Palestinian prisoners in... Palestine?

On Monday, May 7th, 2012, El País published an article by Ana Carbajosa under the title Israel deniega la excarcelación a dos presos palestinos al borde de la muerte (Israel rejects to release two almost dead Palestinian prisoners). Excerpts from the article below (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

"Adameer, the Palestinian association which provides legal counseling to many of the prisoners, denounces that penitentiary authorities have begun a campaign of reprisals against the strikers, who are said to be deprived of visits, access to lawyers and all kind of personal goods. Some of them are even confined in isolation cells, according to Adameer."

All these measures are actually applied in the jails of almost every single democratic State. It's a way to fight against those prisoners who don't adapt themselves to the rules of the jail or who incite others to commit rebellious acts.

Ana Carbajosa's article also deals with the Israeli administrative detention:

"However, institutions like the European Union have criticized in the past the 'excessive use' of this Israeli legal precept, which according to the international legislation should be applied in very exceptional cases and to prevent damages which couldn't be prevented in another way."

Precisely an exceptional case is that of Israel. It's not a country which fights against terrorism under the same circumstances Spain or the Federal Republic of Germany have fought under against E.T.A. and the Red Army Fraction, respectively. Israel fights terrorism in the context of an armed conflict, thus making the terrorists enemies of the State during wartime. And enemies of the State during wartime, irrespective of the fact that they're terrorists or not, are not held in the same conditions as conventional criminals.

More examples of Spanish newspapers denouncing Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners are Público (Thousands of Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike), El Mundo (More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike) and ABC (Barbecues to disrupt the hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners), for example.

But there is something the Spanish mainstream media doesn't talk about, at least not usually: those Palestinian prisoners who are held by their fellow Palestinians in Palestinian territory. The Jerusalem Post, however,  informs about it. For example, on Sunday, May 13th, 2012, this Israeli newspaper published an article by Khaled Abu Toameh under the title Fatah prisoners held by Hamas go on hunger strike.

And Hamas can't argue that the prisoners it holds are enemies of the State during wartime. Actually, those Palestinians held (or something even worse than just being held) by Hamas are mainly political prisoners who are suspected to be members of al-Fatah, the faction which fights against Hamas for the Palestinian political hegemony. It should also be noticed that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not a legitimate authority which could be legally recognized as such. What Hamas pretends when arresting Palestinians suspected to be members of al-Fatah or to support it, is to terrorize its fellow countrymen, warning them neither to show any sort of sympathy nor to join or help main Hamas' political rival in Palestine.

Telecinco turns a blow to the face into a shot.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post on Monday, April 16th, 2012, an Israeli soldier who hit a Danish pro-Palestinian activist in the face with his rifle will be subjected to an investigation.

Also on this day, Spanish TV channel Telecinco reported about the issue. In its news bulletin, at 15:00 hours, the event was literally portrayed as an example of the way in which the Israeli army exercises repression against pro-Palestinian activists, thus extending the guilt over the incident to all Israeli soldiers. But in its official website, Telecinco showed one of the most shocking distortion of facts I've ever read: the blow to the activit's face was not a blow, but a shot. He was fired upon. A rifle bullet was what the activist received in his face.

Under the title Israel suspende a un militar que disparó contra un activista pro palestino (Israel suspends a soldier who shot a pro Palestinian activist), we can read what follows (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

"The incident took place on Saturday, as declared to the Army Radio by Yoav Mordechai [a military spokesman]. Lieutenant colonel Shalom Eisner can be seen in the video bearing his M-16 rifle with both hands and shooting against a group of individuals who were participating in a march by bicycle in the West Bank.

One of the shots hit in a Danish citizen's face, who fell down and was evacuated by other activists. The activist, whose name is Andreas Ias, was looked after minor injuries in a Palestinian hospital and has declared to the Israeli media he is OK."

There are two videos on YouTube which show the incident. One lasts for 14 seconds and shows Ias being punched in the face. The other shows several incidents recorded on that day, lasts for 2 minutes and 16 seconds, is reserved to adult YouTube users only and also shows Ias being punched.

I only have a question: does somebody see or hear any single bullet being fired?

#HITLER becomes trending topic in Spain; anti-Semitic jokes arise.

As most of you probably know, Twitter is a social network which shows those issues which become trending topics (or T.T.'s) in a specific country, and sometimes even in a certain area or city within that country. From 23:35 on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012, until 2:45 on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012, #HITLER became T.T. in Spain, and anti-Semitic jokes arose.

Untold stories.

As shown before (read here and here), not only what the Spanish mainstream media tells must be taken into account in order to understand the way it treats Israel; for this purpose, what the media doesn't tell is also important. Misinformation and deception don't only come from half-truths, exaggerations and fabrications, but also from deliberate omissions.

Spanish mainstream media usually denounces how a Palestinian refugee problem was prompted by Israel; what the media doesn't tell here is that the Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, declared in September, 2011, that the Palestinian refugees in countries such as Lebanon or Jordan, as well as even inside the Palestinian territories, wouldn't be eligible to become citizens of the proposed Palestinian State, if created.

Does it make sense when it is usually alleged that a hypothetical Palestinian State would be created in order to serve precisely as a national homeland for the Palestinian people? If the Palestinian refugee problem is so important for the Spanish media from a humanitarian perspective, why not to denounce Abdullah and for this future policy he is announcing?

Is it maybe because Abdullah Abdullah is Palestinian instead of Israeli and works for the P.L.O. but not for Israel?

Manuel Tapial's anti-Semitism exposed again.

Isaac Querub is the president of the F.C.J.E. (Federación de Comunidades Judías de España or Spain's Federation of Jewish Communities). He was interviewed by the Spanish daily El País and claimed that Holocaust denial should constitute a punishable offense in Spain (which was the case before a 2007 ruling by the Spanish Constitutional Court).

1.- This was Manuel Tapial response:

"And because of Israel denial, do they want to imprison us for that? Put me the first in the line."

2.- Manuel Tapial's contact Santi Garcia Avila answered:

"The Spanish state should expel every Jew who doesn't recognize the Palestinian holocaust."

Please notice such an example of anti-Semitism: Jews should be expelled if they deny a Palestinian holocaust, a fact which isn't happening nor happened before in strictly historical terms. And he is referring to those Jews located in Spain but not to the Spaniards as a whole, which means he is singling them out. Just because they're Jews?

3.- In this third screencapture we can observe how Manuel Tapial likes Santi Garcia Avila's comment. Does that mean Manuel Tapial would support such an anti-Semitic measure? Please remember what the Spanish laws tell about this in the article 510 of the Penal Code.

Manuel Tapial and terrorism (III).

Manuel Tapial is a Spanish pro-Palestinian activist who was on board the Mavi Marmara when this ship was assaulted by Israel's Tzahal in 2010. Though he declares himself a pacifist, he has a long history of support for terrorism (read here and here), which constitutes a criminal offense according to the Spanish Penal Code.

Now let's read how his self-procclaimed pacifism is contradicted by what he wrote (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

1.- On Thursday, January 12th, 2012, Manuel Tapial wrote the following:

"The tremendous shamelessness of the European political class before the occupation of Palestine, could, in the medium term, reverse the increasing feeling of struggling lawfully and in a pacific way which characterizes the Palestinians when achieving their legitimate rights..."

Manuel Tapial seems not to pay too much attention to what has been going on in the Middle East for the last years. The truth is that the way the Palestinians are struggling have been consisting mainly of this.

2.- Manuel Tapial himself suggests to harass Israeli citizens worlwide just because of their nationality (which is also punishable under Spanish laws), as he wrote lately from Nicaragua:

"The same [wall] Israel will use to isolate the Palestinians is the one the world's civil society should build to isolate Israel and its practices in order to make them realize their criminal attitude is not tolerable! I'm happy to be in Nicaragua and to see that Israeli citizens here are asked and questioned constantly about what they do to the Palestinians, don't let this people even a single minute of rest!"

3.- On Monday, December 26th, 2011, Manuel Tapial published an article in his own blog. He later linked to his article via Facebook, as shown in the screen capture. What he wrote in his blog includes the following:

"Under the present scene, all indicates we are called to write the History of our epoch. New persons will have to make them known publicly this year around the new struggles which appear before us (..) emulating Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, Ulrike Meinhof, Leila Khaled, Steve Bico, Fonseca, Salvador Puig Antic[h] and many others,..."

Of those individuals mentioned, at least two, Ulrike Meinhof and Leila Khaled, are well known terrorists. Ulrike Meinhof was part of the R.A.F. (Rote Armee Fraktion or Red Army Fraction), a West German extreme-left terrorist organization, while Leila Khaled was the first known woman who hijacked a civil passenger aircraft, in this case on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Indeed, daring to compare those two terrorists with Rosa Parks, who is a symbol against racism, is insulting.

Manuel Tapial's link in Facebook was answered by one of his contacts in the social network: Sarai Costas Silva. She commented the following:

"Ulrike Meinhof, extrajudicially executed by the 'Federal Republic of Germany' (the specific executor organism is still to be determined; maybe their intelligence service?) at the Stammheim prison in 1977."

And under this comment, Sarai Costas Silva wrote another one:

"Also executed by the Federal Germany's security apparatus were, in Stammheim, Andreas Baader, his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan Carl-Raspe. The same night during which these three executions were carried out, they tried to do the same to Irmgard Möller, but they failed.

All of these were the leaders of the first generation of the Red Army Fraction. Earlier, another of its member, Holger Meins, had been executed in prison, leaving him dying from starvation (he had begun a hunger strike)."

4.- As we can see in the screen capture bellow, Manuel Tapial liked Sarai Costas Silva's first comment. Does it mean he really believes in such an absurd conspiracy theory about West German extrajudicial executions of prison inmates?

5.- Finally, we can see here how Manuel Tapial supports another well known terrorist: Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also know as Carlos the Jackal, who is currently serving life imprisonment sentence for the murders of two French security officials and a Lebanese contact, among other crimes. The multiple crime happened in Paris in June 27th, 1975. He was apprehended in Sudan in 1994.

Article on anti-Semitism in Spain.

An article on anti-Semitism in Spain was published by El País on Friday, December 2, 2011, under the title España encabeza las encuestas de antijudaísmo (Spain leads the polls on anti-Jewishness). It was written by Juan G. Bedoya and reads as follows (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

"'We are often asked why the Jews have been being hated so much and for so long. The question has to be made to those who hate us, not to those who are hated.' This thought by Isaac Querub Caro, president of the Federación de Comunidades Judías de España (F.C.J.E. [in English, Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain]), summarized the IV International Seminar on Anti-Semitism. It was closed the last night at the Fundación Caja Navarra [Caja Navarra Foundation]. Several graffiti in the street insulted those present with phrases such as 'Zionism is terrorism' and red crossing-outs on the Star of David.

'The insults, the graffiti, and the slogans against the Jews are considered something normal, when the truth is that they reflect an underlying anti-Semitism. They're a symptom of a social pathology', Alejandro Baer, professor of Sociology at the University of Munich, had denounced previously.

Jurist Jorge Trías Sagnier, who participated in the debate Penal struggle against anti-Semitism and hate offenses, expressed his repugnance regarding last April [Spanish] Supreme Court sentence which revoked the conviction against four nazis when considering that phrases such as: 'The Jews are destroyers and promote the wars'; 'The Germans were wrong for not having burnt all of them'; or that 'They're a pestilent race', don't pose a danger and don't deserve a penal reproach.

Trías Sagnier described that sentence as 'barbaric'. 'Some of the magistrates who passed it are the same who are chasing Baltasar Garzón [a Spanish magistrate currently under a judicial investigation for his alleged missconduct during his own judicial investigation on the crimes committed by former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco], but there was a particular vote, full of dignity, by magistrate Martínez Arrieta', he added.

Jews are just a o.1% of Spain's population, but the anti-Semitism levels are among the highest ones in Europe, Querub denounced. The final manifesto of the seminar concluded that 'the denial of the existence of this anti-Semitism aggravates the problem and stops its prevention'."