A leading human rights activist from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority was charged yesterday with the most serious security offences on Israel’s statute book, including espionage. Prosecutors indicted Ameer Makhoul, the head of Ittijah, an umbrella organization for Arab human rights groups in Israel, with spying on security facilities on behalf of Hezbollah after an alleged …
Continue reading “Israeli Human Rights Activist: I Was Tortured”
Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East. Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports on Monday that it …
Continue reading “Israel’s Bomb Out of the Shadows”
The construction of sections of a controversial segregated road network in the West Bank planned by Israel for Palestinians – leaving the main roads for exclusive use by settlers – is being financed by a US government aid agency, a map prepared by Palestinian researchers has revealed. USAID, which funds development projects in Palestinian areas, …
Continue reading “US Funds Israel’s Apartheid Roads Plan”
The recent arrest of two respected public figures from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority in night-time raids on their homes by the Shin Bet secret police – brought to light this week when a gag order was partially lifted – has sent shock waves through the community. The arrests are not the first of their kind. …
Continue reading “Israel’s Red Line: Real Democracy”
Author’s note: Below is the text of a talk delivered to the fifth Bilin international conference for Palestinian popular resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bilin on April 21. Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, …
Continue reading “Israel’s Large and Small Apartheids”
Two Israeli Arab brothers have won $8,000 in damages from Israel’s national carrier, El Al, after a court found that their treatment by the company’s security staff at a New York airport had been "abusive and unnecessary." Abdel Wahab and Abdel Aziz Shalabi were assigned a female security guard who watched over them at the …
Continue reading “New York Airport ‘Blind’ to El Al Racial Profiling”
An Arab member of the Israeli parliament is demanding that a newspaper be allowed to publish an investigative report that was suppressed days before Israel attacked Gaza in winter 2008. The investigation by Uri Blau, who has been in hiding since December to avoid arrest, concerned Israeli preparations for the impending assault on Gaza, known …
Continue reading “Did Banned Media Report Foretell of Gaza War Crimes?”
Jonathan Cook: Is Anat Kamm a spy or whistleblower?
A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as "Israelis," a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state. Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country’s establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction …
Continue reading “Why There Are No ‘Israelis’ in Israel”
The Israeli government has indicated that it will press ahead with a plan to enlarge the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, despite warnings that the move risks triggering a third intifada. Israeli officials rejected this week a Jerusalem court’s proposal to shelve the plan after the judge accepted that …
Continue reading “Israel’s Provocation at al-Aqsa” 
