Daily Archives: July 26, 2005

A ‘warning’ from Israel that merits the worlds attention

As Israel’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip draws near, three Israeli scholars have sounded an alarm about the potential dangers that could follow the withdrawal. In a message entitled “A Warning from Israel,” Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron – all three of whom have extensive knowledge of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – say they fear the Israeli evacuation of Gaza could be a prelude to disastrous war crimes against the Palestinian inhabitants of the territory. Based on their analysis of the “past behavior, ideological leanings and current media spin initiated by” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government, they conclude that a primary motive for the Gaza withdrawal is to remove Jewish settlers so that they will be “out of harm’s way when the Israeli government and military possibly trigger an intensified mass attack on approximately one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

NY police begin random bag searches on subways

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York authorities began randomly searching bags of subway passengers on Friday in the aftermath of a second set of London bombings and planned to extend the practice to buses, airport trains and suburban commuter lines.

Riders on the nation’s largest subway system waited patiently while officers at various stations around the city combed through their briefcases and knapsacks on the first day of what Mayor Michael Bloomberg said would be a practice that would go on indefinitely.

“Clearly we’ll do it for a little while. It’s partially designed to make people feel comfortable … and keep the potential threat away,” Bloomberg said in his weekly radio show, adding that there were no new threats to New York.

In Washington, D.C., officials said they were not instituting a similar system of random searches on subways, but were still considering it.

Breaking Down Hate Crime

When a group of white men attacked three black men on the streets of Howard Beach, Queens, last month, severely beating one with a baseball bat, it was the 125th hate crime in New York this year, according to records collected by the Police Department.

The attack echoed an assault from nearly 20 years earlier when another group of white men armed with bats chased three black men through the same neighborhood, causing the death of one victim, who ran in front of a car while trying to escape.

In one notable difference, two suspects in the latest attack have been charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime — a provision that did not exist in New York until the Hate Crimes Act of 2000. That law, for the first time, allowed harsher sentences for criminals who single out victims because of personal traits like sexual orientation, race or religion. As a result, these suspects, if convicted, would face a minimum penalty of eight years in prison — compared with a five-year minimum for regular assault.