By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli  war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel’s pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhood.

Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory.

As a nefarious mass murderer, Ashkenazi, like the rest of Israeli war criminals, ought to be in the Hague preparing his defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all the crimes he perpetrated put him  on equal footing with Nazi war criminals who had stood trial  for their  own crimes against humanity during the Second World War.

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Palestinians and foreign activists have torn down segments of Israel’s separation wall in a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the town of Qalandiya in the occupied West Bank, a group of masked activists using a lorry pulled down a two-metre cement block before Israeli security forces confronted them with tear gas grenades.

Several of the estimated 50 demonstrators passed through the hole they had made, hoisting a Palestinian flag and setting ablaze tyres on the other side.

Protesters were wearing shirts with the text “Jerusalem we are coming”, which was the slogan for the protest.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, second left. AFP photo

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By Khalid Amayreh

Hundreds of children were killed in Israel's war on Gaza earlier this year.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – A Jewish rabbi has issued a book giving Jews permission to murder non-Jews, including babies and children, who may pose an actual or potential threat to Jews or Israel.

“It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah.”

He argues that goyem (a derogatory epithet for non-Jews) may be killed if they threaten Israel.

“If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

Shapiro, who heads a small Talmudic school at the settlement of Yitzhar near Nablus, claims his edict “is fully justified by the Torah and the Talmud.”

The anti-goyem edict seems to come in response to the arrest by Israeli police of a Jewish terrorist who has confessed to having murdered two Palestinian shepherds in the West Bank.

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Mahmoud Abbas, the beleaguered head of the Palestinian Authority, has finally but belatedly admitted that  the so-called Peace process with Israel has completely  failed and that the Palestinian people will have to seek an alternative to it.

In a speech in Ramallah Thursday evening, Abbas rightly blamed Israel for the collapse of the political process, saying that the PA had carried out “all our commitments and obligations” while Israel continued to steal Palestinian land and build Jewish settlements.

The 74-year-old Fatah leader said  he decided  not to seek a second term as PA Chairman, citing the failure of peace talks with Israel and the Israeli refusal to end the occupation that started in 1967.

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