‘I prefer ISIS to Iran’ — Israeli defense minister: Zio-Watch, January 19, 2016

In another act of land grab, Israel is planning to seize hundreds of acres of Palestinian agricultural land to expand its illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, says a report.

According to a report by the Times of Israel, the Tel Aviv regime is to confiscate 370 acres of agricultural land near the Palestinian city of Jericho in the West Bank over the coming weeks.

According to the report, the planned land grab, which will be the largest since August 2014, is expected to trigger harsh criticism from the European Union (EU) and the Palestinian Authority.

On Monday, the EU unanimously condemned the Israeli regime’s illegal settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories.

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro also said on Monday that the White House was “concerned and perplexed” by Israel’s settlement policy, which he said raised “honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions.”

The United Nations (UN) and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of its future independent state, with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.
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The president of the European Council has warned that Europe has “no more than two months” to get the refugee crisis under control, or else its borderless Schengen zone will collapse.

“We have no more than two months to get things under control,” Donald Tusk told the European Parliament on Tuesday, adding that the Schengen area would otherwise fail. The 26-nation Schengen zone allows people to travel freely between participating countries, without passport or ID checks.

Tusk also said the EU would “fail as a political project” if the bloc could not exercise proper control of its external borders.

It comes just days after Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann, announced that the country had “temporarily cancelled” its adherence to the Schengen agreement.
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Islamic State is holding around 3,500 people as slaves in Iraq, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday. Most of those being detained are women and children from Iraq’s Yazidi community.

The report, issued jointly by the UN human rights office and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, states that an estimated 3,500 people are “currently being held in slavery” by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

“Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yazidi community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities,” the report says.

It goes on to state that the militant group, which also controls large swathes of territory in neighboring Syria, has committed widespread abuses that may “in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”
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French police officers secure the area as a bulldozer is used to clear dismantled shelters of the camp known as the “Jungle”, a squalid sprawling camp in Calais, northern France, January 18, 2016 © Pascal Rossignol / Reuters Diggers and bulldozers protected by riot police have begun carving a path towards the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp – home to thousands of refugees – after authorities told the migrants to move into new housing so the original makeshift camp can be destroyed.

French authorities want to create a 100-meter buffer zone between the Calais camp and the bordering motorway to protect thousands of lorries from migrant attacks, as the refugees try to board trucks headed to the UK.

“The migrants are invited to move from the tents to go into the containers and the facilities that have been fitted,” Philippe Mignonet, deputy mayor of Calais, told RT. “There have been lots of things created there which are illegal and they must disappear, as simple as that, they must disappear.”

Last week the city’s authorities gave Calais Jungle residents until last Thursday to leave the area, but extended the grace period until Monday. Ahead of the clean-up effort, many of those living in the Jungle had already moved into 125 homes formed from converted shipping containers in an area adjacent to the camp.
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PARIS (JTA) — Listing terrorist attacks in Israel along with attacks by the Islamic State, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said they showed “we are in a world war.”

Valls made the statement Monday at a Paris hotel in an address before approximately 350 listeners, mostly from the Jewish community, during an event organized by CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities.

In explaining the reasons for the existence of a terrorist threat in France, he noted “upheaval in the Arab world” and “the reality in certain neighborhoods in France, where young people are being radicalized.”
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WASHINGTON (JTA) – The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process a year ago has led to an accelerating war of words over Israeli settlements, with Israel accusing its growing chorus of foreign critics of prejudging the final terms of a peace deal at best – and anti-Semitism at worst.

The battle heated up this week with the release of a report by Human Rights Watch arguing that doing business with West Bank settlements reinforces Israel’s presence there and contributes to human rights abuses.

The report comes a day after the European Union, which in November announced new guidelines to label Israeli exports produced in the settlements, declared that any agreement with Israel “must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”

And the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, while not going nearly as far, decried Israel’s seizure of West Bank lands and what he described as a two-tiered justice system.
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(JTA) — More than one-third of Jewish-Israelis see their Arab fellow citizens as “enemies,” and only 20 percent said they consider Arab-Israelis their “equals,” a new poll has found.The poll was conducted via face-to-face interviews with 600 Israeli Jews by the Institute for National Security Studies, which is holding its annual conference this week. It also found that 44 percent of Jewish-Israelis see Arab-Israelis as “people who needed to be respected but also treated with suspicion,” Haaretz reported Tuesday.

The think tank’s poll, which is not yet available on its website, also interviewed 200 Arab citizens of Israel, finding that 70 percent identify as Israeli in some form, whether describing themselves as “Israeli Arab,” Palestinian Israeli” or “Arab with Israeli citizenship.”
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Tue Jan 19, 2016 7:8PM

The Syrian government has strongly denounced the recent massacre by Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the eastern Deir al-Zour Province, saying the responsibility for the crime lies with the supporters of terrorist groups operating across the Arab state.

In two identical letters to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the head of the UN Security Council, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said that such killings are a continuation of a series of barbaric and methodical terrorist acts by armed groups, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Tuesday.

The ministry said the militant groups are receiving funds from some regional countries as well as states outside the region, noting that these countries recruit terrorists to serve their interests.

The ministry also pointed out that such crimes would not have happened without the constant funding, arming, and logistic support provided by intelligence agencies of certain states especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.

The Syrian government affirms its determination to continue defending the Syrian people and confronting terrorism, the ministry emphasized.

The letter also reiterates its call for the UN chief and the Security Council to condemn such terrorist acts.
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Published time: 19 Jan, 2016 22:29

70 asylum-seekers have been taken to a camp in the Finnmark province of Sor-Varanger on the border with Russia. Uncertainty about their fate has led to some staging a hunger strike.

“When they brought us here, they said we would be interviewed by UDI [the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration], but we haven’t been. We haven’t been given any information,” one of the asylum seekers, Rami Haddad from Jordan, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK on Monday.

“It feels like we are in prison. We can’t go out or do anything, the police are everywhere,” he said.

He said that both children and adult have joined the hunger strike.
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Published time: 19 Jan, 2016 04:37

© Tom A mass anti-immigration rally in the Netherlands has erupted into violence after riot police moved in to disperse a 1,000-strong march against the opening of a refugee center in the town of Heesch.

Protesters shot fireworks and threw flares at riot police who attempted to disperse a crowd of an estimated 1,000 people marching on the local town hall. The protesters took to the streets as officials held a meeting on Monday to discuss plans of accommodating some 500 refugees over the next 10 years.

Far right activists tried to storm the local government headquarters, forcing local officials to abandon their scheduled debate and evacuate the premises. The town “had given police extra powers” after a “demonstration ran out of control,” said a message from the mayor, Marieke Moorman, posted on the town’s website.Authorities did not immediately announce the number of those detained or possibly injured in clashes.

The demo began peacefully at around 6:00pm GMT. Protesters carried signs bearing slogans such as “stop the asylum nonsense!” the crowd marched to the town hall, where the building was eventually pelted with eggs.

Clashes erupted hours after notorious far-right politician Geert Wilders demanded that male Muslim migrants be locked up in asylum centers, justifying the move as a measure of protection for Dutch women after the New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne, Germany. Anti-migrant activists took the video message of the head of the Freedom Party (PVV) seriously, and moved quickly to organize an event via Facebook.

Police officers urged the crowd to disperse and called for riot-geared backup to take control of the situation and clear the square in front of the city hall by 7:30pm.Protesters insist that 500 asylum seekers is a disproportionally high number for a town of some 12,500 people, urging authorities to scrap their plans for refugee resettlement.
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(JTA) — An American Jewish billionaire philanthropist in Chicago has donated $2 million to establish what is believed to be the first chair of transgender studies at a university.

Jennifer Pritzker, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who is believed to be the only transgender billionaire in the world, made the gift through her Tawani Foundation to the University of Victoria in British Columbia, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.

Aaron Devor, a sociology professor who studies transgender issues and the founder of the University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives, will be the inaugural chair.

Pritzker’s foundation also supports U.S. military personnel and historiography, according to the Tribune.

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(JTA) — Western Europe faces a “very real prospect of an exodus of Jews” because of anti-Semitic violence, a leader of European Jewry told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor made the statement to the Russian president during a meeting between Putin and delegates from seven European Union member states, the congress said in a statement.

Putin replied by suggesting Jews who leave Western Europe come to Russia, BBC reported.

“Let them come to us. In the Soviet Union they used to go away, now let them come back,” Putin said with a smile.
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(JTA) — A Brazilian publisher canceled the release of a new printing of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” after strong pressure from the Jewish community and scholars.

Edipro reportedly decided on Thursday to call off a first printing run of 1,000 copies, saying it was an old translation to Portuguese from the 1930s with no commentary. The release was slated for late January.

The vice president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, Paulo Maltz, said legal procedures are under discussion to prevent the national distribution of the book authored by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
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RAANANA, Israel (JTA) – Before she traded her native France for Israel, Catherine Berdah ran a successful drug store in an affluent suburb on the eastern edge of Paris.

A 50-year-old pharmacist with a master’s degree in business and decades of experience, Berdah earned over $6,000 per month and presided over an expanding business with 14 employees. But Berdah sold out last year and moved with her husband and two teenage daughters to this central Israeli city because she feared for their future in France amid rising anti-Semitic violence.

Berdah hoped to build a new pharmacy business in the Jewish state. But six months after settling here, she has already quit a $6-per-hour job as a cashier that offered no prospect of advancement and another in a health clinic where she was told to stack boxes in a storage room. Berdah left the latter because she was unable to lift the boxes.

“At 60, I was told that lifting boxes was basically all I’m good for,” Bredah said. “That’s when I started to feel humiliated.”
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Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:52PM

Britain sold the Saudis over 1.5 billion dollars worth of arms last summer that saw Riyadh escalate its deadly military campaign against Yemen, say human rights groups.

From July to September 2015, the British government authorized the sales under an export category which covers missiles, rockets and bombs via five separate licenses, The Guardian cited Saferworld and Amnesty International as saying on Tuesday.

The sales were made just one day after British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed he was trying to “encourage a political process in Yemen,” and that the crisis in the country would not be solved through military intervention, said a Saferworld spokesperson.

“All of these are for air force end use, with the components for air-to-surface rockets for training purposes,” the spokesperson noted.

He added that the Saudi air force “has bombed hospitals, schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a displaced persons camp and helped to turn Yemen into a living nightmare.”

Amnesty International UK’s head of policy, Allan Hogarth, said that these licenses were being signed off by British officials as “hundreds – possibly thousands – of Yemeni civilians” were being killed by Saudi Arabia’s “terrifying barrage of indiscriminate” airstrikes.

“The law is crystal clear: any Saudi attack, whether deliberate or not, that fails to adequately protect civilians is a violation of international law. And our obligations are equally clear – as a major supplier of Saudi Arabia’s weaponry, the UK is legally obliged to suspend arms exports,” he noted.

Last month, the Campaign Against Arms Trade NGO reported that the UK had sold over eight billion dollars of military hardware to Riyadh since Cameron took office in May 2010.
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Published time: 19 Jan, 2016 21:06

Security forces and local tribes have joined efforts to turn the small Iraqi town of Barwanah into an unassailable fortress, which has survived a 1.5-year siege by Islamic State. They have delivered huge losses to the jihadists.

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) used over 300 vehicles, rigged with explosives, to crush the resistance of the Barwanah residents, but failed to succeed every time, Ali Farihat one of the local tribal leaders, told RT’s Arabic Channel.

“We’ve delivered them (IS) heavy losses in manpower and hardware. We’ve seized more than 50 cars and burned more than a hundred vehicles. We took some valuable weaponry from them,” Farihat said.

Barwanah is a small town which occupies an area of around three square kilometers, and most of its population is involved in agriculture.
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Pressure from BDS activists leads to Mercator removing Israeli produce, including pomelos, dates and avocados, from its stores.

Mercator, Slovenia’s largest supermarket chain, has removed Israeli products from its shelves – including pomelos, dates and avocados, following pressure from the BDS movement.

The Slovenian government holds shares in the chain. The Slovenian ambassador to Israel was this week summoned for a discussion at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, where senior ministry officials explained the seriousness with which Israel views the affair.
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