Tag Archives: B’Tselem

Rights Monitor Demands Probe of Israel’s ‘Guantánamo-Like’ Prison

Detainees at Israel’s Sde Teman camp were “blindfolded and bound, with both their hands and feet handcuffed, and if they tried to ask for anything, were met with abuse and threats,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

By Julia Conley. Published 12-19-2023 by Common Dreams

Sde Teman camp. Photo: Palestine Captives/X

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor on Monday demanded an independent investigation into Israel’s alleged “torture and murder of Palestinian civilians” who have been captured and detained by the Israel Defense Forces—particularly those who have been held in the Sde Teman army camp, located between the Israeli city of Beersheba and Gaza.

Sde Teman has been turned into “a new Guantánamo-like prison,” the monitor said, comparing it to the U.S. prison where inmates accused by the U.S. of being terrorists have been held indefinitely, many without being charged, and subjected to torture for more than two decades.

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Israel ‘Legalizes’ 9 Apartheid Settler Colonies in Occupied Palestine

“Make no mistake; this isn’t about retaliation for the recent terror attacks,” said one critic. “This is nothing else than colonialism, and the U.S. and E.U. won’t do anything about it; instead, they say that they are ‘deeply concerned.'”

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 2-12-2023 by Common Dreams

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an occupied territory in which international law bans nations from settling civilians. (Credit: Montecruz Foto / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 /

Israel’s far-right Security Cabinet on Sunday approved the immediate “legalization” of nine Jewish-only settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem over what critics called the empty objection of benefactor the United States and in violation of international law—under which all Israeli settler colonies are illegal.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich both claimed responsibility for the action, in which they sought government recognition of 77 illegal settler outposts. The ministers and other Israeli officials said the move was in response to recent deadly attacks against Jews by Palestinian resistance fighters, including a vehicular assault that killed three people—two of them young children—near East Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood on Friday. Continue reading

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2021 Was Deadliest Year for Palestinians Since 2014: Israeli Human Rights Group

According to analysis, Israeli forces and settlers killed over 300 people in the occupied territories and left nearly 900 homeless.

By Jessica Corbett.  Published 1-4-2022 by Common Dreams

Israeli strikes have destroyed buildings and infrastructure in Gaza. Photo: UNOCHA/Samar Elouf

A Jerusalem-based human rights group on Tuesday released new statistics revealing that Israeli security forces and armed settlers‘ violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories escalated in 2021 to the highest levels in seven years.

Last year was the deadliest year for Palestinians living under occupation since 2014, when Israel launched Operation Protective Edge and killed thousands in the Gaza Strip, according to B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Continue reading

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EU Joins Rights Group in Condemning Israel’s ‘Day of Destruction’ of Palestinian Homes

“Demolitions are illegal under international law and significantly undermine the prospects for peace.”

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 11-28-2021 by Common Dreams

sraeli forces use bulldozers including a U.S.-made Caterpillar to destroy Palestinian homes in illegally occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo: jenniferlisa/Flickr/cc)

The European Union on Friday joined a prominent Israeli human rights group in condemning last week’s demolition of multiple homes in occupied East Jerusalem, an illegal action that displaced 22 Palestinians including 15 children.

“We reiterate our call to halt demolitions and any other unlawful practices that coerce Palestinians out of their homes,” the European Union Delegation to the Palestinians (DPAL) tweeted. Continue reading

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Rights Group Says Israel Uses Settler Violence Against Palestinians to Take Over West Bank Land

“Settler violence is a form of government policy, permitted and aided by official state authorities with their active participation,” according to a report from the Israeli group B’Tselem.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-14-2021 by Common Dreams

The Um Zuqa farm is one of six “farms” set up by settlers in the northern Jordan Valley in the past five years. It was built in 2016 on a site that housed the Palestinian village of Khirbet al-Mzoqah, which Israel demolished after occupying the West Bank. (Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B’Tselem)

The Jerusalem-based rights group B’Tselem released a report Sunday that accuses Israel’s “​​apartheid regime” of using settler-colonist violence to take control of Palestinian farmland and pastureland, focusing on nearly 11 square miles in the illegally occupied West Bank.

“Settler violence against Palestinians serves as a major informal tool at the hands of the state to take over more and more West Bank land,” says the report. “The state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly.” Continue reading

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‘An Act of Cowardice’: 21 Israel-Based Groups Condemn Terror Label for Palestine NGOs

The organizations called the designation “a draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work.”

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-25-2021

The Israeli bombing of civilian neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip 2021. Photo: MathKnight/Wikimedia Cpmmons/CC

Twenty-one Israel-based civil society groups on Sunday joined Palestine defenders around the world in condemning the Israeli government’s labeling of six Palestinian advocacy groups as terrorist organizations, calling the move “an act of cowardice.”

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s “designation of prominent Palestinian civil society organizations, among them our colleagues in the Palestinian human rights community, as terrorist organizations is a draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work,” the groups said in a statement. Continue reading

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Scathing Human Rights Watch Report Says Israel Guilty of Apartheid

The prominent watchdog group’s new analysis finds the oppression of Palestinians has reached a “threshold.”

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-27-2021

Photo: Alisdare Hickson/flickr/CC

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the policies and actions of the Israeli government against the Palestinian people amount to systematic “apartheid” and unlawful persecution that must be stopped.

The accusations related to Israel’s actions in the occupied territories (OPT) and within Israel are laid out in a new report entitled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” The findings are based on over two years of research and documentation including official government statements, internal planning documents, and interviews Continue reading

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‘No One Can Censor Reality’: Human Rights Group Pushes Back After Israel Retaliates Against ‘Apartheid’ Label

“Israel cannot be considered a democracy, for it works to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people, Jews, over another, Palestinians.”

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-18-2021

Palestinian workers queue up along the separation barrier often called the apartheid wall by critics as they wait to clear an Israeli military checkpoint. (Photo: delayed gratification/Flickr/cc)

The prominent Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem on Monday defiantly defended its position that Israel is an apartheid state after the country’s education minister banned members of groups that call the Jewish state “false, derogatory names” from entering its schools.

Last week, B’Tselem published a position paper that cited “a wide array of Israeli policies” it said are “advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group—Jews—over another—Palestinians” before concluding that “we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.” Continue reading

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Palestinians, Advocates Blast New U.S. Rule Requiring ‘Made in Israel’ Label on Settlement Goods

“Such a decision attempts to legitimize settlement-manufactured goods as well as the theft of Palestinian land and products,” said Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-26-2020

Mike Pompeo at the Psagot Winery—located on stolen Palestinian land in the illegal Israeli settler colony of Psagot. Photo: Secretary Pompeo/Twitter

Palestinian officials and international peace activists condemned a Trump administration order that went into effect earlier this week requiring goods produced in a large portion of the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine to be labeled “Made in Israel.”

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol on Wednesday announced that “for country of origin marking purposes, imported goods produced in the West Bank, specifically in Area C under the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement… must be marked to indicate their origin as ‘Israel,’ ‘Product of Israel,’ or ‘Made in Israel.'” Continue reading

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With World’s Eyes on US Election, Israel Bulldozes West Bank Village in Biggest Single Demolition in 10 Years

The razing of Khirbet Humsa—which left dozens of people homeless—”can only be considered an act of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian population,” said one human rights group.

By Brett  Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-5-2020

Bulldozers destroying Khirbet Humsa. Photo: Ahmad/Twitter

Under cover of the U.S. presidential election, the Israeli military bulldozed an entire Bedouin community in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine on Tuesday, leaving scores of people—including more than 40 children—homeless during a cold, driving rainstorm.

Just hours before the cold front rolled through the West Bank, Israel Defense Forces troops razed the Bedouin hamlet of Khirbet Humsa, near Tubas in the Jordan Valley, forcing 74 people including 41 children—one just three months old—out into the approaching storm. Continue reading

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