Human Rights Organizations to Supreme Court: Open Criminal Investigations into War Crimes Committed in Rafah and Jabaliya
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Supreme Court Decision: Aerial Spraying of Toxic Chemicals on Crops Cultivated by of Arab Bedouin Farmers in the Unrecognized Villages is Illegal
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Supreme Court Halts Implementation of District Court Decision Obliging Haifa University to Cancel Use of Military Service Criterion in Allocation of Student Dorms
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Following Adalah’s Intervention, ILA Cancels Discriminatory Criteria for Leasing Farm Land by Arab Bedouin in the Naqab
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Adalah to Supreme Court: Reject State’s Request to Delay Implementation of Court’s Ruling in ‘National Priority Areas’ Case
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| Prisoners' Day |
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| The Foreign Agent, the Punishment and the Prison |
| Adalah’s Media Coordinator Amal Ziadah interviews former political prisoner Areej Shahbari |
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Objects or Subjects? Theoretical Comments on the
De-Politicization of the Issue |
Dr. Anat Matar, Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy,
Tel Aviv University |
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| Palestinian Political Prisoners: The Numbers |
| Prepared by Adalah |
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| 10 Years of Adalah |
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10 Years of Adalah: Interns and Fellows
on their Experiences at Adalah |
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| Upcoming Conference |
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Palestinians and Jews in Israel:
On the Threshold of Confrontation or Reconciliation?
16 May 2007, University of Haifa
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| International Advocacy |
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The EU and Israel Should Implement their Human Rights Commitments within the Framework of the EU-Israel Action Plan
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| The Democratic Constitution |
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Adalah's Constitutional Proposal for the State of Israel Based on the Concept of a Democratic, Bilingual and Multicultural State
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Adalah’s Newsletter is a monthly publication issued in Arabic, Hebrew and English. It highlights Adalah’s main activities, provides analysis of human rights issues, and links to new reports. Suggestions, articles and commentaries from our readers are welcome.
View previous volumes
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| Opening Remarks |
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Above the Law
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The General Security Services (GSS or “Shabak”) alleges that former Arab MK Dr. Azmi Bishara is guilty of one of the most serious crimes in Israeli law: assisting the enemy during wartime. The punishment for this crime is the death penalty or life imprisonment. Dr. Bishara explained in a recent interview that the GSS is trying to twist regular discussions he held with his friends and colleagues during the war on Lebanon last summer, wire-tapped by the GSS, into a serious crime. Indeed, although the GSS’s practices of falsifying evidence and giving false testimony are well known, it is continuing to seek the conviction of many innocent people. The State Comptroller’s Report from 2000 states that, “Even after the publication of the Landau Commission's report [in 1987], the phenomenon of lie-telling by GSS investigators before the legal authorities has not ceased.” However, the law enforcement authorities were undeterred and proceeded to bring about the conviction and imprisonment of Sheikh Raed Salah and his colleagues in the Islamic Movement in Israel, for example, without verifying the unreliable evidence that the GSS had gathered against them. This was also the case in the trial of Tali Fahima, a Jewish Israeli who was imprisoned for having personal contact with Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jenin. It should also be noted that the Landau Commission, which examined GSS investigatory practices, namely the use of torture, published its report against the background of the overturning of Izzat Nafsu’s conviction and the Bus #300 affair. Nafsu, a Circassian Israeli army officer, was convicted and sentenced in 1980 to 18 years in prison for assisting the enemy on the basis of his personal contacts in Lebanon. The court ruling in his case sprawled over 300 pages and relied on his forced confession and false testimonies provided by the GSS. In the Bus #300 affair, GSS officers lied before legal authorities concerning their involvement in the beating to death of two Palestinian hijackers of the bus. Dr. Azmi Bishara stated last weekend that, “We have never hurt any human being and we have never carried guns. Our only weapons are our pens and our voices. But in the Knesset there were and still are criminals who take pride in the killing of Arabs.” In just one example of many, in spite of judicial confirmation that Ehud Yatom, who was an MK from 2003 to 2006, bears responsibility for the killing of the hijackers of Bus #300, he was not indicted or put on trial for these serious crimes. This is how the GSS operates “above the law”.
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