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Topic: Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp (Read 14740 times) |
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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 #60 on: 2009-01-12 16:15:56 » |
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[Blunderov] For quite some time I thought that the way forward was the so called "two state solution" but in retrospect I think I was mistaken. Upon reflection this seems a bit like asserting that partition is the solution to apartheid.
The Israelis don't want a two state solution. They want a one state solution but a state with no, or very few, Arabs in it. This, though, is why they keep talking about a two state solution - when they bother to talk at all. They have no intention of allowing any such thing of course and are simply keeping the pot boiling in order to buy time to eliminate the Palestinians altogether.
Hyperlinks and comments on site as usual but here is the gist of Lenin's most recent scathing observations.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-on-only-democracy-in-middle-east.html
Monday, January 12, 2009
More on "the only democracy in the Middle East"
posted by lenin
The news is that Israel has banned Arab parties from standing in the upcoming elections:
Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist.
This can't be a complete surprise since a) there are many Israeli politicians who would like the chance to dispose of the Arab minority permanently, and b) there are always moves to repress Arab political expression during one of Israel's periodic wars against, well, other Arabs. It will be recalled that during the 2006 Lebanon invasion, the Israeli press was filled with stories concerning the unpatriotic attitude of the country's Arab population. Ehud Olmert complained that Israeli Arab parliamentarians were guilty of treason and should be put on trial. Subsequently, some Arab parliamentarians were the subject of investigations by Israeli police, as they were accused of travelling to Lebanon and Syria and providing information to the enemy in September 2006. Reports last year showed a serious rise in racism toward Israeli Arabs, demonstrated in part by killings on the part of the police, the army, and Jewish Israeli civilians. It is increasingly clear that mainstream Israeli politicians do not view Israeli Arabs as proper citizens of the country. Only last December, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni advocated the transfer of Israeli Arabs. Her 'clarification' was interesting. She said:
I am willing to give up a part of the country over which I believe we have rights so that Israel will remain a Jewish and democratic state in which citizens have equal rights, whatever their religion.
How sweet. But even the far right Avigdor Lieberman doesn't talk about violent transfer: he talks precisely about the kinds of 'peaceful' transfer that Livni does. This has always been the way in which the Zionist idea of 'tihur' has been expressed. But what if Israeli Arabs don't want to go anywhere? What if they insist on their rights as citizens in what is supposed to be, but never has been, a democratic state? Moreover, doesn't this illustrate an inherent problem with the two-state position? Allowing Israel to exist in its current form, qua "Jewish state", is a racist proposition. It means that Israel cannot stomach too many Arabs, that Jews and Arabs can't live together.
The current repression isn't only directed against Arabs. As the Israeli philosopher Avi Ophir points out, this war has unleashed a serious crackdown on all internal dissent (his reflections on the nature of the war are also well worth taking time to read). But, seriously, after this disgrace, can anyone be left in doubt that Israel - from its inception to this denouement - is a racist state?
See also this and this.
Labels: democracy, gaza, hamas, Israel, israeli arabs, palestine
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letheomaniac
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #61 on: 2009-01-13 05:07:26 » |
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Quote:| Excellent analogy letheomaniac. |
[letheomaniac] Thanks Walter! 
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #62 on: 2009-01-13 10:35:53 » |
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Who will save Israel from itself?
Source: al Jazeera
Authors: Mark LeVine
Dated: 2009-01-13
Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam and the soon to be published An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989.
One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling.
The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks.
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled "Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report," confirmed that the June 19 truce was only "sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by ... "rogue terrorist organisations".
Instead, "the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement" occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day.
According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.
During a conference call with half a dozen pro-Israel professors on Thursday, Asaf Shariv, the Consul General of Israel in New York, focused more on the importance of destroying the intricate tunnel system connecting Gaza to the Sinai.
He claimed that such tunnels were "as big as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels," and offered as proof the "fact" that lions and monkeys had been smuggled through them to a zoo in Gaza. In reality, the lions were two small cubs that were drugged, thrown in sacks, and dragged through a tunnel on their way to a private zoo.
Israel's self-image
The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them.
With each new family, 10, 20 and 30 strong, buried under the rubble of a building in Gaza, the claim that the Israeli forces have gone out of their way to diminish civilian casualties - long a centre-piece of Israel's image as an enlightened and moral democracy - is falling apart.
Anyone with an internet connection can Google "Gaza humanitarian catastrophe" and find the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories and read the thousands of pages of evidence documenting the reality of the current fighting, and the long term siege on Gaza that preceded it.
The Red Cross, normally scrupulous in its unwillingness to single out parties to a conflict for criticism, sharply criticised Israel for preventing medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians, some of whom remained trapped for days, slowly starving and dying in the Gazan rubble amidst their dead relatives.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has flatly denied Israeli claims that Palestinian fighters were using the UNRWA school compound bombed on January 6, in which 40 civilians were killed, to launch attacks, and has challenged Israel to prove otherwise.
War crimes admission
Additionally, numerous flippant remarks by senior Israeli politicians and generals, including Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, refusing to make a distinction between civilian people and institutions and fighters - "Hamas doesn't ... and neither should we" is how Livni puts it - are rightly being seen as admissions of war crimes.
Indeed, in reviewing statements by Israeli military planners leading up to the invasion, it is clear that there was a well thought out decision to go after Gaza's civilian infrastructure - and with it, civilians.
The following quote from an interview with Major-General Gadi Eisenkot that appeared in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth in October, is telling:
"We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases," he said.
"This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised."
Causing "immense damage and destruction" and considering entire villages "military bases" is absolutely prohibited under international law.
Eisenkot's description of this planning in light of what is now unfolding in Gaza is a clear admission of conspiracy and intent to commit war crimes, and when taken with the comments above, and numerous others, renders any argument by Israel that it has tried to protect civilians and is not engaging in disproportionate force unbelievable.
International laws violated
On the ground, the evidence mounts ever higher that Israel is systematically violating a host of international laws, including but not limited to Article 56 of the IV Hague Convention of 1907, the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention (more specifically known as the "Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949", the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the principles of Customary International Humanitarian Law.
None of this excuses or legitimises the firing of rockets or mortars by any Palestinian group at Israeli civilians and non-military targets.
As Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur, declared in his most recent statement on Gaza: "It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime."
By the same logic, however, Israel does not have the right to use such attacks as an excuse to launch an all-out assault on the entire population of Gaza.
In this context, even Israel's suffering from the constant barrage of rockets is hard to pay due attention to when the numbers of dead and wounded on each side are counted. Any sense of proportion is impossible to sustain with such a calculus.
'Rogue' state
Israeli commentators and scholars, self-described "loyal" Zionists who served proudly in the army in wars past, are now publicly describing their country, in the words of Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim, as a "rogue" and gangster" state led by "completely unscrupulous leaders".
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, has declared that Israel's actions in Gaza are like "raising animals for slaughter on a farm" and represent a "bizarre new moral element" in warfare.
"The moral voice of restraint has been left behind ... Everything is permitted" against Palestinians, writes a disgusted Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy.
Fellow Haaretz columnist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Amira Haas writes of her late parents disgust at how Israeli leaders justified Israel's wars with a "language laundromat" aimed at redefining reality and Israel's moral compass. "Lucky my parents aren't alive to see this," she exclaimed.
Around the world people are beginning to compare Israel's attack on Gaza, which after the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers was turned literally into the world's largest prison, to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Extremist Muslims are using internet forums to collect names and addresses of prominent European Jews with the goal, it seems clear, of assassinating them in retaliation for Israel's actions in Gaza.
Al-Qaeda is attempting to exploit this crisis to gain a foothold in Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, as well as through attacking Jewish communities globally.
Iran's defiance of both Israel and its main sponsor, the US, is winning it increasing sympathy with each passing day.
Democratic values eroded
Inside Israel, the violence will continue to erode both democratic values in the Jewish community, and any acceptance of the Jewish state's legitimacy in the eyes of its Palestinian citizens.
And yet in the US - at least in Washington and in the offices of the mainstream Jewish organisations - the chorus of support for Israel's war on Gaza continues to sing in tight harmony with official Israeli policy, seemingly deaf to the fact that they have become so out of tune with the reality exploding around them.
At my university, UCI, where last summer Jewish and Muslim students organised a trip together through the occupied territories and Israel so they could see with their own eyes the realities there, old battle lines are being redrawn.
The Anteaters for Israel, the college pro-Israel group at the University of California, Irvine, sent out an urgent email to the community explaining that, "Over the past week, increasing amounts of evidence lead us to believe that Hamas is largely responsible for any alleged humanitarian crisis in Gaza".
I have no idea who the "us" is that is referred to in the appeal, although I am sure that the membership of that group is shrinking.
Indeed, one of the sad facts of this latest tragedy is that with each claim publicly refuted by facts on the ground, more and more Americans, including Jews, are refusing to trust the assertions of Israeli and American Jewish leaders.
Trap
Even worse, in the Arab/Muslim world, the horrific images pouring out of Gaza daily are allowing preachers and politicians to deploy well-worn yet still dangerous and inciteful stereotypes against Jews as they rally the masses against Israel - and through it - their own governments.
What is most frightening is that the most important of Israel's so-called friends, the US political establishment and the mainstream Jewish leadership, seem clueless to the devastating trap that Israel has led itself into - in good measure with their indulgence and even help.
It is one that threatens the country's existence far more than any Qassam rockets, with their 0.4 per cent kill rate; even more than the disastrous 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, which by weakening Israel's deterrence capability in some measure made this war inevitable.
First, it is clear that Israel cannot destroy Hamas, it cannot stop the rockets unless it agrees to a truce that will go far to meeting the primary demand of Hamas - an end to the siege.
Merely by surviving (and it surely will survive) Hamas, like Hezbollah in 2006, will have won.
Israel is succeeding in doing little more than creating another generation of Palestinians with hearts filled with rage and a need for revenge.
Second, Israel's main patron, the US, along with the conservative Arab autocracies and monarchies that are its only allies left in the Muslim world, are losing whatever crumbs of legitimacy they still had with their young and angry populations.
The weaker the US and its axis becomes in the Middle East, the more precarious becomes Israel's long-term security. Indeed, any chance that the US could convince the Muslim world to pressure Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons has been buried in Gaza.
Third, as Israel brutalises Palestinians, it brutalises its own people. You cannot occupy another people and engage in violence against them at this scale without doing even greater damage to your soul.
The high incidence of violent crimes committed by veterans returning from combat duty in Iraq is but one example of how the violence of occupation and war eat away at people's moral centre.
While in the US only a small fraction of the population participates in war; in Israel, most able-bodied men end up participating.
The effects of the latest violence perpetrated against Palestinians upon the collective Israeli soul is incalculable; the notion that it can survive as an "ethnocracy" - favouring one ethnic group, Jews, yet by and large democratic - is becoming a fiction.
Violence-as-power
Who will save Israel from herself?
Israelis are clearly incapable. Their addiction as a society to the illusion of violence-as-power has reached the level of collective mental illness.
As Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman described it on January 10, "Israel has created an image of itself of a madman that has lost it".
Not Palestinians, too many of whom have fallen prey to the same condition.
Not the Middle East Quartet, the European Union, the United Nations, or the Arab League, all of whom are utterly powerless to influence Israeli policy.
Not the organised Jewish leadership in the US and Europe, who are even more blind to what is happening than most Israelis, who at least allow internal debate about the wisdom of their government's policies.
Not the growing progressive Jewish community, which will need years to achieve enough social and political power to challenge the status quo.
And not senior American politicians and policy-makers who are either unwilling to risk alienating American Jewish voters, or have been so brainwashed by the constant barrage of propaganda put out by the "Israel Lobby" that they are incapable of reaching an independent judgment about the conflict.
During the US presidential race, Barack Obama was ridiculed for being a messiah-like figure. The idea does not sound so funny now. It is hard to imagine anyone less saving Israel, the Palestinians, and the world from another four years of mindless violence.
Update
In a further challenge to the democratic process in Israel, on January 12, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Central Elections Committee had voted overwhelmingly to bar Arab-led parties from participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Also, there are reports that the claim that extremist Muslims are using the internet to collect names and addresses of prominent British Jews in order to attack them, might in fact have been a hoax.
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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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letheomaniac
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #63 on: 2009-01-14 11:30:41 » |
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Pro-Israel Rally Attended by Big-Time NY Dems Descends into Calls for 'Wiping Out' Palestinians
Source: http://www.alternet.org
Author: Max Blumenthal
Dated: 13/1/2009
On January 11, an estimated 10,000 people rallied in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York in support of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York in cooperation with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, featured speeches by New York’s most senior lawmakers. While the crowd was riled to righteous anger by speeches about Hamas evildoers, the event was a festive affair that began and ended with singing and joyous dancing.
Sen. Chuck Schumer highlighted Israel’s supposed humanitarian methods of warfare by pointing to its text messaging of certain Gaza Strip residents urging them to vacate their homes before Israeli forces bombed them. “What other country would do that?” Schumer shouted from the podium. Gov. David Paterson appeared on stage wearing one of the red hats distributed to demonstrators as symbols of the red alerts some residents of Israel endure when Palestinian groups fire rockets their way. Paterson cited the many Qasam rockets that have fallen on Israel as a justification for the country’s operations in Gaza, a military assault that has resulted in over 800 casualties and thousands of injuries.
Then Paterson highlighted the anti-Semitism that has followed in the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza, highlighting the beating of a teen-age girl in France. “This kind of anger and hatred spreads like a disease,” Paterson said, “and one thing I've always pointed out is there's no place for hate in the Empire State.”
But hatred was plentiful at the rally Paterson addressed. Right in front of the stage, a man held a banner reading, “Islam Is A Death Cult.” Rally attendees described the people of Gaza to me as a “cancer,” called for Israel to “wipe them all out,” insisting, “They are forcing us to kill their children in order to defend our own children.” A young woman told me, “Those who die are suffering God’s wrath.” “They are not distinguishing between civilians and military, so why should we?” said a member of the group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch group that flocked to the rally.
No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering -- nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it.
The rally made me think of a passage in “The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” a powerful new book by former Israeli Knesset speaker and Jewish National Fund chairman Avraham Burg:
“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modest, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whosever life that is, then your are not my sister. You might be my enemy. A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end.”
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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letheomaniac
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #64 on: 2009-01-14 11:45:50 » |
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[letheomaniac] A whole new and disturbing dimension I hadn't even thought about, but seeing as it's impossible to tell where the US military ends and the IDF begins, it's not altogether unsurprising now that I do think about it. Depleted uranium in Bagdad, Dime in Gaza...
Is Israel Using Experimental Weapons in Gaza?
Source: http://www.counterpunch.com
Author: Jonathan Cook
Dated: 13/1/2009
Concerns about Israel’s use of non-conventional and experimental weapons in the Gaza Strip are growing, with evasive comments from spokesmen and reluctance to allow independent journalists inside the tiny enclave only fuelling speculation.
The most prominent controversy is over the use of shells containing white phosphorus, which causes horrific burns when it comes into contact with skin. Under international law, phosphorus is allowed as a smokescreen to protect soldiers but treated as a chemical weapon when used against civilians.
The Israeli army maintains that it is using only weapons authorised in international law, though human rights groups have severely criticised Israel for firing phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza.
But there might be other unconventional weapons Israel is using out of sight of the watching world.
One such munition may be Dime, or dense inert metal explosive, a weapon recently developed by the US army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.
The munition is supposed to still be in the development stage and is not yet regulated. There are fears, however, that Israel may have received a green light from the US military to treat Gaza as a testing ground.
“We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” said David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who has visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans.
“I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.”
Gaza’s doctors, including one of the few foreigners there, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian specialist in emergency medicine working at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, report that many of the injuries they see are consistent with the use of Dime.
Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive. Those exposed to the blast have severed or melted limbs, or internal ruptures, especially to soft tissue such as the abdomen, that often lead to death.
There is said to be no shrapnel apart from a fine “dusting” of minute metal particles on damaged organs visible when autopsies are carried out. Survivors of a Dime blast are at increased risk of developing cancer, according to research carried out in the United States.
Traditional munitions, by contrast, cause large wounds wherever shrapnel penetrates the body.
“The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 metres, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave, are cut in pieces,” Dr Gilbert said in a recent interview.
This is not the first time concerns about Israel’s use of Dime have surfaced in Gaza. Doctors there reported strange injuries they could not treat, and from which patients died unexpectedly days later, during a prolonged wave of Israeli air strikes in 2006.
A subsequent Italian investigation found Israel was using a prototype weapon similar to Dime. Samples from victims in Gaza showed concentrations of unusual metals in their bodies.
Yitzhak Ben-Israel, the former head of the Israeli military’s weapons development programme, appeared familiar with the weapon, telling Italian TV that the short radius of the explosion helped avoid injuries to bystanders, allowing “the striking of very small targets”.
Israeli denials about using weapons banned by international law would not cover Dime because it is not yet officially licensed.
It will be difficult to investigate claims that non-conventional weapons have been used in Gaza until a ceasefire is agreed, but previous inquiries have shown that Israel resorts to such munitions.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has recorded numerous occasions when the Israeli army has fired flechette shells, both in Lebanon and Gaza. The shell releases thousands of tiny metal darts that cause horrible injuries to anyone out in the open.
A Reuters cameraman, Fadel Shana, filmed the firing of such a shell from an Israeli tank in Gaza in April, moments before its flechettes killed him.
Miri Weingarten, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights, said they were watching out for use of a new flechette-type weapon the Israeli army has developed called kalanit (anemone). An anti-personnel munition, the shell sends out hundreds of small discs.
Israel appears to have used a range of controversial weapons during its attack on Lebanon in 2006. After initial denials, an Israeli government minister admitted that the army had fired phosphorus shells, and the Israeli media widely reported millions of cluster bombs being dropped over south Lebanon.
There are also suspicions that Israel may have used uranium-based warheads. A subsequent inquiry by a British newspaper found elevated levels of radiation at two Israeli missile craters.
Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, said her organisation had not yet been able to confirm which weapons were being used in Gaza in the current attacks. She added, however, that Israel’s denials about using non-conventional munitions should not be relied on.
“It is true, as the army spokespeople say, that weapons such as phosphorus and flechette shells are not expressly prohibited. But our view is that such weapons, which do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, cannot be used legally in a densely populated area like Gaza.”
Reports this month revealed that the United States has been organising massive shipments of arms to Israel, though a Pentagon spokesman denied they were for use in Gaza.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #65 on: 2009-01-15 01:36:32 » |
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Venezuela, Bolivia cut ties to Israel over Gaza
Hermit: And then there were two (countries of conscience/people with functioning eyes/politicians not in the pay of Apartheid Israel and its enablers.).
Source: CNN
Authors: Not Credited
Dated: 2009-01-15
Venezuela announced Wednesday it is breaking diplomatic relations with Israel over the conflict in Gaza, joining Bolivia, which did the same thing earlier in the day.
Bolivian President Evo Morales announces Wednesday that he is severing diplomatic ties with Israel.
In the announcement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, the government cited "the gravity of the atrocities against the Palestinian people."
The statement accused the Israelis of having "ignored, systematically, calls from the United Nations, violating in a repeated and shameless manner the resolutions approved by the overwhelming majority of their members and placing themselves ever more on the margin of international law."
It described "19 days of continuous bombardment, the assassination of more than 1,000 people and the destruction of the infrastructure of the population of Gaza," calling it "a human catastrophe that is unraveling before the eyes of the entire world."
It further accused Israel of participating in "state terrorism" against "the most weak and innocent human beings: children, women and the aged."
The statement called for Israeli leaders be tried before an international court for crimes against humanity.
The move is a ratcheting up of tensions between the two countries that have simmered since January 6, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador from Caracas.
Venezuela's announcement came hours after Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that Bolivia was breaking diplomatic relations with Israel and urged that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert be declared war criminals.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 5,000 wounded in the Israeli military operation, which started December 27, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.
Israel said Wednesday that 10 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed and more than 100 soldiers have been wounded.
Israel, which did not immediately respond to the diplomatic moves, has defended its actions in Gaza as a response to years of shelling into its territory from Hamas. Hermit: Where "its territory" is land seized illegally from the victims of ethnic cleansing, trapped without hope in a concentration camp by the Israelis - and where Palestinian fertilizer fueled fireworks have killed 20 Israelis in 8 years, while Israelis have killed over 6,000 Palestinians over the same period. Meanwhile the USA proudly supports the genocidalists and blames Iran for suppling the Palestinians (a total fabrication).
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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 #66 on: 2009-01-15 12:35:56 » |
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Israel Attacks UN HQ in Gaza With ‘White Phosphorus’ Shells
Israel Defends Attack on Building Sheltering 700 Civilians, Storing Food
[ Hermit : More lies by Apartheid Israel exposed. As a reminder, some of them already dealt with include: Because of the Rockets; Not targeting with Phosphorus; Careful to limit collateral damage and avoiding civilian infrastructure; Avoiding civilians; With over 1000 Palestinians dead, over 5000 injured, of which 2/3 are civilians, 1/3 children and the 1/3 that works for Hamas mainly civic authorities, over $1.5 billion in damage and over half the population now without water at all, it is now apparent to more and more supporters that this is nothing more that genocide and terrorism of a captive population. When even CNN starts wondering aloud you have to know it doesn't get much more blatant.]
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2009-01-15
The headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip was attacked today by Israeli artillery, sparking a fire which continues to burn. The compound was reportedly housing 700 civilian refugees and storehouses of increasingly scarce food aid at the time of the attack.
But perhaps even more pressing is the nature of the attack, which UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said was hit with shells containing the incendiary agent white phosphorus. [ Hermit : Supplied by the USA. ] "What more stark symbolism do you need?" asked the spokesman. "You can’t put out white phosphorus with traditional methods such as fire extinguishers. You need sand. We don’t have sand."
Though Gunness says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak termed the attack "a grave mistake," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the attack, saying it made him sad but it was legitimate self defense [i] [ Hermit : Israeli policy, when in doubt, or caught out, lie and blame the victims. Some fools will still believe you.]. Israeli forces claimed the headquarters was being used by "militants" who were attacking the invading Israeli troops.
Israel has retroactively accused Hamas of being at the sites of several of their most serious incidents of attacking civilian targets, but has generally been light on evidence to back up those claims. In an attack on a United Nations girls’ school full of civilians last week, the Israeli military claimed to have video evidence, which later turned out to be a YouTube video over a year old from a different school in a different city. Israel has repeatedly revised their story on that attack since the incident.
The latest attack has sparked yet another international outcry against Israel for its now 20 day old war on the Gaza Strip. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared the spiraling civilian death toll "unbearable," while European Union Aid Commissioner Louis Michel was "deeply shocked and dismayed to learn of this incident."
The use of white phosphorus as a weapon of war in civilian areas is banned under the Geneva Conventions’ Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, though Israel has repeatedly denied that it is doing so. Still, rising evidence is putting that story, like so many other official stories during this war, in serious doubt.
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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 #67 on: 2009-01-15 18:55:59 » |
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Israel shells Gaza U.N. warehouse, hospital, news bureaus
[ Hermit : Read the whole article. And weep. I have used limited highlighting because it contains enough that is significant that it ended up looking like a pot of paint had been tossed at the screen. ]
Sources: McClatchy
Authors: Ahmed Abu Hamda (McClatchy special correspondent,Gaza City, Strip), Dion Nissenbaum (Jerusalem)
Dated: 2009-01-15
The Israeli military punched deeper into Gaza City on Thursday with a series of strikes that hit the United Nations' headquarters, a major hospital and the offices of international media groups.
As Israeli leaders weighed an evolving Egyptian initiative that's considered the best hope for ending the 20-day-old conflict, Israeli forces delivered another blow to the Hamas-led Gaza Strip.
For the first time in the offensive, Israel killed a top Hamas political leader in the Gaza Strip. Late Thursday, an Israeli air strike hit Said Siam, who served as interior minister after Hamas won control of the territory in democratic elections in 2006.
The most spectacular strike Thursday came when Israeli forces opened fire on the U.N. compound in Gaza City and set off an uncontrollable blaze that sent a pillar of charcoal-black smoke hundreds of feet into the sky.
Israeli forces hit the compound as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was preparing to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv.
Ban said that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had apologized for the attack.
"The defense minister said to me it was a grave mistake, and he took it very seriously," Ban said before meeting with Livni to discuss U.N. efforts to bring the fighting to an immediate end.
Israeli officials, however, later issued contradictory versions of why Israeli forces fired on the U.N. compound. An anonymous Israeli military official first told the Associated Press that Gaza militants had fired anti-tank weapons and machine guns from inside the compound.
Then Israeli officials came forward to say that preliminary results showed that the militants ran for safety inside the U.N. compound after firing on Israeli forces from outside.
Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency dismissed the Israeli claims as "baseless" and challenged Israeli officials to produce evidence to support their version of events.
Relations between the U.N. and Israel have been strained by Israeli attacks in Gaza that have killed United Nations staff members, students and refugees seeking refuge in temporary shelters. In the worst such incident, 43 Palestinians were killed last week when an Israeli strike hit a U.N. school where hundreds had sought safety.
Then, as now, Israeli officials initially claimed that Hamas militants had fired from inside the school. After the U.N. denied that charge, Israel said that its soldiers had fired at Hamas militants who were firing mortars near the school.
On Thursday, Gunness said that Israel's shifting stories raise questions about Israeli officials' veracity.
"With every flip-flop, Israel's credibility is severely undermined," he said.
Israeli forces also hit a Red Crescent hospital where more than 100 staff and patients were trapped as a blaze engulfed the administration building.
"It is unacceptable that wounded people receiving treatment in hospitals are put at risk," said Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Another Israeli strike hit several high-rise buildings, including one that houses the Reuters news service's office.
Reuters had given the Israeli military the location of its office before the fighting broke out last month. On Thursday, as Israeli forces moved in, Reuters staffers said they called the Israeli military to remind them where they were.
Two minutes after they made the call, a shell hit their office, the Reuters staff reported.
The Associated Press reported that gunfire hit its office in a separate building.
Thursday’s attacks came as Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad met with Egyptian diplomats who're trying to broker an end to the fighting that's claimed nearly 1,100 Palestinian lives so far.
While Hamas leaders have said they back the Egyptian plan in principle, they haven't agreed to the details. Egypt has proposed halting the fighting temporarily to allow mediators to draw up a longer-term cease-fire deal, but crafting a workable plan could prove difficult.
Israel has said it will end the military operation when Hamas halts persistent rocket fire aimed at southern Israeli cities and world leaders ensure that the hard-line Islamist forces running Gaza aren't able to smuggle more weapons in through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
Hamas has refused to concede defeat and vowed to keep fighting until Israel agrees to allow a normal flow of aid and supplies into Gaza.
Egyptian, Israeli and Hamas leaders all have suggested in recent days that a deal is within reach.
More Palestinians have been killed so far in Israel's offensive than in any single year this decade. Some 40 percent of the more than 1,000 dead are women and children, according to Palestinian medical officials.
More than 4,500 people reportedly have been wounded as Israeli forces have taken aim at densely populated civilian areas that military officials say Hamas fighters use as cover. On the Israeli side, 13 people have died, 10 of them soldiers.
As Israeli soldiers clamped down Thursday on Gaza City, thousands of residents fled their homes looking for safety, many in their nightclothes.
In response to the strike on media offices in Gaza City, the Foreign Press Association in Israel denounced Israel’s "unconscionable breaches" and urged members not to distribute or broadcast photos or video that the Israeli military gave them until there was a formal apology.
Since early November, Israel has imposed a near-blanket ban on international reporters entering Gaza, a decision that the press association, which includes McClatchy, is challenging.
Israel’s high court directed Israel to allow reporters into Gaza during the fighting, but the Israel Defense Forces have refused to do anything more than take selected journalists on short embeds with troops.
"The FPA rejects and condemns the IDF policy of controlling the news coverage of the events in Gaza," the association said Thursday in a statement. "By preventing the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza and bombing buildings housing offices of international media — contrary to IDF assurances that these media buildings would be safe — the IDF is severely violating basic principles of respect for press freedom."
The Israeli campaign has forced tens of thousands of Gazans from their homes with nowhere for them to go, collapsed Gaza's health system and cut off huge sections of the territory from water, electricity and medical care, nine human rights groups have said.
In a joint statement, the groups — including the Israeli sections of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights — said Wednesday that, "This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes."
Israeli officials have said that their forces don't intentionally target civilians, and they reject allegations that they've violated international laws.
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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 #68 on: 2009-01-18 16:04:39 » |
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Eradicating Hamas
Afterward: From his Writer's Notebook on his website 2009-1-16:As besieged Gaza looks ever more like WWII's Warsaw Ghetto, four players in this drama stand out for particular scorn:- UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon whose tepid little chirps of protest made him sound like an offended squirrel instead of the leader of the world body. The US shoe-horned him into office and has gotten what it wanted: a compliant nobody.
- Egypt's dictator, Husni Mubarak for keeping terrorized Palestinians in their bombarded open-air prison and secretly colluding with the US and Israel to starve Gaza into submission. One of the most contemptible acts of any Arab leader in recent memory.
- Tony Blair, once a foghorn of faux morality and oily sincerity on the Mideast, now fallen strangely silent in the face of Israel's three week savaging of Gaza. [ Hermit : Perhaps, given his recent conversion to Catholicism, he doesn't want to contradict the Pope or the Synod - given that the latest out of Rome is that Israel is running a concentration camp with added violence in Gaza. ]
- Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has shown himself a lapdog of the US and Israel, making little peeps of protest over Gaza while colluding with his masters to replace Hamas in Gaza when it is wiped out. This once admired Palestinian leader has become an Arab Quisling. [ Hermit : As I have observed from the beginning. ]
- Then there is the North American media, which has self-censored itself over the Mideast, presenting a mostly one-sided version of events. The most reliable Mideast news source, al-Jazeera, has been just about banned from the US and Canada. So much for free speech. For regional news, even Israel's government censored media is more reliable and open.
Now, it seems Israel may soon cease its attacks. The reason is simple: Bush, who gave Israel a green light to blitz Gaza as a going-away gift, is on the way out, and Barack Obama will be in office by next week.
Source: Eric Margolis
Authors: Eric Margolis
Dated: 2009-01-12
[ Hermit : Eric and I do not always agree, but I regard him as one of the best connected and most analytical commentators of the Middle East, Asian, one of the best war correspondents - and a very readable author. As far as Israel is concerned, sanctions other than on military materiel are not really required. Just a cessation of sponsorship, public and private. Although, given how with American help they have used a blockade against Gaza for years, it would be perfect karmic retribution for them to to be on the receiving end of one. The down side with all sanctions (and blockades) is that they all rely on the effect of "starving the poor until the rich surrender." ]
It now seems clear the last disastrous act of the Bush administration was giving Israel a green light to launch its final solution campaign against the Hamas government in Gaza.
Just when we thought it was impossible for this calamitous president and Svengali Dick Cheney to do any more damage to the world or to America’s interests, they loosed one final Parthian shaft into the heart of the Mideast.
Another, earlier fool, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, gave Israel’s Ariel Sharon a green light in 1982 to invade Lebanon and crush the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Israel’s guns and bombs pounded large parts of besieged Beirut to rubble. The invasion was a disaster and led to the deaths of 18,000 to 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and the massacres of 2,000 Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by Israel’s neo-fascist Lebanese allies, and the death of 247 US servicemen.
Osama bin Laden noted a few years ago that the 9/11 attacks on New York were in direct retaliation for Israel’s brutal bombardment and destruction of downtown Beirut. Not surprisingly, the US media ignored this story.
In 2006, the Bush administration worked out a plan with Israel to again invade Lebanon, crush Hezbullah, then go on to attack Syria and Iran. This plan, like other American-Israeli machinations, collapsed in ignominy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, struggled to prevent the UN and world powers from ending Israel’s attack on Lebanon, which killed over 1,000 civilians and inflicted billions of dollars in damage on Lebanon. But Hezbullah’s unexpectedly effective resistance turned the invasion into a US-Israeli defeat.
Now, she has been at it again in Gaza, attempting to thwart efforts by the UN, EU and other powers to end the massacre there. Once again, America has covered itself with shame and hypocrisy. Shame and hypocrisy only exceeded by America and Israel’s co-conspirator in the Gaza siege, Egypt, which has barred the only escape route from the hell of besieged, starved Gaza.
President-elect Barack Obama, who is regarded by many around the globe as a savior, has only issued a few platitudes about the Gaza massacre. He did not hesitate to comment on the attack on Mumbai and other world issues, but his lack of response to the savaging of Gaza could be a dismaying portent of more of the bloody same in the Mideast.
So far, over 900 Palestinians have been killed and 3,500 seriously wounded. Three Israeli civilians are dead. The psychic wounds inflicted on 1.5 million cowering civilians subjected to 1,000 and 2,000 lb bombs, 155mm artillery shells, cluster munitions, heavy mortar fire, air to ground missiles, white phosphorus, and high power tank shells cannot be described.
Gaza has very few basements. Its people cower in apartments and buildings, never knowing when a bomb will crash through the roof or a tank shell through the wall. According to the UN, before the latest crisis, 70% of Palestinian children in Gaza suffered from emotional disorders as well as malnutrition.
Israel’s goal remains to eradicate Hamas and kill many of its members before world outrage finally forces a cease-fire. Once Hamas is crushed, the lapdog Fatah organization, which is financed by the US and Israel, will remain the sole voice of Palestinians. Fatah’s yes-men will then agree to the US-Israeli plan for the West Bank, which recognizes Israel’s retention of its useful parts, and leaves millions of Palestinians squeezed into Israeli-policed tribal enclaves, or Bantustans. In short, little versions of Gaza. Hamas kept refusing to recognize Israel until Israel recognized the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees.
The strategy of Hamas is simply to survive and continue to defy Israel and its allies. The homemade rockets still being fired by Hamas are an act of foolhardy but determined defiance.
The US-Israeli-Egyptian-British plan to eradicate Hamas, which is the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, has another important objective. Hamas was founded in 1987 by a group of Islamic charities linked to Egypt’s venerable Muslim Brotherhood movement. The new Hamas movement gained widespread popular support by promising to defend Palestinian rights to their lost lands and by providing a broad range of social welfare to destitute Palestinian refugees subsisting in squalid slums.
Hamas, in essence, is a democratic revolutionary movement that threatens all of the Mideast’s US-backed dictatorships and monarchies. Its biggest threat is to Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood remains the unofficial opposition to the regime of President Husni Mubarak, who has ruled his nation with an iron fist for 28 years.
Mubarak’s dictatorship is the keystone of US domination of the Mideast. Egypt holds almost a third of the Arab world’s total population. Gen. Mubarak is now 81. Egypt faces regime change soon. The last thing Washington wants is for Hamas’ revolutionary ideas and zeal to infect Egypt’s quiescent, nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to Mubarak, and risk seeing the US-backed Cairo regime replaced by a nationalist or Islamist government.
So it was essential, in the US-Israeli-Egyptian view, to once and for all crush the Hamas movement and keep Gaza’s Palestinians – who were ethnically cleansed from their homes in what became Israel in 1948 – safely penned up in the Gaza prison. A high-ranking Vatican official just called Gaza a "concentration camp."
Israel has been remarkably successful in barring the world’s eyes from the carnage in Gaza. But when journalists and cameras finally do get in, there will be even more international outrage against Israel’s brutality. No matter. The world, including the ineffectual regimes running so many Arab states, have proven helpless in the face of Israeli ruthlessness and US interference to end the agony of the Gaza Palestinians. Contrast the UN’s helplessness over Gaza to its condemnations against Iraq’s late, lynched Saddam Hussein.
As I said last week, Israel is handing a "fait accompli" to President Barack Obama. Its squabbling politicians primarily launched this war to boost their chances in upcoming elections, but also to destroy Hamas while their protector, George Bush, was still in the White House.
A short-term success, perhaps. But these Israeli politicians will pay a heavy price in the long term for this slash-and-burn policy. The world will turn further against Israel and see it, as too many critics claim, as a brutal oppressor. Comparisons with the Warsaw ghetto uprising will inevitably be made. More important, any hope for a real peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors has been set back for years.
Equally, America will be blamed for the carnage in Gaza. In my latest book, American Raj, I try to explain why there is so much anger and hatred directed in there against the United States. Gaza is now exhibit "A."
While our media mostly repeats Israel’s side of the argument, people across the Muslim world hear nightly of Gaza’s agony and horror – and will soon see TV footage. Everyone knows the F-16’s, helicopter gunships, and self-propelled heavy artillery raining death on Gaza come from the US courtesy of American taxpayers. Everyone knows the White House has been blocking action to succor the Palestinians and ordering its Arab satrap regimes to stay quiet – or, as in the case of Egypt, keep the prison gates locked.
If 9/11 was payback for Beirut, 1982, then the next attack on the US or its citizens abroad will likely be labeled, "Gaza."
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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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letheomaniac
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #69 on: 2009-01-19 07:10:45 » |
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[letheomaniac] And now a thought from one of the only South Africans I know that has an opinion worth listening to - Nelson. Well, him and the Arch, who also talks a lot of good sense (for a clergyman).
The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
- Nelson Mandela in his address at The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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Fritz
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #71 on: 2009-01-20 17:39:49 » |
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[Fritz]This story sure take Hermit's articles and Mermaid's last photo posts and brings it down to where's the beef" or natural gas and the real motive or evil ... pawns in the game of energy chess ... sigh
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
Source: Global Research:
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
Date: January 8, 2009
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine's gas reserves could be much larger.
Map 1
Map 2
Who Owns the Gas Fields
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza's gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.
The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza's offshore gas reserves.
British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.
The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine's sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that "Israel would never buy gas from Palestine" intimating that Gaza's offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.
In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza's offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)
The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.
In 2006, British Gas "was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt." (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.
The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority." The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:
"Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government." (Ibid, emphasis added)
The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza's offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.
The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:
"Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror". (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on "The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas," March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza's Coastal Waters Threaten Israel's National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)
Israel's intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).
Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board
The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under "Operation Cast Lead" was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:
"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , 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)
That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza's natural gas:
"Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel's wish to renew the talks.
The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel's request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials." (Globes online- Israel's Business Arena, June 23, 2008)
The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.
Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board. In all likelihood, a new "post war" political-territorial arrangement for the Gaza strip was also being contemplated by the Israeli government.
In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.
In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG's offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)
"Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government's decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.
The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender." (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)
Gaza and Energy Geopolitics
The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.
What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?
What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine's Natural Gas reserves?
A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or "peacekeeping" troops?
The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?
The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza's maritime areas?
If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel's offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).
These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel's energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport - pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. "What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline." (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)
Map 3
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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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Mermaid
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #72 on: 2009-01-20 18:46:40 » |
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to fritz: i dont know if i have mentioned this article before, but israel certainly doesnt need to buy oil from palestine because they are getting it from the united states...over 500 million gallons..
read and be amazed...(ok..not highlighting because the whole thing is worth reading)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/16/gaza_invasion/
Jan. 16, 2009 | Israel's current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes. Israel's campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America's support for Israel.
It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. taxpayers' expense. The U.S. has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. refineries to ports in Israel.
In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel's $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's budget is also spent on oil. A senior analyst at the Pentagon, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says the Israel Defense Force's fuel use is most likely similar to that of the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, the Israeli military is spending about the same percentage of its defense budget on oil as the U.S. is. Therefore it's possible that the U.S. is providing most, or perhaps even all, of the Israeli military's fuel needs.
What's more, Israel does not need the U.S. handout. Its own recently privatized refineries, located at Haifa and Ashdod, could supply all of the fuel needed by the Israeli military. Those same refineries are now producing and selling jet fuel and other refined products on the open market. But rather than purchase lower-cost jet fuel from its own refineries, the Israeli military is using U.S. taxpayer money to buy and ship large quantities of fuel from U.S. refineries.
The Israeli government obtains the fuel through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and pays for the fuel and the shipping with funds granted to it through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), another Defense Department program. (In 2008, Congress earmarked $2.4 billion in FMF money for Israel, and $2.5 billion for 2009.) The dimensions of the FMS fuel program are virtually unknown among America's top experts on Middle East policy. For his part, the Pentagon analyst was surprised to learn that FMS money was even being used to supply fuel to Israel. "That's not the purpose of the program," he says. "FMS was designed to allow U.S. weapons makers to sell their goods to foreign countries. The idea that fuel is being bought under FMS is very, very odd."
The fuel program, in fact, raises a number of pressing questions. The shipments have occurred during times of record-high oil prices, when American consumers have been angered by motor fuel prices that in 2008 exceeded $4 per gallon. Given those high prices, it appears to make little sense for the U.S. government to be promoting policies that reduce the volume of -- and potentially raise the price of -- motor fuel available for sale to U.S. motorists.
The U.S. fuel shipments are part of a sustained policy that has widened the energy gap between Israel and its neighbors. Over the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has cut off fuel supplies and destroyed electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Those embargoes and attacks on power plants have exacerbated a huge gap in per-capita energy consumption between Israelis and Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. And that sharp disparity helps explain why the Palestinians have never been able to build a viable economy.
Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to "do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It's their choice, not the government's choice. It's the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose."
Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, "Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?"
***
Since 1948, oil has been a critically important commodity for both the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli economy. And Israeli leaders have long worried about their energy security. In 1957, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wrote in his diary, "The only sanctions which could defeat or break us are oil sanctions."
In 1967, Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran precipitated the Six Day War. The Straits, writes Israeli historian Michael Oren in his book on the conflict, "Six Days of War," were "a lifeline for the Jewish state, the conduit to its quiet import of Iranian oil." In 1973, the Yom Kippur War (Arabs call it the Ramadan War) led to the Arab Oil Embargo, an event that still reverberates in the U.S., particularly in the fanciful political rhetoric about the desire for "energy independence."
The U.S.-Israel oil relationship goes back to 1975. In September of that year, Henry Kissinger, who was then secretary of state, struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that led the Israelis to partially withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. The agreement required Israel to pull out of the Giddi and Mitla passes and relinquish the Sinai oilfields the Israelis had captured during the 1967 war.
In return, Kissinger agreed that America would provide multibillion-dollar economic and military subsidies to Israel. He also agreed that the U.S. would supply Israel with oil in case of any emergency. That agreement was formalized in 1979 about the time of the Camp David peace talks. It says that the U.S. will "make every effort to help Israel secure the necessary means of transport" for the oil that it purchases. The agreement concludes by saying that the U.S. and Israel will "meet annually, or more frequently at the request of either party, to review Israel's continuing oil requirement."
Since 1979, the agreement has been quietly renewed every five years. (The most recent approval of the document was done by the U.S. State Department in November of 2005.) The U.S. does not provide any other country the same insurance.
Nor does any other country get anything close to the volume of fuel that Israel does under FMS. In 2004, more than 140 countries received FMS aid from the U.S. Of that group, only about 13 countries received fuel of any kind through the FMS program and the biggest recipient, after Israel, was Singapore, which got $7.3 million in fuel. That year, Israel received 17 times more FMS fuel than all of the other countries combined.
Why did the U.S. Defense Department begin providing oil to Israel in 1986? And why does the program persist, particularly given that Israel no longer sees its refineries as strategic assets? The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which manages the FMS and FMF programs, referred questions about the program to the Israeli government. The press office of the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to numerous requests about the program.
While the rationale for the oil transfers remains elusive, the facts behind Israel's refinery privatization are freely available. In 2006, the government sold the Ashdod refinery to Israeli tycoon Zadik Bino for about $500 million. And in early 2007, it sold the larger refinery in Haifa to a group led by Israel Corp., the shipping and chemicals conglomerate, for $1.5 billion.
The sale of the refineries marked a major turning point in Israel's attitude toward oil. In its earliest years as an independent nation, Israel's survival was made possible by using crude from the Soviet Union and Venezuela. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, Iranian crude was the lifeblood of the Zionist state. Later still, the Israelis relied on the Kuwaitis. Today, the Russians are providing much of Israel's crude needs. And the sale of the refineries is indicative of the Israeli government's confidence in its ongoing ability to purchase the oil it needs on the international market.
Nevertheless, the FMS fuel shipments to Israel have continued. The most recent shipments for which records are readily available occurred in July and October 2008.
On July 7, 2008, the spot price for U.S. crude oil hit a near-record of $141. That same day, the San Antonio Business Journal reported that San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp. had been awarded a contract by the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) worth $46 million to provide fuel to Israel. Valero has won a number of lucrative contracts from the DESC, the Defense Department agency that handles all of the Pentagon's bulk fuel purchases. On Oct. 9, the Journal reported that Valero had been awarded a $235 million contract under FMS. Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero, says that the company "doesn't talk publicly about its contracts."
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that U.S. taxpayers are paying the shipping costs to move the fuel from refineries -- many of them on the Texas Gulf Coast -- to Israeli ports at Haifa or Ashkelon. Shipping costs vary but one specific bid called for shipping costs of $.30 per gallon. Officials with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that manages programs that "strengthen America's alliances and partnerships," has confirmed that the costs to ship the fuel from U.S. refineries to Israel have been paid for with FMF money designated for Israel by Congress.
The huge FMS fuel shipments are puzzling to the Israelis. Amit Mor, CEO of Eco Energy, an Israeli consulting and investment firm, has worked on energy issues in his home country for about two decades. In a recent e-mail, Mor says that "there is a paradox" in the fuel shipments that Israel gets from the U.S. He said that the privately owned Israeli refineries export jet fuel in "FOB prices," while the defense ministry imports jet fuel in "high CIF prices," with the funds of U.S. military assistance.
FOB, short for "free on board," means that customers must take possession of the fuel at the refinery and then pay for all shipping and related costs to get the fuel to its final destination. On the other hand, as Mor explains, the Israeli military is importing fuel from U.S. refineries located 7,000 miles away, while incurring the CIF, short for "cost, insurance and freight," of moving the fuel that distance.
Mor says Israeli refiners have "complained about this issue" but have had no luck with the Israeli government. He goes on to say that "it is the U.S. government that insisted for some reason to continue with this historical, costly and inefficient arrangement."
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Energy analysts squabble about a myriad of issues. But if there is one truism that draws near-universal agreement, it's this: As energy consumption increases, so does wealth. And while that truism holds for oil use, it is particularly apt for electricity. As Peter Huber and Mark Mills point out in their 2005 book, "The Bottomless Well," "Economic growth marches hand in hand with increased consumption of electricity -- always, everywhere, without significant exception in the annals of modern industrial history."
That statement underscores the significance of the FMS fuel shipments to Israel, many of which have occurred at or near the time that the Israeli military has attacked the electric power plants of its neighbors.
In late June 2006, Israeli aircraft fired nine missiles at the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied Territories. (One of the original partners in the project was Enron, but that's another story.) The missiles caused damage estimated at $15 million to $20 million and, for a time, made Gaza wholly reliant on electricity flows from Israel. The 140-megawatt power plant, owned by the Palestine Electric Co., was insured by the Overseas Private Investment Corp., an arm of the U.S. government. Thus the U.S. was providing fuel and materiel to the Israeli military, which destroyed the plant, but it was also paying to fix the damage. Call it cradle-to-grave service.
The Israeli attack on the Gaza City Power Plant offers a stark example of how the FMS fuel helps assure that Israel stays energy rich while many of the citizens in neighboring regions live in energy poverty.
Two weeks after the attack on the Gaza City plant in 2006, during Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, Israeli aircraft attacked the 346-megawatt Jiyyeh power plant, the oldest electric power plant in Lebanon. Those attacks resulted in the largest-ever oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean. About 100,000 barrels of fuel oil that was stored in tanks at the Jiyyeh site flowed into the sea, creating an oil slick that stretched for more than 150 kilometers.
The attacks on the Jiyyeh plant occurred on July 13 and July 15. Those dates are important because they underscore the timing of the U.S. fuel transfers to Israel.
On July 14, 2006, the U.S. military issued two press releases. In one of them, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it would be providing up to $210 million in JP-8 jet fuel to the Israeli government. The other release, put out at 5 p.m. Eastern time, came from the Defense Logistics Agency, which said that it had awarded a $36.7 million contract to Valero as part of another JP-8 supply deal for Israel.
The July 14 release contains this rather bland description of the fuel deal: "The proposed sale of the JP-8 aviation fuel will enable Israel to maintain the operational capability of its aircraft inventory. The jet fuel will be consumed while the aircraft is in use to keep peace and security in the region. Israel will have no difficulty absorbing this additional fuel into its armed forces." The release goes on to claim that the "proposed sale of this JP-8 aviation fuel will not affect the basic military balance in the region."
While the attacks on the Jiyyeh plant were important, Lebanese citizens could get electricity from other power plants in the country. That was not true in Gaza, a province in which electricity has always been in short supply. According to the CIA Fact Book, the Gaza Strip ranks dead last -- 214th out of 214 countries and territories listed -- in the amount of electricity consumed. According to the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Agency, in 2004, the average Gazan used about 654 kilowatt-hours of electricity. By contrast, the 7.1 million residents of Israel consume about 6,295 kilowatt-hours of electric power per person per year, nearly 10 times as much as the average Gazan.
Although more recent energy consumption data for Gaza is not available, there's no question that the endemic poverty in the West Bank and particularly in Gaza, is due, largely, to a continuing lack of energy resources. And the Israelis have frequently cut off the flow of fuel and electricity, which has exacerbated the Palestinians' energy poverty.
Over the past few years, the Israelis have cut off the flow of energy to Gaza as retribution for various transgressions. And those cutoffs have forced the Gaza City Power Plant to shut down for lack of the fuel oil it needs to operate. When the power plant is idled, most of the residents of Gaza City are left without power and overall power supplies in the Gaza Strip decline by about 25 percent.
In May 2006, Israel cut off the flow of oil into the Occupied Territories after the Islamic group Hamas won local elections. In January 2008, the Israelis closed the border crossings into Gaza, which resulted in a fuel shortage that closed the Gaza power plant. In April 2008, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency stopped distributing aid in Gaza after it ran out of fuel. The Israelis stopped the fuel flow as retribution for attacks that killed two Israeli civilians and three Israeli soldiers. In November 2008, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency was again forced to suspend work due to lack of fuel. The fuel shortage occurred after Israel closed the border into Gaza in response to rockets and mortar shells that had been fired into Israel from Gaza.
The disparity in energy consumption between the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and their counterparts in Israel is just one element in the centuries-old story of tragedy and conflict in the region. But with the U.S. squarely on the side of the Israelis in the Gaza campaign, the potential for an angry backlash against the U.S. appears to be growing.
And that anger will likely only increase when Arabs begin to understand that much of the fuel that the U.S. is giving to Israel is being refined from Arab oil. The Valero refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, which has won several of the FMS contracts for Israel, is a big buyer of Mideast crude. During the second quarter of 2006, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the refinery got about 40 percent of its crude oil from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.
In short, U.S. taxpayers are paying for U.S. energy companies to buy Arab crude, ship it across the Atlantic to refineries in the U.S., refine it, and then ship it back across the Atlantic so that the Israel Defense Force can use it in its wars.
While the origination point of the crude may only matter to part of the Arab world, it is becoming apparent that bloodshed in Gaza is further complicating America's efforts to gain credibility as an honest broker in the region. Anti-U.S. sentiment is not in America's long-term interest, says former diplomat Chas Freeman, a man whose résumé in international affairs extends back nearly four decades.
Freeman is a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as well as a former assistance secretary of defense. He served as Richard Nixon's chief interpreter during Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Now the president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank, Freeman says the FMS fuel program for Israel runs counter to long-term goals of resolving the Palestinian conflict and America's stated goal of protecting the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf. The Defense Department has assumed "unilateral responsibility for the protection of the oil trade in the Persian Gulf, and yet it's assuming responsibility for the delivery of aviation fuel for the Israeli military," he says. "That's confused and contradictory." The program, he adds, is "one of many elements of our relationship with Israel that is very hard to explain."
Freeman may be correct, but the House of Representatives has scant doubt about continued U.S. support for Israel. Nor has Congress shown much interest in the fuel shortages among Palestinians. On Jan. 9, the 14th day of the fighting in Gaza, the House passed a resolution sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." The vote was 390 to 5.
Two days before the vote, UNICEF estimated that 800,000 Gazans did not have running water and 1 million were living without electricity.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #74 on: 2009-01-21 17:40:55 » |
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UNRWA Chief Appalled at Israeli Destruction in Gaza
Source: Inter Press Service
Authors: Thalif Deen
Dated: 2009-01-21
When Israel went on a military rampage during its 22-day air strikes and artillery attacks on Gaza, it largely singled out residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and UN buildings on the pretext of targeting Hamas fighters.
But John Ging, director of operations for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), based in Gaza, kept insisting there were no Hamas fighters anywhere in the vicinity of UN-run schools or warehouses.
"What we have regretted in the past is that we have not been given a hearing to answer," he told reporters Monday.
He charged that most of the allegations made by Israel were "unsubstantiated, unfounded – and continue to be repeated."
Perhaps his strongest indictment of the Israelis was reflected in his response to a question on military tactics: "We don't, in a civilized world, shoot the hostage to get to the hostage-taker."
But in reality that was what the Israelis were doing in Gaza, says an Arab diplomat, echoing Ging's comment.
"The Israelis violated every single international convention governing the rules of war and the treatment of civilians," he told IPS. "Their military excesses can, in no way, be justified."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who praised Israel at a press conference in Jerusalem last week, describing the Jewish state as "a responsible member of the United Nations," apparently had second thoughts when he saw the devastation caused in Gaza.
Standing outside a UN compound that was destroyed by Israel, Ban told reporters Tuesday: "I am just appalled. Everyone is smelling this bombing still. It is still burning. It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack against the United Nations."
Despite pleas from the secretary-general, Israel bombed UN-run facilities, including schools and warehouses, on four different occasions.
One of the bomb attacks on the UNRWA compound took place on the same day Ban arrived in Israel.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the final tally read: 1,314 Palestinians killed, including 416 children and 106 women; 5,320 injured, including 1,855 children and 795 women.[i] [Hermit] This is not the "final tally." Bodies continue to be dug from the rubble and children killed and injured by the "carefully targeted" munitions the "discriminating" (against children?) Israelis leave behind.]
In comparison, the number of Israelis killed included four civilians and nine soldiers, along with 84 injured.
And according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the buildings destroyed included 4,100 residential homes (with 17,000 damaged), 20 mosques, 25 educational institutions and medical facilities, 31 security offices, 16 government buildings, and 1,500 factories and shops.
The Office of the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator pointed out that 16 health facilities and an equal number of ambulances were destroyed or damaged during the 22-day conflict.
Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, told IPS: "The scale of the devastation is such that Israel and its supporters are unlikely to be able to bury or bulldoze it out of the collective conscience of the world."
There have already been calls to bring war crimes charges against Israeli leaders, she pointed out.
Although the formal wheels of international justice may grind slowly, citizens are not waiting.
"Trade unions in different parts of the world are calling for a boycott. Israel's fruit shipments are rotting in its warehouses as importers in Scandinavia, Jordan, and the UK canceled orders," she said.
In an open letter in the London Guardian last weekend, Israeli citizens themselves called on world leaders to impose sanctions against their own country: "This is the only road left. Help us all, please!"
Although a cease-fire has been declared, said Hijab, Gaza's torment and siege is not over and the UN's "We the peoples" are likely to remain mobilized until justice is done.
Speaking from Gaza, Ging told reporters that the population in Gaza remains shell-shocked, traumatized, and living in real fear.
Asked about the "most outrageous" incident he had witnessed, Ging said: "The dead children."
Meanwhile, the United Nations is expected to lead international efforts to rebuild Gaza.
But Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the external affairs commissioner of the 27-member European Union, was quoted as saying that the EU would not fund reconstruction as long as Hamas was in control of Gaza.
Humanitarian aid, however, would be provided without any conditions, she added.
Hijab told IPS that "it is almost as though there are two different worlds, with the mainstream media, European and U.S. leaders, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon living in one world."
And in the other, she said, are the leaders of the Third World, the president of the General Assembly (Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann), and millions of outraged citizens.
D'Escoto has taken a very strong stand denouncing the United Nations as ineffective in taking any action against Israel.
Hijab said the former parrot the Israeli line about Israel's need for protection while the latter exchange UN reports and eyewitness accounts of the destruction and damage to thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure.
They also share photographs of phosphorus shells showering white flame on unprotected civilians; read about the killing of entire families among the thousands of dead and wounded; and respond with horror to the reports of women whose legs have been shorn off by new kinds of weapons, she added.
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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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