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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #15 on: 2008-12-26 19:07:03 »
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Israel Wraps Up Preparations for Gaza Invasion

Olmert Tells Gazans This Is Their Last Chance to Remove Hamas From Power


Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2008-12-25

Just one day after Israel’s cabinet approved a “substantial and painful” military operation in the Gaza Strip, the military is reporting that it has completed preparations for the invasion, and is just waiting for more pleasant weather to begin its attacks. Though Defense Minister Ehud Barak only promised to make Hamas pay “a heavy price,” anonymous Israeli officials say the operation is likely to begin with a series of air strikes, culminating in a ground invasion.

Military Chief Gen. Ashkenazi promised the Israeli forces would "act with wisdom" in the invasion, and said he would leave "a new secure situation around the Gaza Strip."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, warned Gaza’s 1.5 million civilian residents that they would be in danger if they did not stop Hamas from launching missiles. Insisting that Israel’s military operations in Gaza were all "a result of Hamas' activities," Olmert said tens of thousands of Gaza children will be put in danger.

He also promised not to let Gaza slip into a humanitarian crisis, vowing to prevent any shortages of food or medicine. The promise is unlikely to carry much weight in the besieged strip, as Israel has spent much of the past month doing everything they can to prevent food and medicine from reaching the strip’s residents.

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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #16 on: 2008-12-27 15:27:23 »
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At Least 210 Killed as Israel Destroys Police Stations Across the Gaza Strip

[Hermit : Opening score, Israel 500 : Palestine 5 - US condemns victims ]
[ Did somebody imagine Israeli genocide would be different under Obama? Worse? ]


Hundreds Also Wounded as Barak Vows to Expand Operation "As Necessary"

Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2008-12-27

Just hours after Israeli President Shimon Peres insisted his nation had no plans to ignite a war in the Gaza Strip and urged Arab nations to appoint “peace envoys” for the crisis, the Israeli military launched an unprecedented attack on the Gaza Strip.

The attack, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead” by the Israeli military after a Hanukkah poem, targeted police stations across the strip, killing Hamas security officials (reportedly including police chief Major-General Tawfik Jaber) and nearby civilians. The toll at present count was 210 killed and 300 wounded, according to a Hamas spokesman.


The attacks are expected to continue, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowing "the operation will last as long as necessary" and promising to widen the campaign from its already enormous scale. Barak labeled the police stations hit "terrorism infrastructure" and claimed that over 150 of those killed were Hamas militants.

Hamas remained defiant after the killings, insisting “all options are open” for retaliation against Israel. Palestinian protesters staged demonstrations against the attacks in the West Bank, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for "this aggression to stop immediately." There are also reports of protests from Arabs inside Israel. Hamas fired at least 25 rockets in retaliation for the attacks, killing one Israeli civilian and wounding four others.

President Hosni Mubarak also hit out at the "Israeli military aggression." In response to the massive casualties in a strip virtually bereft of medicine after months of lockdown, the Egyptian government has opened the Rafah border crossing to allow the wounded in for medical treatment.

The United States condemned Hamas in the wake of the attacks, but declined to criticize the Israeli strikes. They did, however, encourage Israel to avoid civilian casualties, a difficult matter in the densely populated strip. Israel has said they will mount an "emergency international public relations campaign" to gain international support for the attack.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #17 on: 2008-12-28 08:18:45 »
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[Blunderov] Lenin weighs in with rightful contempt for the disgraceful Israeli ethnic cleansing operation in Palestine. There seems to be a new urgency to the Israeli clearances agenda. Are they emboldened by the advent of Obama or perhaps apprehensive? I suspect the former case.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/

Saturday, December 27, 2008

الأرض المقدسة

posted by lenin

Here is a seasonal treat for the yapping terriers of the Israel fan club: Israeli air strikes have killed 140 205 people in Gaza. Apparently, the furore over Gaza and its disgraceful oppression of the indigenous people of southern Israel (go with it) is producing soaring support for the Israeli far right. The difference between the far right parties and Kadima is that the far right wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinian towns in Gaza and incorporate them into Israel, using the Qassam rocket fire into Sderot as a pretext, while the Kadima administration has so far preferred to do it gradually, starving Gaza and depriving it of electricity and water.

Consider: according to the UN, the Israeli blockade has resulted in Palestinians receiving running water only once every five to seven days. UNRWA ran out of flour some time ago, and Gaza's bakeries have warned they will have to close down. No more bread. 70% of Gazans already had no reliable source of food. Poverty is soaring, with nine out of ten Gazans living below the poverty line. Gazan families have been forced to eat grass to survive. And if those people aren't sufficiently careful in their selection of pasture, they may end up taking home a poisoned batch, because raw sewage has been pumping out into the streets and into the soil since the blockade was first imposed.

The purpose of this sadistic policy, punctuated by frequent bouts of blood-letting, is supposedly to produce an end to the Qassam rocket attacks. If this appears to be a feeble excuse for imposing such misery on one and a half million people, bear in mind that at least the Qassams - unlike Saddam's WMD arsenal - actually exist. By the standard of our times, Israel's casus belli is indisputable. And if sanctions on Iraq killed up to a million people, what is a little 'diet' in Gaza? As for legality, the policy has been supported by the Israeli supreme court, whose impartiality in the matter could hardly be more obvious. Am I over-doing it with the heavy irony here? The true purpose of the blockade is the same as that which lay behind the blockade first imposed upon the election of Hamas, with the support of the Quartet. And it is the same as that behind the coup-plotting that led to Dahlan's gangs being booted out of Gaza while Fatah seized control of the West Bank. It is to force the population of Gaza into changing their political behaviour and voting for a tame leadership that will, as Fatah did throughout the 1990s, tolerate Israel's regular incursions and the growing network of colonies meshed together by 'Jewish Only' roads (not to mention Jewish Only land). It is to accomplish by gradual and insidious means what the brutes of the Israeli far right would like to accomplish in another six day war: politicide. The final, successful destruction of Palestine as a potential nation.

The options for a 'Jewish state' determined to maintain itself as such, with a majority no lower than 80%, are few. Obviously, any recognition of Palestine as a free nation is anathema to a wide swathe of Israeli opinion, including much elite opinion. And Israeli leaders have never shown any sign that they are willing to contemplate this. Just as surely as Gaza is an "enemy entity" today, a truly independent Palestine would be a mortal enemy entity, calling into question by its very existence the whole narrative and rationale behind a 'Jewish state' built out of blood and iron in an Arab country. However, the incorporation of a Palestinian Arab population into Israel would undermine the labyrinthine racial hierarchy that Israel's leaders have so assiduously constructed. What commentators are apt to describe as the "demographic timebomb" is a colonial one: how to get the territory and at the same dispose of the troublesome population. In a previous era, it might have entailed little difficulty just to drive them out in a bloody purge and force the surviving refugees to try and integrate as discarded untermenschen into societies run by bribed police states. As Benny Morris has said, it would have been much easier for Israel had it simply completed the task in 1948. Now, they've got to answer to the soft-headed humanitarianism of modern television audiences, and they've got to pretend to be the victims. All they have to assist them in this task is a few measly rockets being lobbed into southern Israel to little effect. They don't even have the suicide attacks that characterised the Second Intifada, during which time the decontextualised focus on explosions ensured that people in the West largely missed the fact that Israel was knocking of Palestinian civilians at a much higher rate than the suicide attacks were killing Israelis. With so little to assist its PR plight, no wonder Israel needs its overseas contingent of berserkers more than ever. Just watch, and wait: as Israel ramps up its attacks on Gaza, the permanently livid fellowship of offshore Middle Earth colonists will be spitting about Sderot, about terrorism, about Islam, about the world's unfair bias against the plucky little Levantine racists, about anything in the world except what is being done and what has been done, deliberately and brutally, to Palestine.

Update: Protest tomorrow, 28 December at 2pm, outside the Israeli embassy.

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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #18 on: 2008-12-29 04:45:54 »
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In all of the hysteria and propaganda being put out by the Zionists and their fellow travelers there are a few numbers that put their exaggerations into perspective.

In seven years of illegal homemade rocket attacks on Israel by a few hundred Palestinians trapped with 1.5 million others, 80% or so of who suffer from malnutrition and other readily preventable conditions, seventeen Israelis have died.

In seven hours of illegal attacks on the West bank by members of the gargantuan Israeli Defense Force, using American supplied aircraft, gunships and bombs, funded by billions of dollars of American tax payers money, and strongly supported by both major American political parties (although only by a minority of the population of the US), the Israelis destroyed most of what little infrastructure remained in the West Bank after 40 years of ethnic cleansing by Israel and killed significantly more than two hundred Palestinians, most of who had had nothing whatsoever to do with homemade rockets or mortars other than having been trapped in the world's largest concentration camp where they can be slowly starved into submission in a form of death by collective punishment.

This, our Palestinian hating haranguers assure us, is proportionate and defensible. It is perhaps little wonder that it is not readily apparent to those with a functional brain, that this is an unbiased and defensible opinion.

Of course, having long ago destroyed any viability of a Palestinian State, Israel, with America as its willing partner, has condemned itself to blatant ethnic cleansing, genocide or an ever increasing spiral of Apartheid style poverty and brutality, until demographics and economics eventually ensure that it ceases to exist as a "Jewish state" capable of massively oppressing the people whose land they have stolen. Even so, in a sense their ethical culpability may be less than that of the Americans, whose ethnic cleansing of those dispossessed by their ancestors and sundry brown people around the world is so much more thorough than Israel's. Does this explain the special relationship?

Captivity is freedom. War is peace. Genocide is acceptable.

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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #19 on: 2008-12-30 11:39:30 »
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364 Killed, Over 1,500 Wounded as Gaza Strikes Continue

US Stands by Israel as Attacks Take Toll on Economy

Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2008-12-29
Related Stories: Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a third straight day, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak promised that the war would continue "to the bitter end". The death toll has continued to rise, with 364 reported killed and over 1,500 wounded.

Eyewitnesses on the ground in the strip report an increasingly dire humanitarian situation, with widespread blackouts, food shortages, and impossibly crowded hospitals, while United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said he was deeply alarmed by the escalation of violence. And though Israel has not yet launched its ground invasion of the strip, deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon says his government is committed to toppling the Hamas government. In fact Ramon went so far as to say Israel would look favorably on any Gaza Strip government that didn't include Hamas.

Today also marked the first day stock markets in the west have been open since the Israeli attacks began, and the prospect of open-ended violence has sent commodities higher in an already jittery market. Oil in particular jumped over 5% in volatile trading in the US.

But as the market hopes for a quick end to a destabilizing war, the White House signaled its further backing of the Israeli attacks. As much of the world has called for both sides to cease attacks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated the US position that the Hamas is solely responsible for the violence.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #20 on: 2009-01-02 02:24:39 »
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/02/israel-palestine-pr-spin


Special spin body gets media on message, says Israel

    * Rachel Shabi in Tel Aviv
    * The Guardian, Friday 2 January 2009
    * Article history

Israel believes its has won broad international support in the media for its actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message to the world's press.

The body, known as the National Information Directorate, was set up eight months ago following recommendations from an Israeli inquiry into the 2006 Lebanon war. Its role is to deal with hasbara - meaning, in Hebrew, "explanation", and referring variously to information, spin, and propaganda.

The directorate's chief, Yarden Vatikai, said: "The hasbara apparatus needed a body that would co-ordinate its agencies, coordinate the messages and become a platform for co-operation between all the agencies that deal with communication relations and public diplomacy."

The directorate acts across ministries and decides key messages on a daily basis. Of its core messages for the media, there has been the advice that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements with Israel; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Hamas is a terror organisation targeting Israeli civilians. "In general, we think we are succeeding in getting the message across," said Vatikai.

Israeli officials have also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes. Speaking for the Israeli military, Major Avital Leibovich said: "Quite a few outlets are very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering ... I am sure it is a result of the new co-ordination."

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman said: "I don't know how long it will last but at this moment Israel has no small measure of understanding and support, and even approval, from many countries."

One of the challenges of Israel's media offensive has been to counter the disturbing images of Gaza in the conflict. "In the war of the pictures we lose, so you need to correct, explain or balance it in other ways," said Aviv Shir-On, foreign ministry deputy director-general for public affairs. "Support doesn't mean the world is standing behind us, but it does mean people understand what we are doing and why."

The hasbara directive also liaises over core messages with bodies such as friendship leagues, Jewish communities, bloggers and backers using online networks. Last week the directorate started a YouTube channel showing Israeli bombings in the Gaza strip. "New media is a new war zone within the media - we are planning to be relevant there," said Leibovich.


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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #21 on: 2009-01-02 18:43:56 »
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At Least 425 Killed in Gaza as Israel Running Out of Things to Bomb

Mosques, Minor Ministries Become Targets As Airstrikes Displace Thousands

[ Hermit : Important to recognize that the UN has stated that at least 25% of the 2500 casualties to date are women and children and 50% are wearing uniforms (policemen, traffic control, jailors, trashcollectors, dog catchers, meter readers etc). Despite the Israeli aligned press claiming that "most" of the casualties "are Hamas" as if this makes them terrorists, most are clearly civilians performing civilian jobs for the only people who can still pay them. Hamas. And Hamas came to power because of the immense discipline in their ranks that allowed them to become the de facto provision of aide and services when the utterly corrupt and incompetent Israeli stooges running the PA were failing dismally despite receiving most of the aid money from around the world. In other words, Israel is acting to ensure that the Palestinians not only have their society and social structures destroyed, they now have their aid distribution channels irreversibly disrupted too. Meantime, with a score of nearly 2500 Palestinian casualties in the last week, after 3 years of deliberate starvation, versus 17 Israeli casualties in the last 7 years and 6 billion dollars a year of US funding for Israel, only the terminally delusional can still yammer on about proportion. Particularly when it is Israel that has deliberately broken every truce and declined every peace initiative.]

Sources: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-01

An Israeli air strike today killed Nizar Ghayan, an influential Hamas figure, as well as nine women and 11 children. Though the overall toll in the strip is difficult to ascertain amid the chaotic situation on the ground, reports are that the toll is now at least 425 dead and over 2,000 wounded.

And as Israel defends its decision to reject the international call for a ceasefire, the air strikes continue apace, though they are running into one obstacle: after six days of salvos into the densely populated strip the Israeli military is really running out of interesting things to bomb.

Sure, they blew up Ghayan’s home, but past that a campaign that began with blowing up police stations and universities is rapidly giving way to strikes on mosques and attacking the long abandoned education ministry and transportation ministry.

Near Rafah, Israel has destroyed most of the tunnels used to smuggle goods in from Egypt, and displaced thousands of residents who live near the border. Admittedly, in a 130 square mile strip with no escape on any side one [ Hermit : And bombs and naval shells falling in all directions and barbed wire on all sides to keep the inhabitants of Palestine away from the land from which Israel has "cleansed" them ] can only be displaced a relatively short distance, but the hundreds of families are now taking refuge in a UN-managed school.

Increasingly, hospitals are the only place truly safe from the strikes, and even then Israel has been sending out accusations that the hospitals are being used to hide terrorists, so whether they’ll remain exempt from attack remains to be seen.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #22 on: 2009-01-02 19:51:38 »
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so odd...while the genocide in gaza by israel continues, bush condemns hamas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202047.html?hpid=topnews

Bush Condemns Hamas in Radio Address
   
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 2, 2009; 7:15 PM

President Bush issued a sharp condemnation of Hamas late today, accusing the Palestinian militant group of provoking Israeli military action with rocket attacks and increasing the death toll by secreting its arms within civilian populations.

In his weekly radio address, to be broadcast Saturday morning, Bush also said he would not support "another one-way ceasefire," and he called for a strict monitoring system to curtail weapons smuggling into Gaza. A transcript of the address was released a day ahead of broadcast.

"This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel's destruction," Bush said. He also referred to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules the West Bank, as "the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people."

"I urge all parties to pressure Hamas to turn away from terror, and to support legitimate Palestinian leaders working for peace," he said.

The address marked Bush's first public comments on the conflict since Israel began targeting Hamas positions with airstrikes on Saturday.

Bush has generally supported Israeli military actions during his eight years in office while strongly condemning Hamas, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli groups that are considered terrorists by the U.S. government. At the same time, he vowed to finalize a Middle East peace plan by the time he left office -- a pledge that was abandoned even before the latest violence.

Bush said in his address that he has been in contact with leaders throughout the region, including Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and leaders in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He also said he would continue to keep President-elect Barack Obama informed, and said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "is actively engaged in diplomacy" aimed at achieving "a meaningful ceasefire that is fully respected."

Bush's criticism of Hamas was focused largely on allegations that the group endangers innocent Palestinians, using civilian areas to hide in and focusing scant resources on weapons. Bush also said he was "deeply concerned" about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and pledged to increase U.S. assistance.

"Since Hamas's violent takeover in the summer of 2007, living conditions have worsened for Palestinians in Gaza," Bush said. "By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people."

The Islamic militant group won parliamentary elections in Gaza in 2006, then seized control of the isolated area by expelling forces loyal to Abbas, who is considered a moderate. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

The flare-up of violence in Gaza this week underscored the difficulties that the Bush administration has faced in attempting to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestinians. The latest effort was launched by Bush, Abbas and Olmert during a November 2007 peace conference in Annapolis but has shown little progress. Hamas is excluded from the talks because it is labeled a terrorist group by the United States.

(this will not be forgotten...the lack of criticism of america's spinelessness and the nazi state of israel will go down in history as our greatest failures. we watched while the palestinians were massacred. shame on us all)
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #23 on: 2009-01-03 00:29:37 »
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Well, given that the entire world, bar a few delusionists here and there perhaps, knows that Bush is a liar, war criminal, torturer and mass murderer in his own right, and that the American Media is spineless and owned by Israel, though not as thoroughly as both parties in the US Congress, should not be amazed to discover that they side with the Zionists in the ongoing holocaust being perpetrated by Israel.

The only question is what the consequences will be - if any, and if indeed Obama will be any improvement. Given Obama's silence it would seem that his embarrassing pre-election display of obsequious submission to AIPAC was anything but an error; that his conscience has been purchased by the Zionists; that the large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide of people who have been more massively oppressed on a more continuous basis than any others in the past half century does not concern him; and that America will continue to display hypocrisy unmatched in history as it founders under the weight of greed and adventurism worthy of Rome at its zenith.

And this before he takes office.

Does this mean that the fall of the American Empire will be as attributable to Judeo-Christianity as the fall of Rome? There ought to be a lesson in this somewhere. Although, given that the churches are doing better than they did during the Nazi regime, and much better than the governments of the west, which are almost unanimously acting against the wishes of their populations in not calling for an end to the Zionist inequity, perhaps I will have to be a little less critical of them.

My own opinion is that the Israelis have ensured that the Palestinians have absolutely no alternative but a future in a single state along with their oppressors. I suspect that the eventual reconciliation process is going to be more difficult and likely bloodier than the not yet completed integration of the Southern US after the civil war. The only likely alternative is that most of the planet's population dies in a war triggered by Israel. Now isn't that a vision to satisfy the most fundamental eschatologist?
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« Reply #24 on: 2009-01-04 17:10:42 »
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Why Israel went to war in Gaza

'Are you a target if you voted for Hamas?' Last night Israel sent its ground forces across the border into Gaza as it escalated its brutal assault on Hamas. As a large-scale invasion of the Palestinian territory appears to be getting under way, Chris McGreal reports from Jerusalem on Israel's hidden strategy to persuade the world of the justice of its cause in its battle with a bitter ideological foe

[ Hermit : As you read this, remember that any data reported from Israel has passed by the Military censors twice, once in the feed, and once in the form of the completed article. This is simply a fact of life in Israel and results in the suppression of many relevant facts, for example the fact that Israeli military build-ups and staging points are invariably located in Arab/Palestinian Israeli areas to ensure that attacks on them involve a high probability of Arab/Palestinian civilian casualties. This is suppressed because it is "operational data" as are most photographs from within the combat zone.  There are many other examples.]

Source: The  Guardian
Authors: Chris McGreal
Dated: 2008-01-04
Dateline: Jerusalem, Israel

It is a war on two fronts. Months ago, as Israel prepared to unleash its latest wave of desolation against Gaza, it recognised that blasting Hamas and "the infrastructure of terror", which includes police stations, homes and mosques, was a straightforward task.

Israel also understood that a parallel operation would be required to persuade the rest of the world of the justice of its cause, even as the bodies of Palestinian women and children filled the mortuaries, and to ensure that its war was seen not in terms of occupation but of the west's struggle against terror and confrontation with Iran.

After the debacle of its 2006 invasion of Lebanon - not only a military disaster for Israel, but also a political and diplomatic one - the government in Tel Aviv spent months laying the groundwork at home and abroad for the assault on Gaza with quiet but energetic lobbying of foreign administrations and diplomats, particularly in Europe and parts of the Arab world.

A new information directorate was established to influence the media, with some success. And when the attack began just over a week ago, a tide of diplomats, lobby groups, bloggers and other supporters of Israel were unleashed to hammer home a handful of carefully crafted core messages intended to ensure that Israel was seen as the victim, even as its bombardment killed more than 430 Palestinians over the past week, at least a third of them civilians or policemen.

The unrelenting attack on Gaza, with an air strike every 20 minutes on average, has not stopped Hamas firing rockets that have killed four Israelis since the assault began, reaching deeper into the Jewish state than ever before and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing. Last night Israel escalated its action further, as its troops poured across Gaza's border, part of what appeared to be a significant ground invasion. And a diplomatic operation is already in full swing to justify the further cost in innocent lives that would almost certainly result.


Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.

"This was something that was planned long ahead," he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery - whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police or the army - work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message."

In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on "the infrastructure of terror" in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.

Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion. Gaza was freed in 2005 when the Jewish settlers and army were pulled out, the Israelis said. It could have flourished as the basis of a Palestinian state, but its inhabitants chose conflict.

Israel portrayed Hamas as part of an axis of Islamist fundamentalist evil with Iran and Hezbollah. Its actions, the Israelis said, are nothing to do with continued occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza or the Israeli military's continued killing of large numbers of Palestinians since the pullout. "Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism. Hamas is not," the foreign minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni, said on arriving in France as part of the diplomatic offensive last week.

Earlier in the week Livni deployed the "with us or against us" rhetoric of George W Bush's war on terror. "These are the days when every individual in the region and in the world has to choose a side. And the sides have changed. No longer is it Israel on one side and the Arab world on the other," she said. "Israel chose its side the day it was established; the Jewish people chose its side during its thousands of years of existence; and the prayer for peace is the voice sounded in the synagogues."

It was a message pumped home with receptive Arab governments, such as Egypt and Jordan, which view Hamas with hostility. "Large parts of the Muslim and Arab world realise that Hamas represents a greater danger to them even than it does to Israel. Its extremism, its fundamentalism, is a great danger to them as well," said Gillerman. "We've seen the effect of that in numerous responses, in the public statements made by [Egypt's] President Mubarak and even by [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas and other Arabs. This is totally unprecedented."

Indeed, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said his government knew exactly what was coming: "The signs that Israel was determined to strike Hamas in Gaza for the past three months were clear. They practically wrote it in the sky. Unfortunately they [Hamas] served Israel the opportunity on a golden platter."

Also crucial was what was not said. Just a few months ago Livni was talking of wiping out Hamas, but that would be unpalatable to much of the outside world as a justification for the assault. So now the talk is of pressing Gaza's government to agree to a new ceasefire. Occasionally someone has got off-message. A couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for "as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely". Infuriated Israeli officials in Jerusalem warned her that such statements could set back the diplomatic offensive.

In the first hours of the attack, Israel repeated the same messages to the wider world. Livni and the Labour defence minister, Ehud Barak, were widely quoted on international TV. The government's national information directorate sought to focus foreign media attention on the 8,500 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past eight years and the 20 civilians they have killed, rather than the punishing blockade of Gaza and the 1,700 Palestinians killed in Israeli military attacks since Jewish settlers were pulled out of Gaza three years ago.

Lobby groups, such as the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) in London and the Israel Project in America, were mobilised. They arranged briefings, conference calls and interviews. The Israeli military posted video footage on YouTube. Israeli diplomats in New York arranged a two-hour "citizens' press conference" on Twitter for thousands of people. At the same time, Israel in effect barred foreign journalists from witnessing the results of its strategy.

Livni has suggested that Israel's assault is good for the Palestinians by helping to free them from the grip of Hamas. "She's basically trying to convince me that they're doing this for my own good," said Diana Buttu, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's legal counsel and negotiator with the Israelis over the 2005 pullout from Gaza. "I've had some Israeli friends reiterate the same thing: 'You should be happy that we're rooting out Hamas. They're a problem for you, too.' I don't need her to tell me what's good for me and what's bad for me, and I don't think carrying out a massacre is good for anybody."

And when the killing started, Israel claimed that the overwhelming majority of the 400-plus killed were Hamas fighters and the buildings destroyed part of the infrastructure of terror. But about a third of the dead were policemen. Although the police force in Gaza is run by Hamas, Buttu said Israel is misrepresenting it as a terrorist organisation.

"The police force is largely used for internal law and order, traffic, the drug trade. They weren't fighters. They hit them at a graduation ceremony. Israel wants to kill anyone associated with Hamas, but where does it stop? Are you a legitimate target if you work in the civil service? Are you a legitimate target if you voted for Hamas?" she said.


Similarly, while Israel accuses Hamas of risking civilian lives by hiding the infrastructure of terror in ordinary neighbourhoods, many of the Israeli missile targets are police stations and other public buildings that are unlikely to be built anywhere else.


Israel argues that Hamas abandoned the June ceasefire that Tel Aviv was prepared to continue. "Israel is the first one who wants the violence to end. We were not looking for this. There was no other option. The truce was violated by Hamas," said Livni.

However, others say that the truce was thrown into jeopardy in November when the Israeli military killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid on Gaza. The Palestinians noted that it was election day in the US, so most of the rest of the world did not notice what happened. Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into Israel. Six more Palestinians died in two other Israeli attacks in the following week.

"They were assaulting Gaza militarily, by sea and by air, all through the ceasefire," said Buttu. Neither did the killing of Palestinians stop. In the nearly three years since Hamas came to power, and before the latest assault on Gaza, Israel forces had killed about 1,300 people in Gaza and the West Bank. While a significant number of them were Hamas activists - and while hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in fighting between Hamas and Fatah - there has been a disturbing number of civilian deaths.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says that one in four of the victims is aged under 18. Between June 2007 and June 2008, Israeli attacks killed 68 Palestinian children and young people in Gaza. Another dozen were killed in the West Bank.

In February, an Israeli missile killed four boys, aged eight to 14, playing football in the street in Jabalia. In April, Meyasar Abu-Me'tiq and her four children, aged one to five years old, were killed when an Israeli missile hit their house as they were having breakfast. Even during the ceasefire, Israel killed 22 people in Gaza, including two children and a woman.


Perhaps crucial to the ceasefire's collapse were the differing views of what it was supposed to achieve. Israel regarded the truce as calm in return for calm. Hamas expected Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza that the latter said was a security response to the firing of Qassam rockets.

But Israel did not end the siege that was wrecking the economy and causing desperate shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Gazans concluded that the blockade was not so much about rocket attacks as punishment for voting for Hamas.

Central to the Israeli message has been that, when it pulled out its military and Jewish settlers three years ago, Gaza was offered the opportunity to prosper. "In order to create a vision of hope, we took out our forces and settlements, but instead of Gaza being the beginning of a Palestinian state, Hamas established an extreme Islamic rule," said Livni. Israeli officials argue that Hamas, and by extension the people who elected it, was more interested in hating and killing Jews than building a country.

Palestinians see it differently. Buttu says that from the day the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, they set about ensuring that it would fail economically. "When the Israelis pulled out, we expected that the Palestinians in Gaza would at least be able to lead some sort of free life. We expected that the crossing points would be open. We didn't expect that we would have to beg to allow food in," she said.

Buttu notes that even before Hamas was elected three years ago, the Israelis were already blockading Gaza. The Palestinians had to appeal to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, to pressure Israel to allow even a few score of trucks into Gaza each day. Israel agreed, then reneged. "This was before Hamas won the election. The whole Israeli claim is one big myth. If there wasn't already a closure policy, why did we need Rice and Wolfensohn to try to broker an agreement?" asked Buttu.

Yossi Alpher, a former official in the Mossad intelligence service and an ex-adviser on peace negotiations to the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, said the blockade of Gaza is a failed strategy that might have strengthened Hamas. "I don't think anyone can produce clear evidence that the blockade has been counterproductive, but it certainly hasn't been productive. It's very possible it's been counterproductive. It's collective punishment, humanitarian suffering. It has not caused Palestinians in Gaza to behave the way we want them to, so why do it?" he said. "I think people really believed that, if you starved Gazans, they will get Hamas to stop the attacks. It's repeating a failed policy, mindlessly."
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #25 on: 2009-01-04 17:47:11 »
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[Fritz] What the experts on Fox Sunday morning spoke this morning really underscores that reality is manufacture by special interests; so I had to add to your (Hermit) already well documented despair for the region


Source: Global Research
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
Date:  January 4, 2009

The Invasion of Gaza: "Operation Cast Lead", Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda

The aerial bombings and the ongoing ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli ground forces must be analysed in a historical context. Operation "Cast Lead" is a carefully planned undertaking, which is part of a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001:

    "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."(Barak Ravid, Operation "Cast Lead": Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)

It was Israel which broke the truce on the day of the US presidential elections, November 4:

    "Israel used this distraction to break the ceasefire between itself and Hamas by bombing the Gaza strip.  Israel claimed this violation of the ceasefire was to prevent Hamas from digging tunnels into Israeli territory.

    The very next day, Israel launched a terrorizing siege of Gaza, cutting off food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities in an attempt to “subdue” the Palestinians while at the same time engaging in armed incursions.

    In response, Hamas and others in Gaza again resorted to firing crude, homemade, and mainly inaccurate rockets into Israel.  During the past seven years, these rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 17 Israelis.  Over the same time span, Israeli Blitzkrieg assaults have killed thousands of Palestinians, drawing worldwide protest but falling on deaf ears at the UN." (Shamus Cooke, The Massacre in Palestine and the Threat of a Wider War, Global Research, December 2008)

Planned Humanitarian Disaster

On December 8, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in Tel Aviv for discussions with his Israeli counterparts including the director of Mossad, Meir Dagan.

"Operation Cast Lead" was initiated two days day after Christmas. It was coupled with a carefully designed international Public Relations campaign under the auspices of Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Hamas' military targets are not the main objective. Operation "Cast Lead" is intended, quite deliberately, to trigger civilian casualities.

What we are dealing with is a "planned humanitarian disaster" in Gaza in a densly populated urban area. (See map below)



The longer term objective of this plan, as formulated by Israeli policy makers, is the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestinian lands: 

    "Terrorize the civilian population, assuring maximal destruction of property and cultural resources... [T]he daily life of the Palestinians must be rendered unbearable: They should be locked up in cities and towns, prevented from exercising normal economic life, cut off from workplaces, schools and hospitals, This will encourage emigration and weaken the resistance to future expulsions" Ur Shlonsky, quoted by Ghali Hassan, Gaza: The World’s Largest Prison, Global Research, 2005)

"Operation Justified Vengeance"

A turning point has been reached. Operation "Cast Lead" is part of the broader military-intelligence operation initiated at the outset the Ariel Sharon government in  2001. It was under Sharon's "Operation Justified Vengeance" that  F-16 fighter planes were initially used to bomb Palestinian cities.

"Operation Justified Vengeance" was presented in July 2001 to the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon by IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, under the title "The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Disarmament of All Armed Forces".

    "A contingency plan, codenamed Operation Justified Vengeance, was drawn up last June [2001] to reoccupy all of the West Bank and possibly the Gaza Strip at a likely cost of "hundreds" of Israeli casualties." (Washington Times, 19 March 2002).

According to Jane's 'Foreign Report' (July 12, 2001) the Israeli army under Sharon had updated its plans for an "all-out assault to smash the Palestinian authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its army". 

"Bloodshed Justification"

The "Bloodshed Justification" was an essential component of the military-intelligence agenda. The killing of Palestinian civilians was justified on "humanitarian grounds." Israeli military operations were carefully timed to coincide with the suicide attacks:

    The assault would be launched, at the government's discretion, after a big suicide bomb attack in Israel, causing widespread deaths and injuries, citing the bloodshed as justification. (Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel's move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001, emphasis added)

The Dagan Plan

"Operation Justified Vengeance" was also referred to as the "Dagan Plan", named after General (ret.) Meir Dagan, who currently heads Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.

Reserve General Meir Dagan was Sharon's national security adviser during the 2000 election campaign. The plan was apparently drawn up prior to Sharon’s election as Prime Minister in February 2001. "According to Alex Fishman writing in Yediot Aharonot, the Dagan Plan consisted in destroying the Palestinian authority and putting Yasser Arafat 'out of the game'." (Ellis Shulman, "Operation Justified Vengeance": a Secret Plan to Destroy the Palestinian Authority, March 2001):

    "As reported in the Foreign Report [Jane] and disclosed locally by Maariv, Israel's invasion plan — reportedly dubbed Justified Vengeance — would be launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians. (Ibid, emphasis added)

The "Dagan Plan" envisaged the so-called "cantonization" of the Palestinian territories whereby the West Bank and Gaza would be totally cut off from one other, with separate "governments" in each of the territories. Under this scenario, already envisaged in 2001, Israel would:

    "negotiate separately with Palestinian forces that are dominant in each territory-Palestinian forces responsible for security, intelligence, and even for the Tanzim (Fatah)." The plan thus closely resembles the idea of "cantonization" of Palestinian territories, put forth by a number of ministers." Sylvain Cypel, The infamous 'Dagan Plan' Sharon's plan for getting rid of Arafat, Le Monde, December 17, 2001)


From Left to Right: Dagan, Sharon, Halevy

The Dagan Plan has established continuity in the military-intelligence agenda. In the wake of the 2000 elections, Meir Dagan was assigned a key role. "He became Sharon’s "go-between" in security issues with President’s Bush’s special envoys Zinni and Mitchell."  He was subsequently appointed Director of the Mossad by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in August 2002. In the post-Sharon period, he remained head of Mossad. He was reconfirmed in his position as Director of Israeli Intelligence by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in June 2008.

Meir Dagan, in coordination with his US counterparts, has been in charge of various military-intelligence operations. It is worth noting that Meir Dagan as a young Colonel had worked closely with defense minister Ariel Sharon in the raids on Palestinian settlements in Beirut in 1982. The 2009 ground invasion of Gaza, in many regards, bear a canny resemblance to the 1982 military operation led by Sharon and Dagan.

Continuity: From Sharon  to Olmert


Olmert and Sharon

It is important to focus on a number of key events which have led up to the killings in Gaza under "Operation Cast Lead":

1. The assassination in November 2004 of Yaser Arafat. This assassination had been on the drawing board since 1996 under "Operation Fields of Thorns". According to an October 2000 document "prepared by the security services, at the request of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that 'Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence'". (Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel's move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001. Details of the document were published in Ma'ariv, July 6, 2001.).

Arafat's assassination was ordered in 2003 by the Israeli cabinet. It was approved by the US which vetoed a United Nations Security Resolution condemning the 2003 Israeli Cabinet decision. Reacting to increased Palestinian attacks, in August 2003, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared "all out war" on the militants whom he vowed "marked for death."

    "In mid September, Israel's government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel's cabinet for political security affairs declared it "a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace." Mofaz threatened; "we will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat." Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN he thought Arafat was the next target. CNN asked Sharon spokesman Ra'anan Gissan if the vote meant expulsion of Arafat. Gissan clarified; "It doesn't mean that. The Cabinet has today resolved to remove this obstacle. The time, the method, the ways by which this will take place will be decided separately, and the security services will monitor the situation and make the recommendation about proper action." (See Trish Shuh, Road Map for a Decease Plan,  www.mehrnews.com November 9 2005



The assassination of Arafat was part of the 2001 Dagan Plan. In all likelihood, it was carried out by Israeli Intelligence. It was intended to destroy the Palestinian Authority, foment divisions within Fatah as well as between Fatah and Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian quisling. He was installed as leader of Fatah, with the approval of Israel and the US, which finance the Palestinian Authority's paramilitary and security forces.



2. The removal, under the orders of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, of all Jewish settlements in Gaza. A Jewish population of over 7,000 was relocated.

    "It is my intention [Sharon] to carry out an evacuation – sorry, a relocation – of settlements that cause us problems and of places that we will not hold onto anyway in a final settlement, like the Gaza settlements.... I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza," Sharon said." (CBC, March 2004)

The issue of the settlements in Gaza was presented as part of Washington's "road map to peace". Celebrated by the Palestinians as a "victory", this measure was not directed against the Jewish settlers. Quite the opposite: It was part of  the overall covert operation, which consisted  in transforming Gaza into a concentration camp. As long as Jewish settlers were living inside Gaza, the objective of sustaining a large barricaded prison territory could not be achieved. The Implementation of "Operation Cast Lead" required "no Jews in Gaza". 

3. The building of the infamous Apartheid Wall was decided upon at the beginning of the Sharon government. 

4. The next phase was the Hamas election victory in January 2006. Without Arafat, the Israeli military-intelligence architects knew that Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas would loose the elections. This was part of the scenario, which had been envisaged and analyzed well in advance.

With Hamas in charge of the Palestinian authority, using the pretext that Hamas is a terrorist organization, Israel would carry out the process of "cantonization" as formulated under the Dagan plan. Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas would remain formally in charge of the West Bank. The duly elected Hamas government would be confined to the Gaza strip.

Ground Attack

On January 3, Israeli tanks and infantry entered Gaza in an all out ground offensive:

    "The ground operation was preceded by several hours of heavy artillery fire after dark, igniting targets in flames that burst into the night sky. Machine gun fire rattled as bright tracer rounds flashed through the darkness and the crash of hundreds of shells sent up streaks of fire. (AP, January 3, 2009)

Israeli sources have pointed to a lengthy drawn out military operation. It "won't be easy and it won't be short," said Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a TV address.

Israel is not seeking to oblige Hamas "to cooperate". What we are dealing with is the implementation of the "Dagan Plan" as initially formulated in 2001, which called for:

    "an invasion of Palestinian-controlled territory by some 30,000 Israeli soldiers, with the clearly defined mission of destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership and collecting weaponry currently possessed by the various Palestinian forces, and expelling or killing its military leadership. (Ellis Shulman, op cit, emphasis added)

The broader question is whether Israel in consultation with Washington is intent upon triggering a wider war.

Mass expulsion could occur at some later stage of the ground invasion, were the Israelis to open up Gaza's borders to allow for an exodus of population. Expulsion was referred to by Ariel Sharon as the "a 1948 style solution". For Sharon "it is only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians. -'Jordan is Palestine' - was the phrase that Sharon coined." (Tanya Reinhart, op cit)

Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #26 on: 2009-01-04 17:57:48 »
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From Lord Stirling's site

Cheers

Fritz


Source: xinhuanet
Author: www.chinaview.cn Editor: Yan
Date: 2009-01-04 

Syrian, Russian presidents review Gaza situation

    DAMASCUS, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev Saturday reviewed in a telephone conversation the "grave situation" in Gaza due to the continued Israeli aggression, the official SANA news agency reported.

    The two leaders reviewed the situation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip because of "the crimes committed by Israel against children, women and men and the deliberate destruction of infrastructures of schools, mosques, universities and hospitals," said the report.

    Assad called upon Medvedev to enhance the international moves to pressure Israel to stop the massacres against the Palestinian people, break the siege on the Gaza Strip and open the crossings to put an end to the sufferings of the people.

    Israel has been carrying out unprecedented airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since last Saturday, leaving some 450 people killed and nearly 2,300 wounded, and destroying Hamas buildings, houses and mosques.
« Last Edit: 2009-01-04 18:05:49 by Fritz » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #27 on: 2009-01-04 18:03:26 »
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Source: Lord Stirling
Author: Lord Stirling
Date: Saturday, January 3, 2009

<snip>Links of the Day

Israeli ground troops invade Gaza ~ link ~ I think that the Israelis have taken the bate. Two and a half years ago, they did the same thing in the Second Lebanon War, and were defeated. Hamas has been preparing a massive 'killing field' for Israeli armor. This will cause super-war hawk Bibi to win the February election and serve to set the Middle East and the World up for the Final Battle.<snip>
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #28 on: 2009-01-04 18:10:36 »
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[Blunderov] What most interests me about the map of Gaza that Fritz most kindly provided is the word "camp" and how often this appears on it. This word, ISTM, has the all the sulphurous reek  of a rank euphemism. Perhaps we could (more accurately) add the word "concentration" as a prefix? Or "ghetto"? Or bantustan? Or gulag?
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #29 on: 2009-01-04 20:15:21 »
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As I have repeatedly observed, the people in Gaza are, by and large, not natives of Gaza. Gaza was where the Israelis drove many of the Palestinians and Arabs in 1948, the same people that America insisted did not fall under the UN-HCR authority as they had a right of return.

These permanent refugees are Israel's crows. What more fitting than they live in concentration camps within a larger concentration camp, where 80% of the children are malnourished, fabricating unguided rockets, which pose far more of a threat to the person lighting the fuse than anyone else, from plumbing parts and fertilizer while staring through the wire at the land stolen from them. This is the reality. Few realize it. Israel does not care. Mass protests - as are occurring throughout Europe do not matter. The politicians and the media have, as in the USA, been thoroughly purchased.


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