Palestine – Breaking News

Israel officials call report by Dutch director George Sluizer a ‘modern blood libel’ after he director claimed to have seen then Defense Minster shooting children from close range near the Sabra-Shatilla refugee camp in 1982.

By Cnaan Liphshiz 

(source: Haaretz)

Dutch media this month published articles accusing Ariel Sharon of murdering Palestinian children in Lebanon. Former officials who worked with Sharon said the publications were false. The Israeli foreign ministry called the claim “a modern blood libel.”

The claim first appeared in the Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherlands, in an interview with the well-known Dutch-Jewish director George Sluizer. According to Sluizer, 78, he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla while filming a documentary there.

“I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” said Sluizer, who lives in Amsterdam. Sluizer has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is best known for directing The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland in 1992.

Sluizer repeated the accusation in an interview for Vrij Nederland, an intellectual magazine, published on November 13 ahead of a screening of his film at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes,” he said.

The children, according to Sluizer, “were toddlers, two or three years old. He shot them from a distance of 10 meters with a pistol that he carried. I was very close to him.” Sluizer added he thought this happened in November, when Sharon was Israel’s minister of defense, but he was not sure of the month.

Read More »I saw ariel sharon murder 2 palestinian toddlers in Lebanon

By Nick Beams

(source:  World Socialist Web Site)

The announcement by credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s that it had downgraded its outlook on US debt to “negative” has sent a shudder through global financial markets. The decision means there is now a one in three chance that US debt itself will be downgraded over the next two years—an event without precedent.

More than the state of the US economy and government finances, however, is being called into question by the S&P decision. With US debt considered the safest in the world, any downgrading means that the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency will be severely undermined, if not ended altogether.

In response to the decision and the growing lack of confidence in all paper currencies, the price of gold has risen to a new high, reaching more than $1,500 per ounce.

Over the past decade, the dollar’s role as the pivot of the global financial system has come under increasing scrutiny, as US debts have risen and the balance of payments gap widened, requiring an increasing inflow of capital from the rest of the world, especially China. But so long as the world economy kept growing, these concerns remained somewhat in the background. Things began to change when the financial crisis erupted in 2008, revealing the rot and decay—not to speak of outright criminality—at the heart of the American financial system.

Anxiety about the US dollar’s role is being fuelled by the fact that far from being resolved, the global financial crisis that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers two and half years ago has simply mutated.

Last weekend, billionaire financier George Soros warned that the present situation was more baffling and less predictable than at the height of the financial crisis. “There are clearly a number of unsustainable situations which nevertheless continue, and the authorities don’t necessarily try to solve them, but merely to buy time. We live in this situation without an immediate collapse or an immediate solution confronting you.”

Read More »Question mark over role ofUSdollar

Read More »Kill who?

GAZA, (PIC)– United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes on Wednesday slammed the continued Israeli closure of the Gaza border-crossings and  described the situation as “desperate” and “unacceptable.”

No fuel, humanitarian supplies or commercial commodities were allowed into Gaza on Wednesday, according to the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO).

Mr. Holmes – who is also Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs – told journalists in Geneva that the closure was seen as collective punishment. Half the population of Gaza was under 15 and were being held hostage by the situation.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Tuesday to urge him to facilitate the freer movement of urgently needed humanitarian supplies and of UN personnel into Gaza. Mr. Olmert denounced the continuing rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, although he agreed to look seriously into the urgent matter.

Starting Thursday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had to suspend cash assistance to some 98,000 of the poorest people in Gaza due to the lack of Israeli shekel bank notes in Gaza banks.

The agency also warned that it is facing “a grave and imminent crisis” and must receive additional pledges in the first quarter of 2009 if it is to continue assisting the 4.6 million people in its five field operations.

UNRWA Commissioner General Karen AbuZayd told donors, host governments and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners that according to present projections its core services will suffer a deficit of more than $87 million by then, leading to an overall shortfall of $160 million when combined with unfunded projects on hold from previous years.

“This will bring UNRWA closer to financial crisis than it has ever been,” she said today at the agency’s annual meeting in Amman, Jordan, which heard updates from the directors for the five field operations – Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
 

Read More »Gaza situation desperate and unacceptable