Israel’s Wall: Security Or Apartheid? (Video)

Israel says it built the separation wall for security reasons to keep Palestinians from the occupied West Bank out of Israel. So why does 85% of the wall run inside the West Bank, rather than on the border with Israel? And how has it affected Palestinian communities?

Coca-Cola’s investment in Gaza

Source: middleeastmonitor.com

By: Yvonne Ridley

Coca-Cola is building a factory in Gaza, but before you applaud such an investment in an area where the economy is shattered and unemployment ranks among the highest in the world, let’s examine the deal more closely. Who will actually benefit from this? It’s a rhetorical question really, because the Palestinians living there will be the long-term losers while the neighbouring State of Israel will count the shekels rolling in.

The first of the materials to build the factory came via Israel with a convoy of 10 trucks carrying assembly line machines through the Yitzhak Rabin border terminal; from there the lorries were processed by the Israeli military into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing last week. This, in itself, is amazing, since only 130,000 tons of construction materials have been allowed into Gaza since the latest Israeli blitz; five million tons are needed to try to rebuild the factories bombed to destruction by Israel in its last two wars against the civilians of Gaza.

Thousands of families are still without homes in the depths of a Gaza winter and some of the dead are still buried under the tons of rubble where tower blocks stood before the Israeli military destroyed them. Despite international promises of humanitarian aid and a massive rebuilding programme nothing of any substance has happened because of the ongoing siege of the territory led by Israel and Egypt.

Breathtaking photographs of the human race

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

A boy rescues his sister from underneath the rubble of their home in Syria

Toshimana, an apprentice Geisha in Kyoto

Yezidi girl carries an assault rifle to protect her family against ISIS

ABANDONED PRIPYAT, UKRAINE (IMAGE)

 Pripyat is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, near the border with Belarus. Named for the nearby Pripyat River, Pripyat was founded on 4 February 1970, the ninth nuclear city in the Soviet Union, for theChernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979, and had grown to a population of 49,360 before being evacuated a few days after the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Though Pripyat is located within the administrative district of Ivankiv Raion, the abandoned city now has a special status within the largerKiev Oblast (province), being administered directly from Kiev. Pripyat is also supervised by Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergencies, which manages activities for the entire Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Substandard Medical Care Claims Another Life At A Bangladesh Rohingya Refugee Camp

Source: rohingyablogger.com

A. Soma Khatun, a 28 year old Rohingya woman, wife and mother, hadn’t recovered well from the birth of her second child. Her son, Abdur Rahman, came to the world just a little over three months ago. Wife of Abdul Karim, A. Soma Khatun was blessed with their first child, Stamina Akter 3 years ago. They lived as a family in one of the thousands of sheds in Nayapara Refugee Camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, which is near the Myanmar border, the motherland of the Rohingya. The country can clearly be seen just across Naf river, which separates the 2 countries beyond the border point shared by the two countries. The Rohingya’s citizenship was revoked by the Myanmar government in 1982. Most of the refugees in this camp came to Bangladesh in the early 1990’s and their generation after, have since been born there in the camps.

What Israel has done in the past 2 days

1. Annexed another 1,000 acres of West Bank land
2. Seized $55,000,000 dollars of PA tax revenue
3. Broken the ceasefire by firing at fishermen
4. Broken the ceasefire by not opening the border crossing for goods
5. Destroyed a dairy factory in Hebron
6. Destroyed five houses and a farm belonging to Bedouin near Jerusalem
7. Destroyed a family home in Silwan, making 11 children homeless
8. Shot and critically injured a man in Qalqilya
9. Kidnapped 17 people from Jenin
10. Kidnapped 7 people from Nablus

Israel Announces Massive West Bank Land Grab

It’s quiet in ‪#‎Gaza‬ but apartheid ‪#‎israel‬ is still stealing land! ‪#‎FreePalestine‬‪#‎Boycottisrael‬ ‪#‎bds‬ ‪#‎icc4israel‬

Source: huffingtonpost.com

By: Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Israel announced on Sunday a land appropriation in the occupied West Bank that an anti-settlement group termed the biggest in 30 years, drawing Palestinian condemnation and a U.S. rebuke.

The Roots of Iraq’s Sectarian Division

Source: http://lostislamichistory.com/

The land of Iraq is home to some of the most ancient and precious civilizations in history. In the Mesopotamian valley that encompasses the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Babylonia, the world’s first empire was born. Writing was first developed along the banks of the rivers with tablets made of clay. Advanced government bureaucracies were first implemented here. It is truly one of the cradles of human civilization.

And when Islam was revealed in the deserts of Arabia south of Mesopotamia, the people of Iraq were some of the first to accept Islam outside of the Arabian Peninsula during the caliphate of Abu Bakr. As Islamic history went on, Iraq became one of the centers of the Muslim world, with Baghdad being established in the 8th century as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Politics, culture, science, and religion all flourished here in early Islamic history. After the Mongol invasion, however, Iraq’s importance declined, it eventually became a part of the Ottoman Empire from the early 1500s until the end of the empire in the First World War. After the war, it was organized into a British-controlled mandate, which sought to create an independent nation-state in this ancient land.

Which brings us to the question: what is Iraq? The British assumed they’d find a homogeneous people in this land that would easily coalesce into one united nation, but the reality has been much more complicated. When the British drew Iraq’s borders, the people within those false borders were of different ethnic groups, religious beliefs, and languages, yet they were all expected to adopt a new identity – Iraqi – and function as a modern nationalistic European nation. This article will address the origins of these problems of identity in 20th century Iraq.

Ebola forces Liberia to shut border crossings

President orders most crossings closed and restricts public gatherings as worst outbreak in history continues to spread.

Ebola can kill up to 90 percent of those who catch it [EPA]

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/

The Liberian government has closed most of the West African nation’s border crossings and introduced stringent health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed at least 660 people across the region.

The new measures announced by the government on Sunday came as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone struggle to contain the worst outbreak yet of the virus.