Portside

According to the United Nations Report on Children and Armed Conflict, the number of Palestinian children killed in the occupied territories in 2014 was the third highest of all situations monitored by the UN, following only Afghanistan and Iraq. But in response to diplomatic pressure from the U.S., UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made the last-minute decision to leave Israel off the UN’s annual list of states and groups that gravely violate children’s rights.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the coalition agreement with the right-wing extremist settler party, Jewish Home, he also agreed to appoint Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan as Israel’s deputy defense minister, responsible for the army’s “Civil Administration” of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Member of the Knesset (MK) Rabbi Ben-Dahan has publicly declared Palestinians “are not human.”

In honor of International Women’s Day, Activestills (http://activestills.org/) paid tribute to more than a quarter century of anti-occupation activism by the ‘Women in Black’ group in Israel. Every Friday since 1988, the women have stood in the main squares of cities or at highway junctions with signs calling to end the Israeli occupation. Often spat at, cursed or violently harassed by passersby, they have become a symbol of persistence.

The number of homes under construction in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank rose last year by 40 percent, the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said Monday. Peace Now said the construction of 3,100 “residential units” began last year in illegal West Bank settlements, while 4,485 tenders for construction there and in annexed East Jerusalem settlement districts were launched in 2014 — “a record high for at least a decade.”

A group called Breaking the Silence has spent 10 years collecting accounts from Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories. To mark the milestone, 10 hours' worth of testimony was read to an audience in Tel Aviv. Here we print some extracts.

Prohibition on Palestinian appeals to military court decisions confiscating their property embodies the essence of occupation. Returning the legal situation to the narrow province of military law harms the rights of the Palestinian residents, and the removal of judicial oversight for the proceedings against them allows these rights to be harmed arbitrarily, in violation of international law and the basic rules of justice.

Celebrated author Alice Walker urges singer Alicia Keys not to perform for apartheid Israel, as does Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters. Boycott, because Palestinian conditions are worse than they were in US South