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Topic: Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp (Read 14735 times) |
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #30 on: 2009-01-04 23:02:14 » |
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Israeli Tanks and Troops Slice Deep Into Gaza
Israeli Army Spokesman: Gaza Invasion "Not a School Trip"
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-04
The first full day of fighting in the Gaza Strip continues tonight, as thousands of Israeli troops continue to move deeper into the tiny, populous enclave. Though the soldiers have yet to enter any major urban areas, they have encountered resistance and firefights have been reported throughout the area. As Israeli artillery fire continues, the troops have effective cut the strip in half, and have sealed off the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip.
“This is not going to be a school trip,” Israeli military spokesman General Avi Benayahu insisted, as his government continues to rebuff international pressure to bring the attack to a swift end. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni angrily rejected an attempt by the Russian government to broker a ceasefire by facilitating communications with Hamas. At a press conference later, Livni declared that while she didn’t expect the rest of the world to share in the attack on the Gaza Strip, she did expect them to provide the support and time to accomplish their increasingly nebulous mission.
At least 34 Israeli soldiers have been wounded in the attacks so far. The number of Hamas casualties is unknown, as is the toll to Gaza’s civilian populace, though individual reports suggest Israeli tank shells have killed or wounded dozens of children.
Though the ground invasion was sold to the Israeli public and international community as necessary to stop rocket fire, it so far has actually led to an increase. Hamas fired around 50 rockets into Israel today, lightly wounding four people. While the government continues to defend the invasion as “inevitable,” questions still remain about how it ever envisions the war to end.
| Over 500 Killed in Gaza War
Toll Continues to Rise as Israeli Troops Surround Gaza City
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-04
Moving into the ninth day of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, the death toll has surpassed 500 according to medics. Yesterday’s invasion sparked a new round a fighting, and claims of killed combatants on both sides. The first casualties in the invasion however came when an Israeli tank attacked a house full of Palestinian children in eastern Gaza City, killing one and injuring 11 others. All told at least 31 additional civilians were killed yesterday.
The thousands of advancing soldiers have cut the tiny strip virtually in half, [ Hermit : At this point it has been cut in 3 under the cover over barrages of phosphorus shells - the same weapon used by the USA to decimate Fallujah in Iraq. ] and the forces are now massing along the outskirts of Gaza City, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Heavy fighting is still reported and Major General Amod Yadlin’s claims that Hamas is using mosques to store ammunition suggests that the Israeli strategy of attacking religious sites in the strip will continue as the operation moves forward.
Still, while Defense Minister Ehud Barak insists that the Israeli invasion won’t be short, the government continues to insist that it has no intention of occupying the Gaza Strip. As officials also claim that regime change isn’t their goal either, the purpose of the onslaught remains nebulous and it seems increasingly likely that there is no real exit strategy for this invasion.
| US Again Stops UN Call for Gaza Truce
Envoy Insists 'No Point' in Security Council Calling for End to Gaza Violence
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (Compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-04
For the second time in four days, the United States has quashed an attempted United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to the war in the Gaza Strip. After the latest rejection, US envoy Alejandro Wolff declared that there was “no point” in the statement, because Hamas (who has previously suggested openness to a ceasefire) would never abide by it. Wolff added that it was unacceptable for the council to equate the killing of civilians by the Israeli government with the killing of civilians by Hamas [ Hermit : Of course not. Over the past 7 years 17 Israelis have died due to Palestinian rockets and over 2,500 Palestinians have died at the hands of the IDF. Nothing to equate.] , and that “Israel’s self-defense is not negotiable.” [ Hermit : Of course, war crimes weren't really supposed to be negotiable either. ]
The previous draft resolution also called for “an immediate ceasefire and for its full respect by both sides,” which the United States condemned as “one-sided.” The new draft seemed aimed at answering those concerns, as the British government suggested everyone was open to a resolution if the terms were right.
Yet this seems not to have been the case, and the US rejection this time appears to have nothing to do with the terms of the draft, and everything to do with the fact that it would call on Israel to stop its invasion. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the United States can veto any resolution, and has traditionally done so when the resolution would stand in the way of Israeli military action. As the toll continues to rise (passing 500 today) the UN will remain completely unable to act, barring a sudden and miraculous change of American foreign policy priorities.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #31 on: 2009-01-05 14:54:45 » |
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Rationalizing Gaza - How they do it
[ Hermit : Nice analytic argument here. I especially enjoyed his very competent deconstruction of the Mexican analogy. ]
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Justin Raimondo
Dated: 2008-01-04
We all know the rationalization for Israel's brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip. After all, it's been reiterated endlessly over the airwaves by official and unofficial spokesmen for the Israeli government, on all channels, and with no rebuttal or skeptical perspective from Palestinians or, indeed, from anyone vaguely sympathetic to their plight. Their argument goes like this: if rockets were coming from Mexican territory and landing in San Diego, posing a threat to the life and safety of American citizens, we all know what would happen.
This is supposed to settle the question of the morality of the invasion, but it doesn't. Because what we are seeing in this argument is a variation on the old cherry-picking technique of the neocons in the Bush administration, who utilized "talking points" that were very selective in their presentation of the facts to make the case for invading Iraq.
What the rationalizers leave out, of course, is the ongoing blockade of Gaza, imposed after Hamas took control in the wake of its overwhelming election victory – and an attempted (and partially successful) coup d'etat by the losers of that election, the Fatah organization of the late Yasser Arafat (now headed up by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) [ Hermit : Of course, the coup attempt would not have been possible without American and Israeli support and involvement ] . The blockade itself was an act of war, by which the Israelis struck the first blow.
With this correction made, then, let's revisit – and reverse – the Israeli argument, putting all the known facts in their proper context. If Mexico – in an attempt to regain its lost territory, the promised land of California – invaded California, drove the residents of San Diego from their city, cooped them up in, say, Death Valley, and wouldn't let anything but a basic minimum of consumer goods and medical supplies either in or out, well, we all know what would happen.
I won't waste your time or mine complaining about the brazenly Israeli-centric news coverage of the invasion by the English-speaking media. It's a given, like the weather, or, more accurately, the phenomenon of global warming – a man-made disaster. In any case, what's interesting is how Western perceptions of the Palestinian leadership have evolved over time, always in perfect accordance with the talking points put out by the Israeli embassy.
In the beginning there was Arafat, the first Palestinian leader to come to public prominence in the U.S. and Western Europe, who long embodied the Palestinian cause. Seen through the eyes of Israel's amen corner, he was a perfect villain: a radical, a terrorist [ Hermit : As of course was Nelson Mandela ] , and a vicious anti-Semite [ Hermit : Bearing in mind that Palestinian is a Semitic language this statement is a bit suspect ] , whose name was generally associated with intransigence and violence. The Israelis drove him out of Palestine and pursued him into Lebanon and points beyond, yet he endured. Longevity elevated him to semi-statesman status, and his perseverance would have led to a two-state solution if the U.S. negotiating team hadn't taken their instructions from Tel Aviv. He refused to relegate his people to a collection of defenseless bantustans. Be that as it may, in the end the Israelis besieged the ailing symbol of Palestinian resistance, then gloated that he had died of AIDS [ Hermit : While this has been alleged, based on French reports, it is more likely that he was killed in an unclaimed Mossad execution, most likely an Israeli provided bioweapon. ] , rather than an Israeli bullet in the back of the head.
Fatah, traditionally afforded the same treatment as Arafat, has now been rehabilitated in the eyes of the Western media [ Hermit : Although the Palestinians view Fatah as an illegitimate quisling government imposed by, and tools of, Israel, far more motivated by graft than governance. ] In vivid contrast to Arafat's day, today we are told that Fatah is the vessel of pro-Western moderation. Yesterday they were dangerous terrorists who could not be talked to, today they are the recipients of U.S. aid [ Hermit : While Hamas that is not, was by far the larger provider of social services, jobs and assistance. Which accounts for much of its popularity. ] . Abbas has basically taken the position that Hamas provoked the attack by launching rocket attacks after the cease-fire ran out, a position that further erodes his tenuous support among the populace and gives Hamas plenty of ammunition for future political gains.
Hamas, like Fatah before it, is today depicted much as Fatah once was – an exemplar of violent intransigence, an enemy whose fanaticism precludes negotiations, the only difference being the religious element. Fatah was always secular, whereas Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in what is now Israel and the West Bank [ Hermit : Which, having eliminated the opposition, demographics imply that like it or not,ultimately this is what will exist where Israel is today - unless further ethnic cleansing occurs. ] Like Hezbollah, Hamas runs a wide variety of social and humanitarian programs: compared to the notoriously corrupt Fatah, these guys seem like angels to the average Palestinian. When Fatah lost out to Hamas big-time – in elections touted by President Bush as a triumph of democracy – "President" Abbas simply annulled the results, expelled the elected Hamas representatives from the Palestinian parliament, and outlawed the organization. The Israelis took it from there, with the blockade [ Hermit : And the arrest of most of the leadership - including the elected politicians - of Hamas ] .
The pattern here is clear enough: whenever someone is actually opposing Israeli military aggression, that person or group is automatically characterized as a villain, a fanatic, a terrorist whose existence cannot be tolerated. Having demonized Arafat and driven him to his death, now they push Fatah and go after Hamas. Whichever group is more effective in resisting the occupation is targeted for destruction.
The history of Hamas provides more than a few ironies: it was originally sponsored by the Israelis in the late 1970s as a way to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization and Arafat's personal leadership. Citing several former and current CIA officers, UPI's Richard Sale reported the Israelis provided "direct aid," including funding, to Hamas at its inception.
Under the name Al-Mujamma al-Islami, Hamas was registered as a legal association in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "According to U.S. administration officials," reports Sales, "funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel." It soon branched out from propaganda and social work. Aside from splintering the Palestinian movement for national self-determination, Israeli support for Hamas was designed to keep tabs on militants considered dangerous by the Israelis. What happened, instead, was that spies and collaborators were caught and shot by the very effective Hamas counter-intelligence unit. This Frankenstein monster, rising to take the place of the PLO as the instrument of Palestinian rage, turned on its creator.
Hamas is the enemy Israel deserves, and nothing proves this more than the current bloody operation, which is inflicting heavy casualties on the Palestinians. A full 30 percent of the killed and injured are children.
The Israeli blitz demonstrates a new moral principle in action, one that stands the old Catholic just war theory on its head by establishing the concept of disproportionality. Whereas the old just war theorists insisted that responses to aggression must be proportionate to the provocation, this new theory – let's call it the Luciferian [ Hermit : Not much of light or love in this charge ] theory – holds just the opposite: that an overreaction is mandated in order to strike fear and awe into the enemy. This will supposedly deter them from stepping out of line in the future.
We saw this Bizarro World morality applied in Lebanon in 2006, when Israel invaded the country, killed over 1,000, mostly civilians, and devastated civilian targets, including hospitals and water plants – all because Hezbollah had kidnapped a few of their soldiers [ Hermit : Who were operating on Lebanese territory where Israel regularly kidnapped people - just as they do in the West Bank and Gaza.] . Now Israeli government officials are claiming that because the Palestinians insist on fighting back [ Hermit : Primarily with unguided fertilizer powered home-made rockets, which pose far more danger to the person lighting the fuse than to anyone else. ] and firing missiles as deep into Israel as Beersheba, this places a million Israelis in mortal danger, and therefore anything and everything is justified in "self-defense."
This mutant morality was prefigured by the Bushian theory of preemption, which arrogates to the U.S. the right to attack any nation on earth, based on the possibility that someone somewhere is plotting to do us harm, and it will now be upheld (or, at least, not contested) by the Obama administration. This war is sending a message not only to the Palestinians, but to the Americans: the Israelis are telling us that they, too, claim the "right" to preemptively go after their avowed enemies, at least in their own regional sandbox, without having to justify it in a way any normal code of morality or international law would condone.
The two most destructive and objectively anti-American forces in the Middle East – al-Qaeda affiliates and the Israelis – benefit the most from this fresh outbreak of a festering conflict, and the losers are the Palestinians and the American people, with the former enduring the slaughter and the latter paying for it.
We will pay for it not only in billions of our tax dollars, but in terms of the hate-America factor, which will skyrocket on the Arab "street" and inspire many to take up arms against us. These are prime recruits for the jihadists such as bin Laden, whose ultimate target is the continental United States. At the rate we are going, we'll have to close off the country entirely in order to keep out enemies both numerous and determined. In the end, however, nothing will protect us against the relatives and loved ones of the innocents Israel has slaughtered, with our help and full approval.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #32 on: 2009-01-07 21:07:22 » |
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At Least 46 Killed as Israel Attacks Gaza School
UN Insists School Clearly Marked, Israel Given Its Coordinates
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-06
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, something the United Nations adamantly denies.
"So far we've not had violations by militants of our facilities," insists UN Relief and Works Agency Gaza Director John Grig, who added that those seeking shelter in the school were carefully vetted to ensure that no militants were allowed inside. Israel's claims about the compound only came hours after the international community began to express outrage over the killings: initially they promised simply to "look into the incident."
The outrage over the killings was so palpable, in fact, that even President-elect Barack Obama managed to find his voice to briefly speak on the Gaza conflict for the first time. Though he insisted he had "plenty to say on the matter," he said little else, instead promising more elaborate comments after January 20th. Hopefully in another two weeks the president-elect will be able to decide if attacking a school full of civilians is a good thing, or a bad thing. | UN: Israel Admits Claims About Attacked School Baseless
International Outrage Can Safely Resume as Israel Backs off Allegations
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz (compiler)
Dated: 2009-01-07
UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness reported this evening that the Israeli army is privately briefing diplomats on the fact that its previous claims about their attack on a UN-run girls' school in the Gaza Strip, which caused over 100 civilian casualties.
The attack occurred yesterday, when Israeli mortars deliberately fired three shells at the school, which was filled with hundreds of displaced civilians at the time, killing at least 46 and wounding 55 others. As international outrage began to well over the enormous civilian toll of the attack, Israel declared the killings "according to procedures" and claimed Hamas had fired rockets from the school's courtyard, making the attack on hundreds of innocent civilians self-defense.
Much was made of the claim, including reports that Israel was mulling filing a formal complaint to the United Nations about Hamas' use of the facility. But as the United Nations poked holes in the official story, Israel is now backing off those claims.
And while Israel had previously claimed to have had proof to back up its story, Gunness says the military is now conceding that the mortar fire they previously claimed came from the school came from elsewhere in the refugee camp. Though Israel is trying to keep its admission of guilt relatively quiet (far more quiet than its allegations that the killings were justified) it will doubtless pay a further price in the court of international public opinion for having once again deliberately targeted a building full of innocent civilians. [Hermit : And lied about it as aggressively as they have lied about everything else related to the Palestine. ]
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Obama breaks silence on Gaza, voices concern
Source: Reuters
Authors: Steve Holland (Reporting), Sandra Maler (Editing)
Dated: 2009-01-06
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, breaking his silence about the Gaza war, expressed deep concern on Tuesday about the loss of civilian lives in Gaza and in Israel.
Speaking after Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, Obama told reporters "the loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern for me."
But Obama otherwise said he would adhere to his principle that only U.S. President George W. Bush would speak for American foreign policy at this time, but said he would have plenty more to say after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
A lie you weren't supposed to believe
Source: Lenin's Tomb
Authors: Lenin
Dated: 2009-01-08
Let's be clear about this. On 6 January, three UN-run schools in Gaza were attacked by Israeli forces, not just one. What is more, the previous day an Israeli bombing of a UN school had killed three members of the same family. This sort of killing can usually be dealt with in a perfunctory fashion ('we regret all loss of innocent life, but the responsibility belongs to those who use terror and hide among civilians...'). However, the massacre of 43 people in a UN school bearing flags and insignia and housing some 350 refugees from the fighting (many of whom had fled on orders from IDF leaflets dropped on the towns and cities), demanded a more considered explanation and justification. I just want to take a quick look at the explanations offered by Israeli spokespeople and its military.
The IDF's initial justification for the attack on the Al-Fakhura school was that Hamas had used the building to fire mortars from, and its tanks had responded. Implicit in this was an admission that they had targeted the school on purpose. The tank shells, presumably shot from quite nearby, were fired by soldiers operating under orders from command centres equipped with detailed targeting intelligence. As is now known, the Israeli military had the GPS coordinates not only of this UN school but of the other UN schools that it attacked. We also know that the UN told Israeli forces that the schools were being used as refuges for those driven out of their houses by Israel. And the first thing the IDF let us know is that it was done on purpose. Their excuse was barbaric, of course. The idea that an invading force may attack a building filled with hundreds of terrorised civilians just in order to kill two of those resisting the invasion is nothing short of grotesque. But the fact that it was barbaric was part of the point: rather than bluntly condemning a war crime, you were invited to focus on whether Hamas would be so evil as to attack Israel's brave boys from within a civilian building. Because it is so frequently repeated you might be predisposed to assume that Hamas did indeed position its 'infrastructure of terror' among unsuspecting citizens but, whether you are so predisposed or not, you are already drawn into the macabre calculus of the murderer if you even get involved in that argument. You have tacitly accepted the logic in which war crimes are not merely acceptable, but actually appropriate, if the enemy really is as evil as Israel says. The usual suspects, of course, immediately embraced Israel's excuse: Israel's killing, they expostulated, merely demonstrates the ruthless, diabolical genius of Hamas. If anything, they added, the IDF was admirably restrained in its action. But it is doubtful that many others were taken in.
The second thing that the IDF claimed was that there were Hamas troops hiding inside the building, nestling among the refugees, thereby forcing the Israelis to slaughter the innocent. This is quite a different claim, and the first thing that would occur to any reasonable observer would be that the sudden embellishment reflected some sort of dishonesty ('the elaborations of a bad liar', as Hannibal Lecter would put it). Or perhaps there had been a failure by everyone to get their stories straight and stick to them. At any rate, the logic of the astounding claim that Israel acted in self-defense remained as tortuous as it had been. But Israel claimed to have identified the bodies of Hamas members, and even fed two names to the media, (so once again you were invited to get bogged down in the merits of Israel's claim rather than decide on an appropriate response to the slaughter).
The next part of the story is the most interesting. In order to get around the absurd idea that Hamas military operatives had sneaked into the building and launched mortars without anyone in the school noticing, Israel's spokespeople claimed that Hamas gunmen had taken over the UN building, taken the civilians hostage and used the base to fire mortars at Israeli soldiers. Mark Regev said it was a "very extreme example of how Hamas operates". Such a claim was obviously checkable in a matter of minutes. Any UN personnel present in the school at the time could easily say whether in fact they had all been suffering under Hamas captivity until Israel 'liberated' the building. The UN produced an emphatic denial, based on its own investigations, that there was ever any Hamas fighter in the building. By now, the fact that Israel has never provided any real evidence for its claims, which continue to shapeshift, comes into sharp focus. Moreover, since Israeli troops didn't visit the building or have access to the records of the deceased, it would be highly improbable that they would be able to not only name two of the dead, but also gather intelligence that proved they were members of Hamas' military wing, within such a short space of time.
So, the Israeli government topped that brazenness with a stroke of effrontery that is somehow not adequately captured by the word 'chutzpah'. Israel announced that as it was lodging a complaint with the UN for allowing the building to be secretly used by Hamas. Now it appears that Israeli diplomats admit that no rockets were fired from the school. They are now briefing that there was some mortar fire, but that it came from outside the school. Now, there is no evidence that there was any mortar fire at all, but perhaps you aren't really supposed to believe it. Actually, you were never supposed to believe any of it. There was no way that you were ever expected to be taken in by this pitiful subterfuge. They didn't even present a very convincing lie, or a very good case. What they did was tell you up front that they attacked a clearly marked UN school building filled with civilians on purpose, and then follow it up with a flimsy cover-story followed by an even more flimsy revised cover story and an outlandish allegation against the UN that they have dropped in a matter of hours in such a way as to undermine their previous cover-stories. This is obviously contemptuous, but it isn't just a sensational flip-off to 'world opinion'. They are saying they killed civilians on purpose, that nowhere in Gaza is safe, and that they reserve their right to do it again and offer the same risible mitigations and alibis as before.
Israel’s Re-Revised Story: Attack on UN School was a Malfunction
New Version Contradicts Previous Claims, Also Insists Hamas Inflating Death Toll
Sources: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2009-01-11
Among the most significant stories in the past week of Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip was the attack on a United Nations girls’ school in the refugee camp of Jabalya. Though it was clearly marked by the United Nations and the coordinates were given to the IDF when the war first began, Israeli forces fired three mortars on the building, killing 46 and wounding 55 others.
The initial "official story" was that even though they knew the building was being used to house hundreds of displaced civilians, it was deliberately attacked, "according to procedures," because it was being used as a hiding place for Hamas and because Hamas was firing rockets from the premises. The IDF even claimed to have video footage to back up its claims, though it turned out to be over a year old and from a different school in a different city. So outraged was the Israeli government at the furor it created that it considered formally complaining to the United Nations about letting Hamas use its school.
But that was just the first draft of the official truth, and it didn’t fly. The UN contradicted the story at every turn, and the Israeli government eventually had to concede that its narrative was baseless. The school was not, and had never been a valid military target.
For a few days the government was content to leave the story as-is, and indeed it created enough other stories of civilian massacres to draw some of the attention away. Something about deliberately attacking a girls' school full of civilians just didn’t sit well with the overall "doing everything we can to prevent innocent loss of life" storyline [ Hermit : Of course, it appears that when Israel fires artillery shells into a chicken coop crammed so full of people that they cannot move, that too is an example of careful targeting - 'We wanted the guy 3rd from the right'. ] , so the story has been changed, again.
Now, a preliminary investigation by the military says they were firing at some guys less than a yard outside of the school… and they just plain missed. No muss, no fuss… it was a technical malfunction of one of the US-supplied smart bombs that led to the mortar fire. How this “preliminary investigation” managed to completely contradict almost every single detail of the previous preliminary investigation is never made clear.
But it doesn’t stop there: it also accuses Hamas of deliberately exaggerating the death toll in the suddenly-accidental attack on the school, though most of the casualty figures have come not from Hamas but from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, who ran the school. Israel points to the fact that considerably more powerful tank shells which they inexplicably fired at a building housing their own troops managed to kill only three of them. Lost in this analysis is that the building housed only a few dozen soldiers while the school was filled to capacity with refugees. Moreover, it might behoove the IDF to consider that starving, displaced civilians aren’t quite as durable as the average soldier.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #33 on: 2009-01-07 21:34:31 » |
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Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians
Doctor estimates 2,000 - 2,500 civilian casualties
Source: The Raw Story
Authors: David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Dated: Monday January 5, 2009
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that that he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.
"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," said Gilbert, on the phone with Sky News.
"At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. This is really like from Dante's Inferno. It's like hell here now and it's been bombing all night. Up till now, close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2, 2 and a half thousand, which 50 percent are children and women."
"Are your hospital's reaching capacity?" asked the Sky News correspondent. "Can you deal with these people?"
"We have been doing surgery around the clock," Gilbert replied. "I just talked to to one of my colleagues in the ICU who has not been sleeping for three days and they hospital is completely overcrowded and we are running six, seven OR's and there are injuries that you just don't want to see in this world. Children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off.
"We just had a child who left. We had to amputate both legs and the arms and 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. This can not go on. It is a disaster."
"You've talked about the civilians, the women and children, the men who aren't involved in this but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?" asked the reporter.
"To be honest, we came on New Year's Eve in the morning," answered Gilbert. "I've seen one military person among the tens -- I mean, hundreds -- we have seen and treated. So, anybody who tries to claim this as sort of a clean war against another army are lying.
"This is an all out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and we can prove that with the numbers and you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitant is 17-years. It's a very young population and 80 percent are living below the poverty limit of the U.N.
"So, this is a poor and very young people and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere because they can not flee like other populations can in wartime. Because they are fenced in and they are in a cage. So, they are bombing one and a half million people in a cage. And young people and poor people and, you know, you can not separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation."
This video is from CBS News, broadcast Jan. 5, 2008.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #34 on: 2009-01-08 10:56:14 » |
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[Blunderov] 
http://leninology.blogspot.com/
08 January 2009, 11:11:56
We take the greatest care...
08 January 2009, 11:11:56
Via Jamie, who also cites an Amnesty report that accuses Israel of killing civilians on purpose, this astonishing Telegraph article reports an act of organised sadism:
Concerns had been growing that Zeitoun had witnessed massive civilian casualties after surviving members of the Samouni clan reached Gaza City three days ago.
They said that after the Israeli army first took the town on Saturday night soldiers had ordered about 100 members of the clan to gather in a single house owned by Wael Samouni around dawn on Sunday.
At 6.35am on Monday the house was repeatedly shelled with appalling loss of civilian life.
A handful of survivors, some wounded, others carrying dead or dying infants, made it on foot to Gaza's main north-south road before they were given lifts to hospital. Three small children were buried in Gaza City that afternoon.
According to the survivors between 60 and 70 family members had been killed by shrapnel and falling masonry.
Convoys of ambulances twice headed to the area to look for wounded but they were driven back by Israeli shooting.
You were wondering why they don't want the media in Gaza? You were wondering what "all-out war" meant?
Eye-witness accounts from Gaza
08 January 2009, 10:32:23
I just received these two eye-witness descriptions of Israel's conduct in Gaza from the journalist Ben White, and I thought you should have a look at them. One is from a doctor in a Gaza hospital, and the other is via a friend of Ben's whose father lives in Gaza.
The numbers of death and injured reported in the media are far below reality as the media is not able to cover incidents as they unfold. I know of cases where homes were surrounded by the Israeli army and people inside gave themselves up and were shot anyway when they exited.
When bakeries open there are thousands lining up to get their share of bread.
A clinic near my hospital was hit by an Israeli missile earlier today.
What is taking place is a massacre, more than a massacre.
Almost all the cases I saw today at the hospital were civilians, many women and children. This is not an attack on Hamas, it is on the most innocent of people in Gaza
6 ambulance staff members have been killed. Two ambulances were hit. Nothing is safe, nowhere is safe. No moving vehicle is safe. We are afraid for our lives. There is no differentiation between Hamas and Fatah or anyone else
We have witnessed weapons we have never seen before in our lives. Some explode in the sky and scatter bombs all over. Sporadically. I have smelt smells from some of the burns and wounds that I have never before witnessed.
We get the feeling no one is asking about us, the world is not even noticing this is going on, no one cares.
Dr Attallah Tarazi, al-Shifaa Hospital, Gaza City
***
Israel has arrested a number of farmers who live near where the invasion is, they collected their weapons (which are used to protect them from theives and any other dangers) claiming to have arrested some Hamas fighters. This is to prove that the war has been successful so far! Those people are just farmers living quite outside the city between fields...
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #35 on: 2009-01-08 14:14:07 » |
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blunderov...this might amuse you.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article5461544.ece
i didnt know whether to laugh or cry. i chuckled finally. who'd have thought! palestinians only had to say one word...if only they did, their children wouldnt be dead! and poor israel..she has to act because noone else would defend her! i hope you got your FACTS straight NOW!
Quote from: Blunderov on 2009-01-08 10:56:14
[Blunderov]
http://leninology.blogspot.com/
08 January 2009, 11:11:56
We take the greatest care...
08 January 2009, 11:11:56
Via Jamie, who also cites an Amnesty report that accuses Israel of killing civilians on purpose, this astonishing Telegraph article reports an act of organised sadism:
Concerns had been growing that Zeitoun had witnessed massive civilian casualties after surviving members of the Samouni clan reached Gaza City three days ago.
They said that after the Israeli army first took the town on Saturday night soldiers had ordered about 100 members of the clan to gather in a single house owned by Wael Samouni around dawn on Sunday.
At 6.35am on Monday the house was repeatedly shelled with appalling loss of civilian life.
A handful of survivors, some wounded, others carrying dead or dying infants, made it on foot to Gaza's main north-south road before they were given lifts to hospital. Three small children were buried in Gaza City that afternoon.
According to the survivors between 60 and 70 family members had been killed by shrapnel and falling masonry.
Convoys of ambulances twice headed to the area to look for wounded but they were driven back by Israeli shooting.
You were wondering why they don't want the media in Gaza? You were wondering what "all-out war" meant?
Eye-witness accounts from Gaza
08 January 2009, 10:32:23
I just received these two eye-witness descriptions of Israel's conduct in Gaza from the journalist Ben White, and I thought you should have a look at them. One is from a doctor in a Gaza hospital, and the other is via a friend of Ben's whose father lives in Gaza.
The numbers of death and injured reported in the media are far below reality as the media is not able to cover incidents as they unfold. I know of cases where homes were surrounded by the Israeli army and people inside gave themselves up and were shot anyway when they exited.
When bakeries open there are thousands lining up to get their share of bread.
A clinic near my hospital was hit by an Israeli missile earlier today.
What is taking place is a massacre, more than a massacre.
Almost all the cases I saw today at the hospital were civilians, many women and children. This is not an attack on Hamas, it is on the most innocent of people in Gaza
6 ambulance staff members have been killed. Two ambulances were hit. Nothing is safe, nowhere is safe. No moving vehicle is safe. We are afraid for our lives. There is no differentiation between Hamas and Fatah or anyone else
We have witnessed weapons we have never seen before in our lives. Some explode in the sky and scatter bombs all over. Sporadically. I have smelt smells from some of the burns and wounds that I have never before witnessed.
We get the feeling no one is asking about us, the world is not even noticing this is going on, no one cares.
Dr Attallah Tarazi, al-Shifaa Hospital, Gaza City
***
Israel has arrested a number of farmers who live near where the invasion is, they collected their weapons (which are used to protect them from theives and any other dangers) claiming to have arrested some Hamas fighters. This is to prove that the war has been successful so far! Those people are just farmers living quite outside the city between fields...
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #36 on: 2009-01-08 14:45:54 » |
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what can i do?
what can we do?
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #37 on: 2009-01-08 20:25:06 » |
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[Mermaid] what can i do? what can we do?
Teach people to question.
Teach people to think.
Teach people that history matters.
Teach people about the documented history of Israel and its terrorist origins rather than the dewy-eyed, pro-Zionist myths common in the West.
People who obtain their news via the Internet are *much* less susceptible to the Israeli media machine than those watching TV, listening to radios or reading print. So figure out ways to reach this audience. Perhaps mechanimas or multimedia presentations that accomplish the above?
Donate to causes that don't directly support the victims of apartheid Israel's campaigns of mass murder lest you be accused of "supporting terrorists" (as have hundreds of Islamic charities), but nonetheless donate. The IRCRC, Oxfam, UN and other European organizations are all presumably safe avenues to provide help to the actual victims.
Perhaps you ought to avoid quoting Hamas/Hezbollah directly for similar reasons. After all, some poor bugger has already been found guilty of supporting terrorism through making Hezbollah video feeds available over satellite or cable in the US. Nonetheless, try to disseminate a Palestinian perspective. There is no "gods eye view" and there definitely are more sides to this story than the Zionist mouthpieces dominating the conventional media admit to.
On the basis of reciprocity, you might press for accounts from Zionist non-profit organizations looking for evidence that their donations are going to settler groups which have carried out acts of terror and demanding prosecution of them and sequestration or confiscation of their assets. You might also look hard at US based Zionist organizations carrying anti-Palestinian statements from terrorist settler organizations. A database to help arrange this might make a difference.
Other suggestions?
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Fritz
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #38 on: 2009-01-08 21:18:20 » |
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[Fritz]I almost drove off the road listening to CBC radio and the clear disdain of Israel's action in Gaza on the 6:00 pm news. And then to see it cross posted but buried in a cease fire story on MSN still gives me pause. It seems 1 dead UN personnel warrants notice .... sigh
Source : MSN News
Author CBC News transcript
Date: 08/01/2009 8:05:44 PM
Western, Arab nations reach deal on UN Gaza resolution
Key Arab and Western countries reached agreement Thursday on a proposed United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, officials said, as a UN agency halted deliveries to Gaza for safety reasons.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the agreement on the resolution calling for an immediate and durable ceasefire. A Security Council vote was expected to be held later Thursday evening in at UN Headquarters in New York after a closed council session.
It came just hours after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it will suspend aid shipments until the safety of its staff can be guaranteed.
"These firings on our convoy are coming from the Israeli military themselves, with whom we have co-ordinated our movement, and that is what is absolutely unacceptable," UNRWA director John Ging said in an interview with CBC News.
John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian affairs chief, said one person was killed and a second man later died of his injuries when a delivery truck contracted by UNRWA came under fire in the morning. Holmes said they believe the fire came from an Israeli tank.
The attack occurred despite the fact the UN had co-ordinated the delivery with Israel and the vehicle was clearly identifiable, he said.
As a result, the transport company, which is the only one authorized to handle the movement of goods at the border crossings, will suspend all operations until the safety of its drivers can be guaranteed.
"All movement of goods of any significant kind in Gaza is suspended even if the crossings are opened," Holmes said during a briefing at UN Headquarters in New York.
Israel, which launched the Gaza offensive on Dec. 27 to combat the militant group Hamas, said its army is investigating the fatal shooting.
"We're not sure it was us. We're investigating. Any complaint the UN makes, we look into," said Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev. "You've got to remember there are a lot of other ... people with weapons in Gaza."
Later Thursday, during the daily three-hour humanitarian lull, a UN medical convoy that included an ambulance and two armoured vehicles came under fire in Gaza City. Holmes said all vehicles were clearly marked and had been on their way to retrieve the body of a UN worker killed earlier in the campaign.
"It's now apparent to us that this has reached an unacceptable level," Ging said. "We just have to now call a hold until we can be assured that we can conduct our humanitarian operations here with a reasonable [sense of] security.
"We are devastated because we're here with people who are in phenomenal need of our assistance."
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is accusing Israel of failing to fulfil its obligation to assist injured civilians in the Palestinian territory.
The accusations were made after Red Cross medical teams discovered four young children huddled around 12 bodies inside a shelled house. The ICRC said in a statement that its aid workers were told by Israeli Defence Forces, who had an outpost about 80 metres from the house, to leave the area, where more than a dozen other wounded Palestinians were languishing in bombed houses.
Large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the neighbourhood, according to the statement. The wounded were eventually transported to ambulances on a donkey cart.
"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, ICRC head for Israel and the Palestinian territories.
"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation, but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded."
The accusation was a rare move for the ICRC, which normally conducts confidential negotiations with warring parties.
The Israeli army said any serious allegations would be properly investigated once a formal complaint was received, according to Reuters.
The Palestinian death toll since the Israeli assault began has now reached nearly 750, including some 350 civilians, according to Gaza medical officials and UN estimates. More than 3,000 Palestinians have been injured, according to the Associated Press. Ten Israelis, including three civilians, have also been killed.
Palestinian health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said Thursday the bodies of 35 people, including women and children, have been discovered in the ruins of a Gaza Strip battle zone. It was not immediately clear how many of the dead were militants.
Israel temporarily halted attacks on the Palestinian territory for a second day in a row Thursday to allow Gaza residents to stock up on humanitarian supplies, and to allow aid to enter the embattled region.
The brief lull occurred several hours after rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Thursday, the first time the Jewish state has come under fire from its northern neighbour since the offensive began.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said at least three rockets fell around the town of Nahariya, about eight kilometres south of the Lebanese border, striking a nursing home and wounding two people.
Israel's army fired five artillery shells back at Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesperson said, in "a pinpoint response at the source of fire."
It was not immediately clear who was behind the rocket attacks from Lebanon, but similar launches from Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon were a hallmark of the 34-day conflict in 2006 between Israel and the militant and political group.
Both Israeli and Lebanese officials have said they don't believe the attack was launched by Hezbollah.
Lebanon and Israel must exercise "maximum restraint" in the aftermath of the attack, the commander of UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) in Lebanon, Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano, said via a spokesman for the peacekeeping force, according to Reuters.
UNIFIL is working to determine who launched the attacks and has deployed additional troops to the Lebanese-Israeli border, said spokesman Neeraj Singh.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora condemned the rocket attacks, as well as Israel's response, in a statement issued Thursday, saying the strike from south Lebanon was designed to undermine stability.
In Nahariya, one of the rockets fired from Lebanon penetrated the roof of a retirement home and exploded in the kitchen as about 25 residents were eating breakfast in the next room. One resident suffered a broken leg and another some bruising after slipping on the floor when the emergency sprinklers turned on.
Earlier in the day, explosions were heard from southern Gaza, according to media reports from the Israel-Gaza border, while Arab television station Al Jazeera reported 15 people were injured in a nighttime strike at a mosque. Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza, making it difficult to get an accurate picture of the situation in the coastal territory.
Later reports that a second barrage of rockets had struck northern Israel appear to have been a false alarm caused by the sonic boom from an aircraft.
Lebanese authorities are trying to determine who launched the rockets and have deployed additional troops to the border with Israel.
Israel, which has repeatedly said it is preparing for an attack in the north, has mobilized thousands of reserve troops and warned Hezbollah that it is prepared to retaliate.
Israeli cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit, however, agreed the attack was likely carried out by a small Islamic group and not Hezbollah.
Late Wednesday, Egypt's UN ambassador, Maged Abdelaziz, said his country would host separate talks with delegations from Israel, Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which is not directly involved in the conflict.
The plan, introduced by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, calls for an immediate ceasefire, an end to rocket attacks on Israel, the opening of Gaza border crossings and an end to weapons smuggling into Gaza from neighbouring Egypt.
Israel has said that it accepts the principles of the proposal but that it needs guarantees Hamas will not rearm during the ceasefire period. Hamas has said it wants border crossings into Gaza reopened.
Israel launched its military campaign with a series of air strikes on Dec. 27, followed by a ground incursion by thousands of its troops into Gaza, in response to the resumption of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel. The rocket attacks restarted shortly after a six-month truce between the two sides expired.
Many Gazans are living without electricity or running water, and thousands have been displaced from their homes. Hospitals are overcrowded, and the UN is urging that patients be allowed to be taken out of Gaza.
Holmes said about 20,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the violence and most of Gaza is without electricity. Sewage lagoons are filling up because pumps don't have power to run while hundreds of thousands of people are without running water.
The main power plant can't resume full operations because it is too damaged, he said.
With files from the Associated Press
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #39 on: 2009-01-08 21:43:04 » |
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Source: BBC
Article: Mr Hugh Sykes writes
Photo Credit: Hugh Sykes
Dated: 2006-08
Typical Katyusha Damage at a Jewish school during the 2006 attack on the Lebanon by Israel showing damage to a window and window frame destroyed in the art classroom.
Three Katyushas hit the school - not an obvious target, but Kiriyat Shmona became 'a military base' during the war according to Ofer Zafrani. Students at the school confirm this, and say tanks and rocket launchers fired from near their homes. [ Hermit : So much for the one sided allegations that "Palestinians shelter behind civilians." ]
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Source: International Herald Tribune
Article: Pressure increases on Israel as toll rises
Photo Credit: Hatem Moussa (Associated Press)
Dated: 2009-01-07
The ruins of the Al-Noor Mosque following an Israeli airstrike in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Thursday. (Hatem Moussa/The Associated Press)
Moral of the story: F16s armed with BLU-39s are still more effective than unguided (and misguided) fertilizer fueled fireworks.
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Israel faces criticism as Gaza toll hits 765
Source: Reuters
Authors: Nidal al-Mughrabi (Gaza), Yara Bayoumy (Beirut), Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Dan Williams (Jerusalem), Ralph Boulton (Editing)
Dated: 2009-01-08
Dateline: Gaza
Censorship: As this story probably was forwarded via Israel, it probably was inspected and passed by the Israeli military censorship board. This suggests that it was censored or self-censored.
Recovery teams ventured into battlegrounds of the Gaza Strip on Thursday to gather bodies from the rubble, and Hamas officials said the Palestinian toll in Israel's 13 day-old offensive rose to 765 dead.
Local ambulance crews and the Red Crescent, using a time slot coordinated with Israeli forces, said they collected rotting corpses in places that had been too risky to reach since Israeli forces began a ground attack six days ago.
They found four children starving beside the bodies of their mothers, dead many days, and evacuated scores of trapped and injured, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
Israel lost 3 soldiers in fighting with Islamist militants who hold the Gaza Strip. Apart from a "friendly fire" incident which killed four, this was its heaviest one-day combat toll.
Ten soldiers have so far died in the campaign launched by Israel to crush Hamas forces and halt the firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel. Israel says it is doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties but accuses Hamas of deliberately placing its forces close to homes and Mosques.
At the United Nations, Western powers and Arab states reached an agreement in principle on a draft Security Council resolution that would call for an immediate ceasefire.
"In principle there is an agreement," Arab League envoy ambassador Yahya Mahmassani told reporters.
It was not clear if they would vote on the resolution later in the day or on Friday. [ Hermit : Meanwhile the ethnic cleansing and terrorism of the population continues, with 100 Palestinians, half women and children and the rest mainly civic government staff, continue to be killed to every Israeli casualty. ]
Rescue work in Gaza was becoming increasingly dangerous.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which feeds half of Gaza's 1.5 million people, stopped work after a driver was killed by an Israeli tank. It had earlier said two drivers died.
Operations would be suspended until the Israeli army could guarantee security.
The Hamas ministry of health said 34 percent of the dead and 35 percent of over 3,000 injured were children. There was no independent confirmation of the figure.
"The danger to medical staff and the difficulty of extracting the injured from collapsed buildings makes proper evacuation and estimation of casualties difficult," the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator's daily field report said.
"Civilians, notably children who form 56 percent of Gaza's population, are bearing the brunt of the violence. As one of the most densely populated places in the world, it is clear that many more civilians will be killed if the conflict continues."
Around 20 rockets hit Israel on Thursday, fewer than at the start of the war but not the total halt it wants so that "quiet will reign supreme," as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.
Rockets have killed three Israeli civilians since the offensive began. Olmert said Israel's goal had not been achieved and a decision on further military action lay ahead.
Aside from a 3-hour ceasefire which Israel ordered for the second day, to let Gaza civilians venture out, there was no let-up in fighting. Air strikes and ground attacks killed at least nine civilians and three gunmen, medical officials said.
The dead included two brothers aged six and 13, killed when an Israeli air strike missed a group of Islamic Jihad fighters.
A Ukrainian woman, who could have left, was killed in her home by a tank shell, along with her son. The father said his wife was sliced in two, his 18-month-old son only recognizable "by his teeth."
In Washington, the U.S. Senate adopted a bipartisan motion "reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza," said majority leader Harry Reid.
The United States would do the same if "rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada" hit Buffalo, New York, he said.
LEBANON FRIGHT
Israel says it accepts the "principles" of a ceasefire proposal by Egypt and the European Union, and Washington has urged the Jewish state to study details of the plan.
Hamas, shunned by the West for espousing violence, said it was still considering the ideas. But the militants say they will never accept Israel, whose establishment in war 60 years ago dispossessed and uprooted Palestinian people.
European governments offered to back the plan with an EU border force to stop Hamas rearming via tunnels from Egypt. The deal would also address Palestinian calls for an end to Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Relations between Israel and the Vatican, never easy, chilled further over Gaza. The Jewish state condemned an aide to Pope Benedict for calling Gaza "a big concentration camp," the Vatican's toughest criticism of Israel since its offensive.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel was astounded at "the vocabulary of Hamas propaganda, coming from a member of the College of Cardinals."
The ICRC accused Israel of violating the rules of war by delaying ambulance access to the house where its team found children huddled beside corpses, 80 meters (yards) from the Israeli army.
The Red Cross said the army must have known of the situation but did not help the wounded, in violation of international law.
Israeli nerves were rattled in the morning when a rocket from southern Lebanon hit an old people's home in Nahariya, raising fears that Hezbollah fighters were opening a second front to relieve pressure on Gaza.
Israel fought a 34-day war with Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006 and is no hurry to engage them now. It responded with a few artillery rounds and played down the rocket attack.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #40 on: 2009-01-08 22:07:54 » |
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Reply 32 above updated with post providing update and an excellent analysis from Lenin's Tomb.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Mermaid
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #41 on: 2009-01-08 22:48:12 » |
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can we have a cov podcasts? how difficult is to set it up?
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #42 on: 2009-01-09 02:29:29 » |
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[Blunderov] I was a bit stumped on Mermaid's question about what we can do. (The Hermit provided some relief to my own feelings of anger and frustration with his excellent reply.) The only thing I can think of to say is that images are our friend. I read somewhere that an Israeli official had remarked that they "were losing the war of pictures" and that this is what had prompted a massive PR effort by that "government". In this connection the Israeli's have launched the meme "the world understands".
I'm thinking that a gallery, a central repository, of photographs (perhaps entitled something like "No Israel; the world will never understand these evil things that you do!") would help our cause? (This might need some careful consideration though. The Israeli's play hardball.) Additionally perhaps e-mailing pictures to notables* might also be a tactic worth considering?
Best Regards
* With regard to GOP notables we might, in the manner of General JC Christian, perhaps entitle these pictures with interesting and attractive titles like "Man Love", "Naked Spartan Wrestling Championships" and similar?
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #43 on: 2009-01-09 04:49:13 » |
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[Blunderov]
Total horrorshow
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #44 on: 2009-01-09 07:39:51 » |
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[Blunderov] Each succeeding crime is a new dragon tooth in the fields of Zion.
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article18141
January Thursday 8 2009 (20h32) :
ICRC says Israel broke international law in Gaza
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the hit area and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.
"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded," he said.
In unusually strong terms, the neutral agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident.
In a written response, the Israeli army said it works in coordination with international aid bodies assist civilians and that it "in no way intentionally targets civilians".
The Israeli offensive launched in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Dec. 27 to end rocket attacks by Islamic militants has drawn increasing international criticism over mounting civilian casualties.
Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances and ICRC officials managed to reach several houses in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City on Wednesday after seeking access from Israeli military forces since last weekend, the ICRC statement said.
The rescue team "found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses", the ICRC said.
"They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses," it said.
In another house, the team found 15 survivors of Israeli shelling including several wounded, it said. Israeli soldiers posted some 80 meters (yards) away ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do, it said.
The ICRC said it had been informed that there were more wounded sheltering in other destroyed houses in the area.
"The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuated the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable," it said.
In all, it evacuated 18 wounded and 12 others who were exhausted, including the children, by donkey cart. This was because large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the immediate area.
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, warring parties are obliged to do everything possible to search for, collect and evacuate the wounded and sick without delay, it said.
Dominik Stillhart, ICRC deputy director of operations, declined to say explicitly whether the Israeli inaction constituted a war crime.
"Clearly, it is (for) the International Criminal Court — not for the ICRC — to say whether this is or is not a war crime," he said, referring to the Hague tribunal.
Ambulances must be given "round-the-clock" access to the wounded throughout Gaza, Stillhart told a news briefing. "We cannot wait for the next suspension of hostilities for the wounded to be evacuated and brought to hospital."
The Israeli army said any serious allegations would need to be investigated properly after a formal complaint was received, "within the constraints of the military operation taking place". (Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem) (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jonathan Lynn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSL91281282._CH_.2400
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