❶ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI FORCES DETAIN 8 PALESTINIANS ACROSS WEST BANK
June 15, 2015
NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained eight Palestinians across the occupied West Bank overnight Sunday, the Israeli army and Palestinian security sources said.
____The Palestinian security sources said two Palestinian men had been arrested from Nablus; an Israeli army spokeswoman said that one had been arrested from Nablus, in addition to one from Qalqiliya, four from Bethlehem, and one from Hebron.
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❷ From IMEMC-INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER
POLICE KIDNAP TWO WOMEN, ATTACK TWO ELDERLY MEN IN AL-AQSA
June 16, 2015
Israeli police officers kidnapped, Tuesday, two Palestinian women while leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem, and assaulted two elderly men.
____A worker of the Islamic Endowment Department said the police kidnapped the two women while leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque, through the al-Magharba Gate, and took them to a nearby police station.
____He added that the police also assaulted two elderly men, identified as Abu Bakr ash-Sheemy and Abu Ali Shawahna, after they objected to the abduction of the two women.
____The events transpired after a number of Israeli fanatics stormed the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and conducted provocative tours.
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❸ From IMEMC-INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER
SOLDIERS TORTURE AND ABUSE A DETAINED JERUSALEM TEEN
June 16, 2015
Hiba Masalha, a lawyer with the Palestinian Detainees Committee, stated that Israeli soldiers severely tortured, and abused, a detained Palestinian teen, in the HaSharon Israeli prison.
____Masalha said Rabea’ Sa’ada ‘Asaleyya, 17 years of age, was kidnapped after the soldiers invaded his family home in Silwan town, in occupied East Jerusalem, approximately at 2 at dawn, on May 3, 2015. . . .
____In an affidavit to his lawyer, Asaleyya said the soldiers started beating and punching him directly after kidnapping him, and that he fell onto the ground in front of his home, before the soldiers dragged him to their vehicle, and beat him up on his head and back.
____He was then moved to the al-Maskobiyya detention and interrogation center, in Jerusalem, before he was moved to the Asqalan interrogation facility.
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❹ From MONDOWEISS
NETANYAHU LIKENS BDS TO NAZI GERMANY
Annie Robbins
June 15, 2015
I suppose it was bound to happen eventually; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said BDS, the Palestinian led nonviolent global movement for justice in Palestine, resembled Nazi Germany. He said it during a meeting with Poland’s Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna today, in speaking of the “defamation” of the Jewish people in Poland when Nazis controlled the country.
____“The attacks on the Jews were always preceded by the slander of the Jews. What was done to the Jewish people then is being done to the Jewish state now,” Netanyahu said. “In those days we could do nothing. Today we can speak our mind, hold our ground. We’re going to do both.”
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❺ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ORANGE BOSS SUES OVER ‘DEATH THREATS’ AMID ISRAEL SPAT
June 16, 2015
PARIS (AFP) — Orange boss Stephane Richard has taken legal action after receiving death threats against himself and family members amid a row over withdrawing his brand from Israel, legal sources said Tuesday.
____Richard filed a complaint at a Paris court last week before heading to Israel in a bid to calm the controversy, a source close to the affair disclosed.
____”Stephane Richard received death threats on his telephone and his personal data were published on an Internet site in the context of the controversy over Orange’s presence in Israel,” the source said. . . .
____Israel reacted furiously to Richard’s comments, accusing him of bowing to a Palestinian-led boycott campaign.
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“INTERPRETATIONS,” BY MOURID AL-BARGHOUTI
A poet sits in a coffee shop, writing:
the old lady
thinks he is writing a letter to his mother,
the young woman
thinks he is writing a letter to his girlfriend,
the child
thinks he is drawing,
the businessman
thinks he is considering a deal,
the tourist
thinks he is writing a postcard,
the employee
thinks he is calculating his debts,
the secret policeman
walks slowly, towards him.

―from Poems of the Pavement, 1980

Online at Contemporary Palestinian Poetry. Edited by Michael Smith
____Mourid al-Barghouti was born in 1944 in the village of Deir Ghassaneh near Ramallah, and has lived most of his life in exile. While Barghouti was studying at the University of Cairo in 1967, the 6-Day War broke out, and he was unable to return to the West Bank until 1996. He was expelled from Egypt in 1977 and was exiled in Budapest separated from his wife, the Egyptian novelist, the late Radwa Ashour. He worked as a teacher in Kuwait and Cairo, in Budapest as PLO representative and in Cairo as a radio journalist with “Palestine Radio”. He has published 13 collections of poetry, and his collected works. He won the AUC 1997 Naguib Mahfouz Literature Prize for his autobiographical novel Ra’aytu Ramallah (I Saw Ramallah), and in 2000 the Palestine Award for Poetry. He lives once again in Cairo.
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