I watched this really interesting video of what it’s like to be regarded in such low regard by Israeli authorities while in that country and the treatment people receive at their hands is appalling.
The next time someone talks about Israel being the only democratic ally we have in the Middle East, point them to this video, or remind them how they discriminate against their own Arab citizens by banning political parties that give voice to Arab Israelis.
I remember all the brouhaha surrounding Keith Ellison’s run for the House of Representatives; people were afraid he would institute Islamic Shariah law and therefore felt he was a threat to the security of the US. He handled himself well throughout all the racist diatribe he faced and prevailed and won election and reelection last fall as well. Meanwhile another American Muslim was elected to Congress from Indiana named Andre Carson, albeit with a lot less fanfare. Now I know why. Politics as it stands today is a business, and congressmen are business people, not representatives in a Republican form of government. How else can you account for the fact these two Muslims of African-American descent voted either present or for House Resolution 34, which says in part:
expresses vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state……reiterates that Hamas must end the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel…believes strongly that the lives of innocent civilians must be protected to the maximum extent possible…lay(s) blame both for the breaking of the ‘calm’ and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas….reiterates its strong support for a just and sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict achieved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
There’s a lot wrong with the wording of the Resolution and many of the “facts” have been disputed worldwide, and on some of the pages here at Miscellany. What’s disturbing is that ANYONE could vote for such a lame document that is so factually inaccurate and easily documented as such, but it passed overwhelmingly, with the votes of 2 Muslim American congressmen…or rather 1.5 votes of the two. Keith Ellison said in part:
Israeli citizens living near the Gaza border have been repeatedly harassed and live daily in fear. Hamas, a terrorist organization founded with the goal of destroying Israel, has launched more than 6,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2005.
We need to have compassion for the people of Gaza and the tremendous human suffering there.
That is why I will vote “present” on this resolution concerning the current conflict in Gaza.
There are no recorded remarks for Carson regarding this resolution. On the one hand this vote dispels the notion that Muslim congressmen are monolithic and contrary to American foreign policy, but it also points out how political office in America tends to foster myopic vision of world events when it comes to Israel. What I would have liked to see is a more compassionate and reasoned voice like the one offered by Dennis Kucinich, Democrat from Ohio, who said:
In Gaza, the United Nations gave the Israeli army the coordinates of a UN school, and the school was then hit by Israeli tank fire, killing about forty. The UN put flags on emergency vehicles, coordinating the movements of those vehicles with the Israeli military, and the vehicles came under attack, killing emergency workers. The Israeli army evacuated 100 Palestinians to shelter, and then bombed the shelter, killing thirty people.
Emergency workers have been blocked by the Israeli army from reaching hundreds of injured persons. Today’s Washington Post: 100 survivors rescued in Gaza from roads blocked from Israelis. Relief agencies fear more are trapped, days after neighborhood was shelled…Today, the U.S. Congress is going to be asked to pass a resolution supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza. I’m hopeful that we don’t support the inhumanity that has been repeatedly expressed by the Israeli army. The U.S. abstained from a UN call for a ceasefire. We must take a new direction in the Middle East, and that new direction must be mindful of the inhumane conditions in Gaza.
Ellison and Carson could learn a thing or two from Kucinich. Or there is this even more eloquently expressed opinion from an ordinary citizen, Sarah Shields.
I accuse you, the US Congress, of having voted for US House Resolution 34 by an overwhelming margin, 390-5. In the name of protecting Israel’s security, this Resolution instead protects Israel’s “right” to hold a whole population accountable for the violations of a few. By condoning Israel’s behavior over the past two weeks as self-defense, HR 34 condemns one and a half million Gazans to capital punishment without trial for crimes they have not committed. By publicly acknowledging and approving Israel’s behavior, you now share responsibility for the outcomes.
I accuse you of violating the laws made by the Congress of the United States, laws like the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which insist that American-made weapons may not be used against civilian populations.I accuse you of supporting flagrant violations of human rights. The combatants you voted to support are required by international law to care for civilian victims of war. Yet the Israeli government denied the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the sites they bombed for four days.
I accuse you of transgressing international law. The United States, as one of the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, is required to protect civilians in war, and to call to account anyone who targets them. You have instead voted to support behavior considered criminal according to international law.
I accuse you of putting politics before humanity, of condoning the slaughter of innocents, of supporting war crimes instead of standing up for the most basic human right: the right to live without the terrifying fear of immediate death.
I hold you responsible, each of these 390 members of America’s 111th Congress. I accuse you of complicity in the most serious transgressions that humans can commit.
This is the type of passion we need in American politics, the fervor for going against the “status quo” no matter the stakes, if your position is right. I salute the Dennnis Kucinichs and Sarah Shields of today who place their humanity before politics or religion or nationality, who make principled positions based on facts that are readily discernible and not on public relations brochures and junkets, and I ask, Keith, Andre, where were you when it counted?
So the next time anyone tells you it’s an urban legend, or anti-semitic to say Israelis are the dog that wags the American tail….just laugh and congratulate them for their chutzpah!
People say the damndest thing!
“Mr. Olmert is wrong,” the official said.
Even if everything had gone according to plan, “she would have abstained. That was the plan,” said the official. “The government of Israel does not make US policy.”
Hilarious! This from a news article recounting the embarrassing US abstention of a resolution it originally helped produce! It’s in response to Olmert’s interpretation of how that abstention came about.
“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour…In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said.
“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.“
and shows the disregard Israeli leaders have for Americans…. Americans are to serve every Israeli whim at the drop of a hat and drop what they’re doing to do so, and how Israelis paint their picture of that relationship among themselves. That this story found its way in an English medium shows Israelis don’t care we know they have such disdain. So, while the Ariel Sharon quote following 911 has been cast in doubt, literally spun into non-existence, the “I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.” quote is alive and sourced. So the next time anyone tells you it’s an urban legend, or anti-semitic to say Israelis are the dog that wags the American tail….just laugh and congratulate them for their chutzpah!
I blogged how Israel wants the natural resources of its neighbors but didn’t know about this!
…..the invasion of Gaza was in part motivated by vital energy resources, too. According to an article by Jake Bower, “Why It Rains: Hamas holding Israeli gas reserves hostage”:
“GAZA: Plans for proposed $400,000,000 offshore natural gas field development project….The deposit reportedly contains an estimated 50 to 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The field… is considered to be the largest in the area north of Egypt….
Estimated at 100 billion cubic meters of proven reserves, these discoveries potentially offer enough gas to meet Israel’s goal of supplying 25% of its energy needs for more than 20 years – even without further imports. The discovery has also raised realistic expectations of locating oil deposits beneath the gas fields.
Unfortunately for Israel, 60% of these reserves are in waters controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which has signed a 25-year contract with British Gas for further exploration in the area…. Keen to secure the gas for its domestic market but unwilling to submit its sensitive energy supplies (and their profits) into the hands of the Palestinians, Israel has for the past 6 years pursued a policy of non-commitment, stalling and obstruction.” (Jake Bower, “Why It Rains: Hamas holding “sraeli” gas reserves hostage”) http://tinyurl.com/7y2bcf
The natural gas deposits are just one more reason why Israel plans to remove Hamas and replace them with Mahmoud Abbas and the corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA).
The Middle East is being reshaped according to the ideological aspirations of Zionists and the exigencies of a viciously-competitive energy market. That’s a combo that makes peace nearly impossible.
Go figure.
The Israelis have already started their false flag operations in the south of Lebanon.
Lebanese army and international forces bolstered troop numbers, stepped up patrols and declared a state of alert Thursday after an early-morning rocket attack on Israel from southern Lebanon threatened to widen the ongoing Gaza Strip conflict.
The rocket fire, which struck a nursing home and slightly injured at least two civilians, resurrected memories of the destructive 2006 war between Israel and the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah, an ally of the Gaza-based militant group Hamas.
There was no claim of responsibility for the rocket attack. Hezbollah and the major Palestinian organizations based in Lebanon denied any role. Only one small group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, would neither affirm nor deny any part in the attack.
The area the missiles were launched from is outside the sphere of influence of Hezbollah, well south of the Litani River, the line of demarcation setup in UN Resolution 1701. The rabid politicians of the Israeli government want to involve Lebanon in order to strike at Hezbollah and Iran. Of course they want the US to do the latter…..Iran is far too formidable for Israel alone. They also want to discredit the UN by underscoring how ineffective it is in preventing the missile attacks from Lebanese soil and avoid having to deal with the Lebanese government which is the party responsible for southern Lebanon. Israel always seems to demand recognition from others, while not giving it to its neighbors and it wants to blunt criticism from the UN because of the crimes being committed in Gaza. Curious that…
Meanwhile, Israel true to form, continues to violate Lebanese airspace, and this is no doubt an attempt to get the Lebanese to open fire on Israeli aircraft, while claiming Hezbollah has “rearmed”. There’s no question Israel will attack Lebanon. Whether it will be of the same magnitude as 2006 will probably depend on the US response to Gaza. Already there is talk of how the US had to resupply the Israeli war machine and if the killing continues there forcing more supplies in the face of international opposition, the US may decide to stop the resupply to curb Israel’s appetite for blood.
Professor Juan Cole, whose blog I read constantly comes out swinging against street demonstrations in opposition to what’s going on in Gaza.
I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t matter if tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Paris. Oh,it might put a little pressure on Sarkozy to remonstrate a little harder with the Israeli government, but in the larger scheme of things it isn’t very significant.
Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States.
The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress.
All of the above is true, but the fault lies in the last statement, the people have given up their power to control politicians by allowing themselves to be easily manipulated and not throwing the scoundrels out of office if they are not in lock step with the wishes of their constituents. For example, the mood of the people in 2008 was against the deployment of US forces in lands that have posed little or no threat to US vital interests, or even US allies, yet the likes of Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers, just to name a few, were reelected inspite of this public backlash. Why?
Later in his piece Cole describes how the Israeli lobby is able to effectively influence members of Congress, and I submit so can We the people. Professor Cole does offer up an excellent suggestion of how that can be done, and I’ll leave it up to the reader to read what is written in Cole’s own words. My contention to Professor Cole’s piece is this: people the world over need to see there is an active opposition in America to government tyranny, even if the opposition is not effective in changing policy. It’s the one way we are able to show the international community that our government may be rotten in its foreign policy but America is still a good place to live and its people are still imbued with the spirit of freedom and liberty. In the absence of such images people can easily justify their rhetoric of hate and fear towards Americans and their form of government. Believe me, the distinction between America’s government and its people is known, recognized and appreciated the world over.
I remember how the placards and card board signs influenced America during the era of civil rights and Vietnam. They were not solely responsible for positive change, but they certainly played a part in that change. When we can synchronize the protest on the streets with the protest at the ballot box, we will return America to a truly representative form of government envisioned by the “Founding Fathers”. Until that time, I really like seeing and hearing the voices of dissent and hope they will flourish. When they stop being raised is when everyone should be afraid!
“We’ve been coordinating with them (Israeli forces) and yet our staff continue to be hit and killed.” – U.N. spokesman, Chris Gunness
A Robert Fisk excerpt, which I think is entirely relevant today.
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What’s clear to most observers of the Middle East is this latest attack on Gaza is a pattern of Israeli behavior that rears its ugly head in an attempt to assert Israeli domination over its neighbors and their total humiliation. Fortunately for humanity the Israelis have forgotten their own historical lessons, the proof of which is in their existence today, that a people cannot be destroyed and wiped off the face of the earth, even by the greatest super power. Our silence however, implicates us along with Israel in their criminal behavor.
There is more than enough proof that crimes were committed by Bush officials over the last 8 years….some of those were of the same magnitude as ones we prosecuted the war on terror over
I really wanted to wait before jumping on Obama’s case, but there’s very little he’s done to let himself off the hook with me. This latest bit of news really has my hackles up because there is a legitimate ground swell of opinion that has now become focused that says some officials in the Bush administration should be held accountable for their illegality on behalf of the US government while they were in office. There is more than enough proof that crimes were committed by Bush officials over the last 8 years….some of those were of the same magnitude as ones we prosecuted the war on terror over, yet Obama doesn’t seem inclined to pursue the matter?!?! What’s going on?
The debate as to whether Bush administration officials have broken international and federal torture laws has played out over the past month in a series of interviews with major media in which Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he “signed off” on requests by CIA interrogators to waterboard three alleged high-level terrorist detainees. Cheney has staunchly defended the decision and maintained that it was not illegal.
*snip*
Obama has been under intense pressure, as a result Cheney’s public statements, by numerous human rights and civil liberties organizations since he was elected president last November to aggressively probe the Bush administration’s torture and domestic surveillance policies and to prosecute officials who may have violated anti-torture and civil liberties laws. Obama has selected some outspoken critics of the Bush administration’s torture policies for positions at the Department of Justice and the CIA.
On Friday, in officially announcing retired admiral Dennis Blair as his director of national intelligence and former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Obama vowed to break with past practices that took place under Bush.
“I was clear throughout this campaign, and have been clear throughout this transition that under my administration, the United States does not torture, we will abide by the Geneva conventions, that we will uphold our highest values and ideals,” Obama said.
But that’s as far as Obama intends to go.
Perhaps, Obama’s handlers think the image make-over he is responsible for will not be tarnished by this bit of news and that there are other things they deem more important to the US’ image than torture prosecutions. Perhaps, but if the US is to regain its stature as a democracy that’s pursuing a moral tract, it should start with its own housecleaning, which should mean getting rid of those who’ve tarnished our image.
There is plenty of documentation to make a case for the illegal nature of the Israeli government towards Palestinian Arabs both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. The longer it takes for America and the rest of the world to act and deny this voracious killer its meal of foreign aide and military hardware, the more likely we are to have these kinds of incursions onto foreign soil by the Israeli government.
The Israeli war machine has killed over 800 Palestinians and claims are their genocidal blood lust will be escalated, but finally there are cries, albeit faint, that Israel has committed war crimes. It’s about time! All one need do is look at the volume of work on the internet, indisputable pictures and videos which show the use of white phosphorous, the shooting of medical aid workers who were out attending to the wounded as well as hospitals and their facilities, the indiscriminate bombing of shelters for the homeless, and most notably the UN sponsored school where scores of people were killed, all civilians, by the murderous IDF to know that Israel has committed war crimes and should be censured by the international community.
The United Nations has accused Israel of evacuating scores of Palestinians into a house in the suburbs of Gaza City, only to shell the property 24 hours later, killing some 30 people.
In a report published today on what it called “one of the gravest incidents” of the 14-day conflict, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) complained that the Israeli Defence Force then prevented medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded, including young children.
All of these actions come amidst the incontrovertible fact that Israel is the aggressor in this latest war on Palestinians.
Thus the latest ceasefire ended when Israel first killed Palestinians, and Palestinians then fired rockets into Israel. However, before attempting to glean lessons from this event, we need to know if this case is atypical, or if it reflects a systematic pattern.We defined “conflict pauses” as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. As shown in Figure 2, this analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern — in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause — becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.
Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.
The lessons from these data are clear:
First, Hamas can indeed control the rockets, when it is in their interest. The data shows that ceasefires can work, reducing the violence to nearly zero for months at a time.
Second, if Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.
One can conclude that Israel is not interested in peace with its neighbors and that this information alone should be the impetus on which the world community denies Israel the blind eye it has lent the Israeli government for so long and impose the type of punishment reserved and codified for “evil doers” or breakers of international law.
The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”
“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”
“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”
The above stated view should gain more traction as time goes on. There is plenty of documentation to make a case for the illegal nature of the Israeli government towards Palestinian Arabs both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. The longer it takes for America and the rest of the world to act and deny this voracious killer its meal of foreign aide and military hardware, the more likely we are to have these kinds of incursions onto foreign soil by the Israeli government.
The title above comes from a very well written piece which explores what’s behind the US’ inactivity or paralysis when it has to confront the crimes of the Israeli government. In it, the author states
Every time Israel doesn’t something mean, cruel or stupid you can almost hear the sound of liberals and progressives rushing for a place to hide. Strip away the rhetoric and the excuses and the problem basically comes down to the fact that people don’t like being called anti-Semitic.
Israel’s attack on Gaza, for example, is not only vicious, inexcusable and a violation of international law, it is a direct attempt to interfere with American politics by making sure Obama’s hands are completely tied.
If, the other hand, one feels that it is far worst to support a cruel and unnecessary war than it is to be labeled an anti-Semite then it may be time to be as brave in the face of right wing Jewish accusations as we are confronting criticism by Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. It is, after all, a partner in illogic – of the sort where unsupportable accusations are used to drown actual facts – such as the constant evocation of the Holocaust in which past victims are shamefully dishonored by using them to justify the creation of still more victims. Once you take the simple liberating step of saying that you don’t give a damn what Abe Foxman says about you, then the whole Mid East issue takes on a new look.For example, you are suddenly free to wonder whether some sort of boycott against Israel might not be worthwhile. Such a boycott might include all of the following: AOL Time Warner, Coca-Cola, Disney, Estee Lauder, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, Nokia, Revlon, Sara Lee, Home Depot, Starbucks, Timberland, or McDonald’s. Or it might include just one for ease of organizing.
Another approach would be a campaign to cut aid to Israel. A modest ten percent – $300 million – would start to make the point.But whatever the approach one prefers, we should all take a New Year’s vow not to be afraid of pro-Israeli extremists anymore. They are bullies and it’s long past time that we started treating them as such.
The Israeli lie machine keeps rumbling on in the absence of the western media’s presence in Gaza. They are purposely keeping out corporate media from Gaza. This is the same media that usually passes on every Israeli excuse and propaganda generated by the government’s spin doctors, so the atrocities being committed in Gaza must be of a magnitude bad enough to keep others from witnessing them. The massacre of Palestinians at the UNRWA school is one example where the Israelis tried to explain away their crime in the absence of media intrusion and presence, by blaming Hamas, but it backfired on them. Initially the Israelis claimed they were responding to Hamas fire from the school and in the process killed 46 or more Palestinian civilians, but had to back down from the assertion after being pressed hard by the UN to put up or shut up.
What the Israelis and the media are hoping is the initial shock over the mounting death toll will be replaced with indifference and eventually ignored altogether, and in the absence of any attention at all the killing and expulsion of people from their homes can continue.
Their parents probably suspected when they dressed them in the morning of their last day on earth they would be dressing them in their burial shrouds.
The Samouni family woke on Sunday morning to find themselves surrounded by camouflaged Israeli troops and dozens of tanks, who had set up a position in the rubble of what was once the large Jewish settlement of Netzarim. As dawn broke, the soldiers seized control of the highest buildings in the district and ordered several of the neighbours into the Samouni family home and there a dozen of them waited, without food and without water.
“All day Sunday there was shooting and bombing. We didn’t have anything to eat, we didn’t have water to drink – our water tanks had been damaged in the fighting,” said Wael Samouni, 32, who on a normal day would be manning his stall at the vegetable market. “We couldn’t sleep.”
“We were sitting and suddenly there was bombing on our house and everyone started to run. There were three rockets. I have no idea where they came from,” said Samouni. The rockets, believed now to be tank shells, hit the building and brought it crashing down. “I looked to my side, took hold of my boy Mohammad and I started to run. As I ran I looked back and saw on the floor my mother, two cousins and three of my children. All dead,” he said. Samouni and the others ran from the house, some raised white cloths as flags and they made it to a patch of safe ground where they were taken to hospital by car.
Israel has no problem killing civilians and labelling them terrorists. In another development, Israel destroyed a UN sponsored school in Gaza killing scores of people who were sheltered there. It’s not the first school they’ve destroyed. The American school of Gaza and the Islamic University of Gaza’s women’s faculty were destroyed earlier. Along with killing civilians, Israel wants to seriously damage the infrastructure of Gaza.
“I keep the children away from the windows because the F-16s are in the air; I forbid them to play below because it’s dangerous. They’re bombing us from the sea and from the east, they’re bombing us from the air. When the telephone works, people tell us about relatives or friends who were killed. My wife cries all the time. At night she hugs the children and cries. It’s cold and the windows are open; there’s fire and smoke in open areas; at home there’s no water, no electricity, no heating gas. And you [the Israelis] say there’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tell me, are you normal?”
The answer to the question is no. Israel is on a blood lust; driven by their thirst to spread death and destruction, no one is spared. Is it any wonder there are some who may think Israeli Jews come from monkeys and pigs?
If you’re an Arab Israeli you’re far more likely to be killed by Hamas’ inaccurate “missiles” than if you’re Jewish and here’s why.
Homes in Jewish towns and settlements are required to have one room with reinforced walls and a steel door. Public bomb shelters are accessible, and protective barriers even have been erected in rural areas.
The Arab town of Rahat, population 45,000, is about 24 miles from Gaza and is situated on the outer perimeter reachable by the long-range rockets that Hamas has unleashed for the first time. Few homes here have a safety room, and there are no public shelters.
Once again, Israelis sacrifice human life for political associations and expediency, and sometimes it’s their own citizens who serve as fodder.
On another note, to underscore what was written previously here about how the IDF is intent on killing all within their grasp, not taking into consideration who is a combatant or not, comes news that the Red Cross has been refused entry into Gaza to treat the wounded.
A specialist medical team from the International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to enter the Gaza Strip for the past three days, a spokeswoman for the organization said Sunday.
The team, comprised of two doctors and two nurses, was supposed to enter the enclave on Friday to help the local Palestinian medical staff, who were ‘exhausted’ and having trouble coping with the massive influx of injured people, she said.
The Israeli pogrom of Gaza continues unabated and in plain sight. If there was any doubt before, let there be no doubt now, this military operation is intended to intimidate and humiliate the Palestinian people and has nothing at all to do with the security of the state of Israel.
Once and for all, the recent attacks on Gaza have nothing to do with Israeli security folks. Rather they are a continuation of Israeli policy that has been in place since the inception of the state and are designed to remove the intractable Palestinian population and garner as much of the natural resources of the area as they can. Some of those resources include the land which cover or protect them.
The Gaza invasion was planned even before the latest truce between Hamas and Israel began in the summer of last year.
Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas……Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas’ security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.
As we mentioned in a previous post, Israel considers any and all Palestinians within Gaza strip terrorists or militants even the American International School of Gaza which was destroyed in the early phases of the ground invasion.
Rather, this latest attack was politically motivated by the Labor party to solidify its base in time for the elections that will come up shortly and has nothing at all to do with Israeli security!!
The Israeli decision to launch the attacks on Gaza was a political, not security, decision. Just a day or two before the airstrikes, it was Israel that rejected Hamas’s diplomatic initiative aimed at extending the six-month-long ceasefire that had frayed but largely stayed together since June, and that expired 26 December. Hamas officials, working through Egyptian mediators, had urged Israel to lift the siege of Gaza as the basis for continuing an extended ceasefire. Israel, including Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, of the “centrist” (in the Israeli context) Kadima Party, rejected the proposal. Livni, who went to Egypt but refused to seriously consider the Hamas offer, is running in a tight race for prime minister; her top opponent is the further-right Benyamin Netanyahu of the officially hawkish Likud party, who has campaigned against Livni and the Kadima government for their alleged “soft” approach to the Palestinians. With elections looming in February, no candidate can afford to appear anything but super-militaristic.
For Israeli politicians it is perfectly legitimate to kill people in order to get votes, as a way of showing their constituents they are tough against a defenseless and essentially unarmed population, the Palestinians. This is a no brainer; the Israeli government is the terrorist in this action in Gaza and their continued censorship of the media, and blockade, keeping international observers out allows them to perpetuate the myth of their vulnerability where there really is none!
It’s hard to believe the Bush administration denied the author of the piece below entry into the United States. He is safely ensconced in the US’ main ally, the UK and writing pieces like this one:
An alliance
of values
Listening to the feelings expressed by Muslims around the world one gets a sentiment of anger and revolt mixed with a deep sense of helplessness. The current massacres are but a confirmation of the well-known: the “international community” does not really care about the Palestinians, and it is as if the state of Israel, with the support of the US and some European countries, has imposed a state of intellectual terror. Among the presidents and kings, nobody dares to speak out; nobody is ready to say the truth. All are paralysed by fear.
While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sometimes perceived, and experienced, as critical to the relationship between the west and Islam, many Muslims no longer know how to react. Is it a pure political conflict? What does Islam have to do with it? Should we make it an Islamic concern to call upon the ummah?
Muslims around the world are facing three distinctive phenomena. First, in the Muslim-majority countries or in the west, they see they can expect no reaction from governments, especially from the Arab states. Theirs is the guilty silence of the accomplice, the hypocrisy, the contempt for Palestinian lives. Second, western media coverage is alarming, with the majority buying the Israeli story: two equally powerful belligerents, with the victim of aggression (Israel) acting in self-defence. What a distortion! Yet the third phenomenon is interesting: while 73% of Europeans were backing Israel in 1967, more than 67% are supporting the Palestinians today. With time, understanding and sensitivity have moved: populations are not blindly following the games and hypocritical stands of their political elites.
Considering these factors, Muslims around the world, and especially western Muslims, should clarify their position. While refusing to turn the Israeli-Palestinian war into a religious conflict, they should not deny its religious dimension, and thus formulate an explicit stand. From an Islamic viewpoint, it should be clear that their resistance is not against Jews (antisemitism is anti-Islamic); to target innocent civilians must be condemned on both sides; and the objective should be for Jews, Christians and Muslims (with people of other religions or no religion) to live together with equal rights and dignity.
The Palestinians are never going to give up; and Israel, for all its awesome firepower, has not won the conflict. Muslims around the world should be a driving force of remembrance and resistance. Not as Muslims against Israel, the west or the hypocritical Arab states, but more widely, and constructively, for justice with all (religious or not) who refuse to be brainwashed or reduced to powerless spectators. It is time to create broad alliances and synergies around clear political objectives.
If the Middle East is teaching Muslims anything, it is to stop acting in isolation and return to the universal values they share with their fellow citizens. They should realise they are in and with the majority. Demonstrations and articles are crucial but we need to go further. To launch a global movement of non-violent resistance to the violent and extremist policy of the state of Israel has become imperative. The violence inflicted, in front of us, upon a population of one and a half million humans makes our silence, our division and even our limited emotional reaction undignified, insane and inhumane. A true and dignified resistance requires commitment, patience and a long-term strategy of information, alliance and huge, non-violent democratic participation.
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