Excerpts: Rumor spreading re Assad suffered a stroke.IDF Jenin camp

Excerpts: Rumor spreading re Assad suffered a stroke.IDF Jenin camp
incursion fired when attacked by explosive devices. Unforeseen problems with
Trump immigration ban January 29, 2017

+++SOURCE:Al Arabiya News 29 Jan.’17:”News is spreading that Bashar al Assad
has ‘suffered a stroke’”,by Staff Writer 28 Jan ‘17
SUBJECT: Internet news stating Assad has serious health problem

News has been circulating on the internet since Friday[27 Jan]stating that
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is experiencing serious health
problems.Some media outlets said that Assad had suffered a stroke; while
others said that he was shot and has been taken to Damascus Hospital for
treatment.

France’s Le Point, speculated that Assad might have been assassinated by his
personal Iranian Bodyguard Mehdi al-Yaacoubi, going so far as to say that he
shot him in the head.

Lebanese newspaper, al-Mustaqbal, quoted “reliable sources” as saying that
Assad suffered from a cerebral infraction and was transferred to Damascus
Hospital where he is being treated under high security.

As for the Saudi newspaper Okaz, Assad is suffering from a “brain tumor.” He
tried to cover up his illness through short and frequent appearances.
According to its sources, Assad is being treated by a Russian-Syrian medical
team on a weekly basis, adding that he has undergone medical tests when he
was in Moscow in October.

Pro-Syrian regime Lebanese newspaper al-Diyar reported on Friday that Assad
suffered from a stroke, but denied the news today.

There were also rumors that Assad is at the American University Hospital
(AUH) in Beirut. However, Al Arabiya contacted the hospital and no
information on the issue was given. Al Arabiya has also tried to contact
Damascus Hospital, but there has been no response.

On the other hand, in a statement carried by the Presidency of the Syrian
Arab Republic page on Facebook, Syrian authorities said that such rumors
were incorrect.

+++SOURCE: Naharnet(Lebanon) 29 Jan.’17:”Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian in
West Bank Palestinian in West Bank” by Agence France Presse
SUBJECT:IDF Jenin camp incursion fired when attacked by explosive devices

QUOTE:”Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a
leading cause of the violence”

FULL TEXT: Palestinian was shot dead Sunday[20 Jan] and five others were
wounded by Israeli soldiers at the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank,
Palestinian medical sources said.

The person who was killed at the camp located in the northern West Bank was
identified as 19-year-old Mohammed Abu Khalifa, the sources said.

The shooting occurred after an incursion into the camp by Israeli forces
sparked clashes with young Palestinians, Palestinian security officials
said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the soldiers had opened fire after entering
the camp and being attacked with explosive devices.

“Faced with immediate danger, the soldiers fired at the main instigators of
the violence,” she told AFP.

None of the soldiers were hurt, she added.

A wave of Palestinian attacks that erupted in October 2015 has resulted in
the deaths of 252 Palestinians, 40 Israelis, two Americans, a Jordanian, an
Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming
attacks, according to Israeli authorities, with others killed during
protests, in clashes or air raids on Gaza.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a leading cause
of the violence.

Israeli authorities have confiscated the bodies of killed Palestinians since
the violence began, often keeping them for many months as a means of
deterrence and to prevent clashes during funerals

+++SOURCE:Naharnet(Lebanon)29 Jan.’17:”Trump Immigration Ban Loses First
Legal Battle”,by Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Unforseen problems withTrump immigration ban
FULL TEXT:A federal judge blocked Saturday[28Jan] part of President Donald
Trump’s temporary immigration ban, ordering authorities to stop deporting
refugees and other travelers stuck at U.S. airports.

The decision accompanied growing resistance to Trump’s crackdown on Muslim
immigration, with large protests spreading at major airports across the
country.

“Victory!!!!!!” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), whose lawyers
sued the government, tweeted after US District Judge Ann Donnelly issued her
decision.

“Our courts today worked as they should as bulwarks against government abuse
or unconstitutional policies and orders.”

Trump’s sweeping executive order, signed Friday[27 Jan], suspends the
arrival of refugees for at least 120 days and bars visas for travelers from
seven Muslim majority countries for the next three months.

The move, which was implemented immediately by U.S. authorities, sparked
large protests at major airports across the country. At New York’s John F.
Kennedy International Airport, some of the 2,000 demonstrators there chanted
“Let them in, let them in!”

Large protests took place at the main airports for Washington, Chicago,
Minneapolis, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.

Donnelly’s decision to issue a temporary stay — which stopped short of
ruling on the constitutionality of Trump’s order — came after dozens of
people were detained at U.S. airports following Trump’s actions.

The exact number of those affected is unclear, but the judge ordered the
government to provide lists of all those detained at U.S. airports since the
measure went into effect.

Sending those travelers back to their home countries following Trump’s order
exposes them to “substantial and irreparable injury,” wrote Donnelly, who
was appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

A second federal judge in Virginia also issued a temporary order restricting
immigration authorities for seven days from deporting legal permanent
residents detained at Dulles Airport just outside Washington, according to
U.S. media.

- ‘We were prepared’ -

“We knew that was coming — we were prepared,” said Camille Mackler, a
lawyer who heads legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition,
one of the groups that quickly mounted the demonstration there.

“But we didn’t know when, and we couldn’t believe it would be immediate,
that there’d be people in an airplane the moment the order was taking
effect.”

The List Project, which helps Iraqis whose personal safety is threatened
because they have worked for the United States, expressed outraged over the
move, warning it put American lives at risk too.

“I can’t say this in blunt-enough terms: you can’t screw over the people
that risked their lives and bled for this country without consequences,”
wrote the project’s founder and director Kirk Johnson.

The ACLU’s legal challenge sought the release of two Iraqi men on grounds of
unlawful detention. One of them — Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who has worked as
interpreter and in other roles for the U.S. in Iraq — was in fact released
on Saturday[28 Jan] after being detained the day before.

- ‘We must fight’ -

Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, who went to JFK to press for the
release of those detained under Trump’s measure, said “We must fight this
executive order in the streets, in the courts, anywhere, anytime. We must
resist. We must fight.”

Trump’s pronouncement on Muslim immigration makes good on one of his most
controversial campaign promises to subject travelers from Islamic countries
to “extreme vetting” — which he declared would make America safe from
“radical Islamic terrorists.”

The targeted countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and
Yemen.

Donnelly’s decision shows that “when President Trump enacts laws or
executive orders that are unconstitutional, and illegal, the courts are
there to defend everyone’s rights,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero
said in leaving the emergency hearing.

The ban has triggered political backlash, including from Trump’s fellow
Republicans.

Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the US Senate, spoke of America’s
“legal and moral obligations to help the innocent victims of these terrible
conflicts.”

“I strongly urge the new administration to move quickly to tailor its policy
on visa issuance as narrowly as possible, delivering on our security needs
while reducing unnecessary burdens on the vast majority of visa-seekers that
present a promise — not a threat — to our nation,” he said in a statement.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, wrote: “To my colleagues:
don’t ever again lecture me on American moral leadership if you chose to be
silent today.”

His tweet was accompanied by the now iconic photograph of Aylan Kurdi, a
three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey in 2015
after a failed attempt to flee Syria’s brutal war to join relatives in
Canada.

- A long battle -

The rapid mobilization against the order suggests a protracted battle is
shaping up between migrant advocates and Trump and his administration.

“This is the opening salvo of a long battle that will go on in the courts,”
said Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas
who specializes in immigration issues.

He said the outcome of the legal battle is unclear because “we are in
unchartered territory in modern America.”

The battle could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not ruled on
this type of immigration issue since the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

A White House official said that holders of a green card — which allows
permanent residence in the US and often takes years to obtain — who are
abroad should first go to the US consulate to obtain a document allowing
return to the U.S.

And green card holders in the U.S. who want to travel abroad must obtain
approval from a consulate official.

The State Department has said that people from the seven countries under the
90-day travel ban will be prohibited entry no matter their visa status. Only
those holding a dual citizenship with the U.S. will be allowed to enter.
============
Sue Lerner – Associate, IMRA

Source: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72104