Skip to main content

A lawless out-of-control army

No comment called for....other than yet another example of Israel's IDF behaving in an intolerable and unacceptable way.    Most certainly not an example of the so-called most moral army in the world as Israel continues to claim.

"Reuters news agency has said two of its cameramen were struck with rifle butts, forced to strip and attacked with teargas by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Yousri al-Jamal and Mamoun Wazwaz were allegedly stopped near a checkpoint where a Palestinian teenager, Mohammed Ziad Sulaima, had just been shot dead by an Israeli border guard. The two were forced out of their car by an Israeli military foot patrol, despite the car being clearly marked TV and both men wearing blue flak jackets with "Press" on the front, said the agency.

After striking them and forcing them to strip down to their underwear, the soldiers then fired teargas at them, it was claimed, which left Wazwaz requiring hospital treatment.

Stephen Adler, editor in chief of Reuters News, said: "We deplore the mistreatment of our journalists and have registered our extreme dismay with the Israeli military authorities."

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is looking into the allegations. "The regional brigade commander was ordered to open an investigation," Colonel Avital Leibovich told Reuters in an email.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel condemned the alleged assault, telling the BBC: "Press freedom is the signal of a civilised nation. The assault and humiliation of reporters trying to do their work is unacceptable and falls far, far below the standards that the IDF says it adheres to."

Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: "The IDF claim that it is carrying out an investigation seems intended to buy time when what is needed is immediate action. The soldiers who engaged in this wanton act of abuse against two professional journalists must face legal consequences, and commanders must make clear that such actions are incompatible with IDF standards and will not be tolerated in future."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does a no-fly zone actually mean?

As some countries consider imposing a no-fly zone in relation to Libya, the pertinent question must be what does that mean and entail? FP provides the answers: "It depends on the circumstances. There are two primary types of no-fly zones imposed by air forces. The first is imposed by one military over another, while the two sides are at war. In practice, this type of no-fly zone amounts to a warning from one side that it will engage the other's aircraft if they are spotted in a given territory. The second type, more applicable to the situation in Libya, is when an outside power possessing overwhelming air superiority restricts flights over a given country in order to discourage an internal conflict or humanitarian crisis. This is a relatively recent tactic, which was used most famously in Bosnia and Iraq during the 1990s. No-fly zones are often a compromise in situations where the international community is demanding a response to ongoing violence, but full military interven...
6 comments
Read more