‘This is apartheid!’ Israeli minister blasts bus segregation for Palestinians

Requests for separate buses for Palestinians in Israel are “unacceptable” and resemble “apartheid,” the country’s Justice Minister said, adding that this kind of discrimination is banned by Israeli law.

“It’s intolerable, the claims that they [the settlers] need their own buses, because one [Palestinian] didn’t get up for a woman or an elderly person, and another wasn’t nice to them. This is apartheid!” Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said. “That’s something I find unacceptable, and I’ll work against it,” she vowed. “This is discrimination that’s forbidden by Israeli law.”

Livni’s statements come after the country’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon decided that West Bank Arabs working in Israel should have their own segregated public buses when traveling to and from Israel via a single crossing.

Full article at RT News

READ MORE: Israel Apartheid? Palestinians to be banned from West Bank settlers’ buses

Kissinger Wanted to Bomb Havana for Fighting Apartheid

In the new book, "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana," authors Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande use recently declassified documents to expose the secret history of dialogue between the United States and Cuba. Among the revelations are details of how then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considered launching airstrikes against Cuba after Fidel Castro sent troops to support independence fighters in Angola in 1976. In the years that followed, top-secret U.S. emissaries, including former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, worked to normalize relations with Cuba. The book's release comes as Cuban leader Raúl Castro is set to participate for the first time in next year's Summit of the Americas in Panama. Cuba recently denounced the Obama administration for extending the more than 50-year embargo for another year in a little-noticed move in September.

Israel's Apartheid Wall must fall: 10 years justice denied

Comedian Mark Thomas walked the length of Israel's Apartheid Wall on both sides!
July 2014 marks 10 years since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the construction of Israel's Apartheid Wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank illegal under international law.
The ICJ ruled that Israel is legally obliged to dismantle the Wall and to make reparations for all damaged caused. Yet construction continues to this day, devastating every aspect of Palestinian life.

Kerry Warns Israel Could Become ‘An Apartheid State’

The secretary of state said that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could become ‘an apartheid state,’ like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming over the comparison.

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term "apartheid" in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to Jewish State. Kerry's use of the loaded term is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and it could attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.

It wasn't the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

The Daily Beast

Mossad trained Mandela

Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who passed away earlier this month, received sabotage and weapons training by Mossad operatives in 1962, a report by the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed on Friday. During the training, which took place a few months before Mandela was arrested and jailed for over 27 years, he reportedly expressed interest in the tactics of Israel's pre-state underground military organization the Haganah.

According to documents of the Israel State Archives labeled "Top Secret," Mandela was trained by Mossad operatives in Ethiopia where he stayed while attempting to garner support from African leaders for the armed wing of the underground African National Congress (ANC). At the time, the operatives were unaware of Mandela's true identity as he was going by a fake name. In a letter sent to Israel's Foreign Ministry about two months after Mandela was arrested in South Africa, Mossad agents told of a man who called himself David Mobsari.

“As you may recall, three months ago we discussed the case of a trainee who arrived at the [Israeli] embassy in Ethiopia by the name of David Mobsari who came from Rhodesia,” the letter said. “The aforementioned received training from the Ethiopians [code for Israeli embassy staff, almost certainly Mossad agents] in judo, sabotage and light weapons.”

The letter also said that the man "showed an interest in the methods of the Haganah and other Israeli underground movements," and that he "was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel, and gave the impression of being an intellectual." "The staff tried to make him into a Zionist,” the operative added. “In conversations with him, he expressed socialist worldviews and at times created the impression that he leaned toward communism,” the letter continued, adding that the man who called himself David Mobsari was the same man who had been arrested in South Africa.

More on i24news

Also see: Israel's immoral alliance with South Africa

Nelson Mandela - A Tribute To Madiba!

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela went on to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father). Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Wikipedia

Israel's War on Truth

Abby Martin highlights the Israeli Military's bombing of media buildings and targeting of journalists, including the RT office in Gaza, and calls out the Israeli government to for making veiled threats to RT's headquarters in Moscow.

Liberman slams EU for calling Jerusalem construction plans 'illegal' activity

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday criticized the European Union, Britain, and France for their condemnation of a plan to construct hundreds of additional apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood situated across the 1967 Green Line. The Interior Ministry on Thursday approved a plan to expand the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo by 797 units. The plan was published for validation in an Israeli newspaper in what was the last phase of the planning process, AFP reported.

“Gilo is an inseparable part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israel,” Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) said in a statement. ”These automatic condemnations indicate a lack of a basic understanding of the reality in the region. These condemnations contribute nothing to the advancement of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. They only encourage the Palestinian side to stick to its refusal to negotiate and continue its anti-Israeli activities in the international arena,” Liberman stated. “The EU should focus on the problems that are surfacing between different nations on European soil. After these issues are successfully resolved, we will gladly hear any suggestions,” he said.

The Times of Israel

Roadmap to Apartheid

Official trailer for the upcoming movie Roadmap to Apartheid. Narrated by Alice Walker.
There are many lessons to draw from the South African experience of Apartheid relevant to conflicts all over the world. Roadmap to Apartheid explores in detail the apartheid comparison as it is used in the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict. As much an historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid, the film shows us why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.
For more information go to http://roadmaptoapartheid.org

Palestinian "Freedom Riders"

Six Palestinian activists boarded Israeli busses in an attempt to challenge the system of segregation in the West Bank. They were arrested at Hizmeh checkpoint, interrogated by Israel's internal intelligence agency, the Shabak, and released. In the West Bank, segregation is both visible with the separation wall, fence, and separate cities for Israelis and Palestinians and invisible with separate legal and security systems for the two peoples. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke with Fesal Al Hatib, a Palestinian living in Hizmeh, a village divided in half by a road and the Wall.

Egged now also drives in The Netherlands