HAARETZ (ISRAEL) – Questions are surfacing about Israel’s use of tear-gas grenades, as security officials investigate the recent death of a protester at the weekly demonstration near the separation fence at the West Bank village of Bil’in. A 36-year-old woman, Jawaher Abu Rahmah, died on Saturday morning.

The medical report filed in the Ramallah hospital where Abu Rahmah was taken shows that her death was caused by respiratory failure resulting from the inhalation of tear gas.

Haaretz obtained the medical report on Sunday from Jawaher’s brother, Ahmed Abu Rahmah.

Jawaher Abu Rahmah was the sister of Bassem Abu Rahmah, who was killed in April 2009 when Israeli soldiers fired a tear-gas grenade at his chest at a demonstration at the fence in Bil’in. Ahmed Abu Rahmah has three surviving brothers; their father died five years ago.

“My entire family is ruined,” he said on Sunday. “The whole house feels a sense of catastrophe.” He said he bears no hatred toward Israelis. “They are people just like myself. We don’t seek vengeance against Israel. We want the return of our lands, and the struggle won’t end until our property is restored.”

The Israel Defense Forces uses crowd-dispersal tear gas known as CS, which was developed half a century ago in Britain and the United States. It is used by armies and police forces around the world. In recent years, a number of studies have cast doubts about this type of gas; there have been reports of several deaths caused by the inhalation CS tear gas.

Click to read full article on IDF use of dangerous tear gas.

© Copyright 2011 Haaretz  

Article written by Avi Issacharoff and Anshel Pfeffer

Photograph by flickr user Mark Z.

DEMOCRACY NOW – A general strike has been called for in the Ivory Coast today to force incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo to cede power. Gbagbo has refused to step aside following the disputed presidential election last month. Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara has been widely recognized as the winner of the vote. Meanwhile, the president of ECOWAS threatened that the West African bloc may use force to remove Gbago from power. We speak with Syracuse University professor Horace Campbell.

For transcript, visit Democracy Now.

Click to read Reuters report about UN concern for Ivory Coast on the ‘brink of genocide’.

THE PENINSULA – Top officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.

“These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday.

The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA.

Assange or Mansour, however, didn’t disclose the names of these officials. The WikiLeaks founder said he feared he could be killed but added that there were 2,000 websites that were ready to publish the remaining files that are in possession of WikiLeaks after “he has been done away with”.

Click to read the full article on Arab officials working for the CIA.

Article by Mobin Pandit & Ahmed El Amin

Photograph by Flickr user: Jan Krömer 

© COPYRIGHT THE PENINSULA, 2010

AL JAZEERA – Sexual assault within the ranks of the military is not a new problem. It is a systemic problem that has necessitated that the military conduct its own annual reporting on the crisis.

A 2003 Air Force Academy sexual assault scandal prompted the department of defense to include a provision in the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act that required investigations and reports of sexual harassment and assaults within US military academies to be filed. The personal toll is, nevertheless, devastating.

Military sexual trauma (MST) survivor Susan Avila-Smith is director of the veteran’s advocacy group Women Organizing Women. She has been serving female and scores of male clients in various stages of recovery from MST for 15 years and knows of its devastating effects up close.

“People cannot conceive how badly wounded these people are,” she told Al Jazeera, “Of the 3,000 I’ve worked with, only one is employed. Combat trauma is bad enough, but with MST it’s not the enemy, it’s our guys who are doing it. You’re fighting your friends, your peers, people you’ve been told have your back. That betrayal, then the betrayal from the command is, they say, worse than the sexual assault itself.”

On December 13, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed a federal lawsuit seeking Pentagon records in order to get the real facts about the incidence of sexual assault in the ranks.

The Pentagon has consistently refused to release records that fully document the problem and how it is handled. Sexual assaults on women in the US military have claimed some degree of visibility, but about male victims there is absolute silence.

Click to read the full article on rape in the US military.
Article by Dahr Jamal

Photograph by WeNews

Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

This is the first in a two part series on sexual harassment in the US military. The second part in the series will be published in the coming week. 

© COPYRIGHT AL JAZEERA, 2011