1.
Yibna
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Yibna, was a Palestinian village with a population of 5,420 in 1948, located 15 kilometers southwest of Ramla. Yibna was occupied by Israeli forces on 4 June 1948, and was depopulated during the military assault, based on written sources and archaeology, the history of Yavneh/Jabneh/Yibna goes back to the Iron Age and possibly to the Bronze Age. The Hebrew Bible mentions Yavneh repeatedly, as does Josephus, the harbour of ancient Yavneh has been identified on the coast at Minet Rubin or Yavne-Yam, where excavations have revealed fortification going back to the Bronze Age Hyksos. It has been in use from the Middle Bronze Age until the 12th century CE, the Islamic historian al-Baladhuri mentioned Yibna as one of ten towns in Jund Filastin conquered by the Rashidun army led by Amr ibn al-As in the early 7th century. Also in the 9th century, Yaqubi wrote that Yubna was an ancient city built on a hill that was inhabited by Samaritans, al-Muqaddasi, writing around 985, said that Yubna has a beautiful mosque. From this place come the excellent figs known by the name of Damascene, yaqut wrote that in Yubna there was a tomb said to be that of Abu Hurairah, the companion of the Prophet. The author of Marasid also adds that tomb seen here is said to be that of ´Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarh. In 2007, remains ranging from the Early Islamic period until the British Mandate period were uncovered, an additional kiln, and part of a commercial/industrial area were uncovered at the west of the tell in 2009. The Crusaders called the city Ibelin and built a castle there in 1141. Two excavation seasons led by Professor Dan Bahat starting in 2005 revealed the main gate. Its namesake noble family, the house of Ibelin, was important in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Ibelin was captured by Saladin in 1187. Salvage excavations at the west of the tell unearthed a stash of 53 Crusader coins of the 12th and 13th centuries, ibelins parish church was transformed into a mosque, to which a minaret was added during the Mamluk period in 1337. The minaret survives until today, while the mosque was blown up by the IDF in 1950, maqam Abu Hurayra, described as one of the finest domed mausoleums in Palestine, is located in Yavne. Since the 12th century, it has known as a tomb of Abu Hurairah. After 1948 the shrine has been taken over by Sephardic Jews who believe that the tomb is the place of Rabbi Gamaliel of Yavne. In 1596, Yibna was part of the Ottoman Empire, nahiya of Gaza under the liwa of Gaza with a population of 710. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, summer crops, sesame seeds and fruits, as well as goats, beehives and vineyards. An American missionary, William Thomson, who visited Yibna in 1834 and he wrote that an inscription on the mosque indicated that it had been built in 1386, while Denys Pringle indicates 1337 as the construction year of the minaret. An Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that Jebna had a population of 1042, in 348 houses, though the population count included men, only
2.
Mandatory Palestine
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Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948, further confusing the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. At the wars end the British and French set up a joint Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in what had been Ottoman Syria, the British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, the land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948. The land east of the Jordan, a region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz. The divergent tendencies regarding the nature and purpose of the mandate are visible already in the discussions concerning the name for this new entity. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called Southern Syria in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State. During the British Mandate period the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs, following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist recent cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, following the arrival of the British, Muslim-Christian Associations were established in all the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem and its main platforms were a call for representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist Commission was formed in March 1918 and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine, on 19 April 1920, elections were held for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Zionist Commission received official recognition in 1922 as representative of the Palestinian Jewish community, Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organizations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favor Zionism, when Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist. As Grand Mufti, as well as the influential positions that he held during this period. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had created by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, in addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine
3.
Gaza City
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Gaza, also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of 515,556, making it the largest city in the State of Palestine. Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC, Gaza has been dominated by different peoples and empires throughout its history. The Philistines made it a part of their pentapolis after the Ancient Egyptians had ruled it for nearly 350 years, under the Romans and later the Byzantines, Gaza experienced relative peace and its port flourished. In 635 AD, it became the first city in Palestine to be conquered by the Rashidun army, however, by the time the Crusaders invaded the city in the late 11th century, it was in ruins. In later centuries, Gaza experienced several hardships—from Mongol raids to floods and locusts, reducing it to a village by the 16th century, when it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the first half of Ottoman rule, the Ridwan dynasty controlled Gaza, the municipality of Gaza was established in 1893. Gaza fell to British forces during World War I, becoming a part of Mandatory Palestine, as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip territory and several improvements were undertaken in the city. Gaza was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, but in 1993, in the months following the 2006 election, an armed conflict broke out between the Palestinian political factions of Fatah and Hamas, resulting in the latter taking power in Gaza. Egypt and Israel consequently imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, Israel eased the blockade allowing consumer goods in June 2010, and Egypt reopened the Rafah border crossing in 2011 to pedestrians. The primary economic activities of Gaza are small-scale industries and agriculture, however, the blockade and recurring conflicts has put the economy under severe pressure. The majority of Gazas inhabitants are Muslim, although there is also a Christian minority, Gaza has a very young population with roughly 75% under the age of 25. The city is administered by a 14-member municipal council. The name Gaza is first known from records of Thutmose III of Egypt in the 15th century BC. In Semitic languages, the meaning of the city name is fierce, other proper Arabic transliterations for the Arabic name are Ghazzah or Ġazzah. Accordingly, Gaza might be spelled Gazza in English, although the z is double in Arabic, it was transliterated into Greek as a single zeta, and the voiced velar or uvular fricative at the beginning was transliterated with a gamma. The Hebrew name of the city is Aza – the ayin at the beginning of the word represented a velar fricative in Biblical Hebrew. Gazas history of habitation dates back 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world, settlement in the region of Gaza dates back to Tell es-Sakan, an Ancient Egyptian fortress built in Canaanite territory to the south of present-day Gaza. The site went into decline throughout the Early Bronze Age II as its trade with Egypt sharply decreased, another urban center known as Tell al-Ajjul began to grow along the Wadi Ghazza riverbed
4.
Gaza Strip
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Gaza, together with the West Bank, comprise the Palestinian territories claimed by the Palestinians as the State of Palestine. The territories of Gaza and the West Bank are separated from each other by Israeli territory, both fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, but Gaza has since June 2007 been governed by Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic organization which came to power in free elections in 2006. It has been placed under an Israeli and U. S. -led international economic, the territory is 41 kilometers long, and from 6 to 12 kilometers wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers. With around 1.85 million Palestinians on some 362 square kilometers, an extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gazas Palestinians. Gaza has a population growth rate of 2. 91%, the 13th highest in the world. The population is expected to increase to 2.1 million in 2020, by that time, Gaza may be rendered unliveable, if present trends continue. Due to the Israeli and Egyptian border closures and the Israeli sea and air blockade, Sunni Muslims make up the predominant part of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. Israel maintains direct control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza, it controls Gazas air and maritime space. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military, Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election,2006, Fatah refused to join the proposed coalition, when this collapsed under joint Israeli and United States pressure, the Palestinian Authority instituted a non-Hamas government in the West Bank while Hamas formed a government on its own in Gaza. Further economic sanctions were imposed by Israel and the European Quartet against Hamas, a brief civil war between the two groups had broken out in Gaza when, apparently under a U. S. -backed plan, Fatah contested Hamas’s administration. Hamas emerged the victor and expelled Fatah-allied officials and members of the PAs security apparatus from the Strip, since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been de facto governed by Hamas, which claims to represent the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian people. Israel maintains direct control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza, it controls Gazas air and maritime space. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military, Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The Gaza Strip acquired its current northern and eastern boundaries at the cessation of fighting in the 1948 war, article V of the Agreement declared that the demarcation line was not to be an international border. At first the Gaza Strip was officially administered by the All-Palestine Government, All-Palestine in the Gaza Strip was managed under the military authority of Egypt, functioning as a puppet state, until it officially merged into the United Arab Republic and dissolved in 1959. From the time of the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government until 1967, Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip under their unilateral disengagement plan, in July 2007, after winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas became the elected government
5.
Alexandria University
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Alexandria University is a public research university in Alexandria, Egypt. It was established in 1938 as a satellite of Fouad University and it was known as Farouk University until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 when its name was changed to the University of Alexandria. Taha Hussein was the rector of Alexandria University. It is now the second largest university in Egypt and has affiliations to various universities for ongoing research. These are the faculties of Agriculture, Fine Arts, Physical Education for Boys, Alexandria University is ranked 301+ worldwide based on Times Higher Educations World University Rankings 2011–2012. Alexandria University is ranked 601+ worldwide based on QS World University Rankings 2011/12 and it was ranked 701+ in the QS World University Rankings 2014/2015. As of 2017, it is 916 worldwide and 2nd in Egypt according to Webometrics ranking of world universities
6.
Hamas
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Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization. It has a service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Hamass military wing objected to the truce offer, analysts have said that it seems clear that Hamas knows that many of its conditions for the truce could never be met. The attacks on civilians have been condemned as war crimes and crimes against humanity by human rights such as Human Rights Watch. In the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a plurality in the Palestinian Parliament, Hamas rejected those changes, which led to the Quartet suspending its foreign assistance program and Israel imposing economic sanctions on the Hamas-led administration. In March 2007, a unity government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was briefly formed. Israel and Egypt then imposed a blockade of the Gaza Strip. In 2011, Hamas and Fatah announced an agreement that provides for creation of a joint caretaker Palestinian government. Progress stalled, until an April 2014 agreement to form a unity government. It is not regarded as a terrorist organization by Iran, Russia, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, China, an EU court found the EUs earlier designation flawed, but its decision has been appealed by the European Council. It is a point of debate in political and academic circles over whether or not to classify Hamas as a terrorist group, Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الاسلامية or Harakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya, meaning Islamic Resistance Movement. The Arabic word hamas means courage or zeal, the Hamas covenant interprets its name to mean strength and bravery. Hamas, as its name implies, aims to liberate Palestine from the Israeli occupation by resisting it, Hamas inherited from its predecessor a tripartite structure that consisted in the provision of social services, of religious training and military operations under a Shura Council. Traditionally it had four distinct functions, a social welfare division, a military division for procuring weapons and undertaking operations, a security service. The exact nature of the organization is unclear, secrecy being maintained for fear of Israeli assassinations, formally, Hamas maintains the wings are separate and independent. Matthew Levitt maintains this is a public myth, davis argues that they are both separate and combined for reasons of internal and external political necessity. Communication between the political and military wings of Hamas is difficult, owing to the thoroughness of Israeli intelligence surveillance, after the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi the occasional political direction of the militant wing diminished, with field commanders given discretional autonomy on operations. The governing body is the Majlis al-Shura, the principle behind the Council is based on the Quranic concept of consultation and popular assembly, which Hamas leaders argue provides for democracy within an Islamic framework
7.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
8.
Ahmed Yassin
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Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin was a Palestinian imam and politician. He was a founder of Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian paramilitary organization, Yassin also served as the spiritual leader of the organization. Yassin, a quadriplegic who was blind, had used a wheelchair since a sporting accident at the age of 12. He was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from early morning prayers. His killing, in an attack claimed the lives of both his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was widely condemned and many observers suggested that the act would negatively impact the peace process. Two hundred thousand Palestinians attended his funeral procession, Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura, a small village near the city of Ashkelon, in the British Mandate of Palestine. His date of birth is not known for certain, according to his Palestinian passport, he was born on 1 January 1929 and his father, Abdullah Yassin, died when he was three years old. Afterward, he known in his neighborhood as Ahmad Saada after his mother Saada al-Habeel. This was to him from the children of his fathers other three wives. Together, Yassin had four brothers and two sisters and he and his entire family fled to Gaza, settling in al-Shati Camp after his village was captured by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee, when he was 12, he sustained a severe spinal injury while wrestling his friend Abdullah al-Khatib. His neck was kept in plaster for 45 days, the damage to his spinal cord rendered him a quadraplegic for the rest of his life. Fearing a rift between his family and al-Khatibs, Yassin initially told his family that he sustained his injuries while playing leapfrog during a lesson with his school friends on the beach. Although Yassin applied and attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he was unable to pursue his studies due to his deteriorating health. He was forced to be educated at home where he read widely, particularly on matters and on religion, politics, sociology. His followers believe that his worldly knowledge made him one of the best speakers in the Gaza Strip, during this time, he began delivering weekly sermons after Friday prayers, drawing large crowds of people. After years of unemployment, he got a post as an Arabic language teacher at a school in Rimal. Headmaster Mohammad al-Shawa initially had reservations about Yassin, concerning the reception he would receive from the due to his disability
9.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
10.
State of Palestine
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The State of Palestine claims the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as the designated capital. Most of the areas claimed by the State of Palestine have been occupied by Israel since 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and its independence was declared on 15 November 1988 by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Algiers as a government-in-exile. Since the British Mandate, the term Palestine has been associated with the area that currently covers the State of Israel, the West Bank. In 1947, the UN adopted a plan for a two-state solution in the remaining territory of the mandate. The plan was accepted by the Jewish leadership but rejected by the Arab leaders, on the eve of final British withdrawal, the Jewish Agency for Israel declared the establishment of the State of Israel according to the proposed UN plan. During the war, Israel gained additional territories that were designated to be part of the Arab state under the UN plan, Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip and Transjordan occupied the West Bank. Egypt initially supported the creation of an All-Palestine Government, but disbanded it in 1959, Transjordan never recognized it and instead decided to incorporate the West Bank with its own territory to form Jordan. The annexation was ratified in 1950 but was rejected by the international community, the Six-Day War in 1967, when Egypt, Jordan, and Syria fought against Israel, ended with Israel being in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, besides other territories. In 1964, when the West Bank was controlled by Jordan, the Palestinian National Charter of the PLO defines the boundaries of Palestine as the whole remaining territory of the mandate, including Israel. Following the Six-Day War, the PLO moved to Jordan, the October 1974 Arab League summit designated the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and reaffirmed their right to establish an independent state of urgency. In November 1974, the PLO was recognized as competent on all matters concerning the question of Palestine by the UN General Assembly granting them observer status as an entity at the UN. In spite of this decision, the PLO did not participate at the UN in its capacity of the State of Palestines government, in 1979, through the Camp David Accords, Egypt signaled an end to any claim of its own over the Gaza Strip. In July 1988, Jordan ceded its claims to the West Bank—with the exception of guardianship over Haram al-Sharif—to the PLO, in November 1988, the PLO legislature, while in exile, declared the establishment of the State of Palestine. In the month following, it was recognised by many states, including Egypt. In the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the State of Palestine is described as being established on the Palestinian territory, the UN membership application submitted by the State of Palestine also specified that it is based on the 1967 borders. During the negotiations of the Oslo Accords, the PLO recognised Israels right to exist, after Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza Strip from Egypt, it began to establish Israeli settlements there. These were organised into Judea and Samaria district and Hof Aza Regional Council in the Southern District, in 1980, Israel decided to freeze elections for these councils and to establish instead Village Leagues, whose officials were under Israeli influence. Later this model became ineffective for both Israel and the Palestinians, and the Village Leagues began to break up, with the last being the Hebron League, dissolved in February 1988
11.
Israeli Air Force
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The Israeli Air Force operates as the aerial warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces. It was founded on May 28,1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, as of May 2012 Aluf Amir Eshel serves as the Air Force Commander. The Israeli Air Force formed on May 28,1948, using commandeered or donated civilian aircraft and obsolete, eventually, more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs. The Israeli Air Force played an important part in Operation Kadesh, on June 5,1967, the first day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force executed Operation Focus, crippling the opposing Arab air forces and attaining air supremacy for the remainder of the war. Shortly after the end of the Six-Day War, Egypt initiated the War of Attrition, on October 7,1973, the IAF conducted Operation Tagar against Egyptian air bases of the Egyptian Air Defence Force. Although initially successful, with 10 bases hit, the urgency of the fighting on the Golan heights forced the operations suspension, since that war most of Israels military aircraft have been obtained from the United States. Among these are the F-4 Phantom II, A-4 Skyhawk, F-15 Eagle, the Israeli Air Force has also operated a number of domestically produced types such as the IAI Nesher, and later, the more advanced IAI Kfir. On June 7,1981, eight IAF F-16A fighters covered by six F-15A jets carried out Operation Opera to destroy the Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osiraq, on June 9,1982, the Israeli Air Force carried out Operation Mole Cricket 19, crippling the Syrian air defence array. The IAF continued to mount attacks on Hezbollah and PLO positions in south Lebanon, on October 1,1985, In response to a PLO terrorist attack which murdered three Israeli civilians in Cyprus, the Israeli air force carried out Operation Wooden Leg. The strike involved the bombing of PLO Headquarters in Tunis, by F-15 Eagles, in 1991, the IAF carried out Operation Solomon which brought Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In 1993 and 1996, the IAF participated in Operation Accountability and Operation Grapes of Wrath and it took part in many missions since, including during the 2006 Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Cloud and Operation Protective Edge. On September 6,2007, the Israeli Air Force successfully bombed an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor in Operation Orchard, squadron markings usually go on the tail fin. Forerunners of the Israeli Air Force were the Palestine Flying Service established by the Irgun in 1937, and Sherut Avir, the Israeli Air Force formed on May 28,1948, shortly after Israel declared statehood and found itself under attack. The force consisted of a hodge-podge of commandeered or donated civilian aircraft converted to military use, a variety of obsolete and surplus ex-World War II combat-aircraft were quickly sourced by various means to supplement this fleet. Creativity and resourcefulness were the foundations of early Israeli military success in the air, Israels new fighter-arm first went into action on May 29,1948, assisting efforts to halt the Egyptian advance from Gaza northwards. Four newly arrived Avia S-199s, flown by Lou Lenart, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman and Eddie Cohen, although damage to the enemy was minimal, two aircraft were lost and Cohen killed, nevertheless the attack achieved its goal and stopped the Egyptians. After un-assembled planes were strafed on the ground on May 30th at Ekron airfield the fighters were moved to makeshift strip located around the current Herzliya Airport. The Israeli Air Force scored its first aerial victories on June 3 when Modi Alon, flying Avia D.112, the first dogfight against enemy fighters took place a few days later, on June 8, when Gideon Lichtaman shot down an Egyptian Spitfire
12.
Targeted killing
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Targeted killing is a form of assassination based on the presumption of criminal guilt. By definition, targeted or named killings do not occur in any other than a declared state of war. Some analysts believe it to be a euphemism for the assassination of an individual by a state organization or institution outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield. Targeted killings were employed extensively by death squads in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Targeted killings have also been used in Somalia, Rwanda, and in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars. The United States government also carries out targeted killings, such as the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, Targeted killings have also been used by narcotics traffickers. Use of targeted killings by Israeli conventional military forces became commonplace after the Second Intifada, though initially opposed by the Bush Administration, targeted killings have become a frequent tactic of the United States government in the War on Terror. Under the Obama administration use of targeted killings has expanded, most frequently through use of combat drones operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen, the legality of targeted killing is disputed. They argue that drones are more humane and more accurate than manned vehicles, the report relied upon figures provided by the Roman Catholic Church and included allegations of torture and summary executions. Americas Watch and other groups reported targeted killing of civilians by the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the following year during its campaign against the Contras. Politically motivated targeted killings of trade unionists and activists were also recorded in Costa Rica Haiti, referring to killings by drug cartels in Washington, D. C. mayor Marion Barry infamously stated, Washington should not be called the murder capital of the world. We are the capital of the world. Barry went on to explain that targeted killings by D. C. s cartels were comparable to those during the days of Al Capone, similarly, drug-related mob hits in Moscow were euphemistically described as targeted killings by the Cox News Service and Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the 1990s. During fighting in the Somali Civil War, Sean Devereux described torture and killing by warlords in Kismayo as targeted killings, also in Africa, Reuters described targeted killings of political opponents by Hutu army and militias in Rwanda during the Rwandan Genocide. The American State Department reported the politically targeted killings were a prelude to general massacres in Rwanda, chechen sources said that the letter was coated with a fast-acting nerve agent, possibly sarin or a derivative. Yandarbiyev was seriously wounded and died in hospital and his 13-year-old son Daud was seriously injured. The day after the attack, Qatari authorities arrested three Russians in a Russian embassy villa, there were some speculations that Fetisov had been released in exchange for Qatari wrestlers detained in Moscow. On 30 June 2004, both Russians were sentenced to imprisonment, passing the sentence, the judge stated that they had acted on orders from the Russian leadership. But on 23 December 2004, Qatar agreed to extradite the prisoners to Russia, the agents however received a heroes welcome on returning to Moscow in January 2005 but disappeared from public view shortly afterwards
13.
Hellfire missiles
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It was originally developed under the name Heliborne, Laser, Fire and Forget Missile, which led to the colloquial name Hellfire ultimately becoming the missiles formal name. It has multi-mission, multi-target precision-strike ability, and can be launched from air, sea. The Hellfire missile is the primary 100-pound class air-to-ground precision weapon for the forces of the United States. The Hellfire can be deployed from rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft, waterborne vessels, most variants are laser guided with one, AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire, being radar guided. The development of the Hellfire Missile System began in 1974 with the U. S. Army requirement for a tank-buster, production of the AGM-114A started in 1982. The Hellfire II, developed in the early 1990s is a missile system with several variants. Predator, Reaper and AH665 Tiger, UCAVs carry the Hellfire II, but the most common platform is the AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship, which can carry up to 16 of the missiles at once. It also works in adverse weather and battlefield obscurants, such as smoke, each Hellfire weighs 47 kilograms, including the 9 kilograms warhead, and has a range of 8,000 metres. The AGM-114R Romeo Hellfire II entered service in late 2012 and it uses a semi-active laser homing guidance system and an integrated blast fragmentation sleeve warhead to engage targets that previously needed multiple Hellfire variants. It will replace AGM-114K, M, N, and P variants in U. S. service, in October 2012, the U. S. ordered 24,000 Hellfire II missiles, for both the U. S. armed forces and foreign customers. The Joint Common Missile was to replace Hellfire II by around 2011, the JCM was developed with a tri-mode seeker and a multi-purpose warhead that would combine the capabilities of the several Hellfire variants. In the budget for FY2006, the U. S. Department of Defense canceled a number of projects that they no longer warranted continuation based on their cost effectiveness. A possible new JCM successor called the Joint Air to Ground Missile is under consideration, the only known operational air-to-air kill with a Hellfire took place on 24 May 2001. A civilian Cessna 152 aircraft entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon, with unknown intentions, an Israeli Air Force AH-64A helicopter fired upon the Cessna, resulting in its complete disintegration. In 2008, the usage of the AGM-114N variant caused controversy in the United Kingdom when it was reported that these thermobaric munitions were added to the British Army arsenal, thermobaric weapons have been condemned by human rights groups. The UK Ministry of Defence refers to the AGM-114N as an enhanced blast weapon, in January 2016 the Wall Street Journal reported that one training missile without a warhead was accidentally shipped to Cuba in 2014 after a training mission in Europe. The dummy missile was later returned, a US official said that this was an inert dummy version of the Lockheed system, known as a Captive Air Training Missile. It is stripped of its warhead, fuse, guidance equipment, AGM-114A Basic Hellfire Target, Tanks, armored vehicles
14.
Boeing AH-64 Apache
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The Boeing AH-64 Apache is an American four-blade, twin-turboshaft attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement and a tandem cockpit for a two-man crew. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vision systems and it is armed with a 30 mm M230 chain gun carried between the main landing gear, under the aircrafts forward fuselage. It has four hardpoints mounted on stub-wing pylons, typically carrying a mixture of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, the AH-64 has a large amount of systems redundancy to improve combat survivability. The Apache originally started as the Model 77 developed by Hughes Helicopters for the United States Armys Advanced Attack Helicopter program to replace the AH-1 Cobra, the prototype YAH-64 was first flown on 30 September 1975. The U. S. Army selected the YAH-64 over the Bell YAH-63 in 1976, after purchasing Hughes Helicopters in 1984, McDonnell Douglas continued AH-64 production and development. The helicopter was introduced to U. S. Army service in April 1986, the first production AH-64D Apache Longbow, an upgraded Apache variant, was delivered to the Army in March 1997. Production has been continued by Boeing Defense, Space & Security, American AH-64s have served in conflicts in Panama, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Israel used the Apache in its conflicts in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, British and Dutch Apaches have seen deployments in wars in Afghanistan. Following the cancellation of the AH-56 Cheyenne in 1972, in favor of projects like the U. S, the Army wanted an aircraft better than the AH-1 Cobra in firepower, performance and range. It would have the maneuverability for terrain following nap-of-the-earth flying, to this end, the U. S. Army issued a Request For Proposals for an Advanced Attack Helicopter on 15 November 1972. As a sign of the importance of project, in September 1973 the Army designated its five most important projects as the Big Five. Proposals were submitted by Bell, Boeing Vertol/Grumman team, Hughes, Lockheed, in July 1973, the U. S. Department of Defense selected finalists Bell and Hughes Aircrafts Toolco Aircraft Division. This began the phase 1 of the competition, each company built prototype helicopters and went through a flight test program. Hughes Model 77/YAH-64A prototype first flew on 30 September 1975, while Bells Model 409/YAH-63A prototype first flew on 1 October 1975, after evaluating the test results, the Army selected Hughes YAH-64A over Bells YAH-63A in 1976. Reasons for selecting the YAH-64A included its more damage tolerant four-blade main rotor, weapons and sensor systems were integrated and tested during this time, including the laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missile. In 1981, three pre-production AH-64As were handed over to the U. S. Army for Operational Test II, the Army testing was successful, but afterward it was decided to upgrade to the more powerful T700-GE-701 version of engine, rated at 1,690 shp. The AH-64 was named the Apache in late 1981, keeping with the Armys traditional use of American Indian tribal names for its helicopters, in 1983, the first production helicopter was rolled out at Hughes Helicopters facility at Mesa, Arizona. Hughes Helicopters was purchased by McDonnell Douglas for $470 million in 1984, the helicopter unit later became part of The Boeing Company with the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in August 1997
15.
Jaffa, Israel
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Jaffa or Yafo, is the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the stories of Jonah, Solomon and Saint Peter as well as the mythological story of Andromeda. The town was mentioned in Egyptian sources and the Amarna letters as Yapu, mythology says that it is named for Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, the one who built it after the Flood. The Hellenist tradition links the name to Iopeia, or Cassiopeia, an outcropping of rocks near the harbor is reputed to have been the place where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus. Pliny the Elder associated the name with Iopa, daughter of Aeolus, the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi referred to it as Yaffa. The tell of Jaffa rises to a height of 40 metres, with a view of the coastline. The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries made the even higher. Archaeological evidence shows that Jaffa was inhabited roughly 7500 BCE, the natural harbour of Jaffa has been in use since the Bronze Age. The city is mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho. The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BCE, Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the modern term Gush Dan for the center of the coastal plain. The tribe of Dan did not manage to dislocate the Philistines from Jaffa, in the Song of Deborah the prophetess asks, דן למה יגור אוניות, Why doth Dan dwell in ships. After Canaanite and Philistine dominion, King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa, the city remained in Israelite hands even after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, after a period of Babylonian occupation, under Persian rule, Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre. Alexander the Greats troops were stationed in Jaffa and it later became a port of the Seleucid Empire until it was taken over by the Maccabees and ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus, the Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, the New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles,9, 36–42, takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη. Peter retells the story of his vision in Acts 11, 4-17, in Midrash Tannaim in its chapter Deuteronomy 33,19, reference is made to Jose ben Halafta traveling through Jaffa. Jaffa seems to have attracted serious Jewish scholars in the 4th and 5th century, the Jerusalem Talmud in Moed Ketan references Rav Acha of Jaffa, and in Pesachim chapter 1 refers to Rav Phineas of Jaffa
16.
Khan Yunis
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Khan Yunis is a city in the southern Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Khan Yunis had a population of 142,637 in 2007 and 202,000 in 2010 and 350,000 in 2012, the Constituency of Khan Yunis had five members on the Palestinian Legislative Council. Following the Palestinian legislative election,2006, there were three Hamas members, including Yunis al-Astal, and two Fatah members, including Mohammed Dahlan, the city is now under the Hamas administration of Gaza. Before the 14th century, Khan Yunis was a known as Salqah. To protect caravans, pilgrims and travelers a vast khan was constructed there by the emir Yunus al-Nûrûzi in 1387-88, the khan and the growing town surrounding it were named Khan Yunis after him. In 1389 Yunus was killed in battle, Yunus ibn Abdallah an-Nuzuri ad-Dawadar was the executive secretary, one of the high-ranking officials of the Mamluk sultan Barquq. The town became an important center for trade and its weekly Thursday market drew traders from neighboring regions, the khan served as resting stop for couriers of the barid, the Mamluk postal network in Palestine and Syria. In late 1516 Khan Yunis was the site of a battle in which the Egypt-based Mamluks were defeated by Ottoman forces under the leadership of Sinan Pasha. The Ottoman sultan Selim I then arrived in the area where he led the Ottoman army across the Sinai Peninsula to conquer Egypt, during the 17th and 18th centuries the Ottomans assigned an Azeban garrison associated with the Cairo Citadel to guard the fortress at Khan Yunis. Pierre Jacotin named the village Kan Jounes on his map from 1799, in 1863 French explorer Victor Guérin visited Khan Yunis. He found it had about a thousand inhabitants, and that many fruit trees, at the end of the 19th-century the Ottomans established a municipal council to administer the affairs of Khan Yunis, which had become the second largest town in the Gaza District after Gaza itself. In 1945 Khan Yunis had a population of 11,220,11,180 Muslims and 40 Christians, with 2,302 and 53,820 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this,4,172 dunams were plantations and irrigable land,23,656 used for cereals, during the night of 31 August 1955, three Israeli paratroop companies attacked the British-built Tegart fort in Khan Yunis from where attacks had been carried out against Israelis. The police station, a station and several buildings in the village of Abasan were destroyed, as well as railway tracks. In heavy fighting,72 Egyptian soldiers were killed, one Israeli soldier was killed and 17 were wounded. The operation led to a ceasefire on September 4, forcing President Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the mechanized companies was commanded by Rafael Eitan. Before the Suez War, Khan Yunis was officially administered by the All-Palestine Government, seated in Gaza, after a fierce firefight, the Sherman tanks of the IDF 37th Armored Brigade broke through the heavily fortified lines outside of Khan Yunis held by the 86th Palestinian Brigade. It was the site in the Gaza strip where the Egyptian army put up any resistance to the Israeli invasion of Gaza
17.
Joe Sacco
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Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, on Israeli–Palestinian relations, Sacco was born in Malta on October 2,1960. His father Leonard was an engineer and his mother Carmen was a teacher, at the age of one, he moved with his family to Melbourne, Australia, where he spent his childhood until 1972, when they moved to Los Angeles. He began his career working on the Sunset High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon. While journalism was his focus, this was also the period of time in which he developed his penchant for humor. He graduated from Sunset High in 1978, Sacco earned his BA in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1981 in three years. He began working for a local publisher writing guidebooks, returning to his fondness for comics, he wrote a Maltese romance comic named Imħabba Vera, one of the first art-comics in the Maltese language. Because Malta has no history of comics, comics werent considered something for kids, in one case, for example, the girl got pregnant and she went to Holland for an abortion. Malta is a Catholic country where, at the time, not even divorce was allowed and it was unusual, but its not like anyone raised a stink about it, because they had no way of judging whether this was appropriate material for comics or not. Eventually returning to the United States, by 1985 Sacco had founded a satirical, alternative comics magazine called Portland Permanent Press in Portland, when the magazine folded fifteen months later, he took a job at The Comics Journal as the staff news writer. This job provided the opportunity for him to create and edit another satire, but Sacco was more interested in travelling. In 1988, he left the U. S. again to travel across Europe, the trip led him towards the ongoing Gulf War, and in 1991 he found himself nearby to research the work he would eventually publish as Palestine. The Gulf War segment of Yahoo drew Sacco into a study of Middle Eastern politics, and he traveled to Israel, Palestine was a collection of short and long pieces, some depicting Saccos travels and encounters with Palestinians, and some dramatizing the stories he was told. It was serialized as a book from 1993 to 1995 and then published in several collections. Safe Area Goražde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001 and he has also contributed short pieces of graphic reportage to a variety of magazines, on subjects ranging from war crimes to blues, and was a frequent illustrator of Harvey Pekars American Splendor. In 2005 he wrote and drew two eight-page comics depicting events in Iraq published in The Guardian and he also contributed a 16-page piece in April 2007s issue of Harpers Magazine, entitled Down. Youre in the Iraqi Army Now, in 2009, his Footnotes in Gaza was published, which investigates two forgotten massacres that took place in Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956. In June 2012, a book on poverty in the United States, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Sacco currently lives in Portland, Oregon
18.
Pediatrics
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Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents, and the age limit usually ranges from birth up to 18-21 years of age. A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, the word pediatrics and its cognates mean healer of children, they derive from two Greek words, παῖς and ἰατρός. Pediatricians work both in hospitals, particularly working in its specialized subfields such as neonatology, and as primary care physicians. Pediatrics is known as a new modern medicine in the society today, hippocrates, Aristotle, Celsus, Soranus, and Galen, understood the differences in growing and maturing organisms that necessitated different treatment, Ex toto non sic pueri ut viri curari debent. Some of the oldest traces of pediatrics can be discovered in Ancient India where childrens doctors were called kumara bhrtya, sushruta Samhita an ayurvedic text, composed during the sixth century BC contains the text about pediatrics. Another ayurvedic text from this period is Kashyapa Samhita, a second century AD manuscript by the Greek physician and gynecologist Soranus of Ephesus dealt with neonatal pediatrics. Byzantine physicians Oribasius, Aëtius of Amida, Alexander Trallianus, islamic writers served as a bridge for Greco-Roman and Byzantine medicine and added ideas of their own, especially Haly Abbas, Serapion, Avicenna, and Averroes. The Persian scholar and doctor al-Razi published a treatise on diseases among children. The first book about pediatrics was Libellus de aegritudinibus et remediis infantium 1472 and he was born in Germany, where he received his medical training, but later practiced in New York City. The first generally accepted pediatric hospital is the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, in 1852 Britains first pediatric hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Streets. The first Childrens hospital in Scotland opened in 1860 in Edinburgh, in the US, the first similar institutions were the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, which opened in 1855, and then Boston Childrens Hospital. The body size differences are paralleled by maturation changes, the smaller body of an infant or neonate is substantially different physiologically from that of an adult. Congenital defects, genetic variance, and developmental issues are of concern to pediatricians than they often are to adult physicians. A common adage is that children are not simply little adults, the clinician must take into account the immature physiology of the infant or child when considering symptoms, prescribing medications, and diagnosing illnesses. A major difference between the practice of pediatric and adult medicine is that children, in most jurisdictions and with certain exceptions, the issues of guardianship, privacy, legal responsibility and informed consent must always be considered in every pediatric procedure. Pediatricians often have to treat the parents and sometimes, the family, adolescents are in their own legal class, having rights to their own health care decisions in certain circumstances. The training of pediatricians varies considerably across the world, depending on jurisdiction and university, a medical degree course may be either undergraduate-entry or graduate-entry. The former commonly takes five or six years, and has been usual in the Commonwealth, entrants to graduate-entry courses, usually lasting four or five years, have previously completed a three- or four-year university degree, commonly but by no means always in sciences
19.
Genetics
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Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in living organisms. It is generally considered a field of biology, but intersects frequently with other life sciences and is strongly linked with the study of information systems. The father of genetics is Gregor Mendel, a late 19th-century scientist, Mendel studied trait inheritance, patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring. He observed that organisms inherit traits by way of discrete units of inheritance and this term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the cell, the organism, genetics has given rise to a number of subfields, including epigenetics and population genetics. Organisms studied within the broad field span the domain of life, including bacteria, plants, animals, genetic processes work in combination with an organisms environment and experiences to influence development and behavior, often referred to as nature versus nurture. The intracellular or extracellular environment of a cell or organism may switch gene transcription on or off, a classic example is two seeds of genetically identical corn, one placed in a temperate climate and one in an arid climate. The word genetics stems from the ancient Greek γενετικός genetikos meaning genitive/generative, the observation that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The modern science of genetics, seeking to understand this process, prior to Mendel, Imre Festetics, a Hungarian noble, who lived in Kőszeg before Mendel, was the first who used the word genetics. He described several rules of inheritance in his work The genetic law of the Nature. His second law is the same as what Mendel published, in his third law, he developed the basic principles of mutation. Other theories of inheritance preceded his work, a popular theory during Mendels time was the concept of blending inheritance, the idea that individuals inherit a smooth blend of traits from their parents. Mendels work provided examples where traits were not blended after hybridization. Blending of traits in the progeny is now explained by the action of genes with quantitative effects. Another theory that had some support at that time was the inheritance of acquired characteristics, other theories included the pangenesis of Charles Darwin and Francis Galtons reformulation of pangenesis as both particulate and inherited. Modern genetics started with Gregor Johann Mendel, a scientist and Augustinian friar who studied the nature of inheritance in plants, the importance of Mendels work did not gain wide understanding until the 1890s, after his death, when other scientists working on similar problems re-discovered his research. William Bateson, a proponent of Mendels work, coined the word genetics in 1905, Bateson popularized the usage of the word genetics to describe the study of inheritance in his inaugural address to the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906. After the rediscovery of Mendels work, scientists tried to determine which molecules in the cell were responsible for inheritance, in 1911, Thomas Hunt Morgan argued that genes are on chromosomes, based on observations of a sex-linked white eye mutation in fruit flies
20.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
21.
Physician
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Both the role of the physician and the meaning of the word itself vary around the world. Degrees and other qualifications vary widely, but there are common elements, such as medical ethics requiring that physicians show consideration, compassion. Around the world the term refers to a specialist in internal medicine or one of its many sub-specialties. This meaning of physician conveys a sense of expertise in treatment by drugs or medications and this term is at least nine hundred years old in English, physicians and surgeons were once members of separate professions, and traditionally were rivals. Henry VIII granted a charter to the London Royal College of Physicians in 1518 and it was not until 1540 that he granted the Company of Barber/Surgeons its separate charter. In the same year, the English monarch established the Regius Professorship of Physic at the University of Cambridge, newer universities would probably describe such an academic as a professor of internal medicine. Hence, in the 16th century, physic meant roughly what internal medicine does now, currently, a specialist physician in the United States may be described as an internist. Another term, hospitalist, was introduced in 1996, to describe US specialists in internal medicine who work largely or exclusively in hospitals, such hospitalists now make up about 19% of all US general internists, who are often called general physicians in Commonwealth countries. In such places, the more general English terms doctor or medical practitioner are prevalent, in Commonwealth countries, specialist pediatricians and geriatricians are also described as specialist physicians who have sub-specialized by age of patient rather than by organ system. Around the world, the term physician and surgeon is used to describe either a general practitioner or any medical practitioner irrespective of specialty. This usage still shows the meaning of physician and preserves the old difference between a physician, as a practitioner of physic, and a surgeon. The term may be used by state medical boards in the United States of America, in modern English, the term physician is used in two main ways, with relatively broad and narrow meanings respectively. This is the result of history and is often confusing and these meanings and variations are explained below. In the United States and Canada, the term physician describes all medical practitioners holding a professional medical degree, the American Medical Association, established in 1847, as well as the American Osteopathic Association, founded in 1897, both currently use the term physician to describe members. However, the American College of Physicians, established in 1915, does not, its title uses physician in its original sense. A physician trained in the United States has either a Doctor of Medicine degree, all boards of certification now require that physicians demonstrate, by examination, continuing mastery of the core knowledge and skills for a chosen specialty. Recertification varies by particular specialty between every seven and every ten years, graduates of osteopathic medical schools in the United States should not be confused with osteopaths, who are trained in the European and Commonwealth nations. Their training is similar to physical therapy and they are not licensed to prescribe medications or perform surgeries, also in the United States, the American Podiatric Medical Association defines podiatrists as physicians and surgeons that fall under the department of surgery in hospitals
22.
Muslim Brotherhood
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The Society of the Muslim Brothers, shortened to the Muslim Brotherhood, is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. The Brotherhoods stated goal is to instill the Quran and the Sunnah as the reference point for. Ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community, as a Pan-Islamic, religious, and social movement, it preached Islam, taught the illiterate, and set up hospitals and business enterprises. The Arab Spring brought it legalization and substantial power at first. The Brotherhood itself claims it is a peaceful, democratic organization, according to a spokesman, the Muslim Brotherhood believe in reform, democracy, freedom of assembly, press, etc. We believe that the reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the rotation of power. Its founder, Hassan Al-Banna, was influenced by Islamic modernist reformers Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, with the group structure and it downplayed doctrinal differences between schools emphasizing the political importance of worldwide unity of the Muslim Nation. Al-Banna believed the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life, Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Brotherhood preaches that Islam will bring justice, the eradication of poverty, corruption and sinful behavior. On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively, there have been breakaway groups from the movement, including the Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya and Al Takfir Wal Hijra. Prominent figures of the Brotherhood include Sayyid Qutb, an influential and anti-Semitic thinker of Islamic supremacism. Osama bin Laden criticized the Brotherhood, and accused it of betraying jihad, the Brotherhoods most frequently used slogan is Islam is the Solution. Another well known slogan is God is our objective, dying in the way of God is our highest hope. On the Brotherhoods green logo is emblazoned وَأَعِدُّواْ - taken from sūrat l-anfāl, according to academic Khalil Yusuf its motto was traditionally Believers are but Brothers. The Muslim Brotherhood position on political participation varied according to the situation of each branch. For many years its stance was collaborationist in Kuwait and Jordan, for pacific opposition in Egypt, armed opposition in Libya, (A book on the document was published under the name, La conquête de lOccident, Le projet secret des Islamistes by Sylvain Besson. These parties are staffed by Brotherhood members but they are independent from the Muslim Brotherhood to some degree
23.
Parasitology
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Parasitology is the study of parasites, their hosts, and the relationship between them. As a biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question, much research in parasitology falls somewhere between two or more of these definitions. In general, the study of prokaryotes falls under the field of bacteriology rather than parasitology and it is also concerned with the various methods of their diagnosis, treatment and finally their prevention & control. A parasite is an organism that live on or within another organism called the host and these include organisms such as, Plasmodium spp. the protozoan parasite which causes malaria. The four species of malaria parasites infective to humans are Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae, leishmania donovani, the unicellular organism which causes leishmaniasis Entamoeba and Giardia, which cause intestinal infections Multicellular organisms and intestinal worms such as Schistosoma spp. Wuchereria bancrofti, Necator americanus and Taenia spp, ectoparasites such as ticks, scabies and lice Medical parasitology can involve drug development, epidemiological studies and study of zoonoses. The study of parasites that cause losses in agriculture or aquaculture operations. Examples of species studied are, Lucilia sericata, a blowfly, the maggots hatch and burrow into the flesh, distressing the animal and causing economic loss to the farmer Otodectes cynotis, the cat ear mite, responsible for Canker. Gyrodactylus salaris, a parasite of salmon, which can wipe out populations which are not resistant. This is the study of structures of proteins from parasites, determination of parasitic protein structures may help to better understand how these proteins function differently from homologous proteins in humans. In addition, protein structures may inform the process of drug discovery, parasites exhibit an aggregated distribution among host individuals, thus the majority of parasites live in the minority of hosts. This feature forces parasitologists to use advanced biostatistical methodologies, parasites can provide information about host population ecology. In fisheries biology, for example, parasite communities can be used to distinguish distinct populations of the fish species co-inhabiting a region. Additionally, parasites possess a variety of specialized traits and life-history strategies that enable them to colonize hosts, understanding these aspects of parasite ecology, of interest in their own right, can illuminate parasite-avoidance strategies employed by hosts. Conservation biology is concerned with the protection and preservation of vulnerable species, the huge diversity between parasitic organisms creates a challenge for biologists who wish to describe and catalogue them. Parasitism Parasitologists Loker, E. & Hofkin, B
24.
Islamic University of Gaza
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The university, now located in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has ten faculties capable of awarding B. A. B. Sc. M. A. and M. Sc. diplomas and higher diplomas, as of August 2014, due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Israeli forces have destroyed the Islamic University of Gaza by firing multiple missiles into the building. People were reported to be inside the university campus during the attack, a large part of the university has been destroyed. No casualties were reported in the strike, programme donor institutions include, Arab Student Aid International, United Palestinian Appeal, Islamic Relief, British Council, World Bank, Islamic Development Bank and Human Appeal International. According to the release, the attack destroyed the Science and Engineering buildings. The university called upon academics, local, regional and international higher educational, a number of international academic institutions have proceeded to express their commitment to support IUG as well as other universities in Gaza. The Islamic University has close links with Hamas and it was co-founded by one of the future founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 1978, and many Hamas members have taught within the university. A2007 article about USAID funding of organisations having links to terrorism cites American, Palestinian, there are also clear contemporary links. For example, the new and reshuffled ministers in the Gaza cabinet announced by Hamas in March 2011 hold faculty positions at the university, nevertheless, some Palestinian academics have denied that the university is in any respect a Hamas institution. Just as Palestinians in Gaza belong to a variety of parties, IUGs students, board, faculty. IUG is a university like any other in Palestine that reflects the diversity of its population, roy also writes, logic maintains, institutional clients become automatically linked to Hamas and constitute a base of support for political Islam. As a result, Islamic social institutions become recruiting centers for the Hamass military wing, there is however, little hard evidence to support any of these allegations. These photos were taken prior to the beginning in 2007
25.
Ahmad Yassin
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Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin was a Palestinian imam and politician. He was a founder of Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian paramilitary organization, Yassin also served as the spiritual leader of the organization. Yassin, a quadriplegic who was blind, had used a wheelchair since a sporting accident at the age of 12. He was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from early morning prayers. His killing, in an attack claimed the lives of both his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was widely condemned and many observers suggested that the act would negatively impact the peace process. Two hundred thousand Palestinians attended his funeral procession, Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura, a small village near the city of Ashkelon, in the British Mandate of Palestine. His date of birth is not known for certain, according to his Palestinian passport, he was born on 1 January 1929 and his father, Abdullah Yassin, died when he was three years old. Afterward, he known in his neighborhood as Ahmad Saada after his mother Saada al-Habeel. This was to him from the children of his fathers other three wives. Together, Yassin had four brothers and two sisters and he and his entire family fled to Gaza, settling in al-Shati Camp after his village was captured by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee, when he was 12, he sustained a severe spinal injury while wrestling his friend Abdullah al-Khatib. His neck was kept in plaster for 45 days, the damage to his spinal cord rendered him a quadraplegic for the rest of his life. Fearing a rift between his family and al-Khatibs, Yassin initially told his family that he sustained his injuries while playing leapfrog during a lesson with his school friends on the beach. Although Yassin applied and attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he was unable to pursue his studies due to his deteriorating health. He was forced to be educated at home where he read widely, particularly on matters and on religion, politics, sociology. His followers believe that his worldly knowledge made him one of the best speakers in the Gaza Strip, during this time, he began delivering weekly sermons after Friday prayers, drawing large crowds of people. After years of unemployment, he got a post as an Arabic language teacher at a school in Rimal. Headmaster Mohammad al-Shawa initially had reservations about Yassin, concerning the reception he would receive from the due to his disability
26.
Salah Shehade
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Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade صلاح شحادة was a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. He led the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing of Hamas, born in Gaza and a member of Hamas since the formation of the group in 1987, he quickly became one of its most influential leaders and was arrested a few times by Israel or the Palestinian Authority. After Yahya Ayashs death, in 1996, Shehade became a top leader in the group, along with Mohammed Deif, during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Israel accused Shehade of masterminding several attacks against both Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Gaza strip and in Israel proper. He was given a prison sentence but released 14 May 2000. It was reported that Shehade was involved in the production of Qassam rockets, fired against Israeli civilian targets, as a leader of the Hamas military wing he oversaw Hamas field commanders in Gaza and the West Bank and defined the policy of terror attacks by Hamas. On 22 July 2002, the Israeli Defense Forces targeted the house in which Shahade was hiding using a bomb dropped by a F-16 plane in a neighborhood of Gaza City. Fifteen people were killed, including Shehade, his wife and daughter, between 50 and 150 were injured as a result of the attack. Both Shehades and Matars houses were destroyed by the bomb, as were eight others in the vicinity, nine houses were partially destroyed, and 20 other houses moderately damaged. 27 reserve pilots, among them Iftach Spector, signed a letter refusing to fly assassination sorties over Gaza. The attack received widespread condemnation from other Middle Eastern nations, Western Europe, ariel Sharon initially praised it as one of our greatest successes, but later told Yediot Ahronot that ad I known the outcome, I would have postponed the assassination. The Gush Shalom movement also threatened to turn the pilot over to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Israeli Air Force Chief Dan Halutz, who was abroad during the bombing itself but was still accountable as IAF commander, gave an interview to Haaretz, to his pilots he said, Guys. you can sleep well at night. I also sleep well by the way and you arent the ones who choose the targets, and you were not the ones who chose the target in this particular case. You are not responsible for the contents of the target, and I repeat again, There is no problem here that concerns you. You did exactly what you were instructed to do and you did not deviate from that by so much as a millimeter to the right or to the left. And anyone who has a problem with that is invited to see me, when the reporter asked about the feelings of a pilot when he drops a bomb, Halutz answered, No. That is not a question and it is not asked. But if you want to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you
27.
Takbir
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The Takbīr, also transliterated Tekbir or Takbeer, is the Arabic phrase Allāhu akbar, usually translated as God is greatest. The form Allāhu is the nominative of Allah, meaning God, in the context of Islam, it is the proper name of God. The form akbar is the elative of the adjective kabīr, meaning great, as used in the Takbīr it is usually translated as greatest, but some authors prefer greater. The phrase is often transliterated less accurately as Allah akbar, the term Takbīr itself is the stem II verbal noun of the triliteral root k-b-r, meaning great, from which Akbar greater is derived. The phrase is known in the West for its common use as a battle cry in Islamic extremism. This phrase is recited by Muslims in many different situations, the phrase is not found in the Quran, which does not refer to God as Akbar, but uses the name Al-Kabir or Kabir, commonly translated as Most Great. The phrase is said during each stage of both obligatory prayers, and supererogatory prayers, the Muslim call to prayer by the muezzin and to commence prayer also contains the phrase. This phrase is used in times of distress. Just before a Garuda Airbus A300B-4 crashed into the jungle near Medan, Indonesia and it was suspected that the crash may have been due to either disorientation or engine failure caused by local dense smog resulting from forest fires. As a multi-purpose phrase, it is used by Arab football commentators as an expression of amazement. The phrase is used after the birth of a child as a means of praising God, in the hadith, Muhammad is reported to have spoken the Takbīr after a funeral. During the festival of Eid al-Adha and the days preceding it and this is particularly the case on the Day of Arafa. The phrase is known in the West for its common use as a battle cry in Islamist protests, Islamic extremism. It included a checklist of final reminders for the 9/11 hijackers, an excerpt reads, When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, Allahu Akbar, because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers. and giving out boxes of halva, imam Samudra, who was sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, chanted the phrase upon hearing his sentence. In the video of Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq in 2004, in 2008, Aafia Siddiqui is alleged to have fired at US interrogators while yelling Allah Akbar. During the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, witnesses reported that gunman Nidal Malik Hasan shouted Allahu Akbar before opening fire, killing 13 people, times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad smiled and said Allahu Akbar after receiving a life sentence in 2010 for his attempted bombing. During the incident aboard American Airlines Flight 1561 in 2011, the person attempting to bash his way into the cockpit was heard shouting Allahu Akbar, mohammed Merah recorded himself shouting Allahu Akbar as he killed three French paratroopers in the 2012 Midi-Pyrénées shootings
28.
First Intifada
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The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, the uprising began on 9 December, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli Defense Forces truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, in the first 13 months,332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, it adopted a policy of might, power. The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets, in the intifadas first year, Israeli security forces killed 311 Palestinians, of which 53 were under the age of 17. Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings, over six years the IDF killed an estimated 1, 162–1,204 Palestinians. Between 23, 600-29,900 Palestinian children required medical treatment from IDF beatings in the first 2 years. Among Israelis,100 civilians and 60 IDF personnel were killed often by militants outside the control of the Intifadas UNLU, intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators. At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, the ensuing Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005. Israel opened its labor market to Palestinians in the occupied territories. Palestinians were recruited mainly to do unskilled or semi-skilled labor jobs Israelis did not want, by the time of the Intifada, over 40 percent of the Palestinian work force worked in Israel daily. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work, the Israeli Labor Partys Yitzhak Rabin, the then Defense Minister, added deportations in August 1985 to Israels Iron Fist policy of cracking down on Palestinian nationalism. Referring to the developments, Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Yaacobi, a policy of deportation was introduced to intimidate activists in January 1987. Violence simmered as a schoolboy from Khan Yunis was shot dead by Israelis soldiers pursuing him in a Jeep. Over the summer the IDFs Lieutenant Ron Tal, who was responsible for guarding detainees at Ansar 11, was dead at point-blank range while stuck in a Gaza traffic jam. A curfew forbidding Gaza residents from leaving their homes was imposed for three days, during the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha. In two incidents on 1 and 6 October 1987, respectively, the IDF ambushed and killed seven Gaza men, reportedly affiliated with Islamic Jihad, who had escaped from prison in May. Some days later, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Intisar al-Attar, was shot in the back while in her schoolyard in Deir al-Balah by a settler in the Gaza Strip
29.
Palestine Liberation Organization
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The Palestine Liberation Organization is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians. The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991, at its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964, concluding this meeting the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated goal was the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, the ideology of the PLO was formulated in the founding year 1964 in the Palestinian National Covenant. The document is a combative anti-Zionist statement dedicated to the restoration of the Palestinian homeland and it has no reference to religion. In 1968, the Charter was replaced by a revised version. Until 1993, the only promoted option was armed struggle, from the signing of the Oslo Accords, negotiation and diplomacy became the only official policy. In April 1996, a number of articles, which were inconsistent with the Oslo Accords, were wholly or partially nullified. They demanded that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homes and this article was adapted in 1996 to meet the Oslo Accords. Article 20 states, ″The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality, nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own, they are citizens of the states to which they belong″. This article was nullified in 1996, the PLO has always labelled the Palestinian people as Arabs. This was a consequence of the fact that the PLO was an offshoot of the Arab League. It also has an element, as to keep the backing of Arab states. Over the years, the Arab identity remained the stated nature of the Palestinian State and it is a reference to the ″Arab State″ envisioned in the UN Partition Plan. The PLO and its dominating faction Fatah are often contrasted to more religious orientated factions like Hamas, all, however, represent a predominant Muslim population. Practically the whole population of the Territories is Muslim, most of them Sunni, the National Charter has no reference to religion. The draft Constitution, which never materialized, contains the same provisions, at the time, the PLC did not include a single Hamas member
30.
Lebanon
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Lebanon, officially known as the Lebanese Republic, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, Lebanons location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. At just 10,452 km2, it is the smallest recognized country on the entire mainland Asian continent, the earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than seven thousand years, predating recorded history. Lebanon was the home of the Canaanites/Phoenicians and their kingdoms, a culture that flourished for over a thousand years. In 64 BC, the region came under the rule of the Roman Empire, in the Mount Lebanon range a monastic tradition known as the Maronite Church was established. As the Arab Muslims conquered the region, the Maronites held onto their religion, however, a new religious group, the Druze, established themselves in Mount Lebanon as well, generating a religious divide that has lasted for centuries. During the Crusades, the Maronites re-established contact with the Roman Catholic Church, the ties they established with the Latins have influenced the region into the modern era. The region eventually was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918, following the collapse of the empire after World War I, the five provinces that constitute modern Lebanon came under the French Mandate of Lebanon. The French expanded the borders of the Mount Lebanon Governorate, which was populated by Maronites and Druze. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, establishing confessionalism, a unique, foreign troops withdrew completely from Lebanon on 31 December 1946. Lebanon has been a member of the Organisation internationale de la francophonie since 1973, despite its small size, the country has developed a well-known culture and has been highly influential in the Arab world. Before the Lebanese Civil War, the experienced a period of relative calm and renowned prosperity, driven by tourism, agriculture, commerce. At the end of the war, there were efforts to revive the economy. In spite of troubles, Lebanon has the highest Human Development Index and GDP per capita in the Arab world. The name of Mount Lebanon originates from the Phoenician root lbn meaning white, occurrences of the name have been found in different Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of Ebla, and three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The name is recorded in Ancient Egyptian as Rmnn, where R stood for Canaanite L, the name occurs nearly 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, as לְבָנוֹן. The borders of contemporary Lebanon are a product of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 and its territory was the core of the Bronze Age Phoenician city-states. After the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Levant, it was part of the Rashidun, Umyayad, Abbasid Seljuk, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Greater Lebanon fell under French mandate in 1920, and gained independence under president Bechara El Khoury in 1943
31.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
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PIJ has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. Iran is a financial supporter of the PIJ. Following the Israeli and Egyptian squeeze on Hamas in early 2014 and its financial backing is believed to also come from Syria. The Islamic Jihad Movement has sent its gratitude to the brothers in Hezbollah, particularly Hassan Nasrallah, for their stance and support, be it financial, military or moral support. The armed wing of PIJ is Al-Quds Brigades, formed in 1981 and its operations have included suicide bombings, attacks on Israeli civilians, as well as the firing of rockets into Israel. PIJ has much in common with Hamas, with fighting against the existence of the State of Israel. Both groups were formed as offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and receive an amount of funding from Iran. With similar goals, Hamas and PIJ have worked together on a number of projects, based in Egypt, Shaqaqi and Awda were originally members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their views on the destruction of Israel, however, led them in 1979 to establish Islamic Jihad-Shaqaqi Faction, the Shaqaqi Faction was expelled from Egypt in 1981 following the assassination of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Shaqaqi and Awda returned to Gaza where they formally established PIJ, the aim of the organization was the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state within the geographic borders of pre-1948 Mandatory Palestine. Completely rejecting the process, the organization professes that its goals can only be achieved through military means. PIJ began its operations against Israel in 1984. In 1988, its leaders were exiled by Israel to Lebanon, while in Lebanon, the group received training, support and other backing from Hezbollah and its backers in Iran, and developed a close relationship with the organization. In 1990, the headquarters of PIJ moved to the Syrian capital, Damascus, where it continues to be based, with offices in Beirut, Tehran, and Khartoum. PIJ masterminded several suicide bombings in Israel, the first one being the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem bus 405 suicide attack in 1989 which resulted in 16 civilian deaths. Shaqaqi was a key player in setting up the Alliance of Palestinian Forces in January 1994, PIJ was and continues to be considered by Israel the most extreme organization in its operational methods and commitment to the destruction of Israel. By 1995 PIJ was, according to Fisk, perhaps the fiercest of all Israels modern-day enemies, Shaqaqi was assassinated in 1995 in Malta, and Ramadan Shalah became secretary-general of the organisation. There was a subsequent crackdown on the PIJ by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority which led to a significant weakening of the organization, on 20 February 2003, University of South Florida computer engineering professor Sami Al-Arian was arrested after being indicted on a terrorism-related charge
32.
Palestinian National Authority
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Following elections in 2006 and the subsequent Gaza conflict between the Fatah and Hamas parties, its authority had extended only in areas A and B of the West Bank. Since January 2013, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority uses the name State of Palestine on official documents, the Palestinian Authority was formed in 1994, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the government of Israel, as a five-year interim body. Further negotiations were then meant to place between the two parties regarding its final status. The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlements, the Jordan Valley region, East Jerusalem was excluded from the Accords. In the Palestinian legislative elections on 25 January 2006, Hamas emerged victorious, however, the national unity Palestinian government effectively collapsed, when a violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah erupted, mainly in the Gaza Strip. The move wasnt recognized by Hamas, thus resulting in two separate administrations – the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and a rival Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. The reconciliation process to unite the Palestinian governments achieved some progress over the years, the PA received financial assistance from the European Union and the United States. All direct aid was suspended on 7 April 2006, as a result of the Hamas victory in parliamentary elections, shortly thereafter, aid payments resumed, but were channeled directly to the offices of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. In November 2012, the United Nations voted to recognize Palestine as a non-member UN observer state, the Palestinian Authority was created by the Gaza–Jericho Agreement, pursuant to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The administrative responsibilities accorded to the PA were limited to civil matters and internal security, Palestinians in the diaspora and inside Israel were not eligible to vote in elections for the offices of the Palestinian Authority. General elections were held for its first legislative body, the Palestinian Legislative Council, the expiration of the bodys term was 4 May 1999, but elections were not held because of the prevailing coercive situation. Bush stated that the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2005 was unlikely due to instability and we will give the Palestinian Authority technical help by sending equipment, training people. We will give the Palestinian Authority helicopters and also communication equipment, the Palestinian Authority became responsible for civil administration in some rural areas, as well as security in the major cities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This increased the percentage of land in the Gaza Strip nominally governed by the PA from 60 percent to 100 percent, Palestinian legislative elections took place on 25 January 2006. Hamas was victorious and Ismail Haniyeh was nominated as Prime Minister on 16 February 2006, Hamas rejected these demands, which resulted in the Quartet suspension of its foreign assistance program and Israel imposed economic sanctions. In an attempt to resolve the financial and diplomatic impasse, the Hamas-led government together with Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas agreed to form a unity government, as a result, Haniyeh resigned on 15 February 2007 as part of the agreement. The unity government was formed on 18 March 2007 under Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and consisted of members from Hamas, Fatah and other parties. The situation in the Gaza strip however quickly deteriorated into a feud between the Hamas and Fatah, which eventually resulted in the Brothers War
33.
Yasser Arafat
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Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 to 2004, ideologically an Arab nationalist, he was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004. Arafat was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, where he spent most of his youth, while a student, he embraced Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist ideas. Opposed to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, he fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, returning to Cairo, he served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1956. In the latter part of the 1950s he co-founded Fatah, an organisation seeking the disestablishment of Israel. Fatah operated within several Arab countries, from where it launched attacks on Israeli targets, in the latter part of the 1960s Arafats profile grew, in 1967 he joined the PLO and in 1969 was elected chair of the Palestinian National Council. Fatahs growing presence in Jordan resulted in clashes with King Husseins Jordanian government. There, Fatah assisted the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War and continued its attacks on Israel, from 1983 to 1993, Arafat based himself in Tunisia, and began to shift his approach from open conflict with the Israelis to negotiation. In 1988, he acknowledged Israels right to exist and sought a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In 1994 he returned to Palestine, settling in Gaza City and he engaged in a series of negotiations with the Israeli government to end the conflict between it and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords, in 1994 Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at Oslo. At the time, Fatahs support among the Palestinians declined with the growth of Hamas, in late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat fell into a coma and died. While the cause of Arafats death has remained the subject of speculation, investigations by Russian, the majority of the Palestinian people view him as a heroic freedom fighter and martyr who symbolized the national aspirations of his people. Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt and his father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza City, whose mother, Yassers paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafats father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim land in Egypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful. He worked as a merchant in Cairos religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi and his mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem-based family. She died from an ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age
34.
Khaled Mashal
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Khaled Mashal is a Palestinian political leader and the leader of the Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas since the Israeli assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004. After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal came to lead the Kuwaiti branch of the organization and he moved from Kuwait to Jordan in 1991. Following the expulsion of the Hamas leadership from Jordan in August 1999 and he returned to Qatar in 2012 as a result of the Syrian Civil War. Mashal was born in 1956 in Silwad in the West Bank during the Jordanian occupation and he attended Silwad Elementary School until the 1967 Six-Day War. His father moved the family to Kuwait afterwards for financial reasons, Mashal joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1971. He holds a bachelor of degree in Physics from Kuwait University. While at Kuwait University, Mashal headed the Islamic Justice list in the General Union of Palestinian Students elections in 1977, the basis for the Islamic Justice list was the Palestinian Islamic movement, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the cancellation of the GUPS elections, Mashal established the Islamic League for Palestinian Students in 1980, Mashal was a teacher in Kuwait from 1978 to 1984. He was married in 1980 and is the father of three daughters and four sons and it was an important milestone as it laid the foundation for the creation of Hamas. Mashal was part of the leadership of the project to build a Palestinian Islamic movement from its inception, after 1984, he devoted himself to the project on a full-time basis. Mashal lived in Kuwait until the 1991 Gulf War, when Baathist Iraq invaded Kuwait, he then moved to Jordan and began working directly with Hamas. He has been a member of Hamas Political Bureau since its inception, on 25 September 1997, Mashal was the target of an assassination attempt carried out by the Israeli Mossad under orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet. The assassination was intended as retaliation for the 1997 Mahane Yehuda Market Bombings, at the time of the assassination attempt, Mashal was considered Hamas Jordanian branch chief. Two Mossad agents carrying fake Canadian passports entered Jordan, where Mashal was living, soon afterward the two Israeli agents were captured. Immediately after the incident, Jordans King Hussein demanded that Netanyahu turn over the antidote for the poison, threatening to sever diplomatic relations, Netanyahu at first refused, and the incident quickly grew in political significance. With Israeli-Jordanian relations rapidly deteriorating, King Hussein threatened to void the historic 1994 peace between the two countries should Mashal die, U. S President Bill Clinton intervened and compelled Netanyahu to turn over the antidote. The head of Mossad, Danny Yatom, flew to Jordan, with the prime ministers consent, the doctors at King Hussein Medical Center, where Meshaal lay in a coma observed Meshaals symptoms to be consistent with an opioid overdose. After the incident, Mashal told Third Way magazine, Israeli threats have one of two effects, some people are intimidated, but others become more defiant and determined
35.
Mahmoud Abbas
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Mahmoud Abbas, also known by the kunya Abu Mazen, is the President of the State of Palestine and Palestinian National Authority. He has been the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 11 November 2004, Abbas is a member of the Fatah party. As a result, Fatahs main rival, Hamas, announced that it would not recognize the extension or view Abbas as the rightful president. Abbas was chosen as the President of the State of Palestine by the Palestine Liberation Organizations Central Council on 23 November 2008, Abbas served as the first Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from March to September 2003. Before being named prime minister, Abbas led the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, mahmoud Abbas was born on 26 March 1935 in Safed, in the Galilee region of Mandatory Palestine. His family fled to Syria during the 1948 Palestine war, before going to Egypt, Abbas graduated from the University of Damascus where he studied law. Abbas later entered graduate studies at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow and his doctoral dissertation was The Other Side, The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, a conspiracy theory about the Holocaust. He is married to Amina Abbas and they have had three sons, the eldest, Mazen Abbas, ran a building company in Doha and died in Qatar of a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 42. The kunya of Abu Mazen means father of Mazen and their second son is Yasser Abbas, a Canadian businessman who was named after former PA leader Yasser Arafat. The youngest son is Tareq, a business executive, Abbas has eight grandchildren, six of whom are part of the Seeds of Peace initiative bringing them in touch with young Israelis. While there in 1961, he was recruited to become a member of Fatah, at the time, Arafat was establishing the groundwork of Fatah by enlisting wealthy Palestinians in Qatar, Kuwait, and other Gulf States. According to Abu Daoud, part of the funds raised by Abbas were used, without the latters knowledge and he was among the first members of Fatah to call for talks with moderate Israelis, doing so in 1977. In a 2012 interview, he recalled, because we took up arms, Abbas has performed diplomatic duties, presenting a moderating contrast to the PLOs revolutionarypolicies. In the Oslo I Accord, Abbas was the signatory for the PLO on 13 September 1993 and he published a memoir, Through Secret Channels, The Road to Oslo. In 1995, he and Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin wrote the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement, Palestinian officials replied that at the time in question, the PLO collaborated with Moscow, and that Abbas was their liaison man in the Palestinian-Soviet friendship foundation. By early 2003, as Israel and the United States refused to negotiate with Yasser Arafat, Abbass reputation as a pragmatist garnered him favor with the West and some members of the Palestinian legislature. Under international pressure, on 19 March 2003, Arafat appointed Abbas Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, according to Gilbert Achcar, the United States imposed Abbas on Arafat, the democratically elected leader, though the majority of Palestinians thought of the former as a Quisling. However, a struggle for power between Arafat and Abbas followed, Abbass term as prime minister was characterised by numerous conflicts between him and Arafat over the distribution of power
36.
George W. Bush
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George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 and he is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election and he is the second president to assume the nations highest office after his father, following the lead of John Quincy Adams. He is also a brother of Jeb Bush, a former Governor of Florida who was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election, the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bushs first term as president. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine, launching a War on Terror, a military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001. He also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, Social Security reform and his tenure included national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and torture. In the 2004 Presidential race, Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry in another close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections, Bush left office in 2009, returning to Texas where he purchased a home in Crawford. He wrote a memoir, Decision Points and his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in historians polls published in the late 2000s and 2010s. George Walker Bush was born on July 6,1946, at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, as the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife, the former Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas, with four siblings, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, another younger sister, Robin, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S and his father, George H. W. Bush, was Ronald Reagans Vice President from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st U. S. President from 1989 to 1993. Bush has English and some German ancestry, along with more distant Dutch, Welsh, Irish, French, Bush attended public schools in Midland, Texas, until the family moved to Houston after he had completed seventh grade. He then spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a school in Houston. Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, a school in Andover, Massachusetts
37.
Targeted killings by Israel Defense Forces
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The Israeli army maintains that it pursues such military operations to prevent imminent attacks when it has no discernible means of making an arrest or foiling such attacks by other methods. On 14 December 2006, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that targeted killing is a form of self-defense against terrorists. Many strikes have been carried out by Israeli Air Force attack helicopters that fire guided missiles toward the target, sometimes, when heavier bombs are needed, the strike is carried out by F-16 warplanes. Other strategies employ strike teams of Israeli intelligence or military operatives and these operatives infiltrate areas known to harbor targeted individuals, and eliminate their assigned targets with small arms fire or use of explosives. Snipers have also utilized, as was in the case of Dr. Thabet Thabet in 2001. Unmanned aerial vehicles are used for the strikes as well, regardless of the method used, intelligence on targets is critical. As regards helicopter strikes, orbiting UAVs or unmanned drones, linked to intelligent monitoring and eavesdropping systems, special care is taken to minimize civilian casualties, and sometimes strikes were aborted if the civilian presence near the target was too large to be politically acceptable. Operation Spring of Youth against top Palestine Liberation Organisation leaders in Beirut,1973, Muhammad Najjar, Kamal Adwan, khalil al-Wazir known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad. His wife, his son, and four others were also killed. Yahya Ayyash in Beit Lahya, Gaza,1996, Ayyash was killed by a cell phone allegedly containing “50 grams of high-grade explosives. ”Khaled Mashal in Jordan,1997 Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade killed by a one-ton bomb during July 2002 in Gaza. Also killed were 11 civilians, including Shehadehs wife and three sons, and four other children, jamal Abu Samhadana killed with three other militants on 8 June 2006, when an Israeli Apache helicopter fired four missiles at a PRC camp in Rafah. Possible targeted killing, Imad Mugniyah, a senior Hezbollah commander, was killed in February 2008 in a car bomb, the Israeli Mossad is alleged to have been behind the killing. Nizar Rayan killed by an Israeli airstrike on 1 January 2009 with 15 relatives when a 2, ahmed Jabari killed by an Israeli drone strike on 14 November 2012 while he was traveling with his bodyguard along Omar Mukhtar Street in Gaza City. Raed al Atar killed with two other top Hamas commanders by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah on 21 August 2014, samir Kuntar killed with other seven Syrian nationals on 20 December 2015 by an Israeli airstrike in Jaramana, Syria. Of these,251 persons were the individuals and 174 were civilian bystanders. This implies a ratio of civilians to targets of 1,1.44 during the whole period, the civilian casualty ratio of the targeted killings was surveyed by Haaretz military journalist Amos Harel. In 2002 and 2003, the ratio was 1,1, Harel called this period the dark days because of the relatively high civilian death toll as compared to later years. He attributed this to an Israeli Air Force practice of attacking targets even when they were located in populated areas
38.
Assassination
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Assassination is the murder of a prominent person, often a political leader or ruler, usually for political reasons or payment. The word assassin is believed to derive from the word Hashshashin. It referred to a group of Nizari Shia Persians who worked against various Arab, founded by the Persian Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the fortress of Alamut in Iran from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and also controlled the castle of Masyaf in Syria. The group killed members of the Persian, Abbasid, Seljuq, the word for murder in many Romance languages is derived from this same root word. Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics and it dates back at least as far as recorded history. The Old Testament story of Judith illustrates how a woman frees the Israelites by tricking and assassinating Holofernes, a warlord of the rival Assyrians, with whom the Israelites were at war. King Joash of Judah was recorded as being assassinated by his own servants, Joab assassinated Absalom, King Davids son, chanakya wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra. His student Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire, later made use of assassinations against some of his enemies, other famous victims are Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman consul Julius Caesar. Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later, the practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Kes failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC. Whilst many assassination were performed by an individual or a small group, the earliest were the sicarii in 6 A. D. who predated the Middle Eastern assassins and Japanese ninjas by centuries. In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, blinding and strangling in the bathtub were the most commonly used procedures. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe and this account is, however, contentious among historians, it being most commonly asserted that he died of natural causes. The myth of the Curse of King Zvonimir is based on the legend of his assassination, in 1192, Conrad of Montferrat, the de facto King of Jerusalem, was killed by an assassin. The reigns of King Przemysł II of Poland, William the Silent of the Netherlands, in Russia alone, two emperors, Paul I and his grandson Alexander II, were assassinated within 80 years. In the United Kingdom, only one Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has ever been assassinated—Spencer Perceval on May 11,1812. In the United States, within 100 years, four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, there have been at least 20 known attempts on U. S. presidents lives. Huey Long, a Senator, was assassinated in September of 1935, the Polish Home Army conducted a regular campaign of assassinations against top Nazi German officials in occupied Poland. Adolf Hitler, meanwhile, was almost killed by his own officers, indias Father of the Nation, Mohandas K. Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30,1948, by Nathuram Godse
39.
Army Radio
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Army Radio or Galei Tzahal known in Israel by its acronym Galatz, is a nationwide Israeli radio network operated by the Israel Defense Forces. The station broadcasts news, music, traffic reports and educational programs to the public as well as entertainment. The network has one station and an offshoot - Galgalatz - that broadcasts music and traffic reports 24 hours a day in Hebrew. Staff includes both soldiers and civilians, as of December 2013, the station is no longer broadcast via shortwave to Europe. There is still a livestream feed on the internet, Galatz started its transmissions on September 24,1950 as a continuance of the Hagana transmission to the Jewish public during the Israeli War of Independence. Transmissions began with a trumpet blast at 6,30 p. m. followed by HaTikva, an improvised studio had been set up inside a former school building in Ramat Gan, with army blankets hung on the walls to muffle background noise. In 1956, its status was defined by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority law, the Israel Defense Forces was authorized to choose its programming for soldiers, but programs for civilians had to receive approval from the IBA. During the stations formative period in the 1960s and 1970s, it was headed by Yitzhak Livni, in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Galatz was the first Israeli radio station to broadcast around the clock. In 1982, during the Lebanon War, the station collaborated with Israeli Educational Television and this wartime cooperation led to a daily news and interview show called Erev Hadash. Galatz was the first radio station in Israel to abandon the formal and its entertainment programs to soldiers were the first to use colloquial Hebrew on air. Its news bulletins use a more relaxed style than IBAs Kol Yisrael. This presentation style proved popular among two age groups, youngsters and senior citizens. For many years Galei Zahal broadcasts were mainly geared toward soldiers, including music programs conveying soldiers’ greetings, following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the station began broadcasting 24 hours a day, expanding its broadcasts to include news broadcasts and current affairs programming. For years, it was the only Israeli station that continued to broadcast throughout the night, in November 1993 Galei Zahal began operating Galgalaz, which broadcasts music interspersed with traffic reports and has high listener rates. According to Oren Soffer, a head of studies in Open University, Galei Zahal has become symbol of pluralism. Beginning in the 1960s, new poems were read aloud once a week, in the 1970s, the station broadcast radio plays, inaugurated University on the Air, and held the first live telephone conversations with listeners ever broadcast on a radio station in Israel. Ram Evron hosted live nightly talk shows, recently, Galei Tzahal was the first radio station to incorporate a podcast into their scheduling -- when they gave Israel Story a permanent slot. The station is managed by an appointed by the defense minister for a 3- to 5-year term
40.
Human shield
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Human shield is a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of non-combatants in or around combat targets to deter the enemy from attacking these combat targets. It may also refer to the use of persons to literally shield combatants during attacks, using this tactic is considered a war crime by nations that are parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, and the 1998 Rome Statute. Berger realized that this would contravene the 1929 Geneva Convention and argued there was not enough barbed wire—as a result. Wehrmacht and later SS forces extensively used Polish civilians as human shields during Warsaw Uprising when attacking the insurgents positions, at the Wola massacre in Poland on 7 August 1944, the Nazis forced civilian women onto the armored vehicles as human shields to enhance their effectiveness. During the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese soldiers often used civilians as shields against American troops. In the Battle of the Notch North Korean forces were claimed to have used captured U. S. soldiers as human shields while advancing. In one particularly grisly incident, three children had been riddled with bullets before their parents eyes because their father had dared to suggest calling an end to the fighting, was flown to Sidon to advise the command on how to deal with such irrational behavior. One of the most famous uses of human shields occurred in Iraq in 1990, a number of these hostages were filmed meeting Hussein, and kept with him to deter any targeted attacks, whilst others were held in or near military and industrial targets. In 1991, during the operations in the Gulf War, the U. S. submitted a report to the UN Security Council denouncing Iraq for having “intentionally placed civilians at risk through its behavior”, the Iraqis parked each vehicle adjacent to a civilian house. Shortly after the cease-fire between Croat and Serb forces, the Bosnian Serbs launched an assault against the area of Goražde, heavily shelling the town. Protests and exhortations from the UN Security Council turned out to be ineffective, in retaliation, Bosnian Serb forces captured many UN personnel, using them as human shields at sites expected to be bombed. In a similar situation to what had happened in Sarajevo, an ultimatum was issued, according to various accounts—including that of the American ambassador to the U. N. According to human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, al Mezan reported the systematic use of human shields during the invasion of Beit Hanoun in 2004. Human shields were also employed by Israeli soldiers to subdue a stone-throwing protest in Hebron in 2003. In 2004, a 13-year-old boy, Muhammed Badwan, was photographed tied to an Israeli police vehicle in the West Bank village of Biddu being used as a shield to deter stone-throwing protesters, rabbi Arik Ascherman was placed under arrest after he tried to intervene. In 2005, Israels High Court of Justice banned the practice, in 2006, however, initial investigations by BTselem indicated that the IDF might have used civilians as human shields in 2006 Beit Hanun. The Israeli Army launched an investigation into the incident involving Amira. In April 2007, the Israeli army suspended a commander after the unit he was leading was accused of using Palestinians as human shields in a West Bank operation
41.
Jack Straw
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John Whitaker Straw is an English politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015. Straw served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the governments of Tony Blair and he held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001 and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. From 2007 to 2010 he served as Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice throughout Browns Premiership, Straw is one of only three individuals to have served in Cabinet continuously under the Labour government from 1997 to 2010, the others being Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. In February 2015 Channel 4 Dispatches and The Daily Telegraph accused Straw of impropriety following a meeting set up with a fictitious Chinese company. Straw strongly denied the allegations and referred himself to Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards, in September 2015 the Commissioner for Standards dismissed all allegations that he had brought the House of Commons into disrepute and criticised Channel 4 and the Daily Telegraph’s conduct. Jack Straw was born in Buckhurst Hill in Essex, the son of Walter Arthur Whitaker Straw, an insurance salesman, after his father left the family, Straw was brought up by his mother on a council estate in Loughton. Known to his family as John, he started calling himself Jack while in school, in reference to Jack Straw, Straw is of 1/8th Jewish descent. Jack Straw was educated at Brentwood School and the University of Leeds and he graduated with a 2,2 degree in Law. He was alleged by the Foreign Office to have disrupted a student trip to Chile to build a youth centre and they branded him a troublemaker acting with malice aforethought. Led by Straw, Labour Society disaffiliated itself from the Labour Party, Straw was then elected president of the Leeds University Union. At the 1967 National Union of Students Conference, he ran for office in the NUS. In April 1968, he stood unsuccessfully for election as NUS President, however, he was elected as NUS President in 1969, holding this post until 1971. In 1971, he was elected as a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Islington, in 2007 the Union Council reinstated his life membership and place on the Presidents Board. Straw subsequently qualified as a barrister at Inns of Court School of Law and he is a member of The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple and remains active in lecturing to fellow members and students. Between 1971 and 1974, Jack Straw was a member of the Inner London Education Authority, and Deputy Leader from 1973 to 1974. He served as an adviser to Barbara Castle at the Department of Social Security from 1974 to 1976. From 1977 to 1979, Straw worked as a researcher for the Granada TV series, Straw stood unsuccessfully as the Labour parliamentary candidate for the safe Conservative Tonbridge and Malling constituency in the February 1974 election. He was later selected to stand for Labour in its safe Blackburn seat at the 1979 General Election, Straw was selected to stand for Parliament for the Lancashire constituency of Blackburn in 1977, after Barbara Castle decided not to seek re-election there
42.
Palestinian Legislative Council
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The Palestinian Legislative Council was the parliament of the Palestinian inhabitants of the Palestinian territories. It was a body with 132 members, elected from 16 electoral districts of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank. The PLC was inaugurated for the first time on 7 March 1996, the PLC had limited power and responsibilities, restricted to civil matters and internal security in Area A of the West Bank and in Gaza. With the possible reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah, it would be re-assembled to become the Parliament of the State of Palestine, the Palestinian Legislative Council passed a law in June 2005, increasing the number of members from 88 to 132. It stipulated that half be elected under a system of proportional representation, the last parliamentary elections took place on 25 January 2006. The next election was intended to take place sometime in 2014 but has been delayed because of disagreements between Hamas and Fatah, the emblem used for the Palestinian Legislative Council is referred to as the Eagle of Saladin. Every single detail regarding the elections was led down in Annex II, Oslo II determines that only residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territories may vote or be elected. The power and responsibilities of the PLC are limited to civil matters and internal security and public order, the PLC is excluded from the negotiations process with Israel. The PLC was inaugurated for the first time on 7 March 1996, the Council was predestined to replace the Arafat/Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, which was established as a temporary organ, pending the inauguration of the Council. The PA, however, never transferred its power, while the PLC is elected by the Palestinians residing in the Palestinian territories, it is not the parliament of the State of Palestine. Accordingly, the Palestinian Authority is not the government of the State of Palestine, on the contrary, PLO is recognized by the United Nations as the Government of the State of Palestine. The PLO has its own parliament, the Palestinian National Council, accordingly, the Executive Committee, formally elected by the PNC, is the official government of the State of Palestine on behalf of the PLO. Pursuant to the PAs 1995 Elections Law No,13, the 132 PLC members would automatically become members of the PNC. This was revoked, however, by the 2005 Elections Law No,9, which does not mention the PNC at all. 2, issued in a decree from President Abbas, re-instated the determination, as this PA legislation was neither enacted by the PLO or the PNC, their legal validity are questioned in a PLO document. While both PLC and PNC are virtually defunct, the functions of both parliaments are performed by the PLOs Central Council and they had to obtain a permit from the Israeli authorities for every single travel, valid for very short periods and sometimes refused. In 2001, the European Parliament noticed in a resolution that The Palestinian Legislative Council is more often than not hindered from attending the sessions Isolation from the outer world, Israel prevents official contacts with the outer world. Even the visit of members of the European Parliament to Gaza were denied, Israeli interference with the composition of the PLC
43.
Caliphate
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A caliphate is an area containing an Islamic steward known as a caliph —a person considered a religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and a leader of the entire Muslim community. During the history of Islam after the Rashidun period, many Muslim states, the Sunni branch of Islam stipulates that, as a head of state, a caliph should be elected by Muslims or their representatives. Followers of Shia Islam, however, believe a caliph should be an Imam chosen by God from the Ahl al-Bayt, before the advent of Islam, Arabian monarchs traditionally used the title malik, or another from the same root. The term caliph, derives from the Arabic word khalīfah, which means successor, steward, however, studies of pre-Islamic texts suggest that the original meaning of the phrase was successor selected by God. There was no specified procedure for this shura or consultation, candidates were usually, but not necessarily, from the same lineage as the deceased leader. Capable men who would lead well were preferred over an ineffectual heir, Sunni Muslims believe that Abu Bakr was chosen by the community and that this was the proper procedure. Sunnis further argue that a caliph should ideally be chosen by election or community consensus, the Shia believe that Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad, was chosen by Muhammad as his spiritual and temporal successor as the Mawla of all Muslims in the event of Ghadir Khumm. The caliph was often known as Amir al-Muminin, Muhammad established his capital in Medina, after he died, it remained the capital during the Rashidun Caliphate, before Kufa was reportedly made the capital by Caliph Ali. At times there have been rival claimant caliphs in different parts of the Islamic world, according to Sunni Muslims, the first caliph to be called Amir al-Muminin was Abu Bakr, followed by Umar, the second of the Rashidun. Uthman and Ali also were called by the title, while the Shia consider Ali to have been the only truly legitimate caliph. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk officially abolished the system of Caliphate in Islam as part of his secular reforms, the Kings of Morocco still label themselves with the title Amir al-Muminin for the Moroccans, but lay no claim to the Caliphate. Some Muslim countries, including Somalia, Indonesia and Malaysia, were never subject to the authority of a Caliphate, with the exception of Aceh, consequently, these countries had their own, local, sultans or rulers who did not fully accept the authority of the Caliph. Abu Bakr, the first successor of Muhammad, nominated Umar as his successor on his deathbed, Umar, the second caliph, was killed by a Persian named Piruz Nahavandi. His successor, Uthman, was elected by a council of electors, Uthman was killed by members of a disaffected group. Ali then took control but was not universally accepted as caliph by the governors of Egypt and he faced two major rebellions and was assassinated by Abd-al-Rahman ibn Muljam, a Khawarij. Alis tumultuous rule lasted only five years and this period is known as the Fitna, or the first Islamic civil war. The followers of Ali later became the Shia minority sect of Islam, the followers of all four Rashidun Caliphs became the majority Sunni sect. Under the Rashidun each region of the Caliphate had its own governor, Muawiyah, a relative of Uthman and governor of Syria, succeeded Ali as Caliph
44.
Umar
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Umar, also spelled Omar, was one of the most powerful and influential Muslim caliphs in history. He was a senior Sahabi of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and he succeeded Abu Bakr as the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate on 23 August 634. He was an expert Islamic jurist known for his pious and just nature and he is sometimes referred to as Umar I by historians of Islam, since a later Umayyad caliph, Umar II, also bore that name. Under Umar, the caliphate expanded at a rate, ruling the Sasanian Empire and more than two-thirds of the Byzantine Empire. His attacks against the Sasanian Empire resulted in the conquest of Persia in less than two years, according to Jewish tradition, Umar set aside the Christian ban on Jews and allowed them into Jerusalem and to worship. Umar is revered in the Sunni tradition as a ruler and paragon of Islamic virtues. He is viewed adversely in Shia Islam, Umar was born in Mecca to the Banu Adi clan, which was responsible for arbitration among the tribes. His father was Khattab ibn Nufayl and his mother was Hantama bint Hisham and he is said to have belonged to a middle-class family. In his youth he used to tend to his fathers camels in the plains near Mecca and his merchant father was famed for his intelligence among his tribe. Umar himself said, My father, Al-Khattab was a ruthless man and he used to make me work hard, if I didnt work he used to beat me and he used to work me to exhaustion. Despite literacy being uncommon in pre-Islamic Arabia, Umar learned to read, though not a poet himself, he developed a love for poetry and literature. According to the tradition of Quraish, while still in his years, Umar learned martial arts. He was tall, physically powerful and a renowned wrestler and he was also a gifted orator who succeeded his father as an arbitrator among the tribes. Umar became a merchant and made journeys to Rome and Persia. As a merchant he was unsuccessful, like others around him, Umar was fond of drinking in his pre-Islamic days. In 610 Muhammad started preaching the message of Islam, like many others in Mecca, Umar opposed Islam and he even threatened to kill Muhammad. He resolved to defend the traditional religion of Arabia. He was adamant and cruel in opposing Muhammad and very prominent in persecuting Muslims and he firmly believed in the unity of the Quraish and saw the new faith of Islam as a cause of division and discord
45.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
46.
Wayback Machine
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The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
