Remarks from US Secretary of State come after Israeli PM suggested mufti of Jerusalem persuaded Hitler to kill Jews

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Thursday for an end to inflam­ma­to­ry Israeli-Palestinian rhetoric dur­ing a meet­ing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which took place as the death toll from a recent surge of vio­lence again climbed. Speaking to reporters ahead of talks with the Israeli PM, Kerry made no ref­er­ence to Netanyahu’s sug­ges­tion this week that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem dur­ing the 1940s, per­suad­ed Adolf Hitler to exter­mi­nate the Jews. Those com­ments, which come after three weeks of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, have attract­ed wide crit­i­cism from, among oth­ers, Israeli oppo­si­tion politi­cians and Holocaust experts, who accused the prime min­is­ter of dis­tort­ing the his­tor­i­cal record. Meanwhile, the cycle of vio­lence con­tin­ues in Israel and the occu­pied Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries. On Thursday, a Palestinian was shot dead dur­ing an alleged stab­bing attack Israeli at a bus stop west of Jerusalem.

Israeli police said on Thursday that the two sus­pects attempt­ed to get on a chil­dren’s school bus in Beit Shemesh, a major­i­ty ultra-ortho­dox area. After they were asked why they were doing so, they attempt­ed to stab an Israeli at the bus stop at which point they were shot by the police, wit­ness­es said. The Israeli, a 25-year-old man, was mod­er­ate­ly injured in the attack, police said. The injured men were tak­en to hos­pi­tal, with the sec­ond sus­pect said to be in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Since Oct. 1, a total of 52 Palestinians — includ­ing sus­pect­ed attack­ers, unarmed demon­stra­tors and bystanders — have been killed by Israeli sol­diers or set­tlers, while eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks. Israeli forces have been accused of using exces­sive force against pro­test­ers and sus­pect­ed attack­ers. Rights groups have said “dis­pro­por­tion­ate vio­lence” has been used against Palestinian chil­dren, with at least 10 killed in the violence.

Among the caus­es of the tur­moil are Palestinians’ anger at what they see as Jewish encroach­ment on the al-Aqsa mosque com­pound in Jerusalem’s Old City, Islam’s holi­est site out­side Saudi Arabia, which is also revered by Jews as the loca­tion of two ancient tem­ples. “It is absolute­ly crit­i­cal to end all incite­ment, to end all vio­lence and to find a road for­ward to build the pos­si­bil­i­ty, which is not there today, for a larg­er process,” Kerry told reporters as he and Netanyahu posed for pic­tures. Kerry said he hoped that the two men could agree on steps “that take us beyond the con­dem­na­tions and beyond the rhetoric.” Diplomats hold out lit­tle hope for any resump­tion of broad­er Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which col­lapsed in 2014. Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for the recent surge in killings, sin­gling out Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “There is no ques­tion that wave of attacks is dri­ven direct­ly by incite­ment. Incitement from Hamas, incite­ment from the Islamist move­ment in Israel, and incite­ment, I am sor­ry to say, from President Abbas,” he said.

A senior U.S. State Department offi­cial told reporters that Kerry hopes to per­suade both sides to “tamp down” their rhetoric dur­ing a four-day trip to Europe and the Middle East in which he also plans to meet Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah. His tone mir­rored that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint news con­fer­ence with Netanyahu on Wednesday evening. “We have to do every­thing to calm down the sit­u­a­tion and in this spir­it I think all sides need to make a con­tri­bu­tion,” she said. It is not clear why Netanyahu launched into the issue of the then-Mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini. His remarks come with Israeli-Palestinian ten­sions at a new peak, notably over the Jerusalem holy site over­seen by the cur­rent mufti. Israel says it respects the sta­tus quo, which allows tourists and non-Muslim vis­i­tors to enter the Al Aqsa com­pound at some hours but for­bids non-Muslim prayer.

Palestinians say that ultra-Orthodox and nation­al-reli­gious Jews are exploit­ing the rules to enter the area, called the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims and the Temple Mount by Jews, in grow­ing num­bers and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pray there, in breach of the sta­tus quo. Israel says it expels any­one who prays, but the prac­tice con­tin­ues and some Israel gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have been open about encour­ag­ing Jewish access to the area, say­ing all monothe­is­tic reli­gions should have the right to pray. U.S. offi­cials say they hope a change in the rhetoric over the holy site could help ease ten­sions more generally.
Read more here:Kerry urges end of inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric in talks with Israel’s Netanyahu

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