Alex Lantier

Kiev's brutal military campaign in eastern Ukraine
creating humanitarian crisis (DriveByPlanet)

As the Western-backed regime in Kiev assaults pro-Russian militias in the major cities of eastern Ukraine, mass graves are coming to light in Slavyansk, the former opposition stronghold recently captured by Kiev. The government offensive is unfolding with the support of Washington and the European Union (EU), which yesterday imposed more sanctions to compel Moscow to abandon any support for opposition militias in Ukraine.

Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the Kiev regime’s Defense and Security Council, said yesterday that “hundreds of bodies of rebel fighters” had been found in shallow graves. Lysenko claimed some of the graves “have been mined by the terrorists”—apparently implying that some of the dead were killed during the siege of Slavyansk and buried by fellow opposition fighters before Kiev’s forces captured the town. Lysenko refused to give further details.

While the Kiev regime’s bombardment of Slavyansk doubtless caused hundreds of casualties, its own accounts show that the far-right Ukrainian nationalist militias it has mobilized are carrying out a campaign of political terror and murder in Slavyansk. Upon capturing the city, they detained all men between the ages of 25 and 35 on suspicion of supporting or giving aid, including medical aid, to the opposition militias.

On Tuesday, Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko confirmed that two Slavyansk priests had been murdered for supporting opposition forces. “We found a grave of two priests from Slavyansk, who were tortured and killed by the Ukrainian nationalists,” Gerashchenko said. The bodies of two sons of one of the priests were discovered in the same grave as the priests’ mutilated remains.

The Odessa diocese confirmed that Ukrainian nationalists have threatened, beaten or kidnapped several Orthodox priests, many of whom they consider too close to Moscow. The Odessa diocese secretary, Archpriest Andrei Novikov, who has fled to Moscow fearing arrest by Ukrainian nationalist groups, said, “I’m sure if the government keeps its position, it will handle the physical liquidation of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine.”

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Mohammed Omer

Israeli air strikes on Gaza city resumed around 3pm (15th July). (AFP)

Hamas almost immediately distanced itself from a ceasefire proposal that didn't meet any of its aims - or come through the right channels

When rumors began spreading late on Monday about a possible Hamas-Israel ceasefire brokered by Egypt, Ismail Haniyeh - the top Hamas leader in Gaza - appeared on a pre-recorded TV interview from an unknown location to address Palestinians.

In the video, Haniyeh's message was clear - he wanted to reassure Gazans that he and Hamas were unwilling to compromise on the innocent blood spilled in Gaza during the last nine days. “It is not possible for any party to bypass the conditions set by Palestinian Resistance to implement a period of calm,” he said in the clip. Hamas have since said says the ceasefire draft wasn’t seen by then until after it was made public, suggesting to them that the ceasefire proposal was more a media ploy rather than a true political initiative to end the conflict. “We want to stop the aggression on our people, but the problem is the realities of Gaza such as the starvation siege, closure of borders, the humiliation of people,” Haniyeh said.

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Richard Falk

The civilian population of Gaza are trapped in an overcrowded war zone with no form of exit. This situation reveals a serious gap in international humanitarian Law.

As the hideous Israeli assault on Gaza, named Operation Protective Edge, by the IDF enters its second week, overdue international appeals for a ceasefire fall on deaf ears. Bibi Netanyahu tells the world that no outside pressure will alter Israel’s resolve to reach its military and political goals to disable Hamas for the indefinite future. The purported justification for such aggression is to make sure this time that Israelis will never again have to seek shelter from Hamas rockets, which could require a prolonged military campaign combining ground forces with a continuing air and naval assault.

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Sam Kriss
Idiot Joy Showland

To protect the world from devastation! To unite all peoples within our nation! To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above! - Benjamin Netanyahu, address at the opening of the 2014 Knesset summer session

Imagine, if you dare, the sheer horror of living near an ideologically motivated amateur youth rocketry club. Something like the Socialist Youth Committee for Space Exploration, for instance, or the Young Tories Science Society. While at first it might be heartwarming to see teenagers developing an interest in politics and an involvement in practical physics, rather than indulging in their usual habits of playing violent video games all day or viciously cyberbullying each other to death, this would quickly grow tiring. The sudden bangs in the night, the scattered debris in the morning, the occasional terror as an errantly and implausibly airborne tin can goes screeching over your leafy suburb: it’s more than anyone could reasonably be expected to bear. Surely nobody would blame you if, after a few days of these potassium nitrate-powered hijinks, you and a few of your sensible middle-class neighbours got together to launch a combined military assault on the part of town where these kids hang out, killing them, their families, and several dozen others stupid enough to be in the area. It’s not that you’d get any particular pleasure from murdering all these people, but everybody deserves a decent night’s sleep.

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Gilad Atzmon

As the Israeli Cabinet announced earlier today that it accepted the Egyptian cease-fire offer, Palestinian freedom fighters in Gaza continued firing rockets targeting the whole of Israel.

The situation is clear. Israel is desperate for a break in the violence. In spite of its endless ‘bravado,’ and military might, Israel lacks the military capacity and the courage to encounter Palestinian resistance on the ground. The Israeli elite recognizes that the military can’t resolve the problem, if anything, its extensive use would diminish Israeli manoeuvrability on the international front.

Hamas, on the other hand, has won its biggest military, political and ideological victory to date - it has managed to deliver some elementary messages to all of Israeli society:

You are living on our Palestinian stolen land, our Right to Return is elementary and is not negotiable. You Israelis do not belong here, you never did, and you had better consider your options immediately.

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John Pilger

The other night, I saw George Orwells's '1984' performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell's warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, "To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country."

Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. "What a mindfuck," said the young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in '1984'. "Democracy" is now a rhetorical device. Peace is "perpetual war". "Global" is imperial. The once hopeful concept of "reform" now means regression, even destruction. "Austerity" is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.

In the arts, hostility to political truth-telling is an article of bourgeois faith. "Picasso's red period," says an Observer headline, "and why politics don't make good art." Consider this in a newspaper that promoted the bloodbath in Iraq as a liberal crusade. Picasso's lifelong opposition to fascism is a footnote, just as Orwell's radicalism has faded from the prize that appropriated his name.

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Patrick Martin

As the Israeli onslaught on Gaza enters its second week, more and more evidence of atrocities is being made public, producing widespread expressions of outrage around the world.

There have been numerous protests in Europe and North America, which though still relatively small, reflect the growth of popular understanding of the criminal character of the one-sided “war” against Gaza.

Since the non-stop air strikes began on Gaza July 7, Israel has carried out more than 1,300 bomb and missile attacks on the Gaza Strip, an average of one massive explosion every nine minutes, 24 hours a day.

Amid reports that Israel’s security cabinet was to meet early Tuesday morning to consider a cease-fire proposal advanced by the Egyptian regime, there was no letup in this onslaught, and Israeli troops and tanks remained poised on the border of Gaza for a potential ground invasion.

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Patrick Martin

The US Department of Justice announced Thursday that it would not investigate charges that the CIA had spied on members of the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whitewashing the brazenly illegal actions of the US intelligence apparatus. “The department carefully reviewed the matters referred to us and did not find sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation,” read the Justice Department statement.

The department will also not investigate countercharges by the CIA that Senate staffers had gained unauthorized access to CIA documents, effectively equating the two and prompting the corporate-controlled media (which has largely buried the story) to portray the action as a neutral, “hands-off” position in a murky dispute between the Senate and the CIA.

The CIA surveillance of the activities of the Senate committee—which is charged by law with oversight of the CIA—was such a flagrant violation of the constitutional separation of powers that the panel’s chairman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, took the extraordinary step of denouncing the agency in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor on March 11.

A longtime hardline defender of the intelligence apparatus, Feinstein was visibly disturbed by what she had learned of the CIA’s actions, which she said “may well have violated the separation-of-powers principle embodied in the United States Constitution,” and also “the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”

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Alimuddin Usmani interviews Gilad Atzmon

#PalestineUnderAttack

Alimuddin Usmani: After "Cast Lead" in 2009 and "Pillar of Defense" in 2012, the Israeli army has launched operation "Protective Edge" in July, 2014 against Gaza. What is the purpose of these repeated large scale military operations?

Gilad Atzmon: It is important to note that Israel hasn't won a single military battle since 1973. True, it has killed many Arabs, but it hasn't managed to achieve any of its military objectives.

Israel’s military domination has been sustained by the power of deterrence. The strategy was to force Arabs to avoid conflict by threatening that they could lose everything. This week has shown that this trick won't work anymore. Palestinian resistance has sprung back to life.

Israel can not solve its problems by military means. The situation is desperate for the Israelis. They have started to realize that they are stuck within a political, ideological and cultural stalemate. Israel is unable to conjure an image of a resolution. There is no prospect of future for the Jewish State.

Furthermore, the Jewish left's blatant lie that the ‘occupation is the problem’ has been exposed this week as we witness Israeli Arab citizens chased by Jewish mobs. As we know, the right-wing call for mass expulsion of all Arabs from Israeli territory is becoming increasingly popular within Israel. This brutal ‘solution’ is totally consistent with Jewish supremacist culture and ideology. After all, Jews, and I mean both Zionists and anti, like to operate within a Jews only environment. But can Israel rid itself of the Palestinians? This is exactly what the Right wing parties within the coalition promise to do.

Back to your question; since the military cannot provide the answers and the politicians cannot produce an image of a solution, the military is used as a firemen's brigade. It supplies short lived victories. The IDF is buying time, it cannot deliver a victory because military objectives cannot even be articulated. The IDF pounds Gaza with missiles, it kills whatever it suspects might be dangerous (a lot of kids, elders and women). But as time goes by, the military options are shrinking and to a certain extent, are not viable any more.

The German military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz suggested in the 19th century that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” In the case of Israel what we see instead is the reverse of Clausewitz’ idea: Israeli politics is the continuation of the Jewish need for a conflict.

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Mike Head

Israel yesterday told an estimated 100,000 Gaza residents living in cities near the border with Israel to leave their homes immediately, in a clear warning of an imminent ground invasion of the densely-populated enclave that houses nearly two million Palestinians.

According to Israeli media reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) yesterday sent phone calls to people living in cities and towns, including Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Absan al-Saghira, ordering them to evacuate and move to the west or south.

Residents are largely unable to leave the territory, however, because the US-backed military regime in Egypt, headed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has closed the only possible border crossing, at Rafah, except temporarily for some injured people who need to seek hospital treatment.

After four days of relentless aerial bombardments, which have already killed 89 Gaza residents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has approved a call-up of 40,000 IDF reservists. About 20,000 have already been mobilised to the Gaza border in anticipation of a possible ground assault.

In a statement televised following a meeting of his security cabinet, Netanyahu declared: “So far the battle is progressing as planned but we can expect further stages in future.”

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon added, “We have long days of fighting ahead of us.”

The Israeli offensive is being intensified with the clear backing of the United States. President Barack Obama phoned Netanyahu late yesterday, reportedly offering to broker a ceasefire, while stressing his support for the view that Israel has the right to employ overwhelming force against Gaza, supposedly to defend itself.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Yesterday we learned that three Israeli suspects have confessed to burning to death Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdair. The killers even re-enacted their grisly deed for police.

The Western media is treating this incident as an isolated outrage. It is not. During the past 14 years, Israelis have murdered one Palestinian child every four days, on average.

During the second half of June, while the Zionist-dominated global media relentlessly hyped the “three kidnapped Israeli teens” story, several Palestinians were shot to death by the IDF, including 15-year-old Mohammed Dudin, who was murdered in Dura on June 20th. Corporate media coverage of the killing of Mohammed Dudin was negligible. To the mainstream media, the lives of Israeli Jews are priceless, while those of Palestinians are worth little or nothing.

Statistics bear out this conclusion. A study by If Americans Knew found that the New York Times, America’s newspaper of record, reported Israeli children’s deaths at 6.8 times the rate of Palestinian children’s deaths.

In an exclusive interview with Truth Jihad Radio, Palestinian professor Mazin Qumsiyeh said: “We have a huge problem in the way American media portrays the situation. Between the year 2000, when an uprising started against the occupation, until today, there have been over 1,540 Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers. These children are barely mentioned anywhere in Western media; whereas every time an Israeli is killed, rare as that may be compared to the number of Palestinian children and civilians killed, we hear everything in detail about these people.”

What explains the disparity? The New York Times, like much of the Western mainstream media, is owned and operated by Zionists. In an article entitled “Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do?” Jewish ex-New York Times journalist Philip Weiss notes that pro-Israel Jews do indeed dominate US corporate media. He adds: “The result is that Americans are not getting the full story re Israel/Palestine.”

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Bill Van Auken

Israel has launched a major bombardment of Gaza. Some 12 Pale-
stinian civilians, including 5 children, have been killed. (Reuters)

"So if we want to remain alive, we have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day. If we don't kill, we will cease to exist." - Arnon Sofer

Israeli bombings and rocket attacks against the densely populated and impoverished neighborhoods of Gaza claimed the lives of at least 27 Palestinians by late Tuesday night and left well over 130 others wounded, many of them seriously.

The Israelis military boasted that it had launched over 273 airstrikes on Tuesday. The attacks, carried out by F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters and drones, turned homes into rubble and sent towering plumes of fire and smoke into the skies over Gaza, where nearly two million Palestinians are confined in what amounts to the world’s largest open-air prison.

The worst of the attacks was carried out against a house in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, where a missile fired by an F-16 warplane struck the building as its residents were trying to escape. Among the seven killed in the attack were two young boys, ages 13 and 14. An eight-year-old child who was severely wounded by shrapnel died later in a hospital. At least 25 more people were wounded in the air strike.

Other strikes took the form of “targeted assassinations.” Individual members of the ruling Hamas party were murdered by missile strikes on their homes or cars, or were annihilated while walking in the street.

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Gilad Atzmon

In his latest article in The Nation, Noam Chomsky cherry picks the facts that fit his preferred narrative, while ignoring and disguising relevant details that contradict his thesis. One would expect an academic of Chomsky’s stature to perform at a much higher standard of intellectual integrity.

Reviewing Chomsky’s latest criticism of the BDS reveals that the MIT linguist borders on deception. It is especially fascinating to examine Chomsky’s tactics in light of the current violent events in Israel/Palestine.

Chomsky writes, “The opening call of the BDS movement, by a group of Palestinian intellectuals in 2005, demanded that Israel fully comply with international law by “(1) Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall.”

This is simply not true. In July 2005 BDS’ first goal read rather differently – “(1). Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.”

In 2005 the first BDS goal didn’t include any reference to 1967 as Noam Chomsky suggests. It expressed opposition to the Israeli occupation of the entire land of historic Palestine. This goal was very upsetting for Jews and especially distressful to members of the Jewish Left. For them, the meaning was obvious; it implied that the Zionist project was a pure land grab. Then, at some unknown date around 2010 and without any protocol that suggested a formal decision, the goal changed as if by ‘magic’ and the words “occupied in June 1967” were added.

Attempts to discover who, within the BDS movement, had made the change didn’t reveal any answers. We do know, however, that the change followed growing pressure from Jewish anti Zionists within the BDS movement. We also know that the change occurred when BDS formed a dependence on EU money and Wall Street financers such as George Soros. I would like to believe that Chomsky, who is a meticulous researcher who doesn’t miss details, is well aware of this change in BDS’ Goal statement. However, it may as well be possible that I am totally wrong and Chomsky was not aware of this BDS saga at the time he wrote his article.

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John W. Whitehead

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” ~ Patrick Henry

It is fashionable in some quarters to debunk the Founding Fathers who guaranteed Americans civil liberties with a Constitution. The debunkers have helped the New Tyrants destroy the Constitution. - 238 Years Later, Would Americans Still Choose Freedom Over Slavery?

Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal. Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong. However, the scenario described above took place more than 200 years ago, when American colonists suffered under Great Britain’s version of an early police state. It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.

No document better states their grievances than the Declaration of Independence. A document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who laid everything on the line, pledged it all—“our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives. Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up when silence could not be tolerated. Even after they had won their independence from Great Britain, these new Americans worked to ensure that the rights they had risked their lives to secure would remain secure for future generations. The result: our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

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The Saker

By now you all have probably heard it: the newly appointed Ukrainian Minister of Defense has officially pledged to re-take Crimea and to organize a victory parade in the streets of Sevastopol. His statement, made in the Ukrainian Parliament, was received with a standing ovation.

Needless to say, the notion of the Ukraine re-taking Crimea is ludicrous. The Ukrainian Defense Minister knows this, and so do the Parliamentarians. But what is important here is not that he would make such a statement, but that it caught the attention of the international media as if this was an exception. Sadly, I assure you that it is not. The sad and hard to imagine reality is that Banderastan lives in a total "la la land" in which literally everything is just as ludicrous as the idea of the Ukrainian military somehow kicking the Russians out of Crimea. As somebody who follows the Ukrainian TV (through the Internet) on a regular basis, can tell you that this kind of nonsense is absolutely the mainstream norm. The disconnect between the real world and the imaginary world in which the rump-Ukraine (aka "Banderastan") lives in today is total. The best image I can think of is the orchestra of the Titanic playing music while the ship was sinking, except that the disconnect between reality of the situation of Banderastan and what the poor people in Kiev and the rest of the Ukraine hear on TV is even bigger. This is not just "propaganda", it is really insanity, denial and delusional thinking at its most extreme. Even tonight I have heard respectable looking Ukrainian politicians seriously discussing how the Ukraine's "civilizational choice" will usher a new era in which, I kid you now, the "Ukraine will re-join its West European destiny". In the meantime, the Ukie solidiers in Luganks have shot all the stray dogs they could to feed themselves.

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Rehmat's World

Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Palestinian Islamic resistance group Hamas, “a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel” without any proof to support his lunatic accusations. Morning the death of three Jewish settlers this week, Netanyahu called Hamas “human animals”. I bet Netanyahu was quoting his Talmud because according to holy book, all non-Jews are “sub-humans”. As I explained in an earlier post that the killing of the so-called “innocent Jew settlers” was an inside job to use as an excuse in Israeli efforts to destroy Hamas politically and as an armed resistance.

Interestingly, Zionist president Shimon Peres, who knows PA leader Mahmoud Abbas for the last 30 years, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 News on May 7, 2014, said that Netanyahu deliberately destroyed a peace deal that had been reached covertly with Mahmoud Abbas in 2011. according to Peres, the deal included explicit recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

One doesn’t need a Ph.D to figure out that Hamas is not a military force in the real sense. It doesn’t have tanks, gunships, fighter planes (not even a commercial plane), and no navy or nuclear bombs to “wipe Israel off the map”.

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Patrick Martin

A ball of fire is seen following an Israel airstrike in Rafah, southern
Gaza, on Tursday. Israeli warplanes launched dozens of airstrikes on
different targets in the Gaza Strip. (Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

Isaeli warplanes struck the Gaza Strip again on Thursday, hitting at least 15 targets in the blockaded Palestinian territory, causing extensive damage and wounding at least 10 people, including a pregnant woman and a 65-year-old man.

The Israel Defense Forces moved tanks and artillery units towards Gaza, positioning them in advance of any order from the cabinet to invade the densely populated enclave, with nearly two million people crammed into an area of less than 200 square miles. The IDF also called up an undisclosed number of reservists for duty.

The military mobilization was the largest on the border of Gaza since Israel’s last major attack on the Palestinian territory, eight days of bloody bomb and missile strikes in November 2012.

An Israeli military spokesman claimed the sites targeted by bombs and missiles were linked to Hamas, the Islamic party that has ruled Gaza since it won elections in 2006. The Israeli government has declared Hamas responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, although that territory is controlled by the secular Palestinian party Fatah, with Israeli support.

The killing of the three teenagers, whose bodies were found on June 30 outside Hebron, is being used as a pretext by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to escalate tensions with Hamas and threaten an invasion or re-occupation of the Gaza Strip. Israeli military forces and settlers were withdrawn from Gaza in 2005.

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Eric Zuesse
Washington's Blog

View here our bombing-victims. Impeach and prosecute Obama for his international war crimes!

On Wednesday, July 2nd, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko resumed unlimited war against the residents of southeastern Ukraine, whom he calls “terrorists” for their wanting not to be killed by his troops. European leaders (especially Merkel of Germany, Hollande of France, and Putin of Russia) urged him not to resume his bombing campaign against the southeast, but the U.S. (specifically President Obama) supports the bombings, and that’s enough for Poroshenko; so, he did it. As the U.S. State Department said, “he has a right to defend his country.” Reuters reports that Poroshenko gave as his reason for the resumption, “to rid Ukraine of ‘parasites’.” Adolf Hitler had given the same reason for ethnically cleansing his country.

Here are videos and photos of the Obama Administration’s sponsored ethnic cleansing to reduce the population in the areas of Ukraine that had voted overwhelmingly “the wrong way” in Ukraine’s final nationwide election, in 2010: the areas of Ukraine that overwhelmingly chose as Ukraine’s President the man whom Obama’s coup overthrew in February 2014. After this ethnic cleansing, maybe Ukraine can have another nationwide election, which will produce the type of outcome that the U.S. Government likes.

But on 25 May 2014, we held in Ukraine an election where people voted only in the pro-American portion of Ukraine, and only leaders who were acceptable to the U.S. White House were allowed onto the ballot.

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Patrick Martin

The abduction and murder of a Palestinian teenager early Wednesday morning, apparently a revenge killing carried out by right-wing Israeli settlers, has sparked rioting and direct clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli security forces.

Muhammad Hussein Abu Khudair, age 16, was grabbed by several men who approached him on the street as he walked from his home to the local mosque for early morning prayers, the usual start of the day for an observant Muslim during Ramadan. Eyewitnesses said the men were Jewish. They shoved him into a dark-colored car and drove away.

The family reported the abduction to the Israeli police. About an hour later, the boy’s body was found in another part of the city, Jerusalem Forest, badly burned and bearing other signs of the violence that claimed his life. The father identified his son’s body, and this was confirmed by DNA analysis based on samples given by the parents.

The body was taken to Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for autopsy. It will be released Thursday to the family for an independent autopsy by Palestinian doctors and for burial.

The Khudairs showed reporters a copy of the video footage from a CCTV camera in front of the family’s electronics shop showing two of the kidnappers. The original video was seized by Israeli police. Israeli courts have imposed a gag rule on media reports about the details of the crime.

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Barry Grey

Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

A Chilean court issued a ruling Monday that the commander of US military forces in Chile played a pivotal role in the murder of two US citizens following the September 1973 coup that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator.

“The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths,” the ruling by Judge Jorge Zepeda said.

The ruling went on to say that the murders were part of “a secret United States information-gathering operation carried out by the US Milgroup [Military Group] in Chile on the political activities of American citizens in the United States and Chile.”

Judge Zepeda found that US Navy Captain Ray E. Davis provided his Chilean liaison, Raúl Monsalve, with information casting the two Americans, 31-year-old journalist Charles Horman and 24-year-old student Frank Teruggi, as left-wing subversives. Monsalve passed on the information to the Intelligence Department of the Chilean Joint Chiefs of Staff, which ordered the men’s arrests.

Horman, whose abduction and murder were depicted in the award-winning 1982 film Missing, was seized from his home by soldiers on September 17 and taken to Santiago’s National Stadium, which had been turned by the US-backed junta into a detention, torture and execution center. An estimated 10,000 people were incarcerated at the stadium in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Horman was severely tortured and shot to death on September 18. His corpse was hidden in a wall in the stadium and only discovered a month later. Teruggi was arrested on September 20 and taken to the stadium. He was tortured and executed the following day.

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