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Complaint: grocery store branch fired its Arab employees
21 Arab employees in the Modi'in branch of the grocery store chain "almost free" complained to agency of equal opportunity at workplace because they were fired. The chain: the employees acted violently
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The lawyer in charge of the suit said the chain's claims of violence were insufficient and there's a suspicion of discrimination.
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The chain responded: "The chain was forced to fire these employees due to their violent actions, including threats on the branch's manager, his deputies and the rest of the employees there as well as the customers while disrupting managerial hierarchy.
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The dismissed employees conducted physical threats against employees, suppliers and by standers, sexual harassment, theft, sabotage and more. The straw that broke the camel's back without a doubt was the bragging after the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar. Some of the things said by these employees caused to severe distress and worry for personal safety of peer employees.
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The chain still employes about 496 Arab employees which is about 23% of the entire workforce.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in an attempt to address what he claims is an increase in anti-Muslim bigotry, is relying on questionable statistics and a witness with a record of opposing virtually all law enforcement attempts to deal with Islamist-inspired terrorism.
In a statement, Durbin said his hearing Tuesday on the state of Muslim civil rights in America comes "in response to a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech, and other forms of discrimination."
While hate crime data for 2010 has not yet been released, FBI reports in recent years show no spike in anti-Muslim attacks. Those statistics show 107 anti-Islamic incidents reported in 2009, compared to 156 anti-Muslim crimes in 2006. In both reports, race related crimes dominated, and religiously-targeted attacks involved Jews as victims about nine times more often than Muslims in 2009 and more than five times more in 2006.
Durbin does not appear prepared to challenge them. After making critical statements about the organization, the three-term senator has embraced the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and visited a Chicago-area mosque whose leaders have been cited in federal court records as part of support front groups for Hamas, the U.S.-designated Islamic terrorist group that leads the government in Gaza.
A key witness, Farhana Khera, leads a group which claims there is widespread abuse of Muslims by law enforcement. "We have very serious concerns about FBI surveillance tactics that are used," she said in the wake of a series of arrests in terror plots involving sting operations and informants. In an April 13, 2010, article titled "Americans Should Be Free to Pray without FBI Snooping," Khera accused the FBI of "planting informants" in "American Muslim congregations." Without providing any evidence, she claimed "FBI agent provocateurs" had infiltrated mosques "without evidence of wrongdoing" in places as far out as New York, Florida and Southern California.
Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2719/durbin-flawed-hearing
David Eshel
A former British air force commander said a clear objective in Libya is needed before launching airstrikes. Now the strikes are on and may produce the "Biggest Show in Town" but unfortunately, little more. But what is the objective of Operation 'Odyssey Dawn'? Does it include a regime change, or physical removal of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi personally? If so, what of his seven sons – are they to be targeted too? As far as we know, UNSC Resolution 1973 calls for the "halt in the fighting and to achieve a ceasefire". It does not explicitly call for the removal of Col Muammar Gaddafi or a even a regime change. In fact, it specifies clearly that no ground action is permitted: It "authorizes member states to "take all necessary means to protect civilians", but crucially excludes any "foreign occupation force" moving into the territory of Qaddafi's Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, in most sweeping terms. So what 'necessary means' can the operation take to achieve to protect civilians? Without getting 'boots on the ground' very little can be achieved in any military action. Even hitting high-profile targets will become difficult, when hidden, or well camouflaged in urban environment., without 'eyes on the ground'. So what is the purpose behind all this noise?
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Rocket lands on home in Eshkol Regional Council causing damage but no injuries; Barak says Iron Drome anti-rocket system to be deployed within days, cautions system is not a 100% solution.
A Kassam rocket exploded in Eshkol Regional Council area late Friday night, causing damage to one house but no injuries.
A second Kassam had fell in an open area
Palestinians report army attacked building, military post belonging to Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas' military wing; several Palestinians injured. Palestinians also report IAF strikes in Jabel Ris, Sajaiyeh
Altogether five rockets fired from Gaza Strip in further escalation of violence in south. One rocket apparently lands in open spaces in city, alarm sounded. A number of residents suffer shock
Opposition figures say Hezbollah members working alongside Syrian security forces to quell Deraa riots; local hospital says bodies of 25 protestors brought in, 'all with gunshot wounds'
Wednesday’s terrorist bomb attack in Jerusalem detonated next to the “Blast of a Kiosk,” re-named after a 1993 suicide bombing that destroyed it.
The kiosk owner’s brother-in-law saved dozens Wednesday by keeping them away as he called police to report a suspicious object. It blew up in the middle of the conversation.
Kiosk owner Shimshon Moshe said that he asked his brother-in-law to take his place a short time before the explosion, which killed a 59-year-old woman and seriously wounded two others, including the brother-in-law.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said that Moshe's brother-in-law noticed a suspicious bag at a nearby public telephone and warned people to keep their distance as he telephoned police to report the suspicious object. It contained a four-pound bomb and exploded in the middle of the conversation.
MDA says none dead, over 20 injured Police estimate that package at exploded next to Egged bus 74 outside Binyanei Ha'uma in central Jerusalem; Netanyahu delaying departure to Moscow.
No reports of damage, injuries; 9 Palestinians, 4 civilians killed in IDF attacks on terrorists in Gaza Strip; PM "expresses regret" for innocent loss of life; Hamas threatens strong response.
Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh has called on the United Nations Security Council to protect the Palestinian people the same way it is protecting Libya. He has also asked Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing following "Israel's crimes."
The Paesltinians also reported that a military unit member who was injured during an IDF attack on Gaza has died. This raises the number of terrorists killed in the attack to four.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: This coalition between the Right and Israel, the evangelical right in the United States, is not founded on personal friendships or anything like that, or even values. It’s founded on some sort of weird, rightwing thing. You just high five each other there at the Western Wall and then that’s done, they’re trip.
DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: But there is a theological component which Gene was referring to…
MATTHEWS: Explain.
CORN: …Which is there’s a certain brand of evangelical Christians who believe in Revelations, that Armageddon is coming, and that will happen in Israel basically.
MATTHEWS: If they hold the West Bank.
CORN: If they hold, well there’s a lot of different components to that, but that’s why they like Israel. That’s why they want Israel to be strong. It’s not because…
MATTHEWS: It’s not personal.
CORN: Right. It’s not because they like Jews or Israelis.
MATTHEWS: [Laughs hysterically]
Rocket alert system rings out across Ashkelon as rocket from Gaza slams into southern part of the city; bomb squad officers searching for location of impact; no physical injuries or damages reported.
France says EU recognition of Palestinian state a 'possibility'
French FM says his country has no plans to recognize Palestinian state alone, and that it must be done with the entire EU.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Israel news Palestinians
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday that European Union recognition of a Palestinian state could be a "possibility that should be kept in mind," according to AFP.
"There's no point recognizing the Palestinian state on our own. It must be done together," AFP quoted Juppe as saying about recognition by EU countries.
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.
FP: Kenneth Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about the Palestinian Authority’s efforts of seeking recognition as an independent state via the UN and on a nation by nation basis.
The PA has pursued United Nations Security Council condemnation of Israeli settlements, is threatening to go now to the General Assembly with an anti-settlement resolution, and is threatening as well to seek recognition from the UN of Palestinian statehood along the pre-1967 cease-fire lines. It has also sought and received such recognition from various nations around the world, particularly in South America but elsewhere as well.
What is your understanding of this PA strategy?
Levin: Thanks Jamie.
It has always been the goal of the Palestinian leadership to gain recognition, and territory, without acknowledging Israel’s right to exist as the national homeland of the Jewish people and without giving up Palestinian pursuit of additional claims against Israel; its goal, ultimately, is Israel’s dissolution.
At the time of the initiation of the Oslo accords, on the evening of the famous signing and handshake on the White House lawn in September, 1993, Yasir Arafat appeared on Jordanian television and explained to his constituency and his wider Arab audience that they should understand Oslo as the first phase of his 1974 plan. In 1974, he had elaborated a plan according to which the Palestinians would take any land they could acquire by negotiations and use that land as a base from which they would pursue Israel’s annihilation. Arafat repeated this understanding of Oslo many times thereafter.
When Arafat, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Clinton held their talks at Camp David in 2000, Arafat rejected all the concessions offered by Barak and Clinton and refused to put forward counter-proposals. He was unwilling to agree to any accord, whatever the territorial and other concessions made by Israel, because an “end-of-conflict” agreement was demanded from him in return and he was not interested in ending the conflict and foregoing future, additional Palestinian demands.
Around the same time, Arafat spoke of declaring a state unilaterally, as a way, again, of establishing “Palestine” without signing away future claims against Israel. President Clinton made clear that the U.S. would not support such a unilateral move and, not least because of U.S. pressure, European states conveyed the same message.
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Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend's bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.
The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.
Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas' Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas' General Intelligence services in Ramallah.
Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.
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The Jewish Federations of North America has opened an emergency relief fund to provide aid and support to the victims of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck Japan earlier today, and to help those in other potential disaster zones such as Hawaii and the U.S. mainland’s West Coast.
Donations can be made to the Japan, Hawaii and the Pacific Relief Fund online, by texting RELIEF to 51818, or through our national mailbox at The Jewish Federations of North America, Wall Street Station, PO Box 148, New York, NY 10268. JFNA is also working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to support relief efforts.
A civilian Israeli search and rescue team was to leave for Japan on Sunday morning to help victims of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami that struck the island nation on Friday.
Officials at the Prime Minister's Office are mulling the option of releasing shocking photographs of the terror attack aftermath in Itamar to the foreign media.
The perpetrators of the massacre in the West Bank community entered a family home late Friday and slit the throats of three children and their parents while they were sleeping.
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Bibi: Why are Israel critics silent?
In a televised speech Saturday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences and encouragement to relatives of the victims and to Judea and Samaria settlers.
"Don't let your spirits drop," the prime minister said, while stressing that security forces will make every effort to nab the perpetrators of the attack.
Netanyahu also demanded that the international community condemn the brutal killing.
"I noticed that some of the states that rushed to the Security Council to condemn Israel, the Jewish State, for planning to build a home somewhere, are slow in issuing a harsh condemnation over the murder of Jewish babies," he said.
"There' is no justification whatsoever, no excuse and no forgiveness for the murder of babies," the PM said.
Five family members were found dead in their residence in the West Bank Itamar settlement Friday overnight. A number of settlement residents had reported gun shots coming from the house as well, an Army spokesperson said.
A Magen David Adom that arrived at the scene at 1:00 a.m. determined the couple, an 11-year old child, a 3-year-old toddler, and a baby dead.
Police have set out in search of the suspect in the Itamar settlement, as well as in the surrounding villages of Awarta, Beit Pouriq, and Beir Mouksaifa.
Initial reports said that an armed terroist entered the settlement and stabbed to death the couple and their children.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom, (Wonderland, The Road to Guantánamo), and partly backed by British taxpayers via the UK Film Council, The Promised Land presents a revisionist history of Palestine during World War II–one in which the British favor the Jews over the Arabs, the Jews repay British kindness with cruelty, and Arab violence against civilians and support for the Third Reich are airbrushed out of the picture.
The story centers around the real-life romance between two unlikely lovers, Shoshana Borochov and Thomas Wilkin. Borochov was the daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, a left-wing Zionist who saw the creation of Israel as part of the proletarian struggle. Wilkin was a British police officer responsible for tracking down members of the Jewish underground, particularly the infamous “Stern Gang.”
Before he was murdered during his arrest in 1942, Avraham “Yair” Stern had led a sensational and violent campaign to oppose British rule. His organization, “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” (Lehi, in the Hebrew acronym) broke away from other Zionist groups and targeted British officials and police. He was regarded as an outlaw by many Jewish leaders, including the leaders of other Zionist underground organizations in Palestine.
At the time, the Holocaust was accelerating in Europe, while the British refused to allow the tide of Jewish refugees into Palestine. Though Palestine’s Arab leaders had revolted against British rule in the late 1930s, and soon took an active role in Hitler’s war effort, the British–after crushing the Arab rebellion–attempted (in vain) to appease Arab opinion with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish immigration.
The Promised Land ignores much of that context. Instead, it portrays the Jewish underground as a fascist, even pro-Nazi movement. The screenplay–a draft of which I have read–calls for graphic scenes of Arab suffering at the hands of Jewish terrorists and British officers. Jewish victims are largely off-screen, mentioned in the abstract–if at all. The film even suggests, falsely, that Jews provoked Arabs to commit the Hebron massacre of 1929 by not hiring Arab workers, absolving Palestinian Arab leaders who incited the pogrom.
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That is certainly how Israeli actress Mili Avital felt upon reading the screenplay. As she related to an Israeli newspaper last year, she had been approached to participate in the film, but refused after reading the screenplay: “…it was so anti-Zionist that I closed it after 20 pages. I read it and there were tears in my eyes…it pains me to read how [Winterbottom] describes the beginning of Zionism from such an extreme point of view.”
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The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Wednesday reported initial Israeli agreement to facilitate completion of two large housing projects in Gaza, Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported.
UNRWA said its delegation received the commitment in a meeting Tuesday with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Major-General Eitan Dangot.
UNRWA media adviser Adnan abu Hasneh told KUNA that Maj.-Gen. Dangot relayed the promise to the delegation, and added that he hoped construction material would be brought into Gaza "quickly" to complete the projects "with all due haste." Abu Hasneh quoted the officer as saying the two projects, one in Khan Younis and the other in Rafiah, would receive "priority."
The projects came to a halt four years ago, after Hamas took over Gaza and Israel imposed a closure on the area. The closure includes a ban on importation of construction material that could also be used for terrorist purposes. This includes cement, steel, and gravel.
According to KUNA, the homes are intended to house "thousands of families whose homes had been destroyed during the Israeli attacks prior to pullout from Gaza."
The first project, Tal El-Sultan in west Rafiah, is financed by Saudi Arabia. Phase One, costing $52 million, includes 752 housing units, a school, and a health care facility. UNRWA would cover the cost of the Phase Two, which would see construction of another 850 housing units.
"There was also a promise to facilitate UNRWA work on the second project in western Khan Younis, executed with Japanese funding, which would see construction of 439 housing units. The cost of this project is some USD 13.5 million," the UNRWA media adviser said.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi was quoted as saying, "We welcome these promises, and hope they would be translated into real progress on the ground and that we would see real action to facilitate and speed up execution and completion of these projects."
Mrs. Dadhouh is, of course, proud of her sons:
I do not regret that three of my children are martyrs; we all must have the Certificate [of martyrdom], and be ready to continue on this path for Palestine and for the redemption of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque....Palestinian women are willing to sacrifice and give all that they possess for Jerusalem and to walk on the path of the martyrs.
Israeli officials say business almost back to normal in factories in Egyptian QIZs after one month of closure prompted by revolt against Mubarak regime
UN nuclear watchdog chief says reached agreement with Syria on inspection of facility where yellowcake made as by-product. Expert: Damascus will cooperate just enough to keep IAEA at bay
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Monday he saw possible movement in a probe into allegations of covert atomic activities in Syria, but once again criticized Iran for lack of cooperation.
Western powers fear Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability, while US intelligence reports have said Dair Alzour, a Syrian desert complex bombed by Israel in 2007, was a nascent North Korean-designed nuclear reactor intended to produce bomb material.
The Knesset plenum on Monday approved in its first reading a "boycott law," which would levy harsh punitive fines on Israelis who call for academic or economic boycotts against Israeli institutions.
The controversial bill was put forth by 24 Knesset members, including Kadima party whip Dalia Itzik, coalition chairman Zeev Elkin (Likud ) and committee chairman David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ).
The bill was supported by 32 members of Knesset, while 12 MKs opposed.
The draft law also calls for imposing sanctions against foreign nationals and organizations that call for anti-Israel boycotts, as well as against states that pass legislation giving such boycotts the force of law.
Elkin said prior to the vote that while in the United States it is considered illegal to boycott Israel - punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $1 million - the Israeli legal system cannot punish an Israeli who urges an American company to boycott his own country.
"This is an important and reasonable bill that will enable us to continue to ask the U.S. to take legal action against its citizens who boycott Israel," Elkin said.
Kadima faction chairwoman Dalia Itzik voted against the bill, and said that "it has nothing to do with the left or the right, for or against Arabs. MK Elkin, this is not what the poet intended. As a private civilian, do you want to put me in jail? You have taken the bill too far."
The Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Industry, Trade and Labor are fiercely opposed to the bill, on the grounds that it will not achieve its stated purpose of curbing boycotts and will only hamper efforts to cope with boycotts and the delegitimization of Israel on an international level.
Representatives of these ministries told the committee that the law would violate the right to freedom of expression and could damage Israel's relations with the European Union and the Foreign Ministry's freedom of action.
Roger Waters, founding member, vocalist and bassist of the iconic rock band 'Pink Floyd' has voiced his support for a cultural boycott of Israel.
The British musician performed in Israel in 2005, ignoring calls from Palestinian rights advocates to cancel. While in Israel, Waters visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He was taken to the controversial separation fence in the West Bank, which he called "an appalling edifice to behold."
Waters said he was extremely affected by his tour of the West Bank, scrawling "We don’t need no thought control", lyrics from one of Pink Floyd's most popular songs, on the wall, and cancelling his performance in Tel Aviv. Instead, the British star held the concert in Neve Shalom, a cooperative village founded by Jews and Arabs.
In the letter Waters wrote announcing his support of a cultural boycott of Israel, he said that in his "view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance."
He concluded the letter, saying that he is joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it satisfies three basic human rights he claims are demanded by international law.
He called on Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and dismantle the separation fence, recognize the rights of Arab citizens of Israel and granting them full equality and allow all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
Waters stressed in his letter that he is not anti-Semitic, and his solidarity with the Palestinians stems from his belief that all people deserve basic human rights.
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Mideast in turmoil: Israel needs to make concessions, Mideast isn't in turmoil, Israel needs to make concessions
While Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly prepares to present new peace initiative, officials in Jerusalem fear Obama Administration to demand clear reference to 1967 borders
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a diplomatic initiative that will seek an interim agreement with the Palestinians rather than one that resolves all core issues, an Israeli government official said Tuesday.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said that the latest instability in the region, including the departure of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, has caused Netanyahu to try to move the stalled process forward.
"Of course, Israel would prefer final status peace agreement, but that has become all but impossible because of the Palestinian refusal to negotiate," the government official said. "We are looking at options for steps forward that will help lead to a two-state solution and move the process forward."
