The Israeli prime min­is­ter, Binyamin Netanyahu, has attract­ed a storm of crit­i­cism for an incen­di­ary speech in which he accused the sec­ond world war Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem of hav­ing sug­gest­ed the geno­cide of the Jews to Adolf Hitler. The com­ments in a speech to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem came in the con­text of the cur­rent vio­lence between Israelis and Palestinians and were con­demned by his­to­ri­ans and the Israeli oppo­si­tion leader Isaac Herzog for triv­i­al­is­ing the Holocaust. On the Palestinian side, senior offi­cial Saeb Erekat described the remarks as absolv­ing Hitler.

In his speech, Netanyahu pur­port­ed to describe a meet­ing between Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler in November 1941. “Hitler didn’t want to exter­mi­nate the Jews at the time, he want­ed to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’” According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: “What should I do with them?” and the mufti replied: “Burn them.” Among those ques­tion­ing Netanyahu’s inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry was Prof Dan Michman, the head of the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University and head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. He said that while Hitler did indeed meet the mufti, this hap­pened after the Final Solution began.

Yad Vashem’s chief his­to­ri­an, Prof Dina Porat, told the Israeli news web­site Ynet that Netanyahu’s claims were incor­rect. “You can­not say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews. It’s not true. Their meet­ing occurred after a series of events that point to this.” Netanyahu made the claim – which he also made in 2012 – to illus­trate what he said was the Palestinian his­to­ry of using holy sites in Jerusalem as pre­texts for com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against Jews. However, almost as soon as the tran­script was released by his office, he was accused on social media and then by a raft of Israeli polit­i­cal fig­ures of fac­tu­al errors in his assertions.

The claim that Husseini – who met and sup­port­ed Hitler – was the one to ini­ti­ate the idea of the exter­mi­na­tion of Europe’s Jews has been sug­gest­ed by his­to­ri­ans on the fringes of Holocaustresearch, but is reject­ed by most his­to­ri­ans. Defending his com­ments, Netanyahu said: “I didn’t mean to absolve Hitler of respon­si­bil­i­ty, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation want­ed to destroy Jews even with­out occupation.”

Speaking before fly­ing to Berlin to meet the US sec­re­tary of state, John Kerry, Netanyahu said he did not mean to dimin­ish Hitler’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Holocaust. “He is respon­si­ble for the Final Solution, and he made the deci­sion,” he said. “It is also absurd to ignore the role played by the mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was a war crim­i­nal and encour­aged Hitler to exter­mi­nate European Jewry.”

A spokesman for the German chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel, how­ev­er, reject­ed Netanyahu’s fram­ing. “All Germans know the his­to­ry of the mur­der­ous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civil­i­sa­tion that was the Holocaust,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “I see no rea­son to change our view of his­to­ry in any way. We know that respon­si­bil­i­ty for this crime against human­i­ty is German and very much our own.”

At the cen­tre of the row is Netanyahu’s sug­ges­tion that Hitler had want­ed to expel Jews and that it was Husseini who some­how per­suad­ed him instead to kill them when the two men met in late November 1941. In real­i­ty, the mass killings of Jews by SS mobile killing units – Einsatzgruppen – were already under way when the two men met face to face. The first was in Lithuania in July 1941, described by Yad Vashem as the “begin­ning” of the Final Solution. In September 1941, again before Husseini’s meet­ing with Hitler, Einsatzgruppe C, com­mand­ed by Otto Rasch, killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in the Babi Yar ravine on the out­skirts of Kiev, an act of mass mur­der ordered by the new Nazi mil­i­tary gov­er­nor of Kiev, Maj Gen Kurt Eberhard.

Netanyahu’s incen­di­ary com­ments come amid a ris­ing death toll and accu­sa­tions of incite­ment on both sides, with Israelis point­ing to com­ments made by Palestinian offi­cials and inflam­ma­to­ry mate­r­i­al on social media, and Palestinians equal­ly accus­ing Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment of fan­ning the flames and point­ing to anti-Palestinian mate­r­i­al on social media. The vio­lence con­tin­ued on Wednesday with sev­er­al inci­dents, includ­ing a stab­bing that crit­i­cal­ly injured a 19-year-old Israeli female sol­dier. Over the past month, 10 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, most of them stab­bings. In that time, 46 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, includ­ing 25 iden­ti­fied by Israel as attack­ers, and the rest in clash­es with Israeli troops. AnEritrean asy­lum seek­er died after being shot by a secu­ri­ty guard and beat­en by a mob that mis­tak­en­ly believed he was a Palestinian assailant dur­ing a dead­ly Arab attack at a bus sta­tion. Reacting to Netanyahu’s com­ments, Herzog wrote on his Facebook page: “This is a dan­ger­ous his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tion and I demand Netanyahu cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly as it min­imis­es the Holocaust, Nazism and … Hitler’s part in our people’s ter­ri­ble disaster.”

He added that Netanyahu’s remarks played into the hands of Holocaust deniers. “A historian’s son must be accu­rate about his­to­ry,” Herzog wrote. “Netanyahu has for­got­ten that he’s not only the prime min­is­ter of Israel but the prime min­is­ter of the Jewish people’s gov­ern­ment.” The grand mufti, added Herzog, “gave the order to kill my grand­fa­ther, Rabbi Herzog, and active­ly sup­port­ed Hitler”.

Herzog’s fel­low Zionist Union MP Itzik Shmuli called on Netanyahu to apol­o­gise to Holocaust vic­tims. “This is a great shame, a prime min­is­ter of the Jewish state at the ser­vice of Holocaust-deniers – this is a first,” he said. “This isn’t the first time Netanyahu dis­torts his­tor­i­cal facts, but a lie of this mag­ni­tude is the first.” Denouncing Netanyahu’s com­ments, Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace nego­tia­tor, also weighed into the row. “It is a sad day in his­to­ry when the leader of the Israeli gov­ern­ment hates his neigh­bour so much so that he is will­ing to absolve the most noto­ri­ous war crim­i­nal in his­to­ry, Adolf Hitler, of the mur­der of 6 mil­lion Jews dur­ing the Holocaust.”

Seeking to defend Netanyahu, the defence min­is­ter, Moshe Ya’alon, told Army Radio that the idea for the Final Solution was Hitler’s and the mufti had joined him, and accused the Palestinian Authority of employ­ing “incite­ment” that was “the lega­cy of the Nazis”. “I don’t know what exact­ly the prime min­is­ter said. History is actu­al­ly very, very clear,” said Ya’alon. “Hitler ini­ti­at­ed it, Haj Amin al-Husseini joined him, and unfor­tu­nate­ly the jiha­di move­ments pro­mote anti­semitism to this day, includ­ing incite­ment in the Palestinian Authority that is based on the lega­cy of the Nazis.” Netanyahu’s com­ments fol­low remarks made by the ener­gy min­is­ter, Yuval Steinitz, at a recent con­fer­ence in Washington, who accused the Palestinian pres­i­dent, Mahmoud Abbas, of “Nazi-like incite­ment”. Steinitz – one of Netanyahu’s most loy­al allies who often echoes the Israeli prime minister’s posi­tions – labelled Abbas “the num­ber one inciter in the world against Israel and the Jewish peo­ple” and com­pared his attacks against the Jewish state to Nazi propaganda.
Read more here : Anger at Netanyahu claim Palestinian grand mufti inspired Holocaust

The death toll from vio­lence in Israel and the Occupied Territories has increased with new Palestinian stab­bing attacks and an inten­si­fied Israeli crack­down. On Sunday, an attack­er iden­ti­fied as a 21-year-old Arab cit­i­zen of Israel knifed an Israeli sol­dier to death and then opened fire at a bus sta­tion in Beersheba, wound­ing 10 peo­ple. The attack­er was killed. In an appar­ent case of racial pro­fil­ing, a mob of sol­diers and bystanders then shot and beat an Eritrean man to death, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing he was a sec­ond assailant. After seal­ing off East Jerusalem neigh­bor­hoods last week, Israel is widen­ing its crack­down on Arab res­i­dents and con­tin­u­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions across the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations says last week was the dead­liest for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel in 10 years, rais­ing con­cerns “of exces­sive use of force, and vio­la­tions of the right to life and secu­ri­ty of the per­son.” We are joined by two guests: Jamil Dakwar, a Palestinian human rights lawyer with Israeli cit­i­zen­ship, and Nathan Thrall, senior ana­lyst at the International Crisis Group whose new arti­cle for The New York Times is “Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem.”

AMY GOODMAN: The death toll from vio­lence in Israel and the Occupied Territories has increased with new Palestinian stab­bing attacks and an inten­si­fied Israeli crack­down. On Sunday, an assailant iden­ti­fied as a 21-year-old Arab cit­i­zen of Israel knifed an Israeli sol­dier, then opened fire at a bus sta­tion in Beersheba with the soldier’s rifle, wound­ing 10 peo­ple. The sol­dier and the attack­er died. In an appar­ent case of racial pro­fil­ing, a mob of sol­diers and bystanders then shot and beat anoth­er man to death, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing he was a sec­ond assailant. Video footage shows the crowd kick­ing and assault­ing the vic­tim, 29-year-old Haftom Zarhum, as he lies on the ground. Zarhum lat­er died in the hos­pi­tal. He had been seek­ing asy­lum in Israel from his native Eritrea. The inci­dent comes after Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians accused of stab­bing attacks, includ­ing three in the occu­pied West Bank city of Hebron.

After seal­ing of East Jerusalem neigh­bor­hoods last week, Israel is widen­ing its crack­down on Arab res­i­dents. A new bill before Parliament would give forces stop-and-frisk pow­ers to search any­one in the streets with­out cause. In addi­tion to severe restric­tions on move­ment, Israel is also erect­ing a wall in East Jerusalem that would sep­a­rate Palestinian neigh­bor­hoods from a near­by Israeli set­tle­ment. Israeli forces mean­while con­tin­ue mil­i­tary attacks across the West Bank and Gaza, raid­ing vil­lages and fir­ing on Palestinian demon­stra­tions. Over the week­end, a group of some 200 Israeli set­tlers report­ed­ly attacked two Palestinian vil­lages in the West Bank with firebombs.

The surge in Palestinian knife attacks and protests is par­tial­ly fueled by con­cerns over Israeli con­trol of the Al-Aqsa Mosque com­pound and vis­its there by far-right Israelis. On Sunday, Israel reject­ed a French pro­pos­al to deploy inter­na­tion­al observers at the flash­point holy site. Speaking today in Madrid, Secretary of State John Kerry backed Israel’s rejec­tion of a for­eign pres­ence at the Temple Mount, but said he would meet with both Israeli and Palestinian lead­ers in the com­ing days.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Israel has every right in the world to pro­tect its cit­i­zens, as it has been, from ran­dom acts of vio­lence. But in my con­ver­sa­tions with the prime min­is­ter, as well as with King Abdullah and the for­eign min­is­ter of Jordan, they have expressed a desire to try to see this process be able to find a way of mak­ing cer­tain that every­body is clear about what is hap­pen­ing with respect to the Temple Mount.

AMY GOODMAN: The over­all death toll stands at 44 Palestinians and eight Israelis this month. The U.N. says last week was the dead­liest for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel in 10 years, rais­ing con­cerns, quote, “of exces­sive use of force, and vio­la­tions of the right to life and secu­ri­ty of the person.”

Joining us now are two guests. Here in New York, Jamil Dakwar is with us. He’s a human rights lawyer, a Palestinian cit­i­zen of Israel who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as senior attor­ney at Adalah, a lead­ing human rights group in Israel. And in Jerusalem, Nathan Thrall is with us, senior ana­lyst at the International Crisis Group cov­er­ing Gaza, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. His new arti­cle for The New York Times is head­lined “Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem.”

Nathan, let’s start with you in Jerusalem. What is hap­pen­ing there, and why do you believe that the sit­u­a­tion is so out of con­trol at this point?

NATHAN THRALL: So what’s hap­pen­ing now in Jerusalem is check­points are going up all over the east. At the exits to Palestinian neigh­bor­hoods in occu­pied East Jerusalem, you have big con­crete cubes going up and very, very long lines for Palestinians to exit their neigh­bor­hoods. And there is a sense among Palestinians in East Jerusalem that they are being pun­ished for these so-called lone wolf stab­bing attacks that have tak­en place so far. The oth­er morn­ing, res­i­dents of one neigh­bor­hood, where basi­cal­ly the traf­fic police, the park­ing — peo­ple who give park­ing tick­ets nev­er go, came and left 500-shekel tick­ets on everybody’s car. And there are a series of small steps like this that are lead­ing a lot of Palestinians in East Jerusalem to feel that they’re being col­lec­tive­ly pun­ished for what’s going on now.

I live right at one of the seam neigh­bor­hoods between the east and the west, and it’s filled with bor­der police who are basi­cal­ly stop­ping a high pro­por­tion of the Palestinian men who are walk­ing from one side of the city to the oth­er. Many of them work in the west side of the city. You had men­tioned a moment ago that there is a con­sid­er­a­tion of allow­ing the police to do stop-and-frisk with­out cause. You know, that’s news to the res­i­dents of Palestinian East Jerusalem, who are stopped and frisked with­out cause all the time and are being stopped and frisked with­out cause today. So the sit­u­a­tion in Jerusalem is extreme­ly tense. People are eye­ing one anoth­er sus­pi­cious­ly. A Palestinian woman in West Jerusalem was walk­ing around today and was telling me how peo­ple were star­ing at her, sur­prised that she was walk­ing around there.

So, the attacks don’t seem to have any kind of orga­nized lead­er­ship behind them, which makes them much more dif­fi­cult for any­body to stop. And one of the big prob­lems here is we don’t have an orga­nized polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Jerusalem, a Palestinian polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Jerusalem, which means that there’s no one for the Israelis to talk to in order to try and calm the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: I want­ed to go right now to what hap­pened on Sunday. The Israeli prime min­is­ter, Benjamin Netanyahu, reject­ed Palestinian con­cerns over the Temple Mount.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The rea­son the sta­tus quo has been vio­lat­ed is not because we changed it. We didn’t change any­thing. The orders of prayer, the vis­it­ing rights have not changed for the last 15 years. The only thing that’s changed are Islamist hood­lums, paid by the Islamist move­ment in Israel and by Hamas, who are enter­ing the mosque and try­ing to put explo­sives there, and, from there, emerge and attack Jewish vis­i­tors to the Temple Mount, and Christian vis­i­tors. That’s the only change in the sta­tus quo. Israel will pro­tect the holy site, will guard the sta­tus quo. Israel is not a prob­lem on the Temple Mount, Israel is the solution.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime min­is­ter. We’re also joined by Jamil Dakwar, human rights lawyer, a Palestinian cit­i­zen of Israel, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a senior attor­ney at Adalah, a lead­ing Israeli human rights group. Your response to what Netanyahu just said?

JAMIL DAKWAR: Well, I think that what is real­ly strik­ing here is that the Israeli gov­ern­ment, every time there is any kind of a rise in ten­sion and cri­sis and use of vio­lence, it turns into mil­i­taris­tic approach towards deal­ing with the Palestinians. It’s using that same old poli­cies of a crack­down, on col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment, on see­ing the Palestinians with no real­ly val­ue of their life and their basic human rights. The response, and par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issue of sta­tus quo, you know, Israel is the only coun­try that is allowed to change the sta­tus quo in Jerusalem, and it’s been chang­ing that for years, for decades. And yet, if a coun­try or polit­i­cal par­ty is sug­gest­ing a change of the sta­tus quo towards more peace­ful res­o­lu­tion, towards more pro­tec­tion of civil­ians, then that is always reject­ed. So I think there is, clear­ly, a going back to giv­ing now the Israeli gov­ern­ment and Benjamin Netanyahu a pre­text to go — what he real­ly would pre­fer to do is to con­tin­ue his poli­cies of aggres­sion against Palestinians.

Certainly, this is going to be more and more dif­fi­cult, because in Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem, the rea­son that there is no lead­er­ship is because Israeli poli­cies were crack­ing down on insti­tu­tions. The Orient House was closed by the Israeli gov­ern­ment. The Palestinians who were elect­ed by their own peo­ple were not allowed to engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. Many of them were impris­oned. So that, in and of itself, clear­ly shows that the Israeli gov­ern­ment wants to see only its own inter­est, mean­ing the Jewish Israeli inter­est in Jerusalem, and that con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion both in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank as a mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, which is now near­ing 50 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what has caused this lat­est esca­la­tion of vio­lence, from your per­spec­tive. Where did you grow up, by the way?

JAMIL DAKWAR: I grew up in Haifa. I went to school at Tel Aviv University. I remem­ber when I went to law school at Tel Aviv University, there were very, very dif­fi­cult times. There were times when there were sui­cide attacks going on inside Israel. Those hap­pened in response to the set­tler going to Hebron mosque and killing prayer — Palestinians who were pray­ing in the mosque. That kind of blew up the whole sit­u­a­tion. And it was clear that with­out crack­ing down on the set­tler vio­lence, with­out end­ing Israel’s set­tler activ­i­ty in the West Bank, there is no way that the Palestinians will sit back and allow the Israeli gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to con­trol their life in every way.

So I think the esca­la­tion that we’re see­ing now has been mount­ing, has been build­ing, because of what’s hap­pened in the last sev­er­al years. There is no hope for any real, nor­mal life. This is the new nor­mal for the Palestinians, which is mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion con­tin­ues unabat­ed, the Israeli gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to send set­tlers to the West Bank. There’s a crack­down round­ing up chil­dren, Palestinian chil­dren, in night raids, doc­u­ment­ed by Palestinian and Israeli human rights orga­ni­za­tions. These kinds of things will make Palestinians despair or make the Palestinians, some of them, to resort to vio­lence and do what they are doing. And I think that is what is real­ly concerning.

AMY GOODMAN: Are these knife attacks new?

JAMIL DAKWAR: These knife attacks are new, although in the — we’ve seen in the — this is not the first time that there were these kinds of wave of knife attacks. And it hap­pened dur­ing the Shamir — appeared in the ’80s. They were very much sim­i­lar, in a sit­u­a­tion where the Palestinians were real­ly giv­ing up on their hope to have a nor­mal life. I think that there’s now also — there’s the impact on their lack of abil­i­ty to be able to express themselves.

You men­tioned the Arab Palestinian cit­i­zen who stabbed the sol­dier. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Palestinian cit­i­zens are peace­ful. They’ve been peace­ful in their activ­i­ties for their entire career, and yet the Israeli gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on their lead­er­ship, is crack­ing down — there are home demo­li­tions inside Israel, dis­place­ment of Arab Bedouin com­mu­ni­ties. That is mak­ing peo­ple see that despite the fact that you are mak­ing an effort to be a cit­i­zen, a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, the Israeli gov­ern­ment is say­ing, “No, you are not wel­comed here. You are an ene­my. You are not going to be enjoy­ing the same basic rights as oth­ers in the country.”

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, a Palestinian report­ed­ly opened fire at a cen­tral bus sta­tion in the south­ern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing a sol­dier and wound­ing 11 oth­er peo­ple. He had tak­en the gun of the sol­dier. Afterward, the Israeli police spokesper­son, Micky Rosenfeld, addressed reporters.

MICKY ROSENFELD: As a result of the attack where the ter­ror­ist had a pis­tol and opened fire, we have six peo­ple that were injured, four of them being police offi­cers injured inside the cen­tral bus sta­tion. One man was severe­ly tak­en to hos­pi­tal and received med­ical treat­ment. Unfortunately, con­firmed that he passed away a few min­utes ago. Heightened secu­ri­ty is con­tin­u­ing in the area, and our police units are still in and around the cen­tral bus station.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli eye­wit­ness to the shoot­ing, Sima Koseshvili, called for greater security.

SIMA KOSESHVILI: [trans­lat­ed] Do I need to live in a world where I am afraid to leave home to go to my col­lege stud­ies, to work or to go shop­ping? Everything is fright­en­ing, and I want the police to take more action and increase their secu­ri­ty presence.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Thrall in Jerusalem, can you talk about what hap­pened there in Beersheba? First you had the killing of both the Palestinian gun­man and the Israeli sol­dier, many oth­er peo­ple also injured, and then the Eritrean man being beat­en to death in a case of appar­ent­ly mis­tak­en identity.

NATHAN THRALL: Yes. Frankly, I know about as much as what — as much as you do about what hap­pened there. I wasn’t there, and I’ve seen the reports and watched some of the videos. And I’ve seen that the gov­ern­ment has, you know, acknowl­edged that a trag­ic mis­take was made. But beyond that, I don’t know the details of the incident.

AMY GOODMAN: The sig­nif­i­cance of this?

JAMIL DAKWAR: The sig­nif­i­cance is that, look, what’s hap­pen­ing is that now any­one appears to be an Arab Palestinian. And that starts with the racial pro­fil­ing, stop-and-frisk, that is a dai­ly expe­ri­ence of Palestinians. But also Israeli Jews who are Arab Jews, who come — [Sephardic] Jews, who appear to some Israelis or to the Israeli secu­ri­ty forces as sus­pi­cious Arab Palestinians, some of them are even being attacked. I think this is going out of con­trol, because the Israeli gov­ern­ment and the politi­cians are spread­ing those state­ments, mak­ing those state­ments that are very dan­ger­ous state­ments, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to take arms and shoot peo­ple, shoot to kill. And there are now human rights reports inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot-to-kill orders. This amounts to extra­ju­di­cial killing. There need to be clear inves­ti­ga­tions of these instances. You have peo­ple who did not pose any immi­nent threat to addi­tion­al peo­ple; even if they com­mit­ted crimes, they still should not be exe­cut­ed right on the spot. And that, I think, will bring the sit­u­a­tion to a much worse, because peo­ple are mis­trust­ing any­one who is a Palestinian, who is an Arab, who appears to be Palestinian, and that’s why the Eritrean refugee got in that sit­u­a­tion. And the lynch­ing — there’s sit­u­a­tions where a sol­dier is stand­ing by, secu­ri­ty forces stand­ing by and not pro­tect­ing those civil­ians. That, in and of itself, is a huge, dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion that I think even worse than the act of lone­ly or indi­vid­ual tak­ing some knives and stab­bing peo­ple, because that frus­trates entire — puts entire com­mu­ni­ties at risk, when law enforce­ment car­ries those attacks and crack­downs and opens fire with no respect to human life.

We see a sit­u­a­tion that real­ly requires more atten­tion and more action, not just — you know, con­dem­na­tion of acts of vio­lence is the easy part of this. What is real­ly need­ed to be done is what needs to be done about the sit­u­a­tion, the sit­u­a­tion of the occu­pa­tion, the sit­u­a­tion on East Jerusalem. And what we’re not hear­ing, what are the solu­tions, includ­ing admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Every time Secretary Kerry tries to say some­thing right, whether it’s the recent com­ment that he made, where he said, “Well, we’ve seen build­ing of set­tle­ments, an expan­sion, etc. That is now — and now we’re see­ing vio­lence.” So he’s mak­ing the right con­nec­tion, a very log­ic, com­mon­sense con­nec­tion, and yet he had to retract those state­ments, even though he’s real­ly say­ing what every­body knows, what every­body knows in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, what every­body knows here in the United States, that set­tle­ments are ille­gal, and yet they are now get­ting full sup­port from this Israeli gov­ern­ment, and is now build­ing on turn­ing this con­flict into a reli­gious war. And I think that is real­ly the crit­i­cal point where I think we need to be very, very con­cerned about. People who know the sit­u­a­tion know that if you are going to speak to the youth about reli­gious wars and agi­tate them, they will take things like this, they will take knives and stab peo­ple. And with­out lead­er­ship, with­out any hope, with­out a future, this will become the norm. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, that would be a very dan­ger­ous route to go to.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there a role for the ICC here, the International Criminal Court?

JAMIL DAKWAR: Well, the ICC, as you know, there’s a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion of the sit­u­a­tion in Israel and Palestine, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sit­u­a­tion of Palestine after Palestine joined the ICC. There were calls to ask the pros­e­cu­tor to look at the alleged crimes com­mit­ted in the recent month. I believe it will be a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult for the pros­e­cu­tor to jump at this issue. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment that hap­pened just last week with the ICC pros­e­cu­tor ask­ing to open full inves­ti­ga­tion in Georgia. That will be an impor­tant — has impor­tant impli­ca­tions on the sit­u­a­tion in Palestine, because this will be — if this full inves­ti­ga­tion will move for­ward, will be the first non­state par­ty full inves­ti­ga­tion that is tak­ing place in the ICC, which could, again, delay, on one hand, the Palestinian sit­u­a­tion, but, on the oth­er hand, would also set impor­tant prece­dent for that. I think, most impor­tant­ly, there should be a clear deter­rence to the Israeli gov­ern­ment from clear state­ments made, that the Israeli gov­ern­ment can­not con­tin­ue these actions with no con­se­quences. There is no account­abil­i­ty. We know from reports like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Al-Haq and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that inves­ti­ga­tions with­in the Israeli mil­i­tary are dis­cred­it­ed, they’re not cred­i­ble, they’re not seri­ous, and there­fore, at some point, there will be action by legal mech­a­nisms, includ­ing the ICC, to look into the crimes that are com­mit­ted in the occu­pied Palestinian territory.

AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his coun­ter­part in Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, vis­it­ed Israeli stab­bing vic­tims recov­er­ing in the hos­pi­tal. On Sunday, Mayor de Blasio vis­it­ed the Western Wall and toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum. He signed the guest book at the muse­um, “Never again,” then made a statement.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: We’re here at a painful moment. We’re here at a moment where peo­ple are afraid, where peo­ple are strug­gling, because of the vio­lence in their midst every sin­gle day late­ly, more and more ter­ror­ist attacks on absolute­ly inno­cent civil­ians, some­thing uncon­scionable and unac­cept­able, accord­ing to all our val­ues, and some­thing that must end.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Thrall, I want­ed to get your com­ment — also the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Marine General Joseph Dunford, in addi­tion to de Blasio, are in Israel — to what you believe needs to be done and what de Blasio said.

NATHAN THRALL: So, what we’re see­ing is the begin­ning of the United States com­pen­sat­ing Israel for the Iran nuclear deal, and they’re dis­cussing now increas­ing the $3 bil­lion in aid that Israel receives each year. And regard­ing de Blasio’s state­ment, of course attacks on civil­ians are hor­ri­ble, and all of this death is hor­ri­ble. In terms of look­ing at the root caus­es, I see very lit­tle being done to address that.

What we’re see­ing right now among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jerusalem, is a real sense that the idea of a Palestinian state with a cap­i­tal in Jerusalem is escap­ing them. Jerusalemites have felt for many years that they are los­ing Jerusalem. They feel that they’re los­ing con­trol over Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well. And so, they’re — the oth­er guest had men­tioned that the insti­tu­tions of the Palestinian polit­i­cal lead­er­ship used to exist in Jerusalem. The PLO had some­thing called the Orient House, which was its head­quar­ters in Jerusalem, that had been — that has been shut down and is shut down. And, you know, Jerusalem has been sep­a­rat­ed by an enor­mous wall from the rest of the West Bank. And when Palestinians come and vis­it from Gaza, for exam­ple — those few who are allowed exit per­mits and do get to come to Jerusalem — they’re in shock at what they see. And see­ing it with their own eyes and going around the West Bank, they come to the con­clu­sion that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sep­a­rat­ing Israel from an inde­pen­dent Palestinian state passed a long time ago.

And nobody is offer­ing any kind of solu­tions or answers to Palestinians, includ­ing their own lead­er­ship. And I think that’s a big part of why you see Palestinians actu­al­ly act­ing right now out­side of the polit­i­cal fac­tions that dom­i­nate Palestinian pol­i­tics. Palestinians feel like those fac­tions are not offer­ing any solu­tions and that they are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands. So, the cen­ter of some of the fight­ing against Israel has occurred specif­i­cal­ly among those groups who are not under Palestinian Authority con­trol. The Jerusalem — Jerusalemites, of course, are not at all under Palestinian Authority con­trol. The Palestinian Authority is for­bid­den from act­ing in any form in Jerusalem — and in oth­er domains, as well. Villages in the West Bank who are fight­ing against the wall cut­ting through and tak­ing part of their land also find — many of them are out­side of the Palestinian Authority’s con­trol and there­fore are able, actu­al­ly, to fight Israel. The same thing with hunger-strik­ing pris­on­ers and with Gazans now, who are approach­ing the bor­der fence every day and throw­ing rocks, and get­ting shot and killed in the process.

So, I think that Palestinians, in gen­er­al, feel that they are approach­ing the end of an era, and that era is the era that was inau­gu­rat­ed with President Mahmoud Abbas’s elec­tion in January 2005. This came just after Yasser Arafat had died and at the end of a very bloody and painful intifa­da, one that was bloody and painful for both sides. And what Abbas rep­re­sent­ed for Palestinians was a chance to try a total­ly dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy, one that was not based on armed con­flict, one that would basi­cal­ly give Israel exact­ly what it most want­ed, which is secu­ri­ty, and to coöper­ate with Israel, ful­ly in secu­ri­ty, to hunt down mil­i­tants in the West Bank and to pre­vent attacks against Israelis, against set­tlers. And Abbas — if you ask the Israeli secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, they will say that Abbas has deliv­ered that in spades. And what the secu­ri­ty offi­cials say is, you know, “We view our job as to pro­vide the calm that allows the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship to reach out and to make a deal, or at least to improve the sit­u­a­tion.” Even if you don’t have a final peace agree­ment, there are a thou­sand things that Israel can do to make life bet­ter for Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem and Gaza. And a lot of the anger — sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just — we have to wrap up, but I want­ed to bring Jamil Dakwar back in. Go ahead with “a lot of the anger,” and then I’m going to go back to Jamil.

NATHAN THRALL: Sure. OK, sure. I just want­ed to say that a lot of the anger is a sense that that strat­e­gy, that was inau­gu­rat­ed with Abbas’s elec­tion in January 2005, has been giv­en 11 years now to play itself out, and it hasn’t achieved any­thing. And it hasn’t real­ly eased life or restric­tions on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem. And so, what Palestinians are doing now is, in a very non­strate­gic and emo­tion­al way, rebelling against that, with­out a clear vision of where they’re headed.
See more here : Israel-Palestine: As Stabbings, Shootings Kill Dozens, Endless Occupation Fuels Vengeful Resistance

Canadians vot­ed for a sharp change in their gov­ern­ment Monday, return­ing a leg­endary name for lib­er­als, Trudeau, to the prime min­is­ter’s office and resound­ing­ly end­ing Conservative Stephen Harper’s near-decade in office. Justin Trudeau, the son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became Canada’s new prime min­is­ter after his Liberal Party won a major­i­ty of Parliament’s 338 seats. Trudeau’s Liberals had been favored to win the most seats, but few expect­ed the final mar­gin of vic­to­ry. “Tonight Canada is becom­ing the coun­try it was before,” Trudeau said.

He said pos­i­tive pol­i­tics led to his vic­to­ry. “We beat fear with hope,” Trudeau said. “We beat cyn­i­cism with hard work. We beat neg­a­tive, divi­sive pol­i­tics with a pos­i­tive vision that brings Canadians togeth­er. Most of all we defeat­ed the idea that Canadians should be sat­is­fied with less.” Harper, one of the longest-serv­ing Western lead­ers, stepped down as the head of Conservatives, the par­ty said in a state­ment issued as the scope of the loss became appar­ent. Tall and trim, Trudeau, 43, chan­nels the star pow­er — if not quite the polit­i­cal heft — of his father, who swept to pow­er in 1968 on a wave of sup­port dubbed “Trudeaumania.” Pierre Trudeau, who was prime min­is­ter until 1984 with a short inter­rup­tion, remains one of the few Canadian politi­cians known in America, his charis­ma often draw­ing com­par­isons to John F. Kennedy.

Justin Trudeau, a for­mer school­teacher and mem­ber of Parliament since 2008, becomes the sec­ond-youngest prime min­is­ter in Canadian his­to­ry. Trudeau has reen­er­gized the Liberal Party since its worst elec­toral defeat four years ago when they won just 34 seats and fin­ished third behind the tra­di­tion­al­ly weak­er New Democrat Party. Trudeau promis­es to raise tax­es on the rich and run deficits for three years to boost gov­ern­ment spend­ing. His late father, who took office in 1968 and led Canada for most of the next 16 years, is a sto­ried name in Canadian his­to­ry, respon­si­ble for the coun­try’s ver­sion of the Bill of Rights.

A bach­e­lor when he became prime min­is­ter, Pierre Trudeau dat­ed actress­es Barbra Streisand and Kim Cattrall and mar­ried a 22-year-old while in office. Canada has shift­ed to the cen­ter-right under Harper, who has low­ered sales and cor­po­rate tax­es, avoid­ed cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion and clashed with the Obama admin­is­tra­tion over the Keystone XL pipeline. “The peo­ple are nev­er wrong,” Harper said. “The dis­ap­point­ment is my respon­si­bil­i­ty and mine alone.” Harper said he called Trudeau to con­grat­u­late him. The Trudeau vic­to­ry will ease ten­sion with the U.S. Although Trudeau sup­ports the Keystone pipeline, he argues rela­tions should not hinge on the project. Harper has clashed with the Obama admin­is­tra­tion over oth­er issues, includ­ing the recent­ly reached Iran nuclear deal. Trudeau’s oppo­nents pil­lo­ried him as too inex­pe­ri­enced, but Trudeau embraced his boy­ish image on elec­tion day. Sporting jeans and a var­si­ty let­ter jack­et, he posed for a pho­to stand­ing on the thighs of two his col­leagues to make a cheer­lead­ing pyra­mid, his cam­paign plane in the back­drop with “Trudeau 2015” paint­ed in large red letters.

“A sea of change here. We are used to high tides in Atlantic Canada. This is not what we hoped for,” said Peter MacKay, a for­mer senior Conservative Cabinet min­is­ter, short­ly after polls closed in Atlantic Canada. The Liberals were elect­ed or were lead­ing in 185 dis­tricts, with Trudeau win­ning his Montréal dis­trict. The par­ty need­ed 170 to gain a majority.

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The Conservatives were next with 97, fol­lowed by the New Democrats at 28 and Bloc Québécois with nine. Harper, 56, vis­it­ed dis­tricts he won in the 2011 elec­tion in an attempt to hang on to them. On Saturday, he posed with Toronto’s for­mer crack-smok­ing may­or, Rob Ford, in a con­ser­v­a­tive sub­urb. Harper had said he would step down if his par­ty did­n’t win the most seats. Former col­leagues of Harper said he would be per­son­al­ly dev­as­tat­ed to lose to a Trudeau, the lib­er­al lega­cy he entered pol­i­tics to destroy. Harper’s long-term goal was to kill the wide­ly entrenched notion that the Liberals — the par­ty of Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien — are the nat­ur­al par­ty of gov­ern­ment in Canada, and to rede­fine what it means to be Canadian.

Hurt when Canada entered a mild reces­sion this year, Harper made a con­tro­ver­sy over the Islamic face veil a focus of his cam­paign, a deci­sion his oppo­nents seized on to depict him as a divi­sive leader. “Canadians reject­ed the pol­i­tics of fear and divi­sion,” New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair said of the Harper Conservatives. Nelson Wiseman, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the University of Toronto, said Canadians ral­lied around the Liberals as the anti-Harper vote. The New Democrats suf­fered a crush­ing defeat, falling to third place after win­ning offi­cial oppo­si­tion sta­tus in the last elec­tion. “I con­grat­u­lat­ed Mr. Trudeau on his excep­tion­al achieve­ment,” Mulcair said. Paula Mcelhinney, 52, of Toronto vot­ed Liberal to get rid of Harper. “I want to get him out; it’s about time we have a new leader. It’s time for a change,” she said.
Read more here :Trudeau wins Canada’s prime min­is­ter race; Harper steps down as head of Conservatives

CAREY PARK, Trelawny — The Trelawny police have launched a mas­sive man­hunt for a gun­man who brazen­ly mur­dered a taxi oper­a­tor and shot and injured a female cop and a motorist along the Carey Park main road in Trelawny, Sunday evening.

The deceased has been iden­ti­fied as 52-year-old Eric Lee Anderson of Zion dis­trict in the parish.

According to the police, Anderson was ply­ing the Ocho Rios to Montego Bay route when an argu­ment over fare devel­oped between him­self and one of the five pas­sen­gers he was transporting.

The row­dy pas­sen­ger report­ed­ly bran­dished a gun and fired a shot from a win­dow of the mov­ing motor vehi­cle. He then ordered Anderson not to stop upon reach­ing a sec­tion of the Carey Park main road where a police ser­vice vehi­cle was spot­ted. Read more here :Cops on the hunt for Trelawny cab­bie killer

A group of police offi­cers, who opt­ed for ear­ly retire­ment from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), is now threat­en­ing legal action against the Government for out­stand­ing compensation.

The dis­grun­tled retirees said they are fac­ing severe hard­ship, that they are at a stage of des­per­a­tion after years of being told to “hold strain”, and that they will be tak­ing their grous­es to the Office of the Public Defender.

“Is more than 30 years of my life I served my coun­try, nev­er miss a day from work, and after all of that I made the deci­sion to retire from the JCF on the promise that if I took up the ear­ly retire­ment offer I would be ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed. Now almost two years have passed and still noth­ing has hap­pened,” a 57-year-old com­plainant told Jamaica Observer recently.

He, like the oth­er retirees quot­ed for this sto­ry, asked not to be named or pho­tographed for fear of retribution.

“My life has now fall­en into sham­bles,” the frail-look­ing man added, with tears freely flowing.

He showed a doc­u­ment from a finan­cial insti­tu­tion warn­ing that his house would be placed on auc­tion with­in a few days if he did not make out­stand­ing payments.

According to anoth­er, who said he retired after 35 years of ser­vice, his daugh­ter is in need of life-sav­ing surgery which he’s not able to afford.

“I don’t know where to turn. As a big man I cry so much time,” he said. “I can’t cry anymore.”

A 59-year-old retiree said his case was so dire he could no longer find basic items such as food.

“I cred­it from the shops in my area so much, promis­ing them that I would get my pen­sion,” he said. “I am now afraid to go back home to face this embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion.” He too served in the JCF for over 30 years.

“It hard to see me spend all my life serv­ing a cause, risk­ing life and limb to serve and pro­tect; and what do we get?” he said before break­ing down.

He claimed that many of his for­mer col­leagues died wait­ing on the promised payment.

To make mat­ters worse, the retirees said, they have received reports that some who were late appli­cants to the ear­ly retire­ment incen­tive pro­gramme have been receiv­ing pay­ments ahead of them.

However, Lucius Thomas, the for­mer com­mis­sion­er of police — who heads the wel­fare com­mit­tee review­ing, among oth­er things, the pen­sion of retired police­men and women — has sought to clar­i­fy the issue.

Read more here : ‘Suffering’ ear­ly retirees from JCF threat­en lawsuit

Information is sketchy at this time, but OBSERVER ONLINE has learnt that the taxi oper­a­tor was killed by gun­men who were trav­el­ling in his car, after he was sig­nalled to stop by police officers.

After the dri­ver brought the motor vehi­cle to a halt, alleged eye­wit­ness­es say the gun­men opened fire on the taxi dri­ver and then turned their weapons on the cops, injur­ing a woman constable.

She has since been tak­en to hos­pi­tal and is report­ed­ly in seri­ous condition.

The gun­men escaped on foot.

It is not clear if the oth­er pas­sen­gers in the motor vehi­cle were injured.

Mark Cummings
Story orig­i­nat­ed here..Police spot check in Trelawny turns deadly

In this inci­dent you will see what is hap­pen­ing in America today even as America seeks to tell oth­er Nations how to behave it’s Jackbooted goons are actu­al­ly doing this to lit­tle boys.
Oh by the way did I men­tion that this is not hap­pen­ing on the streets, this kind of Governmental aggres­sion is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the schools.
On Wednesday, fel­low stu­dents and friends of 15-year-old Tyler Deburgo filmed him being need­less­ly body slammed by a police offi­cer at William Tolman High School in Pawtucket, R.I.

From the looks of the video and inter­views with eye­wit­ness­es, Tyler was an inno­cent onlook­er as his friend, Ivander, was being arrest­ed by police inside of the school. When the offi­cer grabs Tyler by the throat and bru­tal­ly slams him to the ground, you can hear the out­rage from fel­low stu­dents grow­ing and teach­ers attempt­ing to calm them down. It’s hor­ren­dous that this lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty is hap­pen­ing inside of our schools. Just last week in Texas, a very sim­i­lar case of police bru­tal­i­ty took place.

CRIMINALS who con­tin­ue to wreak hav­oc across the island have now snuffed out the lives of close to 1,000 peo­ple since the start of the year. Statistics gath­ered by the Jamaica Observer showed that, up to the 14^th of October, 981 peo­ple have been killed, which is a 25.4 per cent increase in killings when com­pared to cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year when 781 mur­ders were record­ed. Statistics show that the parish of St James con­tin­ues to record the high­est num­ber of mur­ders, record­ing 171 so far, com­pared to 111 up to October 14 last year.

Clarendon fol­lows close­ly behind with 107 mur­ders, com­pared to 71 last year this time. Hanover also has record­ed a big jump, with 54 mur­ders up to October 14, com­pared to 30 over the same peri­od in 2014. Police say this is the high­est ever for the tiny parish. Police have blamed crim­i­nals involved in the lot­to scam for the bulk of mur­ders com­mit­ted in the west­ern parish­es. If the killings con­tin­ue at this rate, the coun­try could end the year with more than 1,200 mur­ders. The coun­try end­ed 2014.
Read more here : Murder toll moves close to 1,000 mark

Violence between Palestinian pro­test­ers and Israeli secu­ri­ty forces spread beyond the walls of Jerusalem’s old city on Friday, with at least eight Palestinians shot in clash­es in the West Bank and Israeli police­men injured by fire­bombs in a restive part of the city. In a rare deci­sion, Israeli lead­ers called up a few hun­dred bor­der police reservists to beef up secu­ri­ty as ten­sions rise over Jerusalem’s most sen­si­tive holy site. One Israeli civil­ian has been killed in the vio­lence since Sunday. In the West Bank, vio­lent protests broke out after Muslim prayers Friday after­noon. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 8 Palestinians were seri­ous­ly hurt after being shot by live rounds. About 20 were light­ly hurt in clash­es with Israeli sol­diers, it said. Two Palestinians were shot and wound­ed while throw­ing fire­bombs at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, police said.

Palestinians also clashed with Israeli forces in Hebron, Qalandia and else­where. The police­men were attacked on Friday near the area in Jerusalem where an Israeli man died ear­li­er in the week after Palestinians pelt­ed his car with rocks. Palestinians threw fire­bombs and rocks at the offi­cers, and three of them were tak­en to a hos­pi­tal, author­i­ties said. Emergency ser­vices said one offi­cer was shot in the arm. Most of the unrest had until now focused on Jerusalem’s most sen­si­tive holy site — a hill­top com­pound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The com­pound is a fre­quent flash­point and its fate is a core issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, site of the two bib­li­cal Jewish tem­ples and the religion’s holi­est site. Muslims revere it as the Noble Sanctuary and it is Islam’s third holi­est spot, where they believe Prophet Muhammad ascend­ed on a vis­it to heav­en. Since Israel cap­tured east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, Jews have been allowed to vis­it but not pray at the com­pound. Under an arrange­ment, Muslim author­i­ties man­age the site’s reli­gious and civil­ian affairs under Jordanian super­vi­sion, while Israeli police over­see secu­ri­ty. Palestinians say in the last two months there has been a new devel­op­ment where Israel has inter­mit­tent­ly restrict­ed some Muslims from the com­pound when Jews vis­it. Israel says this is to reduce fric­tion, but Palestinians claim that Israel intends to estab­lish Muslim-free Jewish vis­it­ing hours, which they fear could lead to upsets in the frag­ile arrange­ment in place.

Israel has reit­er­at­ed its posi­tion that it has no plans to change the sta­tus quo at the site. But even rumors to the con­trary are enough to spark vio­lence. The unrest began Sunday on the eve of the Jewish new year hol­i­day of Rosh Hashanah when Palestinians bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque and threw rocks and fire­crack­ers at offi­cers. Police said pipe bombs were also found there.

Rumors had been spread­ing among Palestinians of a “plot” to take over the site after activists from a Jewish group pub­li­cized a notice for “a mass vis­it to the Temple Mount” on Sunday. Police entered the hill­top com­pound three days in a row to dis­perse Palestinians who had holed up inside the mosque with stock­piles of rocks and fire­works. The Israeli response sparked con­dem­na­tions across the Arab world and con­cern that the ten­sions could spi­ral out of control.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas con­demned the clash­es in par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh lan­guage, claim­ing that none of Jerusalem’s holy sites belonged to Israel. Israel’s pub­lic secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gilad Erdan on Friday blamed Abbas for “incite­ment and lies” that led to vio­lence. He said that by bring­ing explo­sive mate­ri­als and rocks into the holy site, pro­test­ers had turned the “house of wor­ship” into a “ware­house of terror.”

Earlier, parliament’s for­eign affairs and defense com­mit­tee decid­ed in a “spe­cial dis­cus­sion” Friday to call up bor­der police reserves to beef up secu­ri­ty. Police have put thou­sands of offi­cers on patrol. Authorities also banned Muslim men under the age of 40 from pray­ing at the site in an attempt to curb vio­lence as most­ly younger Palestinians throw rocks at the site. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has tele­phoned world lead­ers includ­ing U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urg­ing them to take mea­sures at the U.N. Security Council to stem the unrest, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

He told the lead­ers in his calls Thursday that “such aggres­sion fla­grant­ly vio­lates the holi­ness of reli­gions and gives a hand to fan extrem­ism and vio­lence in the entire world,” the report said. He also spoke with Abbas con­cern­ing the devel­op­ments. Elsewhere in Israel, a rock­et fired from Gaza explod­ed in the bor­der town of Sderot on Friday evening, the mil­i­tary said. The town has been hard-hit by rock­ets from neigh­bor­ing Gaza, ruled by the Islamic mil­i­tant group Hamas, over the years. Israeli media said the rock­et Friday dam­aged a house and a bus. Nobody was hurt.
Violence erupts as Palestinians and Israel forces clash in Jerusalem, West Bank

THE Court of Appeal has chid­ed secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting for his depor­ta­tion of a Curaçao nation­al notwith­stand­ing a court order not to do so in April 2013.

The court also rapped the min­is­ter for “cas­ti­gat­ing” a mag­is­trate’s deci­sion to hear an appli­ca­tion on a Saturday from lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Shurendy Quant, whom he had labeled a drug kingpin.

The court last week described Bunting’s state­ment regard­ing the mag­is­trate as “unfor­tu­nate” and said the min­is­ter should have instead com­mend­ed the magistrate.

Retired Court of Appeal President Justice Seymour Panton, in the rul­ing, said he was “sur­prised” that the min­is­ter “does not know that a res­i­dent mag­is­trate may prop­er­ly sit and dis­pose of mat­ters on days oth­er than those that have been gazetted”.

The court also slammed Bunting for claim­ing igno­rance of an order by the Supreme Court bar­ring Quant’s deportation.

“In light of the inte­gral func­tion the min­is­ter plays in the depor­ta­tion of an alien, the asser­tion that he was igno­rant of the court’s order stay­ing his order is curi­ous. It is cer­tain­ly odd, in light of the cru­cial role he plays or ought to play in a depor­ta­tion, that he did­n’t acquaint him­self with the out­come of the pro­ceed­ings,” the court noted.

Bunting had signed an order on Friday, April 5, 2013 for the depor­ta­tion of Quant, after a taxi in which he was trav­el­ling in St Ann was found to con­tain gan­ja that the dri­ver of the vehi­cle sub­se­quent­ly claimed.

Quant was not charged but was tak­en to the Narcotics Division in Kingston where his attor­ney Chukwuemeka Cameron inquired about his release to no avail.

His attor­ney applied for a writ of habeas cor­pus before the mag­is­trate on Saturday, April 6, 2013.

The mag­is­trate then adjourned the mat­ter to the Monday after lit­tle infor­ma­tion was forth­com­ing when she inquired from the police offi­cer present the rea­son for Quant’s detention.

At the adjourned hear­ing, a Detective Inspector Johnson pre­sent­ed the court with two orders signed by Bunting for Quant’s depor­ta­tion. This was the first time the appel­lant was made aware of the depor­ta­tion orders.

The offi­cer informed the court that there was no nar­cotics inves­ti­ga­tion against Quant.

The mag­is­trate then adjourned the mat­ter for April 11, 2013, dur­ing which time Quant’s legal team filed in the Supreme Court a habeas cor­pus appli­ca­tion and an appli­ca­tion for judi­cial review of the min­is­ter’s depor­ta­tion order.

Quant’s legal team also obtained an inter­im order stay­ing Bunting’s order of depor­ta­tion. However, Quant was deport­ed on April 11, 2013, a day before his chal­lenge of Bunting’s order was sched­uled for hear­ing in the Supreme Court.

On that same day, Bunting told a pub­lic lec­ture at the University of the West Indies regard­ing Quant that, “There was a clear nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­est here, an alleged nar­cot­ic king­pin, want­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly… Interpol arrest warrant.”

He called the Saturday sit­ting of the court to hear Quant’s mat­ter “very unusu­al, high­ly puz­zling” and added that “it was very strange to the police offi­cers as well”.

Prior to that, Quant was nev­er informed that he was viewed as a nar­cot­ic king­pin and that there was an Interpol war­rant for him, nor was he giv­en a rea­son for his deportation.

Following his depor­ta­tion, Quant filed con­tempt of court action in the Supreme Court against Bunting, among oth­er things. But the court ordered that Quant deposit a mil­lion dol­lars in an account to cov­er Bunting’s legal cost should he fail in his court action.

He suc­cess­ful­ly appealed the Supreme Court rul­ing, with the Court of Appeal deliv­er­ing its deci­sion last week that Quant does not have to deposit the one mil­lion dollars.

It’s in that deci­sion that the appel­late court blast­ed the minister.

The court said that Bunting’s com­ments, if he was prop­er­ly quot­ed, lend cre­dence to Quant’s alle­ga­tion that the min­is­ter’s pro­nounce­ments tend­ed to and/​or were cal­cu­lat­ed to inter­fere with the admin­is­tra­tion and/​or course of justice.

“His state­ment inveigh­ing against the mag­is­trate for her indus­try is unfor­tu­nate. The ratio­nale for a mag­is­trate or judge mak­ing himself/​herself avail­able at any time of day or night is to pre­vent an irre­versible wrong occur­ring, such as unlaw­ful depor­ta­tion,” the court said.

“There was noth­ing sin­is­ter about the judge sit­ting on a Saturday after­noon to hear an appli­ca­tion for a habeas cor­pus writ. It was her duty to sit and she ought to have been com­mend­ed rather than cas­ti­gat­ed and have asper­sions pub­licly cast on her char­ac­ter,” the court added. Read more here : Court of Appeal blasts Bunting