TV News LIES

The testimony in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. activist's family marks his first public comments since the woman's 2003 death in Gaza. Speaking from behind a screen, he says he remembers little.

"It's Rachel-something," he testified in a Haifa courtroom. "Carrie?"

The former Israeli reservist's courtroom appearance, his first public comments since the college student's 2003 death, was expected to be the dramatic climax of the Corrie family's long-running civil lawsuit against the Israeli government. But during more than four hours of testimony, the 38-year-old Russian immigrant, speaking from behind a screen to hide his identity, said he remembered little about that day and the young woman he ran over.

Is there no limit to what the American government will accept from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman?

With Netanyahu’s backing, the Israeli cabinet voted in support of Lieberman’s loyalty oath for non-Jewish immigrants, which requires allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic state” of Israel. It was as if Mexican immigrants to the United States would have to swear allegiance to a United States that is white and Protestant, while immigrants from Europe would face no such oath.

"According to true Jewish values, your lives come before those of the enemy, whether he is a soldier or a civilian under protection. Therefore, you are forbidden from endangering your own life for the sake of the enemy, not even for a civilian," Shapira declared.

Shapira was arrested over the summer for encouraging Jews to kill Gentiles in his book "The King's Torah." The preface of the book, which was published in November, states that it is forbidden to kill non-Jews - but the book then apparently describes the context in which it is permitted to do so.

The Anti-Defamation League, the premier American organization devoted to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, has long had a dark side. No one has done better work investigating and exposing neo-Nazi and white Supremacist groups in the United States.

I’ve spoken at several ADL meetings about my own reporting on Christian nationalism. But the ADL has also shown itself willing to smear human-rights activists when it thinks Israel’s interests demand it. It is in this context that the organization’s misguided new report on the “top 10 anti-Israel groups in America,” which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations, has to be understood.

You could easily miss the thin, gravel road that leads to Al Arakib, a Bedouin village in the north Negev. It is a bit ironic, given the enormity of the struggle there and its deep implications for the Jewish state.
Israeli forces have razed the village five times since late July, sparking cries of ethnic cleansing and leaving more than 300 Bedouin homeless. But the equally determined residents, along with a handful of Jewish activists, continue to rebuild.

The government claims that Al Arakib was abandoned and, as such, belongs to the state. Israel calls the Bedouin squatters who "infiltrate" the area and settle it illegally. According to the state, these people must be removed to make way for a forest to be planted by the Jewish National Fund.

At least 10 Palestinian children have been shot and wounded by Israeli troops in the past three months while collecting rubble in or near the "buffer zone" created by Israel along the Gaza border, in a low-intensity offensive on the fringes of the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Israeli soldiers are routinely shooting at Gazans well beyond the unmarked boundary of the official 300 metre-wide no-go area, rights groups say.