Report: 250 Palestinian children deprived of basic rights in Israel jails

As many as 250 Palestinian children under the age of 18 are held in Israeli jails and subjected to all forms of oppression, torture and degrading treatment, the Palestinian Detainees Committee said.

In a special report released yesterday to mark Palestinian Children’s Day, the group revealed that Israeli forces have arrested nearly 10,000 Palestinian children since the Second Intifada in September 2000.

According to the report, Israeli forces subjected the detained children to brutal treatment including arresting them from their homes late at night, interrogating them without a lawyer, food or drink and subjecting them physical and psychological maltreatment including severe beatings, insults, threats and intimidation to obtain confessions under pressure.

 read on in MEMO

Israel converts historical mosque into a bar and events hall

The Israeli municipality in Safed has turned Al-Ahmar Mosque into a bar and events hall, Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported yesterday.

As one of the most historical mosques in the Arab city, which was occupied by the Jewish gangs in 1948, the building was first turned into a Jewish school, then into a centre for Likud’s elections campaigns and then into a clothes warehouse before finally being converted into a nightclub.

……. Safed was once home to 12,000 Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in 1948.

Tabari said that the mosque is now open for use for everything except prayers by Muslims.

Article on Memo

Israelis to turn historic mosque into museum.

Israel has demolished hundreds of Palestinian mosques, cemeteries and other religious sites since the state’s creation in 1948.

read on more About this in Memo

Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn’t Gas Syrians

Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists,
Sorry to interrupt: I know you’re very busy right now trying to convince yourselves, and the rest of us, that your hero couldn’t possibly have used chemical weapons to kill up to 70 people in rebel-held Douma on April 7. Maybe Robert Fisk’s mysterious doctor has it right — and maybe the hundreds of survivors and eyewitnesses to the attack are all “crisis actors.”
Maybe Assad didn’t use sarin to kill around 100 people in rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun a year ago either. A joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found “unmistakable evidence” that he did. Human Rights Watch and Hans Blix also agree that Assad was probably to blame. But maybe they’re all wrong. Or, maybe they’re paid shills for the CIA.
My point is this: Who cares? Seriously, who cares? Whether or not it was Assad who used chemical weapons in Syria earlier this month, or last year, might matter to the leaders of the U.S., the U.K., and France, who decided to launch brazenly illegal and rather pointless airstrikes against his regime, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Syrian president-for-life is a monster who has perpetrated a vast array of blatant human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
 

read on in theintercept....