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Topic: Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp (Read 14736 times) |
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Fritz
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #90 on: 2009-02-26 19:09:04 » |
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[Fritz]Support takes on interesting forms
Spray your tag on West Bank wall -- online
Source: Reuters
Author: Douglas Hamilton; editing by Michael Roddy
Date: Wed Feb 25, 2009 4:18pm EST
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - It could turn out to be the world's longest graffiti space -- the massive concrete barrier separating Israel from the Palestinians.
Over the Internet, a group of Palestinian graffiti artists is offering to spray-paint your personal message on Israel's towering security wall in the occupied West Bank.
It costs 30 euros ($40) per message and they can be as solemn or wacky as you want. Everything goes, except for obscene, offensive or extremist hate speech. Clients get three digital pictures of the finished product.
The 8-meter (25-foot) high barrier of massive concrete slabs is part of a 620-km (385-mile) fence Israel says is intended to keep suicide bombers out, and which can be dismantled at some point in the future when peace reigns.
But with its slit-eyed watchtowers and burgeoning Palestinian protest graffiti, it is already reminiscent of the hated Berlin Wall, which divided the German capital for 28 years before it was torn down 10 years ago.
The taggers at www.sendamessage.nl are members of the Palestinian Peace and Freedom Youth Forum, which set up the scheme in collaboration with a Dutch Christian organization.
"It is a new way to speak with the people, that we the Palestinians exist," says graffiti artist Yusef Njm.
"We are not only throwing stones and clashing. We are alive. We think in a new way to tell them that we are alive."
Organizers stress that revenue does not go to buy weapons for the Palestinians. It is intended to support grassroots social and cultural projects in the West Bank.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #91 on: 2009-03-20 16:52:26 » |
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| UN envoy: Gaza op seems to be war crime of greatest magnitude | Israeli Soldiers Expose Atrocities in Gaza | Israel vows to improve minority, prisoner rightsUnder UN scrutiny, Israel vows to improve rights of minorities and prisoners | | Source: Ha'Aretz | Source: Antiwar.com | Source: AP News | | Authors: Uncredited (News Agencies) | Authors: Jerrold Kessel (Inter Press Service), Pierre Klochendler (Inter Press Service) | Authors: Frank Jordans (AP News) | | Dated: 2009-03-20 | Dated: 2009-03-20 | Dated: 2009-03-20 | A United Nations human rights investigator said on Thursday that Israel's offensive against Hamas in densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a war crime of the "greatest magnitude."
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.
"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said.
"On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he wrote in an annual report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Falk called for an independent experts group to be set up to probe possible war crimes committed by both Israeli forces and Hamas.
Violations included Israel's alleged "targeting of schools, mosques and ambulances" during the December 27-January 18 offensive and its use of weapons including white phosphorus, as well as Hamas firing of rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel.
Falk said that Israel's blockade of the coastal strip of 1.5 million people violated the Geneva Conventions, which he said suggested further war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
The aggression was not legally justified and may represent a "crime against peace" - a principle established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals, according to the American law professor who serves as the Human Rights Council's independent investigator.
He further suggested that the Security Council might set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court.
Rights group names 1,417 Gaza war dead; Israel disputes toll
A Palestinian human rights group has released the names of 1,417 Gazans it says were killed in Israel's recent war on the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Thursday that of those killed, 926 were civilians, 236 were combatants and 255 were members of the Palestinian security forces.
Most of the policemen were killed in a series of Israeli bombing attacks on Hamas security compounds on December 27, the first day of the war.
The group says it has investigated every civilian death. The list is posted on the center's Web site.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev disputes the findings | Based on testimony from Israeli soldiers who took part in the recent war in Gaza, Israel is being confronted directly with the serious charge that permissive rules of engagement allowed for the killing of Palestinian civilians and widespread destruction of Palestinian property.
The disclosures created a stir after first publication Thursday in a major front-page spread in the Tel Aviv daily, Haaretz. The charges are all the more telling in that they are based on first-hand accounts from dozens of combat soldiers who served in the war. Their testimonies were compiled by an academic college the soldiers had attended in a prep course before being drafted.
This represents the first uncensored recording in Israel of what occurred within combat units which took part in what Israeli codenamed Operation Cast Lead. The picture drawn by the soldiers differs radically from the refined version of the war provided by military commanders to the public and Israeli media.
The report includes the testimony of one NCO (non-commissioned officer): "A company commander with 100 soldiers under his command saw a woman walking down a road some distance away, but close enough that you could've gunned down whoever you identified...She was an elderly woman – whether she raised any suspicion, I don't know. But what the officer did in the end was to put men on the roof and with the snipers bring her down. I felt it was simply murder in cold blood."
As presented in the report, Danny Zamir, head of the army prep-course, who compiled the transcript of the testimonies, intervened: "I don't get it – why did he have her shot?" The soldier who witnessed the incident replied: "That what's great in Gaza, you could say – you see someone walking down a track, not necessarily armed, and you can simply shoot them. In our case, it was an elderly woman. I didn't see her with any weapon. The order was to bring the person down, that woman, 'as soon as you sight her'. There are always warnings, and there's always the saying – 'it could be a suicide bomber'. What I felt was a lot of bloodthirstiness. Because, we weren't in many engagements, our battalion was only involved in a very limited number of incidents with terrorists."
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 1,434 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive, 960 of them civilians, among them 288 children. Palestinians have spoken insistently of atrocities by Israeli troops and of random destruction of thousands of homes. Israel has brushed off the accusations and calls for investigations into "war crimes" committed during the war, dismissing it as "anti-Israel propaganda."
In the report, another infantry squad leader gave this account of an incident where an IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) sniper shot and killed a Palestinian woman and her two children: "There was a house with a family inside....We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it. A few days later there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.
"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One of the women and her two children didn't understand the instructions. They went to the left. No one told the sniper on the roof that they had been permitted to go, that it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he...he did what he was supposed to, like he was following orders."
According to the squad leader's account, "The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, they crossed the line he was told no one should cross. He shot them straightaway. In the end, what happened is that he killed them. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he was doing his job according to the orders he'd been given. The atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to...I don't know how to describe it...The lives of Palestinians, let's say, are very, very much less important than the lives of our soldiers. As far as they're concerned, that's the way they can justify it."
"I was in shock at what I heard," said Zamir in an interview on Israel Radio. "The incidents involving the killing of civilians are the most disturbing and need to be investigated. What I also found very distressing was how the norms of the army's code of conduct have been eroded and how widespread the aberrations are at junior commander level."
Zamir said the soldiers reported that officers never intervened when troops deliberately damaged property, harassed civilians or wrote "Death to Arabs" graffiti. The report also quotes individual soldiers reporting that, when they tried to remonstrate with fellow soldiers who were causing wanton damage, they were met with the response, "Because they're Arabs." "This is not the Israeli Defense Forces that we used to know," said Zamir.
Amos Harel, the Haaretz military affairs correspondent who broke the story, says the accounts have a ring of authenticity. "The soldiers are not lying, for the simple reason that they have no reason to do so. There's a continuity of testimony from different parts of the Gaza war zone. Read the transcript and you won't find any judgment or boasting. This is what the soldiers saw in Gaza."
Israel's army is a temple of social consensus and a national melting pot. It is one of the fundamental tenets of Israel's social fabric that the army does not commit war crimes, and operates according to "the highest ethical standards," even in war time. They call it "purity of arms."
The accounts expose a dehumanizing view of 'the enemy' that seems to be more extreme than ever among Israeli soldiers. But the deterioration has been going on for decades – since Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands has meant that the Israeli army has been principally engaged in fighting guerrillas in civilian populated areas; this has included fighting two Palestinian Intifada uprisings and two wars in Lebanon, one against the Palestinian Liberation Authority and one against Hezbollah.
The report of what happened in Gaza was submitted three weeks ago to Israel's Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi. The army says it will investigate the allegations thoroughly.
But Harel says that "if the army never heard about these incidents, it's a reasonable assumption that it didn't want to know. The soldiers describe the reality in combat units, from the level of company commander down. In debriefings, the participants usually include company commanders up. It seems that, except for isolated incidents, the rule is 'you don't ask, we won't tell.'"
Asked on Israel Radio to comment on the report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stuck to the credo: "I only heard of the charges this morning. I'm convinced that the army will carry out a thorough investigation. There are always exceptions, but our army is the world's most moral. Our soldiers talk openly when they return home."
Moshe Negbi, a leading legal expert, told IPS that an independent inquiry was essential – "not only for justice to be seen, but also as a most effective way of heading off increasing world pressure for a war crimes inquiry against the Israeli military."
Whether there will be a major public grappling within Israeli society that will press for such an inquiry is improbable. Ever since the beginning of the occupation more than 40 years back, and especially in the last decade since the Second Intifada, attitudes and public and political discourse in regard to the Palestinians, and to Arabs in general, have been degraded. | The Israeli envoy to the United Nations in Geneva said Thursday Israel will improve its treatment of minorities and prisoners [ Hermit : As it was reported just 2 days ago on Wednesday 2009-03-18 that "Israel increased its threats to press the crippling Gaza blockade, as well as to toughen up conditions for the 11,000 Palestinians in its prisons." it looks as if Israel is likely lying - again. ] , taking on board some suggestions made in a review of its human rights record before the UN.
But Israel rejected calls to abolish the death penalty, noting that it was last applied to Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann in 1962 and has since been effectively suspended, Israel's ambassador Aharon Leshno-Yaar said.
Israel received 54 recommendations from other countries as part of the UN Human Rights Council's regular scrutiny of all the global body's members. Many suggestions focused on Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian territory and alleged abuses against the population there.
Leshno-Yaar declined to address the Palestinian issue directly, provoking anger from several Arab and Muslim nations, and forcing adoption of the report on Israel to be postponed until Friday.
"Israel takes note of the recommendation to intensify its efforts to ensure that human rights are respected in the fight against terrorism," he said - diplomatic language meaning the country won't heed outside opinion on the matter.
Of his country's treatment of minorities, Leshno-Yaar said it would redouble efforts to increase women's representation in society, address gaps between the various populations and raise the percentage of the Arab minority in the civil service.
Responding to demands from Denmark, Britain and Canada that prison conditions be improved and allegations of torture be investigated, he said Israel will strive to meet its international obligations.
Leshno-Yaar also said that those who object to serving in Israel's army service on conscientious grounds will be allowed to fulfill their obligatory national service with a civilian body independent of the military.
It was the first time that Israel appeared before the Geneva-based council's newly created review, which is designed to examine each country's record every four years.
The council's recommendations are not binding. |
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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 #92 on: 2009-03-24 06:48:15 » |
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[letheomaniac] In between massacres in the Gaza strip, Israeli fascists somehow find the time to pass discriminatory legislation against Arabs living within Israel's (illegal) borders...
Source: http://www.counterpunch.com
Author: Uri Avnery
Dated: 23/3/2009
Israel's Most Revolting Law?
The most important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in the general tumult of exciting events.
Really exciting: In a final act of villainy, typical of his whole tenure as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert abandoned the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Ehud Barak decided that the Labor Party must join the ultra-right government, which includes outright fascists.
And this, too: the former President of Israel was officially indicted for rape.
In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written by lawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court?
* * *
THE JUDICIAL debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.
It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a “hostile” Arab country.
The Arab citizens of Israel belong to Hamulas (clans) which extend beyond the borders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the Hamula. This is an ancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in the desire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married his cousin, Rebecca.
The “Green Line”, which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948 war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remained outside the new state, the Hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a large Palestinian Diaspora.
A male Arab citizen in Israel who desires to marry a woman of his Hamula will often find her in the West Bank or in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Syria. The woman will generally join her husband and be taken in by his family. In theory, her husband could join her in Ramallah, but the standard of living there is much lower, and all his life – family, work, studies – is centered in Israel. Because of the large difference in the standard of living, a man in the occupied territories who marries a woman in Israel will also usually join her and receive Israeli citizenship, leaving behind his former life.
It is hard to know how many Palestinians, male and female, have come to Israel during the 41 years of occupation and become Israeli citizens this way. One government office speaks of twenty thousand, another of more than a hundred thousand. Whatever the number, the Knesset has enacted an (officially “temporary”) law to put an end to this movement.
As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be “terrorists”. True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a “security” assertion need evidence to prove it?
Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?
The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:
“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”
* * *
ONE SHOULD read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter.
If we are at war with “the Palestinian people”, this means that every Palestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout the world as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel, a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – “collective against collective”.
Of course, the lawyers did not invent this principle. It has been accepted for a long time in daily life, and all arms of the government act accordingly. The army averts its eyes when an “illegal” outpost is established in the West Bank on the land of Palestinians, and sends soldiers to protect the invaders. Israeli courts customarily impose harsher sentences on Arab defendants than on Jews guilty of the same offense. The soldiers of an army unit order T-shirts showing a pregnant Arab woman with a rifle trained on her belly and the words “1 shot, 2 kills” (as exposed in Haaretz this week).
* * *
THESE ANONYMOUS lawyers should perhaps be thanked for daring to formulate in a judicial document the reality that had previously been hidden in a thousand different ways.
The simple reality is that 127 years after the beginning of the first Jewish wave of immigration, 112 years after the founding of the Zionist movement, 61 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, 41 years after the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian war continues along all the front lines with undiminished vigor.
The inherent aim of the Zionist enterprise was and is to turn the country – at least up to the Jordan River – into a homogeneous Jewish state. Throughout the course of Zionist-Israeli history, this aim has not been forsaken for a moment. Every cell of the Israeli organism contains this genetic code and therefore acts accordingly, without the need for a specific directive.
In my mind I see this process as the urge of a river to reach the sea. A river yearning for the sea does not recognize any law, except for the law of gravity. If the terrain allows it, it will flow in a straight course, if not – it will cut a new riverbed, twist like a snake, turn right and left, go around obstacles. If necessary, it will split into rivulets. From time to time, new brooks will join it. And every minute it will strive to reach the sea.
The Palestinian people, of course, oppose this process. They refuse to budge, set up dams, try to push the stream back. True, for more than a hundred years they have been on the retreat, but they have never surrendered. They continue to resist with the same persistence as the advancing river.
* * *
ALL THIS has been associated, on the Israeli side, with an obstinate denial, using a thousand and one guises, pretexts, self-serving slogans and sanctimonious untruths. But from time to time an unexpected flash of light shows what is really going on.
That happened this week, when one of the pre-military preparatory schools, set up to educate future officers, convened a meeting of alumni, most of them on active service or in the reserves, and encouraged them to speak freely about their experiences. Since many of them had just returned from the Gaza War, and the things were burning in their bones (as the Hebrew expression goes), shocking details were disclosed. These quickly found their way to the media and were published at length in newspapers and on television.
To the readers of this column they would not come as a surprise. I have written about them before, e.g. in my article “Black Flag” (January 31, 2009). Amira Hass and Gideon Levy have collected eye-witness reports from Gaza inhabitants, telling much the same stories. But there is a difference: this time the facts are disclosed by the soldiers themselves, those who took part in the events or saw them with their own eyes.
The army was Shocked. Surprised. Revolted. The official Army Liar, who bears the title of Army Spokesperson, had previously denied anything of the kind. Now he promises that the army will investigate every incident “as the case may require”. The Military Advocate General ordered the investigative arm of the military police to open an inquiry. Since the same Advocate General bragged in the past that his officers had been embedded throughout the war in every front-line command post, one would have to be more than naïve to take his statement seriously.
One can rely on the army to ensure that nothing tangible emerges from the investigation. An army investigating itself – like any institution investigating itself – is a farce. In this case it is even more than farcical, since the soldiers must testify under the eyes of their commanders, while their comrades are listening. In the alumni meeting, they spoke freely, believing that only those present would hear. Even so, they needed a lot of courage to speak out. And since each of them could speak only about what had happened in his immediate vicinity, only a few cases were brought up. The army intends to investigate only those.
But the picture is far wider. We have heard about many cases of the same kind, and they clearly were a widespread phenomenon. A woman and her children were evicted by soldiers from their home in the middle of the fighting and immediately afterwards shot dead at close range by other soldiers who had orders to shoot everything that moved. Old people and children walking on open ground were shot in cold blood by snipers who saw them clearly through their telescopic sights, who had orders that everybody moving should be considered a “terrorist”. Homes were destroyed for no reason, simply because they were there. Belongings inside apartments were vandalized just for fun, “because they belong to Arabs”. Soldiers slit open sacks of food intended by UNO agencies for the hungry population, because they “go to Arabs”.
I know that such things happen in every war. A year after the 1948 war I wrote a book about them called “The Other Side of the Coin”. Every fighting army has its share of psychopaths, misfits and sadists, side by side with decent soldiers. But even some of the normal soldiers may go berserk in battle, lose their sense of right and wrong and conform to the “spirit of the unit”, if it is such.
Something has happened to our army. Its commanders never tire of calling it “the Most Moral Army in the World” and this has become a slogan like “Guinness is Good For You”. But what happened during the Gaza operation testifies to a massive deterioration.
This deterioration is a natural result of the definition of the war as used in the document submitted to the Supreme Court. This document must arouse shock and condemnation and serve as a wake-up call for every person to whom the future of Israel is dear.
This war must be ended. The river must be channeled into a different bed, so that its waters will make the earth fertile - before we become irreversibly bestialized in our own eyes, and in the eyes of the world.
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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 #93 on: 2009-03-25 06:47:59 » |
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[letheomaniac] T-shirts that glorify the slaughter of preganant civillians. I would expect nothing less from soldiers fighting in the "the most moral army in the world". 
[letheomaniac] And then there's this...
Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca
Author: Press TV (not credited)
Dated: 23/3/2009
Commander confirms Netanyahu war plans
Israel is preparing for all-out war on multiple fronts that include Iran, Syria and Lebanon, a senior military commander claims.
Israeli army Home Front Command Major General Yair Golan said Sunday that Tel Aviv is preparing for "all possible scenarios", indicating that one such scenario would be to fight a simultaneous war against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. [letheomaniac] I am the veteran of a thousand+ hours of strategy gaming and consider myself a fairly good (cyber) general. If those games have taught me one thing, it's that you never fight a war on more than one front if you can avoid it. And seeing as neither Iran, nor Libya, nor Lebanon has declared war on Israel, I would say that this scenario is very, very avoidable.
The confirmation comes as US President Barack Obama seeks "new beginnings" with its arch-rival Iran. The US offer has been met with world praise but with fury in Tel Aviv.
Israeli media outlets late on Sunday began propagating wild scenarios that Iran is using the Lebanese Hezbollah to recruit Palestinian fighters to carry out terror attacks on Israel. [letheomaniac]What a contorted conspiracy theory! Positively Python-esque in its ridiculousness!
Citing anonymous sources, the reports began to surface after Tel Aviv countered an alleged bombing attempt outside a shopping mall in the northern city of Haifa.
"We are treating the attempted attack in Haifa with great gravity. A huge disaster was prevented by a miracle," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting after the bomb was defused on Sunday.
Israel has long accused Iran of arming Hezbollah and Palestinian groups via Syria, in an attempt to demonize the two Muslim countries.
Tel Aviv also accuses Tehran of developing nuclear weaponry -- a charge denied by the UN nuclear watchdog.
At a conference held in Tel Aviv, Golan also confirmed the likeliness of Israel staging another military confrontation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Although Israel does not consider rocket attacks from Gaza as a serious threat, there is the possibility of "dangerous" missile attacks by other countries, he said.
He failed to elaborate how such missile attacks would relate to Gaza.
His remarks came as reports claim that the soon-to-be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has plans for "a major military conflict in the coming months."
The commander also revealed that Tel Aviv will install new warning systems across Israel in preparation for its war plans.
The last Israeli-waged war on the Gaza Strip, which began on December 27, killed at least 1,350 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,450 others in the densely-populated sliver.
The aggression was the last in a series of operations carried out by the Israeli forces against the natives of the land since occupying Palestine in 1948.
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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 #94 on: 2009-04-04 18:36:29 » |
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UN: ex-prosecutor to lead Israel-Gaza probe
UN appoints ex-tribunal prosecutor to lead probe into alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza
Source: AP News
Authors: Bradley S. Klapper
Dated: 2009-04-03
The United Nations on Friday appointed a widely respected South African judge who is a trustee of Hebrew University to lead a high-level mission to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Israel refused to say if it would cooperate.
Richard Goldstone, the former U.N. chief prosecutor for war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, was named to head the investigation ordered by the Human Rights Council in January.
According to the mandate, the investigation should focus on Palestinian victims of the three-week war between Israel and Hamas earlier this year.
But Goldstone, a Jewish former judge of the South African constitutional court, said his team would investigate "all violations of international humanitarian law" before, during and after the conflict that ended Jan. 18.
"It's in the interest of the victims. It brings acknowledgment of what happened to them. It can assist the healing process," he told reporters in Geneva. "I would hope it's in the interests of all the political actors, too."
Martin Uhomoibhi, the council president, explained the apparent contradiction by saying the mission always intended to evaluate the proportionality of Israel's response, which requires that acts of both warring parties be examined.
Israel has rejected any participation in previous council investigations, including one led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, calling them biased.
It would not say Friday if it would cooperate with the delegation, which also includes British professor of international law Christine Chinkin, Pakistani lawyer Hina Jilani and retired Irish Army Col. Desmond Travers.
"This committee is instructed not to seek out the truth but to single out Israel for alleged crimes," said Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He called the 47-nation body "discredited" and said it has no "practically credibility at all."
Goldstone said he was "shocked, as a Jew," to be invited to head the mission.
"It adds an additional dimension," said Gladstone, who is on the board of governors at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "I've taken a deep interest in what happens in Israel. I'm associated with organizations that have worked in Israel. And I believe I can approach the daunting task that I have accepted in an evenhanded and impartial manner."
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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 #95 on: 2009-04-08 17:53:10 » |
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US congressmen visit aid projects, ruins in Gaza
US congressman: Conditions in Gaza are a 'legitimate humanitarian crisis.'
Source: AP News
Authors: Ben Hubbard
Dated: 2009-04-07
Two U.S. congressmen made a rare visit to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, meeting with aid workers and touring scenes of destruction left by Israel's military offensive.
Reps. Bob Inglis and Stephen F. Lynch pointedly avoided contact with the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza and which the United States, European Union and Israel consider a terrorist organization.
Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the world must find a way to address a "legitimate humanitarian crisis" in Gaza.
"We need to act with some urgency here. There is a humanitarian crisis going on and we can't dawdle," Lynch told the Associated Press.
Israel launched the three-week offensive in December with the aim of ending rocket fire on southern Israel by Hamas militants. Palestinian human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed, including more than 900 civilians. Thousands of buildings and much of Gaza's infrastructure were destroyed or damaged.
Israel says the death toll was lower, and most of those killed were Hamas militants.
Lynch said he and Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina, visited a project run by Catholic Relief Services in a heavily damaged neighborhood and a tent camp where displaced Gazans have been living since the war ended on Jan. 18. They also visited the grounds of the American International School of Gaza, a U.S.-style school the Israeli army flattened during the offensive, saying militants launched rockets from its grounds.
Lynch said the destruction in Gaza was worse than he expected.
Since Hamas violently seized the territory from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007, Israel and Egypt have maintained tight border control. Restrictions on cement and other building materials — which Israel says could benefit Hamas — have greatly hampered the reconstruction effort.
"It is problematic having the checkpoints closed," Lynch said.
He said aid could be brought into Gaza through the U.N. and other organizations, and that safeguards could be put in place to make sure resources were used properly. But the U.S. will not work with Hamas until it changed its policy toward Israel and rejected violence, he said.
Tuesday's visit followed a similar tour earlier this year by Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and two Democratic congressmen, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Brian Baird of Washington.
Land of Ruins: A Special Report on Gaza’s Economy
Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat files a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip. [includes rush transcript]
Source: Democracy Now!
Watch the Video (59 mins)
Credits: Land of Ruins, report by Anjali Kamat and Jacquie Soohen. Special thanks to Hany Massoud.
Dated: 2009-04-06
AMY GOODMAN: We turn, though, now to, well, an international story, a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this truck, which Israel permitted in late March, was the first carrying construction materials to be granted entry since last November.
Democracy Now!’s Anjali Kamat traveled to Gaza with Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films last month. She filed this story.
ANJALI KAMAT: Gaza is now a land of ruins. On December 27th, 2008, Israel launched a brutal twenty-two-day military operation in the Gaza Strip that killed over 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians. In addition to government and United Nations buildings, it is estimated that 21,000 homes were destroyed in all, leaving 100,000 people homeless. Over 600 industries and small businesses in Gaza were razed to the ground, sustaining $180 million in damages, according to the United Nations Development Program.
The industrial zone in Ezbat Abed Rabbo in northern Gaza once housed about sixty workshops and industries. Now it’s just a pile of rubble and twisted metal. Abu Omar established the Haddad tile factory and warehouse here just five years ago. During Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, he closed the factory and moved his family to the relative safety of Gaza City.
ABU OMAR: [translated] When we returned after the war, this is what we found. When we first came back, we couldn’t even recognize our neighborhood. It was like an earthquake, magnitude 10.0, not just 6.0. This is what we found. If there was any resistance, it must have been from here all the way to the Wafa hospital a mile and a half away. They didn’t spare a single house or factory or anything between here and the hospital. I consider this the result of an official decision by the Israeli government to destroy the entire area. We’ve incurred losses of $2,200,000.
ANJALI KAMAT: Salem Darraj used to work at a cement factory in the same area. Now, he too has joined the burgeoning ranks of the Palestinian unemployed, which some economists estimate has now risen to a staggering 70 percent in the Gaza Strip.
SALEM DARRAJ: [translated] There’s nothing going on here, as you can see. Everything is closed, the cars are stopped, the workers are unemployed, and everything is destroyed. As you can see, we are here guarding the businesses of the people we work for. We can’t just leave everything lying around in the open, but, at the same time, we can’t ask for our salaries.
ANJALI KAMAT: A quarter of Gaza’s population depended on agriculture for survival. Now, nearly half of the Strip’s agricultural land, infrastructure, and livestock and poultry farms are ravaged. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates $268 million of losses to Gaza’s agriculture sector. Almost all of the 13,000 families reliant on farming, fishing and herding have been directly impacted.
We visited one such family in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, where twenty-nine members of the Sammouni family were killed. Thirty-eight-year-old Naheela Sammouni and her husband were farmers. He was injured and buried alive in the Israeli attack, finally rescued from a pile of rubble and corpses four days after being given up for dead. He’s too weak to work, and his once lush farmland is now a devastated landscape.
NAHEELA SAMMOUNI: [translated] All of this is farmland. We used to grow chard, lettuce, turnips, radish, all from here. We’d sell it in the market and get some money to feed our children. Now our land is spoiled. Everything is destroyed. What can we do? We used to have sweet, tart pomegranates behind our home, so many plums, apricots, all right behind our house. Now, the olives, figs, everything is gone. We tended to our plants like our own children, so they would grow and we could eat from them. Now see what they did to us. What did we do wrong?
ANJALI KAMAT: Hamed Sammouni says the people of Zaitoun are simply too traumatized to go back to work.
HAMED SAMMOUNI: [translated] There’s absolutely no work. And even if there were jobs, people wouldn’t be able to work. People here are haunted by what happened and don’t have the mental capacity to work. After what they saw, they can’t work. Twenty-nine members of a single family gone. What’s left? What’s left?
Small children like these, what’s their fault? Do they have rockets? What do they know of resistance? An infant still breastfeeding from its mother, is he part of the resistance too? I mean, they even bombed chicken farms, too. How can chickens be in the resistance?
ANJALI KAMAT: John Ging, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, holds out little hope for reconstruction under these conditions.
JOHN GING: There’s going to be no reconstruction in Gaza until the crossing points open. There isn’t a bag of cement coming into Gaza at the moment. We have had to, you know, reopen our schools without conducting the repairs, because there is nothing—there’s no glass to fix the windows or do the basic repairs that are needed. We just have to make safe the area that is damaged and get on.
ANJALI KAMAT: But the economic devastation of Gaza did not begin with this latest assault that Israel dubbed “Operation Cast Lead.” Since 1967, Israel has maintained full control over Gaza’s borders. The restrictions grew tighter after Hamas won the elections in January 2006, and the blockade became a full-scale siege in June of 2007, when Hamas forces defeated those of rival Fatah, solidifying its control of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian economist Omar Shabaan laid out the economic and political consequences of the siege, now in its twenty-second month.
OMAR SHABAAN: Since the closure in 2007, 95 percent of the Palestinian factories in Gaza closed down. We have 4,000 small businesses in Gaza. Two hundred thousand workers become unemployed in Gaza. And to make it clear to you, this 200,000 have no other option except joining the militia. They will become more radical. The siege, which was imposed by Israel, everybody knows now, it failed to bring any peace and moderation to the Palestinian society. This siege left Hamas with no competitors. Hamas is the only player in Gaza. So the international community should stop to blame us, and they should start to blame themselves for their own policy that they were imposing in Gaza.
JOHN GING: So, the siege is at the center of everything. It’s at the center of human misery. It’s at the center of violence. It’s at the center of desperation and a sense—a growing sense of hopelessness. So, you know, before this particular round of conflict, we had a situation where the economy had been destroyed under the siege; there was no commercial activity whatsoever. And the humanitarian effort just to sustain people with basic food and medicine and so on, this was a struggle. In fact, in November of last year, we ran out of food, because we weren’t able to get in sufficient quantities of food. For the first time in sixty years of UNRWA’s operation here, we actually ran out of food. We normally carry two months’ reserves, but we depleted all of our reserves, because we were getting in insufficient quantities to actually meet the demands. At that point, there were 750,000 refugees food-aid-dependent. Again, this is the inevitable consequences of having no economy. [ Hermit : And of course Israel knew all of this before they imposed the siege, carefully isolating the Palesinians in their concentration camps, "to provide safety for Israelis", where Palestinians could do very limited harm to Israel, knowing that the Palestinians would respond violently, and no matter how ineffective this violence was, that it would allow all Palestinians to be painted as terrorists. ]
ANJALI KAMAT: Today, over 1.1 million people in Gaza are dependent on international donations and agencies like UNRWA, UNICEF and the World Food Program. With all legal exit and entry points sealed by Israel and Egypt, the 1.4 million Palestinians squeezed into Gaza’s 140 square miles of land have been forced to turn underground for survival.
OMAR SHABAAN: The Israelis closed the whole border, so the Palestinian has no other option except to dig tunnels to Egypt to bring commodities and to bring some services.
ANJALI KAMAT: We decided to take a look at Gaza’s underground economy for ourselves and headed south to Rafah, where the air is thick with the buzz of US-made F-16s overhead. The tunnels lie below a very visible network of tents stretched along the border with Egypt. We lowered ourselves a hundred feet into a tunnel, which was still under construction. We spoke to the man running the motorized system bringing excess sand to the surface. He wouldn’t give us his name but told us why he risked his life working in the tunnels.
TUNNEL WORKER: [translated] This work is very difficult. But we have no choice. We have to work in order to eat. If the crossings were open and the goods and cement were coming in, there’s no way I would be doing this. If we work, we eat; if not, we go hungry. This is our only means, our only livelihood. As long as the crossings are closed, there’s no alternative to the tunnels.
ANJALI KAMAT: Before January, there were nearly a thousand tunnels along the border; now only 400 are operational. The tunnels have been the targets of deadly, almost daily air strikes by Israel, which accuses Hamas of using them to smuggle in weapons.
While the man we spoke with denied the tunnels are used to bring in weapons, there’s no denying that the tunnels serve as Gaza’s only conduit to the outside world. They bring in everything required to maintain a semblance of normal life—everything that Israel does not allow in through the crossings.
The downside is that the prices are near unaffordable for a majority of Palestinians. Daoud Al-Banna owns a grocery store in Rafah.
DAOUD AL-BANNA: [translated] The stores are full of goods from the tunnels, but at very high prices. Everything coming from the tunnels is very expensive. It’s all because of the siege, of course. If there was no siege, the prices would be normal. Prices used to be low, everything would be plentiful, and the goods would move off the shelves. Now, it’s the opposite. This used to be four shekels, now it’s nine shekels.
ANJALI KAMAT: Abu Omar from the Haddad tile factory said that cement in Gaza costs a fortune because it comes through the tunnels.
ABU OMAR: [translated] A bag of cement is about $4 everywhere in the world. We pay about $50, because cement in Gaza comes through the tunnels. We pay about $30 just for entry. Now the whole world wants to raise funds for Gaza, but can the world tell Israel to open the borders and let the goods come in for the people?
ANJALI KAMAT: A vendor at a wholesale market selling goods straight from the tunnels blamed the high prices on the continuing air strikes.
VENDOR: [translated] Now very few of the tunnels are functional, because the Israelis bomb the tunnels every day. Very few workers want to work there now. They’re scared. Also the Egyptians are cracking down on the tunnels bringing goods. Very few people come here to buy things, because everything is expensive, they aren’t getting salaries, and they just don’t have money to buy the goods.
ANJALI KAMAT: While the tunnels are the only lifeline into Gaza, they also leave Gazans vulnerable to Israeli air strikes. Umm Mohammad’s house is one of the few buildings left standing on the border with Egypt. Armored Caterpillar bulldozers demolished most of the other homes over five years ago, between 2000 and 2004. Tunnels now surround Umm Mohammad, and an air strike in early January damaged half her home.
UMM MOHAMMAD: [translated] There’s been no truce. There’s bombing every day. Just this morning, they bombed this tunnel. Yesterday here. Day before yesterday there. Every day, it’s a new place. Every day, there’s an attack. We’ve had to run out onto the streets each time they attack, once at 1:00 in the morning, once at noon, once in the middle of the afternoon. Every day, day after day.
ANJALI KAMAT: She pointed out another tunnel beside her house that she feared would be the next target.
UMM MOHAMMAD: [translated] There’s pros and cons to the tunnels. On the negative side, the tunnels put us in harm’s way. But we also benefit from them, because the crossings are closed. There’s no food or reconstruction or jobs. What are we supposed to do? The young men turn to this so they can get married, live, have children and eat.
ANJALI KAMAT: I asked her how prices had changed.
UMM MOHAMMAD: [translated] It is very expensive. Chicken is twenty-three shekels. Turkey is twenty-five. Meat is sixty. What do we do?
ANJALI KAMAT: A tunnel supervisor, who didn’t want his face on camera, said prices had to be high to keep the tunnels functioning.
TUNNEL SUPERVISOR: [translated] Everything is expensive. We have to pay rent to the tunnel owner, and there are a lot of expenses to keep the system working. It has to be expensive. There’s no official way into Gaza for items to be sold at regularized prices.
ANJALI KAMAT: Indeed the tunnels are now big business and constitute one of the only avenues for profitable investment.
OMAR SHABAAN: Since the closure, which was imposed on Gaza in June 2007, 90 percent of the products, what are available in Gaza market, were coming through the tunnels, and estimated the turnover of the tunnels around $30 to $40 million a month.
ANJALI KAMAT: But Omar Shabaan is critical of the kind of economy generated by the tunnels.
OMAR SHABAAN: We are very angry to be seen by the international community as tunnel diggers. We are a nation looking for peace, for a state, not to dig tunnels. We were obliged to dig tunnels to take food for our children. We, most of the Palestinians, are against that, because the tunnel has caused a huge trouble to our economy and to social fabrics. Some people become rich in two weeks. Some kids make $1, $2 million in three weeks. So the whole economy has become informal economy. Usually black economy, ten percent; the 90 percent is the legal one, registered, formal, pay taxes. But we have now 90 percent of our economy is the black market. We don’t know who’s bringing what and on what basis, what’s the criteria. The main thing here about this tunnel, this tunnel will create a group of people who will be against any peace, because peace means the end of the tunnel phenomenon. So the Israeli policy created some people in Gaza who are against the peace, against the truce.
ANJALI KAMAT: We asked the tunnel supervisor how his work is affected by the unity talks between Hamas and Fatah and international efforts for a peace process.
TUNNEL SUPERVISOR: [translated] If there’s an agreement or a solution or the crossings are opened, then all of this will have to close down, of course. None of this will remain as you see it now. But perhaps the smuggling—smuggling will never end in the world. Regardless of how much they try, it will not stop. There’s always something to smuggle.
ANJALI KAMAT: Putting a stop to cross-border smuggling into Gaza has become a key concern of the United States and other Western nations. Last month, the Obama administration pledged $900 million to rebuild Gaza on the condition that the Palestinian leadership renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Meanwhile, the US has promised Israel $30 billion in aid over the next decade, 75 percent of which Israel must use to buy American military goods and services. Omar Shabaan remains skeptical about the impact of aid pledged to Palestinians.
OMAR SHABAAN: Mrs. Hillary Clinton knows exactly that the $900 million that the American government will help to the extent Gaza and the West Bank, it wouldn’t do any positive consequences unless the siege on Gaza is lifted. The siege on Gaza will not be lifted as long as Hamas is ruling Gaza. Hamas will not be—will continue to rule Gaza unless the Palestinian divide is coming to its end. The $5 billion pledges of the international community to help in Gaza cannot start, cannot flow into Gaza, because Hamas is here. The international community will not deal with Hamas directly. The international community will deal with PA in Ramallah. PA in Ramallah has no physical presence in Gaza. The international community knows exactly this problem. So they have to work harder to bring the Palestinians together, to pressure Israel to leave, to stop the siege, and to let the Palestinian economy operate.
ANJALI KAMAT: Some would argue, however, that the Palestinian economy hasn’t been allowed to operate for several years now. Israeli journalist Amira Hass says we have to go back to the 1990s, the decade of the Oslo peace process.
AMIRA HASS: Israel started its policy of closure in ’91, but it became more and more draconian and brutal when the PA, when the Palestinian Authority, was established in ’94. It went alongside it. And the main Israeli aim in that policy of closure was to separate Gaza from the West Bank, to disconnect the two.
This implied that less Palestinians could find work in Israel or could have worked in Israel. It, of course, affected their job opportunities here in Gaza. And it turned an entire people into beggars. We’re talking about one million and a half, excluding some bureaucrats and some politruks. They are more dependent than ever on outside sources than on themselves. And this is how I see the devastation of Gaza. It’s not the food that gets here. It’s not the—it’s their ability to decide about their life, even in—I mean, we don’t live in a world where people can really decide about their lives, but there are degrees. And they are now on the bottom of this ladder of how much you can decide about your life, you can improve your life, you can develop, you can offer your children a better life than your own life.
ANJALI KAMAT: While the people of Gaza try to rebuild their shattered lives, their primary demands are for the borders to be opened and guarantees that Israel will not destroy their homes and factories and farms once again. And many, like Abu Omar, the owner of the tile factory, don’t want monetary or humanitarian aid from the international community, but solidarity in their struggle for justice and accountability.
ABU OMAR: [translated] We don’t want to beg the world for money. We just want to take those who destroyed our houses to court. If we are really criminals and our houses are terrorist houses, then OK, this is what you get. But if our houses are innocent and our factories are innocent, then the Israelis need to account for what they destroyed. They are the ones who should give us the reparations. Why do we need to rely on the sympathy of the world? We don’t want that. We want the world to stand by our rights. We don’t want their charity, little bits of money and food. We’re full, thank God. We are just asking for our rights, nothing else.
ANJALI KAMAT: For Democracy Now!, this is Anjali Kamat with Jacquie Soohen, and special thanks to Hany Massoud.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #96 on: 2009-04-19 02:23:56 » |
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Three months after conflict, UN official warns of dire humanitarian situation
Source: United Nations News Service
Authors: Uncredited
Dated: 2009-04-18
Although the devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip against Hamas came to an end three months ago, life for Gazans remains extremely difficult, the United Nations humanitarian chief has stressed.
The three-week offensive Israel launched late last December, with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks by Hamas and other groups, killed at least 1,300 Palestinians and injured some 5,000 others. The heavy bombardment and fighting also reduced homes, schools, hospitals and marketplaces to rubble.
"For the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip to improve, lifesaving assistance must be decoupled from the security and political agendas," said John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.
"If the Israeli-Palestinian peace that has been sought for over 60 years, and more recently inter-Palestinian reconciliation, remain preconditions for improving living conditions, the Gaza Strip risks being dependent on handouts for years to come," he warned, appealing for the reopening of all land borders to allow urgently-needed humanitarian and reconstruction supplies into Gaza.
Last month in Egypt, over $5 billion was pledged for reconstruction efforts in Gaza, "possibly the most significant show of donor support for Gaza in the history of the occupied Palestinian territory," Mr. Holmes, who also serves as UN Relief Coordinator, said.
However, "for once, money is not the main problem," he noted, adding that the funds are not "hitting [the] mark" with three-quarters of Gazans requiring some form of aid.
The sweeping Israeli ban on the import of construction materials, spare parts for public infrastructure and the industrial sector in Gaza, along with restrictions on the entry of cash, has prevented work to start on almost all of the planned early recovery projects, according to last month's report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on the situation in Gaza.
In addition, a ban on exports, apart from a few truckloads of flowers, has exacerbated the situation by crushing Gaza's job-creation industries, said Mr. Holmes. "The ruin of hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods appears to be seen by Israel as the collective price that Gaza's civilians must pay for the acts of a few among them."
Over 20 per cent of the population able and willing to work is unemployed and nearly half live below the poverty line, according to the latest survey of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics cited in the OCHA report.
It also indicated that the continued blockade on the livelihoods of Gazans – especially farmers, herders and fishermen – has been exacerbated by Israeli restrictions on access to farmland along the border and to fishing areas beyond three nautical miles from the shore.
This grim humanitarian situation was compounded for chronically ill patients as access to specialized medical treatment outside Gaza was dramatically tightened after Hamas took over the Referral Abroad Department (RAD) in late March. Subsequently, the Palestinian Authority-controlled Ministry of Health has not approved or funded applications for treatment outside of Gaza, and without its consent neither Israel nor Egypt will allow patients to exit the Strip.
"While Israel has primary responsibility for this terrible crisis of human dignity in Gaza," Mr. Holmes stressed that "Hamas must also should its part of the blame because of the indiscriminate and pointless rocket attacks it committed from Gaza for so long," as well as for its three-year silence over the fate of Israeli captive Gilad Shalit.
The Israeli offensive may have ended in late January with unilateral ceasefires by both sides, but violent clashes – some resulting in deaths – occurring almost daily, according to OCHA.
"In Gaza today, humanity has taken a back seat to politics, and a measly trickle of items has become the most the world can offer civilians trapped by a political stalemate not of their making," the Under-Secretary-General said.
"Protection, food, water, healthcare and shelter are basic human needs, not bargaining chips," he underscored. "It is high time that fact is recognized by all the parties responsible for the immense suffering in Gaza today."
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #97 on: 2009-04-24 03:54:50 » |
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Gaza, remember?
Source: Ha'Aretz
Authors: Gideon Levy
Dated: 2009-04-23
Tags: Gaza, Israel News, Cast Lead
Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent's empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for three months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense Forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun's mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon.
Abu-Aun, 53, was wounded while trying to flee when his home in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia was bombed. He has been on crutches ever since. His wife gave birth during the height of the war, and now the baby is with them in the cold tent. The tent was sent flying during the storm that devoured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, so the family had to put it back up. They receive water only occasionally in a container, and a tiny tin shack serves as a bathroom for the 100 families in this new refugee camp, 'Camp Gaza,' in Beit Lahia's Al-Atatra neighborhood.
Abu-Aun sounded particularly bitter this past weekend; the Red Cross refused his family a bigger tent. He has also had enough of eating beans.
For three months, the Abu-Aun family and thousands of others have been living in five tent encampments built after the war. They have not begun clearing away the ruins of their homes, let alone build new ones. Thousands live in the shadow of the ruins of their homes, thousands in tents, thousands crowded together with their relatives, tens of thousands who are newly homeless and whom the world has lost interest in. After the conference of donor countries, which convened to great fanfare in Sharm el-Sheikh a month and a half ago, which included 75 countries and agreed to transfer $1 billion to rebuild Gaza, nothing happened.
Gaza is besieged. There are no building materials. Israel and the world are setting conditions, the Palestinians are incapable of forming a unity government, as is needed, the money and concrete are nowhere to be seen and the Abu-Aun family continues to live in a tent. Even the $900 million promised by the United States is stuck in the cash register. It's doubtful whether it will ever be taken out. America's word.
It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.
Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?
From the ruins of the Abu-Aun family sprouts a new desperation. It will be more bitter than its predecessor. A decent family of eight has been destroyed, physically and psychologically, and the world stands aloof. We should not expect Israel to compensate its victims or rebuild the ruins it caused, even though this would clearly be in its interest, not to mention its moral obligation, a topic not even talked about.
The world once again has to clean up Israel's mess. But Israel is setting more and more political conditions for providing emergency humanitarian aid ? empty excuses to leave Gaza in ruins and not offer aid that Gaza deserves and desperately needs. Gaza has once again been left to its own devices, the Abu-Aun family has been left in its tent, and when the hostilities resume we will be told once again about the cruelty and brutality of ... the Palestinians.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #98 on: 2009-04-28 02:42:08 » |
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No rejoicing for Israeli Arabs on Independence Day
Source: Reuters
Authors: Joseph Nasr
Dated: 2009-04-27
Dateline: UMM EL-FAHM, Israel
When Israel marks its 61st anniversary this week, most of the Arab citizens who make up 20 percent of the population will not celebrate.
To many in the Arab minority, the birth of a state that describes itself as a Jewish homeland is no cause for rejoicing.
"Of course I will not celebrate (Independence Day). Why would I when I feel discriminated against? I don't feel Israeli," said Mahmoud Agbaria, 23, a student from Umm el-Fahm.
Israeli leaders have acknowledged institutionalised discrimination against Israel's 1.5 million Arab citizens. Arabs say little has been done. [ Hermit : Or as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to Apartheid Israel - a bigoted racist state. ]
"There is no doubt that the government has failed with regard to Israeli Arabs," said Mohammad Darawshe of the Abraham Fund, a group advocating co-existence between Arabs and Jews.
"As long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unsolved, problems between Jews and Arabs in Israel will persist," said Darawshe, who takes pride in instigating mandatory spoken Arabic and Arab culture studies in 39 Jewish elementary schools.
Israeli Jews mark Israel's creation 61 years ago with official ceremonies, military aerial shows, parties and barbecues on Wednesday. Streets are adorned with blue and white Israeli flags emblazoned with the Star of David.
But there will be no festivities in the town of Umm el-Fahm, where Arab residents clashed with Jewish ultranationalists who last month tried to march into the city to assert Jewish dominance.
Violence between Arabs and Jews in the mixed town of Acre last year on the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, and an Israeli offensive that killed hundreds in the Gaza Strip in January further fuelled tensions.
In Umm el-Fahm, on the border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Israeli flags can be seen only outside the police station and atop the Arab town's only government building.
Veiled women walk past the imposing golden dome of the Abu Ouwaida mosque on a narrow, winding road dotted with green and white flags of the Islamic Movement in Israel, whose leader, Raed Salah, was indicted last year for inciting violence.
"NO LOYALTY, NO CITIZENSHIP"
The appointment by Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister has raised Arab concerns.
Lieberman's far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party accuses Israeli Arab lawmakers of seeking Israel's destruction and voicing support for attacks by Palestinian militants against Israelis.
"No loyalty, no citizenship," was Yisrael Beiteinu's campaign slogan in the February parliamentary election. It emerged as the third largest party and key coalition partner in Netanyahu's right-leaning government.
Lieberman's deputy Daniel Ayalon said the party would push for laws requiring Israeli statesmen and legislators to pledge allegiance to the Jewish state as a condition for taking office.
"We are for free speech, but we cannot have a situation where public servants get paid by the state and attack the state," Ayalon said.
During the 22-day Gaza offensive, which Israel launched with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket attacks, Israeli Arabs held protests in several towns, waving Palestinian flags in solidarity with brethren in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi said during the war that every vote for the then-ruling Kadima party was a bullet in the chest of a Palestinian child.
Israel's Central Elections Committee voted during the offensive to disqualify two Arab parties, including Tibi's Raam-Taal, from running in the election after hearing arguments that they identified with the Jewish state's enemies.
That decision was overruled by Israel's High Court.
PARTING COMPANY
Lieberman has proposed trading areas in Israel, including Umm el-Fahm, where the majority of Arab citizens live, for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
An election poster in Arabic for the communist Hadash party encapsulated what Umm el-Fahm residents thought of Lieberman's plan: "We shall stay here, in spite of them."
Four Hadash candidates -- three Arabs and a Jew -- won seats in parliament in the February ballot. Lieberman's proposal is also disputed by Zionist parties. Parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin of Netanyahu's rightist Likud party said during a visit to Umm el-Fahm last week that the Arab town would remain an "inseparable" part of Israel.
Israeli far-right parties suspicious of the loyalties of Arab citizens also point to the annual marches organised by Israeli Arab lawmakers to mark the 1948 Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe, when some 700,000 Arabs fled or were forced from their homes during the war over Israel's creation. [ Hermit : Nice elision here. The fact that all of the Palestine was held by the British as "a sacred trust" for the Palestinians, that Israel illegally occupied Palestinian areas, murdering and terrorising nearly a million into taking flight as refugees whom the USA insisted had a right to return when the high commissioner for refugees was established has been forgotten, or at least is not mentioned, leaving it seem as if these ungrateful Arabs are as bad as uppity Southern "niggers" who seemed to resent their slave masters or the South African "kaffirs" who resented the state that generously provided them with the ability to develop separately. ]
Lieberman's party wants to introduce a law that would grant government benefits, such as discounted education and housing assistance, to Israelis who served in the army. That would exclude Muslim and Christian Arabs, exempt from army service. [ Hermit : Further entrenching the apartheid which means that "In 1997 28.3% of Arab families were living under the poverty line, while only 16% of Jewish families were. In 1996, average income per capita for Arab household was 44.1% of the average per capita." http://www.mediterraneas.org/article.php3?id_article=148. The situation is far worse today, with unemployment amongst Palestinian Israelis being at an all time high. ]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #99 on: 2009-04-28 14:51:00 » |
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No more make-believe in the Middle East
Bibi's policies may be misguided, but at least he doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker. Such intellectual honesty could prove salutary.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Authors: Norman H. Olsen
Dated: 2009-04-28
Norman H. Olsen is a former senior United States Foreign Service officer. He served at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1991 to 1995, and from 2002 to 2007, including four years as chief of the political section.
Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
This pattern of pretending holds true for promises to ease travel for Palestinians within the West Bank. At the time of the Nov. 15, 2005, Agreement on Movement and Access, which was pressed on the Israelis and Palestinians by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, there were some 320 roadblocks. At the time, some US embassy staff openly termed the agreement toothless. Secretary Rice and her team termed it a historic achievement. Today, there are 632 roadblocks.
Ditto for the growth in Israeli-settler-only road systems in the West Bank, the thousands of Palestinians held prisoner for years without charge in Israeli "administrative detention," and the continuing blockage of Palestinian commercial traffic into and out of the Occupied Territories.
Ditto, too, for the talk in the late 1990s – by Bibi no less! – about weaning Israel from the billions in US aid it gets each year. The Israelis assured progress and the US pretended to believe them. For cash-strapped American taxpayers, the 10-year agreement signed in 2007 for $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, plus another billion or so a year in assorted other US-funded programs, amounts to a lot of pretending.
Palestinians, unlike Americans, are under no illusion about change under a Netanyahu government; hence the lack of public outcry over the Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman alliance. Despite the regular meetings that the US insisted take place since 2002 between Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Abbas never won a single substantive, realized concession. Israel and the US pretended that meetings equaled progress, but, each time, Abbas returned to Ramallah weakened, the object of increasing scorn not only from Hamas, but from his own Fatah supporters.
From the field, the relationship was always reminiscent of the scene from the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," where a man and his mistress, caught in flagrante by the wife, simply deny, deny, deny until they have calmly dressed and the mistress has departed, leaving the wife wondering whether to believe her eyes.
Once he became prime minister in the 1990s, even firebrand Netanyahu played the "we pretend, you pretend" game, signing on to the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which, among other things, provided billions in US funding for Israel's redeployment out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, though, Netanyahu appears to have ended the charade, although perhaps only until political expediency warrants another metamorphosis. His policies may be misguided, but his intellectual honesty may prove salutary. The Israeli right and its American supporters have a hard time claiming Israeli moderation and reasonableness when Netanyahu and his ministers openly oppose a two-state arrangement; affirm the blockade of Gaza, preventing reconstruction there; tout settlement expansion; brag of undermining US efforts to talk with Iran; and threaten an attack on Iran – across US-controlled Iraqi airspace – that could jeopardize US troops and interests throughout the region.
In lifting the veil on Israeli policy and the criticism-stifling fiction of US-Israeli mutual interest, Netanyahu leaves the US open, finally, to voice and pursue its own positions and interests.
Finally, Washington can say, clearly and forcefully, that Israel's occupation harms US interests; that an attack on Iran is unacceptable and will get no US support, even in the UN Security Council; that settlement construction must stop and barriers be removed; that meetings are no substitute for progress; that Palestinians must be granted the opportunity – a real one – to form a viable state; and that the time has come for one of the world's wealthiest countries to be weaned off American largess.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #100 on: 2009-04-29 02:35:30 » |
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World Bank finds Israel’s water policy hard to swallow
Source: The National
Authors: Stephen Glain
Dated: 2009-04-28
As a former, and by many accounts successful, finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu presumably knows his way around economics. So when the Israeli prime minister says he will work to provide the Palestinians with economic, if not political, independence, might that not suggest his hard-line government understands that a prosperous Palestine would be an important first step towards a more stable Middle East?
Not according to the World Bank, which last week issued the latest in a series of reports about how the Israeli government is systematically pre-empting the evolution of a viable Palestinian economy. The 154-page “Assessment of Restrictions on Palestinian Water Sector Development” is written with a blandness suited to the banality of this particular Israeli outrage. The report offers a detailed look at how Israel deprives the West Bank and Gaza of the most basic commodity for human survival, a deficit that consumes a growing share of Palestinian GDP.
The report is another indictment, as if one were needed, of the now-defunct Oslo Accords. Just as Oslo lacked adequate mechanisms to enforce Israeli pledges to sharply reduce its occupation of Palestinian land, so too has Israel been allowed to abrogate its commitment to revise interim agreements relating to water systems in the Arab territories it controls.
Instead, according to the World Bank report, Israel has aggrandised a growing share of available water supplies while intensifying Palestinian reliance on Mekorot, the Jewish state’s national water carrier. The report states that Israel, without the approval of the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee (JWC) – a legacy of the Oslo process – draws more than 50 per cent from the aquifers that support both the West Bank and Israel beyond what it is authorised under the accords. Needless to say, Palestinian protests of such violations are routinely ignored, according to the report.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as much about resources as it is about land. It is no coincidence, for example, that West Bank settlements are located on top or near groundwater wells, a strategy that dates back to the earliest days of the settler movement. But the situation has worsened over the past decade, when Israel began restricting mobility in the West Bank and Gaza following its “withdrawal” from certain Palestinian areas under the terms of Oslo. Palestinians must now pay an estimated 8 per cent of their household budgets for adequate water supplies, about double the globally accepted standard. That is beyond the capacity of many Palestinian families, and revenues have fallen precipitously in the parts of the West Bank under Palestinian administration.
Rural villagers who are unconnected to the water grid must allocate up to 20 per cent of their household income for tanker-born drinkable water, an increasingly expensive enterprise due to the proliferation of Israel-controlled checkpoints, the massive, serpentine security wall and other barriers to mobility throughout the West Bank. The World Bank estimates the added expense of transporting water by tanker amounts to about 1 per cent of the Palestinian GDP. In Gaza, water availability has reached “crisis levels”, while utility revenues have collapsed and tax collections rates are down 20 per cent.
Water quality is deteriorating and there is growing evidence of rising water-related diseases. The public health costs of waterborne illness for children below the age of five alone is 0.4 per cent of GDP, the report estimates. The environmental impact, meanwhile, is devastating. Sanitation and sewage systems have been badly neglected due to unstable security conditions and Israeli restrictions on movement. Sewage is returned untreated into lagoons, wadis and the sea or seeps into the soil where it ultimately contaminates aquifers. In rural areas, septic tanks are not properly emptied, while Israel’s settler population routinely dumps raw sewage on to Palestinian soil.
Just as Israel controls the borders, roads, air and sea ports, airspace and export revenue on which the Palestinian economy vitally depends, so too does it control Palestinian water resources via Mekorot, an unhealthy reliance intensified by Israeli over-extraction of available supplies. Mekorot’s dominant role in water distribution, the report states, “makes [the West Bank and Gaza] vulnerable to Israeli decisions and interventions, and may increase commercial risks and costs”.
The report concludes with a raft of proposals that might ameliorate the crisis, all of which require Israeli co-operation and consent. It suggests, for example, the wholesale reform of the JWC, which is strongly biased in Israel’s favour due to its disproportionate levels of power and capacity. Only half of the US$121 million (Dh444.4m) worth of Palestinian-proposed projects have been approved since 2001, while all but one mooted by Israel have been granted. Israel, the report lays out, routinely decides unilaterally how regional water sources will or will not be developed.
An economy without access to clean water supplies is by definition unsustainable. Mr Netanyahu either fails to understand this or his commitment to Palestinian economic independence is nothing more than political palaver. Either way, Palestine’s man-made water crisis should be at the top of the agenda when the Israeli leader meets his US counterpart early next month.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #101 on: 2009-05-06 01:05:07 » |
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UN Inquiry Critical of Israeli Attacks in Gaza
Source: [url=]Inter Press Service[/url]
Authors: Thalif Deen
Dated: 2009-05-06
A detailed 184-page report critical of Israeli attacks on UN personnel and buildings during the Gaza conflict last December-January has been meticulously stripped down to a 27-page document – mostly due to political sensitivities and on security grounds.
Responding to charges he had released only a "watered-down" version of the report by a four-member UN Board of Inquiry (BoI), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon vehemently denied the accusation. [ Hermit : Denial doesn't mean refutation. ]
"I would like to categorically reject any impression, any word, called watered-down," he told reporters Tuesday. "I told you that this Board of Inquiry is independent. I respect the complete independence of this report."
"You may ask all our senior advisers who have been working on this. I do not have any authority to edit or change any wording on this conclusion and recommendations. You should have no doubt about that," he added.
The BoI, comprising Ian Martin, Larry Johnson, Sinha Basnayake, and Lt. Col. Patrick Eichenberger, was mandated to investigate the nine most serious incidents involving UN personnel and property during the sustained Israeli military attacks on Gaza during the conflict with the Islamic militant organization Hamas.
The Israelis repeatedly attacked UN compounds even after giving several personal assurances to the secretary-general that they would not single out the United Nations for any military strikes. These attacks resulted in deaths and injuries.
The destruction of UN property resulted in damages costing over $10.4 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and more than $700,000 to the Office of the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
Asked about compensation, Ban said he "intends" to seek reparations or reimbursement for loss and damage incurred by the United Nations.
"As you know, I have been carefully reviewing these recommendations with a view to determining what course of action the United Nations and I, as the secretary-general, should take in future, if any," he added.
But in a letter to the president of the Security Council, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin of Russia, Ban explicitly said: "I do not consider it necessary for me to initiate any further formal inquiry in this regard, which are outside the terms of reference of this Board."
Asked repeatedly about a follow up investigation, Ban said: "At this time I do not see it is necessary for me to establish any further inquiry on this issue. And whatever the cases there may be, where appropriate, I will take some action on a case-by-case basis on this."
Ban also said that the government of Israel has told him it has "significant reservations and objections" to certain elements in the summary of the BoI report.
Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International representative at the United Nations, told IPS: "We are very disappointed with the secretary-general’s reaction to what we have come to know [from the report]."
What the secretary-general seems to be telling the Board of Inquiry is, "Thank you very much. We are not going to conduct any further investigations," Terlingen added.
She said there should be a broader inquiry into the Israeli attacks by the 15-member Security Council.
An Arab diplomat told IPS he does not expect any investigation by the Security Council because three of the permanent members, namely the United States, Britain, and France, are "far too protective" of Israel.
"It’s a lost cause," he added, pointing out that "Israel knows that it can get away with murder."
He said the secretary-general will not pursue a broader inquiry because he is under pressure and beholden to the big powers in the Security Council.
The BoI says that in relation to some of the incidents caused by military actions by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), "the Board found that it could not accept that sufficient efforts and precautions were made to fulfill the responsibilities of the government of Israel to respect the inviolability and non-interference with UN premises and property or to fulfill its responsibilities to protect civilians and civilian objects on UN premises."
The Board concluded that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to UN premises and to the safety of UN staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property.
In the case of the UNRWA Jabalia School, the BoI concluded "that the precautions which the IDF may have taken as regards the UN premises were inadequate, while the responsibility of the parties with respect to the many civilians killed and injured outside the school, were to be assessed in accordance with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law, and requires further investigation."
At the time of the attacks, the IDF defended its actions by saying that its military strikes were a response to Hamas mortar fire within the school premises, and that Hamas militants were hiding in or had taken over the school.
The BoI report said it "found that these allegations were untrue, continued to be made after it ought to have been known that they were untrue, and were not adequately withdrawn and publicly regretted."
The Board also noted that at the time of the writing of the report, the allegation that there was firing from the UNRWA Jabalia school "remained on the website of the [Israeli] Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #102 on: 2009-05-06 01:37:04 » |
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Israel ‘Enraged’ by UN Gaza Report
Report Critical of Attacks on UN Facilities, Calls for Reparations
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2009-05-05
The Israeli Foreign Ministry is reportedly "enraged" tonight, after the United Nations released a report regarding its attacks on UN facilities in the Gaza Strip during this year’s war. The inquiry accused Israel of "gross negligence and recklessness" in the attacks.
The most high profile attack in perhaps the entire war, which killed nearly 1,000 Palestinian civilians, was when Israeli mortars attacked the UN’s al-Fahoura school in the Jabalya refugee camp. Israel initially claimed that the facility was being used by Hamas, but changed their story several times in the days that followed, but never really settled on any single official story. At this point, the official line appears to be simply that criticizing the attack is inherently biased. [ Hermit : And this is new? ]
Israel had previously declined to cooperate with the United Nations on any Gaza probes, and said it would not allow a delegation of investigators to even enter the country. The Israeli military briefly had a probe of their own, but abandoned it insisting that all the evidence of civilian deaths in the war was “based on hearsay.”
The Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip was cheered at the time by the United States Congress [ Hermit : Once again being seen as standing up for righteousness, freedom and the American way. Or something. ] , and many of the weapons used by the Israeli military in the war were provided by the US. Indeed, one of Israel’s official explanations for the attack on the UN school blamed a faulty US-supplied smart bomb. State Department spokesman Robert Wood cautioned against "politicization" of the report’s findings.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #103 on: 2009-05-06 04:39:10 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-05-06 01:37:04
...criticizing the attack is inherently biased...
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[Blunderov] I'm surprised he didn't claim it was antisemitic. Good memetic engineering though. Them as knows will understand that subtext very well and the implication is deniable if any hostiles get uppity about it. 
Fond Regards.
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Hermit
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #104 on: 2009-05-08 11:09:04 » |
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U.N. experts prepare to investigate war crimes in Gaza
Source: Reuters
Authors: Stephanie Nebehay (Reporting), Laura MacInnis (Editing) and Samia Nakhoul (Editing)
Dated: 2009-05-08
International human rights experts examining alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip said on Friday they planned to visit soon, and renewed a call for Israel to support their investigation.
An Israeli government official said last month that the Jewish state would not cooperate with the United Nations inquiry into violations by Israeli troops and Hamas militants during the December 27-January 18 offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone heads the team of four investigators who were appointed last month and held their first closed-door meetings in Geneva this week.
"In the course of its work, the mission intends to conduct visits to affected areas of southern Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza, and has requested the cooperation of the government of Israel in this regard," the team said a statement issued by the U.N. in Geneva on Friday.
Goldstone stressed the investigators would take a "law-based approach," analyzing alleged violations committed by both sides, rather than a political approach when they prepared a report for the U.N. Human Rights Council in July.
"I believe that an objective assessment of the issues is in the interests of all parties, will promote a culture of accountability and could serve to promote greater peace and security in the region," the South African judge said.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has called for an investigation into whether Israeli forces committed war crimes in the coastal strip of 1.5 million people.
She raised specific concerns about the Israeli shelling of a home that killed 30 Palestinian civilians and a lack of care for young, starving children whose mothers died in the attack.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has said that the Israeli army unlawfully fired white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza, needlessly killing and injuring civilians, and cited it as evidence of war crimes.
Goldstone's fellow investigators are Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, British international law professor Christine Chinkin and retired Irish colonel Desmond Travers.
The Human Rights Council, which is dominated by Muslim countries and their allies, gave the U.N. inquiry team a broad mandate in a resolution adopted in January.
The experts will look into violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed in the context of the December-January military operations.
According to a Palestinian rights group, 1,417 Palestinians, including 926 civilians, were killed in the fighting. Israel disputes those figures. Militants fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the period.
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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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