israel/palestine
16 Jan 2009
Not Fit To Print
If you didn't know that civilians were being killed in Gaza, and think that all criticism of Israel is simply about hating Jews, it may be that you've just read a Paul Sheehan article
At the time of writing this, Israeli shells have hit a UN Compound and Gaza City's Media Centre. Gaza hospitals are about to run out of power and medicines. The death toll in Gaza has reached 1078, with more than 5000 injured and tens of thousands internally displaced. Hamas rockets are still being fired into southern Israel.Israeli spin doctors continue to use the neoconservative rhetoric, claiming to be at the forefront of the West's "war on terror". But the reality is that the wheels are falling off this paradigm. On the eve of the inauguration of America's first African-American president, British Foreign Secretary David Milibrand has rejected the Bush doctrine as self-defeating:
"The idea of a 'war on terror' gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda ... The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common."
But while the rest of the world (apart from Israel) may turn its back on terror tunnel vision, Paul Sheehan seems happy to provide an "analysis" of the Israel/Palestine conflict that relies on it completely. Sheehan's column is based on his visit to Israel last November, before the most recent bombardment commenced. Almost a quarter (170 out of 939 words) in Sheehan's column is "[b]ased on briefings I received from the Israeli Government".
Of course, Sheehan is entitled to agree with (if not repeat almost word-for-word) the line of one side to this conflict. Sheehan is also entitled to fill his columns with as much of this kind of content as he wishes. His piece is opinion, not reportage.
And we, as media consumers, are entitled to call a spade a spade, to express our own opinions. So in expressing my own opinion, I cannot help but ask this question: Did Sheehan completely fall for the well-oiled Israeli PR machine's spin when he visited them last November? After seeing the way this Media Watch story hung a question mark over Sheehan's fact-checking rigor I would not be surprised.
If not, how else could Sheehan have reached the ridiculous conclusion that support for Palestinian human rights and opposition to the current Israeli bombardment is necessarily about hating and/or blaming the world's entire Jewish population? Must criticism of Israel necessarily involve sentiments Sheehan describes as "Kill Jews. Dirty People. Sub-human. Mass murderers. Greedy."?
Sheehan paints all critics of Israel, Jewish or otherwise, with the same brush based purely on reports of what some people and their placards said at a protest in Melbourne, along with a BBC report of what a "young man with an Australian accent" said at a rally in Beirut. So a few people at a few rallies reflects the sentiments of millions of people across the globe, many of whom despise Hamas, want a ceasefire and abhor the loss of civilian life.
Using Sheehan's logic, surely the persons in this video taken by Max Blumenthal must necessarily reflect the feelings of every one of the much smaller number of people who support Israel's continued bombardment.
Using Sheehan's logic a bit further, Australian federal MP Julia Irwin surely feels the way she does because she thinks that all Jews are greedy. Sara Dowse, the Jewish author of a novel about three generations of Jewish women, regards Jews as sub-human. Readers of Sheehan's article will now realise that Amira Hass, Israeli journalist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, just wants to kill Jews. And they'll understand that activists from the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem are just a bunch of anti-Semites.
But as (relatively conservative) UK sociologist Frank Furedi wrote in The Australian recently: "I have always criticised the tendency of some Zionist commentators to dismiss all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Such a defensive knee-jerk reaction simply avoids confronting the issues and undermines the possibility of dialogue."
Sheehan claims such alleged anti-Jewish sentiment is "carried by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism". I have no doubt a fair few Muslim theocrats are deeply anti-Semitic. Certainly the literature of groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir does contain grossly anti-Semitic references, something their Australian spokesman Wassim Doureihi had trouble explaining away when grilled by Radio National's Mark Colvin some years back.
Sheehan claims Gaza had become a second Iran, its Government implementing Sharia law. His evidence is that a senior deceased Palestinian leader had 4 wives and 14 children. Back in 2005, King Mswata III had 10 wives and 3 fiancées. Does this make Swaziland a super-Sharia state?
Sheehan insists one cannot generalise about a group whose population of 13 million makes up hardly 0.2 per cent of the world's population. I agree. But I wonder on what basis Sheehan feels comfortable making generalisations about the sentiments and attitudes of 1.2 billion Muslims who make up 20 per cent of the world's population? Or does Sheehan subscribe to Rupert Murdoch's theory that Muslims share certain genetic defects?
Of course, when Sheehan points the finger at others for allegedly being racist and making generalisations about groups, he should be sure that it isn't just his own fingers pointing back at him. Last April, Sheehan wrote a column referring to "Tongan morons" and claiming that Goulburn jail "is dominated by Aborigines, Pacific Islanders and Lebanese Muslims". Shakira Hussein refers to one piece penned by Sheehan in 1995 in which he claimed that a race war in the US involving blacks against whites had cost 25 million lives.
Paul Sheehan doesn't once mention civilian deaths in Gaza. Sheehan's column has about as much nuance as a Corey Worthington interview. I'd love to see him try to get such a ridiculous piece published in an Israeli newspaper.
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Lord knows I am no fan of Sheehan, but I have to say that his outrage has been given some fuel over the past few days. In that time I have heard coherant and heartfelt criticisms of Israel’s shocking violence.
Unfortunately I have also heard some language that leads me to beleive the writer is less concerned with the current ‘war’ and more with their hate for Jewish culture and people. We have had an example here in MN in recent days, which thankfully attracted negative responses from both sides.
I think it is vital that those opposing the actions in Gaza are careful about who we take on as partners in opposing Israel’s violence. I for one would hate for my protest to be ignored because my critique has been weakened through association with a raving bigot.
If we give in to the rhetoric of these people in our opposition to Israel, we give blatherers like Paul Sheehan and propagandists like alphacrucis the material they need to diminish the awful truth about what Israel is doing in Gaza. It would be a shame if the supporters of Israel get any moral superiority from this situation; they don’t deserve it.
Why do we universally condemn Israel for doing what any government and nation would do to protect it’s citizens. If New Zealand daily sent rockets that hit Sydney would anyone criticize an Australian government that took steps after trying everything else to militarally stop it? When the Bali bombers killed Australian civilians we were looking for justice. This was not the actions of a Government and we supported civil action to bring justice to the perpetrators.
It is fine to sit in the safest country in the world and opine on matters far away and of no consequence to most of us. But walk ion somebody else’s shoes for a minute. This includes Israelis and Palestinians.
Can you imagine facing a neighbor that has written in it’s constitution the annihilation of Australia and the killing of every man woman and child? This is the difference in position. There are a majority of Israelis who favor peace with Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian state. I have neither heard nor read any Palestinian position arguing for peace with Israel - not from the Hamas leadership anyway.
00bweis, a fairer comparison would be if Australia had invaded Indonesia because of the Bali bombers.
Mr Oob
How exactly is killing Palestininans protecting its own citizens? Fuelling another generation of hatred may just be the stupidest thing Israel’s done in months. If you wish to protect your own citizens then you need to achieve peace. If Australia was building settlements and continuing to expand in new zealand, and had moved into New Zealand and proclaimed it was now Australia then New Zealand would have every right in the world to fight Australia. And Israel has not tried everything to stop the rockets. Israel does not wish to deal with the issues of settlements, refugees, East Jerusalem etc. However ridiculous Hamas may be, and however pointless and inneffective their efforts, and full of hatred their intent, the one-sided support of Israel is absurd.
Yes we supported civil action to bring justice after Bali. What’s happening in Gaza is not civil action. The rockets have killed 20 people in 7 years, hardly requiring a full scale bombardment killing over 1000.
If you have neither heard nor read any Palestininan position arguing for peace then you need to do some research of your own accord.
OObweis this article is about the role of anti-semitism and Israeli propoganda on reporting the conflict in Gaza, but since you are here lets look at a few of your points.
Firstly New Zealand wouldn’t fire rockets at us. They wouldn’t because despite their sense of entitlement to our best beaches and surprising success at cricket and league, we have developed and maintained a relationship of mutual respect and benefit. I leave you to draw your own inferences in relation to Israel.
As dingbat points out there is little relationship between this action and the Bali bombings, and in fact only the lunar right supported anything but allowing the Indonesian justice system to take its course. Many were dismayed to see the resultant capital punishment. I don’t remember anyone calling for the dropping of phosphorus bombs on Indonesian schools.
I would much rather be in an Israeli’s shoes right now than in a Palestinian’s. The Israeli’s shoes would be far less likely to be buried under the ruins of a UN aid depot. Plus Muslims are pretty sensitive about footware, and I would want to be offensive.
There are constitutions and manifestos all over the world that call for my death and yours. I am indeed lucky that I don’t live in a region that is obsessed with age old cultural/religio bullshit. I am proud that we rarely resort to violence in sorting out conflict when it arisies.
Israelis certainly need a lot less Palestinians who hate them. Israel, on the other hand, seems to think they just need a lot less Palestinians.
The reality is that Israel gives Jews a bad name. I have Jewish friends who cringe with shame and frustration at what Israel has become. Some of the loudest voices raised against Israel’s war crimes are Jewish.
The criticism is of Israel and Israelis and their supporters. Some of these supporters are Jewish and many are not. The Christian nutters in the States fully support this genocide because they need armageddon to arrive.
So, in truth, when one criticises Israel’s appalling behaviour it is not anti-semitic. The anti-semitic flag has been waved too many times to count for much anyway these days. At least amongst people of reason.
DerkF
I urge people who wish to understand the situation to read Robert Fisk’s Great war for civilisation; the conquest of the middle east.
Against this background Dingbat’s comments make a lot of sense.
OObweis you are mouthing propaganda and the analogy does not fit!
You said:Why do we universally condemn Israel for doing what any government and nation would do to protect it’s citizens.
Because no other government would do what Israel is doing. When the Brits were bombed by the IRA because the Irish wanted to end English occupation and colonisation of Northern Ireland, the British did not slaughter thousands of men, women and children and attempt to bomb Ireland back to the stoneage.
I am sure if Australia had occupied and was colonising New Zealand as Israel occupies and colonises Palestine and I am sure if we had locked the Kiwis into concentration camps as Israel has done with the Palestinians then I am sure they would fire rockets at us and have every right to do so.
And where do the Bali bombers fit this scenario? That attack was sourced in dissent within Indonesia, religious fundamentalism and a hatred of foreign meddling (the latter understandable.) The attack was not against people who were occupying and colonising Bali and murdering and maiming Balinese.
You said: Can you imagine facing a neighbor that has written in it’s constitution the annihilation of Australia and the killing of every man woman and child?
Do you really know what you are talking about? Let’s turn it around, can you imagine facing a neighbour who is your occupier and who continues to dispossess you and colonise your land, imprison you, torture you (10,000 in Israeli gaols 3,000 of them children and they get tortured too), murder you, demolish your homes, orchards, vineyards, farmlands, drop bombs on you and who has politicians who call for the removal of all of your people from your own land and you are blamed if you resist?
Your analogy is idiotic. Hamas, as the elected government of an occupied people calls for the occupation to end. For the colonisation to stop. For Israel to return to the only borders it can lay claim to, UN mandated. Hamas does not call for the death of all Israelis, it calls for an end to the Zionist State which oppresses Palestinians. Understandably.
But Hamas won’t recognise Israel. Why should it? Israel does not recognise Palestine. Israel refused to allow a Palestinian State. Israel is the occupier and coloniser and yet you would demand of the occupied that they give to the aggressor what the aggressor will not give to them.
Israelis live in freedom. Palestinians do not. Israel has maintained the most venal, vicious and murderous occupation in modern history and you dare to blame the people they abuse.
As to a majority of Israelis favouring peace with Palestine, yep, sure, on their terms. I’ve spent time in Israel and they want peace but they don’t want a Palestinian state, they want the Palestinians kept in their bantustans and they want to keep all their illegal settlements. What sane person would agree to that?
If Israel had wanted peace it would have ended the occupation long ago or it would have annexed all of Palestine and given full rights to its indigenous peoples as Australia has. It hasn’t, it won’t. It’s charter is to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people. That is what this is about.
You said: I have neither heard nor read any Palestinian position arguing for peace with Israel - not from the Hamas leadership anyway.
Then you have not read enough but that is patently clear from your ridiculous comments.
Oobweis, British member of Parliament, Gerald Kaufman, whose family were murdered by the Nazis, whose mother was murdered, in her bed, by the Nazis told the British parliament that his family did not die to provide Israel with an excuse to murder Palestinians.
See Jewish Post article: - http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950867914&pagename=JPost%…
Oobweis, If you want to know why the Palestinians are fighting Israel, read this for starters:
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestin (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much touted “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide.
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law-the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs-have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c).
For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law - the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs - have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people.
This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a).
This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b).
This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.
If you want to read more, here’s the link:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=82097§ionid=3510303
Do these propaganda articles never cease?
Will there, at any point, actually emerge a reasoned analysis of the situation?
All we are hearing is Hamas apologism.
alpha, apologise this:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/jan/15/gaza-israelandthepal…
And for a bit of balance, here is one you can shove right up your kilt:-
http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Crossparty-fury-of-MPs-at.4868105.jp
Sameh A. Habeeb, a Photojournalist, Humanitarian and Peace Activist in the Gaza Concentration Camp reports that on Day 20 of Israeli War On Gaza the Gaza Massacre death toll is 1,100 killed with 5,100 wounded (for the latest reports from Sameh Habeeb from inside the Gaza Concentration Camp see “Gaza Strip, the Untold Story”: http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/ ) .
Yet outstanding Jewish American lawyer and President of the US National Lawyers Guild, Professor Marjorie Cohn (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27707/42/ ) in cataloguing Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Concentration Camp tells us that NO (ZERO) Israelis were killed by Gaza rockets in the year preceding the Israeli attack, QUOTE: "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.
Mainstream media non-reportage about Western-caused deaths in Occupied countries from Occupied Haiti to Occupied Afghanistan make these disgusting media (and their KNOWING readers) complicit in horrendous US Alliance "democratic Nazi" crimes against humanity.
Fundamental to CONTINUING, genocidal carbon pollution (that threatens climate genocide and may be impossible to stop: http://www.green-blog.org/2009/01/13/good-and-bad-climate-news/ ), the Bush Wars (9-11 million excess deaths, 1990-2009: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25184/42/ ) and the current Gaza Massacre (reprisals of 1,100 killed so far versus ZERO Israeli deaths from Gaza rockets in the preceding year – war crimes as analyzed by outstanding Jewish American lawyer and President of the US National Lawyers Guild, Professor Marjorie Cohn: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27707/42/ ) is neo-con, Bush-ite and Zionist LYING by omission and commission as set out in “Gaza. Lying and Climate Genocide”: http://www.green-blog.org/2009/01/15/gaza-lying-and-climate-genoicide/ and “egregious promotion of a “might is right” Culture of Lying that pre-empts rational risk management in the face of the mounting Climate Emergency“.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Rogerio, it is about time. British MP’s as your links show, including Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman, calling the Israeli leadership ’ mass murders and war criminals.’
Hahaha war criminals! Laughable.
Hamas are a gaggle of angels, I suppose?
Rogerio and rosros, I know you mean well, but you are engaging a determined zealot who believes in deceipt and lies. These people are determined criminals who truly believe their cause justifies the crimes the world is witnessing and they add to these crimes by going to every length to deceive, to lie, to distort and to cheat.
They do not share your faith in honesty, in integrity and they genuinely believe in their own superiority. Tragically, they truly believe that they are a race, a superior race, even a chosen race whose ability to lie and deceieve is evidence of their superior intellect and it will never occur to them that they are simply nothing more than common criminals.
I know I will be attacked for saying so, but you are wasting your time engaging with this person who is clearly conveying the patholigal lies which he is being fed by his cohorts.
Look at his username - prime crucifier? - he mistakenly believes Australians will be shocked by anti-christian rhetoric - pathetic - ignore the guy and continue with the debate or else you will be providing these propagandists with a forum for their filth.
The good readers of NM who are undecided on this issue will make up their own minds, Rockjaw.
Your inflammatory rhetoric does not help your cause.
You guys are going to love tim blair’s column tomorrow
These are the "peaceful protesters" demonstrating for "Palestine":
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kp-lwSe2llg
"Allahu Akbar!" they scream. And to the police: "Run, you cowards! I’m watching you, boy!"
Glad I’m not aligning myself with their ilk.
How to get even with the Kiwis - common garden variety rockets that can be launched from your verandah in Punchbowl.
The mechanics, ‘ere…
http://current.com/items/89666922/gaza_rockets.htm
…the land of the long white cloud/settler was illegally occupied by Maoris’ and these people ought really all go back to Togo or Benin or wherever they came from!
These should help …
(Note no rockets where pointed at innocent Maori kids, or khaki clad Mormons chanting adhaan from Gideon’s’ Bible)
Hahahaa great video! I can’t believe you support those maniacs. "Allahu akbar" indeed! Fizzle.
The author produced a wholly unbalanced article to promote his own version of events. If Hamas had Israel’s military might, there would be no Israel, a fact which he, and many other here, conveniently ignores.
Israel is defending itself, and taking all necessary steps so a declared enemy which wants to destroy it is no longer a threat. The enemy (Hamas) does not give a toss about exposing their own civilian population to the might of Israel’s army in order to achieve their declared goals. For Hamas, the more (innocent) people die, the better their cause looks. It is astonishing so many people can be fooled. Worse still, if Hamas (and similar groups) were victorious they would impose the most brutal dictatorship suppressing the most basic human rights in the name of their distorted version of Islam. To focus solely on Israel’s actions in self-defence (which our Government has proudly supported, with the Opposition supports) is wrong and short-sighted.
Ultimately for Israel and Jews this is War for Survival, not an intellectual conversation. For Hamas it is a War for Conquest. They will lose, and and it is a tragedy that Hamas does not care about the people they claim to be fighting for. And worse still, that they kill with impunity anyone within their camp which disagrees with their views. Perhaps Yusuf should look into that, and also wonder why the border between Gaza and Egypt is firmly shut.
eet - "If Hamas had Israel’s military might, there would be no Israel, a fact which he, and many other here, conveniently ignores" - which is why it is called a "military occupation" - and the world tires of it, Israel’s racist regime has to step down and meet the minimum standards expected of a modern nation. This stone age ideology can no longer be tolerated in the 21st century.
The squatter camps will have to be dismantled I’m afraid, and the message from many parts of the world to the "white" supremists in Tel Aviv is this: - "adapt or dye" - the world is running out of patience.
For all its muscle power and powerful allies, Israel stands diminished in the eyes of the world, writes Paul McGeough.
War sets its own hideous pace but there has to be a morning after. If, as anticipated, the smoke and ash start to clear over Gaza in the coming days, the crying by the wounded and bereaved soon will be drowned out by claim and counterclaim over who won the war.
And unless the world has taken leave of its senses, Hamas will have achieved a remarkable breakthrough - a lifting of the internationally backed siege that has made a prison of the Gaza Strip for its 1.5 million people. No doubt there will be conditions that will temper that sense of victory.
Hamas will insist that it fired rockets to the end - 25 lobbed into Israel on Thursday. But it will be a long time before it fires another.
David Horvitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, observed: "The practical success or failure of Israel’s resort to force will be measured in two areas: the degree to which Hamas is deterred from further rocket fire and the extent to which it is prevented from recovering and then expanding its military capacity."
Other yardsticks will also apply. At $US1.4 billion ($2.08 billion), the first estimate of the cost of damage caused by more than 2300 Israeli air strikes alone seems too low. In an interview with The Times in London, an Israeli officer who was in Gaza described the damage as unimaginable: "It doesn’t look like we have been there for [just] a few weeks. It looks destroyed, demolished, like we were bombing it for years."
After almost three weeks of being pummelled by one of the world’s bigger and technologically superior military machines, Hamas lost only a fraction of its fighters and still holds a big stockpile of rockets and other weapons, Israeli officers concede.
On the battlefield, Hamas seemed to be playing for time and that seemed to be paying off. Most estimates put its fighting force at 15,000-plus and so far Israel estimates it has killed 300 to 400 of them.
As the third week of the conflict ends, Israel is diminished in the eyes of the world. Speaking of the hundreds of dead children in Gaza, a Tel Aviv-based ambassador was quoted as telling Israel: "Your action is brutal … I don’t know how to explain these things to myself, never mind to my government."
At the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, a senior official indicated this ambassador was not alone. Acknowledging the overwhelming negativity of dispatches from embassies in Israel even before the onslaught to come - when foreign media finally gets into ravaged Gaza - the official groaned: "You see the reports in the morning and you feel ill."
The serial wrong-headedness by the US, the Europeans and Israel in their collective handling of the Palestinian issue after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington has been breathtaking. The first mistake was to paint the legitimate national claims of the Palestinians into the so-called "war on terror". That error was compounded by the global collective punishment of Palestinians for electing a Hamas government in 2006.
The siege, as described by the Ha’aretz analyst Amira Hass this week, had existed since the early 1990s and was merely refined after Hamas’s election victory. "We’re all big boys and girls and we know … Israel’s goal was to thwart the two-state solution … ," Hass wrote.
It was then that Israel and its international sponsors decided they needed to deal with the nice "moderates" of Fatah rather than Hamas "hardliners" who had been endorsed by Palestinians because of Fatah’s decades of failure.
Describing as a "dangerous idea" Israel’s belief that it has a right to choose who represents the Palestinians, the Israeli commentator Yossi Alpher warned this week: "Israel has failed whenever it has tried to manipulate the structure of the Arab leadership … Israel removed the PLO from Lebanon and instead got Hezbollah. There is no telling what we’ll get in Gaza if we remove Hamas, but the return of Fatah-PLO is improbable."
Speculating on the inevitable key elements of a ceasefire - rocket fire and weapons smuggling cease and border-crossings re-open - Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock, lamented the tragedy in these terms: "It underlines the folly of maintaining the fiction that Hamas is beyond the pale and cannot be a partner in talks … when Hamas leaders have already indicated that they could, in the right circumstances, accept a two-state solution."
Undaunted, Israel’s Foreign Ministry has already set up a "morning after" taskforce, with a key challenge to keep both Hamas and Iran out of what is expected to be a major international effort to rebuild Gaza, lest either reaps the kind of kudos Hezbollah did in the reconstruction of south Lebanon after an Israeli invasion in 2006.
Notwithstanding that Hamas is the elected government of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel wants Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority "as well as Arab and international entities" to do the work.
But the war seems to have further eroded Abbas’s parlous position. West Bank Palestinians who have dared to protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been clubbed and beaten by Abbas’s security forces and anecdotal reports from across the West Bank indicate a steady rise in support for Hamas. "[Abbas] is one of the main losers in this war," the independent Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib observed this week.
One of the deal-breaker issues that will cause some to scratch their heads is the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt - hundreds of them delivering everyday goods as well as arms for Hamas.
All originate on the Egyptian side of the border, which suggests Israel went to war against Gaza to achieve an outcome that could have been had in the Washington-Jerusalem-Cairo cosy corner, without squandering so much military, political and diplomatic capital.
If Israel was unable to do a deal with Egypt to close the tunnels, it might have asked for more help from Washington, which gives the Cairo regime an annual pay cheque second in largesse only to that paid to Israel. Such a deal was reportedly to be signed in Washington yesterday.
The outcome of the war will be assessed with the passage of time and, for Israel, there will be a dangerous sleeper effect - the impact of the war on the attitudes and thinking of Gazans, especially that half of the population who are teenagers or younger, and their judgment of who is to blame.
"The children of Gaza who survive this war will remember," the Ha’aretz commentator Gideon Levy wrote on Thursday. "A significant majority of the children killed in Gaza did not die because they were used as human shields or because they worked for Hamas.
"They were killed because the [Israeli Defence Forces] bombed, shelled or fired at them, their families or their apartment buildings.
"That is why the blood of Gaza’s children is on our hands, not on Hamas’s hands and we’ll never be able to escape that responsibility. A child who has seen his house destroyed, his brother killed and his father humiliated will not forgive."
Levy’s "what next?" theme was taken up by the provocative former Knesset-member Avraham Burg. Writing on Israel’s repeated refusal to accept the Palestinians’ chosen interlocutors, he wrote: "On the day Gaza becomes a stronghold of al-Qaeda and global radical Islam, we will discover that it was Hamas, the Hamas of today, that was not so awful."
There were signs this week that Israel’s political leadership had split. Already being bundled from office on corruption allegations, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, seemed out of touch as he manipulated ministerial meetings to prolong the Gaza war and in his public bragging of how the Israeli tail wagged the Washington dog when it came to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s vote in the UN Security Council.
The Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has a wonderful knack of tracing the arcs of Israel’s history to reveal today’s reality - all the talk of successive governments about the peace process has been lip service which has conceded nothing on the ground.
Even before the events of this week, when Washington dismissed Olmert as - well, as a liar, and the UN used similar language to dismiss Israel’s attempt to blame Hamas for the white phosphorous bombing of the UN’s emergency stores of food and medicine in Gaza, Shlaim was in his library, re-evaluating the words of John Troutbeck.
In June 1948, Troutbeck vented to Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary of the day, that the US had been responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders".
"I used to think this judgment was too harsh," Shlaim wrote in The Guardian. "But Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza and the Bush Administration’s complicity, have reopened the question."
Paul McGeough is the Herald’s Chief Correspondent.
^ Now that’s what I call a balanced and informative article.
It is utterly futile trying to talk sensibly with the Zionist apologists, and by Hell, it appears there are a lot of them. No, not all Jews are Israelis, and not all Jews are Zionists, but the Zionist Jewish organisations in Australia and around the world are extremely well supported financially, and politically. It appears that even Jews find it extremely hard to find the courage to criticize the Jewish ‘state’, because these organisations come down on them lie a ton of bricks, calling them very stupid but supposedly hurtful names, like Anti-Semite, which in itself it utterly stupid, because a lot of the peoples who came from that area were Semite, whether jewish or Muslim or Christian. Any open discussion on the matter of the mass extermination of a people (Palestinians) who can only fight with pop-guns against the Israelis, armed with every known and unknown munition that the Yanks can supply them with,and said to be a ‘war’ by israeli propaganda (how can this be termed a ‘war’ for Hells sake?) is swamped by ‘outriders’ for these Jewish Organisations, armed well in advance (some say over six months in advance) with propaganda) who seem to be given free reign in our media.
I see that some see signs that the USA has been using israeli ‘wars’ against the Palestinians and Lebanese as test beds for their new weapons systems. Certainly phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs and the newer and even more devastating ‘duster’ bombs are American supplied.
However, I see signs of some change for the better. Was it yesterday when I saw an excellent article by (Ex PM) Malcolm Fraser in the Fairfax Press, and today there appears to be some more free discussion. What the israelis are doing (and most people have no understanding of just what the true aims of the Jews in israel (Palestine) are) is coming under some scrutiny here in Australia at last (even if it is NOT in the USA) and more and more people are objecting at our Government’s gutless grovelling at the feet of George Bush on this matter. I see this morning that Bush/Rice have tied the hands of Obama just a little more with an agreement signed with the israelis in the final waning hours of the worst Presidency in US history, tying the hands of future US governments to abject support of israeli genocidal aims.
Was a report in media about the israeli PM speaking to IDF and media, and skiting about how he controlled the agenda of the US, by calling Bush out of a public talk-show to get him to make Rice abstain from the UN vote. Bush and Co are denying all, of course, but it must surely have been embarrassing…unless of course you are beyond embarrassment, which maybe the Bush administration is. However, it was strange that this story, which was somewhat earth-shaking, died after one airing. Our media sure knew it was embarrassing. I guess it is fairly well know that most of our media is controlled by rich jewish interests. The israelis could never have got away with all they have if we had had a ‘free’ media.
I can guess that the latest ‘jewish’ armed assault on the Palestinians in Gaza will end with the end of the Bush presidency. It was planned to occur at just this time because Bush gave his undertaking to give them free rein to do what they wished, commit great war crimes and crimes against humanity, while he remained as president, and most of the world (media and government) was shut down for the Christian pagan festival. Bush controls the UN through his Veto. So nothing was done, and nothing could be done, to stop the devastation. Now, with Bush tying the hands of US Governments to the total isolation of Hamas (the freely ELECTED government of Palestine) for the forsee-able future, the israelis have got most of what they want, and will be able, as they see it, to drive the remaining Palestinians into the sea or into arab lands, or die in the total isolation from all Humanitarian aid that israel will enforce.. unless Obama negates what Bush has done!! Israel has the contempt for the UN that Bush and Co have, and the bombing and killing of UN facilities and people is just what the israelis have planned all along. Keep them out, and you enforce the isolation.
The US congress, dependent on jewish money to get elected, will ensure that Obama is not able to do anything to upset the israeli plans, even if he wanted to, which is unlikely, having Clinton as Secretary of State. She is jewish owned!
Some have spoken of charging the israeli government with Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes, but the US congress will ensure that this does not happen, with their control of the UN. US Presidents would have to be know to be complicit.
Some slight chance that France and other European countries may regain some independence and balance in their dealings, but this will depend on Obama, how far he lets them, I guess. Any threat by an American President carries a lot of weight.
But Australia will never get any slight balance while our media in controlled by Murdoch and other barons. Our pollies will never get any guts, knowing that they will be dropped from pre-selection at the next election at the behest of zionist jewish interests, if they were to speak out against israeli agression and expansionism and mass murder.
We live in a sick world! Dazza.
Dazza,It is a sick world but there are signs of healing. There is greater awareness in the US of the truth, that Israel is a rogue State guilty of war crimes. That in itself is a beginning. the more Americans become aware the better.
The Palestinians say: "This is a war of extermination." They describe bombs which break into 16 parts, each part splintering into 116 fragments, the white phosphorus which water cannot put out; which seems to die and then flares up again.
No one I spoke to has any doubt that the Israelis are committing war crimes. According to the medics here, to reports from doctors inside the Gaza Strip and to Palestinian eye-witnesses, more than 95% of the dead and injured are civilians. Many more will probably be found when the siege is lifted and the rubble is cleared. The doctors speak of a disproportionate number of head injuries - specifically of shrapnel lodged in the brain.
They also speak of the extensive burns of white phosphorus. These injuries are, as they put it, ‘incompatible with life’. They are also receiving large numbers of amputees. This is because the damage done to the bone by explosive bullets is so extensive that the only way the doctors in Gaza can save lives is by amputating.
One of the nurses said to me that the nurses and paramedics were horrified by what they were seeing. "We deal with cases all the time," she said. "But what we’re seeing these days we’ve never seen before or imagined."
Upstairs a professor of economics, accompanying his brother, sees me staring at my notes and says: "Exaggerate. Whatever you write will not be as bad as the truth."
In the silence that followed someone put a mobile in my hand.
"Look!" On a rubble-strewn street lay the body of a roasted and charred child. Two bones were sticking out where her thighs had been. "The dogs ate her legs," he explains. For a moment I put a hand over my eyes. The phone goes round the table, each man gravely contemplating the burned child on the screen. Then someone asks: "What will it take to make the Israelis stop?"
• Ahdaf Soueif is a writer whose novel The Map of Love was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker prize
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/17/gaza-israel-palestine
Video shows evidence of phosphorus bombs in GazaGaza doctors detail burns to entire victims’
http://newmatilda.com/2009/01/16/not-fit-print#comment-8553
Published on Friday, January 16, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Still Breathing, A Report from Gaza
by Caoimhe Butterly
The morgues of Gaza’s hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in. Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child. Many of those who wait their turn have lost numerous family members and loved ones.
Blood is everywhere. Hospital orderlies hose down the floors of operating rooms, bloodied bandages lie discarded in corners, and the injured continue to pour in: bodies lacerated by shrapnel, burns, bullet wounds. Medical workers, exhausted and under siege, work day and night and each life saved is seen as a victory over the predominance of death.
The streets of Gaza are eerily silent- the pulsing life and rhythm of markets, children, fishermen walking down to the sea at dawn brutally stilled and replaced by an atmosphere of uncertainty, isolation and fear. The ever-present sounds of surveillance drones, F16s, tanks and apaches are listened to acutely as residents try to guess where the next deadly strike will be- which house, school, clinic, mosque, governmental building or community centre will be hit next and how to move before it does. That there are no safe places- no refuge for vulnerable human bodies- is felt acutely. It is a devastating awareness for parents- that there is no way to keep their children safe.
As we continue to accompany the ambulances, joining Palestinian paramedics as they risk their lives, daily, to respond to calls from those with no other life-line, our existence becomes temporarily narrowed down and focused on the few precious minutes that make the difference between life and death. With each new call received as we ride in ambulances that careen down broken, silent roads, sirens and lights blaring, there exists a battle of life over death. We have learned the language of the war that the Israelis are waging on the collective captive population of Gaza- to distinguish between the sounds of the weaponry used, the timing between the first missile strikes and the inevitable second- targeting those that rush to tend to and evacuate the wounded, to recognize the signs of the different chemical weapons being used in this onslaught, to overcome the initial vulnerability of recognizing our own mortality.
Though many of the calls received are to pick up bodies, not the wounded, the necessity of affording the dead a dignified burial drives the paramedics to face the deliberate targeting of their colleagues and comrades- thirteen killed while evacuating the wounded, fourteen ambulances destroyed- and to continue to search for the shattered bodies of the dead to bring home to their families.
Last night, while sitting with paramedics in Jabaliya refugee camp, drinking tea and listening to their stories, we received a call to respond to the aftermath of a missile strike. When we arrived at the outskirts of the camp where the attack had taken place the area was filled with clouds of dust, torn electricity lines, slabs of concrete and open water pipes gushing water into the street. Amongst the carnage of severed limbs and blood we pulled out the body of a young man, his chest and face lacerated by shrapnel wounds, but alive- conscious and moaning.
As the ambulance sped him through the cold night we applied pressure to his wounds, the warmth of his blood seeping through the bandages reminder of the life still in him. He opened his eyes in answer to my questions and closed them again as Muhammud, a volunteer paramedic, murmured "ayeesh, nufuss"- live, breathe- over and over to him. He lost consciousness as we arrived at the hospital, received into the arms of friends who carried him into the emergency room. He, Majid, lived and is recovering.
A few minutes later there was another missile strike, this time on a residential house. As we arrived a crowd had rushed to the ruins of the four story home in an attempt to drag survivors out from under the rubble. The family the house belonged to had evacuated the area the day before and the only person in it at the time of the strike was 17 year old Muhammud who had gone back to collect clothes for his family. He was dragged out from under the rubble still breathing- his legs twisted in unnatural directions and with a head wound, but alive. There was no choice but to move him, with the imminence of a possible second strike, and he lay in the ambulance moaning with pain and calling for his mother. We thought he would live, he was conscious though in intense pain and with the rest of the night consumed with call after call to pick up the wounded and the dead, I forgot to check on him. This morning we were called to pick up a body from Shifa hospital to take back to Jabaliya. We carried a body wrapped in a blood-soaked white shroud into the ambulance, and it wasn’t until we were on the road that we realized that it was Muhammud’s body. His brother rode with us, opening the shroud to tenderly kiss Muhammud’s forehead.
This morning we received news that Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was under siege. We tried unsuccessfully for hours to gain access to the hospital, trying to organize co-ordination to get the ambulances past Israeli tanks and snipers to evacuate the wounded and dead. Hours of unsuccessful attempts later we received a call from the Shujahiya neighborhood, describing a house where there were both dead and wounded patients to pick up. The area was deserted, many families having fled as Israeli tanks and snipers took up position amongst their homes, other silent in the dark, cold confines of their homes, crawling from room to room to avoid sniper fire through their windows.
As we drove slowly around the area, we heard women’s cries for help. We approached their house on foot, followed by the ambulances and as we came to the threshold of their home, they rushed towards us with their children, shaking and crying with shock. At the door of the house the ambulance lights exposed the bodies of four men, lacerated by shrapnel wounds- the skull and brains of one exposed, others whose limbs had been severed off. The four were the husbands and brothers of the women, who had ventured out to search for bread and food for their families. Their bodies were still warm as we struggled to carry them on stretchers over the uneven ground, their blood staining the earth and our clothes. As we prepared to leave the area our torches illuminated the slumped figure of another man, his abdomen and chest shredded by shrapnel. With no space in the other ambulances, and the imminent possibility of sniper fire, we were forced to take his body in the back of the ambulance carrying the women and children. One of the little girls stared at me before coming into my arms and telling me her name- Fidaa’, which means to sacrifice. She stared at the body bag, asking when he would wake up.
Once back at the hospital we received word that the Israeli army had shelled Al Quds hospital, that the ensuing fire risked spreading and that there had been a 20-minute time-frame negotiated to evacuate patients, doctors and residents in the surrounding houses. By the time we got up there in a convoy of ambulances, hundreds of people had gathered. With the shelling of the UNRWA compound and the hospital there was a deep awareness that nowhere in Gaza is safe, or sacred.
We helped evacuate those assembled to near-by hospitals and schools that have been opened to receive the displaced. The scenes were deeply saddening- families, desperate and carrying their children, blankets and bags of their possessions venturing out in the cold night to try to find a corner of a school or hospital to shelter in. The paramedic we were with referred to the displacement of the over 46,000 Gazan Palestinians now on the move as a continuation of the ongoing Nakba of dispossession and exile seen through generation after generation enduring massacre after massacre.
Today’s death toll was over 75, one of the bloodiest days since the start of this carnage. Over 1,110 Palestinians have been killed in the past 21 days. 367 of those have been children. The humanitarian infrastructure of Gaza is on its knees- already devastated by years of comprehensive siege. There has been a deliberate, systematic destruction of all places of refuge. There are no safe places here, for anyone.
And yet, in the face of so much desecration, this community has remained intact. The social solidarity and support between people is inspiring, and the steadfastness of Gaza continues to humble and inspire all those who witness it. Their level of sacrifice demands our collective response- and recognition that demonstrations are not enough. Gaza, Palestine and its people continue to live, breathe, resist and remain intact and this refusal to be broken is a call and challenge to us all.
Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist working in Jabaliya and Gaza City as a volunteer with ambulance services and as co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement, She can be contacted on 00972-598273960 or at sahara78@hotmail.co.uk.
Published on Friday, January 16, 2009 by The Washington Times
When Israel Expelled Palestinians: What if it was San Diego and Tijuana Instead?
by Randall Kuhn
In the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."
Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak’s comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let’s see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.
Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I’m Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego’s discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.
And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.
Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn’t allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn’t even allow them to fish.
Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.
The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.
© 2009 The Washington Times
Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
Enough!
Someone Must Stop Israel’s Rampant Madness in Gaza
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
January 16, 2009 "Haaretz " — -Someone has to stop this rampant madness. Right now. It may seem as though the cabinet hasn’t decided on the "third stage" of the war yet, Amos Gilad is discussing a cease fire in Cairo, the end of the fighting seems close - but all this is misleading.
The streets of Gaza Thursday looked like killing fields in the midst of the "third stage" and worse. Israel is arrogantly ignoring the Security Council’s resolution calling for a cease-fire and is shelling the UN compound in Gaza, as if to show its real feeling toward that institution. Emergency supplies intended for Gaza residents are going up in flames in the burning warehouses. Thick black smoke is rising from the burning flour sacks and the fuel reserves near them, covering the streets.
In the streets, people are running back and forth in panic, holding children and suitcases in their hands, helpless as the shells fall around them. Nobody in the diplomatic corridors is in any hurry to help those unfortunates who have nowhere to run.
The handful of journalists trying to cover the events, despite the outrageous media closure Israel has imposed, are also in danger. The Israel Defense Forces Thursday shelled the media building they were in and now they are all crowded in one office, as fearful and horrified as the rest of the scorched city’s residents.
The BBC’s Arabic correspondent, furious and alarmed, swears hoarsely that nobody fired from the building or around it. Meanwhile, in our television studios, there is rejoicing.
Patients Forced From Beds As Israel Attacks Hospital
By AFP
January "16, 2009 "AFP" — –- In scenes of utter panic, patients who had been wounded in the ongoing war in the territory could be seen trying to struggle from their beds, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Desperate patients tried to flee a hospital in Gaza City this morning as it became engulfed in flames after being earlier set on fire by an Israeli tank shell, medics and witnesses said.
In scenes of utter panic, patients who had been wounded in the ongoing war in the territory could be seen trying to struggle from their beds, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
At least three prematurely-born babies were being wheeled out of the hospital in their incubators along with three patients who had been on life-support machines.
The sound of Israeli gunfire could also be heard in the neighbourhood where Al-Quds hospital is situated.
Dozens of families had arrived there at dawn loaded down with babies, toddlers and children after scores of Israeli tanks had roared into the area, sparking furious battles with Palestinian fighters.
Free Palestine. Full credit to the Palestinian resistance for holding out against the aggressor. Israel has lost just as she lost in Lebanon. She has lost because she is in the wrong, because you cannot defeat an idea which is rooted in justice and human rights. Let’s hope Barack Obama actually does something even-handed so that the Palestinians get their freedom and the Israelis get sane leaders.
Israel hoped that Gaza would grant it a victory, any victory, even if a small token of triumph. Starting December 27 and for many days, Israel pulverized entire neighborhoods, killed and wounded thousands, mostly civilians, mostly children and women. Another New Middle East was in the making with its own “birth pangs.” Entire families perished; children died in droves, in their homes, in schools; a panicking population ran in circles, hopelessly trying to flee the death machines that hovered everywhere, but there was no escape. Borders remained sealed as the region’s ‘moderates’ watched the demise of the ‘extremists.’ Rice, again, grinned, brazenly justifying Israel’s new war. The world watched in horror as the drama unfolded. But Gaza fought back, withstood, resisted, and the language once again was altered. Arabs are now speaking of ‘victory’, hailing the ‘resistance’, singing the praise of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Gaza’s resistance is nothing short of a ‘miracle’, said Aljazeera’s military expert. Millions of Arabs around the world agree. The New Middle East defined in Lebanon in July-August 2006, was confirmed in Palestine in December-January 2008-2009. A new language with new terminology and a new culture is springing up from the ashes and the rubble of Gaza. Arabs are eager to define themselves and shed years of defeat and defeatism. A New Middle East, indeed.
http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud160109.htm
Support the brave dissenters from the IDF.
He says he joined the Israeli army believing he would be fighting "terror organisations". He found himself suppressing Palestinian aspirations for freedom and putting down protests of Palestinian farmers "against the incontinent theft of their lands". He also saw abuses, such as Israeli troops sending Palestinian women and children into houses to ensure they were not booby-trapped, and using civilians as human shields.
"I am not a pacifist. I recognise the necessity of Israel to have a strong defensive army but I’m no longer going to play a part in 40 years of occupation. I told the army I will report for training so that I can always be ready to defend Israel, but attacking Gaza and perpetuating occupation is not defending Israel."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/17/refuseniks-israeli-dissent-m…
He is disturbed that most of the Israeli public and much of the media is blind to the fact that hundreds of Palestinians have been cut to pieces by Israeli fire power. "In the long run, it’s not a war of defence. We are creating a thousand suicide bombers for the future from the brothers of the dead, the sons of the dead … in the long term, we are creating more terror. You can’t separate the war in Gaza from the fact that the Palestinian nation is under occupation for more than 40 years. I’m not justifying Hamas firing rockets but we Israelis should first look at what we are doing."
"but the Zionist Jewish organisations in Australia and around the world are extremely well supported financially, and politically. It appears that even Jews find it extremely hard to find the courage to criticize the Jewish ‘state’, because these organisations come down on them lie a ton of bricks"
Yes yes, we’ve heard it all before. The Jews are rich, they control the world, and they kill innocent non-Jewish babies to extract their blood. Is that about right?
Jew-hatred is an awful, Hermes-like, eternal disease.
More Israeli spin. Olmert announces ceasefire because goals are achieved.
Hmmm, wasn’t the plan to stop rockets? Never did.
Wasn’t the plan to destroy Hamas completely? Never did.
Wasn’t the plan to teach the Palestinians a lesson? Never did.(other than that Israelis are the war criminals they always knew they were)
Total failure on Israel’s part and, even more so because in refusing journalists entry to the slaughter they inflicted, the news came from the people of Gaza and the whole world saw the bloodied and dismembered bodies of hundreds of children and now knows the truth about Israel.
The real story is of course as anyone can deduce, that, the Obama lot have said stop it or we will stop you and the Israelis to save face, finally called a ceasefire.
End result, whether or not Obama’s lot can be even-handed, Hamas are heroes, Fatah are destroyed as collaborating wimps, the Palestinian people have pride in their own strength and endurance, the Arab world takes heart from the strength and endurance of the Palestinians and in this very unjust world, a blow has been struck for justice against tyranny and aggression.
Free Palestine!
alpha - "Jew-hatred is an awful, Hermes-like, eternal disease." - yes, and so is infanticide, genocide, depleted uranium, white phospherous, unlawful mlitary occupation and ethnic cleansing, and yet your thugs in Palestinian Israel continue to commit these crimes against the Palestinian people.
Anti-semitism is a shield which you broke when you chose to commit these horrendous crimes.
Let’s hope that some of the Israelis who saw this were shocked back into some semblance of sanity.
Palestinian Doctor’s Daughters killed while he is interviewed on Israeli TV
by Assaf
Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 12:39:22 PM PST
Dr. Ezz-El-Din Abu El-Aish (I hope I am transliterating correctly) is a Palestinian gynecologist from Beit Lahiya, in the NE corner of the Gaza Strip. He works at Israel’s largest hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.
This impressive and peaceful man has been stranded at home during the war. Israel’s Channel 10 TV has regularly interviewed him by phone about the situation. On one occasion, a tank gun aimed at his home - and Israeli media intervention saved him.
No such luck today.
(the link is a Hebrew site, the clip starts auto-playing after a few seconds. the article comes after a short commercial). What we see in the clip is Israeli anchor Shlomi Eldar holding a cellphone with Dr. Abu El-Aish on the other side, howling with misery. A tank shell has just hit his home and immediately killed three of his children (apparently they cut off the first seconds when the shell actually hit).
Text below the video frame says that the doctor’s brother and two of his brother’s children also died. Eldar barely holds himself from crying, and then offers help. Ambulances evacuated some of the wounded to Israel.
Transcript and more ->
Assaf’s diary :: ::
Transcript of first 2 minutes:
Eldar: …we have on the line Dr. Abu El-Aish, we have been talking with him over the past period… he [his home] was just shelled, his family is wounded, maybe I can replay…
Dr. Abu El-Aish: No one can get to us… (unclear)… Ya Rabi, Ya Rabi (my god).. [he continues to cry throughout while Eldar talks to the audience]
Eldar: They killed his family, over the past few days we have been… I think I’m a bit overwhelmed too because,… (tearing up) Dr. Abu El-Aish is a Tel Hashomer physician, [to the doctor] Abu El-Aish we are now in the studio, [back to the audience] and he kept fearing his family would get hurt, once this week he went on air to Gabi Gazit [another anchor], because this was the only way [apparently referring to the previous near-miss incident]…. In short, he was now hit, who was hurt Abu El-Aish?
Dr. Abu El-Aish: My girls, Ya Allah, Ya Allah
[around 1:00 into clip]
Eldar: He has eight children whom he has protected throughout the war, at his home in Beit Lahiya, maybe the only thing we can do is to ask someone who can, maybe in the IDF, Abu El-Aish can you tell me where your house is, maybe they will enable ambulances to get there
Dr. Abu El-Aish: (unclear) …to save them, to save them, but they are dead already they were hit in the head, it was in their heads [died] on the spot, on the spot, Shlomi, Ya Allah, … what have we done, what have we done [repeatedly]… they killed the family… [more screams in the background]
The elipsis (…) marks in the anchor’s speech are mostly not ommissions, rather Eldar was himself shaken and kept jumping mid-sentence to start new ones.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/16/145932/668/542/684934
Also go to Tikun Olan a Jewish site fighting for justice for the Palestinians.
This doctor worked in Israeli hospitals as well. His wife died of cancer some years ago and he looked after his eight children. He lost three daughters and two nieces in this massacre and two other daughters are injured. The Israeli spin is truly sickening.
Thank God because the kept the world’s press out of Gaza the world got to see news from the people of Gaza and the world now knows the truth. One can only hope that some Israelis can see through the fog of insanity to know it as well and they can join the small but courageous group which has been fighting this barbarism for years.
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/
Rockjaw, we can take hope from the fact that more Americans are learning the truth. I suspect it is because the Israelis took the Goebbels handbook into this war and in keeping out the press, to keep the truth hidden, they achieved the opposite. The world has changed. Mobile phones take pictures. People have computers. The truth of the Gaza Ghetto war crime has been sent around the world. Because American media is so censored in regard to Israel I suspect people have decided to find out for themselves and in the doing they have accessed sites which they would not otherwise read. In the same way, the media, being denied its pics and propaganda from Israel has used what it could and what came to hand …. ironically, the truth. More and more people in the world now know the terrorist state which is Israel and the terror it inflicts on the people it occupies and colonises.
It is unspeakably heartbreaking when civilians are killed in war.
Having said that, I am not sure why the stories of tragedies takes even a skerrick of legitimacy away from the Gaza op.
As people like you ramp up your hate for Israel, I have found that my Jewish and Israeli friends have never been more convinced of the justice of Israel’s actions.
We look forward to the day when Hamas is destroyed and we may beat our swords into ploughshares.
alpha, confusing valid criticism with hate is a sign of mental dysfunction. I am sure the Germans felt the same under a fascist government but they eventually saw the light and realised their government members were war criminals, as shall Israelis. Their supporters, who sit safely far away from the carnage may not, but in truth it doesn’t matter. The times are changing at last and the Palestinians will get their freedom, they will get their state, the occupation will end and Israelis will find security and peace on the bit of Palestine the UN gave them in 1948. They will still have to apologise to the Palestinians and make redress for the illegallity and immorality of the partition but at least they will have peace. We live in fortunate times. The most venal and murderous occupation in modern history is coming to an end. The dead of the holocaust can stop turning in their graves.
I Could Not Save a Single Child
By ELLEN CANTAROW
When I was a child my mother used to cry, “I couldn’t save a single Jewish child.”
Now I am my mother: I cannot save a single child in Gaza.
Not the ones wrapped in green cocoons lying row on row, surrounded by throngs of grieving men. I cannot comfort the fathers who jump up and down in agony, screaming as their children lie dead before them on the ground.
I cannot comfort the mother whose eyes, ravaged and blanked by terror, stare beyond me from the photograph, nor save the little one with bloodied, bruised face who stands beside her, nor the older brother, the only two who survived of six. I cannot say, “Come, we have a big, comfortable basement with a bed for you and the children, and a bath, and plenty of food. We will take you and shelter you.” I cannot welcome them to a home full of calm, of sunlight, with the warmth of potted plants, the refrigerator full of food, the showers waiting to receive them, the warm water streaming down to comfort their bruised and tired bodies.
I cannot save a single Gaza child.
Not the ones I saw on Al-Jazeera lying dead with heads all bloodied, under blankets on the ravaged ground. Not the little one, 2, maybe 3, bloodied bandages covering her bloodied skull and face leaving me her bruised lips and part of one dull and hopeless eye, her helpless bigger sister, surely no more than 4, beside her. I cannot take her, bring her back to normal life, hug her and sing to her, hold her up against my piano and ask her to listen to the strings as I run my fingers over them, watch while her face lights up with pleasure as she spots my cats, hold her, hold her, and hold her….
I cannot save the little girl, maybe 5, who says the soldier stood and looked at her, then shot her hand and then, as she turned to run to her mother, her back: “One bullet went out my back and through my stomach.” Will doctors in a hospital the siege had already drained of medicines and equipment, a hospital where patients must share beds, where the floors are full of the wounded, and the blood pools around them – will the doctors working quickly, as expertly as they know within the chaos of the terrified families pouring in from the terrified streets of Gaza City, will the doctors working as quickly as they know, but in this wasteland, save her?
I cannot save the newborn Mohammed, monitors on his chest, a respirator over his tiny face, born within the ground-shaking, ear-splitting terror of bombs falling from F16s, into a life from hell, where the smoke of exploding shells and bombs gags the other children, the women, the men, fleeing helpless before the behemoth wielding their “pure arms” to crush these “two-legged cockroaches,” these Palestinians of whom Golda Meir said, “There are no Palestinians,” and whom the Hebron settlers curse in savage scrawled grafitti: ARABS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS. These people concerning whom the Rabbi said, “One Arab is not worth a million Jewish fingernails.” Concerning whom Avigdor Lieberman, that man of the Israeli people, says, drop the atom bomb on them as the Americans did on Japan.
I cannot lift the dark-faced, dark-haired teenaged girl from the stretcher, rock her in my arms and say, “Darling, Shhh, it will be all right,” because it will not be alright. She is already dead, face down on the stretcher where the hopeless cover her body while I watch her image at my computer.
It will not be alright.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cantarow01162009.html
It will not be alright.
It will not be alright. I am my mother, and it is 1942 all over again, and this is the Warsaw Ghetto – different, I’ll admit. I’ll admit they aren’t killing everyone. Just some of them. Only 400. Only 600. Only 800. Only 1000. When does “collateral damage” become malice aforethought? When does that malice translate as “deaths?” When do deaths become “a massacre?” How many in a massacre? A holocaust? The shoa Mr. Vilnai wanted?
I cannot save a single child in Gaza. I am my mother, and we are weeping together.
(All of the images of Gaza in the prose-poem above are from Al-Jazeera English. The references to Deputy Defense Secretary Matan Vilnai and other figures come from my archives and library.)
Ellen Cantarow can be reached at ecantarow@comcast.net
Ellen Cantarow is the voice of sanity. Israel’s only hope lies in such people.
This is what people hate. To make the world a safer place Israel and the US must face war crimes charges. We may not get them to The Hague but we will mark them as war criminals. Things will change faster when boycotts are in place. This ceasefire means nothing as long as Israel keeps the Palestinians in the Gaza and West Bank concentration camps and refuses them freedom.
From Timothy Siedel,
Let us keep in mind that the people of Gaza have been living as prisoners in what is essentially the world’s largest open-air prison. The Palestinian people have had no control over movement in and out of Gaza, no control over borders (land, sea, or air), no open access to needed services and viable economic opportunity with a poverty rate reaching 80 percent, and have lived constantly under the threat of Israeli military incursions, shelling, and “targeted assassinations” that leave entire Palestinian families murdered in the streets. As the occupying power, Israel has certain obligations under international law in regards to the Palestinian people. Israel has completely shirked this responsibility and left the burden of responding to the needs of one of the most densely populated areas on earth—the great majority of whom being refugees—to the international community, creating a situation that does not provide the opportunity for a prosperous future but only just prevents Gaza from slipping into humanitarian disaster on a daily basis, let alone during times like these.
http://www.counterpunch.org/seidel01152009.html
British MP Sir Gerald Kaufman, a Jewish surviving family member of the Holocaust has this to say:-
"Is it not an incontrovertible fact that Olmert, Livni and Barak are mass-murderers and war criminals. Yes. And they bring shame on the Jewish people whose star of David they use as a flag in Gaza, but whose ethos and morals go completely against what this Israeli Government are doing.”
"My Grandmother did not die to provide cover for the Israeli government to murder Palestinians"
But despicable people like alphacrucis and the Australian pro Israeli oreganisations tag him an "anti-semite" - how pathetically sad.
Here is Sir Gerald’s speech to the British parliament:-
http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/sir-gerald-kaufman/
If Israel were truly representative of the world’s Jews, well then how anti-semitic would the world become after a month of slaughter, infanticide, genocide, bombings, white phospherous and blockading of the world’s most deprived people?
How anti-semitic would the world become to hear how the civilian people of Israel took their picnic baskets to hills overlooking Gaza to witness the slaughter of a helpless population while they enjoy their picnics?
THe world will not allow them to hide behind their cries of "anti-semite" again.
The world must not allow them to hide their crimes behind the holocaust again.
Speaking of hiding their crimes, I wonder why Haaretz "pulled" this report from their news coverage:-
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JNlxgs6qm2M/SXCfEIrgEwI/AAAAAAAACbs/Sx_0QvzGJo…
Fortunately bloggers have kept screen dumps of these reports to republish just as soon as the Knesset Nazis ban them.
Seems the IDF enjoy dressing up like Hamas.
Yawn. More lies from the antisemitic elements here. Do you have anything new?
Yes, we do have something new, this from Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza -
"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered, but never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport like we are witnessing from the IDF in Gaza today." - Saturday, January 18th, 2009
Oh dear - you can’t do better than this blood libel bullshit? You would have felt right at home in Europe during the Middle Ages, dude.
I have just discovered this site and thread linked from www.epalestine.blogspot.com
There is a large Palestinean population here in Qatar, many here since early 50’s. Its interesting to hear their sad stories first hand. Al Jazerra TV based here in Doha has been running continuous 24 hour coverage with reporters inside Gaza since the start of this latest invasion. Its a pity the whole world cant see it for themselves. With commentators from both sides it is refreshing to hear the clear thinking and speaking of Mouin Rabbani who has provided some insights into Hamas.
HH The Emir of Qatar has addressed the world on Al Jazerra TV a number of times these past weeks, instigated one of the first airlifts of aid this year, and hosted the majority of the Arab leaders including Hamas at an emergency Summit here over the weekend (Friday and Saturday). Notable absentees, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. BBC had some coverage. Good posts by rosross and Rockjaw - keep up the good work. The power of the "free" press is being overtaken by the cyberpress. At least we are all able to express our opinions openly, with both sides of the fence being given equal opportunity. Have a look at some of these:
http://tabulagaza.blogspot.com/
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/
http://www.speakingloudly.blogspot.com/
http://gazasiege.org/
http://arabist.net/archives/2009/01/08/jon-stewart-on-america-the-media-…
http://middleeast.about.com/b/2008/07/10/when-settlers-terrorize-palesti…
dude? Is this your new word for the day? Like your stone age theocracy it is a bit dated.
Paulrb_doha, good to see you take an interest in the blog.
Great links.
paulrb_doha
Thanks for the links. It is the net which makes it impossible to hide the truth. Even if our governments ignore it, even if the media censors it, the truth comes out and comes from the people. The time of tyrants is limited because of this. Israel has become such a debased society it is simply incapable of seeing what it has become. It isn’t helped by the sort of blind support it gets from people who live safely far away and who can more easily indulge in deadly racism and evil bigotry.
Is Israel’s Gaza War a New War Crime?
by Dennis Bernstein
The use of the internationally banned substance white phosphorus in highly densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip gives new meaning to the phrase "white power." White western supremacy enforced by latest advanced weaponry.
And not only white phosphorus, but also the latest in bunker buster bombs, unmanned drones, not to mention U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, etc.
Journalists, human rights officials, international aid workers, and many doctors and field medics, including high officials of the Red Cross and the UN, have accused the Israelis of using white phosphorus illegally against civilian populations, as well as other advanced weaponry. They have repeatedly witnessed burns on civilians, including women and children, consistent with the use of white phosphorous.
Meanwhile, Richard Falk, internationally respected legal scholar, and Special Reporter for the UN on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, stated in a recent interview that Israel has potentially committed a new kind of war crime, by making it impossible for endangered civilians to flee a war zone.
Israel "has basically locked the population into this war zone and as far as I know, that hasn’t really happened before in such a systematic way and it probably should be considered a new kind of war crime," said Falk.
On Jan. 15, Israeli forces bombed several hospitals and a UN compound. As many as 500 people were sheltering in the Al-Quds Hospital in the city’s southwestern Tal Al-Hawa district when it was bombed multiple times by Israel and set on fire.
A hospital spokesman said the fire was sparked by phosphorus shells. "We have been able to control the fire in the hospital," the spokesman told reporters, "but not in the administrative building. We hope that the flames don’t spread again to the wings of the hospital."
Sharon Lock is an independent journalist and human rights activist from Australia. For the past two weeks, Lock has been riding in a Red Crescent ambulance in Gaza, documenting attacks on medics and ambulances, as they try to reach hundreds of victims of the bombings, people cut down in the streets or caught under the rubble of hundreds of destroyed buildings.
According to Lock, who was in Al-Quds Hospital when it was struck multiple times, 80 percent of the calls for help have gone unanswered, because Israeli forces "attack the medics" when they try to retrieve the wounded and the dead, "even after they have been given permission to move in."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/18-0
Published on Sunday, January 18, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Villagers Tell of Israeli ‘War Crimes’
White flags ignored and houses bulldozed with families inside, claim residents
by Fida Qishta in Khuza’a and Peter Beaumont in London
Israel stands accused of perpetrating a series of war crimes during a sustained 12-hour assault on a village in southern Gaza last week in which 14 people died.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/18
A Pointless War Has Led to a Moral Defeat for Israel
Editorial
January 18, 2009 "The Guardian" — - In historical terms, it is impossible to separate Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza from the long narrative of conflict and mutual grievance in the region.
In geographic terms, the war over a tiny plot of land cannot be detached from the wider involvement and strategic interests of other countries: Syria, Egypt, the US, Iran.
All of which makes it difficult to judge where - even if a unilateral Israeli ceasefire holds - the war really begins and ends.
That fact alone explains why the operation represents a defeat for Israel, as was always likely to be the outcome. The notion that the country’s security problems can be resolved by the unilateral use of extreme force is a persistent delusion among Israeli politicians. In this case, the problem was perceived to be Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel; the solution was judged to be a war against Hamas. That analysis did not allow for the vital, humane recognition that, in densely populated Gaza, an all-out war against Hamas is, by necessity, an attack on the civilian population.
Even on its own terms, the campaign has failed. Israeli authorities will insist that they have limited the ability of Hamas to launch rocket attacks. But the ostensible war aim was destroying that capability completely.
Israel will also claim that its campaign has exposed a lack of support for Hamas in many Arab capitals; that Hamas’ position as the ruling authority in Gaza has been undermined; and that Hamas has been revealed as little more than a terrorist proxy acting on behalf of and armed by Syria and Iran.
But the reality is that the status of Hamas as the preferred vehicle for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has been enhanced by the indiscriminate brutality of the military assault.
Meanwhile, that status guarantees the resurgence, in some form, of armed response, including rocket fire and terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. It is possible that Hamas’ military capability has been drastically reduced. But even when Israel had full command of Gaza’s external borders, it could not stop the trade in smuggled weapons. Sadly, Hamas will re-arm with or without a ceasefire agreement.
Meanwhile, any increased consideration of Iranian or Syrian sponsorship of terrorism will pale against global outrage at the extraordinary disregard shown by Israeli forces for the lives of Palestinian civilians. It is quite possible, as the Observer today reports, that an Israeli withdrawal will reveal evidence of actions deserving indictment as war crimes. Those allegations must be independently investigated.
Israel’s allies in the west, chiefly the US, have traditionally defended the country on the grounds that it is a democracy besieged by despotic regimes and terrorists. But while Israeli citizens do enjoy immense political and social freedom, those values do not automatically prevent the state from committing atrocities.
The fact of Israeli democracy is not a reason to resist negotiations with Hamas. That was true before this pointless, brutal war and will remain so afterwards.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Those Israelis, experts at grabbing defeat from the Jaws of victory! till, if you have a delusional belief that you are surrounded by enemies then unconsciously you will create them. That is the tragedy of Israel.
Another good link.
http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/
This is not over until Palestine is free and Israel has returned to original borders.
From Gaza blog, send it around.
PLEASE: FORWARD THIS EMAIL IN SIPPORT OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY!
A TOUR AND NEWS REPORT IN THE UNITED NATION COMPOUND IN GAZA: http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/IsraeliBombsTargetedUnitedNatio…
Israeli War: Water Crisis in Gaza
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/IsraeliWarWaterCrisisInGaza#
Israeli War: Bread Crisis
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/IsraeliWarBreadCrisis#
Israeli War: DESTRUCTION and Killing
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/IsraeliWarDESTRUCTIONAndKilling…
A day of War 1
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/GazaWar2#
Children playing despite bombings:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/ChildrenPlayingDespiteBombings#
A day of War 2
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/GazaWar3#
Mob: 00972599306096
Landline: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb
Please, make sure you forward this email to those who you feel are interested in this matter.
rosros. Thanks for the information concerning Sharon Lock. There are personal reasons for my interest.
In fact, if anyone knows of any other foreigners assisting the people of Gaza I am keen to hear from you for personal reasons.
I am attempting to help ensure proper communications with all the foreigners in an effort to provide whatever support possible from the outside world and it would be useful if these people were made aware of each other’s presence in the hope that they can provide each other with support and protection during these horrific times.
Please let me know if you have loved ones or friends or family helping the humanitarian organisations in Gaza.
Israeli Assault Injures
1.5 Million Gazans
By Jonathan Cook
16 January, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Nazareth: This week the death toll in Gaza passed the 1,000 mark, after nearly three weeks of Israeli air and ground attacks. But surprisingly, no one has reported an even more appalling statistic: that there are some 1.5 million injured Palestinians in Gaza. How is is possible that such an astounding figure could have passed the world’s media by?
The reason apparently is that they have been relying on the highly unreliable statistics provided by official Palestinian sources. It appears that the Palestinian health ministry only records as wounded those Gazans who need to stay in hospital because of the severity of their injuries.
That means they only count the more than 4,500 Gazans who have suffered injuries such as severe burns from exploding Israeli phosphorus shells; shrapnel wounds from artillery rounds; broken or lost limbs from aerial bombardment; bullet wounds; physical trauma from falling building debris; and so on.
But in fact there is another, far more reasonable standard for assessing those injured, one that provides the far higher total of 1.5 million Gazans – or every surviving Palestinian in Gaza. The measure I am referring to is the one employed by Israel.
Here is an example of its use. In September 2007, the international media reported that 69 Israeli soldiers had been wounded when Palestinian militants fired a rocket into the Zikim army base near the Gaza Strip. The rocket struck a tent where the soldiers were sleeping.
It is worth noting the details of the attack. Israeli officials related that, of the 69 wounded, 11 had moderate or severe injuries and one was critically injured. A few more had light wounds. The rest, probably 50 or more, were injured in the sense that they were suffering from shock.
So, if we apply the same standard to Gaza, that would mean 1.5 million Gazans have been wounded. Or is there still some doubt about whether the weeks of bombardment of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, have left the entire civilian population in a deep, and possibly permanent, state of shock?
http://www.countercurrents.org/cook160109.htm
When we say that someone is a "friend of Israel" we mean a friend of the occupation, a believer in Israel’s self-armament, a fan of its language of strength and a supporter of all its regional delusions. When we say someone is a "friend of Israel" we mean someone who will give Israel a carte blanche for any violent adventure it desires, for rejecting peace and for building in the territories.
Israel’s greatest friend in the White House, outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, was someone like that. There is no other country where this man, who brought a string of disasters down upon his own nation and the world, would receive any degree of prestige and respect. Only in Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035415.html
Israel is a very sick society. They need our help. Support boycotts.
I am standing on the so-called "hill of shame" – a strange bump of terrain with three trees on top and a cascade of camera’s tents and television dishes pouring down the other side. This is as close as the world’s media has come to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. I have been unable to clarify whose "shame" the hill celebrates. Is it the stream of ordinary Israelis who come to cheer the booms of Israeli bombs and shells and the plumes of resulting smoke? Is it the shame of reporters stymied in their attempts to reach Gaza? Either way it has made me think again about war reporting.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/gaza-war-from-a-distanc…
This is what those filthy animals chose to celebrate on their radio/TV service.
The cries and agony of a Gazan gaenocologist working in an Israeli hospital while his children were being murdered by Israeli thugs in Gaza.
And they call themselves Jews?
The filthy animals are not Jews, they are common criminals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUh6xVlndhM