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Interview: Avner Gvaryahu, director of Breaking the Silence - 'I helped entrench the occupation'


Middle East Monitor
Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:02 UTC
Avner Gvaryahu IDF Breaking the Silence
© Louise Green
Avner Gvaryahu, Executive Director of Breaking the Silence
A former Israeli soldier has said that it is the responsibility of Israeli citizens to call for an end to the occupation in order to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinians.

During an interview with BBC HARDtalk last week, Avner Gvaryahu, executive director of Breaking the Silence, spoke about the organisation's mission to collect testimonies from Israeli soldiers who witnessed the crimes of the military against the Palestinian people.

A former paratrooper in the army, he spoke of his personal experience as a soldier and the operations he was made to carry out.

"I was the sergeant of a snipers team and one of the routine missions we carried out in Nablus, in Jenin or the surrounding areas of those two cities, was a mission that we call a Straw Widow; you would take over a Palestinian home. Every house in the West Bank actually has a number, each and every house has a number, so we would open up the maps and look at the specific house that looked into the right place that we had to enter, and after we would verify that the house has the best parameters, windows and geographical area, we made sure that the people in the house were innocent. So we would enter a house of an innocent Palestinian home in the middle of the night," he explained.

Avner Gvaryahu, Breaking the Silence's executive director interviews to BBC HARDtalk with Stephen Sackur.

Comment:

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Padlock

Iraqi court sentences German teen 'jihadi bride' to six years in jail


RT
Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:28 UTC
Handcuffs
© Getty Images/Kazuhiro Nakamura/AFLO
An Iraqi court has sentenced German teenager Linda Wenzel, dubbed a "jihadi bride", to six years in prison for her affiliation with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), German media has reported.

Wenzel was given a five-year sentence for being a member of IS and another year for crossing into Iraq illegally, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Sunday, citing judicial sources. Her hearing at the Palace of Justice in Baghdad was closed off to the public due to her age, but representatives from the German embassy were present at the trial.

Originally from Pulsnitz, a town near Dresden in eastern Germany, Wenzel converted to Islam in 2016. After meeting extremists online at the age of 15, Wenzel ran away from home and made her way into Iraq through Turkey and Syria. There, she reportedly married a Chechen fighter, who was later killed.

After being captured in Mosul last year, Wenzel made headlines across the world when footage emerged that showed her terrified and in tears as she was dragged along by Iraqi troops. But the teenager was just one of many women from Europe and elsewhere who traveled to the Middle East to become jihadi brides.

Since her capture, Wenzel has expressed regret for her actions. "I want to go home to my family," she told reporters. "I want to get out of the war, away from the weapons, the noise. I don't know how I came up with such a dumb idea. I've completely ruined my life."
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Pistol

Man found not guilty in killing a police officer, acted in self defense

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 18 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC
Ray Shelter
© tribdem.com
Ray Shetler
In an extremely rare move, a jury has returned a verdict of not guilty in the trial of a man who killed a St. Clair Township police officer as he responded to a domestic violence call in November of 2015.

After six days of testimony and more than 20 hours of jury deliberations, Ray Shetler Jr. was found not guilty of murder Friday in the fatal shooting of St. Clair Township Police Officer Lloyd Reed, according to Trib Live. Shelter was facing the death penalty for killing the officer before he was found not guilty of first and third-degree murder.

As Trib Live reports:
Shetler, 33, of New Florence, jumped up and hugged his defense attorney as the verdict was announced. His family members, seated just one row in front of Reed's family, let out an audible gasp.

"You were in the courtroom, you saw him hugging me, thanking me for saving his life," said defense attorney Marc Daffner.

The jury found Shetler guilty of two lesser charges in connection with stealing a truck as he attempted to flee the scene of the shooting in New Florence and swam across the Conemaugh River.

Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio ordered Shetler remain in jail until he is able to post $100,000 bail that continues keeps him in custody for the theft and receiving stolen property convictions.

The judge said Shetler could be sentenced up to seven years in prison.
While there have been a few cases of people being found not guilty of killing police officers, this case stands out for several reasons.
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Vader

Over 100 examples of US meddling in foreign nations' affairs listed by Russian senators


RT
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:28 UTC
A Russian parliamentary commission has prepared a report that lists over 100 cases of US interference in other nations' internal affairs since the end of World War Two.

"We have counted approximately 100, about 101 or 102 absolutely verified and recorded facts of American involvement in the sovereign affairs of over 60 UN member-nations since the approval of this organizations' charter that bans any such involvement - since 1946 till this day," the head of the upper house Commission for Protection of State Sovereignty, Senator Andrey Klimov, was quoted as saying on Monday by TASS.
CIA election meddling
© Dov H. Levin/Carnegie Mellon Center

Comment:

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Whistle

Whistleblower retaliation: U.S. Intelligence shuts down damning report

Kevin Poulsen
The Daily Beast
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 17:23 UTC
whistle blower 800px
A top watchdog investigated 190 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers-and found that intelligence bureaucrats only once ruled in favor of the whistleblower.

The nation's top intelligence watchdog put the brakes on a report last year that uncovered whistleblower reprisal issues within America's spy agencies, The Daily Beast has learned. The move concealed a finding that the agencies-including the CIA and the NSA-were failing to protect intelligence workers who report waste, fraud, abuse, or criminality up the chain of command.

The investigators looked into 190 cases of alleged reprisal in six agencies, and uncovered a shocking pattern. In only one case out of the 190 did the agencies find in favor of the whistleblower-and that case took 742 days to complete. Other cases remained open longer. One complaint from 2010 was still waiting for a ruling. But the framework was remarkably consistent: Over and over and over again, intelligence inspectors ruled that the agency was in the right, and the whistleblowers were almost always wrong.

The report was near completion following a six-month-long inspection run out of the Intelligence Community Inspector General office. It was aborted in April by the new acting head of the office, Wayne Stone, following the discovery that one of the inspectors was himself a whistleblower in the middle of a federal lawsuit against the CIA, according to former IC IG officials.

Comment: The problem is not just within the CIA. Those trying to do the right thing by calling attention to malfeasance in other organizations are equally persecuted:

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Star of David

Palestinian village calls for international help following decision by Israeli court to proceed with demolitions


Mondoweiss
Fri, 16 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC
israel demolition susiya
On the top of the hill, at the edge of the village, Najah Moukhanam is looking with melancholy at her almond trees and blooming flowers that she planted. Her garden and tent can be destroyed at any time by the Israeli army. "I am tired. My body, my heart and my mind are tired," Moukhanam told Mondoweiss. "It's impossible that they demolish and I leave my homeland, because if I left they will take it. [So] they demolish and I build again, I will put in all my effort and stay in this land."

The inhabitants of Susiya are farmers, or so called fellahin in Arabic. In 1986, they were expelled from their village in the south Hebron Hills of the West Bank when it was declared an archaeological site by Israel. They were forced to settle a hundred meters away in tents on their farmland. Considered illegal by the Israeli state, the village of 350 residents and 107 structures including 32 houses has been dismantled several times and is constantly under demolition threat, though this has made the village a symbol of steadfastness.

Comment: The Israeli government has been destroying the homes and livelihoods of Palestinians for decades with complete impunity - and those are only the least of their crimes: Israel's never-ending crimes: It's not just settlements

See also:

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Wolf

Anti-fur protesters cause commotion at London Fashion Week show


RT
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 17:54 UTC
Anti-fur protesters
Anti-fur campaigners have caused a stir at London Fashion Week, protesting designer Christopher Kane's show. Kane is well known for using fur, most recently releasing a range of mink-covered Crocs shoes in 2017.

Animal rights group Surge has harried London Fashion Week (LFW) at every corner, protesting at the Burberry, Mary Katrantzou, and Christopher Kane shows, while also targeting 180 the Strand, the official home of the event.

At the Kane show, held on Monday afternoon at the Tate Britain in Millbank, Surge co-director Ed Winters told RT that the campaign group just wants to sit down with LFW organizers to discuss moving the fashion festival in a more ethical direction.

Winters said Monday's Christopher Kane show had been targeted as the designer is a "prolific" user of fur.
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Vader

US turns prison in Hasaka into military base


FARS
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:12 UTC
The US forces have turned Hasaka city's Central prison into a military base
© FNA
The US forces have turned Hasaka city's Central prison into a military base, media activists reported on Monday, adding that a US military helicopter has recently landed in prison area
The prison is located in a high region between al-Layliyeh and Qariwan neighborhoods in the Central part of Hasaka city, they added.

In the meantime, the militant-affiliated Orient website reported that several US army officers were transferred to the Hasaka prison in a heliborne operation to pave the ground for changing the prison into a military base.

Other sources reported that the newly-made base has been reinvigorated and equipped in the last two months as its has been a main site for dispatching arms and ammunition to the Kurdish fighters in Deir Ezzur in Eastern Syria and Manbij in the Northern part of the country.
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Info

Florida family on school shooter: "We had this monster living under our roof and we didn't know"

Paula McMahon
Sun Sentinel
Sat, 17 Feb 2018 18:50 UTC
sneads
© Staff Photographer Susan Stocker
Kimberly and James Snead took Nikolas Cruz into their home and let him live there for three months before the Parkland school shooting.
Nikolas Cruz was immature, quirky and depressed when James and Kimberly Snead took him into their Parkland home. But he was pleasant and seemed to be growing happier, they said.

How the 19-year-old turned into a killer still baffles them.

"We had this monster living under our roof and we didn't know," Kimberly Snead told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an exclusive interview Saturday. "We didn't see this side of him."

"Everything everybody seems to know, we didn't know," James Snead said. "It's as simple as that."


Comment: Criminal minds are experts at impression management. See Stanton Samenow's The Myth of the Out of Character Crime.


Cruz still lived with the Sneads on Wednesday when he walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with an AR-15 rifle and killed 17 people - the worst school shooting since Sandy Hook.

The Sneads' son had asked whether his friend could move into their home last Thanksgiving. Cruz's mother, who had adopted him, died of pneumonia Nov. 1, leaving him without parents. He stayed briefly with a family friend in the Lantana area but wanted to move on.

The Sneads quickly agreed - though they realized he was extremely depressed about his mother's death.

Comment: How to make sense of a person like Cruz? See:

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Sherlock

Pressure mounts on FBI following disclosure it mishandled tip on Florida shooter


CBS News
Sat, 17 Feb 2018 14:39 UTC
FBI and Nikolas Cruz
The revelation that the FBI botched a potentially life-saving tip on the Florida school shooting suspect is a devastating blow to America's top law enforcement agency at a time when it is already under extraordinary political pressure.

Even before the startling disclosure that the FBI failed to investigate a warning that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, could be plotting an attack, the bureau was facing unprecedented criticism from President Trump and other Republicans, who have accused it of partisan bias.

The agency and its supporters had been able to dismiss past criticism as just politics, but this time it had no option but to admit it made a disastrous mistake.

The FBI's acknowledgment that it mishandled the tip prompted a sharp rebuke from its boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and a call from Florida's Republican Gov. Rick Scott, a Trump ally who is expected to run for U.S. Senate, for FBI Director Christopher Wray to resign.

Comment: Trump: FBI could have prevented Florida mass shooting if they weren't so obsessed with hunting Russians

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