Monday, August 25, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014
7 Facts You Have To Know About Gaza
7 Facts You Have To Know About Gaza • Menzene.com
By Raoof Zubair
Since the last few weeks we have been hearing a lot about Gaza and particularly related to the atrocities that are being committed by the Israeli Defense Force on unarmed civilians in the region. Many have been voicing out their concern and held numerous protests across the globe against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. But do you really know exactly what is Gaza like? Read on to know a bit more about this place that has been in the news for quite some time now.
1. Size of Gaza
Gaza is located on the Banks of the Mediterranean sea and is only 45 km (25 miles) long and at most 10 km (6 miles) wide. It borders Egypt to it south-west and Israel to its north and east. It is separated from the other part of Palestine known as the West Bank with Israel in between.
2. Population
1.5 Million People live in Gaza, half of whom are under the age of 14. A sizable population of adults remain unemployed around 35%.The population density is 20000 people per square mile, one of the highest in the world. The annual growth rate of the population is 3.5%. It is projected that by the end of 2017 its population will be 2 Million.
75% of the population in Gaza are refugees who were forced out of their original homeland in modern day Israel during the 1948 and 1967 wars. Their decedents have permanently been barred from returning to their homeland. According to Humanitarian Aid groups average income in Gaza is less than $2 per day and nearly 80% of the Gazzans survive on food aid.
3.Governance
Egypt controlled Gaza until 1967, when Israel occupied it (along with the West Bank) in the Six Day War. From then onwards Israel governed the region till 2005. Following which it withdrew away from Gaza, but still controls Gaza’s air space and maritime access. Israel even control’s the entire region’s border crossings except the Rafa crossing which is controlled by Egypt. All flow of goods into and outside Gaza are still controlled by Israel that includes basic necessitates such as food, electricity, water, fuel and humanitarian aid.
4. Hamas was democratically elected
Pushed by the George W. Bush administration, the Palestinian Authority held popular elections across the West Bank and Gaza for the Palestinian legislature in 2006. Hamas won a slight majority and is governing the region ever since.
5. Fishing limits
Since Israel controls Gaza’s maritime the Palestinian fishermen are allowed to fish only within 3 nautical miles (5.5 Km) from the sea coast.
6. No go zone on the Israeli border
The Israeli Defense force maintains a 1 Km buffer zone or no go zone inside Gaza all along the entire Israeli-Gaza Border. The border also includes high-tech observation posts which have a biometric scanner and can track records of people that come near the buffer zone. There have been few reports of some Palestinians being killed once they are in the buffer zone.
7. Tunnels in Gaza are important
The tunnels in Gaza are excessively important as they serve as a lifeline for this tiny strip of desert land. These tunnels carry basic necessities and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Majority of the tunnels run into Egypt.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Let My People Go
On August 9th, 2014 a rally supporting the people in Gaza took place at Columbus Circle in NYC. The rally lasted for 2 hours which was followed by a march to the United Nations.
This is that special speech that Chris Hedges wanted to deliver that day. He talked about the historical and religious background to what is the re-occurring violence in the area that the Israelis and Palestinians presently live in.
Chris Hedges, Gaza Rally in NYC: God's Covenant in the Promised Land
God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with those who pilot F-16 fighter jets that drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs over the concrete hovels of Gaza. It was not made with those operating Apache or Cobra attack helicopters that unleash lethal fire over crowded refugee camps. It was not made with drone operators that clinically kill children ... outside mosques. It was not made with M-60 tank units and artillery crews that murder families huddled in terror in their homes. It was not made with those on gunboats that slaughter boys playing on a beach. It was not made with those that fire Sidewinder missiles and drop 250-pound “smart bombs” on apartment blocks. It was not made with snipers from the Golani Brigade that gun down unarmed men and women for sport. It was not made with occupiers that reduce an entire people to a starvation diet—indeed count the calories to keep them barely alive—or to those who use words like “mowing the lawn” to justify the indiscriminant slaughter of innocents.
God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with politicians—including every member of the U.S. Senate—that mouth words for peace and perpetuate war, that call for justice and perpetuate injustice, that refuse to stand up for the rule of law and the right of a captive people to be free.
God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made, finally, with any race or religion. It was not made with the Jews. It was not made with the Muslims. It was not made with the Christians. God’s covenant—in the Bible and the Koran—was made with the righteous. When Ibrahim asked in the holy Koran if the covenant could be inherited, he was told bluntly: “My covenant is not given to oppressors.” And God’s iron requirement to stand with the oppressed occurs as well in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. Those who turn away from righteousness—be they Jew, Christian or Muslim—violate that covenant. They are not God’s people.
God’s covenant is made with those who love mercy and do justice, with those who care for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, with those who frustrate the ways of the wicked, with those who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the brokenhearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to all those in prison, including those imprisoned in Gaza. God’s covenant is with those men and women—Jews, Christians and Muslims, believers and nonbelievers—who say, “Let my people go, oppressed so hard they could not stand. Let my people go.” And God calls these people oaks of righteousness. And they are God’s people.
Why does God weep in the Promised Land?
God weeps because families, huddled in terror in their homes, are dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs. God weeps because mothers howl in grief over the bodies of their children in U.N. schools hit by Israeli shells. God weeps because the old and disabled, who could not flee the deadly Israeli advance, died helpless and afraid. God weeps because the powerful, here and in Israel, lie and dissemble to justify murder. And God weeps for all those who stand by and do nothing.
God weeps because the assault on Gaza is not about Israel’s right to self-defense or about removing Hamas from power. It is not about achieving peace. God weeps because the assault on Gaza is about the decades-long campaign to destroy and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land. God weeps because Israel is constructing squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians is barely sustainable. God weeps because Israel restricts or shuts off movement, food, medicine and goods to accentuate the human misery. God weeps because Israel has turned Gaza, now largely without power, running water and sewage [systems], into a vast gulag.
God weeps because the failure to condemn Israeli war crimes by our political establishment and our compliant media betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. God weeps because we have failed to learn the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are unique or eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide, and you do not, you are culpable. And we [Americans], who provide 95 percent of Israel’s weapons, are very culpable.
All tyrants fall under the weight of their own depravity. Justice does come. The captives are set free. There will be a day when the instruments of war will no longer leave our shores to be delivered into the hands of killers. Not one bullet. And those who have broken God’s covenant will feel the blast of justice, the fury of the righteous who will rise up on behalf of the oppressed.
Peace in the Promised Land is in our hands. It will not come from politicians here or in Jerusalem. It will not come from courts of law. It will not come from international bodies.
Peace in the Promised Land will come when those who love mercy and do justice build a sustained mass movement—as we did against the apartheid regime in South Africa—week after week, month after month, year after year until the captives are set free. Peace in the Promised Land will come when we force, through boycotts, divestments and sanctions, the powerful to end the blockade of Gaza and deny the instruments of death to Israel. But it is up to us. We are all that stands between the Palestinians and obliteration.
The road to justice will be long and hard. It will require sacrifice, including personal sacrifice. Those who worship power cling furiously to it. And they will use that power against us. Our names will be reviled. Our voices will be marginalized. Our motives will be impugned. Our character will be assaulted. Our bodies will be taxed. We will be jailed. And we will know frustration and despair.
The road to justice will be long and hard. But there is no turning back, for we are no longer driven by a vision of suffering but possessed by it. We hear the cries from Gaza. We carry these cries within us. We will not rest until there is a balm to anoint the afflicted. We will not rest until there is comfort and justice for the oppressed. We will not rest until the children of Gaza have their childhood returned to them. We will not rest until the people of Gaza, no longer imprisoned, live in a free and independent Palestine.
Let my people go,Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People go.Go down, Moses,Way down in Egypt’s land,Tell old Pharaoh,Let my people go.
Monday, August 11, 2014
We Are Gaza. Look Into Our Eyes.
We Are Gaza. Look Into Our Eyes.
Published on Aug 8, 2014
(watch the full interview with Kash here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KL57...)
White
White phosphorus burning meat off the civilian bones, burning the single moms hopes of peace, chemical gas greeting the dusty morning sunshine, shelling orchestrating a symphony of death, breath by breath, the long forgotten dream of survival awakens the nightmare of Israel’s arrival, Airstrikes, ground invasion, the rape and theft of an entire nation,Media, money, and mendacity corroding the remains of a heart sold to the musings of Zionist colonial congregation, the truth locked behind the delusion of defense, the a victimizing story lying about Zionist glory….
return the military funding and start the next chapter of your story, the blood NEVER washes off but your comatose conscience will greet the beauty of compassion as the scars of a killer begin to close with vigor, you’ll soon walk upright evolving in the gaza sunlight
The chemicals in the water can’t be prayed away, Zionism is here to stay
White mobs in the streets, chanting death to peace, leave the defenseless Palestinians deceased, burn the olive trees, drain the pipes of hope and wash away the resistance in the streets, cut the electric lines, poison in the food supply, divide the dirt from the earth to the sky, go to sleep Miley Cyrus has a new song, the newest Iphone will sing you songs all day long, the lullaby that takes a lifetime too long,
just stay passive don’t speak of JUSTICE until dust from bombs dropped on Gaza sits
White cloth covers the corpse of a comrade called Mohammed Hussein Saeed Abu Khudair, at 16 occupying the cemetery the creation of a corrupt colonial congregation, could’ve called him my cousin, the white cloth covers his future contributions, cowards pumped gasoline in the blood stream to light his soft skin, pumped adrenaline in the veins to ensure he’s conscious and awake, while the fire on the flesh forces his fate, the smell of skin burning, the sand storm of bombs dropped on the beaches, flesh wounds, butchered pieces
Well….
Take a long look in our eyes, we are the insect in your ears, the rust upon your gears, the resistance you fear, the faith you smear, the justice you want to disappear
We are the Palestinian mothers who continue to send their children to school amidst gunfire, children they gave birth to behind a checkpoint, take a long look
We are the shame on the face of a Zionist at the point of realization, the crux of courage to refute the support of a gangster nation, take a long look
We are the tears of a father holding his mangled child in a hospital about to be set to the fire, take a long look
We are the soldier turning against his battalion, the drone operator turned freedom fighter, take a long look
We are the world knocking at your front door come outside and face the bombs you fight for, the guns your taxes afford, the death your cheering citizens SALIVATE for,
So take a long long look into our eyes, justice is frozen in time, FREE FREE PALESTINE!!
by Khashayar Nikazmrad
Saturday, August 2, 2014
US Resupplies Israel with Weapons
Gaza Death Toll Hits Over 1380, US Resupplies Israel with Weapons
The United States confirmed it had restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition, hours after finally sharpening its tone to condemn an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza that killed 16 people sheltering there.
Israeli airstrikes and shelling continued overnight and into the morning leaving 17 Gazans dead and dozens injured, bringing the 24-day death toll to 1,380 with 8,000 injured, according to the Ministry of Health. The Israeli military confirmed that 20 “sites” had been hit overnight.
The dead included five people, including Majdi Fseifis, 22, killed in a bombing that hit a crowd of civilians near a mosque in the Abasan area east of Khan Younis.
Also in Khan Younis, one Palestinian was killed and four were wounded in a strike that hit a motorcycle in the Ma’an area south of the city.
Maha Abd al-Nabi Salim Abu Hilal was killed in a strike on her home that also “seriously” injured her husband and three children. She was brought to Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital.
Suleiman Baraka, 31, and Aref Baraka, 58, were also killed in a strike, and their bodies were both brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
At least 55 were wounded after the al-Hamoud house in Beit Lahiya was hit at dawn. Injuries were also reported during an Israeli strike on the home of the al-Haw family as well as against Block 7 in Jabaliya.
Israeli aircraft also targeted a house east of al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip belonging to Abu Abdullah Abu Huwayshal, destroying it completely.
Violent clashes broke out between Palestinian fighters and Israelis forces in the Nabahin field east of al-Bureij.
The dead overnight included Yusuf Ibrahim, 19, son of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs who died of wounds sustained in an Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp the day before. Ahmad al-Luh died early Thursday in al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital as a result of injuries as well.
The deaths in the besieged Gaza Strip come on the 24th day of an Israeli assault which has nearly topped the death toll from the 2008-9 Cast Lead, the bloodiest attack on the area in memory when Israel killed 1,400 in 22 days.
Israel launched the current assault — called Operation Protective Edge — in early July as part of what it said was an effort to combat rockets, but has since changed the focus to destroying what it say are tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel.
Rocket fire into Israel increased in late June and early July after Israel launched a sweeping assault on Hamas across the West Bank, killing nearly a dozen, injuring more than 100, and leading to more than 1,000 arrests, along with nightly airstrikes on Gaza.
Hamas has insisted that any ceasefire include an end to the eight-year Israeli blockade, which has severely crippled the tiny coastal enclave’s economy and led to recurring shortages of basic goods.
Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have signaled their refusal to end the assault without inflicting heavy damage on Palestinian military capabilities.
Palestinian paramedics move a victim of an Israeli air strike on a market to an
ambulance in Shujaiyya on Wednesday (AFP Mahmud Hams)
No Blame for Israel
While both the White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Wednesday in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, neither would assign blame to staunch US ally Israel.
“Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of the 23-day fighting in the Gaza Strip.
“Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering some 3,300 Gazans.
But despite heated exchanges with reporters, Harf stressed that “we don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts.”
National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned “those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza” and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal strip.
US officials also warned that patience with “crazy” Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.
New Ammunition for Israel
The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defense Department approving the sale just three days later.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.
“This defense sale is consistent with those objectives.”
Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.
The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.
Kirby said Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart that the United States was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiraling conflict, including a “worsening humanitarian situation” in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.
He also renewed calls for the disarmament of Gaza’s Hamas rulers and “all terrorist groups.”
Anonymous Israeli officials have hit out at Kerry’s truce proposal, calling it “a strategic terrorist attack” and criticizing it for being a “Hamas wish-list” including moves to lift a long-standing Israeli blockade of Gaza while failing to address Israel’s security concerns, such as Hamas rocket fire and a network of underground tunnels.
And on Tuesday a fabricated transcript of a call between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went viral on social media.
Out to Hurt Ties?
Stressing the “unprecedented” US support for Israel, Harf hit out at Israeli elites’ “offensive and absurd” claims that Kerry backs Hamas.
She rubbished the fake transcript as “complete crap,” adding “there’s clearly people … who are putting out false and defamatory and absurd information.”
“I don’t know what else you can assume about the intentions except that they’re designed to hurt our relationship,” she added.
Washington, which has provided billions in military aid to Israel, including funding the Iron Dome shield protecting the country from Hamas rockets, was “very committed” to Israel’s security, which is “why these vicious attacks on the secretary are just crazy,” she added.
And US lawmakers are working on a package of additional military support from Washington to commit $225 million for the Iron Dome missile defense shield.
More than 100 people died in Israeli strikes across Gaza Wednesday, medics said, including 17 at a crowded marketplace, sending the Palestinian toll from the 23 days of fighting to 1,363.
On the Israeli side, the conflict has cost the lives of 56 Israeli soldiers, and two civilians, as well as that of a Thai national.
9 Effective Ways To Boycott Israel
As Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians and attacks on Gaza show, Israel will continue its belligerence and state terrorism unless it is made to pay a heavy price for its crimes against the Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab peoples.
Initiated by an overwhelming majority of Palestinian grassroots organisations in 2005 and inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is now a widespread international movement.
BDS is proving capable of winning mass support and persuading companies, cultural institutions, artists and governments to join or observe the boycott of Israel.
The successes and growth of the global BDS movement has only been possible because of the creative and determined action by conscientious people and organizations and unions across the world.
The BDS movement is supported and led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), and we’ve put together this set of ideas on how to support in the BDS movement.
Get involved today and help to build the international BDS movement against Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid.
1. Boycott goods of Israeli companies as well as international companies involved in Israel’s human rights violations
The most basic step is to stop buying products and services of Israeli companies and, whenever feasible, of international companies involved in Israel’s human rights violations. Try to encourage your friends, family and community to join you in doing so.
It differs from country to country, but the most common Israeli exports include:
- fresh fruit and vegetables such as Jaffa citrus fruits and Israeli Medjoul Dates
- Ahava cosmetics
- SodaStream drinks machines
- Eden Springs bottled water
- Golan Heights Wineries and other Israeli wines
There are many international companies that are complicit in Israeli violations of international law. Examples include HP, Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, among many others.
Trying to boycott the products of every single company that participates in Israeli apartheid is a daunting task that has a slim change of having a concrete impact.
It makes more sense to focus on optimal targets that are being targeted as part of national or international campaigns. Consumer boycotts are most effective when part of a broader campaign against a particular product or aiming to pressure a retailer to stop selling a particular Israeli product.
Get in contact with a BDS organisation in your area to find out what companies and products are being targeted and how to support local campaigns. If no such organization exists, start your own campaign, in coordination with well-recognized BDS organizations.
2. Follow us on social media and help spread the word
There are new BDS successes and developments nearly every day. Help to magnify the impact of the BDS movement by following us on Twitter and Facebook and sharing news of BDS successes on social media.
3. Learn more and share information about the BDS movement
Check out and consider sharing the pages in the Learn section of this website, including the Introduction to BDS, and the list of successes of the BDS movement since 2005.
You can Tweet about the BDS movement and follow developments using the hashtag #BDS.
4. Get involved in your area
There are vibrant organisations and campaigns in towns and cities all over the world that make an enormous contribution to boycott campaigns and the BDS movement as a whole.
Enter your details into our Get involved with a local BDS campaign form to be put in touch with a nearby group and start getting involved in local campaigning today.
5. Take action online
Online petitions and letter writing actions can be an important part of building pressure, especially when they are part of vibrant local campaigning too.
Check out bdsmovement.net/takeaction to find out about on-going online actions. If you have your own suggestions for BDS campaigns, please share them with us through email.
6. Campaign against your own community’s complicity in Israel’s violations of international law
Israel is only able to maintain its occupation and apartheid system because of the massive, unconditional support it receives from international governments, companies and institutions, such as universities.
Get in touch for ideas on how to research and campaign against links between your local community and the companies and institutions that enable Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies. Divesting pension or investment funds from companies involved in Israel’s human rights violations is a major component in many such campaigns.
7. Encourage an organisation you are a member of to endorse BDS
All across the world, trade unions, student unions, NGOs, faith groups and other organisations are getting behind the BDS movement, launching their own BDS campaigns and divesting any shares they hold in Israeli companies or international companies such as Veolia, G4S and HP that are implicated in Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Persuading a union or association that you are a member of to endorse the Palestinian civil society’s BDS call can be a long-term project but is a particularly effective way to reach large numbers of people and build mainstream support for the boycott movement.
8. Organise a boycott action at a retailer that sells Israeli goods
Boycott actions such as a protest or creative flashmob can be a great way to build awareness and support for the boycott of Israel and to pressure a retailer to stop stocking a particular product or Israeli goods in general.
Check out CODEPINK’s guide to organising a creative boycott action targeting Israeli cosmetics company Ahava. The guide works well for actions targeting other complicit products and companies too.
9. Share this list
Help to inspire others to take action by sharing this list via social media.
Friday, August 1, 2014
The propaganda war over the Gaza crisis
What is never even whispered in the corridors of power is some recognition that the people of Gaza should also have some right to be defended or protected if they are to be deprived of any meaningful right of resistance.
The propaganda war over the Gaza crisis
by Richard Falk
The Palestinian narrative starts by challenging the timeline that begins with the rockets launched from Gaza. It insists on the relevance of the prior anti-Hamas rampage in the West Bank that was decreed by the Netanyahu government as soon as it learned of the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers on June 12. It points to the immediate Israeli accusations of Hamas’ responsibility for the crime without providing to this day a shred of evidence to support such inflammatory charges, with no effort to refute a formal denial of involvement by Hamas. Beyond this, Max Blumenthal has reported convincingly that Israel suppressed information about the teens’ deaths, which it confirmed hours after the incident, allowing it to justify continuing a coercive and desperate search for them throughout the West Bank days after it was known that they were no longer alive.
It is too much to expect Hamas — or any political actor — to ignore such provocations without reacting in some way. And what way does Hamas have to react except by sending its mainly primitive rockets in Israel’s direction? This response is without a doubt contrary to international law, but what alternatives were open to Hamas other than sullen acquiescence? It was also the case that prior to the heavy flow of rockets, Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza, which appeared to be designed to induce a retaliation that could then provide Tel Aviv with justification to launch a massive military operation in line with the distasteful Israeli metaphor that “mowing the grass” — an indiscriminate punitive incursion — in Gaza is necessary to ensure that the region remains compliant.
Also relevant is a comprehensive unlawful blockade of Gaza that was established in mid-2007 and is widely viewed by international law experts as illegal because it amounts to the collective punishment of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million civilians. Collective punishment is unconditionally prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In this case, since Palestinian civilians are supposed to be protected by Israel as the occupying power, the violation of international humanitarian law is flagrant.
Through July 19, only two Israeli deaths resulted from rocket or mortar fire, while more than 336 Palestinians were killed, 75 to 80 percent of whom were civilians, according to United Nations reports. (The death toll now stands at at least 425 Palestinian and 20 Israeli deaths, according to the New York Times.) To be sure, the lopsided casualty disparity does not excuse firing indiscriminate rockets, some more recently, with sufficient range to hit the main Israeli cities. Yet this disparity does call for some recognition when diplomats talk piously about civilian suffering on both sides of the conflict.
Recent history
A bit of historical context seems appropriate. Israel in the past accompanied its massive military operations against Gaza with a self-serving narrative that is constructed on the basis of provocations. In November 2008 there was a truce in place that for months cut cross-border violence to almost zero. Israel launched an attack on what it claimed were Hamas militants near a tunnel, killing six, breaking the truce. In retaliation Hamas fired a salvo of rockets into Israel. As in the present crisis, Israeli hasbara (public relations) buried the truce and the Israeli raid, limiting discussion to Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks. There was a variety of secondary motives for Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and ’09 — an Israel Defense Forces ground invasion in Gaza to disarm Hamas militants — such as winning public favor for upcoming domestic elections in Israel, sending a message to Iran and making up for the poor IDF showing in the 2006 Lebanon war. For Gaza the carnage was terrible, with over 1,417 dead (compared with 13 Israelis).
In 2012 the situation was not very different. There had been a period of relative calm, with no Israelis killed by rocket fire in the entire period between the end of the earlier military operation and November 2012. Some tension arose that included rocket fire, but truce negotiations were underway, and in fact, a Hamas military leader, Ahmed Jabari, was on his way to deliver a signed agreement to his Israeli interlocutor when his car was targeted and he was assassinated by a missile. Once more, Hamas responded with a flurry of rockets, including some with longer range, and Israel responded with a preplanned major military operation code-named Pillar of Defense, which again caused much death and destruction in Gaza, killing 133 Palestinians. Hostilities ended with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire in which Israel promised to stop targeted assassinations, made some other concessions and agreed to hold negotiations designed to ease the Gaza blockade. The 2012 cease-fire agreement was never fully implemented by Israel.
From this review of military operations, a pattern emerges that should be distressing to objective observers concerned with peace and justice: a period of quiet, Israeli provocation, Hamas retaliation, then a major military Israeli offensive that is an extreme example of one-sided warfare, followed by international expressions of concern and initially ignored international calls for a cease-fire and finally a cease-fire. On each of these occasions the proclaimed Israeli goals of ending Hamas’ rocket firing capability were not realized, prompting questions rarely asked about whether Israel’s real goals were achieved but not disclosed: “mowing the grass,” testing weapons and tactics, warning the Palestinian Authority not to join forces with Hamas and reinforcing the Israeli image of being a ferocious adversary that should never be challenged.
No military solution
Behind this complex political maneuvering is a propaganda war that Israel is winning at the intergovernmental and mainstream media levels (and steadily losing at grass-roots and social media levels). Gaza is on the receiving end of most of the violence, suffering nearly all the death and destruction, Nevertheless, it is Hamas that is charged with acts of terrorism while Israel’s reliance on state terrorism is removed from view by being described as lawful and reasonable defensive action that is normal for any sovereign state faced with such a threat.
In the foreground — again rarely acknowledged — is the inadequacy of legal and moral categories used to describe what is taking place. Political leaders take some care to avoid claiming Israel’s right of self-defense but more vaguely speak of its right to defend its people from rockets and mortars fired into its territory. What is never even whispered in the corridors of power is some recognition that the people of Gaza should also have some right to be defended or protected if they are to be deprived of any meaningful right of resistance.
If international law holds that indiscriminate rockets are inherently unlawful, then what is left for Hamas to do other than surrender? Many have wondered why Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel when it endures such adverse consequences and yet does so little damage, rarely striking people or property. There is no convincing rational answer beyond noting that resistance to foreign occupation is a very fundamental political impulse. It also seems that Hamas has gradually acquired improved rocket technology and could at some future time threaten Israel with real physical harm and so is a kind of warning.
When Libyans in Benghazi were under dire threat in 2011, the U.N. authorized a no-fly zone as a protective initiative and then proceeded to initiate a regime-changing intervention to remove the threat from Muammar Gaddafi altogether. The U.N. acted in response to a showing of extreme civilian vulnerability. In the case of Gaza, the reality of extreme vulnerability has been in evidence over and over again, and yet all that is done is to show support for Israel’s recourse to war and piously urge restraint to limit civilian suffering.
As many observers have suggested, the conflict between Israel and Palestine has no military solution. It could remain unresolved indefinitely, with these periodic spikes in violence a reminder of the Palestinian ordeal. Repeatedly deferring a solution definitely favors Israel, for time has not been friendly to the Palestinians: In 1947, the U.N. offered the Palestinians 45 percent of historic Palestine. After the 1948 war, Palestinians were confined to 22 percent of the territory. Since the 1967 war, Israeli settlements, along with the separation wall and settler-only roads, have shrunk the Palestinian remnant to an even smaller fraction.
As if to confirm this view of the conflict, the Knesset recently elected Reuven Rivlin, an Israeli ardent one-stater, to be the next president of the country, signaling an increasing readiness to incorporate into Israel what Israelis call Judea and Samaria and the rest of the world knows as the West Bank. In other words, behind the iron and fire is a vision of how to complete the Zionist project without needing to offer the Palestinians anything more than minority rights. It is, perhaps, this triumphalist Zionist vision of the future that best explains why Israel launched this vicious attack on the long-beleaguered people of Gaza: to eliminate Hamas, the major obstruction to realizing that vision.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and research fellow at the Orfalea Center of Global & International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
Inscribing Palestine – A Poem
By Ramona Wadi
International abandonment
a horizon exploding in hideous light
beneath the massacred canopy
echoes of footsteps, voices, laments
the tapestry unravels,
threads suffocating street corners,
pavements, rubble and sand
melting faces dissipating
in kaleidoscopic chronology
smeared with crimson hues
parched land, resistant territory
tears trailing from the enclave
nurturing remembrance in green
inscribing Palestine from Gaza
a memory resilient against
an oblivious world, immersed
in a banquet of veins
ripped from bodies to sustain
the colonial massacre
speckled floors, white sheets bearing
the remains of displaced vengeance
ruptured children, peeling skin, exposed skulls
in incandescent assemblies, from varnished stands
imperialism claims interpretations justifying trophy relics
a transient applause constructed in rhetoric
a call emanates, individual tones
celebrating a common inscription
a harvest of Palestine for Palestinians, tangible
in the cacophony of disturbed dawn
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Israel’s Genocide in Gaza will Achieve No Goal
By Ahmed Meiloud
For over two weeks, the Gaza strip (already besieged for the past 7 years) has been subjected to continuous bombardment from air and sea. This is the third war to be waged on the strip in the span of 5 years and it is more than likely going to be the deadliest. Approximately 800 Gazans, mostly children and women, have already been murdered.
In the past 10 days, the Israelis have added their ground force to the fire power, using heavy caliber artillery and tanks to shell the densely populated strip, compounding the suffering of the population and increasing the scope and space of its ongoing massacre.
For those living in Gaza, language cannot depict the scale of the tragedy. Many families have lost all or most of their members. As one health official in Gaza said, “Entire families have been wiped out of the civil record.” This doesn’t seem to be the result of simple failure to observe the principle of “disproportionality,” but rather an evident disregard for life. Nowhere seems to be sacred or safe in the face of an onslaught, where residential areas are considered legitimate targets. Mosques, hospitals, ambulances, medical teams, UN run schools and children playing soccer on the beach have all been targeted.
The images look barbaric enough for anyone viewing, not experiencing them. But for the Palestinians, this is not the first time they find themselves before this ordeal. For the past 60 years, Israel has been slaughtering Palestinians wholesale with impunity. Ordering or participating in killing, displacing and dispossessing Palestinians are amongst the few things that any successful Israeli politician would have done at one point of his/her public career. As a nation, Israel was created by that very process of decimation, dispossessing, and displacement of Palestinians.
Gaza is a living testimony of that process. Most of its residents, who have been starved for the past 7 years and now bombed, are families who were originally forced in 1948 and 1967 to flee their hometowns and villages, which were subsequently annexed by Israel.
Contrary to the image of an Israeli victim of Arab terrorism, which many Western politicians allege, what is indeed taking place is the reverse. The suffering of the Palestinians as a result of the terror of the Israeli state is immeasurable. Beyond death and dispossession, generations of Palestinian children have been forced to endure unbearable psychological scars, as they were made refugees time and again.
Despite this, it is the Palestinians who are seen to be responsible for the war by much of Western media and the official rhetoric emerging from most Western capitals. In the face of the enormity of the Palestinian suffering, Western leaders (such as US Secretary of State John Kerry, UK Foreign Minister, Philip Hammond) have chosen to blame the victim and side with the oppressor.
In siding with the oppressor, these leaders invoke Israel’s right to self-defense. However, the facts on the ground don’t support this claim. A close look at the figures of the dead and the injured suggests the exact opposite. Israel is committing genocide, not engaging in self-defense.
In the past 17 days of the one-sided onslaught, there are over 780 Palestinians who were killed in targeting residential areas in Gaza. Over 4,000 have also been injured. The figure of internally displaced Palestinians has surpassed 120,000. The figures on the Israeli side are lower. Only dozens were killed and injured. The difference in both cases is not just in the asymmetry of the death toll. The nature of those killed is also indicative of the kind of conflict we are witnessing and the level of deception in the comments and communiqué issued in Western capitals about it.
Of the Israeli fatalities, 94% are military personnel (30 out of the 32 are soldiers). Most of those injured are soldiers as well. The ratio of combatant to civilian death on the Palestinian side is starkly different. According to the UN and the health services in Gaza, over 80% of those killed in Israeli raids and continuous shelling are civilians and one third are children. The UK Telegraph has recently published the names of 132 of these children. Today this number has risen to 181 according to UNICEF.
The genocidal nature of this onslaught is also clear from the circumstances of death as well. All the Palestinians killed, so far, were killed inside Palestinian borders, within residential areas and often as they stayed in their homes. In contrast, all Israeli fatalities (except two, the total number of those died as a result of rockets fired from Gaza) were engaged in combat.
Given the asymmetry of death, of the ratio of civilians to militants, and given the Israeli unchallenged dominance of air and sea space, it is genocide or ethnic cleansing that is more befitting descriptor of what Israel is doing in Gaza. Western leaders’ argument that Israel is defending itself is simply not supported by facts. It is morally reprehensible and inexcusable.
The Israelis claim that they are trying to neutralize the rocketry of the Palestinian resistance, which target Israeli towns. This claim is further strengthened by a corollary claim that Hamas, which runs the strip, is a terrorist organization. Western and Israeli leaders allege that it targets civilians. Today, the UK Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, speaking in Cairo, repeated the same claim and blamed Hamas for starting this round of conflict. But these claims are neither true, nor do they justify the savagery of the current onslaught on Gaza, where civilians, women and children, not rocket launchers are bearing the brunt of the assault.
The insinuation that Hamas has started this round of conflict is a lie. The current round started after three Israeli teenage settlers (one at least of whom was a soldier) were kidnapped and later found murdered. Although the event took place in the West Bank, and although no Palestinian group claimed responsibility, Israeli government immediately pointed fingers at Hamas. Hamas has denied involvement, knowledge of the teenagers’ kidnaping or who did it until it became news. Some press reports have pointed out that Israel deliberately misled its public and knew of the of the victims’ deaths and whereabouts days before it made that information public. A recent report in one German channel suggests that the Israeli government simply used the event as a pretext to attack Gaza. Despite its knowledge of the teenagers’ death, the Israeli government continued to raid and arrest Palestinian activists under the pretext that it was conducting a search for the abducted.
In the process, Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians and killed a dozen. Many of the arrested were prisoners who were originally freed as a part of a prisoners’ swap with Hamas in 2011. This was not only a breach of the terms of the prisoners’ exchange but a clear provocation to involve Hamas. To add more fuel to the fire, Israeli settlers kidnapped and burned a Palestinian boy alive. It is within these circumstances that the resistance groups in Gaza began firing missiles toward Israeli cities in retaliation to the collective punishment, mass arrests and killing of Palestinian activists.
Beyond the immediate context, Israel deliberately breached the 2012 ceasefire brokered by Egypt, which mandated Israel to lift the siege on Gaza. Israel did the opposite. It tightened the siege. Since the fall of Morsi, Egypt joined Israelis in the effort to isolate Gaza, closing its borders, making the already unbearable situation catastrophic.
It is now the position of the Palestinian groups that Israel must first cease its onslaught on Gaza and honor its earlier agreements. Quieting the missiles in Gaza, without lifting the siege, will only mean more suffering to the crowded strip. Israel’s choice to violate its agreements and to focus its military campaign on residential areas is what defines the current conflict and manufactures the tragedy. The solution therefore lies in integrating Gaza through trade with the rest of the world.
The notion advanced in an article published today on the Foreign Policy’s website that Israel is compelled to pursue “an eye for a tooth” policy to establish deterrence is not only a disingenuous attempt to make palatable the cowardly mass killing of civilians. It is misguided in essence as well. Israel has exhausted all violent means to force Palestinians to submission and has so far earned neither rest nor reverence. Deterrence has always been an Israeli policy objective and has always failed. Despite its disproportionality, and Western praise of its efficient military establishment, Israel is not safer today than the time when it pursued deterrence against Palestinians armed mostly with stones. Rather than being a constructive course that would contribute to a peaceful future, Israeli attempts to bomb Palestinians to submission is only going to create further risks for its future generations and diminish the prospect for any peace. It is relatively cheaper for the Israelis to withdraw from the Occupied Territories in 1967 and to stop besieging Gaza from sea, air and ground.
Despite the factual errors about the 2006 war on Lebanon in FP’s article, the allusion to a parallel with Gaza is a stretch. Unlike Hezbollah in Lebanon, who kidnapped soldiers to trade for its prisoners in Israel, an objective it successfully achieved, the Palestinian Resistance is driven by a much bigger and, for that matter, a more just cause. Resistance against occupation is enshrined in all laws and highly regarded by all cultures (including the West whose moral superiority the FP’s article praises), and it is not going to stop regardless of what the outcome of the current killing spree in Gaza is. Israel’s deterrence has been eroding and whatever moral claims it had is also vanishing into thin air with every child blown to bits and pieces by its artillery or bombers. That trend will continue.
The Palestinians do not stand alone and the Israeli brutality will only rekindle the anti-Israeli sentiment in the region. The fact that many of the neighbors are either busy in their own civil wars or are shackled by despots is not a guarantee of a stable future. The region is going through a radical change, and within a decade, Israel will be fully surrounded by actors who are not fettered by fear of loss either of lives or infrastructure. Nor would these societies of warriors be shackled by the international conventions, which the Israelis and the Western governments backing them make mockery of at the moment, feeling that military superiority makes them beyond reproach.
What Israel is sowing today, it will surely harvest tomorrow, and no amount of pontification from Western missionary professors, driven by a contradictory mission to on the hand justify mass murder and on the other hand flaunt the supremacy of Western war ethics, will be of much use to them.
Children of Gaza – Jon Snow’s Experience in the Middle East – Channel 4 News
Children of Gaza – Jon Snow’s Experience in the Middle East – Channel 4 News
Jon Snow recounts the scene in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, where doctors struggle to treat adults and children wounded by Israeli attacks.
Jon Snow recounts the scene in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, where doctors struggle to treat adults and children wounded by Israeli attacks.
Jewish Poem of Contrition
By Darren Stein
There is no hiding from the screams of a child,
Baby forms shredded by shrapnel,
Little bodies broken by bricks;
It makes me sick to look upon, ashamed as
both a human being and a Jew; the tortured
anguish of my conflict of loyalty and identity;
Yet, I owe my integrity first to my humanity,
and then only to my tribe.
I must weep for blood that is not my own.
Baby forms shredded by shrapnel,
Little bodies broken by bricks;
It makes me sick to look upon, ashamed as
both a human being and a Jew; the tortured
anguish of my conflict of loyalty and identity;
Yet, I owe my integrity first to my humanity,
and then only to my tribe.
I must weep for blood that is not my own.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Israelis Creating A Generation That will Hate Them - The Fighting Will Go On
Israelis torturing non-Jewish children documentary film full length.
Viewer discretion.
The still picture shows Palestinian girl Nesreen Hash'hash after being shot
in the face by an Israeli soldier.
Protest against Israeli attack on Gaza, Tel Aviv. 26.7.2014
About 7000 citizens from the Left wing took part in a protest demonstration against Israeli attack on Gaza, in Rabin square, central Tel Aviv, July 26, 2014. Several hundred Right wing activists protested near by and attack left wing activists during the protest, police arrested at least five right wing protesters.
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