Tyrone to Gaza

[theticklemister]

Well folks, just thought I would revive this thread as it is 4 years ago today that I started it with a crazy idea to go to Gaza from Tyrone with aid.

The reponse from the members on the board was incredible, and without your support, I can honestly say that I never would have gone through with such a plan !!

Every once in a while this board comes together for various different causes and we put all our differences to the one side for the greater good. This was one of those times, and each and every one of you played a part for the cause of humanity.

The people of Gaza have never forgotten our convoy to them in the weeks after the brutal attacks, and to this day, the Rocwell lorry is still driving around Gaza with the GAABoard.com stickers still visible......

Here is a short video clip of the truck been handed over filled with aid and support from many members of the board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLqNo_04pwA

Once again, many many thanks to everyone who made this possible.

John

Excellent John!

[Denn Forever]

I'm not the one dragging up a 4 year old thread, and then adding a link to a video of myself handing over "aid" to terrorists.
GO ME!

By the way, I'll f**k off when I'm good and ready.

Vive la difference.

[fitzroyalty]

Fair play GHD. That doesn't feel like it was 4 years ago.

[tyrone exile]

Fair play to you john!
As for Ball DeBeaver never did the quote; "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt" fit more perfectly.

[seafoid]

Good man GHD. The people of Gaza are decent unlike the tramps who oppress them in the name of the religion they hijacked.

[Nally Stand]

Fair play to you and to all involved John

[Ball DeBeaver]

Good man GHD. The people of Gaza are decent unlike the tramps who oppress them in the name of the religion they hijacked.

I totally agree mate. Those Hamas scumbags have a lot to answer for. The very same scumbags GHD showed us all he was delivering aid to.

Just who is oppressing the population of Gaza?

http://www.hrw.org/node/110398/section/1

Summary

This report highlights the failure of the criminal justice system in Gaza under Hamas rule, including security forces, prosecutors, and judges, to uphold the law and protect the rights of detainees and criminal defendants and hold those responsible for serious abuses accountable.

Based on interviews with former detainees, lawyers, human rights groups, and reviews of case files and court judgments the report documents how Hamas security services in Gaza routinely conduct arrests without presenting warrants, refuse to promptly inform families of detainees' whereabouts, deny detainees access to a lawyer and torture detainees in custody.

In August 2008, Abdel Karim Shrair was arrested by members of the al-Qassam brigades, Hamas's armed wing, which detained and allegedly tortured him at an unknown location for three weeks before transferring him to the custody of the police. The military prosecutor then ordered Shrair's detention and interrogation by the Internal Security service, and later charged him with collaborating with Israel, in part on the basis of information that his lawyer alleged was obtained under torture. Internal Security interrogators also tortured Shrair, his family said, and prevented them from seeing him until October. Shrair's mother said that when she was first able to see him, his legs and face were bruised, his feet were swollen, his hands and arms had rope marks and his chest had burn marks. The military courts did not adequately address Shrair's claims of torture. The courts held that the prosecutor, by subsequently ordering Shrair's detention and interrogation, had retroactively "corrected" prior gross violations including Shrair's warrantless arrest and incommunicado detention. Shrair was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in May 2011. His mother said that Hamas authorities had prohibited the family from burying him, and that police beat her when she tried to hold his body during the interment.

Shrair's family members are among numerous witnesses who have reported that the Internal Security agency, the drugs unit of the civil police force, and police detectives all engage in the torture of detainees. The Independent Commission for Human Rights, a non-partisan Palestinian rights group that also monitors abuses in the West Bank, reported receiving 147 complaints of torture perpetrated by these forces in 2011. As a measure of how broken the system is, three criminal defense lawyers in private practice told Human Rights Watch that they had themselves been arbitrarily arrested and tortured in detention by Hamas security forces.

The abusive practices of the security services in Gaza flout human rights norms that Hamas has pledged to uphold, and also violate Palestinian laws. These laws require police to obtain judicial arrest and search warrants, and prohibit torture and the use of evidence obtained under torture. Security officers commonly arrest civilians and present them before Gaza's military judiciary, even though its remit should be limited to military offenses.

In the seven cases documented in this report, the judiciary in Gaza, which consists of civil and military branches, consistently failed to hold to account security services that operated outside the law or to uphold the rights of detainees. In the cases Human Rights Watch examined, the military judiciary did not throw out any criminal cases against detainees because of due process violations, and ignored or failed to investigate credibly detainees' claims that they had been tortured. Hamas officials claim to have disciplined hundreds of members of the security services for abuses since Hamas took power in 2007, but Hamas has never published any details about the officials involved or the disciplinary measures taken. Members of the Internal Security agency apparently continue to enjoy absolute impunity despite consistent allegations of severe abuse.

Former detainees who alleged they were abused by security services said they despaired of finding justice; several were afraid to describe what had happened to them in custody, even on condition that their identities would be kept confidential. Some men said they had needed medical care due to torture, and sought to obtain medical records as evidence that they had been tortured, but that hospital officials refused to provide them. Human Rights Watch is aware of at least three cases in which Hamas has executed prisoners whom judicial authorities sentenced without adequately reviewing credible claims that their convictions were based on evidence obtained under torture.

In previous research on intra-Palestinian political violence and abuses against detainees, Human Rights Watch found that the main factor underlying such human rights violations was the conflict between Hamas and its rival, the Palestinian Authority, which often prompted "tit for tat" abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. The intra-Palestinian political rivalry is still the root cause of many abuses against detainees, but there have been increasing reports of custodial abuse in Gaza against detainees accused of non-political crimes. Victims of alleged abuse whom Human Rights Watch interviewed include persons detained on suspicion of collaborating with Israel or the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as well as alleged perpetrators of drug offenses and fraud. Human rights lawyers in Gaza said that they have continued to receive the same kinds of allegations of abuse from victims since Hamas and Fatah announced a political reconciliation in May 2011.

Human Rights Watch impartially documents abuses by governing authorities in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank. This report does not attempt to compare abuses by Hamas with abuses by the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank, where Human Rights Watch has also documented arbitrary arrest, torture and impunity. As part of a potential reconciliation agreement, the Palestinian authorities in Gaza and West Bank should both ensure that victims of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment are compensated appropriately and that members of security forces responsible for torture are brought to justice.

Given credible evidence of widespread and gross violations of due process as well as systematic ill-treatment and torture, Hamas should take meaningful steps to reform its justice system to strengthen the rule of law and protect the rights of detainees. Hamas should immediately declare a moratorium on executions in death penalty cases. In light of numerous cases of detention where family members and lawyers are not notified of or able to promptly determine which security forces have custody, Hamas should ensure that detentions are carried out only by security forces legally authorized to do so. It should halt the prosecution and trial of civilians by the military judiciary. (The Palestinian Authority significantly reduced such military arrests and trials of civilians in the West Bank in 2011.) Hamas should explicitly guarantee that all detainees have the right to contact their families and a lawyer immediately upon arrest and that their families and lawyers can visit them in a timely manner. It should ensure all detainees are brought promptly before an independent judge after being detained.

Hamas should also ensure that members of security services are held criminally liable for abuses against detainees, and it should sanction prosecutors and judges who turn a blind eye to violations, such as by issuing retroactive arrest warrants or accepting evidence that was credibly alleged to have been obtained under torture. Hamas authorities should strengthen oversight and complaints mechanisms intended to keep security services in check, including by allocating more resources to investigating and prosecuting security officers allegedly responsible for abuses. Hamas should facilitate the work of human rights groups in Gaza, including the Independent Commission for Human Rights, to monitor conditions of detention and examine alleged abuses.

Would you like to see the videos of the Fatah members being thrown off roofs in Gaza by Hamas thugs when they overthrew them? Now that is oppression.

[seafoid]

Israel runs Gaza. Israel decides . Gaza is Israel's lost conscience.

[Ball DeBeaver]

Israel runs Gaza. Israel decides . Gaza is Israel's lost conscience.

Israel runs 1 border, the sky and sea. Not the land in between.

Did Israel decide that Hamas should butcher their Fatah opponents?
Does Israel detain and torture journalists that don't write what Hamas wants them to?

Hamas justice system 'reeks of injustice,' rights group says

By Joe Sterling, CNN

October 4, 2012 -- Updated 0122 GMT (0922 HKT)





A human rights watchdog has documented "serious abuses" in the criminal justice system of Hamas.



(CNN) -- Security forces under Hamas rule have tortured Gaza prisoners during the group's five years of rule, a new report said Wednesday.

The Human Rights Watch report also documents "serious abuses" in Gaza's criminal justice system, such as arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detentions and unfair trials in the Palestinian territory of Gaza since the Hamas political movement took control in 2007.

"After five years of Hamas rule in Gaza, its criminal justice system reeks of injustice, routinely violates detainees' rights, and grants impunity to abusive security services," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said in an online posting Wednesday. "Hamas should stop the kinds of abuses that Egyptians, Syrians, and others in the region have risked their lives to bring to an end."

Are we in store for a kinder Hamas?
In a bullet-point statement on its website, Hamas' Interior Ministry disputed the report's accuracy and called it biased and political.

Titled "Abusive System: Criminal Justice in Gaza," the 43-page report said "there is ample evidence that Hamas security services are torturing people in custody with impunity and denying prisoners their rights."

The group said Hamas has executed at least three men "convicted on the basis of 'confessions' apparently obtained under torture."

Human Rights Watch says the rivalry between the Palestinian movements of Hamas and of Fatah, which prevails in the West Bank, "remains a significant factor" behind many of the alleged Hamas detainee abuses

The group said the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority "arrests and detains Palestinians arbitrarily, including Hamas members or sympathizers, and similarly subjects detainees to torture and abuse."

Read more: Can rival Palestinian factions reach unity deal?

Human Rights Watch's findings are also consistent with increasing reports of abuse by security forces in Gaza against detainees accused of nonpolitical crimes, including people accused of drug offenses and fraud.

Some of the cases documented have been "against people detained on suspicion of collaborating with Israel or the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Collaboration is a serious crime under Palestinian law, but suspicion of collaboration does not justify torture or other abuse."

Abdel Karim Shrair, for example, was charged with collaborating with Israel, the report said.

His family and lawyer said he was tortured. But the group said military courts didn't "adequately address Shrair's claims of torture."

Last year, a firing squad executed Shrair. According to the report, "his mother said that Hamas authorities had prohibited the family from burying him, and that police beat her when she tried to hold his body during the interment."

"There is ample evidence that Hamas security services are torturing people in custody with impunity and denying prisoners their rights," Stork said. "The Gaza authorities should stop ignoring the abuse and ensure that the justice system respects Palestinians' rights."

Islam Shawran, a spokesman for Hamas' Interior Ministry, said Hamas gave Human Rights Watch all of the information it requested, but was surprised that it wasn't taken into consideration.

And why, he asks, is the reporting about incidents from 2007 and 2008 now being released?

"It is obvious because it is a cover for the Zionist occupation. Also this report did not discuss the basic human needs of the Gaza people by discussing the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and did not indicate to any of the violations committed by the Israeli Zionist enemy to our Palestinian prisoners inside the Israeli jails and prisons," he said.

http://www.cnn.co.uk/2012/10/03/world/meast/gaza-hamas-abuses/index.html

But then again, it's all the fault of the evil jews. 

[Dougal Maguire]

You do realise that your contributions here are doing nothing to further the Israeli cause. In fact I'd say its a fair bet that you're doing significantly more to gain sympathy for the Palestinians

[Ball DeBeaver]

You do realise that your contributions here are doing nothing to further the Israeli cause. In fact I'd say its a fair bet that you're doing significantly more to gain sympathy for the Palestinians

I'd lay good money on the assumption that the vast majority on this board have their minds made up, and no amount of hasbara would change their minds. Doesn't make my view any less worthy than though.

[Itchy]

I'm afraid ballbag cannot be cured, he is a complete moron without any redeeming features and bitter, a bit like honest Iago. I must admit defeat and withdraw my services.

[Ball DeBeaver]

Severe human rights violations in inter-Palestinian clashes.




Published:
1 Jan 2011

In the period around 2007, the Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas waged a violent struggle, primarily in the Gaza Strip. The fighting peaked in June 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Strip. In 2008, the violence abated but did not cease. Throughout the struggle, human rights violations committed by Palestinians against Palestinians increased, both in number and severity.

In 2007, at least 353 Palestinians were killed, 349 of them in the Strip, and thousands were injured, in the fighting between the factions. B'Tselem's figures indicate that at least 86 of the dead, 23 of them children, were passersby and were killed during street fighting or from gunfire during demonstrations. Some 300 of the dead were killed in the first half of the year, the vast majority of them in the Gaza Strip. 160 persons were killed in June alone. The casualties occurred during violent clashes between members of the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus, most of whom belong to Fatah and are loyal to Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, and Hamas armed militias, headed by the Hamas Executive Force, which was subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior, and the 'Iz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

In 2008, 18 Palestinians were killed in the inter-Palestinian fighting, all of them in the Gaza Strip. 15 of the dead were killed in a single incident, in August, in an exchange of gunfire between police who had come to arrest members of the Hiles family.

Media reports and investigations by Palestinian and international human rights organizations indicate that in the weeks leading up to the Hamas takeover of the security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, the organization's armed militias abducted several senior members of the Palestinian Authority's security forces and executed them in cold blood, without trial. Other PA security officials who were abducted were tortured during interrogation. One of the severe practices that accompanied the abductions was shooting the victims in the legs as "punishment" before releasing them.

After the Hamas takeover was completed, the street battles came to an almost complete halt. However, since then, the ruling Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, headed by deposed PA prime minister Isma'il Haniyeh, has imposed an oppressive regime against its critics, especially those identified with Fatah. For example, the Executive Force carries out arbitrary arrests daily. The prisoners are usually held for several days and then released with no charges filed against them. Amnesty International has taken many testimonies from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have been arrested in this manner, in which the victims reported being ill-treated and tortured.

The Executive Force has frequently broken into the homes of Palestinians in search for weapons in the hands of opposition members. In addition, this militia has used excessive force in dispersing several demonstrations in the Strip in the last month of 2007. The gravest use of excessive force occurred on 12 November 2007 in response to a Fatah demonstration in Gaza City commemorating the death of Yasser Arafat: seven Palestinians were killed, including a twelve-year-old boy.

In days before and after the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip, armed militias identified with Fatah, spearheaded by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, carried out revenge attacks against persons and institutions identified with Hamas in the West Bank. Here, too, abductions and executions took place, as well as torching and shooting businesses and charitable institutions linked with Hamas. In late June 2007, these attacks diminished, only to pick up again sporadically in the following months, mostly in the Nablus District. In the weeks preceding and following the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip, the PA's security forces, which are charged with law enforcement, refrained from taking any action against the militias in the West Bank. Among other things, they did not open investigations or bring to trial persons suspected of carrying out the attacks.

In addition, in June 2007, PA security forces in the West Bank - the Preventive Security body in particular - carried out mass arrests of Hamas supporters allegedly suspected of trying to run a branch of the Executive Force in the West Bank. Arrests continued, in smaller numbers, in the following months. According to Amnesty International and the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, most of the arrests flagrantly violated Palestinian criminal law, ignoring requirements such as the prosecutor-general reviewing the matter within 24 hours, the suspect being brought before a judge within 72 hours, and the right to consult with an attorney without delay. Most of the persons arrested were released without charges brought against them, reinforcing the concern that the arrests were arbitrary and were prompted by unacceptable political considerations. Moreover, some of the persons arrested reported to Amnesty International, PHRMG, and B'Tselem that they had been ill-treated and tortured during their time in detention.

At the end of August 2007, the head of the Palestinian Authority's emergency government, Salam Fayyad, announced that the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior had decided to close 103 religious, educational and charitable institutions linked to Hamas. He contended that these institutions operated in violation of the Palestinian Non-Profit Organizations Law. Based on the timing of the decision and its sweeping nature, it appears that like the mass arrests, this decision was made for unacceptable political reasons.

Under international humanitarian law, certain fundamental rules apply to every state, organization, or person taking part in a non-international armed conflict. Among these rules is the absolute prohibition on taking hostages, on extra-judicial executions, and on torture. These acts constitute war crimes, for which all those involved in their perpetration are held personally liable. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip have the obligation to investigate such cases and prosecute the persons responsible. In addition, both the PA and the Hamas government must respect other customary principles of law embodied in international human rights law, such as the prohibition on arbitrary arrest or detention.

http://www.btselem.org/inter_palestinian_violations

[Ball DeBeaver]

I'm afraid ballbag cannot be cured, he is a complete moron without any redeeming features and bitter, a bit like honest Iago. I must admit defeat and withdraw my services.

Awwww shucks, and there's me thinking we'd made a (non homo-erotic) connection.

[muppet]

Take nearly 6 million people, imprison them in their own land, point to some of them misbehaving in the hideous lives you impose on them and use this misbehaviour to justify your maltreatment of them.

You are a great man BDB.