What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
A construction site at East Talpiot, where an expansion of the existing settlement is taking place.Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Israel’s government has accelerated the construction of settlements across East Jerusalem, with more than 20 projects totalling thousands of housing units having been approved or advanced since the start of the war in Gaza six months ago, planning documents show.
Ministries and offices within the Israeli government are behind all the largest and most contentious of the projects, sometimes in association with rightwing nationalist groups with a history oftrying to evict Palestiniansfrom their homes in parts of the city.
The rapid approval or construction of settlements that are illegal under international law is likely to further damage Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration.
The war was triggered by surprise Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
“The fast-tracking of these plans has been unparalleled in the last six months,” said Sari Kronish, from the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights. “While many government bodies were shuttered or had limited operation following 7 October, the planning authorities continued to plough forward, advancing these plans at unprecedented speed.”
The new settlements will offer homes for Israel’s majority Jewish population in parts of Jerusalem that were unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1980, and are likely to be an obstacle to any attempt to create a viable Palestinian state with the east of the city as its capital.
A shepherd looks after his flock on the only remaining land reserve by Beit Safafa, where Israel intends to build a much-contested settlement called Givat Shaked.Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
The Gaza war has put a renewed focus on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as foreseen by the Oslo accords in the early 1990s.
Israeli planning authorities have approved two new settlements since the outbreak of the war, the first to be approved in East Jerusalem in more than a decade. The expansion of a gated high-security settlement called Kidmat Zion, in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood Ras al-Amud on the eastern periphery of the city, is also set to go ahead pending comments from the public.
A decision on Kidmat Zion was madejust 48 hoursafter the Hamas attack on 7 October. The government was officially made part of the project in a planning hearing a month earlier, documents on the planning authorities’ website show.
Two major projects now flank the Palestinian community of Beit Safafa, most of which is in East Jerusalem. One, known as Givat Hamatos, was frozen for a decade due to international opposition. Workresumed in 2020and last month the site was busy with workers, heavy machinery and trucks.
According to the most recent official planning documents, the “initiator” and “applicant” for the project is the Israel Land Authority, a governmental body. The document lists stakeholders as the state of Israel and the Jerusalem municipality among others.
A second large housing development is known as Givat Shaked and will be built on the north-western side of Beit Safafa, on a plot of grass and trees.
Official documents viewed by the Guardian show that the entity which has formally filed the plan is the Jerusalem Development Authority,a statutory bodythat aims to “promote Jerusalem as a leading international city in the economic sector and in quality of life in the public domain”.
The project’s “initiator” is the Ministry of Justice, through an office known as the General Custodian, which claims responsibility for the land on which Givat Shaked will be built because it includes substantial tracts that had Jewish owners before 1948.
The Givat Shaked project has been a source of division since building was first proposed there in the mid-1990s. Concerns that this posed a threat to the Oslo peace process led to international outrage and Washington pushed Israelto cancelthe plan.
Two years ago the scheme regained momentum. The interior minister at the time,Ayelet Shaked, rejected any claims of Palestinian control over Jerusalem’s east and said it was “unthinkable to prevent development and construction in this area, or anywhere else in the city”.
Shaked also stressed the need “to increase the supply of housing” in Jerusalem. Othersupporters of the schemeclaimed Palestinians would be able to move into the new “neighbourhood”.
Full planning approval was given on 4 January this year.
A temporary cement plant has been created on the land slated for development near Beit Safafa to aid the expansion of the light-rail line.Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
The scheme involves high-rise blocks containing 700 housing units that occupy the only land in Beit Safafa where the 17,000-strong majority Muslim community could expand to accommodate young people. In the neighbourhood, as elsewhere, bureaucratic obstacles and other restrictions usually prevent Palestinians from building larger homes.
“Our family has been here for 250 years … Now I have a black hole in my heart because I can’t see how my children and grandchildren can spend their lives here,” said Ahmed Salman, 71, the chair of Beit Safafa’s community council.
“We had good relations with the municipality once, but not in recent years. Since the war, life goes on but they approved the plan and dismissed all our objections. We are appealing but I’m not optimistic.”
A third project, also near Beit Safafa, is known as Lower Aqueduct and involves the construction of a large settlement adjacent to a Palestinian neighbourhood. The Lower Aqueduct plan was fully approved on 29 December.
The site straddles the line between East Jerusalem and the western part of the city. The initiator and applicant of the project is the Israel Land Authority, documents show.
The construction of Givat Hamatos had been postponed for a decade due to international opposition.Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
“Many of the settlement plans are strategically designated for areas along the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem,” said Amy Cohen, of Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights NGO based in Jerusalem. “If constructed, they would further fracture the Palestinian space … and create a ‘sealing-off’ effect of East Jerusalem from Bethlehem and the southern West Bank. Such moves directly undermine conditions necessary for a viable independent Palestinian state with a contiguous capital in East Jerusalem.
“All this while bringing planning and building for Palestinians in the city to a complete stop.”
The minutes of a planning meeting held in September show that the office of the General Custodian was accepted as a co-applicant on the Kidmat Zion plan, though it was initiated by a private company established by an organisation called Ateret Cohanim, a group that works to increase the Jewish population of East Jerusalem.
Ateret Cohanimhas been accused of being behind attempts to evict Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to take over Christian hotels in Jerusalem’s Old City. It says the new settlement, which will be heavily fortified, is to be built on Jewish-owned land.
A recent United Nations report noted that the policies of Israel’s government, which is the most right wing in the country’s history and includes religious nationalists with close ties to settlers, appeared aligned with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to an “unprecedented extent”.
Israeli settlements in the occupiedPalestinian territorieshad expanded by a record amount and risked eliminating any practical possibility of a Palestinian state, the UN report said.
About 40% of Jerusalem’s population of roughly 1 million are Palestinian. Maintaining a Jewish majority in the city has been an aim of successive Israeli governments.
Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the six-day war of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by most of the international community.Permanent settlement of territory occupied militarily is illegal under international law."
Members of the St Louis police department detain Luther Hall in St Louis, Missouri, on 17 September 2017.Photograph: Lawrence Bryant/Reuters
AMissourijudge awarded more than $23m to a former St Louis police officer who was beaten by other officers while working undercover at a protest in 2017.
On Monday Luther Hall was awarded the significant sum in a default judgment by Joseph Whyte, the St Louis circuit judge, after one of the defendants failed to respond to a lawsuit over the 2017 attack.
“Mr Hall had to endure this severe beating and while that was happening, he knew it was being administered by his colleagues who were sworn to serve and protect,” Whyte said.
Hall was severely injured by his own colleagues while undercoverat a protestfollowing the acquittal of Jason Stockley, a white police officer who shot and killed 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith, a Black man.
Hall was pinned to the ground by officers and beaten with a baton, suffering permanent injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder,Buzzfeed News reported.
Last year, the St Louis police department reopened an internal investigation into the incident,KSDK reported.
In a 2022 interview withKMOV, Hall said that officers at the 2017 demonstration were simply out to hurt protesters.
“I could have been anybody, but being Black definitely didn’t help,” Hall said.
Officers also lied on an incident report about Hall’s assault, writing that “Hall was knocked to the ground striking the concrete” as officers were making arrests.
Hall previously sued the city of St Louis in 2021 over the attack, later reaching a $5m settlement agreement.
In 2022 Hall sued three former law enforcement colleagues for their roles in the assault: Randy Hays, Dustin Boone and Christopher Myers, who are all white.
Hays did not respond to Hall’s lawsuit, despite being served while incarcerated for his role in the assault. In 2021, Hays wassentencedto four years in prison for using unreasonable and excessive force against Hall.
Boone was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for a civil rights charge related to the attack,the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Myers received probation for his role in the assault.
Hall’s claims against Boone and Myers are ongoing.
Lawyer Lynette Petruska issued a statement on Hall’s behalf after Monday’s judgement, saying: “Luther is grateful that Judge Whyte took his brutal assault by fellow officers and its life-changing consequences more seriously than the city of St Louis and the St Louis police department did.”
U.N. Report Describes Physical Abuse and Dire Conditions in Israeli Detention
Israeli soldiers with Palestinian detainees in Gaza in December. The Israeli military reviewed this image as part of the conditions of allowing the photographer to accompany soldiers.Credit...Moti Milrod/Haaretz, via Associated Press
"Some Palestinians recounted being beaten with metal bars or the butts of guns, according to the report. Israeli officials have said that the rights of detainees are respected.
Gazans released from Israeli detention described graphic scenes of physical abuse in testimonies gathered by United Nations workers, according to areport released on Tuesdayby UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian detainees described being made to sit on their knees for hours on end with their hands tied while blindfolded, being deprived of food and water and being urinated on, among other humiliations, the report said. Others described being badly beaten with metal bars or the butts of guns and boots, according to the report, or forced into cages and attacked by dogs.
The New York Times has not interviewed the witnesses who spoke to UNRWA aid workers and could not independently verify their accounts. None of the witnesses were quoted by name. Still, some of the testimonies in the report matched accounts provided to The Times by more than a dozen freed detainees and their relativesin January, who spoke of beatings and harsh interrogations.
Israeli forces have arrested thousands of Gazans during their six-month campaign against Hamas, the Palestinian armed group. The Israeli military says it arrests those suspected of involvement in Hamas and other groups, but women, children and older people have also been detained, according to the UNRWA report.
The Israeli military and the Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the report. But asked about similar accusations of abusein the past, Israeli officials have said that detainees are held according to the law and that their basic rights are respected.
UNRWA staff gathered testimonies from more than 100 released Gazans arriving at the Kerem Shalom crossing over several months. Palestinian medics would occasionally rush freed prisoners who were injured or ill directly to area hospitals, the report said, adding that they sometimes bore “signs of trauma and ill-treatment.”
Many of the detainees are taken to military holding facilities inside Israel, from which many of them are then funneled into Israel’s civilian prisons. At least 1,500 detainees had been released by the Israeli authorities at Kerem Shalom as of April 4, the report said.
The detainees’ treatment in prison included “being subjected to beatings while made to lie on a thin mattress on top of rubble for hours without food, water or access to a toilet, with their legs and hands bound with plastic ties,” the UNRWA report said.
In the report, one freed prisoner described how an Israeli officer threatened to kill her whole family in an airstrike if she did not provide the Israelis with more information. Another said he had been forced to sit on an electrical probe that burned his anus.
Some freed Gazans told aid workers that they had been beaten on their genitals, aggressively searched and sexually groped, the UNRWA report said. Women said they had been forced to strip in front of male officers, the report said, suggesting that some of the incidents “may amount to sexual violence and harassment.”
When presented with the findings in a draft of the UNRWA report that wasleaked last month, the Israeli military said that all mistreatment of detainees was “absolutely prohibited,” adding that all “concrete complaints regarding inappropriate behavior are forwarded to the relevant authorities for review.” It said medical care was readily available for all detainees and that mistreatment of detainees “violates I.D.F. values.”
The Israeli military said last month that it was aware of the deaths of 27 Palestinians in its custody, at least some of whom were already wounded. And at least 10 Palestinians, mostly from the West Bank, have died in Israel’s civilian prison system since Oct. 7, according to the official Palestinian prisoners’ commission and Israeli rights groups, includingPhysicians for Human Rights-Israel, whose doctors attended some of the autopsies.
UNRWA, a key provider of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, has come under scrutiny in recent months after Israel accused it of harboring numerous Hamas members in its ranks. Major foreign donors, including the United States, subsequently suspended their funding for the agency, although some have since resumed it.
Israel has said that at least 30 of the group’s 13,000 staffers in Gaza participated in the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7 or its aftermath.
In response to the accusations, UNRWA fired staff members who were accused of being Hamas members. Two investigations have been opened into the allegations — one by the U.N.’s internal investigations body and another by independent reviewers appointed by the U.N. secretary general.
In the report released on Tuesday, UNRWA said some of its own staff members had been beaten, threatened, stripped, humiliated and abused while being detained by the Israeli authorities. It said that during interrogations, they were pressured to say that UNRWA had affiliations with Hamas and that its staff members took part in the Oct. 7 attack."
A group of independent experts appointed by the UN human rights council has said Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus violated international law.
In the report, special rapporteurs and independent experts said “retaliatory military attacks between Israel andIranviolate the right to life and must cease immediately.”
“All countries are prohibited from arbitrarily depriving individuals of their right to life in military operations abroad, including when countering terrorism,” said the experts. “Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorised under international law,” they said.
The experts said Israel does not appear to have been exercising self-defence on 1 April because it presented no evidence that Iran was directly committing an “armed attack” on Israel or sending non-state armed groups to attack it. The experts noted that Israel has not provided any legal justification for the strike or reported it to the Security Council, as required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
“Israel’s attack consequently violated the prohibition on the use of armed force against another state under Article 2(4) of the Charter,” the experts said.
Tehran blamed Israel for the strike on its diplomatic building in Syria’s capital, which killed top military leaders. Israel has neither confirmed or denied it carried out the strike, and rarely comments on such operations.
This block was corrected at 13.34 BST. The original erroneously attributed the publication of the report to the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA). Apologies.
Israel's war cabinet to meet again to discuss response to Iran's attack
Israel’s war cabinet will meet on Tuesday to discuss the response to Iran’s attack over the weekend, an Israeli official said.
Reuters reports the official said no time was set for meeting.
It will be the third time that the decision-making cabinet convenes sinceIranlaunched more than 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Saturday night.
The Israel Defense Forces chief of staff,Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, has given the clearest confirmation so far that Israel would strike back, saying “This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response.”
Iran’s presidentEbrahim Raisiis reported to have said in a call with Qatar’s emir that “We now categorically declare that the smallest action against Iranian interests will certainly be met with a severe, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators.”
On state TV in Iran, deputy foreign ministerAli Bagheri Kanisaid that his country would not wait 12 days to respond to another Israeli attack, but would retaliate in “a matter of seconds.”
There have been widespread calls for calm in the international community, keen to avoid the situation escalating after Tehran launched its first ever direct state-on-state attack against Israel. Iran blames Israel for an attack on its consulate in Damascus on 1 April which killed senior military figures. Israel has neither confirmed or denied it carried out the strike inside Syria, and rarely comments on such missions.
Israel’s war cabinet consists of prime ministerBenjamin Netanyahu, his defence minister,Yoav Gallant, andBenny Gantz, the former defence minister and centrist Netanyahu rival."
Paramount Chief Adv. Vekuii Rukoro, high-ranked chiefs and other members of the Herero and Nama communities gather around a monument in honor of the Ovaherero and Nama people that were victims of the genocide by German colonial forces at the Swakopmund Concentration Camp Memorial, in Swakopmund, Namibia, as a part of the Reparation Walk 2019 on March 30, 2019.Christian Ender—Getty Images
“The German government formally recognized colonial-era atrocities against the Herero and Nama people in modern-day Namibia for the first time, referring to the early 20th century massacres as “genocide” on Friday and pledging to pay a “gesture to recognize the immense suffering inflicted.”
“In light of the historical and moral responsibility of Germany, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in a statement, adding that the German government will fund projects related to “reconstruction and the development” of Namibia amounting to €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion). The sum will be paid out over 30 years and must primarily benefit the descendants of the Herero and Nama, Agence France-Presse reported.
Although it’s a significant step for a once colonial power to agree such a deal with a former colony, there’s skepticism among some experts and observers.
“I have an ambivalent reaction to this,” says Olivette Otele, professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol, U.K., and author of African Europeans: An Untold History. “It means that the conversation is ongoing, but I’m assuming and I want to believe that this is not the end. It’s not a case of doing one gesture, and then everything’s forgotten, because that wouldn’t work in terms of reconciliation and bringing communities together.”
What happened to the Herero and Nama people?
Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial forces killed, tortured and displaced thousands of Herero and Nama people in what some historians have called the first genocide of the 20th century. After an uprising against brutal German settler colonial rule in what was then known as German Southwest Africa, many Herero were forced into the Omaheke Desert and left to die of starvation and thirst. Thousands of Nama later suffered a similar fate. Those who survived were imprisoned in concentration camps, where they were subjected to sexual violence, forced labor and medical experiments by German officials, with the aim of exterminating the indigenous people. As many as 60,000 Herero—more than 80% of the group’s total population living in German Southwest Africa at that time—and 10,000 Nama—50% of the population—are estimated to have died.
Since the atrocities, the descendants of the Herero and Nama people have struggled to secure a formal apology, reparations or meaningful reconciliation offers from the German government. The 1985 United Nations’ Whitaker Reportclassified the campaign against the Herero as a genocide, and in 1988, Germany’s then-president, Roman Herzog, met Herero leaders in Namibia but stopped short of a formal apology. In 2001, representatives of the Herero people filed a $4 billion lawsuit against the German government and two German firms in the U.S., but the claim was dismissed. Another lawsuit filed in New York was dismissed in 2019. In 2018, Germany returned the human remains of Herero and Nama people who were killed during the genocide to Namibia. The remains had been stored in hospitals, museums and universities for decades and had originally been sent to Germany for discredited, racist and pseudo-scientific experiments that sought to prove racial hierarchies.
German soldiers pose with captured Nama, circa 1905.ullstein bild—Getty Images
‘No recognition without reparations’
On the 100th anniversary of the genocide in 2004, German politician Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul identified the atrocities committed as genocide, adding that “we Germans accept our historical and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time.” Talks between the governments of both countries have been ongoing for years, punctuated with debates and disagreements over formal apologies, reconciliation and reparations.
In August last year, the Namibian government rejected a German offer of compensation for the atrocities, reportedly totalling €10 million ($12.1 million). At the time, Namibia’s president Hage Geingob said that the offer “for reparations made by the German government … is not acceptable” and needed to be “revised.” Notably, Friday’s statement from Germany’s foreign ministry avoided the term “reparations,” a term of contention between the two countries.
What constitutes reparations is understood in different ways by different people. “Memory scholars, historians and grassroots organisations think in terms of reparative justice,” says historian Otele. “The legacy of the past cannot be repaired through just money—there’s education, health, environmental considerations, and the preservation of community livelihoods. There are so many things that can be done that won’t be included in that package.”
There’s also the question of inclusion, and who has truly been represented in these negotiations, billed as a landmark agreement. Ahead of the formal announcement of the agreement, local Namibian media outlets reported that some government-recognised traditional leaders, who were consulted during negotiations, refused to endorse the deal. One unnamed chief was quoted as saying that “what is being offered is too little, an insult to our community and totally different to what we, the chiefs, have agreed on.” Herero paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro also told Reuters the reported agreement was a “sellout.”
“Herero and Nama traditional leadership are rejecting this, because they have been adamant for many years about no recognition without reparations,” says Samudzi. “We should not even have the words reconciliation in our mouths,” she says. “Any conception of reconciliation in this moment is simply a way for Germany to absolve itself, and to not have to think about the ways that this genocide was incredibly formative for a lot of other German state violence.”
A ceremony is held for the victims of Namibian genocide, at the Friedrichstadt church in Berlin, on Aug. 29, 2018. At the invitation of the Evangelical Church and the Council of Churches in Namibia, the mortal remains of two victims of the genocide 1904-1908 in former German Southwest Africa are returned during a divine service.Gregor Fischer—picture-alliance/dpa/AP
Former colonial powers slow to act
The acknowledgment from Germany comes at a time of reckoning over imperial history across the continent. This has manifested through debates about the repatriation of objects looted in violent colonial expeditions, the inclusion of imperial history in school curriculums, and the presence of statues of colonizers and slave traders in public spaces, as well as formal apologies for past racist violence and slavery.
On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron publicly acknowledged France’s “overwhelming responsibility” in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in a trip to the country’s capital Kigali. Yet survivors were critical of Macron’s failure to clearly apologize for his country’s role, after an independent report commissioned by his government concluded that France was “blind” to atrocities in Rwanda.
“We just saw France, not apologizing for what it did in Rwanda, but already asking for forgiveness,” says Samudzi. “And Germany is doing very similarly, through acknowledging and using the ‘G’ word [genocide], but being very quick to reject the possibility of meaningful compensation for the survivor communities.”
Otele says that, while the developments in Germany should put pressure on other governments to examine their pasts, the reality is that some political systems across Europe are stagnant, reluctant or slow to move on these issues. Imperial nostalgia is also still prevalent within some societies: A 2020 poll founda third of people in the U.K. believed Britain’s colonies were better off for being part of an empire, and that Britons were more likely to say they would like their country to still have an empire compared with people living in other former colonial powers.
Otele, a Cameroonian citizen, says the history of German colonization in the country of her birth in the 19th century has been significantly underexplored. “It will be interesting to see how Germany addresses other stories,” she says, adding that the conversations around these issues in broader society, particularly at the institutional level in some museums and universities in the U.K., are a positive sign. “It’s not perfect. There’s so much more to be done. But the conversation is actually happening rather than avoiding it.”
