❶ From MONDOWEISS
ISRAELI GENERAL LIKENS ATTACK ON GAZA TOWERS TO 9/11 ATTACK, AS ‘SYMBOL’
Dan Cohen
July 27, 2015
An Israeli general likened Israel’s bombing of three landmark towers in the Gaza Strip last year to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. . . Major General (ret.) Gershon Hacohen said:

“I need symbols, I’m talking about symbols. It is no simple matter. Because if I destroyed three towers in Gaza towards the end of Operation Protective Edge, and inflicted not only pain in the economic sense but also a symbol, and like the Twin Towers in New York were a symbol, what is significant is not only the physics but the significance of the matter.”

____. . . Israeli warplanes [bombed] Zafer Four tower, the Italian Compound, the Basha tower, and a four-story mall in Rafah. The mass destruction left hundreds of families homeless and struck a heavy blow to Gaza’s already crippled economy. These attacks were carried out when the ceasefire was imminent.
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❷ From PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY – WAFA
ISRAELI ARMY KILLS PALESTINIAN YOUTH IN COLD BLOOD OUTSIDE JERUSALEM
July 27, 2015
Israeli soldiers shot and killed in cold blood a Palestinian youngster during a raid before dawn Monday on Qalandia refugee camp . . . .
____Sources said an Israeli army force broke into the camp in the early morning hours and raided the house of Mohammad Abu Latifa, 20 . . . The soldiers. . . attempted to detain Abu Latifa and shot at his legs when he reportedly attempted to flee the premises, causing him serious injuries before he died of his wounds hours later.
____However, family sources [said] the Israeli soldiers shot him in the legs before they tied his hands with electric wires and detained him alive. Hours later, the family said, their son was handed over a dead body to the Red Cross. . . .
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❸ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ARAB LEAGUE MINISTERS TO MEET AFTER AQSA CLASHES
July 27, 2015
Cairo (AFP) ― Arab League foreign ministers will meet in Cairo early next month to discuss clashes involving Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.
____Sunday’s incident saw Israeli police enter the mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, as they clashed with Palestinians angered by Jews’ access to the compound on an annual day of Jewish mourning.
____Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters that foreign ministers from 15 Arab states will meet on August 5 to discuss what he called the “dangerous development” in Jerusalem.
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❹ From THE PALESTINIAN INFORMATION CENTER
CHILD AMONG 4 PALESTINIANS KIDNAPPED BY IOF FROM AL-KHALIL
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) at dawn Monday kidnapped four Palestinian citizens from the southern West Bank province of al-Khalil.
____According to local sources, large IOF patrols rolled into al-Khalil city at the crack of dawn and . . . they kidnapped the youngsters Rami Farouk al-Awiwi and Baha Abu Shkheidam. Both were dragged to an unidentified destination shortly afterwards.
____The IOF also raided al-Khalil’s northern town of Surif, nabbed the Palestinian citizen Haj Omar Ghneimat, and transferred him to an unknown location after they confiscated an agricultural tractor of his own.
____Sources based in Beit Ummar village, in northern al-Khalil, said the campaign culminated in the abduction of the 16-year-old minor Hamza Abu Hashem.
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❺ Opinion
From +972 MAGAZINE
NO, JESUS WOULD NOT BE A SETTLER — HE’D PRACTICE SOLIDARITY
Ryan Rodrick Beiler
July 27, 2015
Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren has been saying a lot of obnoxious things lately. His recent book angered Jewish-American journalists . . . and he may have crossed the line from belligerence to blasphemy with his latest remarks. While preaching to the choir of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus, Oren took the name of Jesus in vain, using it to defend the settler enterprise.
____“Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist would today be considered Jewish settlers in Bethlehem,” said Oren, according to The Jerusalem Post.
[. . . .]
____ [Is Oren] really ignorant of what makes a settler a settler? According to international legal consensus, shared by virtually every other nation except Israel, all settlements are illegal.
____This is what makes settlements illegal. It’s not because they’re Jewish. It’s because they’re colonies built on occupied land outside of the state of Israel.
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“HE WHISPERED BEFORE HE TOOK HIS FINAL BREATHS,” BY SAMIH AL-QASIM
Don’t honor me with a monument
and song!
Of all the sad songs,
I prefer my mother’s sadness.

Do not pay your last respects
with laurel and a royal display!
Of all the tender wreaths
I prefer my mother’s palm.

Don’t glorify me by giving my name
to a city square
or a street and public garden!
I’d rather a grapevine be planted
(in my name)
and grow into a vineyard and farm!

Do not preserve my memory
by giving a speech each year in my honor!
I’d rather a fine machine
pounding away in a factory
speak in my name.

Tell my mother―
tell her what you plant in my name,
tell the factory’s machine
that I loved life, from the bottom of my heart,
and therefore took my final breaths
at peace and happy.

From Al-Qasim, Samih. SADDER THAN WATER. New and Selected Poems. Trans. Nazih Kasis and Adina Hoffman. Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2008.
Available from Amazon
Samih Al-Qasim Obituary, August 20, 2014