Thursday, January 29, 2009
Top 5 Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.
Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.
Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.
Other of Israel’s bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.
Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.
Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.
Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.
Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.
Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response by militants to the Israeli attacks.
Israel's actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.
To read the complete article click here
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
it’s a ceasefire…just not on the beach, not in your home
*7 year old Ahmed Hassanin, shot in the head outside his home by Israeli soldiers from Gaza’s eastern border, January 22nd.
On the 5th morning after Israel declared a ‘ceasefire’, Israeli gunboats began shelling, as they had on several mornings since halting the 22 day air and land bombardment of Gaza. The shelling, which began just after 7:30 am off Gaza city’s coast, injured at least 6, including one boy with shrapnel in his head.
Yasser Abed, 15, came out from his home in Gaza’s Beach camp, on the coast, to see where the shelling was occurring. A shard of shrapnel lodged in his forehead.
Nisreen al Quqa, 11, was out earlier, before the navy began to fire towards Palestinian fishermen. She and her brother were walking on the beach when the firing started. A piece of shrapnel lodged in her right calf muscle.
Other injuries included a 14 year old male who was hit in the thigh by one of the shrapnel fragments, a 35 year old male also with a shrapnel injury, and a 4 year old girl with a head wound from flying shrapnel.
To the east of Gaza city, in the Sheyjaiee district close to the eastern border, also on the same day, 7 year old Ahmed Hassanian was outside his house with friends around 9:45 am. He lies now in critical condition in Shifa hospital’s ICU, a bullet still lodged in his brain and with such brain hemorrhaging and damage that he is expected to die shortly.
Mu’awiyah Hassanain, the director of Ambulance and Emergency Services, reports shelling in the northwestern coastal area of As Sudaniya on the same morning, saying five fishermen were injured in the attacks.
Israeli warplanes, on the first day of the ceasefire, flew extremely low and loudly over areas of Gaza, leaving residents expecting the worst. Drones capable of photographing and of dropping lethal, targeted missiles, continued to circle in Gaza’s skies for the first 3 days after the tanks retreated and the air-bombing ceased. At 8:30 am, one of these drones dropped 2 missiles in the Amal area east of Beit Hanoun, wounding a woman and an 11 year old child, who later died of her injuries.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports further violations of the cease-fire.
At 10:40, Israeli troops killed Maher abu Rjaila, 23, shooting him in the chest as he walked on his land east of Khan Younis city.
Two days later, at 1:00pm, Israeli soldiers fired on residents of Al Qarara, near Khan Younis, shooting Waleed al-Astal, 42, in his right foot.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 1, 330, with as many as 200 more bodies expected to be recovered from under the rubble of the over 5,000 destroyed houses and 20,000 buildings.
Dr. Fawzi Nablusi, director of Shifa’s ICU, said that of the cases in Shifa’s ICU, 90% were civilian, of these 50% were women and children. One of those civilians injured the day before Israel’s ceasefire was Mohammed Jarboua. Also from the Beach camp, the 21 year old is clinically brain dead, surviving only on mechanical life-support, after being shot in the head by Israeli naval forces.
The Director of Shifa hospital, Dr. Hassan Khalaf, and Mu’awiyah Hassanain confirmed that since the ceasefire began on January 18, three more Palestinians have been killed, and 15 more injured, 10 of those injured on January 22nd.
These ceasefire violations are not a new precedent, as during the 6 month ceasefire which began on June 19th, Israeli forces routinely targeted and fired upon fishermen and farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, injuring 62, according to Palestinian sources. During this period, 22 Palestinians were also killed, many of them members of resistance groups, and 38 fishermen and farmers were abducted. The truce period saw border crossings mainly closed, completely sealed them from November 4, 2008 with only the briefest of openings.
As the dust settles and noxious chemical fires continue to smolder, Gazans focus on their immediate needs: housing, food, and in many cases locating lost family members still under the rubble.
The root of the problem continues: the nearly 2 year old siege on Gaza, not relaxed under the 6 month ceasefire as agreed, and which had already decimated Gaza’s health and sanitation infrastructures, and had shattered the economy. From the ruins of Gaza, any signs of an end to the siege are far beyond the broken horizon.
*bullet lodged in Ahmed Hassanin’s brain.
*Ahmed Hassanin.
Nisreen al Quqa, hit with shrapnel from Israeli shelling on January 22nd.
Yasser Abed, 15, shrapnel to the head from Israeli gunboat firing, January 22nd.
*Mohammed Jarboua, 21, clinically brain-dead after shrapnel from Israeli gunboat firing on January 17th.
Wanted War Criminals
Wanted War Criminals
WANTED WAR CRIMINALS: USED ILLEGAL WEAPONS IN A WAR AGAINST CHILDREN, WOMEN AND CIVILIANS IN GAZA
Arrest warrant: FOR WAR CRIMES
AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Anyone who has information about the suspects when they are outside of the Israeli borders, report immediately to:
The Prosecutor
POBox 19519
2500 Hague
Netherlands
Fax +31 70 515 8 555
otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int
For more information please visit :
Monday, January 26, 2009
Israel admits using white phosphorous in attacks on Gaza
(Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
The incident being investigated is believed to be the firing of white phosphorous shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya on January 17
From The Times
January 24, 2009
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After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive.
The army’s use of white phosphorus – which makes a distinctive shellburst of dozens of smoke trails – was reported first by The Times on January 5, when it was strenuously denied by the army. Now, in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry, Israel has been forced to backtrack on that initial denial. “Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident.”
The incident in question is thought to be the firing of phosphorus shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on January 17. The weapon is legal if used as a smokescreen in battle but it is banned from deployment in civilian areas. Pictures of the attack show Palestinian medics fleeing as blobs of burning phosphorus rain down on the compound.
To read the complete article click here
CHANGING TUNE
January 5 The Times reports that telltale smoke has appeared from areas of shelling. Israel denies using phosphorus
January 8 The Times reports photographic evidence showing stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells. Israel Defence Forces spokesman says: “This is what we call a quiet shell – it has no explosives and no white phosphorus”
January 12 The Times reports that more than 50 phosphorus burns victims are taken into Nasser Hospital. An Israeli military spokesman “categorically” denies the use of white phosphorus
January 15 Remnants of white phosphorus shells are found in western Gaza. The IDF refuses to comment on specific weaponry but insists ammunition is “within the scope of international law”
January 16 The United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters are hit with phosphorus munitions. The Israeli military continues to deny its use
January 21 Avital Leibovich, Israel’s military spokeswoman, admits white phosphorus munitions were employed in a manner “according to international law”
January 23 Israel says it is launching an investigation into white phosphorus munitions, which hit a UN school on January 17. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF is holding an investigation concerning one specific unit and one incident” Source: Times database
To read the complete article click here
THE DAY ISRAEL USED A BOY AGED 13 AS A HUMAN SHIELD
Muhammad Badwan was grabbed by officers and tied by an arm to the grille covering the windscreen of their security vehicle (circled).
Last night the 13-year-old’s father said the police had illegally used his son as a human shield to try to stop demonstrators throwing stones at them.
‘When I saw him on the hood of the jeep, my whole mind went crazy, ‘ said Saeed Baswan, a 34-year-old labourer. ‘It’s a picture you can’t even imagine. He was shivering from fear.’
Muhammad said: ‘I was scared when they got me at first. I thought they would put me in prison. I was scared a stone would hit me.’
The incident happened in Muhammad’s home village of Biddo, north-west of Jurusalem, which has become a flashpoint for violence between Israeli forces and demonstrators protesting against the building of an Israeli security fence.
The picture was published by an Israeli human rights group trying to expose the behavior of some Israeli security personnel. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis For Human Rights, heard about the boy and tried to intervene with the police, demanding he be released.
The rabbi claimed he was head-butted by one of the officers and arrested. He said he intended to press charges against the police.
‘The boy was sitting on the hood of a vehicle, unsuccessfully trying to hold back his tears, shivering with fright, and with one arm tied to the screen protecting the windshield,’ he said.
‘We tried to calm him down and reassure him. I asked if he was hurt. He said he had been beaten and was in pain.
‘It is very depressing that we have come to this position where this is what we do.’The Israeli police said they were investigating the incident.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Falk likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
US journalists call Livni a 'terrorist'
Shortly after signing anti-smuggling agreement with Secretary of State Rice, foreign minister attends event at Washington Press Club. Several journalists take advantage of opportunity to shoot accusations at her over Gaza operation
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON – Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was surprised Friday night by three journalists who shot accusations at her over the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
The incident took place at the Washington Press Club, after Livni signed a cooperation agreement with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aimed at preventing the smuggling of weapons from Iran to Hamas.
One of the journalists called Livni a "terrorist" and complained that Israel was preventing reporters from covering the war in Gaza.
"What, are you like Zimbabwe?" another woman told the foreign minister.
The journalists took advantage of the opportunity and the stage to read out sections from human rights organizations' reports on Israel's conduct during Operation Cast Lead.
Livni's bodyguards were on high alert when at a certain stage one person, who did not introduce himself, began accusing Israel of murdering innocent civilians.
The event's host asked the man to settle for one question, but the latter cried out, "You let her speak here and don't let as ask questions. Since when are terrorists accommodated here?"
In spite of the unpleasant incident, the foreign minister kept cool and reiterated Israel's traditional stances. She stressed that Israel had left the Gaza Strip three years ago and was forced to return as part of a military operation.
"Nonsense," Livni replied, adding "we work together. Defense Minister Barak and I are doing the job. I work according to my commitments as the foreign minister. We work together with the prime minister to defend Israel's citizens."
The improbable civilian and the impossible victim
Take a piece of land,
40 kilometres long (24 Miles),
and about 5 kilometres wide...only.
Call it Gazza.
Then ,fill it with 1,4 Million inhabitants
Then put the sea on the West side
Mubarak's Egypt in the South
Israel from the North and East.
Call it the Terrorist-Land.
Then declare war on it and invade it
with 232 Tanks
687 Armoured Vehicles
43 Jet Fighter Places
105 Gun-Ship-Helicopters
221 field-artillery batteries
346 Mortar guns
3 Spy satellites
64 informers
12 inside-spies
and 8.000
Now , stop a while
and declare that "you shall avoid
harming the civilians."
Call it the only Democracy ,at work.
It will be a miracle , by any standards ,
to avoid harming those civilians or simply a lie
if anyone could avoid harming them.......
unless he is a liar !!
Call it defending Israel ,again
Now comes my question:
what if this invader is a liar and a war criminal ??
what will happen to those crowded civilians ??
How could , even Mother Teresa ,or even Mickey Mouse,
with such a fire-power ,avoid harming the civilians
in such an equation/situation/scenario .
Call it what ever you want .
Israel knew ,
very well,about the Gazza-civilians
because it has put them there !!
Call it Genocide !.........it is more credible.
Raja Chemayel
a civilian with a PC
17.01.2009
The Independent: Hamas announces ceasefire after Israel declares truce
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Hamas said today it would cease fire immediately along with other militant groups in the Gaza Strip and give Israel, which already declared a unilateral truce, a week to pull its troops out of the territory.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier that if a ceasefire held in the Hamas-ruled enclave, Israel could start the process of withdrawing its forces.
"Hamas and the factions announce a ceasefire in Gaza starting immediately and give Israel a week to withdraw," said Ayman Taha, a Hamas official in Cairo for talks with Egypt on a truce deal.
The Islamist group said previously it would not stop its attacks as long as Israeli soldiers remained in the Gaza Strip.
Taha said Hamas was demanding the opening of all Gaza border crossings for the entry of "all materials, food, goods and basic needs". Israel tightened its blockade of the Gaza Strip after Hamas seized the territory from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
Just hours earlier, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets into southern Israel in defiance of the unilateral ceasefire that Olmert declared late on Saturday and which went into effect at 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Sunday.
Olmert said Israel would not bring its troops home until Hamas ceased fire completely and he threatened its military would respond strongly to any attacks on the soldiers or cross-border rocket salvoes.
Palestinians rushed to remove bodies from rubble and survey damage to homes damaged or destroyed since Israel launched on Dec. 27 its most powerful offensive in the enclave in decades.
Leaders from Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were to meet in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh within hours to coordinate policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Israel must allow full access to humanitarian workers, and to relief supplies," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters en route to the summit. "We must also end Gaza's economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world.
Egypt said the gathering would try to help it turn the ceasefire Israel declared into a mutual agreement leading to Israeli withdrawal from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
During the 22-day-long offensive, Israeli attacks killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, including some 700 civilians, Gaza medical officials said. Israel said hundreds of gunmen were among the dead. Ten Israeli soldiers were killed as well as three Israeli civilians hit by rockets.
The mounting civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip and mounting destruction and hardship in the territory brought strong international pressure on Israel to stop the offensive.
Hours after the Israeli ceasefire began, Gaza militants fired five rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, causing no casualties, an Israeli military spokesman said. By the afternoon, another nine rockets hit Israel, police said.
Israeli aircraft staged what appeared to be a limited response, attacking sites where the rockets were launched.
In the first reported fatality since the ceasefire began, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces near the town of Khan Younis after mortar bombs were fired from the area, medical workers said. They identified him as a civilian.
In an address late on Saturday, Olmert said the Israeli operation, launched with the declared aim of ending cross-border rocket attacks that had killed 18 people in Israel over the previous eight years, had achieved all its objectives.
Olmert cited internationally backed understandings with Egypt, Gaza's southern neighbour, on preventing Hamas from rearming through smuggling tunnels as a reason behind Israel's decision to call off its attacks.
Left unsettled was an issue at the heart of the conflict - Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas, though hit hard by the air and ground campaign, remains the de facto force within the coastal enclave.
Without an accord with Hamas, diplomats said they feared Israel would let only a trickle of goods into Gaza, hampering reconstruction and creating more hardship for its people.
Olmert, speaking about today's rocket attacks, told his cabinet that Israel was reassessing the ceasefire constantly and troops were "prepared to act in any area" if "violations such as those that occurred this morning continue".
Hours after the ceasefire began, Israeli soldiers moved out of Beit Lahiya, an area militants have used as a launching ground for cross-border rocket strikes.
Palestinian ambulances picked up more than 95 bodies, most of them gunmen, that had lain in the rubble of buildings and open areas in and around Beit Lahiya, Hamas police and health officials said.
Residents who had left during the fighting returned to survey what remained of their homes. Children picked through the debris to uncover school bags and torn books.
A column of Israeli tanks and soldiers, some holding Israeli flags, withdrew from the Gaza Strip for what the army called "rest and relaxation".
But several of the tanks established a position 100 metres (yards) inside Gaza while others remained deployed on the eastern edge of the city of Gaza.
Israeli forces reopened the main north-south Gaza road, which they had closed during the conflict, but witnesses said tanks were still stationed along the route.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The IDF has no mercy for the children in Gaza nursery schools
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055574.html
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent
The fighting in Gaza is "war deluxe." Compared with previous wars, it is child's play - pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight. All this must be said openly, before we begin exulting in our heroism and victory.
This war is also child's play because of its victims. About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children - 311, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 270 according to the B'Tselem human rights group - out of the 1,000 total killed as of Wednesday. Around 1,550 of the 4,500 wounded have also been children according to figures from the UN, which says the number of children killed has tripled since the ground operation began.
This is too large a proportion by any humanitarian or ethical standard.
It is enough to look at the pictures coming from Shifa Hospital to see how many burned, bleeding and dying children now lie there. History has seen innumerable brutal wars take countless lives.
But the horrifying proportion of this war, a third of the dead being children, has not been seen in recent memory.
God does not show mercy on the children at Gaza's nursery schools, and neither does the Israel Defense Forces. That's how it goes when war is waged in such a densely populated area with a population so blessed with children. About half of Gaza's residents are under 15.
No pilot or soldier went to war to kill children. Not one among them intended to kill children, but it also seems neither did they intend not to kill them. They went to war after the IDF had already killed 952 Palestinian children and adolescents since May 2000.
The public's shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing. One can blame Hamas for the death of children, but no reasonable person in the world will buy these ludicrous, flawed propagandistic goods in light of the pictures and statistics coming from Gaza.
One can say Hamas hides among the civilian population, as if the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv is not located in the heart of a civilian population, as if there are places in Gaza that are not in the heart of a civilian population. One can also claim that Hamas uses children as human shields, as if in the past our own organizations fighting to establish a country did not recruit children.
A significant majority of the children killed in Gaza did not die because they were used as human shields or because they worked for Hamas. They were killed because the IDF bombed, shelled or fired at them, their families or their apartment buildings. That is why the blood of Gaza's children is on our hands, not on Hamas' hands, and we will never be able to escape that responsibility.
The children of Gaza who survive this war will remember it. It is enough to watch Nazareth-born Juliano Mer Khamis' wonderful movie "Arna's Children" to understand what thrives amid the blood and ruin we are leaving behind. The film shows the children of Jenin - who have seen less horror than those of Gaza - growing up to be fighters and suicide bombers.
A child who has seen his house destroyed, his brother killed and his father humiliated will not forgive.
The last time I was allowed to visit Gaza, in November 2006, I went to the Indira Gandhi nursery school in Beit Lahia. The schoolchildren drew what they had seen the previous day: an IDF missile striking their school bus, killing their teacher, Najwa Halif, in front of their eyes. They were in shock. It is possible some of them have now been killed or wounded themselves.
to recognise Israel
but never the Truth.
16.Jan.2009
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