❶ France calls on Israel to halt new construction of Cremisan Valley separation wall
❷ Israeli Soldiers Kidnap Eleven Palestinians in the West Bank
❸ Over 66% of Jewish Israelis agree with rabbi’s controversial statement
❹ Hamas slams detention of 3 Palestinians by PA as ‘collaboration’ with Israel
❺ Opinion/Analysis: A  NEW  PHASE  IN  ISRAEL’S  ‘LAWFARE’  STRATEGY’
❻ POETRY by Mourid Barghouti
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❶ FRANCE  CALLS  ON  ISRAEL  TO  HALT  NEW  CONSTRUCTION  OF  CREMISAN  VALLEY  SEPARATION  WALL
Ma’an News Agency
April 9, 2016
The French Foreign Ministry called on Israel to halt renewed construction of the Israeli separation wall in the southern occupied West Bank’s Cremisan Valley, according to a statement published Friday.
___“France is concerned by the Israeli authorities’ resumption of construction of the separation wall in the historical Cremisan Valley, which will affect several dozen Palestinian families in Beit Jala,” the statement read, referring to a Palestinian village west of Bethlehem city.
___“This wall is a new obstacle to economic and social development in the town of Bethlehem,” the ministry said.     MORE . . .

❷  ISRAELI  SOLDIERS  KIDNAP  ELEVEN  PALESTINIANS  IN  THE  WEST  BANK
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
April 10, 2016
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, late at night and on Sunday at dawn, at least eleven Palestinians, including children and a journalist, in different parts of the occupied West Bank, and summoned many for interrogation in a number of military centers. The soldiers also invaded and bulldozed farmlands, in Gaza.
___Several military vehicles invaded Silwad town, east of the central West bank city of Ramallah, searched many homes and kidnapped three Palestinians . . . .  in Deir Jarir town, east of Ramallah.
___The soldiers also invaded Zawiya town, in the central West Bank district of Salfit, and . . . In the southern West Bank district of Hebron, the soldiers kidnapped . . .
___The soldiers also summoned for interrogation the head of Palestine Detainees’ Center Osama Shahin, and Jaber Rajoub, from Doura. . . . In occupied Jerusalem, the soldiers kidnapped a child. . . .       MORE . . . 

❸ OVER  66%  OF  JEWISH  ISRAELIS  AGREE  WITH  RABBI’S  CONTROVERSIAL  STATEMENT
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
April 8, 2016
The majority (66.5 per cent) of Israel’s Jewish public agree that “it is a commandment to kill a terrorist who comes at you with a knife”, according to the latest Peace Index published by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University.      MORE . . .  

❹ HAMAS  SLAMS  DETENTION  OF  3  PALESTINIANS  BY  PA  AS  ‘COLLABORATION’  WITH  ISRAEL
Ma’an News Agency
April 10, 2016
Palestinian security forces found and detained three Palestinians on Saturday who had been reported missing, in a move slammed by the Hamas movement as collaboration between PA and Israeli authorities to thwart a planned attack inside Israel.
___The Hamas movement responded to the incident, accusing the Palestinian security services of “cooperation with the Israeli occupation” in the detention of three “resistance fighters.”       MORE . . .

❺ Opinion/Analysis:  A  NEW  PHASE  IN  ISRAEL’S  ‘LAWFARE’  STRATEGY
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
Asa Winstanley
April 9, 2016
For the last decade, a central plank of Israel’s strategy to combat its global critics has been something it terms “lawfare” – using courts around the world to attack, defame, silence and intimidate its enemies.
___Since Israel is addicted to real life war, it’s no surprise to find that even its diplomats and ambassadors are seemingly unable to think and act in terms other than purely military ones . . .  Take its response to the BDS campaign – the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights.
___A reporter for liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, on a recent visit to the Israeli embassy in London, noted a map that was “like the war room of a brigade on the Lebanese border.” This map showed the “front” (another military term) which consists of “the main campuses, the deployment of pro-Israel activists and the location of the ‘enemy forces.’”      MORE . . .
BACKGROUND . . .
AND . . .

Excerpted from  “MIDNIGHT,”  BY  MOURID  BARGHOUTI

You, whose mother gave birth to you
in the homestead of the Orient,
surrounded by poems and age-old laws,
you’ll continue to see faces
carved by ancient chisels,
in the presence of which the beards of ages have gone grey,
faces which now forsake the stacked mud tablets
on the shelves of Babylon,
faces emerging from the memory of two rivers ―
their blueness did not last long ―
and from the temples whose pillars
are now broken like reeds,
faces struck dumb by what now unfolds under your skies.
They look up to see only
hanging ropes
which topple imagination from its saddle,
or, with huge rubbers,
erase thought.

Mourid al-Barghouti was born in 1944 in the village of Deir Ghassaneh near Ramallah, and lived most of his life in exile. He has a BA in English literature from Cairo University. 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 in Cairo.   On Facebook
On Wikipedia
Another of Barghouti’s poems
From Barghouti, Mourid. MIDNIGHT  AND  OTHER  POEMS. Trans. Radwa Ashour. Todmorden, UK: Arc Publications, 2008. Available from Amazon.