Syrian army executes prisoners, desecrates their corpses

This graphic footage, purportedly filmed by Syrian security forces loyal to Bashar al-Asad in March 2012, depicts what appears to be a field execution of 15 men in the Idlib countryside. The living are bound and shot; the corpses are then dragged, shot again, and exploded for the entertainment of the troops filming this video. It was leaked and uploaded by Syrian democracy activists on 7 June 2012.

Living without your name

From Neve Gordon:

My friend’s wife was accepted to a PhD program at McGill University in Montreal. They decided to move to Canada with their two children at about the same time that I was offered a fellowship at Princeton and decided to move with my family to New Jersey for a year. Hoping to rent out our apartments while we’re away, we both posted ads on the most popular website in Israel. I received about five calls a day and found a tenant within a couple of weeks. My friend received only three calls in four weeks, and none of the people who called came to look at his flat.

A few days ago he removed his ad from the website and posted a new one, only this time he changed his name from Hussein to Rami. Rami is an ethnically indeterminate name – it can be either Jewish or Palestinian – but there are no Jews called Hussein. Within three days ‘Rami’ received about thirty phone calls, and six people came to look at the flat. He expects to sign a lease with one of them tomorrow. In Israel, if you are a Palestinian and want to rent a flat, at times, to misquote Arthur Miller, you have to live without your name.
First published in London Review of Books