Between The Lines: Josh Hough on escalation of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank (Week Ending 1/14/11)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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Groups Decry Israeli Use of Tear Gas that Killed Palestinian Woman During West Bank Protest

Real Audio MP3

Interview with Josh Hough, communications director with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The new year started off violently in the occupied West Bank of Palestine, when a 36-year-old woman, Jawaher Abu Rahmah, was overcome by tear gas fired by the Israeli Army at protesters in the town of Bi'lin on Dec. 31st. Jawaher died on New Year's Day. Villagers who participate in a weekly protest are joined each Friday by Israeli supporters and international solidarity activists demanding the rerouting of the separation barrier Israel has built which cuts villagers off from their land. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled in the Palestinians' favor, but the barrier remains.

Abu Rahmah, the woman who died, was the sister of Bassem Abu Rahmah, who in April 2009 was also killed by an Israeli tear-gas canister fired directly at him at a similar Friday demonstration in Bi'lin. Many other protesters have been injured by Israeli forces at the town's weekly protests.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Josh Hough, communications director with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, based in Washington, D.C. He spent almost two years as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team living with Palestinians under siege in South Hebron in the West Bank. He discusses the deteriorating situation in the West Bank and his group's letter sent to Combined Systems, Inc., or CSI, the Pennsylvania-based corporation that supplies most of the tear-gas canisters to the Israeli military.

JOSH HOUGH: The Abu Rahmah family is a prominent family in the Bi'lin area, from which many of the well-known nonviolent demonstrators have come, and which has suffered disproportionate casualties as a result of Israel's violent repression of this nonviolent action. There have been a number of the male residents of that family imprisoned wrongfully, and then over the last weekend, Jawaher Abu Rahmah -- the 36-year-old woman from the same family -- the second person in the family now to be killed from Israeli violent military repression of these weekly Friday demonstrations, in this case from the inhalation of tear gas.

So we're going to continue to put pressure on the State Department using newly emerging cases of egregious Israeli military violations of human rights and international law, the wrongful killing of unarmed civilians in the West Bank, to continue to put this before U.S. policymakers and people who oversee the special relationship between the U.S. government and the Israeli government. And also, the letter that one of our member groups has taken the lead in drafting, directly to CSI -- Combined Systems, Inc. -- which is a U.S. company which manufactures, we are told, the vast majority of the tear-gas canisters that are used by the Israeli military in the repression of nonviolent activists. In this letter, the U.S. campaign is going to be presenting this letter to CSI basically saying: You have to stop dispensing these materials to the Israeli military, because under the terms of your ownprovision of these materials and the documentation you provide that's supposed to be safety instructions to guide the use of these weapons to minimize the bodily injury to people. Given that the Israeli military is continuously, systematically violating your own instructions, and potentially also in violation of U.S. laws -- including the Arms Export Control Act, which says you can't use U.S.-supplied weapons for these means like we've been doing for several years with the Caterpiller Company, (we) basically demand that they stop providing these weapons to Israel. And (we'll be) using these specific horrifying stories like the death of Jawaher this last Friday to try to convince them of that. And then also sharing these communications with CSI, whenever we can in our communications with the U.S. State Department and whoever else in the U.S. government we're able to speak with, and also the general public and the media, to show the linkage that CSI bears substantial responsibility for this horrible unfolding of events.

BETWEEN THE LINES:Josh Hough, when I was in Bi'lin for the Friday protest in 2008, the Palestinians, their Israeli supporters and the international solidarity activists were completely nonviolent, but there were just a couple of Palestinian youths who were shooting stones with slingshots toward the Israeli soldiers, and then Israel used that to say the protest was not nonviolent. Your comment?

JOSH HOUGH: One, I would say just look at the disproportionality of force. We're talking about not stone-throwing against unarmed Israeli civilians, but against very well-armed Israeli soldiers. I've been there also myself a couple of times during the Friday demonstration, and what I see there is very similar to what I've seen a lot more of, actually, in South Hebron, where I've worked much more extensively. Yeah, stone-throwing youth is a pretty common feature of these interactions between local people and the occupation forces when they come to raise hell. The second thing I would point to is that, yes, under the laws of occupation, which Israel claims to follow, that are laid out in international law to which Israel's government is a signatory, some types of military force are justified in the protection of Israeli citizens and Israeli police and military personnel. So that's part of the argument they are using for their systematically overwhelming use of force against these people. From what I've seen, the cases in which they're taking this action and using that argument to defend it, is cases where the military or other security personnel are actually taking the initiative, being instigators, coming in trying to rile up a response from the youth of the village, and then severely punishing them in response for the inevitable reaction from the youth. And it's just incredibly impressive in cases from Bi'lin to Atwani in the South Hebron Hills where I've worked most extensively, how the vast majority of people locally -- including the youth, many of them -- consistently choose not to respond violently.

The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is a coalition of more than 300 organizations. Contact the Campaign by calling their Washington, D.C. office at (202) 332-0994 or visit their website at EndTheOccupation.org