Approximately
300 among NGOs and associations ask the Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court to open an investigation on the war crimes committed by
Israel in Gaza. Our support is indispensable. Sign and circulate this
urgent «universal petition».
To the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC)
Law is the distinguishing mark of human
civilisation. All progress made by humanity coincides with the
consolidation of rights. The challenge that Israel’s aggression against
Gaza poses to us consists in affirming, when confronted with such great
suffering, that the response to violence is justice.
War crimes? Only courts are able to bring
about a sentence, but all of us can bear witness, because a human being
only exists in his relationship with others. The circumstances show the
breadth of their dimension in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of 1949, «All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and
should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.»
The protection of populations, and not
only of States, is the reason why the International Criminal Court
exists. A population without a State is the most threatened of all, and
before History, they are placed under the protection of international
bodies. The most vulnerable populations must be the most protected.
Killing Palestinian civilians, the Israeli armoured tanks have caused
humanity as a whole to bleed. We have been insisting that the power of
the Prosecutor be put at the service of all the victims, and this task
must allow that the entire world receives a message of hope, that of
the construction of international rights based on human rights. And
together, one day, we can pay homage to the Palestinian people for the
contribution that they have given to the defence of human freedom.
use this link to sign in the English page.
But, if English isn't enough, Tlaxcala has translated it into 16
languages! One of them might be yours, so no excuse to not go there,
click on your favourite language and join us in our appeal!!
Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis Targeting civilians was a deliberate part of this bid to humiliate Hamas and the Palestinians, and pulverise Gaza into chaos
Ben White
Jan 20, 2009
The scale of Israel's attack on the
Gaza Strip, and the almost daily reports of war crimes over the last
three weeks, has drawn criticism from even longstanding friends and
sympathisers. Despite the Israeli government's long-planned and
comprehensive PR campaign, hundreds of dead children is a hard sell. As a former Israeli government press adviser put it,
in a wonderful bit of unintentional irony, "When you have a Palestinian
kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is
actually David and the kid is Goliath?"
Despite a mass of
evidence that includes Israel's targets in Operation Cast Lead, public
remarks by Israeli leaders over some time, and the ceasefire
manoeuvring of this last weekend, much of the analysis offered by
politicians or commentators has been disappointingly limited, and
characterised by false assumptions, or misplaced emphases, about
Israel's motivations.
First, to what this war on Gaza is not about: it's not about the rockets. During the truce last year, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip was reduced
by 97%, with the few projectiles that were fired coming from non-Hamas
groups opposed to the agreement. Despite this success in vastly
improving the security of Israelis in the south, Israel did everything it could to undermine the calm, and provoke Hamas into a conflict.
Israel
broke the ceasefire on 4 November, with an attack in the Gaza Strip
that killed six Hamas members, and the following day severely tightened
its siege of the territory. Imports were reduced
to 16 trucks a day, down from 123 daily just the previous month (and
475 in May 2007). Following the unsurprising surge in Palestinian
attacks, Israeli officials claimed that an all-out war was unavoidable;
without mentioning that an operation had been planned for some months already.
Second, the current operation is only in a limited sense related to both the upcoming Israeli elections
and restoring the IDF's so-called deterrence. While it has been pointed
out that a hardline approach to Palestinian "terrorism" can play well
with the Israeli public, wars are not necessarily Israeli politicians'
tactic of choice - the Lebanon war was fought a few months after one.
Israel
is also supposed to be restoring the reputation and "deterrence factor"
of its armed forces, after their humiliation in Lebanon in 2006.
Suffice to say that until this weekend's unilateral ceasefire, in an
aid-dependent enclave defended by an almost entirely isolated militia,
Israel's operation had already lasted three times longer than the 1967
war when Israel defeated its Arab neighbours and occupied the rest of
Mandate Palestine.
These three suggested motivations have
sometimes reached the level of assumed knowledge, providing the
background for further comment and reporting. Based on this kind of
analysis, then, criticism of Palestinian civilian casualties is framed
as "disproportionate" or "heavy-handed", but fundamentally a case of self-defence. It is understood that any democratic nation would have to respond to terrorist rocket fire, but Israel has gone a bit too far.
There is, however, no shortage of evidence
available that points to rather different Israeli aims. Estimates for
the proportion of civilian deaths among the 1,360 Palestinians killed
range from more than half to two-thirds. Politicians, diplomats and
journalists are by and large shying away from the obvious, namely that
Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and the
very infrastructure of normal life, in order to - in the best colonial
style - teach the natives a lesson.
Given the enormous scale of what Palestinians have described as a "war of extermination" - it appears that some 15% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely destroyed or collapsed and there is an estimated $1.4bn
worth of destruction to vital civil infrastructure - it is impossible
to list every atrocity. Israel has repeatedly hit ambulances, medics, clinics, and hospitals, while last week, aid volunteers who tried to douse a fire in a Red Crescent warehouse (attacked by Israel) were then shot at by Israeli forces.
UNRWA
facilities have also been attacked, including several schools
sheltering civilians - just this last weekend, a civilian refuge was repeatedly shelled. Last week, the UN headquarters was also shelled, hitting a vocational centre, a workshop, food warehouse, and fuel depot. Like the massacre of 6 January, Israeli officials quickly began to produce a confusing fog of denials, apologies, promised enquiries and contradictions.
Those
are just some of the more shocking examples from a military operation
that has targeted everything from schools, money-changers and a bird
farm, to entire apartment blocks, harbours, and a market. Palestinians have been killed
when Israeli tanks fired shells at residential neighbourhoods. Every
day has brought fresh horrors; last Wednesday, for example, 70 unarmed
civilians including 18 children were killed by the Israeli military. This week's Observer carried a story alleging Israel bulldozed homes with civilians inside (not for the first time) and shot those waving white flags. Little wonder that Israeli officials predicted with concern that "negative sentiment" towards the state would "only grow as the full picture of destruction emerges".
Much
of this is widely known, and easily accessible; yet still the
analytical emphasis has remained on Palestinian rockets, Israeli
elections, and deterrence. I would like to suggest three alternative
purposes for Israel's Operation Cast Lead that go beyond the usual
perspectives, and presuming with Yale professor David Bromwich
that "if Israel in 2009 reduces to rubble a large portion of the Gaza
Strip and leaves tens of thousands homeless, there is a strong chance
that this was what it intended to do".
The first aim is to
humiliate and weaken Hamas. On the one hand, this seems obvious, but
contrary to how the goal is often understood, this is not primarily to
protect the Israeli public - as pointed out previously, ceasefires and
negotiations are far more likely to deliver security for Israeli
citizens - but rather it is a political goal. Hamas had withstood
isolation, a siege, mass arrests, and an attempted western-backed coup.
Moreover, cracks were appearing in the international community's
resolve to parrot Israel's line on Hamas. The group, with its
resilience and ability to deliver on negotiated ceasefires, was
threatening the chance to make a deal with the Ramallah "moderates",
and so:
A
hammer blow that shattered the movement, launching some of the
resulting splinters in directions that once again put all of them
beyond the pale, was the most effective way to keep at bay those third
parties reaching the conclusion that engaging rather than excluding
Hamas could enhance the prospects of peace.
Back in December, before both the end of the six-month truce and the start of Operation Cast Lead, foreign minister Tzipi Livni stated
that an extended truce "harms the Israel strategic goal, empowers
Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement".
By the end of the month, Livni would be telling
a press conference that "Hamas wants to gain legitimacy from the
international community" and stressing that it is "important to keep
Hamas from becoming a legitimate organisation" (apparently winning a
democratic election isn't enough to confer legitimacy).
Just as Israel chose "blood over diplomacy" in order to avoid enhancing "Hamas's image as a responsible interlocutor", so this weekend, Israel chose
a unilateral ceasefire for the same reason, "hoping to send the message
that Hamas is not a legitimate actor". A war begun in order to
delegitimise Hamas would not make way for a ceasefire in which Hamas
was a partner at the negotiating table.
Hence Israel decided to shortcut
the Egyptian-driven efforts at securing a ceasefire, and opt for a
unilateral approach that allows Israel, the US, Egypt, Mahmoud Abbas,
Britain - in fact, every interested party, except the Gaza
Strip authorities - to work together on an apparent solution. It is
also worth pointing out that the unilateral nature of the ceasefire
frees Israel to define an infringement or collapse on its own terms.
The
second aim of Israel's war is to teach a lesson to the Palestinians in
Gaza, and elsewhere, that the only way to avoid the wrath of the
Israeli military is to accept Israel's idea of a two-state solution, a
generous concession to be gratefully received by Abbas and fellow
moderates. It is a reflection of the approach outlined
by the IDF chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, in 2002 that "the
Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of
their consciousness that they are a defeated people".
On 4 January, Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Hamas needed "a real and serious lesson"; days later, he was more explicit, reportedly
declaring Israel's aim to be "to provide a strong blow to the people of
Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel".
The next day, the Washington Post also described how Israeli officials
were hoping that the attacks would mean "that Gazans become disgusted
with Hamas and drive the group from power".
This Israeli strategy was previously deployed in Lebanon in 2006, when senior military commanders redefined
civilian villages as "military bases" which would be subjected to
"disproportionate force" causing "great damage and destruction". As I
previously noted,
the lessons learned in Lebanon were not just wrong, but criminal: a
retired IDF major general and former adviser to the prime minister,
Giora Eiland, reflected in a paper
that "the destruction of homes and infrastructure and the suffering of
hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence
Hezbollah's behaviour more than anything else".
Ironically, the same Peres who now justifies collective punishment, in 2002 chastised
Avigdor Lieberman for suggesting that the IDF should bomb civilian
targets, warning the minister that such a tactic would be a war crime.
The last three weeks show that proposals made by Israel's political
extremists and originally considered outlandish, do not take long to
become normal policy.
Deliberately targeting civilians and vital
infrastructure for political purposes links smoothly, into the
post-conflict phase, with the Israeli and US plan to try and rescue the
deeply discredited image of the Palestinian Authority through a
politicised reconstruction
of the Gaza Strip. As US state department spokesman Sean McCormack
coyly put it, the "military solution" must be followed up by investing
in infrastructure and helping the population "so that they can make a
different kind of political decision".
The third aim of Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip is to further "catastrophise" the territory, reducing the capacity for continued existence to the barest of minimums - perhaps to bring about
"an end to the persistence of Gaza's ordinary people in wanting the
chance of a peaceful and dignified life". One obvious benefit to Israel
of pulverising
"civilian Palestinian infrastructure" is that "people who lack
collective institutions and are reduced to scrabbling for their very
survival are easier to dominate".
Yet, there is more going on
here. Israel seeks to turn the Gaza Strip into a depoliticised
humanitarian crisis, always on the brink of catastrophe, always
dependent; its population reduced to ration-receiving clients of
international aid. Yitzhak Rabin famously wished that Gaza "would just
sink into the sea", but perhaps the best Israel can do is to share the
problem with the international community, possibly to the extent of troops on the ground.
Increasingly focusing on Egyptian responsibility is also part of this, whether in terms of arms smuggling, aid supplies, or for some, direct rule.
In all of this, the Gaza Strip has become a laboratory
for future possible scenarios in the West Bank (where a process of
"development-isation" and NGO-funded occupation is well established).
All three of these Israeli aims - to delegitimise and sideline Hamas,
to persuade Palestinians to give up their resistance and to shirk
responsibility for a shattered Gaza Strip - require the deliberate
commission of war crimes and gross human rights abuses. As time will
tell, they are also doomed to fail.
Ben White is a writer living in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has spent several
summers in Palestine/Israel based in the West Bank and written
extensively on the Middle East.
A Palestine boy used as a human shield by Israeli Occupation Soldiers, click the image to enlarge it.
January 16, 2009
During the Israeli
war on Gaza, Western media propagated Israeli propaganda that the
Palestinian resistance have been using their family members as human
shields. Sadly, Israeli propaganda is often presented in Western media
as facts, and the Israeli version has been accepted with little
verification. The goal is simple: dehumanise the Palestinian by showing
that he does not care about his family members, and once that is done
it becomes much easier to accept him as a legitimist target.
This
dehumanizing campaign is as old as the Zionist movement; it was
articulated by Golda Meir (a former Israeli Prime Minister) when she
said: Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.
This racist and derogatory comment is often propagated in Western media
without a second thought to its dehumanizing consequences. It paints
the Arab as a sub-human creature, who has neither affection nor love
towards his or her children. When I first heard this racist comment
from an American, I felt as if he was telling me: "you are not much of a human as I"!
To
this date, the Israel Occupation Army (IOF) still refuses to comply
with orders from the Israeli Supreme Court to stop using Palestinian
civilians as human shields (click here
for a BBC article about this subject). If the IOF is a "professional
army" as it claims and it treats Palestinians according to
International Law, then:
I wonder why Israel’s highest court would issue such an order?
I wonder why IOF refuses to stop using Palestinians as human shields?
It
has been an Israeli strategy from the start to use civilian target as a
strategic weapon. Israeli leaders assume this would cause the civilian
population to pressure Arab leaders to submit to Israeli dictates.
Sadly, this Israeli tactic has been historically effective with the
corrupt and unpopular Arab leaders who are more interested in
protecting their corrupt regimes than defending their countries. The
reader should be reminded of the "Grape of Wrath"
agreement between Hizbullah and Israel 1996 which restricted both sides
from hitting civilian targets. This agreement signaled the end of the
Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon, and as a result a new era in
the Arab-Israeli conflict have begun where Israel’s deterrence power
suffered a major setback. It should be noted that Israel has been
determined not to fall into this trap again; that would explain why
Israel rejected signing similar agreements with Hamas.
A Palestinian killed by Israeli Occupation Soldiers used as a trophy.
The
allegation that Palestinian resistance use their own family members as
human shield has been concocted by Zionists to delegitimise any
Palestinian resistance, and to deflect from the war crimes that are
being perpetrated on the people of Gaza. Palestinians are no different
than other colonized people; they’re simply defending their homeland
from foreign aggressions. The following list of pictures, articles,
movies, and Israeli quotations will conclusively prove that the Israeli
Occupation Army is the one who use civilians as human shields.
GAZA CITY — When the phone rang once again, it was Dr. Hassan Al-Attal's turn to go save the lives of another Gazan family.
But in just minutes, it was Attal who pleaded for help after being showered with Israeli bullets.
"We were heading to help three bleeding children whose house was hit by
an Israeli shell," Attal, an emergency doctor in Gaza City, told
IslamOnline.net.
"But once we arrived to the house, our ambulance came under a hail of fire," he recalled.
"We fell to the ground bleeding, and instead of helping the injured
children we were crying for help ourselves," he said from a hospital
bed.
The Israeli killing machine has not spared doctors and medics who struggle to save the lives of helpless victims.
More than 12 doctors and rescue workers have been killed so far in the
19-day Israeli onslaught against the densely-populated coastal enclave.
In addition, dozens of hospitals and health clinics have been destroyed in Israeli air and artillery shelling.
Doctor Ahmed Al-Assafi recalls how his colleague Ihab Al-Madhoon was
killed by Israeli shells while trying to rush a severely-injured child
to the hospital.
"He breathed his last while he was trying to carry the child to the
ambulance when Israeli tanks hit the area once again," he said with
tears in his eyes.
A 28-year-old doctor in the refugee camp of Jabalyia was killed by
Israeli artillery on Tuesday, January 13, while on his way to a
building hit by Israeli missiles.
"Are those doctors posing a threat to Israel's security?" fumed Dr.
Muawiya Hasanien, the head of Gaza Emergence and Ambulance Services.
"They want us to leave our people bleeding to death."
Attal, the emergency doctor, says the attack on his ambulance seemed deliberate.
"They don't want us to help our wounded. They don't want any Gazan to survive."
Journalists Too
Not only medics, but even reporters are not safe from Israeli fire.
"They already massacred entire families, ravaged hospitals, orphanages,
hospitals and schools, and no one has stopped them," Ayman Al-Dalloul,
a local reporter, told IOL.
"What would stop them from targeting us."
So far several reporters have fallen victim as Israel continues to target homes and workplaces of media people.
Al-Aqsa TV journalist Jalal Nashwan, 52, was not carrying a gun or
shooting at Israeli troops when they rained him with bullets in Beit
Hanun on Saturday, January 11.
Two days earlier, an Israeli missile attack killed Palestinian
photo-journalist Ihab Al-Wahidi, his wife and his elderly mother inside
their home.
Israeli tank fire has also destroyed the home of Palestinian journalist Ala Mortijar, killing him and injuring several others.
Israel, which killed nearly 1000 Palestinians in 19 days, also targeted
a building complex in Gaza City that houses media and production
studios of 20 media organizations, including several international news
agencies.
Israel, usually described as the Middle East's sole democracy, is
denying international reporters access into Gaza to cover its war.
Dozens of international news outlets issued a joint call with global
press watchdog Reporters Without Borders last week for Israel to
reverse that decision.
But Dalloul, the Palestinian journalist, believes Israel would never do that.
"Israelis want neither a camera nor a pen to expose the atrocities they are committing in Gaza."
Chronology: Which Side Violated the Israel-Gaza Ceasefire? The Bush Administration and The New York Times v. Amnesty International
Howard Friel
Jan 15, 2009
Introduction
June 18, 2008
Israel
has approved a ceasefire to end months of bitter clashes with the
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, Israeli officials have
confirmed. Under the terms of the truce, which is set to begin Thursday (June 19), Israel will ease its blockade on the Gaza Strip.At the same time, talks to release an Israeli soldier [Gilad Shalit] held by Hamas would intensify, an Israeli official said. Hamas, which controls Gaza, says it is confident that all militants will abide by
the truce [by not firing rockets into southern Israel].The agreement is supposed to last six months. (Emphasis added) ("Israel Agrees to Gaza Ceasefire," BBC, June 18, 2008)
December 28, 2008
"The
United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks
against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire
and for the renewal of violence in Gaza." U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice. ("White House Puts Onus on Hamas to End Escalation of
Violence," New York Times, December 28, 2008)
December 30, 2008
"Israel
must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a
six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into
Israeli territory." ("War Over Gaza," New York Times editorial, December 30, 2008)
Ceasefire Chronology: (See November 5 and December 28 Entries Below For Direct References to Breaking the Ceasefire)
July 4, 2008
A
humanitarian crisis is engulfing Gaza-not the result of a natural
disaster but entirely man-made and avoidable. The tightening of the
Israeli blockade since June 2007 has left the population, 1.5 million
Palestinians, trapped and with few resources. They are surviving, but
only just. Some 80 per cent depend on the trickle of international aid
that the Israeli government allows in.
In
the first five months of 2008 some 380 Palestinians, more than a third
of them unarmed civilians and including more than 60 children, were
killed by the Israeli army, almost all of them in the Gaza Strip. In
the same period 25 Israelis, 16 of them civilians, were killed by
Palestinian armed groups.
A
ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups came into
force on 19 June and at the time of writing it looked uncertain.
Israeli officials however, insisted that Gaza's border remains sealed
so long as Hamas does not release the Israeli soldier they are holding.
Some 8,500 Palestinians are detained in Israeli jails. Of these, 900
are from the Gaza Strip, all of whom have been denied visits by their
families since June 2007.
Palestinian armed
groups in Gaza continue to hold an Israeli soldier, who was captured in
June 2006, and to deny him access to the International Committee of the
Red Cross. ("Gaza Blockage: Collective Punishment," Amnesty
International, July 4, 2008)
August 14, 2008
Some
400 Palestinian students may lose their university places and
scholarships unless the Israeli authorities allow them to leave the
Gaza Strip before the new academic year, which starts in the next few
weeks. The students have enrolled to study subjects including law,
sciences, business and medicine.
At
least 37 of the students have university places and scholarships in
Europe and North America, while hundreds of others are due to travel to
universities in countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Several of
these students have been denied permission to leave Gaza since last
year. ("Freedom of Movement, Right to Education Denied," Amnesty
International, August 14, 2008)
August 15, 2008
Amnesty
International has described as scandalous the Israeli army's account of
firing a tank shell that killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana as a
"sound" decision. The army reached the conclusion as part of a
so-called investigation into the killing of the journalist and three
other unarmed civilians, including 2 children, on 16 April 2008.
The
army's so-called investigation lacked any semblance of impartiality and
Amnesty International called for an independent and impartial
investigation into the killing. The organization said that the army's
conclusion can only reinforce the culture of impunity that has led to
so many reckless and disproportionate killings of children and other
unarmed civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Fadel Shana worked
for Reuters press agency and was in a car clearly marked as Press. He
and his colleague left the car, wearing visible Press flak-jackets and
he was killed by an Israeli tank he was filming. The tank fired a shell
at Shana, which also hit the civilians, including children, and injured
his colleague and others around him. ("Army's So-Called Inquiry into
Cameraman's Killing in Gaza a Scandal," Amnesty International, August
15, 2008)
August 22, 2008
With
the exception of Karima Abu Dalal (who was finally able to leave Gaza
through an exceptional arrangement via the border with Egypt after many
months' delay to her treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma) all the
critically ill patients named above are still being denied permission
to leave Gaza for treatment abroad.
The
Israeli authorities are refusing to allow these and hundreds of other
patients to leave Gaza to obtain specialized treatment unavailable in
Gaza, for undisclosed and unsubstantiated security reasons. Dozens of
patients have died in recent months following delays to, or denials of,
permits to leave Gaza. ("Further Information on Medical Concern,"
Amnesty International, August 22, 2008)
August 27, 2008
With
Gaza locked down and cut off from the outside world by a stifling
Israeli blockade, 46 peace activists from the world over set sail for
Gaza on 22 August to, in their words, "break the siege that Israel has
imposed on the civilian population of Gaza..., to express our solidarity
with the suffering people of Gaza, and to create a free and regular
channel between Gaza and the outside world."
The blockade
imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip over a year ago has left the entire
population of 1.5 million Palestinians trapped with dwindling resources
and an economy in ruins. Some 80 per cent of the population now depend
on the trickle of international aid that the Israeli army allows in.
This humanitarian crisis is man-made and entirely avoidable.
The
Israeli authorities argue that the blockade on Gaza is in response to
Palestinian attacks, especially the indiscriminate rockets fired from
Gaza at the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. These and other Palestinian
attacks killed 25 Israelis in the first half of this year; in the same
period Israeli forces killed 400 Palestinians.
However, the
Israeli blockade does not target the Palestinian armed groups
responsible for attacks-it collectively punishes the entire population
of Gaza.
Though
a ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups has
held in Gaza since 19 June 2008, the Israeli blockade remains in place.
Israel
has banned exports from Gaza altogether and has reduced entry of fuel
and goods to a trickle-mostly humanitarian aid, foodstuff and medical
supplies. Basic necessities are in short supply or not available at all
in Gaza. The shortages have pushed up food prices at a time when people
can least afford to pay more. A growing number of Gazans have been
pushed into extreme poverty and suffer from malnutrition.
With the ceasefire holding, the suffering in Gaza has fallen off the
international news agenda. However, Amnesty International members continue to campaign, calling:
on
the Israeli authorities to immediately lift the blockade, allow
unhindered passage into Gaza of sufficient quantities of fuel,
electricity and other necessities; and allow those who want to leave
Gaza to do so, notably patients in need of medical treatment not
available in Gaza and students enrolled in universities abroad, and
also to allow them later to return; on Palestinian armed groups not to
resume rocket and other attacks on Israeli civilians. ("Trapped:
Collective Punishment in Gaza," Amnesty International, August 27, 2008)
August 29, 2008
The
Israeli authorities are still denying scores of critically ill patients
the authorization they need to leave Gaza for medical treatment that is
unavailable in Gaza. Hospitals in Gaza continue to lack vital medical
equipment and trained personnel to carry out advanced medical
treatment, including many surgical operations and the provision of
chemotherapy for cancer patients. Even those patients who are given
permission to leave Gaza for treatment are often suffering as a result
of delays in receiving exit permits, which contribute to a decline in
patient's health and emotional well-being.
Interrogation by the General Security Service
Over
the past year, the denial of permits to seriously ill patients has
primarily been based on undisclosed security reasons. Some patients
from Gaza testified to Amnesty International that they were openly told
in interviews with the Israeli General Security Service (GSS) [Israel's
counterintelligence and internal security service, also known as Shin
Bet] at the Erez Crossing point at the northern border with Israel that
they would not receive treatment in Israel unless they become
informants for the GSS. As Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
(PHR-Israel) describes in a recent report, "patients are detained for
interrogation at Erez Crossing, and requested either to provide
information or to act as collaborators on a regular basis as a
condition for permission to exit Gaza for medical treatment."
The
report provides testimonies that PHR-Israel has received from a number
of patients that demonstrate this practice. According to PHR-Israel,
rejection or approval of a patient's request to leave Gaza for
treatment almost entirely depends on the GSS who are taking advantage
of the vulnerability of patients who have no other means of accessing
medical care.
Even
patients who already have an exit permit from the authorities to cross
into Israel at Erez are being denied permission to leave Gaza after an
"unsatisfactory" interrogation. This policy by the GSS of questioning
patients in exchange for entry into Israel appears to have become a
formal part of the exit procedure for patients and is reportedly
discouraging some patients from attempting to leave Gaza in the first
place. ("Health Professional Action: Patients From Gaza Are Still
Denied Access to Medical Treatment in Israel," Amnesty International,
August 29, 2008)
October 16, 2008
The
children named above [ages 5 months, 1.2 years, 1.2 years, 1.5 years, 5
years, and 6 years] suffer from serious heart conditions including
congenital heart defects commonly known as holes in the heart. All the
children need urgent surgery that cannot be provided in Gaza, which
lacks both the necessary medical facilities and specialists. The
children were due to be operated on by a team of British heart
specialists at Makassad Hospital in East Jerusalem during the week
beginning 4 October 2008. They were not able to leave the Gaza Strip
because the Israeli authorities refused permissions to their
mothers/grandmothers to leave Gaza to accompany them. Soheb Wael
Alqasas has already missed six appointments for his surgery in recent
months because his mother and grandmother were repeatedly refused
permits to accompany him to the hospital in Jerusalem.
A
team of Italian heart specialists will be conducting a week of
paediatric cardiac surgery at the Makassad Hospital from 6 November. It
is imperative that the six children are able to attend the Makassad
Hospital in time to undergo surgery by the visiting team of
specialists. For this to be possible their relatives must be allowed to
travel with them to the hospital in Jerusalem. ("Medical Concern,"
Amnesty International, October 16, 2008)
November 5, 2008
A
spate of Israeli and Palestinian attacks and counter-attacks in the
past 24 hours could spell the end of a five-and-a-half-month ceasefire.
This would once again put the civilian populations of Gaza and southern
Israel in the line of fire.
The killing of six Palestinian
militants in Gaza by Israeli forces in a ground incursion and air
strikes on 4 November was followed by a barrage of dozens of
Palestinian rockets on nearby towns and villages in the south of
Israel. The Palestinian attacks caused no casualties or
damage, but there is a real risk that any further armed actions by
either side would risk igniting another deadly campaign.
The
ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Hamas last June and has been in
force since then. It has been the single most important factor in
reducing civilian casualties and attacks on civilians to the lowest
level since the outbreak of the uprising (intifada) more than eight
years ago.
The ceasefire has brought enormous improvements
in the quality of life in Sderot and other Israeli villages near Gaza,
where before the ceasefire residents lived in fear of the next
Palestinian rocket strike. However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the
Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen
few dividends from the ceasefire.
Since June 2007, the entire population of 1.5 million Palestinians has
been trapped in Gaza, with dwindling resources and an economy in ruins.
Some 80 percent of the population now depend on the trickle of
international aid that the Israeli army allows in. (Emphasis added)
("Gaza Ceasefire at Risk," Amnesty International, November 5, 2008)
November 14, 2008
The
Israeli army has completely blocked the delivery of urgently needed
humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip for more than a
week. Very little fuel has been allowed in. Amnesty International urged
the Israeli authorities on Friday to allow their immediate passage.
"This
latest tightening of the Israeli blockade has made an already dire
humanitarian situation markedly worse. It is nothing short of
collective punishment on Gaza's civilian population and it must stop
immediately," said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty
International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Eighty
per cent of the population of Gaza has been dependent on the trickle of
humanitarian aid previously allowed into Gaza until Wednesday, 5
November. Industrial fuel, which is donated by the European Union and
needed to power Gaza's power plant, has also been blocked, causing a
blackout in large parts of Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA),
the main UN aid agency, which provides humanitarian assistance to close
to one million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, announced on Thursday that
its supplies had run out. At the same time, the Israeli
authorities have been denying access to Gaza to foreign journalists for
a week and a convoy of European diplomats were likewise refused entry
on Thursday. "Gaza is cut off from the outside world and Israel is
seemingly not keen for the world to see the suffering that its blockade
is causing the one and a half million Palestinians who are virtually
trapped there," said Philip Luther. The breakdown last week of a
five-and-a-half-month ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian
militants in Gaza has generated a renewed wave of violence. The killing
of six Palestinian militants in Israeli air strikes and ground attacks
on 4 November prompted a barrage of Palestinian rockets on nearby
Israeli towns and villages.
Five
other Palestinian militants have been killed by Israeli forces in
recent days. Palestinian rocket attacks have continued. No
Israeli casualties had been reported until earlier today, when one
Israeli was lightly wounded by shrapnel in an attack on the Israeli
city of Sderot. ("Israeli Army Blocks Deliveries to Gaza," Amnesty
International, November 14, 2008)
November 17, 2008
The
impediments faced by Palestinians in Gaza in obtaining access to health
care continue to be a cause for serious concern. The Israeli blockade
of the Gaza Strip has caused a further deterioration in the
humanitarian situation, health and sanitation problems, as well as
extreme poverty and malnutrition.
With
only a few exceptions, the entire population of 1.5 million people are
trapped in Gaza. Students are unable to attend university studies and
jobs abroad and critically ill patients in need of medical care that is
unavailable in local hospitals are often prevented from leaving Gaza.
("Health Professional Action: Crushing the Right to Health," Amnesty
International, November 17, 2008)
November 17, 2008
The
Israeli army allowed a limited number of trucks carrying humanitarian
assistance into Gaza for the first time in two weeks on Monday.
However, the long-term nature of the blockade and restrictions on the
flow of goods into Gaza has led to a situation where reserves have long
been depleted.
"What
is necessary, at a minimum, is for Israel to allow regular and
unhindered flow of humanitarian aid, medical supplies and other basic
necessities into Gaza," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International
researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
("Israeli Army Relaxes Restrictions on Humanitarian Aid to Gaza,"
Amnesty International, November 17, 2008)
December 5, 2008
The
Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is having ever more serious
consequences on its population. In the past month the supply of
humanitarian aid and basic necessities to Gaza has been reduced from a
trickle to an intermittent drip. The blockade has become tighter than
ever since the breakdown of a five-and-a-half-month ceasefire between
Israeli forces and Palestinian militants on 5 November.
"The
Israeli authorities might be allowing through enough for the survival
of Gaza's population, but this is nowhere near enough for the 1.5
million inhabitants of Gaza to live with dignity," said Donatella
Rovera, Amnesty International's researcher on Israel and the Occupied
Palestinian Territories.
As supplies are being further
withheld, most mills have shut down because they have little or no
grain. People who have long been deprived of many food items now cannot
even find bread at times. Reserves of food have long been depleted and
the meagre quantities allowed into Gaza are not even enough to meet the
immediate needs. Families never know if they will have food for their
children the following day.
When people do have food, they
generally have no cooking gas or electricity with which to cook it.
Last week, less than 10 per cent of the weekly requirement of cooking
gas was allowed into Gaza. ("Gaza Reduced to Bare Survival," Amnesty
International, December 5, 2008)
December 28, 2008
Amnesty
International has called on Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups
to immediately halt the unlawful attacks carried out as part of the
escalation of violence which has caused the death of some 280
Palestinians and one Israeli civilian since December 27.
This
is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four
decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Scores
of unarmed civilians, as well as police personnel who were not directly
participating in the hostilities, are among the Palestinian victims of
the Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.
"Such
disproportionate use of force by Israel is unlawful and risks igniting
further violence in the whole region," said Amnesty International. "The
escalation of violence comes at a time when the civilian population
already faces a daily struggle for survival due to the Israeli blockade
which has prevented even food and medicines from entering Gaza."
"Hamas
and other Palestinian armed groups, for their part, share
responsibility for the escalation. Their continuous rocket attacks on
towns and villages in southern Israel are unlawful and can never be
justified," Amnesty International said.
This latest Israeli
onslaught brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces
this year to some 650, at least a third of whom are unarmed civilians,
including 70 children. In the same period, Palestinian armed groups
have killed 25 Israelis, 16 of them civilians, including four children.
The
ceasefire effectively ended after six Palestinian militants were killed
by Israeli forces in Gaza force on 4 November and a barrage of
Palestinians rockets were launched on nearby towns and villages in the
south of Israel. (Emphasis added) ("Civilians Must Be Protected in Gaza and Israel," Amnesty International, December 28, 2008)
Israel's operative military
policy in the Gaza Strip has been fairly consistent with its stated
definition of what it considers to be legitimate military targets,
which in practice has amounted to mass killings of innocent Palestinian
civilians.
Based on the overwhelming evidence available, one
conclusion can be drawn regarding the nature of the US-backed Israeli
attacks on Gaza: a genuine massacre of ordinary, unarmed people has
been taking place for over two weeks.
Here is just a small part of the documentary evidence to prove it.
Targeting Civilian Police Stations and Officers
In
the opening days of Israel's aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, its
main targets were police stations and officers. For civilian police
officers to be considered legitimate military targets, they must be
directly engaged in hostilities, in this case, towards Israel. No
evidence has been presented by Israel, or anyone else, that even
reasonably suggests that the police officers in Gaza fall into this
category. Therefore, the police officers that were targeted and
murdered by Israel were clearly civilians: not lawful military targets.
"The First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions
establishes two conditions that must be met for an object to be
considered a legitimate military target: it must effectively contribute
to military action and its total destruction or partial neutralization
offers a clear military advantage." -- B'tselem, Dec. 31, 2008 [1]
"Police
were not combatants and could not represent legitimate targets unless
actively engaged in hostilities...it was Israel's burden of proof to
show [that] the police they targeted were, indeed, Hamas militants." --
Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch (Middle East
& North Africa Division), January 7, 2009 [2]
"Police members
who do not take part in any hostilities are not considered legitimate
military targets under international humanitarian law and must not be
deliberately targeted." -- Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, December
28, 2008 [3]
"Police stations, police officers and law
enforcement officials are classified under the international law as
civilians, and targeting them as such while they were not engaged in
military action constitutes a violation of the international law." --
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, December 27, 2008. [4]
"[The
Israeli Air Force] bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed,
according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training
course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing.
Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public
disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth." --
B'tselem, December 31, 2008 [5]
"[During the week of December
24-31, 2008] 165 civil police officers were killed on the first day of
the IOF offensive, when they were not engaged in any hostilities." --
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, December 31, 2008 [6]
Targeting Civilians and Civilian Objects
Every
relevant human rights group and international body has documented and
denounced Israel's military practice of "targeting civilians" and
"civilian objects" in the Gaza Strip. As a result, human rights groups
and medical officials in Gaza have reported that the vast majority of
the (currently) 900 Palestinian causalities have been unarmed
civilians.
The IDF, by its own admission, is unilaterally
redefining who is a "civilian" and what is a "legitimate military
target" to suit Israel's political aims. While justifying Israeli
attacks on civil and public institutions in Gaza, the IDF has claimed
that "anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target," thereby
opening up nearly everyone and everything for Israeli attacks. This new
doctrine flatly contradicts international law which states that:
"All
parties engaged in combat must distinguish between civilian objects and
military targets, and are forbidden to intentionally attack civilians
and civilian objects." [7]
To further comprehend Israel's
definitions of "legitimate targets," it is instructive to apply the
same standards to Hamas, which would then give Hamas a green light to
bomb public Israeli synagogues, Jewish elementary schools, the Knesset,
hospitals, homes, and so forth.
Furthermore, while it is
certain that the IDF "targets civilians," it is of no legal value for
Israel to claim that, in the midst of attacking a military target,
innocent civilians were not intended to be killed. According to the
ruling of The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia:
"Attacks which strike civilians or civilian objects
and military objectives without distinction, may qualify as direct
attacks against civilians…This prohibition reflects a well-established
rule of customary law applicable in all armed conflicts." [8]
Whether
Israel is specifically targeting innocent civilians or not, if its
attacks result in "indiscriminate" killing of civilians, then Israel's
attacks qualify as "direct attacks against civilians," if we accept the
ruling of the highest criminal court in the world.
"[Israel's]
air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded
stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated
area of the Middle East." -- UN Human Rights Representative, Professor
Richard Falk, December 27, 2008 [9]
"Since the beginning of the
military operation in the Gaza Strip, on 27 December 2008, the army has
bombed dozens of houses, public buildings, and other structures
throughout the Gaza Strip…[An] example [of IDF civilian targeting] is
yesterday's bombing of the government offices. These offices included
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction
and Housing." -- B'tselem, December 31, 2009 [10]
"Investigations
conducted by the [Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] indicate that
[the IDF] have continued to bombard Palestinian houses and civilian
facilities persistently day and night, while the Palestinian civilian
population suffer a humanitarian crisis as they lack electricity, water
and food supplies….The high number of civilian victims and the
extensive destruction to public and private property are clear evidence
that [the IDF], instructed by the Israeli political and military
establishments, intend to cause maximum deaths and casualties among
Palestinian civilians and maximum destruction to their property." --
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, January 10, 2009 [11]
"After
12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than
1,000 targets were shelled or bombed…Seventeen mosques, the American
International School, many private homes and much of the basic
infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been
destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity
and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by
courageous medical volunteers from many nations…" -- Jimmy Carter,
January 8, 2009 [12]
"There has been extensive destruction and
many deaths reported in the Zeitun neighbourhood, south of Gaza city by
IDF attacks...In one of the gravest incidents since the beginning of
operations…on 4 January Israeli foot-soldiers evacuated approximately
110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom
were children), warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later,
Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately
thirty. Those who survived and were able, walked two kilometres to
Salah Ed Din road before being transported to the hospital in civilian
vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old,
died upon arrival at the hospital." -- UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs, January 8, 2009 [13]
"Israel has
directly targeted and completely or partially destroyed 13 mosques, two
schools, one university, numerous government buildings, including
different ministries and 40 civil police compounds, a medical storage
centre, three money exchange facilities and three chicken farms, all of
which Israel alleges were used by Hamas for military purposes. Israel's
air strikes and ground incursions have to date resulted in the total
destruction of at least 300 houses and damage to 3,800 more." -- Al
Haq, January 7, 2009 [14]
"A characteristic example of an attack
on a civilian object is the 6 January 2009 aerial bombardment on the
Asma' Bint Baker school, a facility of the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Four days prior to the
attack, UNRWA officials provided GPS coordinates to Israeli authorities
of 23 UNRWA installations that were to be used as shelters for fleeing
civilians. The location of the Asma' Bint Baker School was one of the
23 coordinates provided. Three civilians were killed in the attack on
the school." -- Al Haq, January 7, 2009 [15]
"In the deadliest
single attack on Gaza civilians since the war began, Israel fired three
mortar shells at the United Nations' al-Fahoura school in the Jabalya
refugee camp. The school was filled with civilians who had been forced
from their homes by the Israeli invasion, and the attack killed at
least 46. The United Nations reports that at least 55 other civilians
were wounded in the attack.
“The United Nations says the building
was clearly marked with UN flags and that they were in contact with the
Israeli military when the war began to inform them of the location of
the school precisely to prevent it being targeted.
“Indeed, the
Israeli military does not seem to deny that they deliberately targeted
a building they knew to be filled with hundreds of innocent Palestinian
civilians. Instead they claim that Hamas militants were using the
school as a base of operations." --Antiwar.com, January 6, 2009 [16]
"Just
a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central
food market in Gaza City and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured
and between 10 and 15 killed…At the same time they bombed an apartment
house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children
also."
"It's like hell here now and it's been bombing all
night…there are injuries that you just don't want to see in this
world…the only crime they have done is been civilians -- Palestinians
living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs; the
relief now is to stop the bombing immediately…I've seen one military
person among…the hundreds we have seen and treated…This is an all out
war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and we can
prove that with the numbers." -- Mads Gilbert, January 5, 2009 [17]
"Police
stations located in densely populated neighborhoods were attacked,
destroying them and causing severe damage to tens of schools and homes
and killing dozens of civilians, including children and old people.
"Air
strikes have continued through the night, targeting houses and other
civilian premises, including water-wells, workshops, mosques and
communications facilities. A guard of a water well and three employees
of the Palestinian Telecommunications Company were killed in North
Gaza. Another two men were killed in a strike that targeted the
al-Borno Mosque near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The hospital was
damaged in the same strike. Moreover, IOF targeted prisons, including
Gaza's main prison facility of al-Saraya at noon today. Initial reports
indicate that many policemen and prisoners were killed and injured in
this attack.
“Additionally, dozens of homes were destroyed, along
with tens of UNRWA and government schools and clinics. Local government
offices and private vehicles were also destroyed. Al Mezan's initial
monitoring indicates that…of those [people that have been killed by
Israel's strikes] the vast majority are non-combatants and civilians;
including 20 children, nine women and 60 civilians. The majority of the
rest of the casualties are members of the civilian police who were
inside their stations or undertaking training." --Al Mezan Center for
Human Rights Press Release, December 28, 2008 [18]
Dead and Injured Civilians: Numbers and Percentages
Within
the first four days of the Israeli onslaught the UN placed the
Palestinian civilian casualty rate at 25% while noting that "the number
may well be far higher." [19] This number cannot be taken very
seriously because it admittedly did not include adult male civilian
casualties. Now three weeks into the massacre, the UN has reported that
at least 33% of Gaza's dead and wounded are children alone, hence
drastically abandoning its earlier estimates.
As noted below,
UN officials have recently noted that at least half of those killed by
the IDF in Gaza are civilians, although it appears that this estimate
still does not include 165 civilian police officers, which would've, as
of January 9, placed the civilian casualty rate at about 72%.
Furthermore,
countless testimonies, medical reports, and human rights documentary
reports coming out of Gaza continue to show that the large majority of
the dead and wounded have been Palestinian civilians. The documentary
sources that show civilian casualty rates hovering around 70-80% differ
from those claiming around 50% largely because of the failure to
classify civil police officers as civilians in the latter sources.
Additional disparities may also potentially be explained by less
precise documenting of adult male civilian causalities.
"Gaza
medical officials say at least 870 Palestinians, about half of them
civilians, have been killed in the conflict that began Dec. 27 with
Israeli airstrikes…Palestinian medical officials reported about 60
deaths on Sunday [January 11], including 17 who had died of wounds
suffered on previous days. Most of those killed Sunday were
noncombatants, medical officials said, including four members of one
family killed when a tank shell hit their home near Gaza City, and a
10-year-old girl killed in a similar attack." -- MSNBC, January 11,
2009 [20]
"As night fell on Gaza on Saturday, the Israeli Army
continued its illegal offensive for the fifteenth day, killing 854
Palestinians, including 230 children, 93 women, 92 elderly, 14 medics
and three journalists. At least 3,681 Palestinians, 50% of them
children and women, have been wounded, 500 seriously, Dr. Moawiya
Hassanen of the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported." --
International Middle East Media Center, January 10, 2009. (Note that
the "50%" number does not include adult male civilians) [21]
"As
of Thursday, 257 children were among the approximately 760 reported
dead in Gaza. There were another 1,080 children among the 3,100 injured
in the conflict, according to statistics from Gaza's health ministry.
The U.N.'s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, described the
numbers as "credible" and deeply disturbing. U.N officials say about
half of the casualties were civilians." -- San Francisco Chronicle,
January 9, 2009 [22]
"Israel['s] "Operation Cast Lead," a
large-scale aerial offensive in the Gaza Strip [has] been followed by
Israeli ground troops, which invaded the Gaza Strip on the night of 3
January 2009. To date, these attacks have resulted in the death of at
least 729 Palestinians, 603 of whom were civilians, including 173
children, and the further wounding of over 3,200 more."
--Joint
Open Letter to the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva
Convention, signed by 19 "local, regional and international human
rights organizations concerned with respect for international
humanitarian law." According to the casualty numbers provided in the
letter, which was endorsed and accepted by all 19 human rights
organizations, the percentage of those in Gaza who were killed by
Israel that were civilians is 83% as of January 9, 2009. [23]
"Since
the Israeli military operation "Cast lead" began on 27 December until 8
January (4:00PM), 758 Palestinians have been killed—approximately 42%
of whom were women (60) and children (257) according to the Palestinian
Ministry of Health. The number of children fatalities has increased by
250% since the beginning of ground operation on 3 January." -- UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, January 8, 2009
[24]
"Within eleven days, Israeli occupying forces have killed at
least 671 Palestinians, 547 of whom were civilians, including 155
children, and injured at least 3,000." -- Al Haq, Human Rights
Organization, January 7, 2009. Note that according to these
calculations, civilians make up nearly 82% of Palestinians killed by
Israel, as of January 7th. [24]
"Palestinian health ministry
officials say 595 people have been killed since the attacks began, 195
of them children." (over 33%) -- BBC, January 6, 2009. [26]
"In
one of its bloodiest military operations, the Israeli Occupation Forces
(IOF) initiated a wide-scale air strike operation against the Gaza
Strip. More than 900 people have been killed and injured, most of whom
are non-combatants. The number of casualties…because of the timing of
the strike [coincides] with the change in school shifts when tens of
thousands of schoolchildren were on their way to or from school." --Al
Mezan Center for Human Rights, Press Release, December 28, 2008. [27]
- Max Kantar is a freelance writer. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: maxkantar@gmail.com
Notes:
[1] "B'Tselem to Attorney General Mazuz: Concern over Israel targeting civilian objects in the Gaza Strip," December 31, 2008. [2] Deen, Thalif, "Aid groups dispute Israeli claims in Gaza attacks," The Electronic Intifada, January 10, 2009. [3] Al Mezan, Press Release December 28, 2008. [4] Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Press Release, December 27, 2008. [5] See note 1 [6] Palestine Centre for Human Rights, Press Release, December 31, 2008. [7] See note 1. [8] El-'Ajou, Fatmeh, "Re: The Killing of Civilians in the Gaza Strip," Adalah, January 4, 2009. [9]
Falk, Richard "Statement by professor Richard Falk, United Nations
Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories," UN
High Commissioner For Human Rights, December 27, 2008. [10] See note 1 [11] Palestine Centre for Human Rights, Press Release, January 10, 2009. [12] Carter, Jimmy, "An Unnecessary War," The Washington Post, January 8, 2009. [13] UNOCHA, "Protection of Civilians Weekly Report," January 8, 2009. [14] Al-Haq, "Legal Aspects of Israel's Attacks on the Gaza Strip in 'Operation Cast Lead,'" January 7, 2009. [15] See note 14 [16]
Ditz, Jason, "At least 46 killed as Israel attacks Gaza school,"
Antiwar.com, January 6, 2009. Note: media links are provided within the
text of this article for verification. [17] Edwards, David & Webster, Stephen, "Norwegian Doctor: Israel Intentionally Targeting Civilians," The Raw Story, January 5, 2009. [18] Al Mezan Press Release: "Most Gaza Casualties were non-combatants, civilians," December 28, 2008, (electronicintifada.net) [19] "UN: 25% of those killed in Gaza civilians," Ynet, December 31, 2008, ynetnews.com [20] "(AP) Israel advances deep into Gaza urban areas" MSNBC, January 11, 2009. [21] Bannoura, Saed, "As night falls on the 15th day of Israeli offensive…" International Middle East Media Center, January 10, 2009. [22] Heilprin, John, "UN: one third of Gaza dead, injured children," San Fransico Chronicle, January 9, 2009. [23] "Joint Open Letter to the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention," Al-Haq, January 9, 2009. [24] See note 13 [25] See note 14 [26] BBC, "Strike at Gaza school kills '40'" January 7, 2009. [27] See note 18
WRITTEN BY: Santiago ALBA RICO
Translated by Christine Lewis Carroll
“and thereupon the Lord rained down
brimstone and fire out of heaven, the Lord’s dwelling place, and
overthrew these cities, with all the plain about them, and all those
who dwelt there, and all that grew from their soil. And Lot’s wife,
because she looked behind her as she went, was turned into a pillar of
salt.”
Genesis 19, 23-26
The wrath of God is not only just but also
beautiful, and its very beauty reveals and proclaims God’s superior
justice. How can one not give in to this extraordinary picture of El
Bosco painted by the Israeli aviation? Are not the bodies and homes
below demolished precisely because of the beauty of this divine flash,
of this dazzling fountain of light? Those who do not die, those who
resist, those who curse amongst the ruins, are they not guilty for this
reason, demanding with their very survival a new ejaculation of
brimstone and fire?
The oldest religious atavisms are
supported by the most modern means of destruction. Manipulation and
lies apart, we bow fascinated by the Israeli brutality because it is
brutal and comes from the sky; we admire their force and not their
cause, and it is exactly the indisputable verticality of this force
what confers it with a legitimacy unattainable to reason: it is all in
one time and cast aesthetic and theological. At one time one could only
destroy a city by being God; now the Israelis can do it as well. Only
miraculous blessings and deserved punishment fall from heaven. The
technological superiority of the Zionists – their superior contempt of
human life activates this theological legitimation that their rulers
consciously exploit, to the point that it is the biblical
technotheology of the air raids, now the only source of legitimacy,
what obliges them to repeat the raids on a bigger scale every time. It
is so nice, so pleasant, so easy, so fair to reduce a city to rubble
and so difficult, so ugly, so morally degrading to try to rationally
defend Zionism…The God of the Bible who destroys from above is more
just and beautiful the greater his destructive power. His victims adorn
His power, justify His existence, pay tribute to His mercy; the greater
the number of dead, more guilty are the corpses and more sublime the
aggressor; the more children, women and old people that perish under
this marvellous light, more marvellous is the light and more deserving
the punishment. Only Yahweh is “disproportionate” – out of all
proportion – and this is what the mass media and governments mean when
they describe – respectfully and with admiration – the use of force by
Israel: they mean it is “divine”, supernatural, superhuman, they mean
it is justified, that we cannot judge it and even less condemn it
without committing sacrilege. The means (of destruction) justify all
the objectives. The technological “disproportion” declares its right
regardless of human laws and requires very little propaganda to impose
its authority: it is sufficient to be able to imitate God and
“overthrew these cities, with all the plain about them, and all those
who dwelt there” amidst a torrent of light. Even the most hardened
atheists amongst us must ignore the dead as long as there are many, and
cluster bombs and white phosphorous are used; as long as the murderer
is almighty and its power religious and supernatural. Israel is a
theocratic state, because of the way people live and kill there. The
rest of the world admires Israel because of this. And when we look back
on the spectacle, like Lot’s wife, we are converted into dumb pillars
of salt.
The air is pure; the sky is not imputable.
The Israeli pilot of the F16 does not even get his hair ruffled;
elegant, sophisticated, punctilious in accomplishing his mission,
disinfected from all the lowest instincts which could blur his vision,
brilliant, ironic, serious, just, he imitates God and El Bosco and
returns in time to Tel Aviv to try the food from a new Indonesian
restaurant and discuss with his girlfriend the details of the new
furniture bought in Ikea.
And down below? What happens meanwhile down below? What are the people below like?
Here we see them. They are part of the
land, primitive, emotional, loud, threatening, obscure, clinging,
superstitious, gregarious, ragged, ugly, pedestrian, horizontal,
vulnerable, expendable: human. The article in El Mundo which
illustrated this photograph added that they were also “exhibitionists”:
contrary to us, the lords of the sky who prefer to bury our dead in
private, the Palestinians of Gaza enjoy displaying the corpses of their
children and proclaiming obscenely their grief. The shrewd
anthropologist of the Spanish newspaper forgot to quote other
differences just as eloquent: whilst as lords of the sky we like dying
of old age in a hospital or in the privacy of our own homes, the
Palestinians of Gaza like dying in the street, in public, blown up with
no decency by a biblical bomb sent from the sky; whilst as lords of the
sky we like killing without ruffling our hair or getting excited – to
return in time for supper to Tel Aviv without visiting the hairdresser
first – the Gaza Palestinians like killing and killing each other –
because the rage and the hate would not let them do it any other way.
If the Israeli “disproportion” justifies itself, the human proportions
of the Palestinians are also eliminated. The photograph of the Israeli
bombing is enough to convince us of the Zionist justice; the photograph
of the Palestinian funeral is enough to convince us of the Palestinian
guilt.
The difference between Israelis and
Palestinians is summarised in these two images, in this contrast which
the mass media, deliberately or not, feed without respite: the
aesthetic and theological superiority on one part, based exclusively on
their deadly weapons, and the “natural” inferiority of the others,
reduced beforehand and from time immemorial to pure tinder for Yahweh’s
fire, to mere fuel for the Divine Light. No reasoning, no request can
thwart this difference; not even a Qassam rocket. There are only two
ways to correct this contrast fixed in our retina and synthesised
tamely in the way we look: or we arm the Palestinians with missiles,
cluster bombs and white phosphorous or we disarm the Israelis and
dissolve the State of Israel. Not until either of these two
alternatives occurs, will it be of any use that human justice is on the
side of the Palestinians in a world that dribbles fascinated – the USA,
the European Union, the Arab governments, the UN, the mass media – in
the presence of pictures of El Bosco painted by the Israeli aviation
and the biblical just beauty. As long as human justice does not seem
more just and beautiful to us than an Israeli bombing, the Palestinians
– whatever they do – will only manage to enlarge the difference and
give excuses to Yahweh for killing them from its remote, imperturbable
elegance. Please do not give them excuses – do not launch rockets, do
not fire arms, do not unsheathe knives, do not defend your homes, do
not protect your children, do not shout, do not cry, do not eat, do not
breathe. But if there is no human justice and the Palestinians are
guilty before God of breathing (all the more so if they bleed!), if
whatever they do, they have been condemned for eternity, it would be
shameful to condemn them also – whatever they do – from the comfort of
our moral airplanes. There are occasions when it is more immoral to
moralise than murder.
But now the difference has been reduced a
little. Under cover of the F16 in my warm home, shuddering and ashamed,
I feel satisfied that the Israelis have given up their divine impunity
and have also entered Gaza by land. They are still vastly superior, but
they move at ground level so they become more Palestinian, a little
more human and vulnerable; perhaps it would even be justifiable to kill
them. Perhaps some may even die. I wish that instead of fear or
admiration, some might even inspire us pity.
God is “disproportionate”; human justice
is “proportionate”. Beauty is “divinely proportionate”; compassion is
“humanly disproportionate”. Perhaps in the next few days we will see at
last the image of an Israeli tank being destroyed by the heroic
defenders of Gaza and then, after the joy, we would get taken away by
the disproportion of the compassion - unexpected, incomprehensible,
irrational – in the presence of an Israeli soldier taken prisoner or
dead. In the absence of proportion, in the absence of justice, maybe
the murderers now exposed to the weak, ugly and courageous defensive
fire, the Zionists, dead, taken prisoner or wounded, painfully lying on
the ground, would seem human to us for the first time.
Christine Lewis-Carroll is a member of Rebelión and a friend of Tlaxcala,
the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation
may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the
source, author and translator are cited.
Bring Israel to the International Court of Justice
."In the name of justice there cannot be subjection and in the name of peace there cannot be impunity."
–Alvaro Uribe Velez
Total to Day 18 in Gaza (January 13, 2009): about 971 Dead, more than 4,418 Injured
–More than half women and children, with over 360 with critical injuries
"I sometimes worry if there will be enough space to bury the dead."
—Hatem Shurrab, Islamic Relief aid worker in Gaza
If such a massive genocide of a trapped civilian population by air,
sea, and land was committed by any other nation the world would launch
a massive investigation into this crime against humanity and hold the
leaders of such a nation accountable in the International Court of
Justice. In a just world Israel would be charged with crimes against
humanity as was Serbia and Rwanda.
From the Guardian paper, January 13, 2009
"Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and
human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in
Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate"
shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human
shields by soldiers.
The Israeli military are accused of:
* Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
* Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
* Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
* Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
* Killing large numbers of police who had no military role."
In reality Israel will never face any such charges as Israel is the sole "untouchable" nation on earth.
Israel has always used the U.N. Security Council to its advantage,
with America's help, whenever it deems it appropriate to charge the
Palestinians, Arab nations and Iran with what it calls war crimes and
threats to its "existence".
But when the same Council passes Resolution 1860 on January 9, 2009
to demand a "ceasefire" in Gaza, Israel resumes its defiance of the
U.N. as a "biased" organization as it's done for over 60 years with
hundreds of U.N. Resolutions.
According to the Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2009, when Ehud Olmert
received word that Condoleezza Rice was planning to support the
Security Council's "ceasefire" resolution he immediately called Bush
and "demanded" to get him on the phone despite Bush giving a lecture at
the time in Philadelphia. Bush sheepishly interrupted his lecture to
answer Olmert's call.
Israel's prime minister told the President of the United States that
he must not support such a yes vote and in true requisite Presidential
fashion when it comes to Israel's "demands" Bush called Rice
immediately to tell her to abstain from the vote, thereby embarrassing
Rice in front of the world body.
America, when will you accept the answer to "why they hate us"—it is
Israel and its iron grip of our government, national interest, and
foreign policy. If Americans continue to die abroad, blame Israel, not
Al Qaeda.
No people in the entire Muslim world conjures up as much pain,
anger, and visceral passion in the heart and minds of Muslims more than
the issue of Palestine, its theft, its ethnic cleansing, the decades
long suffering of Palestinians under Israel's Nazi like occupation, and
Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.
In 1948 and again in 1967 millions of Palestinians have been forcefully
expelled from their homes and lands and now live in the most dire
existence in dozens of refugee camps in and out of Palestine. Their
refugee camps streets are filled with sewage, but now in Gaza, blood
has overtaken the sewage.
"To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace."
–Tacitus, First Century Roman Senator and Historian
Israel's modus operandi of unleashing its preemptive massive
military bombardments, invasions of neighboring Arab nations as well as
the ethnic cleansing of 1948 Palestine, and now the Palestinian
territories, was always preplanned even prior to the 1948 war that led
to the catastrophic establishment of the State of Israel, an
international "crime against humanity" in itself.
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the
border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while
denying it any employment in our own country …. expropriation and the
removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
– Theodore Herzl, father of Zionism,(Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of
smashing Lebanon, Trans-jordan and Syria… The weak point in the Arab
coalition is Lebanon [for] the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to
undermine. A Christian state should be established… When we smash the
[Arab] Legions strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan,
too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we
shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo."
–David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A
Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
The pro Israel U.S. media compliant as usual (Why? See who owns the
Media) refuses to show any photos of the carnage of Gaza's children
preferring to focus on Obama's choice of a dog for the White House.
The most important element of Gaza's genocide akin to the genocide
in Lebanon in 2006 was that both genocides were Pre Planned by Israel
and Bush.
–Lebanon's invasion in 2006 to eliminate Hezbollah. Justification Hezbollah's kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers:
But:
According to Ha'aretz, March 8, 2007, "PM: War Planned Months in Advance."
"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Winograd Commission that
his decision to respond to the abduction of soldiers with a broad
military operation was made as early as March 2006, four months before
last summer's Lebanon war broke out"
The Guardian (March 9, 2007) also reported Olmert's admission of the preplanned attack on Lebanon in 2006.
"Preparations for Israel's war in Lebanon last summer were drawn
up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by
Hizbullah in July, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has admitted.
contradicted the impression at the time that Israel was provoked into a
battle for which it was ill-prepared. Mr. Olmert told the Winograd
commission."
The hatred and racism of Israeli political (see below) and military
officials become publicly apparent from time to time as they plan to
annihilate Arab civilians, preemptively bomb Syrian installations, or
plan to bomb Iran, although the usual mad bomber Bush nixed that for
the time being.
Here are some quotes from Israeli soldiers prior to invading Lebanon as reported by ABC, July 25, 2006.
"Another soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
Such racism and hatred is a reflection of the same vile outlook by Israeli officials and Rabbis (see quotes below).
On the same invasion, Haim Ramon, Israeli's Justice Minister on July 27 said:
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah".
–Gaza's current Genocide: 2008 - 2009
According to the Guardian (Dec. 29, 2008) Israel was pre planning the genocide against Gaza for 6 months.
This was also reported in the Israeli Haaretz paper.
"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud
Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation
over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a
ceasefire agreement with Hamas." (Haaretz 12/31/08)
Israel's dehumanization and racism against all gentiles, not just
Palestinians, is a basic religious belief that is based on the Rabbinic
teaching of the Babylonian Talmud itself.
Israeli Prime Ministers have described Palestinians as less worthy
than Israeli lives, as "beasts", "cockroaches", "crocodiles"; that they
should be crushed like grasshoppers". Golda Maier even denied their
very existence.
Israel's Past President Moshe Katsav said of Palestinians (Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001) "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ¬not just in
ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience.
They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few
hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our
continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."
While Rabbis uttered these racist statements against all gentiles, Christians and Muslims: The body of a Jewish person," Schneerson bragged, "is of a totally
different quality from the body of members of all other nations of the
world. Bodies of the Gentiles are in vain. An even greater difference
is in regard to the soul…A non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic
spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness."
–Rabbi Mendel Schneerson
"The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews -
all of them in all dlfferent levels - is greater and deeper than the
difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle."
–"Jewish Fundamentalism", by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinksy, p. ix
Throughout Israel's bloody history no weapons are off limits against
civilians and no life is sacred be it an Arab, an American or any
citizen of the world.
The children of Gaza are being killed, burned, maimed, and orphaned
because their parents had the audacity to believe in the democratic
free process to choose their government, Hamas, which infuriated
America and Israel despite their support for free elections.
Thus Gaza's children are paying the ultimate price for Bush's
"export of democracy" to the Middle East. While Israel is killing
Palestinian children it is politically killing the will of the entire
world that demands Israel stop its genocide against innocent youngest
citizens of Gaza. Israel can defy the world and all its International
organizations for one reason: It has America's government in its pocket.
During the debate in the U.N. Security Council on January 6, 2009
the Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev delivered a speech that can only
be described as masterfully crafted lies, myths, and spin to defend the
indefensible in Israel's "genocide du jour" against the Palestinians
that began in 1944.
She said:
"For Israel, every civilian death — Israeli, as well as
Palestinian — was a tragedy. Israel had, therefore, taken steps to show
respect for all human life. It had taken every measure to limit
civilian casualties. The Israel Defense Forces had dropped tens of
thousands of leaflets and made thousands of phone calls to Palestinian
civilians, beseeching them to leave areas of terrorist operation to
avoid harm."
Never in its history has Israel ever given a damn about killing
anyone who stands in its way on any issue. From the 1948 ethnic
cleansing and genocide against Palestinians, to the hundreds of U.N.
documented terrorist attacks against the British army and Palestinian
civilians (including the bombing of the King David Hotel, and the
massacre of the entire Palestinian village of Deir Yassin), to Jewish
terrorists on January 4, 1948 driving a truck loaded with explosives
detonating it in the middle of the city of Jaffa killing 26 civilians
(Israel was first to use car/truck bombs in the MidEast); to its
assassination of the U.N. peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948
for recommending the return of the expelled Palestinian refugees,
assassination of the British Lord Moyne for his stance against
increased Jewish immigration to Palestine; on December 12, 1954 Israel
committed the first airline hijacking in the MidEast by hijacking a
civilian Syrian airliner and forcing it to land in Israel. This
incident prompted Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett to write in
his diary: "They (military leaders) seem to presume that the state of Israel
may-or even must-behave in the realm of international relations
according to the laws of the jungle" Till this day Israel still lives by those laws.
–Donald Neff, "Fifty Years of Israel", page 117
To count the ways Israel from its inception has done nothing but
"harm" civilians would need an encyclopedia, but here are a few
indisputable facts of how Israel wishes to live in Peace with its
Palestinian Neighbors while claiming to protect civilian lives.
1. Israel's many Preemptive Wars on Arabs:
–Israeli Wars on Arabs, including Palestinians: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, 1996, 1987, 2000, 2008
–Arab Wars on Israel: 1973
1982: Israel's Genocide against Lebanon: 20,000 civilian deaths
(plus 2,000 massacred civilians in Sabra and Shatila camps). Over a
dozen U.N. Security Council Resolutions were ignored by Israel during
that summer.
1996: Israel deliberately and knowingly shelled a U.N. compound
where civilians took shelter in Qana killing over 100 civilians. U.N.
Secretary General Butros Butros Ghali was denied a second term by the
U.S. due to his release of the U.N.'s investigation of this horrific
massacre showing Israel deliberately bombed the U.N. compound.
2006: Israel again launched a massive genocide against Lebanon
devastating the nation's infrastructure and killing over 1,300
civilians many in Red Cross and U.N. convoys escaping the
indiscriminate bombing. Over the last 72 hours of the genocide Israel
dropped over 2 million Cluster Bombs to ensure the death, injury, and
maiming of civilians, especially the children. Israel still refuses to
cooperate with the U.N. as to where the locations of these deadly bombs
are.
Illegal Annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions
2. Israel's Terrorism against Palestinians massacring more
Palestinians in 6 years than all terrorism related Israeli deaths in 86
Years:
–Total Excess Mortality Deaths Post 1967 among Palestinians in Occupied Territories: 300,000
With the Post 1967 under 5 years excess deaths: 183,000 (90% were avoidable: United Nations)
–Total Palestinian deaths by Israel's military: Sept. 2000 - April 2006: 5,144 (Including 952 children) Injured 57,100
–Total Israeli Deaths from Terrorism in 86 years: 1920 - 2006: 3,713
–Total Palestinian Deaths due to Israel's Genocide in Gaza in 17 days: About 1,000
3. Illegal Settlements built on Occupied Palestinian Lands.
Deemed illegal and an obstacle to peace by all U.S. Presidents since
1967, including by George W. Bush
The construction of illegal Settlements in the Golan Heights, Sinai,
and the Occupied Palestinian territories began within days of Israel's
capture of these territories after Israel's1967 Preemptive War in total
defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, the International Court
of Justice, U.S. policy, and International Law.
"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to
economic and social development [... and] have been established in
breach of international law." –International Court of Justice Ruling, July 9, 2004
Currently there are 121 settlements and approximately 102 Israeli
outposts built illegally on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967
inhabited by 462,000 Israeli settlers. In Arab East Jerusalem there are
191,000 Israeli settlers. Immediately after Bush's Annapolis Conference
that demanded a halt to settlement construction, Ehud Olmert returned
to Israel to give orders to expand settlement construction by another
9,000 units around East Jerusalem and another 2,600 new units in the
West Bank. America expressed its "concern"
4. Illegal Demolitions of Palestinian Homes creating more Palestinian refugees.
While no Israeli home has been demolished, since 1967 Israel has
demolished 18,147 Palestinian homes displacing another 100,000
Palestinians to become refugees living in tents. During the Al Aqsa
Intafada alone which began in September 2000, Israel committed mass
demolition of 4,170 Palestinian homes.
5. Illegal building of the Apartheid Wall.
The Illegal Apartheid Wall that snakes around the West Bank annexes
more Palestinian land including in Bethlehem, separating families,
villages, and farmers from their land. The United Nations and
International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal. A United
Nations report finds that 12,000 Palestinians could be cut from their
land, work and essential social services.
6. Israel's Talking Points and narrative adopted and parroted blindly by the U.S. media and Government
That Israel has an enormous rapid media response propaganda machine
that bombs the world with the same talking points has been demonstrated
for over sixty years.
Again, Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev's speech to the Security Council: "'The residents of those towns (Israeli) generally had 15 seconds to rush, with their children and elderly, for cover." This speech was delivered on January 6, 2009 in New York City.
However, On January 9, 2009, the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Zion
Evrony, wrote an op-ed (Israel's actions necessary so our citizens can
live in peace) in the Irish Times defending Israel's genocide with the
same "15 second' canard. He was responding to a very passionate
courageous article written by Fintan "O'toole
Ambassador Evronv writes: "I hope O'Toole will never have the awful experience of running with his children to reach a bomb shelter within15 seconds"
Here's a quote from Mr. O'Toole's Article:
"When does the mandate of victimhood expire? At what point does
the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews cease to excuse the state of Israel
from the demands of international law and of common humanity?….The
words that emerged from Auschwitz - "Never Again" - are the most
powerful protection we have from moral hypocrisy, from racism, and from
the twisted language that defends the indefensible….It is a great
historic tragedy that those words must now be spoken against the Jewish
state."
–Fintan O'Toole, "Israel Must Be Held To Account over Gaza Action", Irish Times, January 6, 2008
Mr. O'Toole went on to say that Israel has adopted two Nazi
policies, the first is "collective punishment" of an entire population,
and second that of "profound racism".
Before, during, and after Israel commits another genocide the all
powerful Israel Lobby goes into full active mode to control, spin, and
manipulate the genocide narrative to defend Israel as having been
forced to defend itself against the Arab Muslim "terrorists" while
presenting Israel as the "victim" of terrorism. The White House,
Congress, Pro Israel Academia, and the mainly Jewish owned media
overwhelm and indoctrinate America with the talking points du jour in
favor of Israel.
In the cowardly "Little Knesset" we call Congress both houses
passed, as they're required to do, resolutions supporting Israel's
genocide in Gaza. Thus between Bush's undying love for Israel during
his farewell days and Congressional support of Israel, Barack Obama's
hands are shackled when he takes office on this issue. Not that he
wasn't already paid and bought for by his rich "Jewish friends" and his
mass appointments of Jews in his administration as well as the closet
Jew, Hilary Clinton.
Congressional democrats and republicans went on multiple television
shows to utter the talking points AIPAC provided; mainly asking
rhetorically, what if Mexico or Canada attacked a U.S. city with
rockets—wouldn't we respond? Obama while visiting Israel said the same
but coined it as to what if his 2 daughters were attacked by rockets,
he would have to respond.
Some of the talking points emanating from our indoctrinated politicians are:
1. Israel has the right to defend itself. Which means the Lebanese
and Palestinians have no such right when Israel invades, kills, and
occupies their land.
2. To teach the "terrorists" a lesson not to resist their subjugation and keep quiet.
3. Remove "terrorist" regimes and establish pro democracy, i.e. Pro
Israel regimes. By any sense of justice these "terrorist" regimes are
legitimate resistance movements internationally sanctioned to remove
the yoke of colonial occupation of their lives and land.
4. Kill enough civilians to cause them to overthrow their existing regimes.
5. "Terrorist" groups are to be blamed for heavy civilian casualties since they use civilians as human shields.
See discussion on human shields further down the article.
7. Israel's Violation of International Law and Human Rights.
Every international body from the U.S. State Department, to the
United Nations, the E.U., International Court of Justice and every
International Human Rights Organization has condemned Israel for its
decade's long violations of International Law and Human Rights for its
illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and massive abuses of
their human rights.
From the U.S. State Department Country Human Rights Report 2007.
"Both Israeli and Palestinian NGOs reported that the Israeli
authorities used excessive force, abused civilians and detainees,
tortured Palestinian detainees, failed to take proper disciplinary
actions, improperly applied security internment procedures, maintained
austere and overcrowded detention facilities, imposed severe
restrictions on freedom of movement, and limited cooperation with NGOs."
"The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and
massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the
Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying
Power and in the requirements of the laws of war…The Israeli air
strikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused,
challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either
directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law.
That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the
military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these
illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and
participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian
catastrophe."
–Professor Richard Falk, "Israeli Violates International Humanitarian
Law, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, January 2, 2008; "United Nations Human Rights Council.
Professor Falk, a professor of International Law at Princeton
University was sent to Israel to investigate Israel's human rights
abuses against the Palestinians. Israel detained him at the airport in
a small cramped filthy room for 15 hours then expelled him out of the
country. No nation but Israel can get away with such humiliation of a
U.N. official.
"Hovering above all this is the dark shadow of occupation and
the separation regime evermore entrenched in the Occupied Territories.
For forty-one years, Israel has denied fundamental rights to four
million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even the
establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s and Israeli
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 did not change the
fundamental imbalance of power in which Israel controls the lives of
the Palestinians, and is responsible for the daily, severe, and ongoing
violations of their rights. Under the domination of Israel, which
defines itself as a democracy, live several million people who are
denied their rights under military occupation in which no rights are
guaranteed: not the right to life, personal security, or freedom of
movement, not the right to earn a livelihood, to freedom of expression,
or to health. In the reality of the Occupied Territories, particularly
since the second Intifada in late 2000, most rights have long lost
their meaning."
– Association for Civil Rights in Israel State of Human Rights Report, 2008
From Amnesty International USA 2008 Annual Report for Israel.
"The human rights situation in the Israeli Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT) remained dire… In June, the Israeli government
imposed an unprecedented blockade on the Gaza Strip, virtually
imprisoning its entire 1.5 million population, subjecting them to
collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to
date. Some 40 Palestinians died after being refused passage out of Gaza
for urgent medical treatment not available in local hospitals. Most
Gazans were left dependent on international aid for survival but UN aid
agencies complained that the Israeli blockade made it difficult for
them to provide the much needed assistance. In the West Bank, the
Israeli authorities continued to expand illegal settlements and build a
700-km fence/wall in violation of international law. Impunity remained
the norm for Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers who committed
serious abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings,
physical assaults and attacks on property. Thousands of Palestinians
were arrested, most of whom were released without charge."
8. Blaming Hamas for breaking the Six month ceasefire with Israel.
Another Lie from Ambassador Gabriela Shalev's speech to the U.N.
Security Council on January 6, 2008 blamed Hamas for breaking the six
month ceasefire with Israel.
"In its effort to avoid confrontation, Israel had agreed six
months ago to an Egyptian-brokered "situation of calm". Hamas had
violated that agreement on a daily basis, as over 350 rockets and
mortar shells had been fired into Israel during that period."
Only Israel would have the chutzpah to issue such blatant lies
publicly. In its lies it depends on the U.S. media, the only media that
matters to Israel, to not investigate such statements, not to show any
videos or photos of mutilated Palestinian children but rather focus on
the single structure hit by an inerrant small rocket fired by Hamas,
and in general simply parrot the amply provided Israeli talking points.
BUT, please view these videos on YOUTUBE to see Israel itself admit that Hamas did not fire rockets during the six month truce.
The youtube video below shows the same Israeli spokesman, Mark
Regev, insist that Israel fired into the 3 U.N. schools in response to
Hamas rockets, killing 43 Palestinians, mostly children. Later Israel
admitted that there were no Hamas fire from the schools, too late for
the dead families and children. After a day's investigation it stated
that one of its missiles missed its mark and accidentally hit the
schools despite the U.N. having provided the location of the schools
long before the Gaza genocide.
In addition, several international media agencies in fact reported that it was Israel that broke the ceasefire.
"The six-month ceasefire started coming apart at the beginning
of November after Israeli commandos killed a team of Hamas fighters
during a raid on a tunnel they suspected was being dug for kidnapping
of Israeli soldiers. That raid set off more Palestinian rocketing.".
–U.S. News and World Report, December 30, 2008
–CNN confirms Israel Broke Ceasefire First, December 31, 2008
–Guardian, "Gaza Truce Broken as Israel raid kills six Hamas gunmen", November 5, 2008
–Economist. "The last straw came in November, when Israelis killed six gunmen ", December 30,
Also ignored by our media is that Hamas reached out to Israel to continue the ceasefire.
"Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to
reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December
Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe."
–Professor Richard Falk, "Israeli Violates International Humanitarian
Law, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, January 2, 2008; "United Nations Human Rights Council.
"Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that
last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable
compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press,
Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin
Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is
interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms."
Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the
blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet - high
with election fever and eager to appear tough - rejected these terms."
–Johann Hari; "The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling", Independent, December 29, 2008
9. Hamas (and Hezbollah) Use Civilians as Human Shields
Another Lie by Israel's Ambassador Gabriela Shalev in her speech to
the U.N.S.C. January 6, 2008 is that Hamas uses civilians as human
shields. This is the perpetual standing lie whenever Israel deliberate
kills civilians. The White House, the subservient Congress, and
supportive media repeat this lie constantly until it's become the
knee-jerk statement when massive civilian casualties arise from
Israel's bombs—blame the victim because Israel is too civilized to
wantonly kill civilians. This was used against Hezbollah during
Israel's annihilation of Lebanon in 2006. She said:
"Hamas showed similar disdain for the Palestinian people, she
said. It had adopted a terrorist tactic — "a coward's tactic" — of
using civilians as shields"
It's beyond human comprehension that either of the resistant
movements Hezbollah and Hamas who were formed to fight Israel's
military occupation and subjugation of their families and peoples would
deliberately and knowingly use their own people to protect themselves.
Why? Because Israel doesn't give a damn about any Arab Christian or
Muslim life be they Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian or of any other
nationality regardless if they're surrounded by fighters or simply
sleeping in their beds. Israel's aim is to kill as many civilians as
fast as possible before international pressure coalesces to ask them to
stop.
According to Human Rights Watch's study: "Fatal Strikes: Israel's
Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon"; August 2, 2006,
HRW reported that it found "no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately
used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack."
Other organizations such as Amnesty International came to the same conclusion.
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."—Winston Churchill
In fact it is Israel that is using Palestinian youths as human shields (see photos in links below)
The Israeli paper Ha'aretz, 9/4/05, "IDF still uses human shields in Violation of High Court Ruling" states:
"The Israel Defense Forces is still using Palestinians as human
shields, in defiance of a High Court of Justice ruling forbidding the
practice, Haaretz has learned….An IDF force broke into Mahmoud Rajabi's
home in the Jabel Johar neighborhood in eastern Hebron at about 4 A.M.
last Wednesday and forced three brothers to serve as human shields….At
first, the IDF spokesman denied that the three brothers were being held
against their will and said they could leave whenever they wanted. But
the force's commander told Haaretz that they were holding the three
until the operation ended" and it was "normal procedure intended to
protect his soldiers' lives".
The Ambassador went on to say:
"There was no similarity between military commanders that worked
hard to ensure their operations were carried out in accordance with
international law and those that filled homes with missiles."
However the same HRW report, Fatal Strikes, has this sentence in its introduction to the report: "This report documents serious violations of international
humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in
Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30
attack in Qana"
10. The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Israel's Wars and
Occupations shamelessly and publicly—that unlike Hamas, Israel Respects
U.N. Security Council Resolutions
With incredible chutzpah Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said:
"Was the Council's credibility strengthened if it called for a
ceasefire that "effectively equates a terrorist group with a State
defending itself against it??" Moreover, did anyone really believe that
Hamas would heed the Council's words?
The factual reality here is stunning.
No nation has been as widely condemned by United Nations Resolutions
and U.N. Agencies as has Israel. Over 300 United Nations Resolutions
(including over 90 U.N. Security Council Resolutions—excluding the
additional 45 the U.S. vetoed) have been passed condemning Israel to no
avail. All U.N. agencies such as the UN Human Rights Council, World
Health Organization, U.N. Economic and Social Council, UNRWA, UNICEF,
UNDP, UNESCO have also passed resolutions condemning Israel for its
violation of International and Humanitarian Laws. The World Bank,
International Court of Justice, all International Human Rights
Organizations, including those in Israel, B'tselem, Rabbis for Human
Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch; all relief
organizations from around the world, and all medical and health
organizations; and even the Vatican have condemned Israel for its
defiance of U.N. Resolutions and International Law.
Here's what the Vatican Justice and Peace Minister Cardinal Renato
Martino said on January 7, 2009, said expressing the Vatican's concern
about the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip: "Let's look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp."
11. Israel always wants peace and this newest genocide is a
prerequisite for peace: but for Whom? Certainly not for the over 300
Palestinian infants and children murdered by Israel in Gaza
Again, another lie by Ambassador Shalev: "It is not enough to speak of peace; we have to confront those who
work to destroy it. For this reason, the current campaign is not an
obstacle to peace, but a prerequisite for it."
One doesn't know where to begin to refute this lie. Perhaps one
should start from the foundation of this criminal state and its ethnic
cleansing of two thirds of the Palestinian population during their
genocidal campaign 1948-1949.
After President Truman in direct opposition to his foreign policy
team supported the creation of Israel in 1948 he was sickened by
Israel's criminality against the Palestinian refugees. Thus in the
summer of 1949(April -September) along with the United Nations
Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) the Lausanne Conference
(Switzerland) was convened to address the tragedy of the Palestinian
refugees. Israel and the Arab states attended the conference.
Ambassador Mark Etheridge was Truman's envoy to the conference.
After three months of negotiations Israel refused to take any
responsibility for the expelled Palestinian refugees. Ambassador
Etheridge wrote this to the State Department:
"Since we gave Israel birth we are blamed for her belligerence
and her arrogance and for the cold-bloodedness of her attitude toward
refugees…what I can see is an abortion of justice and humanity to what
I do not want to be midwife… Israel must accept responsibility….her
attitude toward refugees is morally reprehensible….Her position as
conqueror demanding more does not make for peace."
– Donald Neff, former Time Magazine Jerusalem Correspondent in "Fifty Years of Israel", p.79
The U.N. Commission also declared that
"The Government of Israel is not prepared to implement the part
of paragraph 11 of the General Assembly resolution of 11 December 1948
(U.N. Resolution 194 on return of refugees) which resolves that the
refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their
neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable
date".
Contrary to Israel's all powerful propaganda Hamas has offered a
peace initiative to accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 border
which conforms to U.N. Resolution 242 passed in 1967 and to America's
long standing policy. Soon after its free and democratic election in
2006 Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh reached out to Bush to seek a
peaceful settlement with Israel.
In a Ha'aretz article titled; "In 2006 letter to Bush, Haniyeh offered compromise with Israel", 11/14/08
"A few months after Hamas' 2006 election victory, leader Ismail
Haniyeh tried to start a dialogue with U.S. President George W. Bush…..
On June 6, 2006, Haniyeh met Dr. Jerome Segal of the University of
Maryland in the Gaza Strip…Segal had been involved in the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process for many.
Haniyeh laid out the political platform he maintains to this
day. "We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that
we don't mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and
offering a truce for many years," he wrote…. Haniyeh called on Bush to
launch a dialogue with the Hamas government….We are not warmongers, we
are peace makers and we call on the American government to have direct
negotiations with the elected government," he wrote. Haniyeh also urged
the American government to act to end the international boycott
"because the continuation of this situation will encourage violence and
chaos in the whole region….Segal gave State Department and NSC
officials the original letter… Washington did not reply to these
messages and maintained its boycott of the Hamas government."
Ha'aretz reported on 4/21/08:
"Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshal on Monday said Hamas
would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along
Israel's pre-1967 borders, and would grant Israel a 10-year hudna, or
truce, as an implicit proof of recognition if Israel withdraws from
those areas.
Meshal's comments were one of the clearest outlines Hamas has
given for what it would do if Israel withdrew from the territories it
captured in the 1967 Six Day War. He suggested Hamas would accept
Israel's existence alongside a Palestinian state on the rest of the
lands Israel has held since 1948"
Against Ha'aretz on 11/9/08:
"The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Saturday his
government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967
borders.
The Hamas leader spoke at a meeting with 11 European
parliamentarians who sailed from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip to protest
Israel's naval blockade of the territory. Haniyeh told his guests
Israel rejected his initiative."
In Conclusion:
Armed resistance against any foreign occupation is an
internationally recognized right of all peoples. Hezbollah, Hamas,
Iraqis, Afghanis, Chechens, Kashmiris and people around the world who
live under the evil yoke of a foreign army must raise their voices and
guns to achieve freedom.
Enshrined in the U.N. Charter are the inalienable rights of peoples
to self determination, freedom, and right to resistance against foreign
occupation. On December 7, 1987 the U.N. General Assembly passed
Resolution A/RES/42/159 which reaffirmed these principles in addition
to condemning all forms of International Terrorism committed by states,
organizations, or persons.
The resolution passed with a 153 - 2 vote: Ironically the two nay votes were: U.S. and Israel.
The Resolution reads:
"Measures to prevent international terrorism which endangers or
takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms and
study of the underlying causes of those forms of terrorism and acts of
violence which lie in misery, frustration, grievance and despair and
which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own,
in an attempt to effect radical changes:
Reaffirming also the inalienable right to self-determination and
Independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other
forms of alien domination, and upholding the legitimacy of their
struggle, in particular the struggle of national liberation movements,
in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter and of
the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly
Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter
of the United Nations,
Noting the efforts and important achievements of the
International Civil Aviation Organization and the International
Maritime Organization in promoting the security of international air
(could 9/11 have been prevented?) and sea transport against acts of
terrorism, consistent with General Assembly resolution 40/61,"
Thus the two nations that thrive politically, economically, and
militarily on the "war on terror" themselves voted against the
resolution that condemns terror and asks for international cooperation
to prevent it.
Hypocrisy and Double Standards have always been the hallmarks of empires and imperialism.
Israel thrives on wars and murder. This is the only standard policy
of all Israeli governments regardless of party. Israel needs wars not
only to expand its territories and fulfill the dream of Zionism but
just as importantly to avoid internal strife between the different
factions and ethnicities of Jews living in Israel that could easily
erupt into a civil war, especially between the Ashkenazi (European
Jews) and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East.
Israel is a corrupt moral, spiritual, and economic nation that
depends on wars to distract from internal discontent. During election
campaigns politicians vie to reach the innermost murderous soul of the
populace as to who can commit the greater genocide upon the hapless
Palestinians.
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only
be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as
his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."
–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nothing can bring internal peace to Israel, not its enormous wealth,
the sixteenth richest nation on earth, not its fourth most powerful
army in the world (Israel now is the fourth largest exporter of weapons
in the world), not its hundreds of nuclear weapons, and not its
complete strangle hold on the world's sole superpower and on European
governments.
Nothing will ever satisfy a Zionist's heart and soul for it is based
on the evil premise of supremacy, racism, arrogance of power, divine
selection, and an inherent right that the world is for Jews only and
that no one has the right to tell Jews what to do or hold them
accountable.
As Ariel Sharon said: "Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no
one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on
trial."
For the second time in two years Israel is committing genocide
against a civilian population using the latest American made weapons in
direct violation of the U.S. Arms Export Act that limits use of
American weapons to defensive purposes only. But don't expect Obama or
the Congress to raise this issue.
There are only two ways to achieve peace, either by peace or by force.
Somehow someway the world needs to find the courage to end the 60
years of Israeli wars, occupations of Arab and western governments,
genocides, lies, myths, propaganda, and a powerful Lobby that instills
the fear of organized Jewry into the pocketbook of American
politicians. Israel's existence violates divine and all human laws.
It's a criminal nation whose thirst for blood is never quenched.
Israel has succeeded in creating a rift, a doubt, even a simmering
hatred between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Only Israel benefits
from a manufactured conflict between these two worlds who ultimately
worship the same God.
To safeguard our humanity and security we all must demand Israel's
leaders be brought to face charges of crimes against humanity at the
Hague's International Court of Justice.
If we don't, then this genocide too shall pass from our memories as
soon as the bombs stop shredding the lives of Gaza's children whose
breath and dreams litter the mass graves in Gaza.
May God protect the children of Gaza from Israel, American complicity, Arab impotence, and the silence of good people.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/LetterToSecretaryRice.pdf (January 2, 2009)
Letter from Amnesty International USA to Secretary Condi Rice on
America's "lopsided" response to Gaza's recent violence and "its
lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza".
It also called for an "immediate suspension of weapons to Israel."
“Our humanity is incomplete,” says Queen Rania A personal challenge for every Western politician
STUART LITTLEWOOD
Queen Rania of Jordan speaks to reporters during a meeting of U.N. regional chiefs in Amman, Monday, Jan. 5, 2009
Jan 12, 2009
These last two weeks have changed everything. Any remaining tolerance felt towards Israel and its friends has evaporated.
The regime could never have maintained its illegal occupation of
Palestine, or imposed a barbaric blockade on tiny Gaza, or mounted this
latest bloodthirsty assault on civil society, were it not for the
protection of an over-powerful 'friends' network in every major western
country.
In Britain the 'Friends of Israel’ organisation, in its various guises,
has stooges occupying key positions at the heart of government. These
individuals paralyse any effective action against the lawless regime
they subscribe to. They ought to be treated as agents of a foreign
military power and weeded out, especially with the European elections
coming up and a general election just around the corner.
Membership of Friends of Israel is nowadays a necessary stepping-stone
to ministerial rank, I’m told. It is one thing for the Jewish community
to back Israel but a much more serious matter if anyone in public
office secretly places himself under an obligation to a foreign power
and allows it to influence his work. Hundreds of our MPs may have
crossed that line.
It is deeply worrying to discover that our Intelligence & Security
Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee and Defence Committee are all
chaired by Friends of Israel. How can it possibly be in our nation’s
best interest?
After boasting how the UN security council resolution negotiated last
Thursday underlined the international community's determination to end
the tragedy in Gaza, Bill Rammell MP, minister of state for the Middle
East, went on: "Of course a ceasefire can only come about through
decisions taken by the parties involved - but in the interests of
people in both Gaza and Israel, we will expend every diplomatic effort
to stop the violence."
Nothing about implementing the pile of previous UN resolutions. This is
typical of the meaningless drivel that routinely comes out of
Westminster. Rammel’s boss, David Miliband, in a speech to Labour
Friends of Israel last year, numbered himself among "Israel’s most
committed friends". Prime minister Gordon Brown declared himself a
Zionist. Peace envoy Tony Blair, another Zionist, is too chicken to
meet Hamas and look them in the eye. So we can be sure that their
diplomatic efforts amount to no more than revving the engine with the
parking brake on.
It is equally obvious that the Israelis will remain deaf until their
lust for land is satisfied. They’ll listen only when hefty sanctions
are applied, such as suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement
and expulsion of its ambassadors in London and other European capitals.
If Mr Miliband doesn't know how to do this, he should take lessons from
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has expelled the Israeli
ambassador in protest against Israel's military offensive in the Gaza
Strip.
He condemned as "murderers" the Israelis who carried out the military
campaign and urged Jews in his country to take a stand against the
Israeli government. "Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community
speaks out against this barbarism. Do it. Don't you strongly reject all
acts of persecution?" he said. "How far will this barbarism go? The
president of Israel should be taken before an international court
together with the president of the United States, if the world had any
conscience."
Are Jews speaking out against it in London? Plenty are. But the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, which claims to be the main voice of the
Jewish community, yesterday held a rally in London's Trafalgar Square
with this message from its president: "Israel needs and deserves your
support now"… while their brethren carried on with their massacre in
Gaza.
On the Israeli Embassy's website ambassador Ron Prosor merrily vilifies
Hamas while overlooking the fact that his own regime has raped the Holy
Land for its own benefit for 60 years. He claims Israel left Gaza in
2005. "Every soldier was withdrawn. Every Jewish settlement was
evacuated… Politicians staked their reputations on a courageous step
towards peace. They hoped Gaza could provide a blueprint of Palestinian
autonomy, a precursor to a Palestinian state."
But Mr Prosor is either very forgetful or very deceitful. Israel, since
2005, has continued to occupy Gaza's airspace and coastal waters. It
controls all ways in and out. It keeps Gazans under constant
surveillance with drones, some of which can instantly destroy any
target. Thus Israel has disabled Gaza’s civil society, crushed its
economy and denied its people any semblance of freedom or prosperity.
Prosor is correct in one thing: this is indeed the sort of blueprint
Israelis wishes to impose on a future Palestinian state. Quite rightly
the Palestinian people and the government they elected - Hamas –resist.
Now Prosor seeks cover for his country’s war crimes by tying the
international community into the slaughter, urging them to "stand up to
the extremism that threatens us all. We must start the New Year in the
spirit of Churchill. If we are divided, we all stand to lose; if we are
together nothing is impossible."
This cheap attempt to recruit the memory of Churchill to their
dastardly schemes will anger many people here. Besides, the extremism
that threatens us is generated by Israel. Everyone knows it… except
those whom Israel has brainwashed.
And the Embassy website still carries a PR 'briefing' specially put
together by Tzipi Livni to prepare the West for the pre-planned
onslaught on Gaza. It contains a lie or gross distortion on every line.
The most ludicrous claim – and the most evil in terms of its
consequences - is that Hamas violated the 6-month truce begun on 19
June. In fact Hamas kept to the truce and fired no rockets or mortar
shells into Israel and restrained other Palestinian groups.
Israel however failed to honour its pledge to lift the economic
blockade. Moreover, on 4 November Israelis raided Gaza killing six
Palestinians – an act deliberately designed to provoke a retaliation
and provide the 'excuse’ for Israel to launch its long-planned, all-out
war on the already seriously weakened Gaza population, who had nowhere
to run.
An impressive Palestinian body-count would no doubt buy votes in the
run-up to Israeli elections. Or maybe the motive was a desire to turn
an infamous jibe by their former army hero Rafael Eitan into reality.
It was he who said that "when we have settled the land, all the Arabs
will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged
cockroaches in a bottle".
So it was a relief when Queen Rania Al Abdullah, UNICEF's Eminent
Advocate for Children, injected common sense into the situation by
issuing a statement last week to remind the world of the many human
rights that have been trampled in Palestine. She emphasized two:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person (Article 3)
"Over the past 41 years, the people of Gaza have been living under
occupation," she said. "Over the past 18 months, they have been living
under siege. And for the past 10 days, the people of Gaza have been
subject to a cruel and continuous military attack. Either the
declaration is not so universal, or the people of Gaza are not human
beings, worthy of the same 'universal’ rights.
"This is the message the world is sending out today. Not only is there
a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, there is a crisis in our global
humanity... This is the message I am sending world leaders: Our
humanity is incomplete when children, irrespective of nationality, are
victims of military operations."
OUR HUMANITY IS INCOMPLETE… That is a message for every Western
politician to wrestle with and something for Israel’s supporters to
reflect on, now being a good time to disband and renounce their
association with the criminal regime.
The figures for Israel’s killing sprees are too awful to contemplate…
In Lebanon 2006, 1,200 dead and 4,400 wounded; in Gaza, as I write,
over 900 killed including 370 women and children, and 4,100 maimed and
wounded. And let us not forget that in-between times since the start of
the second intifada in 2000, Israel has killed another 4,800
Palestinians including 950 children.
Nearly 7,000 lives brutally taken. That’s a disgraceful amount of blood for anyone to have on their hands in the 21st century.
Remember Gaza: One of History's Terror Bombing Victims
Stephen Lendman
History's terror bombings. This article reviews some of the most infamous:
-- Guernica - 1937;
-- the London Blitz - 1940 - 41;
-- Dresden - 1945;
-- Tokyo - 1945;
-- Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945;
-- North Korea - 1950 - 53;
-- Southeast Asia - 1964 - 73;
-- Iraq - 1991 to the present;
-- Serbia/Kosovo - 1999;
-- Afghanistan - 2001 to the present;
-- Lebanon - 1982 and 2006; and
-- Gaza - 2008 - 09.
Strategic bombing involves destroying an adversary's economic and
military ability to wage war. It targets its war making capacity and
related infrastructure. Terror bombing is another matter. It's against
civilians to break their morale, cause panic, weaken an enemy's will to
fight, and inflict mass casualties and punishment.
Geneva and other international laws forbid the targeting of civilians.
The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV
Convention) states:
-- Article 25: "The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns,
villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited."
-- Article 26: "The officer in command of an attacking force must,
before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in
his power to warn the authorities."
Article 27: "In sieges and bombardments, all necessary steps must be
taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion,
art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals,
and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are
not being used at the time for military purposes." The besieged should
visibly indicate these buildings or places and notify an adversary
beforehand.
The Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in time of war. It
prohibits violence of any type against them and requires treatment for
the sick and wounded. In September 1938, a League of Nations unanimous
resolution prohibited the:
"bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings not in
the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces....In cases
where (legitimate targets) are so situated, (aircraft) must abstain
from bombardment" if this action indiscriminately affects civilians.
The 1945 Nuremberg Principles prohibit "crimes against peace, war
crimes and crimes against humanity." These include "inhumane acts
committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war,"
including indiscriminate killing and "wanton destruction of cities,
towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity."
The 1968 General Assembly Resolution on Human Rights prohibits
launching attacks against civilian populations. Israel and America do
it repeatedly - by land, sea and terror bombings.
Below is some relevant history.
Guernica, Spain – 1937
On April 26, 1937, German and Italian aircraft fire-bombed the small
Basque town at the request of their fascist ally General Francisco
Franco. It destroyed the town, killed an estimated 1650 people, and
injured hundreds more. An eyewitness account said:
"The only things left standing were a church, a sacred tree, the symbol
of the Basque people....There hadn't been a single anti-aircraft gun in
the town. It (was) mainly a fire raid....A sight that haunted me for
weeks was the charred bodies of several women and children huddled
together in what had been the cellar of a house." It was a drill for
larger-scale bombings to come, and civilian sites were as fair game as
military ones.
The scene was repeated throughout the town. Guernica was in flames. It
wasn't the first instance of bombarding civilians. Germans did it in WW
I. Britain did it against Iraq in the 1920s with poison gas. Secretary
for Air and War Winston Churchill's secret poison gas memo recommended
it. In a May 12, 1919 departmental minute he wrote: "I do not
understand the squeamishness about the use of gas....I am strongly in
favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."
In 1937, Hitler used explosives, fragmentation bombs and incendiaries
in the two and a half hour raid "with a brutality that had never been
seen before," according to Basque Autonomous Republic president Jose
Antonio de Aguirre. "They scorched the city and fired machine guns at
the women and children who fled in panic, resulting in numerous deaths."
The London Blitz - 1940 – 41
Following a German-staged August 31, 1939 attack, Hitler invaded Poland
on September 1. Honoring their obligations to Poland, Britain and
France demanded a withdrawal. None came, and on September 3, Prime
Minister Chamberlain announced on-air that a state of war existed
against Germany. WW II began.
On September 7, 1940, Hitler changed tactics. After initially targeting
RAF airfields and radar stations in preparation for an invasion, he
attacked London for 57 consecutive nights to demoralize the population
and force Britain to come to terms. It began the "Blitz" against
numerous UK cities. It lasted intensively until May 11. Hitler then
focused on Russia, continued smaller-scale UK bombings, and by 1944
used pilotless V-1 flying ("Buzz) bombs and V-2 rockets.
Ernie Pyle was a noted war correspondent witness to the Battle of
Britain and invasion of France. He described a 1940 London night raid
as follows:
"It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire. They came
just after dark, and somehow you could sense from the quick, bitter
firing of the guns that there was to be no monkey business this night."
"Shortly after the sirens wailed you could hear the Germans grinding
overhead. In my room....you could feel the shake from the guns. You
could hear (explosions) tearing buildings apart....You have all seen
big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a
city lined with great fires - scores of them, perhaps hundreds....Every
two minutes, a new wave of planes would be over...."
"Later on, I went out among the fires....London stabbed with great
fires, shaken by explosions....all of it roofed over with a ceiling of
pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of
vicious engines. (It was) the most hateful, most beautiful single scene
I have ever known."
London wasn't the only city attacked. In addition to military sites, so
were Dublin, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Birmingham, Sheffield,
Plymouth, Nottingham, Southhampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Clydebank,
Coventry, Greencock, Swansea, and Hull.
Before it ended, around 43,000 died in London, thousands more in other
cities, hundreds of thousands were injured, and more than a million
London houses were destroyed - yet the British public was more than
ever committed to defeating Nazism.
Dresdan – 1945
As a German POW, author Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the effects of its
fire-bombing and described the horror that Arthur ("Bomber) Harris
inflicted:
"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of
flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame,
than died in Hiroshima and Nagazaki combined."
Well, not quite as explained below. Nonetheless, on the evening of
February 13 and early 14th morning, 1945, the raid was horrific by any
measure. It was an orgy of barbarism against a defenseless German city
and one of Europe's great cultural centers.
In less than 14 hours, it was ruined and as many as 100,000 Germans
died, although later accounts suggested lower totals. Dresdan was also
a hospital city for wounded soldiers. It was of no military importance,
and, by February, Germany was soundly defeated. Attacking was morally
indefensible, and unleashing a firestorm and slaughter of tens of
thousands was one of WW II's great war crimes.
More than 700,000 phosphorous bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people.
The temperature in city center reached 1600 degrees centigrade. Bodies
became molten flesh. The slaughter was horrific, so why was it ordered?
The February 4 - 11 Yalta Conference was approaching at which the Big
Three (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) would divide the spoils of war.
Churchill and Roosevelt wanted an edge as well as a way to "impress"
Stalin. It wasn't gotten as bad weather delayed the original raid, yet
Churchill ordered it anyway and declared it successful when over.
Morality wasn't an issue for the man who felt no "squeamishness" over
using poison gas against Iraqis in the 1920s and recommended it in his
secret memo. Nor in firebombing Hamburg in July 1943 - causing
widespread destruction, killing an estimated 50,000, injuring many
more, mostly civilians, and leaving around one million Germans homeless.
Tokyo – 1945
US air forces bombed Tokyo several times before using incendiaries. On
April 18, 1942, four months after Pearl Harbor, Lt. Col. Jimmy
Doolittle led the raid MGM made famous in its 1944 film, "Thirty
Seconds Over Tokyo." It did little damage. All 16 US aircraft were
lost, 11 crewmen were either killed or captured, but it achieved its
aim. It sent a propaganda message and proved Tokyo was vulnerable to
more attacks.
The B-29 Superfortress made the difference. Introduced in May 1944, it
was a long-range heavy bomber used first in a single plane high
altitude reconnaissance mission over Tokyo in November. The first
firebombing raid came on February 24, 1945 when 174 planes destroyed
one square mile of the city. The major attack came days later on March
9 when 279 Superforts demolished 16 square city miles, killed an
estimated 100,000 in the firestorm, injured many more, and left over
one million homeless. Around five dozen other Japanese cities were also
firebombed at a time most structures in the country were wooden and
easily consumed. And for what?
Early in 1945, Japan sent America peace feelers, and, two days before
the February Yalta Conference, Douglas MacArthur sent Roosevelt a
40-page summary of its terms. They were near-unconditional. The
Japanese would accept an occupation, would cease hostilities, surrender
its arms, remove all troops from occupied territories, submit to
criminal war trials, and allow its industries to be regulated. In
return, they asked only that their Emperor be retained in an honorable
capacity.
Roosevelt spurned the offer. So did Truman. In March, Tokyo was
firebombed, then in August atomic bombs were used for the first (and so
far only) time against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki – 1945
The week of August 6, 1945 was the worst in Japanese history. On August
8, Soviet Russia declared war, invaded Manchuria, and occupied it and
the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands.
On August 6 and 9, president Truman authorized Hiroshima and Nagasaki
to be attacked with atomic weapons. Records at the time estimated that
by December the (mostly civilian) Hiroshima death toll was about
140,000. In Nagasaki, it was somewhat lower at 74,000, but those
numbers rose in succeeding months and years. Radiation poisoning is
permanent and enough of it kills or causes grievous illnesses,
disfiguration, and birth defects to offspring. Decades later, they're
still being felt.
The joint US, UK, Canada (1939 - 1946) Manhattan Project developed
nuclear weapons with the first bomb test-detonated three weeks before
August 6. Hiroshima was the initial target, a medium-sized city of
industrial and military importance although that late in the war Japan
was largely destroyed and in a state of collapse.
Nagasaki was a large southern Japanese sea port. Kokura was the primary
target, but poor visibility on August 9 diverted the mission to the
alternate choice. Howard Zinn recounted what happened in his August
2000 "Bombs of August" article.
Their principle justification was to save "lives because otherwise a
planned US invasion of Japan would have been necessary, resulting in
the deaths of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Truman
at one point (said) 'a half million lives,' and Churchill 'a million
lives,' but these figures" had no basis in fact. "Even official
projections" were at most around 46,000.
"In fact, the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not
forestall an invasion of Japan because (none) was necessary" or even
likely. Japan was "on the verge of surrender" and top US military and
government officials knew it so "dropping the bomb(s were) completely
unnecessary."
Afterward, Joint Chiefs Chairman, William Leahy, called the atomic bomb
"a barbarous weapon" and admitted that using them against Japan was
unnecessary. After the US May 1945 Okinawa victory, Japan had enough of
war. By June, six of its Supreme War Council members authorized Foreign
Minister Togo to ask the Soviets to mediate its end. Hitler and
Mussolini were dead. Germany surrendered in early May, and Japan
offered near-unconditionally provided its Emperor was retained.
Truman spurned the offer to ensure the atomic bombings. "It seems that
the United States government was determined to drop those bombs,"
according to Zinn. Why so?
He cites Gar Alperovitz "whose research on that question is unmatched."
Based on Truman's papers, "the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon
against the Soviet Union" - to let us dictate war-ending terms and as
the "first major operation of the cold diplomatic" one that followed.
Horrifying as it was, incinerating hundreds of thousands late in the
war was judged good politics plus a message to Soviet Russia and other
potential adversaries that we were the toughest adversary around - and
for doubters, visit the remains of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Other aims as well lay behind the attacks then and later on - "There
was tin, rubber, oil, corporate profit (and) imperial arrogance." Human
rights and lives relate to none of these.
North Korea - 1950-53
East Asia and Korean expert Bruce Cumings wrote this about the Korean War:
"What was indelible about it was the extraordinary destructiveness of
the United States air campaigns against North Korea, from the
widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to
threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons, and the destruction of
huge North Korean dams in the final stages of war."
Post-WW II, neither North Korea, China or any other country threatened
America. Creating adversaries was entirely bogus to advance our
imperial agenda, and slaughtering millions of North Koreans was
perfectly acceptable. Later millions of Southeast Asians. More on that
below.
On June 25, 1950, after months of US-influenced Republic of Korean
(ROK) provocations, North Korean forces invaded the South. James Petras
wrote about "Provocation and Pretext for the US War Against Korea" and
referred to America's "incomplete conquest of Asia" following WW II.
Revolutionary upheavals followed in China, Southeast Asia and Korea.
"President Truman faced a profound dilemma - how to consolidate US
imperial supremacy in the Pacific" when the public and "war wearied
soldiers....demand(ed) demobilization and a return" to normalcy. Like
Roosevelt in 1941, he chose the usual course, provoked a confrontation,
and intervened in Korea's civil war.
In the run-up to the US invasion, "Truman, the US Congress, and mass
media engaged in a massive propaganda campaign (like today to sell
foreign wars) and purge of peace and anti-militarist organizations
throughout US civil society. Tens of thousands" were affected but not
like what we did to Koreans.
Until the 1953 armistice, North Korea was literally bombed to rubble
with principle targets hit around Pyongyang (the capital), Chongyin,
Wonsan, Hungnam and Rashin. Three to four million deaths resulted and
unimaginable additional casualties, mostly innocent civilians.
Again Cumings:
"Korea (was) assumed to have been a limited war," but it bore strong
resemblance to the air war against Japan in WW II, and it was directed
by some of the same military leaders. The use of napalm against
populated areas was horrific as one survivor described:
"It fell right on people. Men all around me burned. They lay rolling in
the snow. Men I knew....begged me to shoot them...It was terrible. When
the napalm had burned the skin to a crisp, it would be peeled back from
the face, arms, legs....like fried potato chips."
Orders were given to burn towns and villages and create oceans of
fires. General Matthew Ridgway ordered the air force to burn the
capital, Pyongyang, to the ground. Other areas also in a scorched earth
campaign few in America knew about, then or now.
MacArthur asked for commander's discretion to use nuclear weapons, lots
of them, and if Truman hadn't intervened he would have. In posthumously
published interviews, he said he had a plan to win the war in 10 days:
"I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs strung across the neck of
Manchuria," spread a radioactive cobalt belt from the Sea of Japan to
the Yellow Sea, and deterred any invasion from the North. "My plan was
a cinch," he claimed, and the Russians would have done nothing about it.
Cumings continues:
Even without nuclear weapons, "the air war leveled North Korea and
killed millions of civilians. North Koreans tell you that for three
years they faced a daily threat of being burned (alive) with napalm."
There was no escape, and by "1952 just about everything in northern and
central Korea had been completely leveled. What was left of the
population survived in caves."
Bomb damage assessment showed that 18 of 22 major cities were half or
more obliterated. The big industrial ones were from 75 - 100%
destroyed. Villages were described as "low, wide mounds of violent
ashes." This was Korea, "the limited war." Southeast Asia was next.
Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - 1964 – 1973
Gabriel Kolko wrote the definitive history of the Vietnam war in his
1985 book: "Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the
Modern Historical Experience." He saw America's invention as a
predictable consequence of its ambition, strengths, weaknesses, and
quest for world dominance.
Nonetheless, it miscalculated. Vietnamese tired of colonial rule so the
communists in the North gained control. They won peasant loyalty by
promising more equal land distribution. In addition, their top leaders
were intellectuals. They planned well and were patient. The contrast in
the South was stark. America installed the authoritarian Ngo Dinh Diem
regime to build a strong army, crush opposition, and serve as a
reliable ally.
From the 1950s, the US supplied military advisors, slowly escalated
under Kennedy, and much more when Lyndon Johnson became president.
After the bogus August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, war began to
establish client regimes and military bases across East and South Asia,
encircle China, and crush nationalist anti-imperial movements.
Operation Rolling Thunder began in February 1965 and lasted through
October 1968. For 44 months, over one millions tons of ordnance were
used in targeted and indiscriminate bombings. It aimed to destroy North
Vietnam's economy and curtail help reaching National Liberation Front
(Viet Cong) resistance in the South. Over the course of the war, eight
million tons of bombs were dropped from 1965 - 73, threefold the
tonnage in WW II and amounting to 300 tons for every Vietnamese man,
woman, and child.
As in Korea, napalm was also used along with other incendiary devices.
In addition, terror weapons like anti-personnel cluster bombs spewing
thousands of metal pellets hitting everything in their path plus the
indiscriminate planting of land mines that to this day take lives.
From 1961 to 1971, the dioxin-containing defoliant Agent Orange was
used as well, mainly in the South, Cambodia and Laos. Millions of
gallons were sprayed with devastating human consequences. It's one of
the most toxic of known substances, a potent carcinogenic human immune
system suppressant. It accumulates in adipose tissue and the liver, can
alter living cell genetic structures, cause congenital disorders and
birth defects, and contribute to diseases like cancer and type two
diabetes.
These consequences were never considered nor the effects of expanded
spraying to destroy vital food crops like rice. Also in 1970, US forces
conducted Operation Tailwind using sarin nerve gas in Laos causing many
deaths, including civilians. Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Joint Chiefs
Chairman, confirmed the use on CNN in 1998. Then under Pentagon
pressure, CNN retracted the report, fired its award-winning journalist
Peter Arnett and co-producers April Oliver and Jack Smith because they
refused to disavow it.
The Indochinese war engulfed Cambodia and Laos as well. From March 1969
through May 1970, Nixon ordered Cambodia secretly bombed (without
consulting Congress) to destroy North Vietnam and Viet Cong
sanctuaries. Around 3500 sorties caused 600,000 deaths, mostly
civilians, and helped the marginal Khmer Rouge rise to power in 1975.
Neutral Cambodia was bombed with over 500,000 tons of ordnance until
August 1973. Over 25,000 US ground forces also invaded. They destroyed
dozens of towns, villages and hamlets, and killed many thousands more,
mostly peasants guilty of living in the wrong country at the wrong time.
A second 1962 Geneva Accord recognized Laos as a neutral country and
banned the presence of foreign military personnel. The reality on the
ground was quite different. From 1964 - 1973, America dropped over two
million tons of ordnance during 580,000 bombing sorties - the
equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, round-the-clock
for nine years. The aim was to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and target the Pathet Lao government and
North Vietnamese Army in control of the country's eastern provinces.
Secret bombings were again the strategy. Terror weapons were used,
including napalm, white phosphorous and cluster bombs - leaving
millions of unexploded bomblets buried in fields, roads, forests,
villages, and rivers. Laos had a population of about 6.5 million. About
one-third of it was either killed, injured, or displaced. Overall,
Southeast Asia's wars killed about three to four million, inflicted
vast amounts of destruction, and caused incalculable human suffering
felt to this day.
Iraq - Since 1991
Four days after Saddam entered Kuwait (on August 2, 1990), Operation
Desert Shield was launched. US-demanded UN sanctions were imposed. A
large American troop deployment began along with a Kuwait-funded PR
campaign to win public support for Operation Desert Storm. It began on
January 17, 1991.
By any standard, it was horrendous and criminal. Before it ended six
weeks later (on February 28), US forces committed grievous war crime
violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, Nuremberg
Principles, and US Army Field Manual 27-10. Among them were gratuitous
mass slaughter and destruction of essential to life facilities,
including:
-- power plants;
-- dams;
-- water purification facilities;
-- sewage treatment and disposal systems;
-- telephone and other communications;
-- hospitals;
-- mosques;
-- up to 20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings;
-- irrigation sites;
-- food processing, storage and distribution facilities;
-- hotels and retail establishments;
-- transportation infrastructure;
-- oil wells, pipelines, refineries and storage tanks;
-- chemical plants;
-- factories and other commercial operations;
-- government buildings;
-- schools;
-- historical sites; and
-- civilian shelters in a willful targeting of innocent men, women and children.
Virtually everything needed for normal functioning was destroyed or
heavily damaged - and more. Tens of thousands were gratuitously killed,
as many as 200,000 or more by independent estimates.
Twelve years of genocidal sanctions followed that killed as many as 1.7
million, two-thirds of them children under age five. From the 2003
"shock and awe" blitzkrieg through 2007, as many as 1.5 - 2.0 million
more lives were lost, most of them young children. By any standard
since 1991, Washington conducted a 17-year campaign of genocide to
slaughter innocent Iraqis, erase the "cradle of civilization," turn the
country into a free market paradise, and make serfs of its people - as
part of a greater aim for regional and global dominance and control of
world resources and markets.
Human rights and lives are non-starters. So is the rule of law. War
continues to rage. Permanent occupation is planned. The human tragedy
continues with no foreseeable end.
Serbia-Kosovo – 1999
In June 1999, playwright Harold Pinter told a UK anti-war demonstration
that NATO's Yugoslavia bombing made him ashamed to be British:
"Little did we think two years ago that we had elected a government
which would take a leading role in what is essentially a criminal act,
showing total contempt for the United Nations and international law."
He called cutting children to pieces from 15,000 feet "barbaric" and
despicably hypocritical.
"Let us face the truth - neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about
the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been yet another blatant and
brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile. It set out to
consolidate one thing - American domination of Europe. This must be
recognised and it must be resisted." This barbarism mustn't be allowed
to stand.
Diana Johnstone explained the conflict in her superb 2002 book, "Fools' Crusade." Edward Herman reviewed it and wrote this:
"Military interventions on supposedly humanitarian grounds have become
an established feature of the post-Cold War global order. Since
September 11, this form of militarism has taken on new and
unpredictable proportions." Diana Johnstone did an admirable job
analyzing NATO's intervention. Muslims were portrayed as "defenseless
victims," Serbs as "genocidal monsters" to prepare the ground for
America and NATO to dominate the Balkans.
Herman: Johnstone explained "that the 'Kosovo war' was in reality the
model for future destruction of countries seen as potential threats to
the hegemony of an 'international community' currently being redefined
to exclude or marginalize all but those who conform to the interests of
the United States."
Throughout the 1990s, conflict and civil wars divided Yugoslavia into
separate states culminating with the US-NATO 1999 bombing of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - Serbia-Kosovo. From March 24 - June
10, around 600 aircraft flew about 3000 sorties dropping thousands of
tons of ordnance plus hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles. To
that time, the ferocity of the attack was unprecedented given the
destructiveness of modern weapons and technology.
Nearly everything was struck causing massive destruction and
disruption: known or suspected military sites and targets; power
plants; factories; transportation; telecommunications facilities; vital
infrastructure including roads, bridges and rail lines; fuel depots;
schools; a TV station; the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; hospitals;
government offices; churches; historical landmarks; and more in cities
and villages throughout the country.
An estimated $100 billion in damage was inflicted. A humanitarian
disaster resulted. Environmental contamination was extensive. Large
numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Two million people lost
their livelihoods. Many their homes and communities and for most their
futures from what America planned and implemented jointly with NATO.
Michel Chossudovsky explained earlier in a February 2008 article that:
"The Balkans constitute the gateway to Eurasia. The 1999 invasion
establishes a permanent US Military presence (at Camp Bondsteel,
Kosovo) in Southern Europe, which serves the broader US led war.
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq: these three war theaters were waged
on humanitarian grounds. (In each case, utterly bogus.) Without
exception, in all three countries, US military bases were established"
as part of America's global imperial agenda.
The US, NATO and international community support the organized
crime-connected KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) government and its leader
Hashim Thaci. Kosovo as it was no longer exists. Afghanistan and Iraq
were next.
Afghanistan – 2001
The 9/11 attack was the pretext for bombing, invading and occupying
Afghanistan, an operation planned months in advance the way Michel
Chossudovsky explained in his superb book, "America's War on
Terrorism." Most people don't "realize that a large scale theater war
is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks."
The Taliban and bin Laden became fictitious "outside enem(ies)" without
which no "war on terrorism" could exist or imperial wars fought.
Afghanistan was the first target. It began on October 7, 2001, four
weeks after 9/11, and ended five weeks later on November 12. Once
again, conflict ravaged Afghanistan, a country more abused,
long-suffering, and less helped than most any in living memory,
according to John Pilger. Today it's occupied under a US-installed
puppet. Its suffering continues unabated and may intensify under Obama
if he follows through on his promise to add more troops for a larger
combat role.
Chossudovsky again:
US imperialism aims to "recoloniz(e)...a vast region extending from the
Balkans into Central Asia" - the "center of world power," according to
Zbigniew Brzezinski extending from German, Poland and the Balkans in
the East through Russia and China in the Pacific, including the Middle
East and Indian subcontinent. It's an area with 75% of the world's
population, most of its resources and physical wealth, three-fourths of
its oil and gas, and the grandest of grand prizes for whoever controls
it.
Chossudovsky:
...."America's war machine purports to enlarge America's economic
sphere of influence" - through its newly established military bases "in
Iraq, Afghanistan (and) in several of the former Soviet republics on
China's Western frontier." The South China Sea as well.
"War and Globalization go hand in hand. Militarization supports the
conquest of new economic frontiers and the worldwide imposition of
free-market" capitalism. Afghanistan became its victim. Thousands were
killed and as many as six million displaced. Most now have returned but
to what - deplorable conditions of no future, despair, no shelter,
work, schools, medical care, clean water, security, and for many
hunger, disease and early deaths.
Like Serbia-Kosovo and Iraq, Afghanistan is another country
terror-bombed to oblivion to impose free-market capitalism everywhere.
Conflicts will continue. World peace is an illusion, nowhere more than
in the Middle East.
Lebanon - 1982 and 2006
Israel and Lebanon have had a troubled history through no fault of the
Lebanese. In 1968, the IDF conducted cross-border terror raids,
including attacking the Beirut airport and destroying 13 commercial
planes, claiming it was in retaliation for an attack by
Lebanese-trained Palestinians targeting an Israeli airliner in Athens.
Further IDF incursions continued in the 1970s against the PLO,
including the "Litani River Operation." It was launched in March 1978
to establish a southern occupation zone with Christian South Lebanon
Army (SLA) soldiers in place to secure it once Israeli forces withdrew
weeks later.
In June 1982, "Operation Peace of the Galilee" (called the First
Lebanon War) was launched against the Palestinian leadership. The IDF
invaded after claiming PLO involvement in an assassination attempt on
its UK ambassador. The charge was bogus, yet Israel exploited it to
attack and remain in the country until it withdrew in May 2000.
In the interim, Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon, attacked the
PLO, drove out the leadership to Tunis, slaughtered around 18,000
mostly non-combatant Lebanese and Palestinians, and authorized a
Phalange militia force to massacre about 3000 men, women and children
in southern Beirut Sabra and Shitila camps.
In June 2006, Palestinians responded to continued Israeli provocations
by striking an IDF military post, killing two soldiers, injuring
several others and capturing a third. Events escalated when Hezbollah
resistance fighters captured two IDF soldiers who illegally crossed the
UN-monitored "blue line" - a near-daily Israeli routine since it
withdrew from South Lebanon in May 2000.
Israel responded with overwhelming force by launching "Operation Summer
Rain" against Gaza and invading South Lebanon in what became known as
the Second Lebanon War. It lasted 33 days against Hezbollah, the
Lebanese people, and the entire country, including northern Christian
areas.
It was long-planned terror against civilian, commercial, and
infrastructure targets - bridges; roads; power plants; the three
largest cities of Beirut, Tyre and Sidon; Beirut airport; factories;
warehouses; civil defense centers; schools; radio and TV stations;
mosques; churches; hospitals; ambulances; and anything else in the path
of a scorched-earth blitzkrieg killing over 1300, injuring many more,
displacing one million people (or one-forth of the population), and
causing billions of dollars in damage.
Both assaults were planned months in advance and closely coordinated
with Washington like always. Terror weapons were also used, including
blanketing entire towns with cluster bombs. Others reported were:
-- banned white phosphorous bombs and shells (known as Willy Pete) that
burn flesh to the bone and can't be extinguished by water; and
-- reportedly a thermobaric bomb able to penetrate buildings,
underground shelters and tunnels, and able to create blast pressure
enough to suck all oxygen from spaces and human lungs in the vicinity.
Hezbollah prevailed, nonetheless. A post-conflict analysis showed its
commanders were well prepared, and successfully penetrated Israel's
strategic and tactical decision-making cycle, including its
intelligence, military and political operations. As a result, their
fighters held their own, killed over 100 IDF soldiers, retained their
military capability, and effectively embarrassed the Israeli government
- at a very stiff cost to Lebanon and a million or more of its people.
Gaza - 2008 – 09
For Israel, attacking Palestinians is a long-standing practice, beginning with its 1948 "War of Independence." It involved:
-- the wholesale massacre and displacement of 800,000 Palestinians;
-- destroying their homes, 531 villages and crops, and their futures;
-- 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and elsewhere;
-- mass incidents of rape and other atrocities; and
-- the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily to avoid being harmed by invading Arab armies.
The State of Israel was created on 78% of historic Palestine.
Palestinians retained the remainder in Gaza and the West Bank. On June
5, 1967, Israel launched its so-called "Six Day War" against Egypt,
Jordan and Syria - a long-planned preemptive act masquerading as
self-defense. When it ended, Israel controlled the remainder of
Palestine.
It's now occupied the Territories militarily for over 41 years - the
longest continuous illegal occupation anywhere under which Palestinians
lost all freedom; are collectively punished; are losing their land; are
being cantonized in the West Bank; and since December, assaulted by
Israel's most savage aggression since the "Six Day War."
"Operation Cast Lead" terror bombings began on December 27 and have
continued daily round the clock. The death and injury toll exceeds 5000
as of January 12, the great majority of whom are civilian men, women
and children. Portions of Gaza have been reoccupied. Israel is pursuing
genocide. Gaza is completely sealed off. It's now a free-fire zone on
the ground and from repeated air attacks. Tanks, missiles, bombs,
terror weapons, and the latest technology is matched against crude
rockets, home-made mortars, hand-held automatic weapons, and the
redoubtable spirit of brave Gazan freedom fighters unjustly called
"terrorists." Civilians, including women and children, are being
willfully slaughtered and comprise the vast majority of killed and
wounded.
On January 6, IDF tank shelling killed 42 Palestinians and wounded
dozens more taking shelter in an UNRWA school. False reports claimed
"militants" were inside and fired first. UN officials denied it and
provided Israeli authorities with GPS coordinates (in advance) and left
no doubt this was a school used as temporary shelter for civilians
fleeing the fighting. There were no fighters inside.
On January 9, a disturbing UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report read as follows:
"From 3 to 7 January, the IDF prevented medical teams from entering the
area to evacuate the wounded. In one of the gravest incidents....on 4
January Israeli foot-soldiers (herded about) 110 Palestinian
(civilians) into a single-residence house in Zaytoun (half of whom were
children), warning them to stay indoors."
"Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly,
killing approximately thirty. Those who survived and were able, walked
two kilometers to Salah Din road before being transported to the
hospital in civilian vehicles."
On January 9, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) suspended its
relief operations after Israel attacked its convoys and installations.
Its statement read:
"On numerous occasions in recent days, humanitarian convoys have come
under Israeli fire even though their safe passage through clearly
designated routes at specifically agreed times, had been confirmed by
the Israeli liaison office....the nature, severity and frequency of
these incidents" necessitated the suspension of operations.
The International Committee of the Red Cross faces similar problems.
ICRC's Geneva-based operations director, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said:
"There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a full-blown and
major crisis in humanitarian terms."
UNWRA's Gaza head, John Ging, expressed similar sentiments and added:
"There is nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and
traumatized." Israel and the world community are dismissive,
unresponsive, and arrogant. Mass slaughter and destruction are
green-lighted to continue - international human rights laws be damned.
These and other incidents are grievous war crimes. Everything and
everyone is attacked as the IDF connects the entire population to Hamas
- long targeted since democratically winning a decisive January 2006
PLC majority. It's been severely punished ever since. Gaza was
politically separated from the West Bank, and since June 2007 isolated
under a medieval siege. It's now intensified as the Territory is
engulfed in war, in a state of collapse, and a grave humanitarian
crisis approaches a calamity of biblical proportions.
On January 8, the Security Council passed a toothless resolution. SC Res. 1860:
-- "stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and
fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli
forces from Gaza;"
-- other provisions call for humanitarian assistance; "initiatives
aimed at creating and opening humanitarian corridors;" international
efforts to alleviate the situation and "prevent illicit trafficking in
arms and ammunition; intra-Palestinian reconciliation;" support for
Egypt's mediation efforts; the Quartet's "consideration;" and
-- the SC condemns "all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
No Israeli condemnation was included; its wanton targeted slaughter;
its international law violations; its blitzkrieg against men, women and
children; its military juggernaut against vulnerable civilians; the
thousands of killed and wounded; Gazans for 18 months under siege; the
calamitous humanitarian crisis; no firm timelines for attacks to halt;
the siege to end; action threats if they don't; no ordering of
immediate border openings and emergency airdrops until they do; no
teeth in a worthless resolution to let mass slaughter continue with
impunity.
No respect either for the UN Charter's mandate "to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which (dozens of times) in our
lifetime (have) brought untold sorrow to mankind; to reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights;" respect for justice and international law;
"to promote social progress; practice tolerance; maintain international
peace and security;" and advance the rights of all peoples everywhere.
Fourteen nations voted aye. One abstained, America.
Israel ignored it and maintained round-the-clock terror raids. Prime
Minister Olmert called it "unworkable" and his office said that Israel
"has never agreed to let an external body decide its right to protect
the security of its citizens."
Israel disdains the rule of law, has a long history of ignoring UN
resolutions, and believes it can do anything it pleases, law or no law.
World and Arab leaders don't object and remain largely dismissive as
casualties keep mounting. Israel is strangling Gaza. Foreign
journalists can't enter in violation of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling.
On January 6, editor Ramzy Baroud reported that his
PalestineChronicle.com site was "hacked today by an Israeli group
(called) "Blue Dolphin." It's because of his important work providing
vital information about the conflict and Occupied Palestine. Israel and
Washington ruthlessly suppress truths. After a heroic effort, Baroud
was again operating in less than 24 hours.
Gazan Sameh Habeeb is a heroic blogger despite threats on his life. On January 8 he wrote:
"I got three calls from anonymous persons (saying) stop blogging or I
would be killed. Yet I would keep on this track. Some of you do wonder
how I send news in such conditions. I really suffer a lot to send you
this update due to a lack of power (with) shells rain(ing) down and
drones hover(ing) over me. I will keep this up."
Not if Washington can help it. By supplying Israel with weapons,
munitions and defense technology, it violates the 1976 Arms Export
Control Act. It requires recipient governments to restrict their use to
legitimate defense. Israel uses them for aggressive wars and its
illegal occupation. Exports are prohibited to countries that
"contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass
destruction, support international terrorism, increase the possibility
of outbreak or escalation of conflict, or prejudice the development of
bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements
or other arrangements."
The 1994 Human Rights and Security Assistance Act affirms "human rights
as principal goal of foreign policy." It also states that "no security
assistance may be provided to any country the government of which
engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally
recognized human rights." Israel has been a serial violator for six
decades, yet receives more aid than all other countries combined and
uses it for aggressive wars, military oppression, colonial expansion,
and grievous human rights violations.
On January 6 (in complicity with Israel and Washington), Haaretz
reported that Egypt is barring doctors (except for two Norweigians)
from entering through Sinai to provide help. Mubarack's "closure (is)
seen by some as abetting Israel's siege" and partnering in its war
crimes. Obstetrician Jemilah Mahmood expressed her frustration: "Can
you imagine how many women are hurt and how few doctors there are? All
of us are sitting at the border" and can't get in to help.
Reports are that Gaza hospitals are in chaos - with little power, few
supplies, a patient overload, and air and ground assaults all around.
Nonetheless, doctors work day and night to save lives, yet often they
fail. Hundreds of patients are clinically dead with no hope of saving
them. The toll keeps mounting. The frustration is unbearable, and at
Shifa Hospital 90% of the patients are civilians, many with the
ghastliest of wounds.
Disturbing reports claim Israeli use of terror weapons. Tehran Press TV
said medics found DU traces in wounded Gazans following the ground
invasion. The TimesOnline.UK headlined: "Israel rains fire on Gaza with
phosphorous shells" - a weapon that causes horrific burns on human skin
and is illegal except for smokescreens. "Tell-tale shells could be seen
spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops' advance.
(They) blind the enemy (but) anyone caught beneath them" gets severely
burned. Using this type weapon in tightly concentrated Gaza assures
some or perhaps many are vulnerable.
Former British major and military expert calls white phosphorous a
terror weapon and if "deliberately fired at a crowd of people (should)
end (someone) up in the Hague."
Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert is a member of its Gaza triage medical team.
He told Press TV about "clear evidence that the Israelis are using new
type very high explosive weapons called Dense Inert Metal Explosive
(DIME) that are made out of a tungsten alloy."
They have enormous explosive power, and "humans who are hit by (them
are) cut to pieces. (They were) first used in Lebanon (and Gaza) in
2006....On the long term, these weapons will have a cancer effect on
those who survive....So they kill and those who survive risk having
cancer."
Gilbert accused Israel of violating international law. His account was horrifying;
-- a "ten-year old boy (with) his whole chest filled with (bomb) fragments;
-- on his lap was another person's leg that had been cut off;
-- we resuscitated him and did everything we could do to save his life
but he died between our hands." The "common people" of Palestine "are
paying the price for the Israeli bombardments...."
The humanitarian crisis is horrific; 80% or more of Gazans are
impoverished; half of them are under 15; "now they don't have
food....electricity; it's cold, they don't have warmth and in
addition...they are killed; this must be stopped."
"Almost all of the patients we have received have these severe
amputations." Terror weapons caused them - burns, fragment injuries and
most with their limbs cut off.
These are horrific crimes of war and against humanity against 1.5
million Gazans. Global mass outrage keeps protesting. World leaders are
dismissive and unconcerned. Washington spurns efforts to stop the
carnage. Israel is free to continue terror bombing from the air and use
ground assaults against innocent civilians called "terrorists."
Israeli Radio reported Monday morning (January 12) that the IDF
intensified its operation to a "third stage" and pushed deeper into
more Gaza areas. More reserve units have been activated. Heavy bombing
and shelling continues. White phosphorous incendiaries are being used
on civilian neighborhoods and the Jebaliya refugee camp. White smoke
and fires are seen. Severe burns are being reported.
One leader expressed outrage against Israel's "holocaust. Genocidal" he
called it. On January 7, the BBC reported that "Venezuela ordered the
expulsion of the Israeli ambassador (Shlomo Cohen) to Caracas (and a
number of diplomatic staff with him) in protest at Israel's offensive
in" Gaza.
Chavez strongly condemned Israel and called the IDF "cowardly" (for)
attacking worn-out, innocent people, while they claim that they are
defending their people....I call on the world to stop this
madness....The president of Israel....should be taken to the
International Criminal Court together with the president of the United
States." Venezuela's foreign ministry said Israel's campaign
constituted "flagrant violations of international law (and amounted to)
state terrorism." Ecuador's Raphael Correa and Cuba's government sent
similar messages. Other world leaders stay silent. World outrage keeps
raging in spite of them.
Remember Gaza - immortalized as one of history's terror-bombing
victims. World outrage demands an end to this and the prosecution of
its perpetrators. We stand together in solidarity. Today we're all
Gazans. We're all Palestinians.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached
at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also listen to The Global Research News Hour on
RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time
for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and
national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
In Gaza, a firing squad put Hippocrates up against a wall, aimed and fired. The absurd declarations of an Israeli secret services' spokesman, according to which the army was given the green light in firing at ambulances because they allegedly carried terrorists, is an illustration of the value that Israel assigns to human life these days – the lives of their enemies, that is. It's worth revisiting what's stated in the Hippocratic Oath, which every doctor swears upon before starting to practice the profession.
The following passages are especially worthy of note: "I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity. The health and life of my patient will be my first consideration. I will cure all patients with the same diligence and commitment. I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient."
Seven doctors and voluntary nurses have been killed from the start of the bombing campaign, and about ten ambulances were shot at by the Israeli artillery. The survivors are shaking with fear, but refuse to take a step back. The crimson flashes of the ambulances are the only bursts of light in the dark streets of Gaza, bar the flashes that precede an explosion. Regarding these crimes, the last report comes from Pierre Wettach, chief of the Red Cross in Gaza. His ambulances had access to the spot of a massacre, in Zaiton, East of Gaza City, only 24 hours after the Israeli attack.
The rescue-workers state they found themselves faced by a blood-curdling scenario. "In one of the houses four small children were found near the body of their dead mother. They were too weak to stand on their feet. We also found an adult survivor, and he too was also too weak to stand up. About 12 corpses were found lying on the mattresses." The witnesses to this umpteenth massacre describe how the Israeli soldiers, after getting into the neighbourhood, gathered the numerous members of the Al Samouni family in one building and then proceeded to repeatedly bomb it. My ISM partners and I have been driving around in the Half Red Moon ambulances for days, suffering many attacks and losing a dear friend, Arafa, struck by a howitzer shot from a cannon. A further three paramedics, all friends, are presently inpatients at the hospitals they worked in until a few days ago. Our duty on the ambulances is to pick up the injured, not carry guerrilla fighters. When we find a man lying in the street in a pool of his own blood, we don't have the time to check his papers or ask him whether he roots for Hamas or Fatah. Most seriously injured can't talk, much like the dead. A few days ago, while picking up a badly wounded patient, another man with light injuries tried to hop onto the ambulance. We pushed him out, just to make it clear to whoever's watching from up above that we don't serve as a taxi to usher members of the resistance around. We only take on the most fatally wounded – of which there's always a plentiful supply, thanks to Israel.
Last night at Al Qudas hospital in Gaza City, 17-year-old Miriam was carried in, with full-blown labour pains. Her father and sister-in-law, both dead, had passed through the hospital in the morning, both victims of indiscriminate bombing. Miriam gave birth to a gorgeous baby during the night, not aware of the fact that while she lay in the delivery room, her young husband had arrived in the morgue one floor below her.
In the end, even the United Nations realised that here in Gaza, we're all in the same boat, all moving targets for the snipers. The death toll is now at 789 dead, 3,300 wounded (410 in critical conditions), 230 children killed and countless missing. The death toll on the Israeli side has thankfully stopped at 4. John Ging, chief of UNRWA (UN agency for the rights of Palestinian Refugees) has stated that the UN announced they shall suspend their humanitarian activities in the Gaza Strip. I bumped into Ging in the Ramattan press office and saw him shake his finger with disdain at Israel before the cameras. The UN stopped its work in Gaza after two of its operators were killed yesterday, ironically during the three-hour truce that Israel had announced and as usual, had failed to comply with. "The civilians in Gaza have three hours a day at their disposal in which to survive, the Israeli soldiers have the remaining 21 in which to try and exterminate them", I heard Ging state two steps away from me.
Yasmine, the wife of one of the many journalists waiting in line at the Erez pass, wrote to me from Jerusalem. Israel won't grant these journalists a pass to let them in and film or describe the immense unnatural catastrophe that has befallen us in the last thirteen days. These were her words: " The day before yesterday I went to have a look at Gaza from the outside. The world's journalists are all huddled on a small sandy hill a few km from the border. Innumerable cameras are pointed towards us. Planes circle us overhead – you can hear them but you can't see them. They seem like illusions, like something in your head until you see the black smoke rising from the horizon, in Gaza. The hill has also become a tourist site for the Israelis in the area. With their large binoculars and cameras, they come and watch the bombings live."
While I write this piece of correspondence in a mad rush, a bomb is dropped onto the building next to the one I'm in now. The windowpanes shake, my ears ache, I look out the window and see that the building gathering the major Arabic media agencies has been struck. It's one of Gaza City's tallest buildings, the Al Jaawhara building. A camera crew is permanently stationed on the roof, I can now see them all bending around on the ground, waving their arms and asking for help as they're covered by a black cloud of smoke.
Paramedics and journalists, the most heroic occupations in this corner of the world. At the Al Shifa hospital yesterday I paid Tamim a visit – he's a journalist who survived an air raid. He explained how he thinks that Israel is adopting the same identical terrorist techniques as Al-Qaeda, bombing a building, waiting for the journalists and ambulances to arrive and then dropping another bomb to finish the latter two off as well. In his view that's why there've been so many casualties among the journalists and paramedics. As he said this, the nurses around his bed all nodded in agreement. Tamim smilingly showed me his two stubs for legs. He was happy he was still around to tell the story, while his colleague, Mohammed, had died with a camera in his hand when the second explosion had proved fatal. In the meantime I asked about the bomb that was just dropped on the building next door, where two journalists, both Palestinian, one from Libyan TV and the other from Dubai TV, were injured. This is a harsh new reminder that this massacre must in no way be described or recorded. All that's left for me to hope is that among the Israeli military summit no one reads Il Manifesto, or habitually visits my blog.
Nearly everything you've been led to believe about
Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing
from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press,
about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by
choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly
140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from
towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were
driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since
the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an
occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from
the strip in 2005.
Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and
the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza's air
space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will.
As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the
Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian
population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, with the support
of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly
stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections
in January 2006.
Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in
and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to
life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and
transportation.
The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and
malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment - with the
tacit support of the United States - of a civilian population for
exercising its democratic rights.
THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of
rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between
Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from
Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the
subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures).
The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and
ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported
killed.
WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by
Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But
the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them
civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of
last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed,
many of them soldiers.
Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and
other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel
fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of
the Gaza Strip.
This war on the people of Gaza isn't really about rockets. Nor is it
about "restoring Israel's deterrence," as the Israeli press might have
you believe.
Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli
Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made
to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they
are a defeated people."
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the
author of the forthcoming "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American
Dominance in the Middle East."
'The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear.' (AFP)
By John Pilger
"When
the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny
Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is
broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green,
together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries
of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be
viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But
Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call
news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so
denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially
striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of
knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
They
know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas
or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be
true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the
expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was
planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example,
that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of
369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and
that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as
Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred
to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of
this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was
asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?"
Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a
dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'. The
order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was
signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the
world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony
of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party
co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how
it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men
and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of
strategy ... who remembers who used this means against our people
during the [Second World] war ... we are appalled."
Every
subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the
expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The
lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in
1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab
states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such
as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom
Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched
this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane
traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an
expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems,"
wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the
most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as
desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and
not associated with any ideology or system ... Very much as the
apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South
African government, this ideology - in its most consensual and
simplistic variety - has allowed all the Israeli governments in the
past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are
and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period,
from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these
atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."
In
Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the
piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of
medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure
and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of
whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide
Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk,
the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton
University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this
criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."
In
describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis'
establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the
captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German
army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis
exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's
holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in
its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli
project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs
supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a
Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4
billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It
beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken
on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence
on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his
obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the
presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary
of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When
Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom,
at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave
heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"
The
asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation
Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance."
The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when,
with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and
villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's
Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the
"green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's
secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's
enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001
Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide
bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the
'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to
demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the
plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret
agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23
November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud
Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in
response to his killing.
Something uncannily similar happened
on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing
six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A
ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government - which had
imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and
homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its
Arab occupants were "cleansed." Then on 23 December, Hamas offered to
renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out
assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the
Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan
Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his
bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has
seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking
across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The
establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas
is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign
relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably
in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to
Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its
own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have
never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman
Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In
fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only
democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its
resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was
demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in
the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is
never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its
proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality"
of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition:
that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal
occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN
General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4
January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto,
described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."
When
the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken,
the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" -
the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by
mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps
finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational
life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian
exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society:
truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed ... Look to the Iraq of
today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly
achieved it."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on
Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father.
"Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm
not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of
Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are
all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over
the past 60 years ... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy
doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the
young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was
crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide,"
wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my
government is largely responsible."
Reading the words of both,
I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence
is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls
to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too
is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable
invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The
unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the
equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.
Then
there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why
are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the
Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British
universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than
"intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates
rather than greengroceries"?
Then there are the writers. In the
dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie
Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent
messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one
account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away.
Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be
obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of
irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral
and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The
anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov:
"The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary
characteristic; it is just how things are."
If that is how
things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens
in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the
impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort
our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For
the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and
resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On
my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian
flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done
this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied
together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag
between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day
when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not
forget them.
- John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney,
Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright.
Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won
British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year,"
for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. (Originally published in ZNet –
zmag.org - on January 8, 2009)
'The real reason for the onslaught on Gaza is not about fundamentalist Islam.'
By Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD- Bethlehem
In
Gaza as in Iraq, the US public is being lied to while US taxpayers and
US power is wasted to support aggression. Vanity Fair reported on the
scheme to topple Hamas concocted by Eliot Abrams (a Zionist in the Bush
administration) that was “part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs” that
ended up strengthening Hamas. And by contrast to PR strategies, the
former head of the Israeli intelligence services admitted in Israeli
papers that Israel could have stopped Palestinian retaliatory home-made
rockets long ago by lifting its siege of Gaza (a condition of the cease
fire between Hamas and Israel agreed to but rarely implemented) but
that Israel had a more strategic issue: to try a different way to
topple the duly elected Hamas government.
But what else are we not being told about Gaza?
Over
70% of the 1.5 million Palestinians in this besieged tiny strip of arid
land are refugees. When Obama visited Sderot in the Negev, he should
have also visited Gaza where he would have met with the original
residents of Najd which was renamed Sderot after its destruction and
settlement by European Jews. In Gaza he could have met with refugees
from many of the 530 villages and towns ethnically cleansed. To aid the
exodus, in the six weeks that preceded declaring Israel a state, 33
massacres were committed by Jewish forces like the Haganah, Irgun, and
Stern (forerunners of the Israeli army that is attacking Gaza today).
The
Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe of destruction and ethnic cleansing
marks our history like the genocides of WWII marks European history.
The nascent state expanded by force to encompass 78% of Palestine (50%
more than it was allocated). The West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied
in a second stage of Israeli expansion (1967). A massive colonial
settler enterprise brought 450,000 Jews from around the world to live
in the West Bank. In an eternal quest for maximum geography (for the
Jewish state) with minimum (native Palestinian) demography, a deepening
system of apartheid and discrimination ensued funded by US taxpayers.
As in other colonial ventures, the natives (e.g. Native Americans,
Algerians, Indians etc.) are designated as terrorist, savages, and
barbarians especially when they resist.
The Gaza Ghetto
uprising was so inconvenient to designs to dominate the Middle East,
that it was met with uncommon brutality. This had to be coupled with
massive and well-funded media campaigns abroad to hide the realities
while preventing media access to Gaza. But independent coverage in
Europe and elsewhere show that Israeli forces shelled two universities,
three colleges, police stations, several residential neighborhoods,
three UN schools, roads, bridges, and a children playground. 700
Palestinians were killed in two weeks and over 3000 injured. Half of
the victims are women and children and half the men are noncombatants.
Relative to US population, this would be like killing 132,000 US
citizens in two weeks. The Red Cross and UN agencies report massive
violations of Israeli obligations under International law in many cases
amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ironically, in the
past 60 years the US used its veto power twice as often to protect
Israel from International law than to protect US interests.
The
real reason for the onslaught on Gaza is also not about fundamentalist
Islam. The US and Israel are happy to support those when they tow the
party line (take Saudi Arabia for example). Like the attack on Lebanon
in 2006 Gaza is pummeled to accept the colonization and power
structures. In that context we can understand Israeli Deputy “Defense”
minister Matai Vilnai who warned once that continuing resistance would
bring upon Palestinians a “bigger holocaust”. Indeed resistance to
colonization and occupation are natural and enshrined in International
law and can only be obliterated by genocide.
The timing of
Israel’s carnage in Gaza is not coincidental to US transitions of power
(i.e. terrorize Palestinians in case Obama may not be as sympathetic as
Bush to such tactics) nor is it coincidental to upcoming Israeli
elections (ie. ruling party candidates want to appear extra tough).
What is not understandable is that US taxpayers are supporting this
charade. The US role in the world was most admired and its economy was
booming when President Eisenhower stood with International law and
forced Israel to withdraw from Gaza and the Sinai in 1956.
By
contrast, US standing in the world and its economy are weakest now that
the Israel lobby is at maximum power and dragging us into endless wars.
Despite the blackout in many media outlets, hundreds of demonstrations
in support of Gaza around the US indicate that people are starting to
understand that this injustice cannot go on. When we end US support
for Israeli apartheid (and we will), both Israelis and Palestinians
will be able to live in dignity and peace and a big weight will be
lifted from the US and world economies. The alternatives are
continuing bloodshed and economic devastation. The choice is obvious.
-
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh served on the faculty at Duke and Yale before
returning to serve at Bethlehem University and as Chair of the
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People. His website is
Qumsiyeh.org. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
PHR-Israel collects testimonies from residents of Gaza and
medical personnel. According to one of the testimonies, UNRWA school
was shelled and 43 people have been killed, all civilians, mainly women
and children.
The shelling of the UNRWA school on 6.1.09
Conversation with
the director of Camal Adwan hospital, Dr. Bassam Abu Warda, who
received most of the casualties (6.1.09, 20:30)
According to the
most recent reports regarding a direct hit on the UNRWA school in
Jabaliya yesterday, 43 people have been killed, all civilians, mainly
women and children.
The school had
been offered as a temporary shelter by UNRWA to ten families who had
been ordered to flee their homes due to bombardment of their homes.
30 dead bodies
and 40 injured people were brought to Camal Adwan hospital, while 10
bodies and 30 injured people were sent to the neighboring hospital Al
Awda. 25 of the wounded persons are defined as seriously wounded. There
are many children among the casualties, and about 70% of the adults are
women. No armed persons were identified among the casualties. All
casualties are civilians.
Eyewitness
report of Yihia Hassan, an ambulance driver who was injured while on
duty on Jan. 4, 2009. Collected by PHR-Israel on Jan. 6, 2009.
My name is
Hassan, I am 38 years old, and a father of 4 children and I live in Tel
al- Hawa. I work as an ambulance driver for al Khidmat at- Tabiya al-
Askariya hospital and my telephone no. is 0599329747.
On Jan. 4, 2009 I
was at the hospital at 16:00, we got a phone call from one of the
residents, he said some people in the region of Dachduch, south of Al
-Hawa, were injured. I went out with the rescue vehicle together with
the volunteer Anas Faisal Na'im and with Rafat abd al-Ghul, and with
Muhammad al- Jamasi. Another ambulance left together with us, with
Hazem al -Berawee as the driver, and Yasser al- Shabir as the
volunteer. When we arrived at the scene, at the end of 10 th street,
we met a ten year old boy who told us that the people who are injured
are all inside on Ramle st. The two ambulances parked and the
volunteers Anas, Rafat, Muhammad and Yasser walked in the direction of
the place where the wounded were lying. This was about 50 meters from
the rescue vehicles. When we arrived, a plane shot a missile toward
the place were the wounded were waiting. The second driver and myself,
we ran away from the scene with one of the vehicles, in the direction
of Al Quds hospital. In the hospital we were told that Yasser, Rafat,
Anas and the young boy were killed.
Attack against ICRC (Red Cross) coordinator in Gaza, 6.1.09
Testimony of Muhammad Ramadan of the ICRC, 7.1.09:
Yesterday at
13:00 the driver and I set out to transfer urgent medical supplies by
ICRC truck to Khan Younis. Our exit was pre-coordinated with the
Israeli army and the truck is clearly marked with the ICRC symbols.
When we reached netzarim junction [on the main north-south road in Gaza
– PHR-Israel], a tank shot at us from its machine gun. I could see the
tank clearly. The bullets hit the ground 15 meteres away from us.
Afterwards we were also shot at from the air. We back up some 100
meters and then the tank shot again. We went back to the office and
after an hour we set out again, but we were shot at again in the
Netzarim area. In the end we didn't transfer the medical supplies. It
should be noted that this axis has been closed since the start of the
operation and only today, 7.1.09, we can travel through them for the
first time, although we have been clarifying the need for access since
the start of the operation
Testimonies collected on Tuesday, Jan. 6 2009 by PHR-Israel, from Gaza residents it had assisted in the past.
Khaled, from Khan Younis, a father of four children
There is no
electricity. We have water but there is no medicine in the hospitals.
The UN food supplies stopped coming eight months ago, so there is no
food. The only things left in the stores are snacks or chocolate.
There is no milk, no flour and no eggs. The boys don't sleep all night
long and my four year old daughter will not eat. Amir, my ten year old
son was supposed to travel to Israel for his scheduled chemotherapy
treatment, he had a permit (from the Israeli army) but the way to the
Erez crossing was blocked by tanks and it was impossible to reach the
crossing. We tried to get to the European hospital which is 8 km. away
from our house but the roads were blocked and hardly any cars were able
to pass, so I carried Amir on my back the whole way. The hospital was
out of the medicine that Amir needed and we were told that they can not
give him the treatment that he gets in Israel. So Amir is not being
treated and is not taking any medicine or pain killers.
The Al Sawafiri family, Gaza city
The father: 30
people from our extended family are staying with us because their house
is adjacent to Mahmoud Al- Zaher (A Hamas leader) and they are afraid
to stay at home. There is no electricity, no cooking gas and no
water. There is a severe shortage of food in the village. What little
food that can be found is extremely expensive, for example a box of
eggs costs 17 shekels (more than 3 euro). Drinking water has to be
bought in bottles but it is so dangerous to leave the house for
supplies that they try to go out as little as possible.
Ashraf Kdeih, Khan Younis, near the Israel-Gaza border
We get
electricity for only four hours a day, once a week there is water in
the taps so we save as much as we can in plastic bottles. A 12 kg.
container of cooking gas that used to cost us 35 shekels (about 7 euro)
is now 150 shekels (about 50 euro), and it is extremely difficult to
find containers. My wife and I are both at home but we send our
children to Khan Younis because it is safer there. The children are
terrified but we manage to keep in touch on a daily basis. All day long
we hear the bombing and it is impossible to leave the house. Yesterday
I got a phone call from an automatic machine that said, in Arabic, that
we need to leave the house and move to the city. We have no where to
go to and I don't want to evacuate, so as of now we are imprisoned in
our own house.
Antar, Beit Lahiya
We are 16 people
in the house, 12 of them are children and a baby that was born this
week. We all live in one room and we go out only when we have to go to
the toilets or to shower. Two hours a day there is electricity and
during these two hours some one runs to prepare bread or to cook in the
kitchen. The stores in the neighborhood are closed and it is too
dangerous to go out and look for products. Yesterday, one of our family
members, who also lives in the neighborhood, went out for food and was
killed. All the windows in the house are broken so it is cold at night
and we do not have enough blankets. We hear the bombing from all
directions, tanks, jeeps, planes- it is terrifying.
Testimony collected on 7.1.09 by PHR-Israel from Sa'ed, resident of Gaza City
The tanks are
surrounding the city and are shooting inside all the time. We are 150
people in one four-room apartment. People keep looking at their
children and hugging them. My daughter, 3 years old, keeps asking, when
will the plane come. We are all longing for death. Donkeys and dogs in
Israel have a better life than ours. There is nothing here. In Gaza
city there is no electricity, here we have electricity for 6 hours a
day. The water is very dirty but we have no choice so we drink it. We
haven't seen the international organizations recently. Mothers go out
into the streets to look for their children, one mother saw the head of
her son disconnected from its body. I want my kids and the children in
Sderot to go to school. Your media doesn't show you the truth – we are
being shot at from every direction, also from the sea now. We are
strangling here, let them just open the crossings, they don't let us
live. I tell you – now all of Gaza is Hamas? One and a half million
people. Khaled Meshal wants to be a leader – he kills a nation, Ehud
Barak wants to be a leader – he kills a nation. It's worse than 1948.
Gaza victims' burns increase concern over phosphorus
Michael Evans and Sheera Frenkel, Times
The pale blue 155mm rounds are clearly marked with the designation M825A1, an American-made white phosphorus munition
Jan 8, 2009
Photographic evidence has emerged that proves that Israel has been
using controversial white phosphorus shells during its offensive in
Gaza, despite official denials by the Israel Defence Forces.
There is also evidence that the rounds have injured Palestinian
civilians, causing severe burns. The use of white phosphorus against
civilians is prohibited under international law.
The Times has identified stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells
from high-resolution images taken of Israel Defence Forces (IDF)
artillery units on the Israeli-Gaza border this week. The pale blue
155mm rounds are clearly marked with the designation M825A1, an
American-made WP munition. The shell is an improved version with a more
limited dispersion of the phosphorus, which ignites on contact with
oxygen, and is being used by the Israeli gunners to create a smoke
screen on the ground.
The rounds, which explode into a shower of burning white streaks, were
first identified by The Times at the weekend when they were fired over
Gaza at the start of Israel's ground offensive. Artillery experts said
that the Israeli troops would be in trouble if they were banned from
using WP because it is the simplest way of creating smoke to protect
them from enemy fire.
Times Archive
There were indications last night that Palestinian civilians have been
injured by the bombs, which burn intensely. Hassan Khalass, a doctor at
al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told The Times that he had been dealing
with patients who he suspected had been burnt by white phosphorus.
Muhammad Azayzeh, 28, an emergency medical technician in the city,
said: "The burns are very unusual. They don't look like burns we have
normally seen. They are third-level burns that we can't seem to
control."
Victims with embedded WP particles in their flesh have to have the
affected areas flushed with water. Particles that cannot be removed
with tweezers are covered with a saline-soaked dressing.
Nafez Abu Shaban, the head of the burns unit at al-Shifa hospital,
said: "I am not familiar with phosphorus but many of the patients
wounded in the past weeks have strange burns. They are very deep and
not like burns we used to see."
When The Times reported on Monday that the Israeli troops appeared to
be firing WP shells to create a thick smoke camouflage for units
advancing into Gaza, an IDF spokesman denied the use of phosphorus and
said that Israel was using only the weapons that were allowed under
international law.
Rows of the pale blue M825A1 WP shells were photographed on January 4
on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. Another picture showed
the same munitions stacked up behind an Israeli self-propelled howitzer.
Confronted with the latest evidence, an IDF spokeswoman insisted that
the M825A1 shell was not a WP type. "This is what we call a quiet shell
- it is empty, it has no explosives and no white phosphorus. There is
nothing inside it," she said.
"We shoot it to mark the target before we launch a real shell. We
launch two or three of the quiet shells which are empty so that the
real shells will be accurate. It's not for killing people," she said.
Asked what shell was being used to create the smokescreen effect seen
so clearly on television images, she said: "We're using what other
armies use and we're not using any weapons that are banned under
international law."
Neil Gibson, technical adviser to Jane's Missiles and Rockets, insisted
that the M825A1 was a WP round. "The M825A1 is an improved model. The
WP does not fill the shell but is impregnated into 116 felt wedges
which, once dispersed [by a high-explosive charge], start to burn
within four to five seconds. They then burn for five to ten minutes.
The smoke screen produced is extremely effective," he said.
The shell is not defined as an incendiary weapon by the Third Protocol
to the Convention on Conventional Weapons because its principal use is
to produce smoke to protect troops. However, Marc Galasco, of Human
Rights Watch, said: "Recognising the significant incidental incendiary
effect that white phosphorus creates, there is great concern that
Israel is failing to take all feasible steps to avoid civilian loss of
life and property by using WP in densely populated urban areas. This
concern is amplified given the technique evidenced in media photographs
of air-bursting WP projectiles at relatively low levels, seemingly to
maximise its incendiary effect."
He added, however, that Human Rights Watch had no evidence that Israel was using incendiaries as weapons.
British and American artillery units have stocks of white phosphorus
munitions but they are banned as anti-personnel weapons. "These
munitions are not unlawful as their purpose is to provide obscuration
and not cause injury by burning," a Ministry of Defence source said.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian war surgery specialist working in Gaza, told
The Times that he had seen injuries believed to have resulted from
Israel's use of a new "dense inert metal explosive" that caused
"extreme explosions". He said: "Those inside the perimeter of this
weapon's power zone will be torn completely apart. We have seen
numerous amputations that we suspect have been caused by this."
By Ewa Jasieiwcz, in Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun, Gaza Thursday January 8th 2008
I’ve been working with the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance services in Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya for the past 5 days and nights.
For the past five days the Red Cross and the Red Crescent emergency services have been blocked from evacuating the injured and the dead from key areas surrounding Jabaliya and Gaza City. Special Forces have occupied houses in the areas of Zeitoun, Atarturah, Zoumo and Salahedeen.
Paramedic Ali Khalil’s team was shot at on Monday afternoon. He told me, 'We had been told we had the go-ahead from the Israeli army through co-ordination with the Red Cross but when we arrived at the area we were shot at. We had to turn back'. Yesterday afternoon, a medical volunteer, Hassan, was shot in the leg as he and his colleague had to drop the stretcher they were carrying after coming under Israeli sniper fire. There are reports of scores of dead bodies lying in the streets un-claimed. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society estimates there are 230 injured which they haven’t been able to pick up.
There are reports of 18 corpses in one home alone and the injured dying from treatable wounds because of a lack of access to medical treatment.
Last night, at around 9pm, Marwan, an experienced paramedic, bearing the scars of years of Israeli invasions, sustained another yet another. He was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper in Eastern Jabaliya. Gnarled by his work, picking up the pieces after Israeli attacks, he had said only the day before yesterday, ‘This is no life, its better to die, it would be better to be dead than this shit’.
The blockade on any rescuing is reminiscent of the battle of Jenin in April 2002. Israel forbade ambulances from entering the camp, blowing up one with a tank shell and killing Dr Khalil Sulleiman, the Head of the Palestinian Red Crescent. The army cut water and electricity and bulldozed an entire neighbourhood, complete with residents still in their homes, over the course of 11 days. The death count in the 11-day Jenin massacre was 58, but estimated to be much higher. Here in Jabaliya, this is the equivalent to around 4 days in the past week or almost the whole of yesterday. Between December 27th and January 5th, in Jabaliya alone, 119 people had been killed and 662 injured. An average of 15 people are dying, violently, every day. On January 6th, with the Fakhoura school massacre, 50 people were killed in just one day. Hospital authorities mark the day as the single worst day they have ever seen in Jabaliya.
Sporadic battles are taking place between Palestinian resistance fighters, armed with basic machine guns, the odd grenade, and warm clothes. They’re up against the fourth most powerful army in the world, armed with state-of-the-art war planes, Merkava tanks, regional governmental co-ordination and intelligence, a green light to kill with impunity in the name of self defence, body armor, night vision, and holidays in Goa when it all gets too much.
The paramedics, drivers and volunteers at the emergency services risk their lives every time they leave their base and even working within their bases.
Medics evacuated their original base near Salahadeen street due to heavy shelling from Israeli forces early last week. They then moved to the Al Awda Hospital in Beit Lahiya because again, it was too close to the battle front, and again to a community centre in Moaskar Jabaliya to be ‘safer’.
However, against a backdrop of deafening crashes and bangs of bombs falling close by, on Monday at 12.45pm, an Israeli surveillance plane fired two missiles into the Al Awda Hospital compound. The first slammed into a police car, the second, impacted two minutes later into the ground just meters in front of the Hospital’s clinic. Two rescue workers were injured in the head and face, but we were all lucky to escape without any serious damage.
Right now we’re back at the Jabaliya base, still close to the sound of pounding tank shells, apache strikes, and light gunfire met with staggering rapid fire 50 caliber tank-gun fire, the odd grenade and the ever menacing and maddening sneer of surveillance drones.
Yesterday around 1am we were called out to a strike in the Moaskar Jabaliya area. The area was pitch black, our feeble torches lighting up broken pipes streaming water, glass, chunks of concrete and twisted metal. ‘They’re down there, down there, take care’, people said. The smell of fresh severed flesh, a smell that can only come from the shedding of pints of blood and open insides, was in the air. I got called back by a medic who screamed at me to stay by his side. It turned out Id been following the Civil Defence, the front line responders who check to see if buildings are safe and put out fires, rather than the medics.
The deep ink dark makes it almost impossible to see clearly, shadows and faces lit up by swiveling red ambulance lights and arms pointing hurriedly are our guides for finding the injured. ‘Lets get out of here, lets get out’ say the guys, and we’re leaving to go, empty handed, but straining to seeing what’s ahead when a missile hits the ground in front of us. We see a lit up fountain of what could be nail darts explode in front of us. They fall in a spray like a thousand hissing critters, we cover our heads and run back to the ambulance. One of the volunteers inside, Mohammad, is shocked, ‘Did you see? Did you see? How close it was?’
At approximately 4am, we hit the streets in response to an F16 war plane attack on the house of Abdullah Sayeed Mrad in the Block Two area of Jabaliya Camp in the Northern Gaza Strip.
Mrad is said to be a high ranking Hamas official according to local sources. The attack leveled the house. Every house strike is like walking into a smoking grave, broken doll-like bodies of children to be found beneath layers and layers of white rubble and burning shrapnel.
We took Adam Mamoun Al Kurdi, aged 3 to Al Awda. He died of multiple shrapnel injuries to his skull and lower thighs.
We sped back 5 minutes later – four teams in four Red Crescent ambulances, to fetch more casualties. Thankfully there were none.
Whilst waiting in the ambulance we suddenly heard a deafening bang and saw an orange flash before our ambulance was showered with shrapnel, glass and brick. The target of the attack was another house belonging to Sayeed Mrad. Medics say the strike was from an F16. The depth of damage caused was consistent with the force of an F16-fired bomb.
The house, reduced to rubble, was just two meters from our ambulance. Ambulance driver Majdi Shehadda, 48, sustained deep lacerations to his face and right ear and went into shock in the ambulance. He was treated with oxygen. Four rescue workers sustained minor injuries and had to be treated for smoke and dust inhalation. One, Saaber Mohammad Awad, 34, was preparing to exit his ambulance when the bomb hit. ‘The door smashed against me and the windows smashed in because of the pressure. I expected to die. If we had been outside just a second later, we would have been killed. The ambulance saved our lives’.
The four ambulances, one with all of its' windows blown in and damage to medical stocks inside, the others with cracked windows, were trapped by rubble blocking our exit route.
We had to carry Majdi on a stretcher over the debris of the bombed house in total darkness whilst Israeli drones menaced the skies above us. I tripped up over twisted steel foundation poles at one point and dropped the oxygen tank, the pipe detaching and hissing oxygen out over the rubble. We all evacuated the area after 15 minutes, along with a family, carrying their blankets, mattresses and belongings, as another property belonging to Sayeed Mrad also in the area was at risk of being bombed.
The ambulances would have been clearly visible to Israeli drones and special forces with their rooftop indentification markings, bright flashing lights and solo movement in the deserted, pitch black strees of Jabaliya.
An aerial curfew Everyone is terrified by surveillance plane strikes here. ‘Zenane’ they call them, because of the zzzzz sound they make. They have been firing explosive missiles into people – people walking, in cars, sitting in doorways drinking tea, standing on rooftops, praying together, sitting at home and watching television together.
In Naim Street Beit Hanoun, at 9.30pm on Sunday, Samieh Kaferna , 40, was hit by flying shrapnel to his head. Neighbours called him to come to their home. Fearing his home would be struck, he and a group of relatives began to move from one home to another, to be safer. The second missile struck them down directly. When we arrived one man, eyes gigantic, was being dragged into the pavement, half of his lower body shredded, his intestines slopping out. He was alive, his relatives were screaming, we managed to take four, whilst six others, charred and dismembered, were brought in on the back of an open cattle truck. Beit Hanoun Hospital was chaos, with screaming relatives and burning bodies. Three men died in the attack, 10 were injured, six from the same Abu Harbid family. Three had to have leg amputations, and one a double amputation.
Burning shrapnel in eyes is a common injury, shrapnel slices deep into to any soft fleshy parts of the body. We brought a boy from Beit Hanoun with a distorted heavily bandaged head wrapped in bandages, to Al Nasser hospital with its specialist eye unit and mental health clinic. When we get there, its pitch black, doctors are sitting around candles, the place is freezing and full of shadows. Both the doctors and their have been patients blinded with Israeli-controlled power cuts that intensify the confusion, fear, and psychological darkness caving in on people here.
Burning shrapnel in eyes – like those of three year old Shedar Athman Khader Abid from Beit Hanoun, ‘injured in the left eye, explosive injury, full thickness corneal wound, iris prologue and vitreous loss’ according to her medical report. Her father approaches my friend, quietly, to ask if its possible for me to help her, to get her out to have eye surgery, ’This girl, she was like a moon, haram, three years old and her beauty is robbed from her’.
Extremely hot, shrapnel lodges in chests, legs, faces, hands, stomachs, and skullls. I’ve been taught, don’t focus on stopping bleeding with shrapnel injuries, there is very little blood, the foreign bodies burn inside. Many casualties we’ve brought in that seem ok, literally, on ‘the surface’, only to die a few days later. People talk about the missiles being poison tipped, and there have been reports of white phosphorous being used.
Dead for buying bread Last night four members of a family were traveling back from the bakers in Beit Lahiya. Squeezed into a white skoda, their bag of bread still warm, they were struck by a surveillance plane missile at 6pm. Khaled Ismaeel Kahlood, 44, and his three sons Mohammad 15, Habib, 12, and Towfiq, 10, were cut into pieces by the attack which blew their car in two. Taxi driver Hassan Khalil, 20, was also martyred in the attack. The bodies brought into Kamal Odwan hospital were virtually unrecognizable.
A Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees ambulance was fired upon at approximately 8.30am on Sunday morning killing Paramedic and father of five, Arafa El Deyem, 35. He and another rescue worker had been evacuating casualties which had come under fire from an Israeli tank East of Jabaliya in the North of the Gaza Strip. Witnesses report that as the door of the ambulance was being closed a tank shell hit El Deyem. El Deyem died from a massive loss of blood following a major trauma to his chest. Paramedics I ride with cherish his memory, carrying his photo - a kind and strong looking, bearded man - on their mobile phones.
The following day, at the family's grieving tent, five of El Deyem's relatives were killed when a missile smashed into the tent in the Beit Hanoun Area. Arafat Mohammed Abdel Deinm, 10, Mohammad Jamal Abdel Dein, 25, Maher Younis Abdel Dein, 30, and Said Jamal Said, 27, all died from head and internal explosive injuries. Witnesses claim the missile was fired by an Israeli surveillance drone.
The Ministry of Health confirmed that Doctor Anis Naeem, a nephew of the Hamas Minister of Health, Bassem Naeem, and a colleague were killed in the Zeitoun area on Sunday afternoon when a missile strike from an Israeli surveillance plane impacted on the home they had entered in order to retrieve casualties.
Rescue workers Ihab el-Madhoun 35, and Mohammad Abu Hasira, 24, were struck by Israeli missiles when trying to collect casualties in the Jabal Al Rais area of Jabbaliya last Tuesday. Witnesses said Ihab went to assist his colleague following a strike on the rescue workers. He too was then struck.
Abu Hasira was brought to the Kamal Ahdwan governmental hospital in Jabaliya and died at 7.30am according to hospital records. The cause of death was multiple trauma injuries. Ihab died from massive internal injuries following an operation on his chest and abdominal area five hours later.
Khalil Abu Shammalah, Director of Al Dhumeer Association based in Gaza City said: ‘It is a breach of the fourth Geneva Convention to target emergency medical services under conditions of war and occupation. Battlefield casualties are also protected under the Geneva Conventions and cannot be targeted once injured. Israel is in breach of international law'.
The Israeli news agency Y-Net recently reported that Yuval Duskin, Director of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, told the Israeli cabinet that large numbers Hamas operatives are hiding in hospitals and dressing as medical workers. Palestinian medical officials have dismissed the claims as 'nonsense'. Rescue workers are terrified that hospitals will join the list of civilian targets including homes, schools, universities, mosques, and shops hit in Israel's offensive so far.
Homes crushed People and their homes are being pulverized by Israeli tank shells, F16s and bulldozers. I traveled to the buffer zone area of Sikka Street close to the Erez checkpoint, to see the damage. 27 houses had been crushed by either bulldozers or tank shells, one had been destroyed by an F16 bomb. 10 water wells and 200 dunums of land – orange groves and strawberry fields, have been bulldozed, and approximately 250 people have been made homeless.
Six members of the Kiferna family were crushed to death when their home was fired upon by Tanks on Sunday night.
People were coming back to their homes for the first time. The Hamdan Family had three homes in a row destroyed. I asked one woman sitting amongst the ruins of her home where she would go now? She replied, ‘Beit Hanoun UNRWA school’.
’But do you think that will be safe?’ I asked her. ‘No, but I have nowhere else to go’ she replied.
The Al Naim Mosque was also completely destroyed, holy books still smouldering from the attacks. Approximately one in 10 of the some 100 mosques in the Jabaliya area have been destroyed in Israel’s assault. ‘We see them as personal centers for us, theyre not Hamas, and we paid for them out of our own money, they belong to us, not anyone else’, explained one Imam based in Jabaliya.
The demolition of Mosques means many people are praying in the streets, at the Kamal Odwan hospital, people pray in the garden area opposite, and at the funeral for the 42 people, mostly children, massacred at the Fakhoura School , hundreds prayed on the ground that was turned into an early graveyard.
Forced out On Sunday night, all Sikka Street residents were given five minutes to leave their homes, ordered out through loudhailers, unable to take any belongings with them, rounded up by Israeli occupation forces and taken to the Al Naim Mosque. Women, children and the elderly were put inside and men aged between 16-40 were kept in a field outside in the cold and interrogated. Six were taken to Erez, three were released a day later and were told by soldiers, according to a witness, that it was safe for them to make their own way home along Salahadeen Street. It was there that special forces allegedly shot 33 year-old Shaadi Hissam Yousef Hamad 33, in the head.
Torn schoolbooks lie amidst rubble, and Iman Mayer Hammad picks through the debris of her life, a hejab, shoes, pictures, she cries out, ‘Its all gone, everything, they’ve taken everything, my children can’t finish their exams, how will they finish their exams?’
Hundreds of children won’t be finishing their exams in Gaza because they’re dead.
Whether people stay in their homes or leave, they are being bombed. Majid Hamdan Wadeeya, 40, was hit in the leg and spine with shrapnel while he and his family were preparing to leave their home in Jaffa Street, Jabaliya. We arrived at his home on Tuesday afternoon to find the family’s decrepit red car still running and the family minivan stuffed with mattresses, towels, blankets, and belongings, blasted open. They had been hit by a missile from either a drone of apache. ‘We were going from the bombing, from the bombing’, screamed his children, all terrified. We managed to take half of the family, the rest got in their red car and followed.
We were interviewing residents at the UNRWA elementary school in Jabaliya, close to the Fakhoora school, at exactly the same time of the massacre.The Sahaar family, which had walked from their home in Salahdeen Street to seek refuge in the school on the first day of invasion, were asking us, ‘But do you think we are safe here? We feel that any time a missile could come down us? Are we safe here?’ The 500 people, some 50 families living in classrooms, share just 14 toilets and rely on rations to survive. The nights are cold as the windows have been smashed out by Israeli bomb attacks. Noone can sleep at night because of the sounds of homes, mosques and people being bombed to the ground.
The fabric of life Everyone here knows someone who has been killed in Israel ’s massacres. I can’t keep up with the stories of missile struck cousins, nephews, brothers, the jailed, the humiliated, the shot, the unreachable, the homeless, the now even more vulnerable than ever, people, not pieces, piling up in morgues all over Gaza, not pieces, people. These people are struggling to live and breathe another day, to avoid the lethal use of F16s, F15s, Apache Helicopters, Cobra Gun Ships, Israeli naval gun ships that are targeting them.
These networks and vision have held strong for 60 years, but another fabric of life is being planned by Israel. Whilst people say they are resisting the worst attack on them since the Nakba, Israel proceeds to cantonise the West Bank, under a project of roads and tunnels ‘for Palestinains’ which reinforce the existing illegal settlement system, apartheid wall, land and water theft and Palestinian bantustanisation. Under the banner of 'development', this network of new facts on the ground, ‘for the Palestinians’ is called, ‘The Fabric of Life’. Israel is blasting holes in one corner of the Palestinian fabric of life through extreme violence, and tearing up another part with the help of international companies and governments and internal authority complicity.
Back at Kamall Odwan hospital, Dr Moayan, explains, ‘It’s not about just riding the streets of civilians, because, they are bombing us even when we have left, when we are inside supposedly safe compounds. I have left my house, and now have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to go.’ He continues to say what hundreds of people are saying, ‘This is the worst we have ever seen, we have never had this level of violence. It has shocked even us. In Lebanon they killed over 1700 people, will it come to this here?’
The global intifada This killing continues, day and night, and its not just people that are being physically dismembered, their families are being dismembered, their communities are being dismembered, the landscape of Gaza is full of holes. The fabric of these communities, that neighbours no longer neighbours, that families no longer living or alive together is being stretched to breaking point. People are being made refugees again, tents as homes awaiting them again, as no buildings or building materials are available for people to even rebuild their shattered lives, their smashed homes, shops, mosques, governmental buildings, community centres, charities, offices, clinics, youth centers.
How do you break a people that won’t be broken? ‘They will have to kill each and everyone of us’ people tell me. From the first days here people were expecting ‘the shoah’ threatened upon them by Matan Villai , Israel ’s deputy defence minister this February. It is happening. It is happening now. This is the Shoah.
The third Intifada being urged now has to be our intifada too. As Israel steps up its destruction of the Palestinian people, we need to step up our reconstruction of our resistance, our movements, of our communities in our own counties, where so many of us live in alienation and isolation. We need to be the third intifada – people here need more and say repeatedly that they need more than the demonstrations, because they are not stopping the killing here. Demonstrations alone, are not stopping the killing here.
The arms companies making the weapons that are targeting people here, the companies that are selling stolen goods from occupied land pillaging settlements, the companies building the apartheid wall, the prisons, the East Jerusalem Light Railway system. These companies, Carmel Agrexco, Caterpillar, Veolia, Raytheon, EDO, BAE Systems, they are complicit in the crimes against humanity being committed here. If the international community will not uphold international law, then a popular movement should and can – we can use the legal system of international law as one of many means to hold on to our collective humanity.
The European Union decision, undertaken by the Council of Ministers this December, to upgrade relations with Israel, from economic ties to cultural, security, and political relations must be reversed. The EU represents a core strategic market of legitimacy and political economic reinforcement of Israel and as such its capacity to commit crimes against humanity, with impunity.
We can cut this tie, we can halt this decision which if approved this April, will empower Israel further, bring it closer to the ‘community of nations’ of the EU, and give a green light for further terror and crimes against humanity be inflicted upon the Palestinian people. This is a decision which has not yet been ratified. We can influence that which hasn’t happened yet.
There are concrete steps that people can take, learning from the lessons of the first Intifada and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to dismantle the South African Apartheid regime. Strategies of popular resistance, strikes, occupations, direct actions. From the streets into the offices, factories and headquarters is where we need to take this fight, to the heart of decision-makers that are supposedly making decisions on our behalf and the companies making a killing out of the occupation. The third intifada needs to be a global intifada.
----- Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. http://www.FreeGaza.org
'Palestinians will not forget this, as they have not forgotten the past 60 years.' (AFP)
By Susan Abulhawa
How
can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that
history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour
did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let
us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers
of Warsaw and Lodz.
Schools, universities, mosques, police
stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that
supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in
Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear
skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air
force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy
weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous
electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine.
Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of
people and goods in and out of Gaza, including the import of the most
basic goods necessary for survival.
A recent study by the Red
Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia.
Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza’s population, half of whom are
under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children
due to Israel’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low
overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental
disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive
thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from
Egypt.
Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their “will
to live.” Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small
children en mass to lose their will to live?
This is what
Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza
and turned it into an open air prison – a concentration camp of
civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and
no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and
sea. From the white phosphorous disemboweling young and old alike.
But
Gazans dared to try to resist with pathetic homemade rockets that,
until Israel’s barbaric attack, generally landed in open desert. The
rockets were mostly symbolic of resistance, very much like the fighters
in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But who would have called on a ceasefire
there, in 1943, for “both parties” to “cease the violence”? Who would
have blamed the Ghetto fighters for their ultimate fate? Who would say
they had no right to resist? No right to fight back?
Just as
Nazis gave Jews only the right to die silently, Israel starves and
besieges Palestinians, giving them only that same right. Just as the
Warsaw Ghetto was blown to rubble, Gaza is left to burn in an inferno,
its hospitals bursting with the puss of death and unspeakable wounds.
The entire population of Gaza is terrorized and traumatized. No one is
spared the insecurity and fear. Imagine, please, that you are a Gazan.
What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be
endlessly hunted like animals? To have their homes demolished, their
ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in
refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock
to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned,
and denied in every conceivable way?
What have we done that
leaders will not speak against this massive and cold aggression against
our people? With what logic do you call Palestinians terrorists when
their streets flow with the blood of their own children? When they have
been stripped naked of possessions, dignity and hope?
Why?
Because they elected Hamas? Hamas has held power for less than two
years. Yet, Palestinians have suffered this kind of slaughter for 61
years. Whether now in Gaza, in 2002 in Jenin, in 1947 and 1948 in Deir
Yasin, Balad el-Sha, Yehida, Tantura, and the list goes on. Or 1982 in
Sabra and Shatila.
Palestinians are killed as if insects not
because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them. Not because of Qassasm
rockets or hand thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they
are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just
like Jews were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians are killed for
being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even
genetic title to that land.
But unlike Jews of Europe,
Palestinians are killed slowly over decades. Unlike Israel, Nazi
Germany did not establish such an effective global propaganda machine
that would demonize its victims and blame them for their own ghastly
fate. But most importantly, like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Palestinians do not march like mice to their death. In six decades of
enduring unspeakable oppression, their will has not been broken. Now is
no exception.
Israel, and the United States with its
unconditional support, will only succeed in radicalizing a whole new
generation of its victims. Of revving world hatred and resentment
against this unholy duo.
Palestinians will not forget this, as
they have not forgotten the past 60 years. But what will you remember a
week or a year or a decade from now, when a Gazan, who stood before the
long rows of corpses and vowed vengeance, creates your 9-11? When one
of those few million children without a will to live straps on a belt
that rips through your daily routine? Will you remember what we did to
them?
- Susan Abulhawa is the author of The Scar of David, www.scarofdavid.com, and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, www.playgroundsforpalestine.org. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford
professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli
army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless
assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
A
wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground
outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in
Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza
is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state
of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the
Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship
on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote
to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were
responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly
unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was
too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the
Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the
question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli
army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of
the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject
is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the
June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do
with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel
through permanent political, economic and military control over the
Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most
prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four
decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of
the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a
tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's
prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of
economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of
Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of
cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of
local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the
Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the
economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza
is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era.
Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an
insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of
exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the
Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million
local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40%
of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources.
Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local
population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per
cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions
in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful
precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political
extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel
Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all
8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left
behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective
campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a
humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon
presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on
a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis
settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent
Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply
incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The
real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of
Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West
Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a
prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to
further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli
move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli
national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the
Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a
long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent
political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were
withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the
Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an
open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed
unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low
and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless
inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as
an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has
never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the
Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long
history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to
suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the
Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in
the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006,
free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian
Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however,
refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming
that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America
and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the
Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax
revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a
significant part of the international community imposing economic
sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not
against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in
the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own
misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the
notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject
coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little
more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious
fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple
truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other
national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to
call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like
other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological
rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic
accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah
formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a
long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate
with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the
old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the
late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken
Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now
Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to
overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power.
Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot
to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor
in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas
to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The
war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a
series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a
broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared
aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared
aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.
The timing of the war was determined
by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10
February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders
are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top
brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas
in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of
the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical
leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western
Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight
of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the
blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security
Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass
to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel
claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer
asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt
as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David
and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and
defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and
overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is
accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a
farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this
is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To
be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict.
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak -
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused
by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is
immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government.
Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence
but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally
disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years
after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.
On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians
in Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing
civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to
Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting
brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the
blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view
of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During
the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in
clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment
opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At
the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks
carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and
sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see
how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the
people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would
still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly
forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of
Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen.
Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel
established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of
this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population;
and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt
innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably
successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their
propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of
Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas
but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on
4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just
the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas
government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far
from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate
bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the
inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian
catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is
savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to
follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing,
with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the
gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of
which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can
buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of
Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted
on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their
rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom.
There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two
communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it
denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The
only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but
through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness
to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its
pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this
offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of
2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and
compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past
four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has
become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A
rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of
mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against
civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three
criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not
peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military
domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and
more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course
free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not
mandatory to do so.
• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international
relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall:
Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in
War and Peace.
In response to the current brutal assault on Gaza by Israel a
well-known long distance service provider has sponsored a petition for
their customers to sign urging a cease fire. On the face of it, this
seems like a noble endeavor. The company in question caters to the
progressive community and donates a portion of its fees to a wide array
of progressive organizations. One could take issue with the fact that
this company aligns itself with a notorious international banking
cartel to provide credit card services to its customers. But what is
interesting to note is how the language in the email which introduces
the petition, whether intentionally or not, promotes the usual
pro-Zionist narrative about the situation.
First there is the all too familiar contention that "the political and
historical conflict causing this violence is centuries old and far too
complicated to address…." We are supposed to believe that the situation
is so complex the average person can’t be bothered to try and
understand it. So the only reasonable thing to do is to accept the
sound bite version offered to us by the media. This is usually some
form of pro-Zionist rhetoric centered around an Israeli perspective.
In reality, the conflict causing this violence is not centuries old.
Nor is it too complex to address. Prior to 1900, Jews and Palestinians
lived together in Palestine for generations without the extreme levels
of hatred and violence which now exist. With the advent of Zionism, the
political movement to establish a Jewish state in all of historic
Palestine, tensions began to escalate. The leaders of the Zionist
movement sought to control more and more of what they considered to be
land promised to them by God. In 1947-48, the violent ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians from their homeland by Zionist militias and the
creation of the Jewish state of Israel began the conflict in earnest.
Since then, Israel’s continued seizure of Palestinian land through the
establishment of illegal settlements in the West Bank has accelerated
the aggression. In addition, Israel has refused to abide by UN
resolution 194 which guarantees Palestinians the right of return to or
compensation for lands taken from them during the war in 1947-48. As a
result of that war and the 1967 war Israel expanded well beyond the
borders allotted to it by the original partition of Palestine and has
been in violation of the Geneva Conventions as well as the terms of the
original United Nations partition plan since its inception.
Though rarely if ever spoken about in any media source, the real reason
for the conflict in Palestine is not Jews or Palestinians, it is the
Zionist colonization of Palestine. Zionism, a virulent form of ethnic
nationalism, fosters a culture of exclusivity and entitlement within
Israeli society. Jews are "The Chosen People" living in "The Promised
Land." These inherently racist attitudes create an atmosphere which
legitimizes collective punishment and human rights abuses against
Palestinians simply because they are not Jews. Jewish lives are valued
more than Palestinian lives. This attitude was epitomized by the
statement of extreme right wing Israeli Rabbi, Eliyah, in April of
2008. "The life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of
1,000 Arabs."
The stated goal of Zionism has always been and continues to be the
expulsion of the Palestinians and the colonization of all of Palestine,
not just the area which currently is Israel. This is a fact, not idle
supposition. In his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan
Pappe, an Israeli Jewish historian, gives a well-documented account of
the brutally orchestrated removal of Palestinians from their lands and
the systematic plan for the ongoing colonization of Palestine. Pappe
uses Israel’s own archives to support these facts. For those
pro-Zionists who consider Pappe to be too much of a "self-hating Jew,"
a term often used to slander any Jewish scholar who attempts to expose
the dark underbelly of the Zionist movement, they can read essentially
the same history in Benny Morris’s writings. Morris is a fervent
Zionist historian who has fully acknowledged the facts of Zionist
history. But he sums up his findings by saying, in effect, the ethnic
cleansing was a necessary evil and his only regret is that Israel did
not complete the job back in 1948.
The second and more subtle misconception reinforced by the promoters of
the petition calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is contained in the
statement, "All sides of the conflict will continue to act as they have
in the past if they believe the world will stand by and allow them to
do so." Indeed, the world has stood by for the last 60 years and
allowed Israel to aggressively colonize Palestinian lands in violation
of international law and the Geneva Conventions. But the implication of
the statement is that somehow the Palestinian people need the approval
of the international community to engage in resistance to Israel’s
illegal actions. This is like suggesting that if a family were to move
into your home and occupy your living room, you would need to ask
permission to take any action against them.
The Zionist narrative attempts to portray Israel as a victim of
unprovoked Palestinian violence. But Palestinian resistance to the
colonization of their land is recognized as a right under international
law. The widely accepted and vociferous contention that "Israel has a
right to defend itself," is a bizarre transposition of the rule of law.
It is like saying the family that occupied your home has a right to
defend itself from your actions to remove them. Israel does not have
any right under international law to "defend" its ethnic cleansing and
illegal occupation of Palestine. The attack on Gaza, and indeed, any
Israeli action taken against Palestinian resistance, whether that
resistance be violent or nonviolent, is not an act of self defense. It
is an act of aggression against a legitimate resistance movement.
Israel is not defending itself, it is defending its illegal
colonization of Palestinian lands.
From a purely moral perspective, it is absurd to suggest that the
monstrous assault being unleashed against the captive and defenseless
people of Gaza by the world’s fourth largest military is in any way
justified by the firing of crude homemade rockets into Israel. There
are 1.5 million people in Gaza. They have no army, no navy, no air
force. More than two thirds of the population is comprised of women and
children. After having the nerve to conduct democratic elections in
January, 2006, the Palestinians have had their elected officials
imprisoned and assassinated. Their government has been removed in an
administrative coup and replaced by the quisling Fatah party in the
West Bank. When Hamas resisted this coup and reclaimed control of the
government they were freely and fairly elected to lead, it was Hamas
who was considered the aggressor, not those who removed them from power
in the first place. Again, the rule of law was transposed and used to
justify the demonization of Hamas.
To make matters worse, in an attempt to coerce the Palestinians in Gaza
to abandon their legitimately elected representatives, Israel, with the
help of the international community, has kept Gaza under siege for most
of the last three years. Gazans have been denied many of the basic
necessities of life, including such things as paper and pencils, school
books and even sanitary napkins. Israel recently added shoes and
clothing to the list of forbidden imports. They claim Hamas might use
them to make military uniforms. This, despite the fact that Israel
often justifies its killing of civilians in Gaza by asserting that the
Hamas militia can’t be distinguished from civilians because, yes, you
guessed it, they don’t wear military uniforms.
The main power plant in Gaza has also been bombed, severely limiting
the amount of electricity available. This electricity is necessary for
water and sewage treatment along with the more obvious aspects of
normal daily life. Fuel supplies have been restricted. Importation of
cement has been curtailed preventing necessary repairs to civilian
infrastructure. The Israeli Air Force has used F-16 Fighter Jets,
supplied by the U.S., to make frequent low level super sonic flights
over Gaza creating massive sonic booms which, according to the Gaza
Community Mental Health Program and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel,
"are having serious effects on children in Gaza, including anxiety,
panic, fear, poor concentration and low academic success." The sonic
events are also suspected of inducing miscarriages in Palestinian women.
These are just a few examples of the war of collective punishment and
terror being waged against the civilian population in Gaza. These
tactics have increased in intensity over the last three years,
culminating these last six weeks in the nearly complete denial of food,
medicine, electricity and fuel to the million and a half people living
in Gaza. So why would Hamas be engaging in resistance to Israel,
anyway? One can only imagine.
This back story to the devastation in Gaza is completely ignored by our
corporate media and by most so-called progressive media. It’s as if
history began just a few months ago. Out of the blue, those crazy
terrorists started firing rockets into Israel for no reason at all. How
dare they? And this assumption goes largely unchallenged. There is much
angst and hand wringing in the so-called alternative media about how
disproportionate Israel’s response has been. Outrage is expressed at
the suffering of the Palestinian people. But there is little discussion
of the fact that Palestinian militants actually have a reason to be
firing rockets at Israel.
Over the last 60 years, there has never been a sincere effort on the
part of Israel to avert conflict with the Palestinians. On the
contrary, conflict has been continuously inflamed in order to
facilitate and legitimize the colonization of Palestine. Regardless of
the repeated empty rhetoric on the part of Israel about wanting a
partner in peace, since 1967, when the illegal settlement campaign was
begun, there has not been a single Israeli administration which has not
expanded the settlements in the West Bank. This is in direct violation
of the Geneva conventions, not to mention the many so-called agreements
Israel has entered into over the years promising to halt the expansion
of settlements.
Simply put, Israel is colonizing Palestine. Its Zionist founders always
intended to achieve this end, and the current regime has no intention
of sidelining that plan. Any other claim made by the government of
Israel is pure guile. And this deception has been perpetrated with
funding and encouragement from successive United States administrations
since 1947. Indeed, none of Israel’s current illegal aggression would
be taking place without the approval of the United States along with
the massive amounts of military aid we provide. This is the history of
the current conflict which we are not allowed to hear. Not because it
is too complicated for us to understand, but because it is too
offensive to the sensibilities of those who blindly support Israel.
As the horrors unfold in Gaza, how should we respond? Other than giving
direct physical and emotional support to the people in Gaza by donating
money to relief organizations and speaking out against the war crimes
being committed there, not much can be done in the short term to
rectify the situation. We know from attempts to derail the war in Iraq
that no matter how many voices are raised in protest, the international
stage is set and the usual actors will play out this disaster as they
see fit regardless of our efforts to stop them.
And what about over the long term? The situation is dire. Our public
discourse is a cornucopia of lies, obfuscation and denial. Facts are
considered irrelevant. Reality is turned upside down and language has
become meaningless. Imperial and colonial violence is defined as
righteous self defense. Resistance to that violence is defined as
terrorism. The United States and Israel, two of the world’s most
celebrated so-called democracies, are in reality rogue militarized
nations engaging in collective punishment, torture, wars of aggression
and criminal foreign policies which flagrantly disregard even the most
basic concepts of fairness and human decency.
The so-called Left in the United States decries each successive
atrocity either committed or supported by our government. Israel
assaults Gaza using our money and weapons, so we sign petitions calling
for an end to the violence. We engage in a flurry of political activism
every four years and vote in sham elections which only legitimize the
actions of the ruling elite. What we should do instead is boycott these
fraudulent elections and engage in direct action in order to facilitate
a popular uprising against the existing structure of our government. We
need a nonviolent social revolution to create a new political paradigm.
Under the current system, the perpetuation of empire is institutionally
preordained. We are permitted to reshuffle the cards and deal a new
hand now and then, but always from the same stacked deck.
The situation in Palestine, along with many of the violent conflicts in
the world, is nothing more than a symptom of the disease that is U.S.
Empire. Gaza is just one more bloody scene in an ongoing imperial
nightmare of death and destruction. If we want to stop the senseless
killing taking place in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and so many the other
places, we must stand up and say no. Not just to the acts themselves,
but to the fetid imperialist juggernaut which exports and cultivates
them. Until we disrupt this cycle of corporate power mongering and
violent militarism by refusing to participate in it, we have only
ourselves to blame for the deaths of the innocent men, women and
children who are the targets of our bombs. The blood is on your hands
and mine. We are all war criminals now.
Joe Mowrey is a Palestinian rights and antiwar activist. He lives in
Santa Fe, New Mexico with his equally traitorous spouse and their three
canine co-conspirators. He can be contacted at: jmowrey@ix.netcom.com. Read other articles by Joe.
It
appears most of Europe’s leading politicians are merely quoting one
another when asked to comment on the Gaza massacres: killing (thus far)
over 420 people and wounding more than 2,000 is a "disproportionate"
act. And they all agree Hamas bear responsibility for it.
Apparently,
Israel has a license to freely kill every single member of Hamas it
wants. Sure, Hamas are responsible for civilian casualties. But first
of all, the number of Israelis murdered by Hamas doesn’t even come
close to the number of Palestinians murdered by Israel. Secondly, if we
apply the same standards to both sides, then Palestinians should get a
free pass to target any member Israeli political parties such as
Kadima, Likud or the Labour, since every Israeli government has been
bathing in Palestinian blood. Israel is a highly militarised society
where many, not least the West Bank settlers, carry weapons. Yet, when
an armed Israelis are shot they are never reported as dead "militants."
Needless to say, they would be allowed to bomb any building belonging
to the Israeli government.
Our
politicians seem to have forgotten that Gaza is still occupied. Even in
Haaretz, which by Israeli standards is relatively moderate (though it
continues to refer to the 8-meter high wall in the West Bank as "the
security fence"), one finds commentators completely neglecting the
siege:
"[T]he
tragedy of Operation Cast Lead is unavoidable. It derives directly from
the fact that the Palestinians did not take proper advantage of the
historic opportunity given to them in 2005. It derives from the fact
that when the Palestinians achieved self-government for the first time
in their history they misused it. It derives from the fact that the
Palestinian need to destroy Israel is still stronger than their need to
build Palestine." [1]
But
the truth is that Israel’s "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 was
nothing more than the evacuation of Jewish settlers. Three and a half
years on, Israel still controls the Strip’s borders, air-space and
water. Under such circumstances, self-governance means little. In plain
English: Gaza is an open-air prison. Because it has no roof, the
Zionists are able to bomb the prisoners whenever they feel like it.
Hamas
leader Khaled Meshaal made clear that his group does want a cease-fire,
but that it must be part of a wider agreement resulting in Israel
lifting the siege on Gaza and open the crossings. [2] Meshaal is
perfectly right. While a cease-fire would end the immediate warfare, it
would not make much difference in the long run as Gaza is on the brink
of starvation.
Two
days before Israel launched the ongoing bombardment, Gaza resident Rami
Almeghari reported about his difficulties in obtain bread:
"Yesterday,
after I finished my lecture at one of Gaza's universities, my wife
asked me to bring some bread from Gaza City. All bakeries in our area
have stopped operating because of the lack of flour and cooking gas due
to Israel's 18-month siege of the territory.
I
drove throughout Gaza City to try to find some bread for my four
children, instead finding a miserable scene. On the drive back to my
home in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, I saw
dozens of people lining up in rows to get bread from al-Yazji Bakery. I
quickly realized that it would take one or two hours until it would be
my turn in line, by which time I might not find bread at all. So I
continued my drive back to Maghazi, without bread.
"Father,
we want to eat, we don't have bread," my eldest daughter complained. I
paused and then thought to ask my son Munir to bring some felafel
sandwiches — our answer to fast food — so we can quickly fill our empty
stomachs. Fortunately, after a while Munir returned carrying sandwiches
bought at an inflated price." [3]
The
devastating terror against Gaza and its population, I dare say, is
relatively small compared to the long-term damage caused by the siege.
The vast unemployment and the problem with malnourishment are signs of
an approaching mass starvation. The number of Gazans killed indirectly
by Israel is much, much higher than the 420 murdered in the last seven
days. By destroying governmental buildings, the infra-structure and
every seed to self-governance, Israel is hastening the awaiting
disaster. Best of all – they can pin the blame for it on Hamas.
The
cease-fire reached its end just weeks before Israel elections,
providing Livni and Barak with an opportunity to prove to their people
that they’re prepared to get tough. Now, "Israelis are not known for
mercy and grace" as pointed out by Israeli-born Jazz musician Gilad
Atzmon. [4] But the Israelis—and more importantly, the world—have a
right to know that the Israeli government had a choice, and it still
does. Hamas offers them a sustainable cease-fire in exchange for ending
the siege, and they have answered with murdering hundreds of people.
But as Defence Minister Ehud Barak declared, "There is a time for a
cease-fire and a time to fight. Now is the time to fight." [5] And
because the warfare was a deliberate choice by the Israeli government,
not something it was forced into, Israel has once again proven it
prefers ethnic cleansing and apartheid over co-existence.
War Crime du Jour: Israel Deploys White Phosphorus Shells.
Chris Cook
Jan 4, 2008
When regarding the Christmas massacre conducted
against the captive population of Palestine by the Israeli army in the
name of the people of Israel's security, one is left to wonder: How
deeply into Israel's vast arsenal must the IDF dig before the world's
leaders act?
Do we wait until the nuclear
option is put on the table? "Bunker busters" are already deployed;
cluster bombs and the usual array of missiles, bombs, and bullets
rained down on civilians and the civilian infrastructure. Hospitals,
universities, police stations, mosques, and apartment blocks. Have we
missed anything?
Today, picture proof of Israel's further degradation.
The first image is of a white phosphorus test shell;
In Pictures: the slaughter of Gazan children Victims of the Israeli occupation forces in the tenth day of their attacks on Gaza Strip - January 5, 2009
Jan 5, 2009
On January 5, 2009 three families were massacred: Samuni, Abu Eisha, and Al-Hilou .
Seven members of the Abu Eisha family were torn to pieces by shelling,
said medical officials at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. According to
the medics the parents and their five children were killed when Israeli
warships shelled their home in the Al-Mashtal area in the north of
Ash-Shati Refugee Camp, on the shore west of Gaza City.
Medical officials at Ash-Shifa hospital also confirmed on Monday
morning the deaths of seven people, including four children all members
of the Samuni family in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Family
members who managed escape the shelling claimed more than seven people
may have been killed. Jalal Samuni said told Ma'an's reporters at
Ash-Shifa Hospital that more than 20 people were left inside the house
which was bombarded, and he fears that many of them were killed. He
explained that the neighbors gathered in the house of Arafat Samuni who
came to the area yesterday. He said that advancing Israeli troops told
residents to stay in their homes. Then Israeli forces shelled the
house, he said.
Earlier also in the Zaytoun area killed a five-year-old girl and her
grandfather, members of the Al-Hilou family. The girl’s mother was
critically injured. All the victims were evacuated to Ash-Shifa
Hospital (Ma'an news)
The Massacre of Al-Samuni Family
Samuni family says: Israeli soldiers gather 30 persons from Al Samuni
family in one house. Ten families were in the house from the same clan.
Many civilians were killed as artillery shells bombed the house. The
number of victims around 14, most of them are children and women. Some
are in critical conditions! Sameh A. Habeeb
Photo by AFP :Palestinian boys kneel over the bodies of Issa, left, Ahmed, center, and Mohamed Samouni, right.
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by AFP
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by AFP
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Photo by AFP
Photo by AFP
Photo by AFP
Photo by AFP
Photo by WAFA
Photo by WAFA
Other pictures from Gaza - January 5, 2009
Photo by AFP
A Palestinian man shouts next to the bodies of two of four Palestinian siblings at Gaza Citys al-Shifa hospital.
Palestinian medics carry a wounded boy into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.AFP
A Palestinian father carries his wounded baby daughter into a hospital in Gaza City. AFP
Palestinian boys wounded by an Israeli tank shell wait for treatment at Shifa hospital in Gaza January 5, 2009. AFP
Wounded Palestinian children arrive for treatment at Shifa Hospital in
Gaza City, after an Israeli strike early Monday, Jan. 5, 2009.AFP
A wounded Palestinian boy is treated at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza
City, after an Israeli missile strike early Monday, Jan. 5, 2009.AFP
A Palestinian baby wounded by an Israeli tank shell is treated by doctors at Shifa hospital in Gaza January 5, 2009. AFP
Palestinian children wounded by an Israeli tank shell rush into Shifa hospital in Gaza January 5, 2009.AFP
Videos
More children killed as war on Gaza continues - 05 Jan 08 Aljazeera
The assault on Gaza is now into its tenth day. As the death and injury
toll continues to rise hospitals are becoming increasingly overwhelmed.
Israel however insists there is not a humanitarian crisis.
Mohammed Vall reports now on the latest developments.
GAZA (At least 14 Palestinian children were killed on Monday by the terrorist Israeli army)
