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Hermit
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Justifying Genocide
« on: 2008-02-01 19:14:08 » |
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An Experiment in Famine
Hamas is Not the Real Issue
[ Hermit : Its been a while since anyone outside of Africa decided to starve a people into submission or worse. Famously Stalin employed it very successfully. It is of course against a gazillion treaties and international law. But our accomplices in perfecting state applied and managed terrorism in the name of democracy are doing so anyway, confident that our veto will protect them from effective reprisals. Perhaps they think, if sufficiently starved, some Islamic state will take mercy on these 4 million people and allow them to enter their territory - and ethnic cleansing will have succeeded. Or maybe they will just have their spirit broken and be permitted to eke a poor living on the edge of the land which has been stolen from them, while the iron glove we have provided continues to strangle them. Or maybe they will just die. There is no long term solution which does not leave Israel free of this unfortunate side effect of illegally invading, displacing, stealing the territories and possessions of others and engaging in the worlds longest running ethnic cleansing program. Clearly nobody gives a fig about the Palestinians anymore. Can you imagine what Americans - like our loudmouthed resident neoconehead - would have to say if these were Islamics treating any other people like this? But these are not Islamics. These are Jews. Trying their damnedest to make Attila the Hun appear like an enlightened ruler. And lest we forget, the displaced Palestinians and their descendants are not represented by the High Commissioner for Refugees and have, at least theoretically, "a right of return" because the United States of America insisted upon this. The West seems to have forgotten this. Palestinians have not. ]
Source: Counterpunch
Authors: Neve Gordon [Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel and can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com]
Dated: 2008-01-30
The experiment in famine began on January 18, 2008. Israel hermetically closed all of Gaza's borders, preventing even food, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip. Power cuts, which had been frequent for many months, were extended to 12 hours per day. Due to the electricity shortage, at least 40 percent of Gazans have not had access to running water (which is channeled through electric pumps) for several days and the sewage system has broken down. The raw sewage that has not spilled onto the streets is now being poured into the sea at a daily rate of 30 million liters. Hospitals have been forced to rely on emergency generators leading them to cut back, yet again, on the already limited services offered to the Palestinian population. The World Food Programme has reported critical shortages of food and declared that it is unable to provide 10,000 of the poorest Gazans with three out of the five foodstuffs they normally receive.
After five days of extreme suffering, a group of Hamas militants took the lead, and blew-up parts of the steel wall along the Egyptian border. Within hours more than 100,000 Gazans crossed the border into Egypt. They were hungry, thirsty and sick of being locked up in a filthy cage. Once in Egypt they bought everything they could get their hands on and waited patiently for the international community to intervene on their behalf. Yet the world leaders failed them again, and on January 28, after a five day respite, the iron wall was re-erected and the Palestinians were pushed back into the world's largest prison -- the Gaza Strip..
Ehud Barak, Israel's Minister of Defense, did not stammer when he justified his decision to experiment with famine; he had no qualms about introducing a policy that historically only the most brutal leaders have adopted.
His argument seems rational. Barak said that no government in the world would tolerate the ongoing bombardment of its citizens from across the border. Since other measures -- like harsh economic sanctions, extra-judicial executions, the ongoing barrage of northern parts of the Strip as well as the bombardment of several critical infrastructure sites, like the electric power plant and Palestinian government offices -- did not do the job, Israel had no other option.
This ostensibly rational argument [ Hermit : Is it only me or do others find this use of "rational" - even as a rhetorical device - offensive? ] inconveniently ignores the fact that since its victory in the January 2006 democratic elections Hamas has proposed several cease-fire agreements, the latest emerging just last week. In these proposals, Hamas agrees to stop launching missiles at Israeli citizens, in exchange for Israel ending its incursions into Gaza, the assassinations of militants and political leaders, and the economic blockade.
Hamas's proposals underscore two important facts. First, despite what Barak says the use of force is not the only option Israel has: The government could decide to open a dialogue with Hamas based on a cease-fire agreement. Second, it emphasizes, as Israeli critic Uri Avnery cogently observes, that Israel is cynically using the assaults on its own citizens as a pretext for attempting to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and for preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.
Ultimately, though, even the courageous Avnery does not spell out Israel's main objective. The central issue for Israel is not Hamas yes or no, but rather Palestinian sovereignty yes or no. The recent crisis reveals, once more, that Israel's August 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was not an act of decolonization but rather the reorganization of Israeli power and the implementation of neo-colonial rule. Israel realized that in order to maintain sovereignty all it would have to do is preserve its monopoly over the legitimate means of movement. Very different from the withdrawal of British forces from the various colonies of old, it accordingly continued to dominate Gaza's borders, transforming the Strip into a container of sorts whose openings are totally controlled by Israel.
The experiment in Gaza is, in other words, not really about the bombardment of Israeli citizens or even about Israel's ongoing efforts to undermine Hamas. It is simply a new draconian strategy aimed at denying the Palestinians their most basic right to self-determination. It is about showing them who is in control, about breaking their backs, so that they lower their expectations and bow down to Israeli demands. The Palestinians understood this and courageously destroyed their prison wall while crying out into the wilderness for international support. Instead of the expected outrage, the only response they received was a weak echo of their own cry for help.
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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:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #1 on: 2008-02-02 04:07:50 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2008-02-01 19:14:08
An Experiment in Famine Its been a while since anyone outside of Africa decided to starve a people into submission or worse. |
[Blunderov] And the lackey 4th estate papers over the atrocity with blithe euphemisms. Apparently the coward MSM was so impressed with Condy Rice's doughty retail therapy after Katrina that it now seems (to them) entirely reasonable that the Palestinians should wish to follow her shining example.
More generally, Israel continues to make it abundantly clear that it favours only a "one state solution" - Israel. All this perrenial diplomatic chatter about a "two state solution" is pure tinsel. The Palestinians in Gaza are to be driven into the sea. That is all.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/01/gazan-shopping-spree.html
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Gazan "Shopping Spree" posted by lenin
Guest post by EasyWind:
The sad old saga of what passes for news in the United States is highlighted (or in this case, circled with a red crayon) in the accompanying image.
Starving masses under siege break through the wall enclosing them, and the American journal of record talks about shopping sprees, as if there was some mythical Nordstrom's or Macy's in the desert beyond the wall, staffed presumably by Egyptian conscripts in tasteful couture, their caps scented with high notes of peach.
Meanwhile in Israel, the sabers are rattling, rattling, rattling. The Gaza situation is ranked as having "middling" importance by the left-wingers (because starving millions of Gazans is not against their
ethical standards) and welcomed by the Israeli right wingers, who seem overjoyed at the opportunity to get the occupier's responsibility for Palestinians off their hands.
But it isn't just the right wingers. There has been, this week, a shift toward war rhetoric among some of the journalists on the left, ones who frequently reflect the mood of that nation. There is a campaign of interviews with soldiers talking about how they'll do to Gaza what they couldn't do in Lebanon (seen on Ynet -link in Hebrew), and fear mongering about expected attacks on Israelis in the Sinai are being bandied about widely (link in Hebrew).
All that, and starving masses obtaining food through a walled enclosure are on a "shopping spree". Historians of the future, take note: spinning the ghetto break as "shopping" reflects a mood of the moment. Evil is as banal as it ever was.
Labels: gaza, Israel, lebanon, palestinians
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Blunderov
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Re:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #2 on: 2008-02-08 11:05:09 » |
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[Blunderov] Elaborates on the point that the so called "two state solution" is totally a riff. 
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2008/02/illusion-of-palestinian-state.html
Friday, February 8, 2008
The Illusion Of The ‘Palestinian State’
Feb 8, 2008
By Ghali Hassan
In 1923, the Ukrainian-born Zionist and founder of Irgun terror network in Palestine, Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote that Zionist colonization in the Middle East can only succeed if it is “protected by an Iron Wall”, designed to incarcerate and keeps the native Palestinian population out of their land. Today, more than ever, the Palestinian people are refusing to surrender and give up their history.
For decades, Western leaders – led by the Americans –, and pro-Israel Western media have promoted the idea of a ‘Palestinian State’ for Palestinians to claim it as their homeland. It has become a euphemism for never-to-be a Palestinian state. What is misleading about this idea of a ‘Palestinian State’ is it provides people in the West – including those who pretend to support the Palestinians – with an illusionary hope, while at the same time it covers Israel’s war crimes and Israel’s illegal annexation and colonization of Palestinian land and water resources.
Publicly, Israel (unconditionally supported by the U.S.) has rejected any peaceful solution that provides for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Indeed, in 1967 the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border, incorporating all the relevant wording of UN Resolution 242. The Resolution simply demands Israel to withdraw from Arab land it occupied during the 1967 Israeli aggression.
In 1988 when the Palestinian National Council formally accepted the “two-state settlement”, the Israeli government of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir declared that there can be no ‘additional’ Palestinian state between Jordan and Palestine. In other words, Jordan is to be the new Palestine for the Palestinian people. Israel declaration was immediately supported by the U.S. administration, keeping with U.S. traditions of unconditional support for Israel’s terror at the expense of peace and human lives.
It is important to remember that Israel and the U.S. have always found a pretext to reject peace. The demand has always been that the Palestinians must stop the “violence” (legitimate resistance) as a prerequisite to peace. And because Israelis have a monopoly on the most heinous war crimes – comparable only to Nazis’ war crimes –, they are not required to stop the daily killing of innocent Palestinian women and children. Then came the prerequisite of the “recognition of Israel”, then Israel’s “right to exists”, and now we have a new prerequisite to peace; the recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”.
Under the cliché of peace, the Israeli army is besieging and murdering Palestinian women and children with impunity while the rest of the (Western) world condoning Israel for “defending” itself. Peace in the Middle East has become an empty rhetoric. Israel and the U.S. use the cliché of peace as a propaganda tool to whiteout the truth and manipulate public opinion into supporting a Zionist-fascist ideology.
The reality, Israel is addicted to violence and domination with a long history of terrorising an entire defenceless Palestinian population. In a recent article in the daily Ha’aretz newspaper, Israeli journalists Gideon Levy, writes: “Bushra Bargis hadn't even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments”. Even unborn Palestinian babies weren't safe from Israel’s terror either. A bullet in the back of a seven-month pregnant Palestinian woman, Maha Qatuni, “struck her foetus in the womb, shattering its head”. With unconditional endorsement in the West, Israeli war crimes remain a taboo in Western media.
Not surprising, Israelis and Jews in general view the unconditional support provided by Western powers as “emanating from God“. In a recent interview, Israel’s current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that; “It's a coincidence that is almost 'the hand of God' that Bush is president of the United States, that Nicholas Sarkozy is the president of France, that Angela Merkel is the chancellor of Germany, that Gordon Brown is the prime minister of England and that the special envoy to the Middle East is Tony Blair”. (AFP, January 04, 2008). They are the most open pro-Zionism Western leaders.
Even Jabotinsky failed to predict that his Zionist colonial project has no chance of success without the ongoing massive and unconditional political, financial and military support provided by the major Western powers, led by the U.S.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are living under continual suffering and hardship. Those who are the descendants of the 800,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homes in the 1948’s al-Nakba (the "Catastrophe") remain in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries. The rest of the Palestinians are confined to the Occupied Territories of Gaza (1.5 million) and the West Bank (3 million) under Israel’s murderous military occupation and siege. More than 1.2 million live as second-class citizens within Israel’s borders.
In flagrant violations of International Laws and civilized norms, Israel refuses to stop its illegal policies of building Jewish colonies on annexed Palestinian land and pushing Palestinians into small ghettos and concentration camps. Israel’s policy of isolating Palestinian communities from each others by the Apartheid Wall, Jewish-only roads and by a policy of military control and collective punishment made the idea of a viable Palestinian state an impossibility. The Palestinians are cut off from their relatives, from their farms, from their children schools, from hospitals and from their work. In the mean time, the Palestinians, terrorised on daily basis by illegal Jewish settlers and a Gestapo-like army, are told to disappear.
Jewish leaders, whether Rabbinic leaders or political leaders, are calling for the removal/transfer (a.k.a. ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians somewhere outside their occupied land. Again, the Western world looks the other way and contemplates Israel’s unending terror against the Palestinians. But, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran suggested that European countries should take the Jews back to Europe and allow Palestinians to return to their home land, he is demonised and accused of “anti-Semitism”.
Finally, the outbreak from Gaza where Israel is deliberately perpetuating slow motion genocide – with full complicity of European and U.S. governments – has caught the eyes of some Western media and exposes Israel’s murderous occupation and fascist policies to the outside world. Israel’s medieval siege of the crowded territory caused misery and death to many innocent and defenceless Palestinians.
As people stood in the way of Hitler’s colonial project, so are the Palestinian people. The day will come when Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” will fall and with it Palestinians dispossession and victimisation will end, and Palestinian liberation will be achieved.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON at 7:20 AM
Labels: Hitler, Israel, nazis, Palestinians
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Hermit
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Re:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #3 on: 2008-02-08 12:42:07 » |
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Gaza Diary: Not a life for children
[ Hermit : Always worth putting it into human perspective and remembering that the West began this war and occupation by stealing land from the Palestinians to give to the Israelis, who have demanded more from the original inhabitants ever since. Can you imagine that some people still appear to imagine that the Palestinians have no right to resist this process of genocide by inches - a process that the people and the press of "civilized" western countries are unable even to refer to by its proper name. One wonders why the west supported resistance movements in occupied Europe, or anti-government forces in apartheid South Africa, when those rulers treated most of those living under their rule so much better than the Israelis treat the Palestinians. ]
Source: Al J'azeerah
Authors: Omar (a humanitarian worker in partnership with Oxfam)
Dated: 2007-02-07
 A young Palestinian girl wounded in an Israeli air strike on Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]
"Why us? Why are we cold? What is happening?" my children ask all the time.
They are six and two. When they ask for chocolate and I cannot give it to them, they ask why. I explain to them that it is because of the closure, but this does not explain things any further to them, they still ask: "Why? Why us?"
What they least understand is why their lives are being affected by something which they are not responsible for.
It is hard for me to explain. I am 37-years old and have spent my whole life under occupation. My father was a refugee from Barbara, my original village. He said to me the other day: "Son, we have never lived in a situation like this before. I hope that this will be the last time that we live like this, forever".
But people live in hope. They believe, even after all this time, that peace will return to us.
It has been five days now since I have had a shower. This is due to a lack of power to fuel the water system and to the hectic times that are upon us.
It is winter and we are all beginning to get very cold. Without electricity, all my family and I can do to stay warm it to huddle around a gas lamp. We cover ourselves in sheets.
Sometimes, I warm some water for my children to immerse their hands or feet in. But there is very little that we can do apart from hope that this will be the last time that we live like this.
The cold makes it difficult for us to get to sleep but even when we manage to, the blasts of Palestinian and Israeli rockets wake us throughout the night. The tremors and explosions scare my children so much that they now sleep with my wife and me.
They are so small and vulnerable and also very confused. They come home from school talking of Hamas and Fatah, but they do not understand the situation.
This is not a life for children. It is not for anyone.
Stress and anxiety
I try as best as I can to divert their attention away from the crisis that is continuing to unfold before them - I take them to the sea or to a relative's home.
I cannot even turn on the television because we have had no electricity for five days. To find out what's going on or whether or not there will be military operations I ask my colleagues in Jerusalem to keep me updated.
I also call my family every few hours to find out if they are OK.
My children live in an area of violence and hear on a daily basis people arguing, complaining and shouting about the situation. To be honest, they need some professional support for their stress and anxiety but, of course, this is not available to us.
Like many other children living in Gaza, they can rarely get away from the crisis, even while they sleep.
This situation is affecting a lot of children. The other day, when I went to my kid's school, the teacher said that 70 per cent of the children were failing their exams.
The stress of the situation, whether children realise it or not, will effect their education. It is not great for school work or anything at all.
A lack of good quality food, clean drinking water, milk, sleep, fear and cold are just some of the issues that the children of Gaza face.
The adults, too.
The unborn child
There is already little hope for the future for the children of Gaza but without education, they really have nothing. Education is the only capital that we have for our future.
My third child is due in March. This is just two months away.
As a father and a husband I am worried - really worried for my wife and my unborn child. How can she deliver a child when there is no electricity and little supplies in the hospitals?
Will she and our third child suffer as a result? These are some of the questions that keep me awake at night.
Speaking about this makes me want to cry, not just for my family but also for the people of Gaza.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #4 on: 2008-03-01 11:22:46 » |
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Israel threatens to unleash 'holocaust' in Gaza
[ Hermit : This headline is inaccurate. Israel did not "threaten to unleash 'holocaust' in Gaza," Israel asserted that the existing holocaust in Gaza is going to become a "bigger holocaust" "when the weather improves." Note the highlighted areas below.]
Source: THe Times
Authors: James Hider (Jerusalem)
Dated: 2008-03-01
An Israeli minister gave warning yesterday that the Gaza faces a “holocaust” if Islamist militants there do not end their daily barrages of home-made Qassam rockets, and their increasing use of Iranian-built Grad missiles.
“The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, the Deputy Defence Minister said.
The use of the term "holocaust" is usually restricted to descriptions of the Nazi genocide of the Jews in Europe in the Second World War, and many Israelis resent its use in any other context. Mr Vilnai’s deployment of the word appeared to show Israel’s growing frustration that Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza refuse to curb their attacks, despite heavy tolls inflicted in Israeli air strikes and tank raids.
As Israeli media relayed his controversial comments, Mr Vilnai’s spokesman was forced to issue a clarification. “The minister used the Hebrew term 'shoah' which means 'catastrophe' and in this context does not refer to the 'the Shoah' - the Holocaust,” he said.
Israel has killed more than 30 Palestinians, including four children and a baby, in the past two days amid a dramatic escalation of the cross-border war. Palestinians have fired close to 130 rockets in the same period, killing one man on an Israeli campus.
Israeli defence officials said that preparations for a large-scale ground offensive to storm Gaza and break Hamas have been completed, but that they are waiting for improved weather conditions to begin what many predict would be a hugely bloody offensive into the crowded streets of Gaza’s cities and refugee slums.
Many observers worry that Israel could be dragged back into a costly, long-term military occupation of Gaza, which may not even halt the rocket fire. Militants have been firing them for seven years, while Israel only ended its occupation of the Strip two years ago.
“We’re getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we’ve used a small percentage of the army’s power because of the nature of the territory,” Mr Vilnai said.
Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, was reported in the Israeli media to have sent messages to world leaders giving warning of an impending conflagration in Gaza, but insisted that Hamas’s endless rocket attacks have left Israel with no choice but to attack. “Hamas bears responsibility for this deterioration and it will also bear the results,” he said.
Thousands of Gaza residents rallied after Friday prayers to protest against the increased Israeli raids, with children holding up placards saying “They’ve killed my right to childhood.”
Ismail Haniyah, the dismissed Hamas Prime Minister who has largely avoided public appearances for fear of being a target of Israel, warned worshippers at a mosque that they were looking at open conflict.
“Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war led by the enemy against our people,” he said, condemning the Arab world’s silence over the escalating violence and accusing it of “encouraging the Israeli aggression”.
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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:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #5 on: 2008-03-01 21:42:00 » |
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Palestinians' bloodiest day, Israel kills 61 in Gaza
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Authors: Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ari Rabinovitch (Jerusalem), Adam Entous (Jerusalem), Avida Landau (Jerusalem), Alastair Macdonald (Writing Credit, Jerusalem), Ali Sawafta (Ramallah), Mohammed Assadi (Ramallah), Ralph Gowling (editing)
Dated: 2008-03-01
Dateline :GAZA,
Israeli forces killed 61 people in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000.
Almost half the dead were civilians, including children.
Israel, which lost two soldiers, seemed ready to press home its fiercest air and ground assault since it pulled troops back to the borders of the coastal enclave in 2005. It blamed rocket attacks by the Islamist Hamas movement for provoking four days of fighting, in which 96 Palestinians have been killed. [ Hermit : Of course, Israel would not blame their theft of the Palestine's land, oppression, genocide and ethnic cleansing, followed by a deliberate program of brutal treatment of an entire people for resisting occupation. ]
The U.N. Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session. A U.N. official in Gaza appealed for international action to end the "inhuman suffering" of its 1.5 million people and said killing women and children would not help Israel.
U.S. President George W. Bush sounded more supportive of his Israeli allies. While regretting all loss of life, his spokesman said: "There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defence." [ And perhaps there is a difference between a desperate and perfectly legitimate action by the all but disarmed people being crushed by a massive program of ethnic cleansing against an illegal occupation by the most powerful nation in the area with massive military capability unquestioningly supported by the most powerful state in the world and terrorism. But no electable American politician would be able to discern that. ]
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a sworn enemy of the Islamist militant group Hamas which took control of Gaza from his forces in June, called the attack "more than a holocaust". Aides to Abbas said fighting could wreck new U.S.-backed peace talks. Israeli officials said Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qurie called his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, to call off a meeting due on Monday. But Abbas's aides said no decision to suspend the process had been taken. Of course, Reuters does not report that with the aid of the USA, Israel and much of the EU, Abbas staged a partially failed coup d'etat against Hamas, the democratically elected government of the Palestinians under occupation. ]
Bush hopes for a deal on founding a Palestinian state [ Hermit : This is surely a mistranslation. A Palestinian prison (with a Judas-Goat-in-a-Tie as president) would be more accurate - now on less than 7% of their land and incorporating less than 1/3 of their peoples - and with insufficient water for the Israelis and the Palestinians. ] before he leaves office in January. Many view that as very optimistic.
At least 30 of the dead were civilians, among them women and children, said Palestinian doctors who worked round the clock.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the army said -- its first deaths in Gaza since October. As troops backed by tanks pushed deep into areas from where rockets are fired, they met heavy gunfire and landmines, residents said.
Another 48 rockets hit Israel, wounding several people. An Israeli civilian was killed on Wednesday, the first since May.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "not happy" civilians were being hurt but blamed Hamas for firing rockets from built-up areas and said it would "pay the price". [ Hermit : As they always do at a ratio of 5 to 100 to 1]
RICE VISIT
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert next week. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "If Israeli aggression continues, it will bury the peace process in the rubble."
A spokesman for Israel's chief negotiator said: "What Israel is doing in Gaza is fighting terror and it will be continued."
At least 30 gunmen were killed, medical staff and Hamas said. Among targets was the empty office of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whom Abbas fired as his prime minister after the Islamists routed his Western-backed forces in Gaza. [ Hermit : Routed as a preemptive measure against a coup against the popularly elected government ]
Medical staff said four people living nearby were wounded. "Uncle, I don't want to die. I want my dad," a toddler screamed as doctors tried to treat burn wounds across her body in Gaza's main Shifa hospital. The girl had been in a house which the Israeli army said was used to store and make weapons.
One of the dead civilians was a mother who was preparing breakfast for her children when she was hit by gunfire, relatives and medical workers said. One missile slammed into a crowd of Palestinians, killing four civilians, medics said.
In Damascus, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said: "I say to the Zionist leaders, if they decided to raid Gaza, they will be fought not by dozens ... but ... by 1.5 million people."
A senior U.N. official in Gaza, John Ging, appealed to world leaders to stop the fighting:
"Killing Palestinian women and children will not bring security to the people of Israel," said Ging. He also said Hamas's rocket fire would not achieve Palestinians' goals.
Daily rocket fire for months has put Olmert under pressure from voters to act. But the government, chastened by a costly war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon in 2006, is wary of an outright invasion of the densely populated coastal region.
Olmert's deputy, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, said: "We need to act with all our might, but without taking steps that will hurt us more than help us -- by which I mean reoccupying Gaza."
He said the main targets would be those directly involved in firing rockets and the broader Islamist leadership in Gaza.
Washington has urged Israel to "consider the consequences".
Abbas's power is now restricted to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. While he would shed few tears if Israel destroyed Hamas, he risks losing already patchy support in the West Bank if he is not seen to be speaking out against the Israeli military action.
Reflecting the depth of factional rifts among Palestinians, Abbas rejected a charge by Meshaal that he was giving cover to Israel. He declared Sunday a day of national mourning.
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Original Media Source: Front Page New York Times on 2008-03-02
Graphic elements: Hermit
Caption: If this were where you got your news, would this be the significance you grant to genocide?
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. |
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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:Justifying Genocide
« Reply #6 on: 2008-03-03 07:08:44 » |
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Still Largely Unreported in the US
Israeli force in Gaza is 'excessive' -U.N.'s Ban
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Authors: Louis Charbonneau (Writing), Mohammad Zargham (Editing)
Dated: 2008-03-01
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Saturday condemned what he called Israel's "disproportionate and excessive" use of force in the Gaza Strip.
In an emergency meeting of the Security Council called to discuss an upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Ban also condemned the relentless Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel.
Israeli forces killed 61 people in the Gaza Strip, making Saturday the bloodiest day for Palestinians since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting.
"While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed an injured so many civilians, including children," Ban told an emergency session of the council.
"I call on Israel to cease such attacks," he said.
Ban said there had been 26 Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel Saturday alone.
"I condemn Palestinian rocket attacks and call for the immediate cessation of such acts of terrorism," he said.
The permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said Israel's actions, including the closure of all border crossings into Gaza, were war crimes.
"Such actions are clearly prohibited by international law and are being committed by the occupying power on a scale and scope amounting to war crimes," Mansour told the council.
Israel's Deputy Ambassador Daniel Carmon dismissed the idea that the Jewish state was guilty of war crimes.
He said the Palestinian militant group Hamas, [ Hermit : Conveniently forgetting that Hamas is the elected government of Palestine, which "seized power" to counter a coup planned by Israel, the USA and their utterly corrupt ally of convenience, the PLA ] which seized control of Gaza in June 2007, was to blame for the situation in Gaza because it was behind the rocket attacks.
"Hamas bears sole responsibility for the violence," Carmon told the council. [ Hermit : Israel's seizure of most of the Palestine, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians, has, in his opinion, no influence on the situation. ]
LIBYAN DRAFT RESOLUTION
The emergency council meeting was called by Security Council member Libya on behalf of the Arab League and at the request of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Libyan delegation circulated a draft resolution to council members condemning Israel.
The draft, obtained by Reuters, has the council "expressing grave concern ... about the killings of innocent civilians, including the killing of several Palestinian children as a result of recent Israeli military attacks in the Gaza Strip."
It also calls for "an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including military attacks" and urges Israel "to immediately open the Gaza Strip's border crossings."
The draft does not mention the months of daily Palestinian rocket fire against Israel, which the Israelis have cited as the reason they closed all the border crossings into Gaza in January, allowing only humanitarian aid into the territory. [ Hermit :Neither does it mention the dozens of UN resolutions Israel is in violation of, the number of vetoes issued by the US on Israels behalf, or the vast number of treaties which have been breached by Israel over the years. Clearly an inferior document altogether. ]
Western diplomats said the Libyan resolution would not pass unless it was amended to condemn the Palestinian rocket attacks and dropped language suggesting Israel was guilty of terrorism.
Despite widespread concern for the humanitarian plight of Gazans, the council has been deadlocked on the closure of Gaza's borders because Libya and some other Arab states have been reluctant to condemn the rocket attacks against Israel and Hamas' seizure of power.
| Amnesty rips IDF for 'reckless disregard of life' in Gaza
Source: Jerusalem Post
Source: Jonny Paul (JP Correspondent London)
Dated: 2008-03-02
The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International has condemned Israel's attacks on Gaza, claiming they are "being carried out with reckless disregard for civilian life."
"Israeli military attacks over the past few days have killed more than 75 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 10 children, and other unarmed civilian bystanders not involved in the confrontations" Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said Sunday. "Israel has a legal obligation to protect the civilian population of Gaza. Such attacks are disproportionate and go beyond lawful measures which Israeli forces may take in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups."
A statement released by the organization said: "All unlawful attacks must stop - Israeli forces must put an immediate end to disproportionate attacks and collective punishment in Gaza and Palestinian armed groups must immediately stop the barrage of rockets into southern Israel."
"It is high time that the leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority took effective steps to prevent and punish attacks on civilians in Israel, but their failure to do so does not make it legitimate for the Israeli authorities to launch reckless air and artillery strikes which wreak such death and destruction among Palestinian civilians," said Smart.
In its statement, Amnesty highlighted disproportionate casualty statistics in the conflict, saying that in the last two months, close to 200 Gazans, of whom around "one-third were unarmed civilian bystanders, including 15 children" have been killed." In the same period, the statement continued, "one Israeli civilian was killed and several injured by rocket fire," the statement said.
"We condemn all attacks on civilians, but unlawful attacks by one side cannot justify violations by the other," Smart said.
The statement said that IDF actions this week displayed a "disproportion and recklessness" that has "characterized" its operations in Palestinian territories.
At the same time, Amnesty argued, Palestinian armed groups who launched frequent rocket attacks from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns not only showed a "callous disregard" for the lives of Israeli civilians but also exposed their own population to Israeli counterattacks.
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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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