designated it a terrorist organisation.

That followed a complaint made by the US State Department about the rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Al-Mascobiyya detention centre in West Jerusalem.

“[They] removed their computers and declared them a terrorist entity,” Paul said.

The DCIP is the only Palestinian human rights organisation specifically focused on children’s rights.

In February 2021, the DCIP published a report documenting the physical and sexual assault against a 15-year-old Palestinian boy by an Israeli interrogator at Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention facility in January that year. 

The DCIP reported that the detainee had been raped with an object by his interrogator and that he was made to stand against a wall where his interrogator inflicted severe pain on his genitals.

“There are no words to describe that moment,” the detainee said in the report.

A campaign of repression

According to Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, the NGO reported the assault to US officials following hundreds of unresolved complaints filed with the Israeli authorities.

“We used to submit complaints [to the Israeli authorities],” Eqtaish told MEE. “but they would not open investigations…or they would open investigations and close them under the pretext that there was no cooperation from the child or lawyer.”

According to Eqtaish, the DCIP stopped filing complaints with the Israeli authorities as they would not allow a child giving witness statements to be accompanied by a lawyer.

“So we passed the information to US officials and asked for clarification from the Israeli authorities,” Eqtaish told MEE.

“[Israel wanted to] paralyse the organisation and prevent us from revealing Israeli human rights violations against Palestinian children’

– Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP

Following the complaint, DCIP offices were raided twice by Israeli forces, on 19 July 2021, and again on 18 August 2022, when their offices were raided and “sealed off” along with the offices of seven other Palestinian NGOs, in what Amnesty International condemned as a “campaign of repression against Palestinian civil society”.

But according to Eqtaish, the DCIP had not made the connection between the complaint they had filed with the State Department and the subsequent raids until Paul’s comments on Monday, although Eqtaish added that Paul’s interpretation was “logical”.

“The organisation had already been under attack [by the Israeli authorities] for several years before the raids,” Eqtaish told MEE, adding: “[They wanted to] paralyse the organisation and prevent us from revealing Israeli human rights violations against Palestinian children.”

An atmosphere of uncertainty

In October 2021, the DCIP was designated a terrorist organisation by Israeli authorities along with five other Palestinian NGOs.

The move was condemned by the UN human rights commissioner as a “frontal attack on the Palestinian human rights movement and on human rights everywhere”.

In the immediate aftermath of the designation, Eqtaish said that, among the DCIP staff, the “whole atmosphere was surrounded with uncertainty…we didn’t know exactly when they would attack us again and what the type of attack would be,” he said.

Why Israel can torture detained Palestinian children with impunity
Read More »

Following the designation, NGO staff were inundated with queries from anxious donors.

“Instead of concentrating on our work, we had to respond to these questions,” Eqtaish told MEE. “The designation was threatening our existence as an organisation.”

Despite this, DCIP retained all but one of its donors.

“The main purpose of the designation was to dismantle our organisation, but we continue our work,” Eqtaish said.

Since the Second Intifada, in 2000, when DCIP began tracking Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military, Israeli forces have detained, interrogated, prosecuted and imprisoned approximately 13,000 Palestinian children.

Each year, the Israeli military detains between 500 and 700 Palestinian children.

Between 2016 and 2022, DCIP collected sworn affidavits from 766 Palestinian childrendetained by the Israeli military and prosecuted in Israeli military courts to track their experiences of ill-treatment and torture at the hands of Israeli forces.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.

Footage shows IDF parading scores of Palestinian men around in underwear

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/08/footage-idf-israel-military-parading-palestinian-men-around-in-underwear

Modesty is very in some cultures, including among Arabs and Muslims.  So this was totally another way to degrade and dehumanize the Palestinian people.  Hugs.  Scottie

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, said on X the incident was a “blatant attempt at the humiliation & degradation of Palestinian men … stripped & displayed like war trophies”.

Israeli media claimed images show Hamas fighters but several civilians have been identified including a journalist

00:00:56
 

Footage shows Palestinian men stripped to underwear after detention in Gaza – video

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is concerned by images of semi-naked Palestinian men being paraded by the Israeli military in Gaza, adding that all of those detained must be treated in keeping with international humanitarian law.

“We strongly emphasise the importance of treating all those detained with humanity and dignity, in accordance with international humanitarian law,” Jessica Moussan, a spokesperson for the ICRC, said in a statement.

 

The video and photographs, which were shared on social media on Thursday evening, showed dozens of men, some bound and blindfolded, stripped to their underwear in several public locations.

While Israeli media initially suggested that the images, apparently filmed by at least one Israeli soldier, showed the surrender of Hamas fighters, several of the men pictured were identified as civilians, including a journalist.

Hani Almadhoun, who works at a US charity which raises funds for the UN’s Palestine relief agency, UNRWA, said he recognised his brother, Mahmoud, a shopkeeper, in one video.

“I recognised him immediately … and recognised the area as the same area they had been sheltering.”

Almadhoun, who lives in Virginia, said his sister identified his 27-year-old nephew Abood packed in with a bunch of men in the back of a military truck. Almadhoun’s father and 13-year-old nephew, Omar, were also detained.

All four were later released, said Hani, who added that none of them had links to militant groups.

Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (the New Arab) said its correspondent Diaa al-Kahlout was among them. In a statement, the news organisation said Kahlout had been rounded up along with his brothers, relatives and other civilians at the market street in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, and then “were forced to strip off their clothes and searched and humiliated before they were taken to an unknown location”.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called for his release as Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission in London, said on X the images evoked “some of humanity’s darkest passages of history”.

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, said on X the incident was a “blatant attempt at the humiliation & degradation of Palestinian men … stripped & displayed like war trophies”.

 
US risks ‘complicity in war crimes’, says Human Rights Watch – as it happened
Read more 
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/dec/08/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-gaza-palestine-idf-civilians-blinken

The images and video show the men kneeling in the street or in a sandy location and were said to have been taken in several different places in Gaza. They emerged on Thursday evening not long after reports in Israeli media describing the surrender of dozens of members of Hamas around the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya.

There have also been conflicting reports about where the images were filmed. An Israeli government spokesperson claimed it was in the vicinity of Jabaliya and Shuja’iya, Hamas strongholds where there has been heavy street fighting since Israel resumed its ground offensive last week, while Palestinians – including a Hamas spokesperson – said the images were from Beit Lahiya, claiming the men had been rounded up at two UN schools being used as shelters, pointing to an identifying shop sign in one picture.

In one widely shared picture, dozens of men wearing only their underwear can be seen kneeling, many of them blindfolded, near a sandy berm with their hands apparently tied behind their backs while a group of Israeli soldiers stand over them.

It is not clear how and why the images came to be leaked. While the source of the images was not made explicit, one video – showing rows of men kneeling in a street, also stripped – appears to have been recorded by an Israeli soldier walking alongside the prisoners.

In another piece of footage, stripped men can be seen being transported in a military vehicle.

While the Israel Defense Forces – which were contacted by the Guardian about the source of the pictures and if they were officially distributed – have yet to comment, a spokesperson appeared to suggest that the Israeli military was arresting and interrogating all men it came across in areas where there was fighting.

An Israeli government spokesperson, Eylon Levy, insisted the men had been apprehended in areas he described as Hamas strongholds.

“We are talking about individuals who are apprehended in Jabaliya and Shuja’iya […] Hamas strongholds and centres of gravity,” he told a briefing.

“We are talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago.”

Despite Israel’s warnings for civilians to evacuate, they are under no obligation to leave and tens of thousands of Palestinians still remain in combat areas, including Gaza’s north.

The Israeli military has been telling civilians to leave areas where it plans to operate after launching its campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza in response to the group’s murderous terror attacks in Israel on 7 October.

“[Hamas] are hiding underground and come out and we fight them,” said R Adm Daniel Hagari in response to a question at a press conference. “Whoever is left in those areas, they come out from tunnel shafts, and some from buildings, and we investigate who is linked to Hamas, and who isn’t. We arrest them all and interrogate them.”

Under international humanitarian law, combatants in armed forces captured in uniform are entitled to protection under the third Geneva convention, which requires that PoWs be treated humanely and with respect for their honour in all circumstances. They are protected against any act of violence, as well as against intimidation, insults and “exposure to public curiosity”.

While it is not clear that Hamas members would be covered by the convention, the apparent presence of civilians among those being paraded raises questions about their treatment.

The images came as further details were disclosed on how Israel is planning to prosecute detained Hamas members accused of involvement in the 7 October massacre in Israel.

The attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, and state attorney Amit Aisman issued a joint statement suggesting that special legal mechanisms would be required to prosecute those involved.

Describing 7 October as “an incident that was extraordinary and unprecedented in scope”, they said: “The law enforcement establishment needs to address the challenges of the complex investigation into the criminal acts of terrorism, as well as the complex legal issues that stem from those acts.”

Among possibilities that have been apparently discussed is a special tribunal, while some politicians have called for the imposition of the death penalty.

Ryan Grim Calmly Dismantles CNN’s Unhinged Pro-Israel Distraction Tactics

PROJECT 2025!!! It’s WORSE Than You Think! | Christopher Titus | Armageddon Update

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

‘Cry more!’ Florida SAT scores sink again while education leaders act like online trolls | Commentary

‘Cry more!’ Florida SAT scores sink again while education leaders act like online trolls | Commentary

 

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. (left) likes to troll journalists on Twitter and stage feisty debates over preferred pronouns. Meanwhile, Florida's SAT scores have dropped once again. The state ranks 45th in America. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. (left) likes to troll journalists on Twitter and stage feisty debates over preferred pronouns. Meanwhile, Florida’s SAT scores have dropped once again. The state ranks 45th in America. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

New rankings show Florida students are posting some of the lowest SAT scores in America.

We’re talking 46th place. Down another 17 points overall to 966, according to the combined reading and math scores shared by the College Board.

Florida trails other Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia. We trail states where more students take the test, like Illinois and Indiana.

We somehow now even slightly trail Washington, D.C. — a district long maligned as one of the supposedly worst in America, where all students take the test.

This should be an all-hands-on-deck crisis. Yet what are Florida education officials obsessing over?

Pronouns. And censoring books.

While other states focus on algebra and reading comprehension, Florida’s top education officials are waging wars with teachers about what kind of pronouns they can use and defending policies that have led to books by Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neale Hurston being removed from library shelves. We are reaping what they sow.

Tolstoy, Sendak picture book among hundreds banned from Florida schools

But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Florida’s current crop of top education officials isn’t just the misguided policies they’re pushing, it’s the way they behave. Like it’s all a joke. Like Twitter trolls.

They’re calling names, mocking those trying to have serious conversations about education and generally reveling in owning the libs.

A few months ago, Orlando Sentinel education reporter Leslie Postal spent weeks trying to get public records about a newly hired state education employee. Postal just wanted to explain to taxpayers how their money was being spent. But state officials refused to answer questions.

So Postal wrote up the piece, and Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz shared the piece on Twitter (now X) with a two-word comment: “Cry more!”

For those of you who don’t speak troll, “Cry more” is a response used by some social-media users — usually those juvenile in age or intellect — to mock someone who is unhappy. The folks at Urban Dictionary, who revel in all things trolly, define “Cry More” as a “phrase used in online games when someone is getting owned, and they b*tch about it.”

The game in question here, mind you, was the Sentinel’s two-month quest to get answers about how the state was spending tax dollars. And the response from the state’s top education official was: “Cry more!” What a role model for students.

That’s just one example. Last week, after I wrote a column about rampant book-censorship in the state — with one district shelving 300 titles — State Board of Education Member Ryan Petty responded (at quarter ’til 1 in the morning): “Just dumb. This passes as journalism.” Followed by a clown emoji.

This holiday season, give the gift of books banned in Florida | Commentary

OK, for argument’s sake, let’s say I’m the dumbest clod to ever set foot in the Sunshine State. Petty still wouldn’t answer any of the direct questions posed in both the column and on Twitter. Specifically, if the goal isn’t widespread book-banning, why won’t his education department provide a definitive list of what books it believes students shouldn’t have access to in school?

Petty opted for emojis over answers, because that’s what trolls do.

The responses on Twitter to Diaz and Petty — both appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis — were about what you’d expect. One user told Petty: “My ninth grader could have crafted a more articulate response.” Several users responded similarly to Diaz’s “Cry More!” post, questioning his ability to maturely discuss policy and referring back to a Miami Herald investigation into student claims of “inappropriate behavior” by Diaz back when he was a teacher; claims Diaz said were bogus smears.

None of this did a thing to address this state’s education issues. Yet that’s where we are in Florida these days, mired in culture wars and trolling each other.

We also saw something similar last week when Diaz refused to directly answer questions from Orange County Public Schools about whether teachers were allowed to honor the requests of transgender students who wanted to be addressed with different pronouns — if the teachers wanted to and if those students also had their parents’ written permission. (Think about how bizarre it is that schools must even ask that question … in the so-called “parental rights” state.)

In his response to the district, Diaz offered a theatrical and condescending response that referred to “false” pronouns but which school officials concluded didn’t actually answer the question in a straightforward manner. Just more troll games … involving a population of teens more prone to self-harm and suicide, no less.

Orange teachers can use students’ preferred pronouns with parental OK, supt. says

As far as the SAT goes, the test certainly has its share of legitimate critics. But it’s still one of the best apples-to-apples metrics we have for student learning.

Yet hardly any Florida media organizations even covered the October release of the new SAT scores that showed Florida’s poor showing. Why? Because we’ve been trained to follow the bouncing-ball, culture-war debate of the day.

So we see plenty of coverage about Florida supposedly ranking No. 1 in “educational freedom” by partisan political groups and scant addition to real education issues.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like hard numbers more than political posturing or magazine rankings. So do others who actually care about and study education.

Paul Cottle, a physics professor who authors a blog that focuses on STEM education, noted Florida’s increasingly cruddy SAT scores back in October when they were released — when everyone else was focused on the debate-of-the-day.

Cottle noted that Florida’s math scores for 4th graders were solid but that the SAT scores for graduating seniors were so bad, they suggested something was going awry for students before Florida schools sent them into the real world.

Cottle called the showing “a sad state of affairs.”

He’s right. Yet we’re getting precisely the educational environment and results that our culture-warring politicians are cultivating — an environment where trolls thrive, even if students don’t.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Prominent Evangelical: You Can Tell Sodomites By The Look On Their Faces And They All Face “Certain Death”

Prominent Evangelical: You Can Tell Sodomites By The Look On Their Faces And They All Face “Certain Death”

“When the homosexual comes out of the closet and he is bragging about his activities, demanding not only acceptance, but endorsement, that is a nation that God is taking his hand off of. And that’s exactly who we are.

“Here’s a principle that I want you to never forget: Sin often begins manifesting itself even by the transformation of your characteristics. About 80 percent of the time before a homosexual opens his mouth, you can see by the look on his face that he’s—I won’t say the word ‘gay’; it almost slipped out—a sodomite will always reflect it in his countenance. And if he doesn’t naturally, he’ll learn it by those he hangs around with.

“We are spending billions of dollars to keep these sodomites alive, and we should out of compassion. But it can be cured overnight by repentance, by a change of lifestyle.

“There will be certain death among those who’ve been practicing, but I believe God would so reveal himself that we’d find the cure and instead of just keeping them alive with drugs, they’d find a genuine cure if they hadn’t already aborted the one that had the cure.” – Prominent evangelical Rick Scarborough.

Kyle Mantyla reports at Right Wing Watch:

Scarborough has a long history of launching virulent attacks against LGBTQ people, calling them “sodomites” and declaring that AIDS is God’s “judgment as a result of an immoral act,” while insisting in 2015 that “God would probably give us the cure for AIDS today” if the U.S. stopped supporting gay rights. Kirk’s Turning Point USA and several other right-wing organizations—including Liberty Counsel, Patriot Academy, ACT for America, and Liberty Pastors—have partnered with Scarborough and his Recover America organization.

Scarborough last appeared here in October 2015 when he produced a copy of the Obergefell ruling during a sermon, threw it to the floor, and proceeded to walk on it. The screenshot above is from his recent appearance on Mike Huckabee’s TBN show.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Rick Scarborough says he’s willing to burn to death to stop gay marriage. Rick Scarborough leads Christian coalition which declares willingness to go to prison over same-sex marriage. Rick Scarborough says God would be “perfectly justified” in nuking America because we have gay ambassadors. Rick Scarborough suggests filing a class action lawsuit against homosexuality itself.

 

DoctorDJ15 hours ago

O/T: Love this!

Thumbnail
 
Uncle Mark is back! 15 hours ago edited

”We are spending billions of dollars to keep these sodomites alive…”

Just as WE are spending billions to keep heteros alive, and children educated, and for the military, and roads & bridges through our taxes and insurance. It’s what our society does.

You know who doesn’t pay for most of those?
CHURCHES

DaddyRay15 hours ago

They all have such a fascination with butt sex

DaddyRay  Joe in NM15 hours ago

I think I should have phrased it as an “unhealthy obsession”

Wallace Muenzenberger  DaddyRay13 hours ago

Rick Scarborough is equating homosexuality with sodomy. Scientific research has shown that many str8 men enjoy butt sex with their wives and girlfriends while having little to no interest in doing it with other men.

ECarpenter  DaddyRay13 hours ago edited

We know that the majority of sodomitical buttfucking is heterosexual. While a much smaller percentage of them do it, there are lots more of them than us, so the actual numbers are greater.

His harangue is not only crazy and immoral, he’s condemning a big number of het sodomites in his own congregation, without (seemingly) knowing it.

Remember, being a “virgin” is very important in church culture, but buttfucking doesn’t affect a young woman’s virgin-ness, since Jesus only counts vaginal sex. So for centuries, lots of the opposite sex couples in christian congregations have had buttsex before they got married, to preserve the woman’s virginity and to not get pregnant. And some of them like it a lot and continue after they get married.

One straight woman friend told me that getting buttfucked gave her multiple long, rolling, crazy fine orgasms that were very different from her vagina-fucked orgasms. And her boyfriend liked fucking her ass as much as her vagina.

Don’t ever let these hemorrhoid-ridden assholes claim that there’s such a thing as “gay sex”. There’s not – every possible sexual activity same sex couples do is also done by opposite sex couples. Except maybe mutual docking.

olandp  ECarpenter12 hours ago

clay 16 hours ago

“a sodomite will always reflect it in his countenance.”

Most people call that a smile and a lack of tension.

J.Martindale15 hours ago

Fuck you and your horrific god. I am 76 and had HIV 37 years. It is a disease, not a punishment, asshole. If there were punishment for mindless meanness, you would be in hell today.

leathersmith  J.Martindale15 hours ago

its only really punishing in developing parts of the world with little access to healthcare and grown men who have HIV think the only way to get rid of it is to give it to a virgin girl. The children suffer the most.

puny god

Ščŏŧŧ Ċ – 🇺🇦 🕊16 hours ago

Rick Scarborough says he’s willing to burn to death to stop gay marriage.

I don’t think his burning to death would have any impact, but it’s a testable hypothesis.

Nico El Azul Gato Proud & Blue 16 hours ago

Yet here we have pictures of those oh so righteous, holy, peaceful and loving followers of Jesus Trump.

Thumbnail
 
Chucktech 16 hours ago
When the homosexual comes out of the closet and he is bragging about his activities, demanding not only acceptance, but endorsement…

 

Oh, fuck you. I demand nothing more than to pursue life, liberty and happiness and god-goofy cretins the likes of you will not be allowed to deny me.

Hank: NO MORE WoW!!! 16 hours ago
Thumbnail
 
Sashineb16 hours ago

Worry about your creepy brethren instead.

Thumbnail
Christopher 15 hours ago

Who wants to break it to this genius that every human alive will face certain death?

Death is the only inevitability in life.

Friday  Christopher15 hours ago

Meanwhile these Christocreeps think they’re being horribly oppressed if someone ‘offends’ them. They’re the ones that terrified of death they’ll torture children to appease their idea of a homophobic God dumping them into their Hell over not obeying their own ‘rules’ they can’t even keep it in their own pants about.

Randy503 16 hours ago

Last time I heard blatant hate and homophobic like that was the early 1990s.

ChrisInKansas  Randy50316 hours ago

It’s back in style again, sadly.

 

MSNBC & Fox News Join Forces To Smear Pramila Jayapal Following CNN Interview

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal is facing smears from both Fox News and MSNBC following her appearance on CNN this past Sunday.

‘They Came in the Dark’: Settler Violence Intensifies in the West Bank

Since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, extremist settlers in the West Bank have been emboldened, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians, according to the United Nations.

US / POTUS Biden Can No Longer Turn Blind Eye to Netanyahu’s Trump-like Tactics

US / POTUS Biden Can No Longer Turn Blind Eye to Netanyahu’s Trump-like Tactics

Jill reblogged the post and I feel it is so clear and important to understand, along with being really glad that Gronda is posting again, I also want to spread the post. Hugs.  Scottie

Let’s talk about Russia, clubs, and the future of the US….