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rosross 13/01/09 3:45PM

Well done New Matilda. You are our hope for the future.

Rockjaw 13/01/09 4:05PM

Indeed, and thank you NM.

rosross 13/01/09 6:17PM

Boycotts are the answer.
From today’s Age.

Boycotts may achieve what bombs and guns can’t
Randa Abdel-Fattah
January 13, 2009
As the occupying power, Israel must be the one to make concessions.

AS THE Israeli offensive in Gaza enters its third week, people around the world feel a growing desperation at the failure of the UN and of Western and Middle Eastern governments to secure an end to the violence and slaughter.

When the international system fails, what can be done? The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is rapidly garnering support for Palestinian rights from academic institutions, church groups and other grassroots bodies worldwide. Such sanctions were a vital tool in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa and rehabilitate that state as part of the family of nations.

rosross 13/01/09 6:18PM

Kevin Rudd should hang his head in shame for not speaking out against this war crime.

rosross 13/01/09 6:26PM

Gaza is Sinking in a River of Blood:
A Message from a Gazan to the World

By Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi

January 12, 2009 "Commondreams" —- I want to write about the suffering of my people and my family in these days of siege against the people of Gaza. 888 people have been killed and more than 3700 injured. The Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of repeatedly refusing to allow ambulances to go to Zeitoun area, so those who are injured become those who die; a premeditated and purposeful violation of human rights.

In my house we can’t get basic needs. No food. No bread. No fuel. No future. Yesterday, my father went to the bakery at 5 AM. He waited 5 hours to get one loaf of bread, which is not enough for my family because there are 11 of us. So today it was my turn. I went to all the bakeries — all were closed.

There is no safe place we can go. We cannot communicate with our relatives and friends — networks are down as missiles rain on our homes, mosques and even hospitals.

Our life is centered around the burials of those who have died, our martyrs, At night our camp, Jabalya Refugee Camp, is a ghost town, with no sounds other than those of Israeli military aircraft.

There is a horror in every minute and it is clear especially in the lives of children. For example, there were five sisters in one family killed from the Israeli occupation while they stayed in their home. But there are 800,000 other children in Gaza, all afraid, all waiting for someone or something to help them. They are caught in a prison that is becoming a concentration camp. Every day we sleep and open our eyes to the Israeli crimes of killing children and women and destroying civilians’ homes. My words are unable to convey my feelings about this life in Gaza.

I have two messages to the world, to those who claim they love peace and seek freedom.

Imagine your life consisting of no electricity, destroyed homes, the sounds and strikes of missiles, day and night, and the only hunger as great as that for food is the hunger for an end to this occupation and siege. Imagine it is not just you but your children and your family who tell you through their eyes and cries: "We are afraid of the missiles." "We cannot sleep." "We may never sleep again." Imagine you are the dam and the river of blood has turned into a flash flood. How long could you stand it?

We wouldn’t have to stand it any longer if the world stood with us. If they demanded an end to the siege and the killings and demolition of houses for our children. If they demanded assistance reach the people through rallies and sit-ins.

Finally, I invite you to come to Gaza and see the Holocaust. Because despite the siege, the barriers, the killing of my people and homes, and the total destruction of our lives by the Israeli occupation, they can not and will not kill the will of our people for equality and justice.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21728.htm

rosross 13/01/09 6:28PM

To help send more medical aid to Gaza:

http://www.mecaforpeace.org/

Rockjaw 13/01/09 6:28PM

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6604775898578139565&hl=en

rosross 13/01/09 7:16PM

By Chris Hedges

The incursion into Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth.

This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel’s borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090112_the_language_of_death/

rosross 13/01/09 7:21PM

This is what we get when the media becomes corrupted. The sort of propaganda, spin and insane articles that Chris Hedges talks about here. Thank god for NM.

From the above cited article: There will be more dead Palestinian children. There will be more cases like that of the U.N. school, used as a sanctuary by terrified families, that was blown to bits by Israeli shells, with more than 40 killed, half of them women and children. There will be more emaciated, orphaned children. There will be more screaming or comatose wounded in the corridors of Gaza’s glutted hospital corridors. And there will be more absurd news reports, like the one on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, titled “A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery.” In this story, unnamed Israeli intelligence officials gave us a spin on the war worthy of the White House fabrications made on the eve of the Iraq war. We learned about the perfidious and dirty tactics of Hamas fighters. Foreign journalists, barred from Gaza and unable to check the veracity of the Israeli version of the war, have abandoned their trade as reporters to become stenographers. The cynicism of conveying propaganda as truth, as long as it is well sourced, is the poison of American journalism. If this is all journalism has become, if moral outrage, the courage to defy the powerful, the commitment to tell the truth and to give a voice to those who without us would have no voice, no longer matters, our journalism schools should focus exclusively on shorthand. It seems to be the skill most ardently coveted by most senior editors and news producers.

There have always been powerful Israeli leaders, since the inception of the state in 1948, who have called for the total physical removal of the Palestinians. The ethnic cleansing of some 800,000 Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948 was, for them, only the start. But there were also a few Israeli leaders, including the assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who argued that Israel could not pick itself up and move to another geographical spot on the globe. Israel, Rabin believed, would have to make peace with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors to survive. Rabin’s vision of two states, however, appears to have died with him. The embrace of wholesale ethnic cleansing by the Israeli leadership and military now appears to be unquestioned.

rosross 13/01/09 7:27PM

Rockjaw. I can’t/won’t watch graphic things. It’s bad enough reading about what is being done to the Palestinians.

Rockjaw 13/01/09 8:16PM

It is a lot less graphic than the picture on this piece.

Rockjaw 13/01/09 8:21PM

Allison Weir, an American girl who, until 5 years ago, believed every piece of bullshit about Israel and who, when she discovered the facts, started her own resistance to the thugs. Here is here site - worth a look:-

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

Rogerio 13/01/09 8:39PM

And for those who are interested in the advantages of the slaughter, here is an interesting piece for you:-

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2009/01/advantages-of-slaughter.html

alphacrucis 13/01/09 8:49PM

It seems there are a select few readers who will do everything short of licking chocolate body paint off anybody who spits hateful bile against Israel.

Meanwhile, the shrill author of this article, Michael Brull, firing off just that sort of irrational anti-Israel venom, imagines that, by referencing the Murdoch press’ coverage of the conflict, he is inoculating himself against any pro-Israel counter-argument.

Perhaps, but only in the minds of his chocoholic fanboys.

Back in reality, Australians are aware of what is going on in Gaza right now. People don’t need the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to tell them that it is an outrageous war crime for Hamas to fire rockets on Israeli civilian population centres (comprising 1 million Arab and Jewish Israelis).

Ordinary people are quite capable of thinking for themselves and recognising that Hamas cannot use the Geneva Conventions as both a shield and a sword. People can see that Hamas is doing just this when it falsely and libelously accuses Israel of breaching the Fourth Geneva Convention, while proceeding to launch attacks from hospitals, schools, and mosques (contrary to Articles 18 and 19 of that same Convention).

It is disappointing but hardly surprising that we are only hearing radical pro-Hamas analysis from the progressive left. One hopes that sites like New Matilda will stop cherry-picking the Loewensteins from the Jewish community, and recognise that not only is there room on the left for pro-Israel views, but such views describe a significant portion if not a majority of the left in this country - and certainly a vast majority of the Austraian Jewish community.

rosross 13/01/09 9:31PM

alphacrusis, You have to ask yourself how you can condone occupation, colonisation and the slaughter of the children of those you occupy and colonise. Israel is a rogue nation guilty of war crimes and appalling human rights abuses. Sane Israelis know that, though they be few, but most of the world now does.

Ringo 13/01/09 9:54PM

Make chocolate, not war.

alphacrucis 13/01/09 10:18PM

rosross, I assume you mean that Hamas is occupying and colonising Gaza, and slaughtering its own children (not to mention kneecapping its own enemies). In which case the question is a fair one! Well worth asking.

Kind regards
AC

alphacrucis 13/01/09 10:20PM

Ringo - have you tried Pesek Zman? An amazing chocolate that I often enjoyed in TA and Jerusalem. Highly recommended! They are available here.

denko 14/01/09 12:59AM

** yawn … **

Still firing rockets¿

Stupid, stupid, stupid …

** yawn **

(But rather nice, in a schadenfreudesque kinda way!)

[Keep the hamish on the hearth…well cured? Doubtless ….]

"aah…"

dunno4sure¿

isaac 14/01/09 6:50AM

It has been interesting watching the so-called "pro-Israel lobby" work the media over the course of Israel’s latest demonstration of its military superiority in Gaza.
One journalist recently wrote in the Guardian that the Israeli Government is actively recruiting people to peddle their talking points in the media. That’s not a big surprise. It’s certainly part of the reason why I keep reading the same idiotic things over and over again in media from across the world: England, Australia, America, and also from Israel.
Robert Fisk recently noted the same strange uniformity in the rhetoric of persuasion coming from Israel apologists in different places, including Canada and Ireland. In many of the local newspapers he found an identical formula to the one that I’m sure you’ve heard too, in The Age, in The Australian, in The Sydney Morning Herald, on the ABC etc. It goes as follows: "Imagine if you were living in (insert suburb in your own city), and that people who lived in nearby (insert adjacent suburb) had been trying to kill you by firing thousands of rockets at you for years". In this hypothetical world, surely you’d clamour for your government to take action to protect you from such vicious lunatics, right?

Ahh Michael, this has to be one of the saddest things I have ever heard. Your manipulation of reality is unheard of in normal society. However, this is your right, a right that is not bestowed upon the people who live in the Gaza Strip under the Hamas regime, but lets forget about this and move onto some of your absurd points.

1. Israel violated the truce, well I suppose that is true if you would forget about the hundreds of missiles and rockets that were shot from the Gaza Strip during the “cease-fire”. How is it that you can forget about the hundreds of rockets launched into Southern Israel before Israel sent in some troops to blow up some smuggling tunnels? I think this is caused selective memory don’t you?
2. Another point, why is it wrong for Israel to reject a cease-fire that were given on Hamas’ terms? Why can’t Hamas accept Israel’s terms? The reasons for your assumptions are based on illusions that Israel should do what others should do, but when it comes to what Israel needs, well not important
3. Furthermore, why is it that Israel has to open up its borders to an enemy entity, should Syria open its borders for free trade with Israel, or even Lebanon?
4. You claim that Hamas is not an existential threat to the state of Israel, and your basis for this is that, at this moment, they cannot destroy the State of Israel; I didn’t know that for a country to be a threat they had to be able to destroy a country. How about a threat to Israel’s way of life? Or how about a threat to the citizens of Israel? Would they not amount to an existential threat? Would it not be an existential threat when an organization calls for the destruction of a State? You claim that Hamas is not an existential threat to the state of Israel, and your basis for this is that, at this moment, they cannot destroy the State of Israel; I didn’t know that for a country to be a threat they had to be able to destroy a country. How about a threat to Israel’s way of life? Or, how about a threat to the citizens of Israel? Would they not amount to an existential threat? Would it not be an existential threat when an organization calls for the destruction of a State? For example:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
“The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.”
“The question of the liberation of Palestine is bound to three circles: the Palestinian circle, the Arab circle and the Islamic circle. Each of these circles has its role in the struggle against Zionism. Each has its duties, and it is a horrible mistake and a sign of deep ignorance to overlook any of these circles. Palestine is an Islamic land which has the first of the two kiblahs (direction to which Moslems turn in praying), the third of the holy (Islamic) sanctuaries, and the point of departure for Mohamed’s midnight journey to the seven heavens (i.e. Jerusalem).”
But, I suppose that these threats in the Hamas charter, taken from Yale Law School translation, are not an existential threat, rather they would be a peace treaty no?
5. Israel’s demands of a terrorist organization, I struggle to see how there is anything wrong with these demands. However the fact that you are even comparing Israel’s rights to the “Palestinians” rights is complete absurd. 1. until this date there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” country so there rights do not need to be recognized, for no one recognizes that that country exists. Rather, if this country will exist in the future is meant to come from peace talks between Israel and the “Palestinian” people.
6. You throw that word occupation around like it is meant to mean something. I would like to know exactly from whom Israel is occupying Judea, Samaria and Gaza from? As you may know, the answer will not be the “Palestinian” people, for they never had any land for themselves. So this land was once controlled by Jordan and Egypt. However, this land you speak of was also occupied by them, but from whom? It was not the “Palestinian” people. If you do look at international law, the people that this “occupied” land was given to, were the Jewish people, or the Zionist entity under the San Remo Conference of 1922. So I don’t see how Israel is occupying this land, and since there is no occupation, why can Israel not build settlements on this land?
7. Ahhh, more mistakes. The fact that Hamas was elected does not mean they actually had the power. If the writer of this misguided article would actually know what he was talking about he would understand that the person that had the power and the leader of the “Palestinian” people is actually the president, who happens to be from Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). What Hamas won, was the legislative elections, which would be similar to the congress. In other words what the writer is saying is, when the Democrats in America had a majority in the Congress it would be legal for them to kick out the Republicans in a violent coup. Come on, there has to be some logic in this.
8. The reason why journalists are not allowed into Gaza are simple. 1. It is dangerous to allow journalists in there for many reasons. They could be killed in the crossfire, or much worse taken hostage by Hamas terrorists, however, I don’t see any complaints about that from the writer. 2. Israel wants to have the element of surprise when taking on its enemy, and will not have journalists uncovering where its troops are to make them easy targets for the enemy
9. Protests. In ever Western nation there are limits to how protesters can protest. For example, in America one cannot burn an American flag. Does that mean that there is no right to protest in America? Rather it means that the protesters have to comply with the law. Secondly, in order to protest in any Western nation, the protesters have to obtain a permit. If these protesters do not obtain one, then the police can arrest them, like in any Western democracy. However, I would like to know of the last gay pride done through Gaza city? I think you will find that if it did take place, which of course it wont in a society that is not free and run by Sharia Law, there would be violence against these protesters
This writer is clearer disturbed and has written a fantasy that is not based in any logic. Is not terrorism a war crime, I do not see any complaints about that. Is not using schools, ambulances and hiding behind civilians a war crime, but still the writer says nothing. Is not shooting rockets inside civilian areas a war crime? Is not targeting civilians with rockets, a crime Hamas has admitted to, a war crime? When Hamas don’t allow the Red Cross or any international body to visit their captive, Gilad Shalit, a war crime?
This writer seems to concentrate on the actions of one actor in this conflict and how they are to blame for the continuation of violence.

It’s about time this insanity comes to end.

I beg all of you to read what he writes and look for the truth in places where you might actually find it. This writer has brought down his opinion with out it being based in any facts or reality and this is clear.

Thank you

Isaac

askthedust 14/01/09 8:51AM

Just re-iterating the thankyous. Great article.

DrGideonPolya 14/01/09 8:59AM

Excellent article by Michael Brull.

The most dangerous thing about racist Zionism is the endless, shameless, racist, Goebbellsian, Apartheid Israeli LYING that has contributed to a deadly, dishonest, "politically correct" racist (PC racist), Culture of Ignoring, and Culture of Lying in the Western Murdochracies that now threatens extermination of most non-Europeans on the Planet by Climate Genocide (see "Good and Bad Climate News": http://www.green-blog.org/2009/01/13/good-and-bad-climate-news/) .

In this sense of the acute threat of "differentialist" racist Zionist (RZ) and Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite LYING to the lives of 6 billion non-European human beings, racist Zionist LYING is far more dangerous than the Occupation (Occupied Palestinian post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million; post-invasion excess deaths 0.3 million; 7 million refugees); the 9-11 million avoidable deaths associated so far with the Zionist-promoted Bush Wars, 1990-2009 (see "9-11 excuse for US global genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: millions dead (9-11 million) on Bush Wars (1990-2009)": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25184/42/) ; or the latest Apartheid Israeli Gaza Massacre in the Gaza Concentration Camp (latest count on Day 18 from Gaza: 980 dead, 4,400 wounded in Nazi-style Israeli military attacks on one of the most densely populated urban areas of the Planet VERSUS NO Israeli deaths from Gaza missiles in the preceding year) (see Sameh Habeeb’s daily reports from inside the Israeli Gaza Concentration Camp: http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/ ; see "Palestinian-Israeli Death Ratios. Nazi-style Israeli Gaza War Crimes": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27795/42/).

Rational risk management successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis and (c) systemic change to minimize harm to humanity. Racist Zionist, Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite (a) LYING a (b) SPIN and (c) bigoted, genocidal, "terror hysteria" "blame and shame" subvert this protocol and threaten not just Occupied Haitians, Occupied Somalians, Occupied Palestinians, Occupied Syrians, Occupied Iraqis, Occupied Diego Garcians, Occupied Afghans and US robot-bombed Waziris in Pakistan but essentially ALL of Humanity facing a Climate Emergency that is ignored by the racist Zionist-backed Bush-ites and neo-Bush-ites (Libs and Labs, respectively, in Australia).

Those Australians who have dual citizenship with Apartheid Israel or who have otherwise been complicit in Apartheid Israeli war crimes against (a) relatives of Australians or (b) actual Australian residents or citizens (e.g. the 25,000 Australian citizens bombed and rocketed by the Israelis in Lebanon in mid-2006 with Lib-Lab support) should be investigated and prosecuted as TERRORISTS and TRAITORS.

If it is appropriate to detain and prosecute alleged Muslim "terrorist" nutters for intemperate "thoughts" or intemperate "private conversations" , then it is surely appropriate for the AFP to detain and prosecute Israeli state terrorist agents involved in ACTUAL war crimes, in ACTUAL Israeli terrorist violence to Australians or the relatives of Australians or in ACTUALLY supporting these terrorist crimes by word or financially (the latter carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment according to "Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Anti-Terrorism_Act_2005 ).

The racist Zionist (RZs) are not simply un-Australian in their lying, bigotry, psychotic injustice and racism - they are also anti-Australian and pose a huge threat to not only Australia but the whole World.

The racist Zionists (RZs) should be side-lined just as other violent, racist bigots such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis and KKK have been sidelined in Western public life.

In clearly setting out how the Israelis are grossly violating the Geneva Convention, outstanding Jewish American law professor, author and President of the US National Guild of Lawyers, Professor Marjorie Cohn, has set out the pure racist EVIL of the current Gaza Massacre, QUOTE: "The targeting of civilians violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel cannot distinguish between civilians and military targets, they are illegal. But Israel’s air and ground attack in Gaza violates Geneva in four ways. First, it constitutes collective punishment of the entire population in Gaza for the acts of a few militants. Second, it targets civilians, as evidenced by the large numbers of civilian casualties. Third, it is a disproportionate response to the rockets fired into Israel. Fourth, an occupying power has an obligation to ensure food and medical supplies to the occupied population; Israel’s blockade has created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel’s airstrikes and ground assault on the people of Gaza have little to do with the Gazan rockets, which hadn’t killed any Israelis for a year before Israel’s current military operation. Israel’s leaders are bombing and attacking Gaza in order to gain an advantage in the upcoming Israeli elections in February. " END QUOTE (see: "Israel’s Collective Punishment of Gaza ": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27707/42/).

Decent, anti-racist Australians - and indeed ALL decent, anti-racists around the World, including all decent, anti-racist Jews - must employ intra-national and international SANCTIONS and BOYCOTTS to oppose the Bush-ite-, neo-Bush-ite-, and Lib-Lab- supported racist Zionist (RZ) Apartheid Israeli Palestinian Genocide.

Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.

isaac 14/01/09 9:24AM

anytime, im glad that you enjoyed what i wrote ;)

isaac 14/01/09 9:27AM

World media: Israel ‘endangers roots of our civilization’
By MAX SOCOL

At the outset of the Gaza war, Israel and the IDF were eager to promote their media campaign, which they believed would help preserve Israel’s image abroad, allowing the military to do its job at home.

But that may have been wishful thinking.

As Israel’s third week in Gaza marches on, the media coverage is beginning to go sour.

Leading the charge is Time magazine, the most recent cover of which prominently features a Star of David behind barbed wire, a startling and disturbing image that seems to suggest a parallel between the Gaza war and the Holocaust, presumably not to Israel’s credit.

The cover is a lead-in for the magazine’s top story, headlined "Can Israel Survive Gaza?"

Commenting wryly in his blog for Time competitor The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, a Jewish journalist who has spent time reporting in Gaza, said, "It got me thinking: Which one will last longer - Israel, or Time magazine? I’m betting on Israel."

Prof. Eytan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan University was less kind.

A media analyst who has specialized in popular American attitudes towards Israel, he was quick to say that Time "has been anti-Semitic for a long time."

"When [Menachem] Begin won his election in 1977, Time called him a ‘superhawk,’ and compared him to Fagin," the morally reprehensible Jewish character from Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Gilboa said. Anti-Semitic sentiment, he added, had plagued the magazine ever since.

Speaking of its recent cover art, Gilboa pointed out that Time "likes to use Holocaust imagery that hints that Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews."

In his opinion, Time bears responsibility for "a history of not only anti-Semitism, but systematic distortion of what is happening [in Israel]."

But with the current war, the magazine’s sensationalist approach is all but matched by other publications.

The unusual relationship of international media to Israel was described as being subject to "four cardinal sins: obsessiveness, prejudice, condescension and ignorance" by Hanoch Marmari, the former editor of Ha’aretz.

If newspapers around the world are any indication, Israel’s image may once again have failed to escape those sins in the popular press.

Sunday’s international edition of the Miami Herald carried what was perhaps the most extreme headline of the daily newspapers, its front page dominated by the words: "Israel tells Gaza to brace for a bloodbath."

That the word "bloodbath" was only used by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and never by any Israeli source, does not seem to have fazed the Herald’s editors.

But minimizing the damage, the Herald carried a different front page in the US, and it was one of the few American newspapers to devote any front page coverage at all to the ongoing war.

Only the New York Times gave top billing on Sunday to the Gaza action - most other papers had turned their attention to the recession, or president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Outside of the US, Gaza coverage remained more of a priority.

Two Canadian newspapers, the Edmonton Journal and the Halifax-based Chronicle Herald, both ran front page headlines on the war which referred to Israel’s "attacks" on Gaza.

Elsewhere, Turkey’s Today’s Zaman found a more apocalyptic tone, running a front page blurb stating "Reckless Israel Endangering Roots of Our Civilization."

Perhaps most incredible of all, the United Arab Emirates’ Gulf News proclaimed, across five columns of its front page, that Israel had "set sights on reoccupying Gaza" - contrary to Israel’s direct statements.

Gulf News also featured a prominent count of Gaza casualties, though it might mislead the reader into believing in an additional 350 dead.

Gilboa was not eager to condemn Western media universally.

"Violence, in general, motivates newspapers and magazines to take extreme positions," he said. "The question is, why are these always attributed to only one side?"

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231774432557&pagename=JPost%…

Ringo 14/01/09 9:41AM

Sorry alphacrucis, Israeli chocolate is too bitter for me.

rosross 14/01/09 11:25AM

alphacrusis, Just who are the ordinary people? I’ve spoken to a lot of people in Adelaide and Perth of late, across all walks of life and have not found one who is not angry about Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. You may lie to yourself but let me tell you, ordinary people no longer believe the lies. That is why they are demonstrating in their thousands in the UK, US, Europe, Asia and yes, even in little old Australia.
This is the only thing which gives hope. I can watch commercial television, which I never do normally, and see those awful photos of bloodied Palestinian children and commentators who clearly are aware of what Israel is doing. Even SBS, the super suck-up it has become in recent years with the change of management has had the guts to challenge the Israeli propagandists. It gives us all hope.
You forget, this medium, as part of the internet access to information means that more and more people see the sort of truth which used to be restricted to Arabs but which is now spread around the world.
Rabbis in the US are speaking out against this genocide and that says something. Thank God at last people are finding the courage to call Israel exactly what it is a rogue state using terrorism against the people they occupy and colonise.
One can feel depressed when the Zionist lackey Hilary Clinton says she will not talk to Hamas but the fact is, she will talk to anyone she has to if Obama has the guts to say peace is required.
More to the point the worldwide boycotts movement is growing apace and even if Obama fails us, that will succeed. Even some US companies have cancelled sales with Israeli companies following this latest slaughter. The Brits have been doing it for awhile.
So, there is hope, despite the propaganda and the lies and as I have said before, and as Uri Avnery said, Israel simply cannot win. It cannot win because it is in the wrong and it cannot win because the Palestinians exist and will always exist … it is simply impossible to exterminate all of them.
The murderous attack on the Gaza Ghetto will go down in history, as did the attack on the Warsaw Ghetto and on Stalingrad, as a victory for the human spirit against the onslaught of tyranny. Israel was morally bankrupt before, now it is a pariah.

rosross 14/01/09 11:28AM

Israel may face UN court ruling on legality of Gaza conflictAfua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009 Article historyIsrael faces the prospect of intervention by international courts amid growing calls that its actions in Gaza are a violation of world humanitarian and criminal law.

The UN general assembly, which is meeting this week to discuss the issue, will consider requesting an advisory opinion from the international court of justice, the Guardian has learned.

"There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law," said Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

"There is a consensus among independent legal experts that Israel is an occupying power and is therefore bound by the duties set out in the fourth Geneva convention," Falk added. "The arguments that Israel’s blockade is a form of prohibited collective punishment, and that it is in breach of its duty to ensure the population has sufficient food and healthcare as the occupying power, are very strong."

rosross 14/01/09 11:31AM

Suffer the little children of Gaza. Israel’s brave war against Palestinian children. Children make up half of the population of Gaza. Hardly surprising then that a third of the dead are children and that half of those killed are women and children. Those brave Israeli forces …. what a battle of equals.
Here are some stories from children who live, well, at least for the moment they do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/jan/13/gaza

rosross 14/01/09 11:34AM

Just so there is no doubt about what Israel’s supporters are supporting.

Gaza: UN Official Reports Horrific Hospital Scenes of Casualties

By UN News Centre

January 12, 2009 1 – Appalled that fighting was still continuing in Gaza despite the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, senior United Nations officials said today they were horrified at the human costs amid reports that over 40 per cent of the nearly 900 Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive, and almost half of the 3,860 wounded, were women and children.
“Behind those statistics that we read out every day is really profound human suffering and grave tragedy for all involved and not just for those who are killed and injured but for their families as well,” UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Director of Operations John Ging told a news conference in New York, speaking by video link from Gaza, where he had just visited the main Al Shifa hospital.

“(It) is the place of course where you see the most horrific human consequences of this conflict. Among the tragic cases that I saw were a child, six years of age, little or no brain activity, people don’t have much hope for her survival; multiple amputee – another little girl; and a pregnant woman who’d lost a leg,” he said, as the Israeli offensive went into its 17th day with the stated aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks into Israel.

rosross 14/01/09 11:37AM

It gets worse. How debased can a society and its army get? Very is the answer. That will teach those Palestinian kids for resisting occupation!

IDF Under Scrutiny
Is Israel Using Experimental Weapons in Gaza?
By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth.

Concerns about Israel’s use of non-conventional and experimental weapons in the Gaza Strip are growing, with evasive comments from spokesmen and reluctance to allow independent journalists inside the tiny enclave only fuelling speculation.

The most prominent controversy is over the use of shells containing white phosphorus, which causes horrific burns when it comes into contact with skin. Under international law, phosphorus is allowed as a smokescreen to protect soldiers but treated as a chemical weapon when used against civilians.

The Israeli army maintains that it is using only weapons authorised in international law, though human rights groups have severely criticised Israel for firing phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza.

But there might be other unconventional weapons Israel is using out of sight of the watching world.

One such munition may be Dime, or dense inert metal explosive, a weapon recently developed by the US army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.

The munition is supposed to still be in the development stage and is not yet regulated. There are fears, however, that Israel may have received a green light from the US military to treat Gaza as a testing ground.

“We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” said David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who has visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans.

“I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.”

Gaza’s doctors, including one of the few foreigners there, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian specialist in emergency medicine working at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, report that many of the injuries they see are consistent with the use of Dime.

Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive. Those exposed to the blast have severed or melted limbs, or internal ruptures, especially to soft tissue such as the abdomen, that often lead to death.

There is said to be no shrapnel apart from a fine “dusting” of minute metal particles on damaged organs visible when autopsies are carried out. Survivors of a Dime blast are at increased risk of developing cancer, according to research carried out in the United States.

Traditional munitions, by contrast, cause large wounds wherever shrapnel penetrates the body.

“The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 metres, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave, are cut in pieces,” Dr Gilbert said in a recent interview.

balance 14/01/09 12:02PM

Coincidentally, I have noted the same strange uniformity in the lobby attacking Israel … "illegal phosphorous shells" that the Redc Cross today declared aren’t illegal at all, a total absence of any regard for the plight of Israeli civilians over the past 8 years, a similar disregard for the plight of the poor Palestinians whose children are being brainwashed to sacrifice themselves for "the cause", a clear ignorance of what Hamas or Fatah actually stand for (have any of you actually read the Hamas Charter or the Fatah Constitution?).

As to the abyssmal understanding of history that reads like an Arab propaganda primer … the mind boggles. How many are aware that Palestine was actually divided fairly between its residents in 1924, with 80% going to the Palestinians and 20% to the Jews? How many know that the land was never "Palestinian" but, to this day, over 80% of the West Bank and Gaza are classed as "Ottoman public land"? How many know that the settlements sit largely on Jewish owned properties purchased in the 1920s and 30s? But the silly mantras go on. How about you stop simply believing what you hear, and put in a litlle real research of your own on primary documents and reputable sources … you’ll be amazed at what you discover. A whole new world!

rosross 14/01/09 12:18PM

balance,
Even Israeli historians admit that Palestine was Palestine and the Palestinians were dispossessed violently to allow the creation of Israel.
The majority of people living in the land called Palestine were opposed to partition. Hardly surprising. In a more civilized world the partition was therefore a moral and legal wrong. The UN had no right to divide Palestine.
The fact that Palestinians had not reached a point of nationhood is irrelevant. Germany was not a nation until about a hundred years ago and before that time, for countless centuries there were a German people, a German culture and a German country. Ditto for the Palestinians.
The land was called Palestine in Roman times and before that Palestia. Before that it was Canaan which was an Egyptian colony and where a variety of tribes, including Hebrew, settled for a time.
Palestia and Palestine come from the God Pales.
Beyond your ignorance of history the fact is none of this matters.
In the modern age we consider occupation and colonisation to be wrong. Israel is a modern coloniser just like Australia and the US, Canada and Nz. Those nations have had to admit to the wrongs inherent in their foundation and make redress to the indigenous peoples who were living in the country when it was colonised and so must Israel.

And anyone who can defend something as ghastly as phosphorus shells is without soul. They are illegal by the way used against civilians which is what Israel is doing. And for any civilized person they, like all the ghastly weaponry which exists, should be illegal full stop.

rosross 14/01/09 12:21PM

alphacrusis.

You said: I assume you mean that Hamas is occupying and colonising Gaza, and slaughtering its own children (not to mention kneecapping its own enemies).

Dear me, you are confused. I suppose you would say that the French resistance were occupying and colonising France and slaughtering their own children in their fight against German occupation.

That the Russians were occupying and colonising Stalingrad and slaughtering their own children because they resisted German occupation.

That the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were using their women and children as human shields against the Gestapo.

That’s an interesting position. Not a rational one but interesting all the same.

Rockjaw 14/01/09 12:37PM

balance, I suppose you’re a holocaust denier as well? Are you also going to disgust us with claims that there were never 6 million Jews living in Europe during the Holocaust? What sort of "whole new world" would emerge then?

A whole new world is it? You mean the one which exists in the minds of the pathological liars and genocidaires in Tel Aviv? No thanks, you can keep it.

When every international obligation is met, and when those responsible for the numerous genocides and war crimes are brought to trial, perhaps then humanity might take a second look, until then humanity will sympathise with the victims of this genocide which are the Palestinian people whom the zionists are attempting to wipe off the map under the protection of a massive umbrella of propaganda led by a mass media whose credibility is already seriously damaged.

New world this:- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6604775898578139565&hl=en

GraemeF 14/01/09 2:00PM

Does Israeli Intelligence Lie?

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5783

All of the suffering in Gaza - indeed, all of the suffering endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation for the last eight years - could have been avoided if Israel negotiated a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat when it had the chance, in 2001.

What chance? The official Israeli position is that there was no chance, "no partner for peace." That’s what Israeli leaders heard from their Military Intelligence (MI) service in 2000 after the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David. Arafat scuttled those talks, MI told the leaders, because he was planning to set off a new round of violence, a second intifada.

Now former top officials of MI say the whole story, painting Arafat as a terrorist out to destroy Israel, was an intentional fiction. That’s the most explosive finding in an investigative report just published in Israel’s top newspaper, Ha’aretz, by one of its finest journalists, Akiva Eldar.

MissnOmar 14/01/09 2:08PM

balance you need to change your handle to outrightbollocks

"How many know that the settlements sit largely on Jewish owned properties purchased in the 1920s and 30s"

This is patently and demonstrably false (not to mention utterly ridiculous to anyone au fait with the regions history) Which settlements are you referring to anyway those in thhe West Bank? those acknowledged by the ENTIRE world as illegal? Those that were built at an increasing rate at the time of the so called "generous offer" or those currently being built on top of Palestinian farms?

"illegal phosphorous shells" that the Redc Cross today declared aren’t illegal at all"

That is NOT what they said. What they ACTUALLY said was that they have no evidence that WP was being used contrary to IL. That means (unsurprisingly) that they have no eye witnesses to it being used an offensie weapon - funny that what with it being blinding

"Hamas or Fatah actually stand for (have any of you actually read the Hamas Charter or the Fatah Constitution?)."

Yes I have - ever read Israel’s? Ever heard "land without people" bollocks?

"How many know that the land was never "Palestinian" but, to this day, over 80% of the West Bank and Gaza are classed as "Ottoman public land"

why do Israeli apologists keep using this pathetic meme? If what "existed" before is such a big deal then the whole thing is sorted anyway. It wasn’t ISRAEL before EITHER.

Maryj 14/01/09 2:53PM

http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hama…

16. Networks belonging to Fatah/Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were the most prominent and central in violating the lull arrangement. Their motivation was the desire to show themselves as the standard bearers of the “resistance” (i.e., terrorism) and to send a message of defiance to Hamas, their rivals, even though Fatah in Judea and Samaria renounced the attacks.

In certain instances the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other organizations fired
rockets. In most instances they did not publicly claim responsibility. Such attacks were motivated by deep internal Palestinian rivalries, especially between Fatah and Hamas, and not responses to “violations” on the part of Israel.

17. During the first period Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire and its operatives were not involved in rocket attacks. At the same time, the movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the ot her terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it. Hamas took a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement, but in a limited fashion and contenting itself with short-term detentions and confiscating
weapons. For example, a number of times Hamas’s security services detained Fatah/Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades operatives, including Abu Qusai, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades spokesman, who claimed responsibility for rocket fire (June 29).

Detained operatives were released after a short interrogation and no real measures were taken against them. However, it was clear that throughout the first period Hamas sought to avoid direct confrontations with the rogue
organizations (especially the PIJ) insofar as was possible, lest it be accused of collaborating with Israel and harming the “resistance.” Hamas therefore focused on using politics to convince the organizations to maintain the lull arrangement and on seeking support for it within Gazan public opinion (including issuing statements by its activists regarding the lull’s achievements).

The hundreds of rockets during the ceasefire?

June 18-30 - 5, Jul-4, August-8,Sept/- 1, Oct - 1

4 November Israel break truce. Kill 7

A total of 223 rockets and 139 mortar shells were fired during the period of calm, most since November 4, 2008

Freaked out nut cases. And here is another couple of points.

Israel’s only right to be is within the border they accepted in 1947 and even that is moot because the vote was illegal because the Palestinian owners of the land did not get a vote.

How can any of you people here accept the drivel coming out of Israel? It is a massacre and after the other massacres they have committed in the name of having all the land with no arabs how can you fruitcakes believe them?

Maryj 14/01/09 3:03PM

Isaac you freak, why is it more dangerous to be a journalist in Gaza than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, China, Tibet, the Congo, Darfur and other places? It is not about the protection of journalists you idiot it has been acknowledged by Israel that they want to control the news.

Dr Dog 14/01/09 3:26PM

I don’t normally weigh in on the important stuff, but alphacrucis really goes too far in accusing those against the war on Palestinians as being shrill.

The real crime would be if we were as sanguine about the large numbers of deaths in this seemingly endless war as the pro-Israeli writers. Who really cares if phosphorus shells are ‘legal’? Surely the point is that Israel shouldn’t be lobbing the fuckers into schools filled with children and adult non-combatants.

Shrill will be when I front one of these jerks at a party or bar and stick my finger in their smug faces. I had someone hit me with the old ‘eye for an eye’ the other day, like Mosaic Law was something to aspire to in this day and age, but even if that was the law, Israel is looking for a few hundred eyes for each taken.

I wish wholeheartedly that the UN had done the right thing in the first place and created a multicultural state designed to accomodate all the religious and cultural groups that have a claim on the area. No chance now. In the meantime it seems any violence is only as unethical and awful as the subsequent justifications.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 3:40PM

Excellent comments from isaac and balance.

Dr Dog, if your only recourse to my comments is to threaten violence, I have little regard for you indeed. So much for peace, eh?

Meanwhile, I thought the fair-minded readers of NM would enjoy this piece by a former Gazan about the real cause of the Palestinians’ suffering.

The Gaza Prison Camp

Nonie Darwish

"Gaza conditions at ‘40-year low’" the BBC headlined last week. Rarely a week goes by without a politician or organization deploring the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But I do not hear anyone describe its root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at maintaining Palestinians as stateless refugees in order to pressure Israel.

I lived in Gaza as a child in the 1950s when Egypt conducted guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza, then under Egyptian control. My father commanded these operations, carried out by "fedayeen," (which means, "self sacrifice"). This became the frontline of Arab Jihad against Israel. My father was killed by Israel in a targeted assassination in 1956.

Today the Gaza Strip, now under the control of Hamas, has become the Gaza prison camp for 1.5 million Palestinians and continues to serve as the launching pad for attacks against Israeli citizens.

This is the legacy of the Arab world’s Palestinian refugee policy, started 60 years ago, when the Arab League implemented special laws regarding Palestinians that all Arab countries had to abide by. Arab countries could not absorb Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian married a citizen of an Arab country, that Palestinian could not become a citizen of his or her spouse’s country. A Palestinian can be born, live and die in an Arab country, but never gain its citizenship. Even now I receive e-mails from Palestinians telling me they cannot have a Syrian passport, for example, and must remain Palestinian even though they have never set foot in the West Bank or Gaza. Forcing the Palestinian identity on them is designed to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee status. Palestinians have been used and abused by Arab nations, and by Palestinian terrorists, for the purpose of destroying Israel.

The 22 Arab states certainly do not have a shortage of land. Many surrounding Arab areas, such as the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, are very sparsely populated. But absorbing Palestinians would end their refugee status and their desire to harm Israel.

Arab wealth, which is increasing dramatically because of skyrocketing oil prices, is not used to improve the lives, infrastructure and economy of the people of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it supports terror groups who reject Israel’s existence and oppose peace with Israel. The average Gaza man has a better employment opportunity if he joins Hamas.

Gazans’ breach of their checkpoint with Egypt in January, orchestrated by Hamas, is a result of the Palestinian refugee policy. The checkpoints on the Arab side of Gaza could not keep the inmates inside. The Arab plan to overpopulate Gaza exploded in the wrong direction. After this explosion, Suleiman Awwad, an Egyptian administration spokesman, said, "Egypt is a respected state, its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones." In other words, Egypt is not like Israel, which is a disrespected state. Gazans should not direct the violence at Egypt, only at Israel. This is Arab conventional wisdom.

Last month Hamas threatened to bring 40,000 Palestinians, primarily children and women, to the Gaza border with Israel to protest Israel’s restrictions on Gaza. Some Hamas leaders hinted they would send these protestors to breach the border, once again demonstrating that the Palestinian terrorists have no qualms about endangering the lives of innocent people — Israelis or Palestinians. Fortunately, only 5,000 showed up.

But Hamas did succeed two days later in killing an Israeli: a 47 year-old father of four during a rocket attack from Gaza while he was sitting in his car next to Sapir College near Sderot. Two weeks earlier, two Israeli brothers, Osher and Rami Twito, ages 8 and 19, were seriously injured by a rocket from Gaza while buying their father a birthday present. Osher’s left leg had to be amputated.

Israel completely left Gaza in August 2005. In May and June 2007, Hamas waged war against its Palestinian brothers in Fatah to gain control of Gaza. Hamas intensified its rockets attacks on Israeli towns, compelling Israel to take economic and military measures against Gaza. Hamas has become a danger not only to Israel, but to Palestinians and to neighboring Arab countries, as well. Nevertheless, the Arab world still refuses to see its role in creating this monster. It is difficult to find a similar situation in human history: the intentional creation of a refugee status for a million and a half people, sustained for 60 years. The Arab world has cut its nose to spite its face.

The world needs to understand that this dangerous mess started when 22 Arab countries agreed to create a human prison called the Gaza Strip. Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. It is time for the Arab world to open their side of the borders and absorb the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza who wish to be absorbed. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.

Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Cairo and Gaza City, is the author of, "Now They Call me Infidel."

(from www.huffingtonpost.com)

alphacrucis 14/01/09 4:34PM

Readers of NM who are reading these posts and scratching their heads are right to wonder how this publication could get it so right on so many issues, but launch into a radically distant orbit on this particular issue.

This issue has been hijacked by pro-Palestinian ideologues with an agenda. There is no debate; if you disagree with their line, you are labeled a "Zionist propagandist oppressor" or some such thing.

As far as I know, unlike huffingtonpost.com, newmatilda has not yet published the work of pro-Israel progressives. I look forward to a change in this approach, and some genuine debate on this vital issue.

MissnOmar 14/01/09 4:58PM

Readers of NM who are reading these posts and scratching their heads are right to wonder why alphacrucis has never made a comment on any other issue/article posted here but has tonnes to say about every single piece about Israel.

Wee bitty obsessed huh?

pwinwood 14/01/09 5:19PM

Merlinau
Of course the images from Gaza are terrible. Of course it’s a public relations disaster for Israel. Does anyone seriously think that the Israelis didn’t know that would be the case?
So how does one explain it?
The uncomfortable reality might be to examine the argument from the Israeli perspective that NO-ONE has actually cared about what happens to the Jews for over two thousand years. Come on, have they? Anti-semitism has been rife for at least that long, culminating in the Holocaust.
So the Jews know full well (certainly they fully believe it) that no-one cares what happens to them in a realistic practical sense now. If their public image is tarnished by Gaza, so what!. When it comes to what they perceive as their continuing fight (literal fight) for survival surrounded by enemies since Israel was founded in 1948 who are committed to destroy it, they have to look out for themselves.
[Of course, this is not to deny the immense US military and financial support engedered by the Jewish lobby in the USA, and which has been crucial in its survival through at least three major Arab attempts to destroy Israel].
All that Israel (and the Palestinians) want to do is to live in peace together. But the forces of IRAN and their proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, Hamas and Hezbollah, won’t allow this.
Has Hamas and Hezbollah shown the caring for their own people that their rhetoric suggests? Have they ensured all their forces are kept away from civilian areas. Have they done all they can to avoid provoking Israel? Have they done all they can to work towards an Internationally brokered peace agreement?
Well, have they?
Has Israel offered to return Gaza and the West Bank to Palestinian control (in the Oslo talks-1992)?
Has Hamas been firing rockets into Israel at the rate of over 70 a day for months?
Has there been any International efforts to stop Hamas’ attacks on Israel?
Well, have there?
Will the latest Israeli effort to destroy Hamas and prevent these attacks once and for all?
Probably not.
Do you really believe it is it the will and wish of the actual Palestinians living in Gaza to continue to attack Israel on a daily basis by rockets? Well do you?
Imagine if YOUR state, county, council area, (or whatever urban area you live in) was being daily attacked by a neighbour and there was no government action to stop it and prevent it again, year after year.
What might YOU be inclined to do (in desperation) if all the surrounding areas and people about your had no PRACTICAL inclination to help you?
Before we rush to judgment about Israel over Gaza (or Lebanon) we need to actually sit down and carefully consider ALL the facts.
Can Israel solve this situation alone?
Is the International community willing to step in PRACTICALLY to bring this 60 battle to an end once and for all?
THINK before you judge.

shoes1 14/01/09 6:01PM

I am heartily sick of reading articles which use the term "Jews" instead of "Israelis".

The 4th paragraph from the bottom of this article reads "if we accept that JEWS have a right to self-determination and peace, but Palestinians don’t have a right to either." It should read "if we accept that ISRAELIS have a right to self-determination etc"
I am a Jew but am not an Israeli.

I am an Australian and happen to oppose the policies of the Israeli Govt. yet because of this confusion between nationality and religion, it gives the appearance that all Jews agree with the Israeli Govt. We must do if we are Jews - right? There is as much diversity of opinion within the Jewish community in the world as there is in any other faith.

It is just as incorrect to say in the same paragraph "if we accept that Jews have a right to self-determination and peace, but MUSLIMS don’t have a right to either."

By using religion rather than nationality, it provides more ammunition for those who are anti-Israel to have anti-semitic tendencies if they are so inclined. So please get it right.

efoc 14/01/09 6:49PM

Michael writes that Martin Peretz "solemnly informs us that "the Palestinians are unprepared for statehood, as many of the countries in Africa have been unprepared for statehood." Yes, you’ve read that right. Peretz misses the good old days of colonialism, and just doesn’t think people who lack white skin are fully qualified for things like voting."

Peretz doesn’t say that he misses colonialism. He’s just pointing out a pertinent fact that the Palestinians, such as they are, aren’t prepared for statehood. Statehood means having responsibility and ensuring that you live in peace with your own citizens and your neighbours; you have to build institutions of civil society and provide freedom for all of your citizens. In fact, very few of the Palestinians are interested in running a state this way. After all, when you can get a ton of foreign aid from Arab states and much of the West, what imperative is there to do anything? You may as well can keep living off foreign aid and fund most of this towards a war to kill the Jews.

The Palestinians aren’t ready for statehood. Hamas demonstrated this when they came to power in a bloodthirsty-coup even though they were democratically-elected. What does it say about a group who is prepared to murder their political opponents and deny the rights of the ordinary folks in the street, subjecting everyone to Sharia law?

For those of you who haven’t read Hamas’ Charter, please do. It was drawn up in 1988 and Hamas live by it today. They have no problem proclaiming loud and wide what their intentions are and what they’d like to do to Israel should they get the capability to do so. For now they aren’t able to destroy Israel because they don’t have the military capability; indeed, besides killing Israelis wherever they can, they just make life miserable for Israeli civilians and their own civilians too.

Hamas should never be allowed to run a state and it’s clear that the freedoms we all take for granted - such as freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience - would be tossed out the window in Hamastan. All people would be subjected to Sharia law with grave consequences for all who are subjugated to it, especially women and non-Muslims.

MissnOmar 14/01/09 7:22PM

"Hamas should never be allowed to run a state"

So you don’t believe in democracy then? Could you provide a list of people you’ll allow the Palestinians to vote for?

"and it’s clear that the freedoms we all take for granted - such as freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience - would be tossed out the window in Hamastan. All people would be subjected to Sharia law with grave consequences for all who are subjugated to it, especially women and non-Muslims."

That is only clear if you HAVE NOT read their charter which you implore others to do.

It is only clear if you ignore facts on the ground. Hamas’ candidates at the election INCLUDED WOMEN AND NON MUSLIMS and they HAVE NOT INSTITUTED SHARIA

MissnOmar 14/01/09 7:29PM

efoc, is this one of the women you so nobly want to protect from Hamas?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/18/israel.islam

or perhaps one of the other 6 female Hamas MP’s?

Mmmm seems Hamas have a better proportion of female reps than any Israeli parties do

Rockjaw 14/01/09 7:56PM

The most amazing part of all of this is that there are actually people who have justified this positively primitive behaviour of Israel for years already and even now, when the undeniable occurs, when the undeniable becomes public knowledge, these people maintain an indefensible opinion in a barrage of the most shameful and spiteful lies, lies and more lies.

Not only are these people psychopathic, they are pathological.

Indefensible opinions may be excused, of course, but when patent lies and falsehoods are employed for the purposes of promoting the indefensible then criminality or the intent to commit or assist in the commission of a crime as motivation for the lies can be the only rational conclusion one can draw.

Occupation of foreign lands is indefensible, contempt for the international community and it’s laws is indefensible, reservation of special civil rights for a specific religious group is indefensible, deprivation of civil rights granted to others based on religious belief is indefensible but the victimisation of a people, the creation of concentration camps and the wilful slaughter of innocents is absolutely beyond all question indefensible and those responsible for such acts must be brought to answer to humanity or we all lose our dignity and self respect.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 8:09PM

missnomar: ""Hamas should never be allowed to run a state" So you don’t believe in democracy then? Could you provide a list of people you’ll allow the Palestinians to vote for?"

There you go again, defending Hamas. How can you say that you are not pro-Hamas?

Hamas is a genocidal jihadi organisation. That it was elected in apparently free elections does not purify it and make it "democratic". Democracy requires far more than free elections - it requires civil society, which is utterly absent in Gaza and barely functioning in the West Bank.

Gaza may be the least democratic place on the planet.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 8:11PM

Rockjaw, your posts are too numerous, too hateful, and too ignorant to deserve a detailed response.

Benjamin Shah 14/01/09 8:33PM

alphacrud, you have some serious repression there. you sound like a twenty something boy whose still scared of monsters and checks to see if the door is locked before he goes to bed. "hamas is a genocidal jihadi organisation" how hilarious, and they are coming to get YOU, quick bolt the door.

The following lines were not issued by Hamas, maybe you can tell me where they came from

And the rockets’ red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 8:41PM

Where were the protesters when missiles were hitting Israel?
Jan. 12, 2009
benjamin pogrund , THE JERUSALEM POST

The deaths and maimings of civilians in Gaza is terrible and wrenching. Seen on television and in newspapers, they are driving innumerable people in many parts of the world to go into the streets to protest against Israel’s attack on Hamas. The protests are fierce and angry, fuelled by tragedies like the killing of 46 people when the Israeli army shelled a school building in Jabalya refugee camp, and in the death of a family of seven.

But where were the protestors when missiles were falling on southern Israel? Had they come into the streets then and demanded that Hamas stop firing we wouldn’t have the gory mess in Gaza today.

The rockets and mortars first struck on April 16, 2001. Since then, there have been more than 6,300. Last year’s toll was more than 3,000.

For much of the time the rockets were primitive Qassams with small warheads. However small, they kill as effectively as any high-tech grenade launcher. The missiles have been getting deadlier: Katyushas and, more recently, Grad missiles have been reaching further into Israel, striking towns 25 miles from Gaza.

Casualties from the rockets have mercifully been light, with about 20 deaths. That is not due to any lack of trying by Hamas. Instead, it’s because of air raid sirens which give people less than a minute to get into shelter. And luck: Last week a missile hit a school; catastrophe was avoided because the children had been sent home. A kindergarten was badly damaged this week; again, the children were at home.

A million people now live under threat of terror attack. Life is strained and uncertain.

THE GOVERNMENT has never been able to resolve the quandary of commanding one of the world’s most modern armies and yet being powerless to halt low-tech rockets and bombs. It still hunts for a solution.

Public demands mounted for harsh action. For every rocket that lands, fire back a shell, said some; or for one rocket, one shell, for the next rocket, two shells, and so on. Obliterate Gaza, said others. Some, a minority, called for ending the siege of Gaza and greater efforts to talk to Hamas.

The government urged restraint. That became more difficult with a general election due on February 10. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, his Labour party sliding in opinion polls, put his political career on the line by refusing to let the army go in. His view was all the stronger because he was previously chief of staff and is the country’s most decorated soldier for bravery. Those pressing for war did not understand what it meant, he said. He was backed by army chief General Gabi Ashkenazi and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

They feared that a massive attack would cause heavy civilian casualties and loss of soldiers’ lives.

The turning point was November 4. Israel says Hamas was digging a tunnel to kidnap soldiers; it foiled the plot by killing seven militants. Hamas says this was a provocation; it started firing rockets en masse, ending the unwritten ceasefire in effect since June. Missiles had still landed during that time: only 38, but enough for Israel to say it was reason for it to interrupt the flow of food and goods into Gaza.

In the third week of December, more than 200 missiles struck. They were 200 too many. Barak and Olmert accepted they could no longer hold back. The army was ordered to put into effect plans which had already been prepared.

WHY DID the world keep silent for so many years? Could anyone really expect Israel to do nothing for evermore?

That there is much anguish and anger about Palestinian suffering while there was so little response to what Israelis were enduring raises worrying questions. Are protestors giving vent to genuine compassion for Palestinian victims, or is there something dark and ugly under the surface in singling out Israel as though there has never before been a war in which innocent civilians are tragically caught in the fire?

How else to explain the extreme condemnation of Israel? The outpouring of so much hatred and the wild abuse of language and history in accusations of "genocide," "Holocaust" and the "Warsaw Ghetto"?

An official of Unrwa, the United Nations relief agency, was on television this week with a long and passionate call to end the Israeli attack. But not a word about what led to it. Why do he and others speak as though the Israeli onslaught came out of nothing, without reason or cause? Why, too, is there silence about Hamas’ firing of missiles from the heart of civilian areas?

DIPLOMATIC MOVES are underway and will, hopefully, quickly lead to a ceasefire. But Israel has made very clear that it insists that there be no more missiles whether by Hamas or its cronies and that Hamas not be allowed to smuggle in new weaponry. The ceasefire will be of little account unless the world ensures that this is done and that an effective mechanism is put in place to maintain it.

The story, of course, is much more complicated. It has to do with Israel’s blockade of Gaza and its attempt, unsuccessfully, to use this to turn the people there against Hamas. It has to do with Hamas’ rejection of Israel’s existence and refusal to forswear violence, and its power struggle with Fatah. It has to do with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the slow moves towards creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The future for both Israelis and Palestinians depends on resolving these issues. Ending the onslaught on Gaza and halting missiles raining on Israel are the immediate crucial steps.

The writer is director of Yakar’s Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem. South African-born, he was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail when the newspaper was closed down. He has written books about Robert Sobukwe; Nelson Mandela; and the press under apartheid. He is co-editor of Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 8:44PM

Benjamin, I’m not all that interested in your attempt to psychoanalyse me - but I am offended by your using the word "Hamas" in the same breath as a quote from the Star-Spangled Banner. Presumably in a feeble attempt to equate the US with Hamas.

I lived in the US for some time and I won’t have you degrade that country or its beautiful anthem with your nasty comparisons.

pwinwood 14/01/09 8:58PM

Isn’t it just symptomatically tragic that whenever a serious issue (people dying and being maimed-Arab and Israeli-is serious stuff, I think) the debate slides into quite ridiculous personal name calling and abuse as quickly as it does.
And this is on and in a forum as far removed from the practical reality and the lived experience of the events as this is.

Is it any wonder that no sensible resolution of the actual behaviour (and the context in which that occurs) is undertaken by those personally involved in the events, with all the scarrring effect that has.
If we want to see the underlying human reason for all the ‘Gaza’ events in teh world, just read the action/reaction , illogic and irrelevance that permeates this discussion string.

efoc 14/01/09 9:22PM

MissnNomar

It’s Hamas that clearly doesn’t believe in democracy; they killed Fatah members and came to power in a coup. They go around killing fellow Palestinians who don’t agree with them and who don’t follow Islamic law.

If they can’t live with themselves without resorting to violence and denying freedom to their citizens, then they are clearly not worthy of running a state.

Even that article you gave us to read from The Guardian contained the following paragraph:

"Forced marriage, honour killings, low pay and girls being kept out of school are her priorities for change in the Palestinian parliament. That is when she is not preparing her 13-year-old son to die in the fight against Israel."

Ok. So let’s consider that paragraph. It’s quite freely admitted that Hamas forces women to marry against their will (this is not only special to Hamas but other Muslims across the world too), they carry out honour killings and girls are kept out of schools (obviously Hamas don’t want women to be educated). Therefore, we can see right here how backward Hamas is and how they carry out Sharia law.

After all, in case you didn’t know, the Koran contains the following verses relating to women:

Sura IV.34: "As for those [women] from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge [or beat] them."

Sura IV.34: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. God is high, supreme."

These quotes aren’t taken out of context. And Hamas carries out such dictates. I highly doubt one woman’s efforts here are going to change much as long as Hamas, the Islamic group it says it is, adheres to Islamic law. I feel sorry for her in this respect, but, then again, as the article says, she prepares "her 13-year-old son to die in the fight against Israel."

"Preparing" your son to die in the fight against Israel? Well, not so noble. In case you want to know of a woman who is far more popular for Huda Naeem, please research Umm Nidal, a mother famous for raising her children to become suicide bombers. She was so happy when they killed themselves whilst killing Israelis that she celebrated their deaths. Moreover, Hamas has encouraged and does recruit women to become martyrs; far more women are interested in jihad it seems, as opposed to Huda Naeem.

Such a death cult should not be in power anywhere. I thought that would be clear to someone like yourself.

Moreover, if you were to go to Gaza and parade around the beach in a bikini, I doubt you’d get away with it. Have a try.

Benjamin Shah 14/01/09 9:26PM

Alphacrust, . no i think you missed the point there sunny, not comparing the US with Hamas. Its just the words.

People like yourself really should talk to someone about what is wrong with you emotionally. If you can’t empathise with someone who has had a cage built up around them, with teenage boys placed at all of the exits guarding them with automatic weapons, denied their freedom, denied all of the things you take for granted every day, if you cannot empathise with that person and understand why they might fight back, then you really are sick. But then, how stupid of me, the land belongs to the jews, it says so in some pre-enlightenment book.

revilo 14/01/09 9:31PM

Guys guys guys,
Play nice, they really can’t escape the antisemitism they were fed along with their mother’s milk.

The people of the middle east are ALL cousins.
It’s one ginormous family feud going on and on and on.

People like Putin, Banki moon, Obama, Rudd, Smith, Brown, Blair, have no idea what is going on.

Tzippy Livni and Hilary Clinton are close.

The trouble is once the dogs of war are released they have to have their way.
The one’s I really feel sorry for are the Lebs.
The terrorists they have been harbouring their under Syria’s auspices will no doubt continue to goad Israel into a total operation to neutralize the rockets coming from the North into Israel.

The Israelis have to weigh up the issue of having to fight a war on two fronts (at least)

Rockets into Nahariyah and Kiryat Shmona have only resulted in a statement that "the IDF is keeping a close eye on the situation in Israel’s north"
How much closer they will let rockets get to Haifa’s oil refinery is academic, Israel will not let what happened in the south with Gaza happen in the north with Hezbollah.

Despite the south where Dimona is in firing range of Gaza, the armaments of Betsheba and surrounds are largely underground.
Israel’s north is a different kettle of fish.

If the Jewish state has to defend itself from within and without, it will get a lot tougher for her enemies.
Make no mistake, Israel has many friends amongst her Arab citizens who want to shake loose the fanatics who have hijacked them.
In many instances the Jews are the only friends they have.
You only have to look at what happened in the Lebanese civil wars.
Israel had absolutely nothing to do with it.
What about Iran and Iraq during the gulf wars of the seventies?
Unfortunately Saddam and the Sha were the products of a decadent and immoral west, whilst the Russians met their Waterloo in Afghanistan.

Iran is the classic example of what happens to a country hijacked by Islamic fundamentalist fanatics.
The native Persians are like the Israeli Jews and stand as an example of what could happen to Israel if they don’t fight to stem the rising Islamic tide of bloodshed.

Tzvi

Benjamin Shah 14/01/09 9:44PM

pwinwood,
Imagine if YOUR state, county, council area, (or whatever urban area you live in) was being daily attacked by a neighbour and there was no government action to stop it and prevent it again, year after year.

just imagine, that is what the Palestinians have lived through since all of this begun. Just imagine, you were denied your freedom, made to travel through countless checkpoints to get from one side of the city to the other, at every checkpoint a 20 year old kid with a gun lauds it over you and tells you how it is, who is the master, that you are nothing but a dog.

When was the last time you felt an injustice was done to you, how did it make you feel? Did someone ever steal something from you when you were a kid, and you tried to get it back but they beat you senseless when you tried, did you try again the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Or did you just roll over and let them win?

Say you went on holidays and when you came back someone was living in your house. You asked them to leave, the local council, the highest moral authority in your neighbourhood, all asked them to leave, condemned their actions. But they new someone down the street who gave them some weapons, gave them money, let them become rich enough to repel your attempts to reclaim your house. do you throw stones through the windows?

We can all make up little stories…

alphacrucis 14/01/09 11:32PM

"countless checkpoints to get from one side of the city to the other"

Oh yes, the checkpoints. That relatively new complaint by the Palestinians. In fact, the checkpoints are yet another way that the Palestinian terrorists have made their own people suffer.

There were no checkpoints as recently as the 1980s. Then there was the intifada. But there were still very few checkpoints until the mid-1990s, when Hamas and Islamic Jihad blew a bunch of buses up in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The IDF had to start checking that people and vehicles coming in from the territories didn’t carry bombs (usually with nails and ball bearings around the explosive device to maximise the civilian maiming).

So the checkpoints were the handiwork of Palestinian terrorists. And now you hear them on television crying crocodile tears about the checkpoints that they know very well they necessitates by their very actions.

The chutzpah of it reminds me of the definition of chutzpah: the man who kills both his parents and then applies for social security because he’s an orphan.

alphacrucis 14/01/09 11:59PM

If today’s anti-Israel journalists were in charge in 1943: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/77/213535398_6057b8beef.jpg?v=0

Rockjaw 15/01/09 1:16AM

If today’s journalists still reported objectively:-

http://www.debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?t=46329

Dr Dog 15/01/09 9:25AM

Verbal violence only alphacrucis. But you really can’t claim at this point to be anti-violent can you?

MissnOmar 15/01/09 10:20AM

"There were no checkpoints as recently as the 1980s."

LIAR My God alphacrunt why don’t you just say "all the palestinians are horned devils who want to drink our blood and the IDF are angels sent from heaven"

You are such a liar

Patman 15/01/09 10:58AM

MissnOmar, a Lauren Hill for our time. God (sorry, Allah), isn’t it great to see what for bigots the Internet generation has thrown up!

Benjamin Shah, we had our troubles for more than 30 years; we were attacked and discriminated against. Where were you and your ilk when we needed you?

It seems that a high percentage of the "contributors" to this article (including the author) should concentrate on helping Australia’s own "Palestinians", i.e., the Aborigines. I look forward to some vitriol being whanged in my direction sometime soon.

davidh81 15/01/09 11:56AM

Patman the truth can be very hurtful.

davidh81 15/01/09 11:58AM

Great article NM. Keep up the good work.

MissnOmar 15/01/09 1:11PM

patman what exactly have I posted that is in error.

as opposed to your dishonest garbage ie:

—- "Forced marriage, honour killings, low pay and girls being kept out of school are her priorities for change in the Palestinian parliament. That is when she is not preparing her 13-year-old son to die in the fight against Israel."—-

"Ok. So let’s consider that paragraph. It’s quite freely admitted that Hamas forces women to marry against their will (this is not only special to Hamas but other Muslims across the world too), they carry out honour killings and girls are kept out of schools (obviously Hamas don’t want women to be educated). Therefore, we can see right here how backward Hamas is and how they carry out Sharia law."

Either you did not bother to read the article or you are DELIBERATELY MISREPRESENTING THAT QUOTE

Nowhere in the article does it state that Hamas force marriages or honour killings. The FEMALE HAMAS MP says it happens in PALESTINIAN society (as in many nations and religions) and she AS A HAMAS MP wants to work harder to abolish it.

So tell me, are you a liar, can you not read or were you deliberately trying to twist the argument hmmm?

MissnOmar 15/01/09 1:13PM

Oh and another thing to Patman - nice little bigoted snide dig at what you assume is my religious background/beliefs based on my name. I’m an atheist fuckwit.

You think it’s acceptable to go around calling people you do not know bigots based on absolutely nothing then don’t be surprised when people call you names too shithead

dingbat 15/01/09 2:08PM

If the Palestinans stopped firing rockets would the Israelis do anything about settlements, refugees, east jerusalem etc? I say no.

My personal opinion is that the the warmongers among the Palestininans and Israelis have too much to gain from fighting to stop.

And the one-sided comments merely feed the flames.

And interesting that no-one on this site from either side has defended Australian journalists - they’re a disgrace.

Rockjaw 15/01/09 2:25PM

"I look forward to some vitriol being whanged in my direction sometime soon." - forget the vitriol patman, worry about the inevitable blowback.

No nation in history has done what the zio slicks in Tel Aviv have done without blowback.

The trouble is, patman, you pathetic intellectual incompetent, that all the lies about how "all Jews" were responsible and how "all Jews support the filkthy state of Israel" means that, once again, the majority of Jews, innocent people, will be targeted and brought to takew the fall for these crimes against humanity committed by these mad psychopaths.

Hell what do you morons need to recognise these unavoidable consequences of these crimes? a sequence of pictures?

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