Habib Siddiqui

Navi Pillay, the United Nations' senior human rights official said on Thursday she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes. Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, and UN premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions, Pillay said, a week after her Human Rights Council resolved to open a commission of inquiry into Israel's alleged crimes against humanity. "Therefore I would say that they appear to be defying... deliberate defiance of obligations that international law imposes on Israel," Pillay told a news briefing. "This is why again and again I say we cannot allow impunity, we cannot allow this lack of accountability to go on." She also criticized the United States, Israel's main ally, for failing to use its influence with the Jewish state to halt the carnage. "Man...

  Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University’s Department of History and the author of several books, including his latest, Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East . He has been very critical of US's role as a peace broker. In this book, Khalidi draws on his research as a historian, and on his own experience as an adviser to Palestinian negotiators, to argue that far from being an impartial broker, the United States has effectively acted as Israel’s lawyer. In March 2013, he gave an interview to Democracy Now, which was published in two parts. You can read his interview by clicking here and here .

There are many Jewish peace activists who have always been very vocal about Israel's crimes against humanity.  In New York City, a group of demonstrators recently blocked traffic by laying down in the streets outside Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. Twenty-six people were arrested after refusing police orders to disperse. The action was organized by the author and scholar Norman Finkelstein. Norman Finkelstein : "Well, I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for the past 21 days, morning and night, watching the horror unfold, and I felt I wasn’t doing enough, I wasn’t rising to the occasion, I wasn’t acting commensurate to the horror. So I decide it’s time to do something more, time to go past the computer, remove myself from the computer and get arrested."  Tuesday’s act of civil disobedience comes one day after nine Jewish peace activists were arrested protesting the Israeli assault outside the office of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizat...

Naveed Shinwari is one of four American Muslims who filed suit against the government this week for placing them on the U.S. "no-fly list" in order to coerce them into becoming FBI informants. The plaintiffs say the government refuses to explain why they were named on the no-fly list. They also believe that their names continue to be listed because they would not agree to become FBI informants and spy on their local communities. "It’s very frustrating, you feel helpless," Shinwari says. "No one will tell you how you can get off of it, how you got on it. It has a profound impact on people’s lives." Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, is seeking to remove the men from the no-fly list and establish a new legal mechanism to challenge placement on it. Shinwari and Kadidal were interviewed in the Democracy Now program in April. You can read their interview by clicking here .

Award winning author and activist Arundhati Roy needs no introduction. She was interviewed in the Democracy Now in April 9, 2014 on the subject of "Is India on a Totalitarian Path?". Parts of her interview is posted below: AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with the world-renowned author Arundhati Roy. Voting has just begun in India in the largest election the world has ever seen. About 815 million Indians are eligible to vote over the next five weeks. The number of eligible voters in India is larger than the total population of the United States and European Union combined. Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things . Her latest book is called Capitalism: A Love Story [ sic ]. Democracy Now! 's — Capitalism: A Ghost Story . Democracy Now! 's Nermeen Shaikh and I talked to Arundhati Roy about the changes in India she describes ...

Dr. Anurita Kapur, a single woman with a nine-year old child has alleged that she was raped by Colonel Manoj Tiwari who worked was senior commissioned Indian Army officer and Military Attache at the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York, who also served as a New York Liaison for the Defense of India. Tiwari who calls himself Tiger Tiwari is believed to be now hiding out at the Army War College at Mhow, India after her complaint. Anurita reported the incident to The Permanent Mission of India (PMI) to the United Nations in New York including Permanent Representative of India to the UN Ambassador Ashoke Mukherjee, Deputy Permanent Representative of India Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri and other officers. The Permanent Representative of India then passed on the complaints to his lower officers and nothing moved for over six months. No one investigated the matter at PMI instead passed the buck without any outcome. She feared that the officers are covering up for...

As it has happened repeatedly in this latest genocidal campaign in Gaza, the rogue state of Israel has attacked a UN school. The head of the main UN relief agency in Gaza has denounced the Israeli strike on one of its schools, which killed 19 people. "I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces," said UNRWA commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl. "This is the sixth time that one of our schools has been struck," he said. He Tweeted, “ We have moved beyond realm of humanitarian action alone. [We] Are now in the realm of accountability and the need for action to end the carnage.” He said the location of the school was given to the Israeli army 17 times. Mr Krahenbuhl said about 3,300 people had been sheltering in the school at the moment it was struck. Elsewhere, eight people, including five members of the same family in Jebalya, were killed in other strikes, Gaza officials said. Seven other ...

The government of Israel has been in the business of manufacturing lies to justify its evil occupation and extermination campaigns against displaced Palestinians since its unholy birth. Every new criminal action has always been with the motive to gain more control undermining the rights and privileges, if any left, of the occupied people - the Palestinians. So, from Netanyahu on the top down to his envoys across the globe - these war criminals and their diabolical supporters - are despicable liars to deflect and confuse world opinion. In spite of being an utterly evil government with no respect for human lives and international law, it wants to present itself as decent and its unjustifiable actions justifiable, which are necessary for the good of its Jewish people living inside Israel and for its patrons and sponsors in the western world for whom it claims to be a rampart in the Middle East. In earlier articles, I have mentioned that Israel...

In the last two days I have almost stopped watching TV news. It has been too painful to watch the gory scenes of the massacre of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. How could any democratic government, which touts itself as the protector of its civilians, living the Jewish moral codes, commit such horrendous crimes against another people, esp. the children, women and the elderly? Let’s call a spade a spade. Even the hated Nazis had shown more empathy for the Jews of Europe. Netanyahu’s neo-Nazi IDF executioners don’t give any time to their targeted victims. What is going on in Gaza is nothing short of a genocidal campaign: Palestinians are victimized simply because they are the ‘other’ people. Netanyahu’s executioners don’t discriminate anyone – old or young, disabled or able. Their unfortunate victims are safe nowhere, not even inside UN compounds, not on the shores of the Gaza, not inside the mosques, schools, and homes.   As a result, some 1,031 Palestinians (and still cou...

In Buddhist Burma, rape is increasingly used for genocidal campaigns against Muslims and other minorities. The state of Arakan had her share of troubles in recent years, all started with rumors that a Buddhist woman was violated by a Rohingya Muslim. Based on medical reports, Dr. Maung Zarni and I, including many other human rights activists, have shown that there was no truth to such allegations. But the extermination campaign that followed resulted in the death of thousands and the uprooting of nearly a quarter of the Rohingya and other Muslims of Burma. The targeted violence did not confine itself to Arakan but spread everywhere. Before the start of a new hate campaign, there was always some false allegations lodged against one or two Muslims to stir up the Buddhist mob to start the genocidal campaign against Muslims. Last month, the crimes of the Arakan state were repeated in Mandalay - all with a false claim. The news below is from Mizzima: The communal violence in ...

Europe's top human rights court, based in Strasbourg, France, ruled Thursday that Poland violated the rights of two terror suspects Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah by allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from 2002-2003 and facilitating the conditions under which they were subject to torture. The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time any court has passed judgment on the so-called "renditions program" that President George W. Bush launched after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The court said Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to stop the "torture and inhuman or degrading treatment" of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who were transported to Poland in 2002. It ordered Poland to pay 130,000 euros ($175,000) to Zubaydah, a Palestinian terror suspect, and 100,000 euros ($135,000) to al-Nashiri, a Saudi national charged with orchestrating the attack in 2000 on the ...

The IDF has again attacked a UN compound. Crimes of this kind are nothing new for the pariah state run by a rogue government that does not care lives of unarmed civilians. Israeli tank shells hit a compound housing a U.N. school in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens who were seeking shelter from fierce clashes on the streets outside. As reported in the news media pools of blood soiled the school courtyard, amid scattered books and belongings. There was a large scorch mark in the courtyard marking the place where one of the tank shells hit. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra says the dead and injured in the school compound were among hundreds of people seeking shelter from heavy fighting in the area. It was the fourth time a U.N. facility has been hit in fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, since the Israeli operation began July 8. Six members of the same family and an 18-month-old infant boy were killed wh...

As I have repeatedly mentioned in many of my writings over the last three decades the Likudniks in Israel are hardcore racists who have no human feelings for lives of non-Jews like Palestinians. That is why, it is so easy for them to commit mass massacre of Palestinians everywhere. For them, it does not take an excuse or real event to go onto the offensive and commit these heinous crimes. The current events with invasion of Gaza where as of yesterday more than 700 unarmed Palestinian civilians have died with only 2 Israeli civilian deaths once again testify to this truth loud and clear. Benjamin Netanyahu is the man behind the latest war crimes. I don't know if our so-called civilized West would have the moral conscience to send him  to the World Court for such crimes against humanity, but facts cannot be hidden that he is a mass murderer, and has been always as such promoting and executing, whenever possible, such an evil. Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is...

According to latest news, Israel is using banned White Phophorus in her invasion of Gaza. You can read the link here    to learn more. Israel has also attacked 3 hospitals thus far, all pointing to her crimes against humanity.

In a world that is seemingly dominated by Pharaonic powers of our time and their evil agents who are responsible for conveying information - or more correctly their version of the truth -   to the rest of the world, truth-telling journalists are often the first of the casualties of truth. In Syria they are slaughtered by Assad’s sectarian military. In Egypt, the land of the Pharaoh itself, they serve long-terms behind the prison walls, thanks to its midget neo-Pharaoh Sisi. In the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Occupied Palestine, they are targeted for extermination by occupying forces, as it has happened in the past under Bush Jr. Administration and with successive Israeli governments. Mindful of their bosses, often working behind the scene, major TV channels in the USA also don’t like truth-telling journalists. The latest casualties in journalism include NBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin and CNN’s Diana Magnay. When Israel invaded Gaza in early 2009, Ayman Mohyeldin was one ...

In her latest murderous offensive against unarmed  Palestinian civilians, Israel has infiltrated into Gaza with her tanks. In Shejaia, 17 children, 14 women and four elderly were among 62 Palestinians killed, and about 400 people were wounded in the Israeli assault. Gaza's Health Ministry said 37 other Palestinians were also killed on Sunday, bringing the Gaza death toll since an Israeli air and naval bombardments began on July 8 to 434, many of them civilians. Some 2,600 Palestinians have been wounded, it said. Eighteen Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians have been killed since the launch of the offensive. Hamas's armed wing said it used landmines and roadside bombs against advancing Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers. Hamas's armed wing said on Sunday it had captured an Israeli soldier - Shaul Aron, as fighting in Gaza led to the bloodiest losses in a nearly two-week military offensive, with some 100 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers kill...

The US State Department absolved Israel of responsibility for the murder of four Palestinian children in Gaza on Wednesday, placing the blame squarely on Hamas. The four children were killed and three others badly wounded by Israeli fire as they played on a beach in Gaza on Wednesday afternoon. Dozens of international journalists stationed at the nearby Al-Deira Hotel watched in horror as after an initial strike, Israeli fire chased after the terrified children as they ran for their lives screaming for help, firing at them a second time. Some 75 children have been killed and hundreds more injured during Israel’s relentless bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip. But this latest slaughter happened in the presence of journalists from major media outlets accross the globe, garnering more attention for the killings than they would have otherwise received. During Wednesday’s US State Department press briefing, a reporter asked, “How is an Israeli airstrike on what can only be described as a civ...

Kyaw Win has written an excellent article analyzing the politics of hatred in Burma, which has unfortunately and decidedly turned into genocidal campaign against Muslims of Myanmar, esp. the Rohingya. You can read this by clicking here .

By clicking here , you can view what the Israel is not telling us about her murderous campaign in Gaza.

Are Israeli Jews capable of hate crimes? Many American and European Jews would answer – no way. After all, are the Israeli Jews not the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe who had fled the dens of hatred and intolerance? How could they be exhibiting the same hatred that was once the monopoly of the Christian Nazis? Facts are, however, quite the opposite. It won’t be any exaggeration to say that they – i.e., from Prime Minister Netanyahu in the top down to a Jewish teenager - have learned the trade well from their former tormentors. Abu Khudair, a 16-year old Palestinian boy from the eastern occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, was abducted outside of his family’s home during the early morning on 2 July and his badly burned body was found in a Jerusalem forest hours later. A preliminary autopsy report indicated that Abu Khudair was burned alive. Israeli media reported on Sunday that six suspects were arrested; ...