Stephen Lendman

Founded in 1972, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is its leading human and civil rights organization through activities involving litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach. Each year it publishes an annual report covering flagrant violations, positive trends, if any, and "significant human rights-related processes" affecting Israelis and Palestinians.

Its latest December 2009 one is examined below, discussing "a disturbing (government-sponsored) trend that has (gained) currency in Israel over the past year - both in public discourse and sometimes in practice - to make human rights conditional: on fulfilling some obligation, having financial means, or belonging (or not belonging) to certain groups."

For example, free expression is targeted, and Israeli Arabs threatened, denied equality, education, employment, and their citizenship without "declaring loyalty" to Israel - in other words, on condition they abandon their national identity, culture, language, and historic heritage that's the equivalent of asking Jews to renounce Judaism.

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From the University of Haifa via Eurekalert

[Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new," explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research. The Templar palace in Acre, seen here, is one of the sites where this study was carried out. (Amir Yurman, Director of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies Maritime Workshop at the University of Haifa; Courtesy of the University of Haifa)]

“Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new,” explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research.

The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. “Rises and falls in sea level over relatively short periods do not testify to a long-term trend. It is early yet to conclude from the short-term increases in sea level that this is a set course that will not take a change in direction,” explains Dr. Sivan.

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IWPR Staff

Umida Ahmedova, Photographer.
© U Ahmedova. Photos HERE.

Rights groups ridicule suggestions that Umida Ahmedova’s images libel Uzbek nation as a whole.

Police in Uzbekistan are compiling an unusual criminal case against one of the country’s leading photographers, Umida Ahmedova. The charge is defamation, and the insulted party is the population of Uzbekistan.

IWPR has learned that Ahmedova was required to sign an undertaking not to leave the country by a police investigator on January 13. A month earlier, she was charged with defamation and with harming Uzbekistan's reputation, RFE/RL radio reported.

The case against her is based on two articles of the criminal code, carrying penalties of up to six months in jail.

The substance of the alleged defamation differs from any run-of-the-mill libel case – it is said to be not against any individual, but against the Uzbek nation as a whole. Nor is it based on statements made by Ahmedova; instead, the charges derive from visual images of life in the countryside, which have been deemed too negative.

Police investigator Komil Akbarov has released a document containing the joint findings of the Centre for Mass Communications Monitoring and a group of experts including a religious affairs analyst and two psychologists, whom the authorities tasked with assessing Ahmedova’s photographic and documentary film work.

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