27 dec 2013
The Bloody Saturday of Israel in Gaza
60 airplanes of the war criminal Israeli air forces launched strikes during the holy Shabbat, murdering over 205 and injuring over 740, while targeting the Police headquarter in Gaza.
Saturday is the holy day for all Jews in world. This is a well known part of the Jewish customs. During Saturday they exchange greetings, saying “Shabbat Shalom” or “Peace Saturday”.
Under the Israeli occupation in West Bank and Gaza since over 41 years, the Palestinians never lived one day of peace, even not one Saturday.
The Jewish State turned their “Shabbat Shalom”, the Peace Saturday, into a BLOODY one.
In Gaza, today one million and a half Palestinians lived a “special day” of the Jewish “Shabbat Shalom”, after over 60 airplanes of the war criminal Israeli air forces launched strikes during the holy Shabbat, murdering over 205 and injuring over 740, while targeting the Police headquarter in Gaza.
Among the victims at the police headquarters are over 120 dead civilian. The count of victims increases each moment. The Israeli war against humanity has just started, according to the statement of war criminal Ehud Barak during a press conference.
During Bloody Saturday in Gaza, The people had to pick through body parts in order to identify their loved ones. It’s horrible to describe the images of people collecting body parts of human beings.
Yesterday the Israeli occupation allowed the entrance of food into the Gaza concentration camp. The journalists filmed the human face of the Nazi occupation, all the International media broadcasted the scenes of food entering Gaza.
I saw hungry children like butterflies running in front of the food trucks, they all were happy that their starvation would now end.
The Israeli government decided to end the starvation of children in Gaza, but in another way and for ever.
The IAF dropped approximately 100 bombs, with an estimated 95 percent of the ordnance reaching its intended target of murdering the hungry children.
Most of the casualties of the bombings were innocent civilians.
The people are not able to identify the victims who had been in the streets or visiting the offices of Hamas for their civilian affairs, I was told by people from Gaza during a phone call which I made.
They added that the Israeli air strikes began at 11:30 with almost no warning for the civilians in these offices. Many children, men, women and civilians were killed.
Sameh Habeeb, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, said that the Palestinian victims were a mix of policemen and civilians who were visiting some police stations to request personal documents (ID cards, passports, …).
The police station witnessed the bloodiest Israeli attack in which around 70 were killed, mostly policemen. The victims at the police station were holding a graduation ceremony for a group of young police cadets.
A family of 9 members, 15 young children, and some women were killed but could not be identified.
The Ministry of Health is not able to recognize the ID’s of casualties. Tawfiq Jaber, Director of Gaza police, was killed in the air raids along with Ismail El Jabari, head of the security section in the police. The governor of the central Gaza governorates and camps was killed as Israel hit his car.
Palestinian medical sources said that over 205 people had been killed and more than 750 people were also wounded during the Israel Air Force strikes and crimes.
Many critically injured were transferred to Egypt, which has opened its long-sealed border with Gaza, to allow transferring the wounded people for medical treatment in the hospitals.
The wounded were being transported in inhuman way in trucks according to witnesses. The capacity of the hospitals in Gaza is severely limited under the Israeli blockade, the heavy air strikes, the lack of the medicine, and the increased number of injuries, said the same sources from Gaza.
The images of the Israeli war crimes, hundreds of the dead bodies and injured people in the streets, the disgusting images of Israelis dancing of joy in the streets, shows the real face of the Shabbat Shalom of the Jewish State of the Israeli occupation, this “holy chosen people” of thieves and murderers.
The Arab Countries adopted the Plan of Gaza Destruction
Israel and USA used the Arab and other foreign countries, among them Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority…and Europe to justify their war crimes against the population of Gaza.
The USA preparation plan for the destruction of Gaza was presented to the Arab countries and Europe as a step to strengthen the President Mahmoud Abass and as a protection measure for their regimes from the growing danger of the radical Islamic of Hamas, according to the deluded American rhetoric.
SharmutinThe Arabs leaders adopted this criminal plan, and finally we saw Tzipi Livni threaten the population of Gaza with destruction from Egypt during an official press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister Abdul Gheit.
The Saudi Arabian King, who invited some Jewish Rabbis to a religion conference in USA, was seen together with George Bush in his farm in Texas. This illiterate king who hardly speaks a word in English and is known to only know street slang in Arabic, received from his ally George Bush the plans to destroy Gaza. It was demanded from him to cut the relationship with Hamas leaders.
As a result of this visit, the Palestinian Muslims from Gaza were being denied their right of pilgrimage to Mecca. Finally, the Israeli President and war criminal Shimon Peres “justified” the plan to destroy Gaza in the newspaper Al-Sharq- Al-Awsat of Saudi Arabia. The corrupt and criminal Prime Minister Ehud Olmert justified his crimes on the Saudian Al-Arabiya TV.
Finally, the American employee Salam Fayyad cabinet of collaborators imprisoned hundreds of Palestinian political activists in the West Bank as a preparation for the Israeli war crime against the people in Gaza.
Last week the PA American trained forces jailed the Palestinian Rajab Awni Tawfiq Al-Sharif age of 36, a resistance personality who was declared dead after the Israeli strike in Nablus in 2006.
The PA had been informed by their Israeli partners in crime about the Israeli destruction plan against Gaza. They were demanded to jail all Palestinian political opposition as a preventive step before the destruction. President Mahmoud Abbas was in USA on December 18 2008 to discuss the final steps to implement the USA-Israel plan in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza Destruction as an Israeli-American Plan
On June 18, 2007, I wrote my article “Who won Gaza: Dahlan-US-Israel or Hamas?”, I wrote about the Fatah-Dahlan-CIA-Israel conspiracy:
“Why did Fatah let Hamas win the small battle in Gaza, and how did bloody-day-the Israeli intelligence infiltrate the militant Hamas? It was not by accident that the PA and Fatah leaders were not in Gaza during the operation of the Hamas militants. It was not by accident that the PA officials from Gaza fled to Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Ramallah crossing EU- and Israeli-controlled borders at the beginning of battle with Hamas.
It is known from past events that, whenever Dahlan or the Israelis arranged for the murder of somebody, Dahlan and selected people from the PA would run to Egypt for the length of these operations.
Also, in “normal” times it takes on average 2 weeks for Palestinians to get an answer when they request a permit to pass the borders of Gaza for medical emergency cases, and it can take up to one month to receive an answer from the Israelis to such urgent requests.
So, how did the Palestinian officers flee out of Gaza and arrive bloody-day-Ramallah in no time? This could not have happened without full help of the Israelis. During “normal” times the Israel was never helpful to Palestinians. There is no mercy under their occupation. Pregnant women are dying at the Israeli borders all the time, people sick of cancer are dying at their homes because they are not allowed to go to a hospital.
But the traitors around Abbas and Dahlan were allowed free and unhindered passage. What will happen after the Fatah officers hand over Gaza to Hamas? What is the real deal between Dahlan-CIA-PA-Israel and the Hamas? Hamas did not win Gaza. In reality, Dahlan won by implementing the first stage of the CIA-Israel-PA conspiracy.
Which will be the second stage of this Dahlan-CIA-PA-Israel bloody-day-conspiracy? Whatever happens, 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza and other further millions in the West Bank.
The so-called “International Community”, the European countries and the United Nations should be held responsible for any crimes and destructions which Israel will commit or cause to be committed in Gaza and the West Bank against Palestinian civilians. The smell of a conspiracy and disaster spreads out of Gaza”
“The suspicion is that the second stage of this conspiracy will be MIDEAST-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-BARRIER-DEMOthat Hamas shoots some rockets at Israel so as to give them an “excuse” to bomb Gaza flat – “Palestinians” from Lebanon have already done so – while the upper Hamas hierarchy escapes to Egypt leaving poorly armed fighters there to be liquidated together with many other civilians. Israel’s new-old minister of “defense”, Barak, has already announced that they are contemplating a full-scale invasion of Gaza with 20.000 troops, air force, hundreds of tanks …
At the same time, the Hamas death squads, under protection from the IDF, will kill everybody on the Israeli hit lists in the West Bank. The only peace which Israelis know and understand is the peace of the cemeteries, and this is why Olmert called Abbas’ new “emergency” government “partners for peace”.
With the help of the USA, Europe, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, possibly millions of Palestinians will now be butchered, as has always been intended.”
Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank, next week the World
“What started in Gaza today will happen in the West Bank sooner or later. The plans for genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians have been written in the 1880s, and Israel is not about to refrain from those plans by itself. Abbas, Dahlan, the King Saud and other Arab leaders will receive their “thank you” from Israel in the form of a knife in the back, and they know it. The pressure from the USA on all these traitors would not be effective by itself to make them sell out not only the Palestinians, but to accept Israel”.
Arab Leaders demean themselves in Israel
Last month and before the Palestinian-Israeli truce ended in Gaza, the Israeli government opened an exhibition to sell the presents which they received from Arab countries. These expensive presents, which the former director of the Israeli Mossad received from Arab countries and showed in the Israeli exhibition shows the shameful face of the Arab leaders and their regimes.
As a Palestinian following the news of the Israeli exhibition, I felt Israeli visitorsshame about the behavior of these Arab leaders, I felt shame to be an Arab.
How I can understand and explain this scandalous, shameless behavior? The conspiracy of these corrupt people who sold not only themselves but all of us while dealing with the enemy of all humanity has blinded us. We always thought that there was a minimum of decency in their dealings, that certain lines would not be crossed. After all, have these countries not suffered enough due to the Israeli crimes? Have they not been subject to decades of terror by Israel and the USA?
What could make these traitors to all Arabs suddenly befriend their Israeli counterparts? In his book “Political Ponerology“, the Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski explains the the reasons for the wholesale treason against principles and aspirations held by the societies of the countries on part of these so-called “leaders” in the following way:
israeli visitorsPsychopaths exist everywhere in the world; even a faraway pathocracy evokes a resonating response in them, working on their underlying feeling that “there is a place for people like us there”. Uncritical, frustrated, and abused people also exist everywhere and they can be reached by appropriately elaborated propaganda. The future of a nation is greatly dependent on how many such people it contains.[...]
The law furnishes insufficient support for counteracting a phenomenon whose character lies outside the possibilities of the legislators imagination. Pathocracy knows how to take advantage of the weaknesses of such a legalistic manner of thinking.[...]
Whenever a nation experiences a “system crisis” or a hyperactivity of ponerogenic processes within, it becomes the object of a pathocratic penetration whose purpose is to serve up the country as booty. It will then become easy to take advantage of its internal weaknesses and revolutionary movements in order to impose rule on the basis of a limited use of force. … After forcible imposition of such a system, the course of pathologization of life becomes different; and such a pathocracy will be less stable, depending for its very existence upon the factor of never-ending outside force…. [...]
Brute force must first stifle the resistance of an exhausted nation; people possessing military or leadership skills must be disposed of, and anyone appealing to moral values and legal principles must be silenced. The new principles are never explicitly enunciated. People must learn the new unwritten law via painful experience. The stultifying influence of this deviant world of concepts finishes the job, and common sense demands caution and endurance. [...]
This means that Arab leaders see in Israel, ruled by a regime of psychopaths, “a place for people like us”, and that the Abbas regime “serves up the country as booty” to the pathological Israeli regime, and that Israel must use “never-ending outside force” in order to assure the existence of the pathologic Abbas regime. Lastly, the silence of the world before the vile crimes of Israel say something about the governments of these nations being made up of pathologic characters who espouse a morality and values which are very different from those of the majority of the inhabitants of these countries.
Saturday is the holy day for all Jews in world. This is a well known part of the Jewish customs. During Saturday they exchange greetings, saying “Shabbat Shalom” or “Peace Saturday”.
Under the Israeli occupation in West Bank and Gaza since over 41 years, the Palestinians never lived one day of peace, even not one Saturday.
The Jewish State turned their “Shabbat Shalom”, the Peace Saturday, into a BLOODY one.
In Gaza, today one million and a half Palestinians lived a “special day” of the Jewish “Shabbat Shalom”, after over 60 airplanes of the war criminal Israeli air forces launched strikes during the holy Shabbat, murdering over 205 and injuring over 740, while targeting the Police headquarter in Gaza.
Among the victims at the police headquarters are over 120 dead civilian. The count of victims increases each moment. The Israeli war against humanity has just started, according to the statement of war criminal Ehud Barak during a press conference.
During Bloody Saturday in Gaza, The people had to pick through body parts in order to identify their loved ones. It’s horrible to describe the images of people collecting body parts of human beings.
Yesterday the Israeli occupation allowed the entrance of food into the Gaza concentration camp. The journalists filmed the human face of the Nazi occupation, all the International media broadcasted the scenes of food entering Gaza.
I saw hungry children like butterflies running in front of the food trucks, they all were happy that their starvation would now end.
The Israeli government decided to end the starvation of children in Gaza, but in another way and for ever.
The IAF dropped approximately 100 bombs, with an estimated 95 percent of the ordnance reaching its intended target of murdering the hungry children.
Most of the casualties of the bombings were innocent civilians.
The people are not able to identify the victims who had been in the streets or visiting the offices of Hamas for their civilian affairs, I was told by people from Gaza during a phone call which I made.
They added that the Israeli air strikes began at 11:30 with almost no warning for the civilians in these offices. Many children, men, women and civilians were killed.
Sameh Habeeb, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, said that the Palestinian victims were a mix of policemen and civilians who were visiting some police stations to request personal documents (ID cards, passports, …).
The police station witnessed the bloodiest Israeli attack in which around 70 were killed, mostly policemen. The victims at the police station were holding a graduation ceremony for a group of young police cadets.
A family of 9 members, 15 young children, and some women were killed but could not be identified.
The Ministry of Health is not able to recognize the ID’s of casualties. Tawfiq Jaber, Director of Gaza police, was killed in the air raids along with Ismail El Jabari, head of the security section in the police. The governor of the central Gaza governorates and camps was killed as Israel hit his car.
Palestinian medical sources said that over 205 people had been killed and more than 750 people were also wounded during the Israel Air Force strikes and crimes.
Many critically injured were transferred to Egypt, which has opened its long-sealed border with Gaza, to allow transferring the wounded people for medical treatment in the hospitals.
The wounded were being transported in inhuman way in trucks according to witnesses. The capacity of the hospitals in Gaza is severely limited under the Israeli blockade, the heavy air strikes, the lack of the medicine, and the increased number of injuries, said the same sources from Gaza.
The images of the Israeli war crimes, hundreds of the dead bodies and injured people in the streets, the disgusting images of Israelis dancing of joy in the streets, shows the real face of the Shabbat Shalom of the Jewish State of the Israeli occupation, this “holy chosen people” of thieves and murderers.
The Arab Countries adopted the Plan of Gaza Destruction
Israel and USA used the Arab and other foreign countries, among them Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority…and Europe to justify their war crimes against the population of Gaza.
The USA preparation plan for the destruction of Gaza was presented to the Arab countries and Europe as a step to strengthen the President Mahmoud Abass and as a protection measure for their regimes from the growing danger of the radical Islamic of Hamas, according to the deluded American rhetoric.
SharmutinThe Arabs leaders adopted this criminal plan, and finally we saw Tzipi Livni threaten the population of Gaza with destruction from Egypt during an official press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister Abdul Gheit.
The Saudi Arabian King, who invited some Jewish Rabbis to a religion conference in USA, was seen together with George Bush in his farm in Texas. This illiterate king who hardly speaks a word in English and is known to only know street slang in Arabic, received from his ally George Bush the plans to destroy Gaza. It was demanded from him to cut the relationship with Hamas leaders.
As a result of this visit, the Palestinian Muslims from Gaza were being denied their right of pilgrimage to Mecca. Finally, the Israeli President and war criminal Shimon Peres “justified” the plan to destroy Gaza in the newspaper Al-Sharq- Al-Awsat of Saudi Arabia. The corrupt and criminal Prime Minister Ehud Olmert justified his crimes on the Saudian Al-Arabiya TV.
Finally, the American employee Salam Fayyad cabinet of collaborators imprisoned hundreds of Palestinian political activists in the West Bank as a preparation for the Israeli war crime against the people in Gaza.
Last week the PA American trained forces jailed the Palestinian Rajab Awni Tawfiq Al-Sharif age of 36, a resistance personality who was declared dead after the Israeli strike in Nablus in 2006.
The PA had been informed by their Israeli partners in crime about the Israeli destruction plan against Gaza. They were demanded to jail all Palestinian political opposition as a preventive step before the destruction. President Mahmoud Abbas was in USA on December 18 2008 to discuss the final steps to implement the USA-Israel plan in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza Destruction as an Israeli-American Plan
On June 18, 2007, I wrote my article “Who won Gaza: Dahlan-US-Israel or Hamas?”, I wrote about the Fatah-Dahlan-CIA-Israel conspiracy:
“Why did Fatah let Hamas win the small battle in Gaza, and how did bloody-day-the Israeli intelligence infiltrate the militant Hamas? It was not by accident that the PA and Fatah leaders were not in Gaza during the operation of the Hamas militants. It was not by accident that the PA officials from Gaza fled to Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Ramallah crossing EU- and Israeli-controlled borders at the beginning of battle with Hamas.
It is known from past events that, whenever Dahlan or the Israelis arranged for the murder of somebody, Dahlan and selected people from the PA would run to Egypt for the length of these operations.
Also, in “normal” times it takes on average 2 weeks for Palestinians to get an answer when they request a permit to pass the borders of Gaza for medical emergency cases, and it can take up to one month to receive an answer from the Israelis to such urgent requests.
So, how did the Palestinian officers flee out of Gaza and arrive bloody-day-Ramallah in no time? This could not have happened without full help of the Israelis. During “normal” times the Israel was never helpful to Palestinians. There is no mercy under their occupation. Pregnant women are dying at the Israeli borders all the time, people sick of cancer are dying at their homes because they are not allowed to go to a hospital.
But the traitors around Abbas and Dahlan were allowed free and unhindered passage. What will happen after the Fatah officers hand over Gaza to Hamas? What is the real deal between Dahlan-CIA-PA-Israel and the Hamas? Hamas did not win Gaza. In reality, Dahlan won by implementing the first stage of the CIA-Israel-PA conspiracy.
Which will be the second stage of this Dahlan-CIA-PA-Israel bloody-day-conspiracy? Whatever happens, 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza and other further millions in the West Bank.
The so-called “International Community”, the European countries and the United Nations should be held responsible for any crimes and destructions which Israel will commit or cause to be committed in Gaza and the West Bank against Palestinian civilians. The smell of a conspiracy and disaster spreads out of Gaza”
“The suspicion is that the second stage of this conspiracy will be MIDEAST-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-BARRIER-DEMOthat Hamas shoots some rockets at Israel so as to give them an “excuse” to bomb Gaza flat – “Palestinians” from Lebanon have already done so – while the upper Hamas hierarchy escapes to Egypt leaving poorly armed fighters there to be liquidated together with many other civilians. Israel’s new-old minister of “defense”, Barak, has already announced that they are contemplating a full-scale invasion of Gaza with 20.000 troops, air force, hundreds of tanks …
At the same time, the Hamas death squads, under protection from the IDF, will kill everybody on the Israeli hit lists in the West Bank. The only peace which Israelis know and understand is the peace of the cemeteries, and this is why Olmert called Abbas’ new “emergency” government “partners for peace”.
With the help of the USA, Europe, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, possibly millions of Palestinians will now be butchered, as has always been intended.”
Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank, next week the World
“What started in Gaza today will happen in the West Bank sooner or later. The plans for genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians have been written in the 1880s, and Israel is not about to refrain from those plans by itself. Abbas, Dahlan, the King Saud and other Arab leaders will receive their “thank you” from Israel in the form of a knife in the back, and they know it. The pressure from the USA on all these traitors would not be effective by itself to make them sell out not only the Palestinians, but to accept Israel”.
Arab Leaders demean themselves in Israel
Last month and before the Palestinian-Israeli truce ended in Gaza, the Israeli government opened an exhibition to sell the presents which they received from Arab countries. These expensive presents, which the former director of the Israeli Mossad received from Arab countries and showed in the Israeli exhibition shows the shameful face of the Arab leaders and their regimes.
As a Palestinian following the news of the Israeli exhibition, I felt Israeli visitorsshame about the behavior of these Arab leaders, I felt shame to be an Arab.
How I can understand and explain this scandalous, shameless behavior? The conspiracy of these corrupt people who sold not only themselves but all of us while dealing with the enemy of all humanity has blinded us. We always thought that there was a minimum of decency in their dealings, that certain lines would not be crossed. After all, have these countries not suffered enough due to the Israeli crimes? Have they not been subject to decades of terror by Israel and the USA?
What could make these traitors to all Arabs suddenly befriend their Israeli counterparts? In his book “Political Ponerology“, the Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski explains the the reasons for the wholesale treason against principles and aspirations held by the societies of the countries on part of these so-called “leaders” in the following way:
israeli visitorsPsychopaths exist everywhere in the world; even a faraway pathocracy evokes a resonating response in them, working on their underlying feeling that “there is a place for people like us there”. Uncritical, frustrated, and abused people also exist everywhere and they can be reached by appropriately elaborated propaganda. The future of a nation is greatly dependent on how many such people it contains.[...]
The law furnishes insufficient support for counteracting a phenomenon whose character lies outside the possibilities of the legislators imagination. Pathocracy knows how to take advantage of the weaknesses of such a legalistic manner of thinking.[...]
Whenever a nation experiences a “system crisis” or a hyperactivity of ponerogenic processes within, it becomes the object of a pathocratic penetration whose purpose is to serve up the country as booty. It will then become easy to take advantage of its internal weaknesses and revolutionary movements in order to impose rule on the basis of a limited use of force. … After forcible imposition of such a system, the course of pathologization of life becomes different; and such a pathocracy will be less stable, depending for its very existence upon the factor of never-ending outside force…. [...]
Brute force must first stifle the resistance of an exhausted nation; people possessing military or leadership skills must be disposed of, and anyone appealing to moral values and legal principles must be silenced. The new principles are never explicitly enunciated. People must learn the new unwritten law via painful experience. The stultifying influence of this deviant world of concepts finishes the job, and common sense demands caution and endurance. [...]
This means that Arab leaders see in Israel, ruled by a regime of psychopaths, “a place for people like us”, and that the Abbas regime “serves up the country as booty” to the pathological Israeli regime, and that Israel must use “never-ending outside force” in order to assure the existence of the pathologic Abbas regime. Lastly, the silence of the world before the vile crimes of Israel say something about the governments of these nations being made up of pathologic characters who espouse a morality and values which are very different from those of the majority of the inhabitants of these countries.
Gaza massacres must spur us to action
Palestinians carry the body of a victim of an Israeli air strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 27 December 2008
“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more.
Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.
Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.
Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.
The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).
But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.
What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.
As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: “there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.”
That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks — whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel’s attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel’s demands, even assembling “security forces” to fight the resistance on Israel’s behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel’s relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.
Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.
But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably, it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The images that stick are of Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the pictures of Livni and Egypt’s foreign minister smiling and slapping their palms together.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last wednesday the Israeli “cabinet authorized the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister to determine the timing and the method” of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza’s streets red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a year.
On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel’s renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.
But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?
Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it “called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.”
The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do not wake up to “another Gaza” ever again.
“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more.
Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.
Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.
Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.
The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).
But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.
What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.
As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: “there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.”
That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks — whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel’s attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel’s demands, even assembling “security forces” to fight the resistance on Israel’s behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel’s relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.
Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.
But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably, it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The images that stick are of Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the pictures of Livni and Egypt’s foreign minister smiling and slapping their palms together.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last wednesday the Israeli “cabinet authorized the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister to determine the timing and the method” of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza’s streets red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a year.
On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel’s renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.
But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?
Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it “called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.”
The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do not wake up to “another Gaza” ever again.
The rains of death in Gaza
Israeli closures have turned the Gaza Strip into a prison
We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there — so it has become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe and whether the severity warrants an “international outcry” or whether the animals can continue to suffer in their cages for a while longer. We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly.
We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile, we reach him. He has just returned from al-Shifa hospital — we hold our breaths.
“We are OK. We went to donate blood and to see if they needed any help” says my father, a retired surgeon.
“We were in the market when the strikes began. I saw the missiles falling and prayed; the earth shook; the smoke rose; the ambulances screamed,” he said, the sirens audible in the background. He was on Talatini street at the time of the attacks, just a few streets down from one of the attack sites.
My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities at the time of the initial wave of attacks, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centers that was leveled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before they transferred them to al-Shifa hospital. There, she said, medical necessities were in short supply: face masks, surgical gloves, gowns, etc.
My parents live in the the Gaza City center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. More than 50 “targets” by 60 warplanes, read the headline from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. And more than 220 killed in broad daylight, in the after-school rush.
Like a movie or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore. Fifty targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, one day.
All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box.
“There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up.”
Gaza’s air is saturated with the acrid smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs in a cage, however, would create an outcry.
The rains of death continue to fall on Gaza. And silently, we watch. And silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death onto Gaza? Egypt, the United States, Israel …
And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable, but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.
But it is the prisoners’ burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the “humanitarian situation”: as long as they do not starve, everything is OK. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.
The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only eight; or 10; and dream of the days of four.
We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there — so it has become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe and whether the severity warrants an “international outcry” or whether the animals can continue to suffer in their cages for a while longer. We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly.
We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile, we reach him. He has just returned from al-Shifa hospital — we hold our breaths.
“We are OK. We went to donate blood and to see if they needed any help” says my father, a retired surgeon.
“We were in the market when the strikes began. I saw the missiles falling and prayed; the earth shook; the smoke rose; the ambulances screamed,” he said, the sirens audible in the background. He was on Talatini street at the time of the attacks, just a few streets down from one of the attack sites.
My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities at the time of the initial wave of attacks, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centers that was leveled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before they transferred them to al-Shifa hospital. There, she said, medical necessities were in short supply: face masks, surgical gloves, gowns, etc.
My parents live in the the Gaza City center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. More than 50 “targets” by 60 warplanes, read the headline from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. And more than 220 killed in broad daylight, in the after-school rush.
Like a movie or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore. Fifty targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, one day.
All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box.
“There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up.”
Gaza’s air is saturated with the acrid smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs in a cage, however, would create an outcry.
The rains of death continue to fall on Gaza. And silently, we watch. And silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death onto Gaza? Egypt, the United States, Israel …
And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable, but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.
But it is the prisoners’ burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the “humanitarian situation”: as long as they do not starve, everything is OK. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.
The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only eight; or 10; and dream of the days of four.
"The amount of death and destruction is inconceivable"
Blood bags at a Gaza City hospital, 27 December 2008
It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion.
For a few moments I didn’t understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzpi Livni’s statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all. What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I’m in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.
Six locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza City. The images are probably not broadcasted on US news channels. There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men were still alive, someone lifts a hand, and another raises his head. They probably died within moments because their bodies were burned, most had lost limbs, some of their guts were hanging out and they were all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home which is close to the two largest universities in Gaza, a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students.
They’d been warned not to stand in groups as it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. Seven were killed, four students and three of our neighbors’ kids, young men who were from the Rayes family and were best friends. As I’m writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside; I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the three Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now they are sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14-year-old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn’t spoken a word since.
What did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mean when he stated that we the people of Gaza weren’t the enemy, that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad which were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out our state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured, Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike, three schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls’ bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.
In all the locations, people are going through the dead, terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren’t working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the ground, weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanish after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.
And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It’s truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor, side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren’t life-threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window and she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home; too many others needed more urgent medical attention. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia.
More than 200 people dead in today’s air raids. That means more than 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow, probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they — actually all of us — would gladly have had Hamas forever sign off every last basic right we’ve been calling for the last few months if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.
The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is OK, but two of my uncles’ homes were damaged,
We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fates have already been sealed.
It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion.
For a few moments I didn’t understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzpi Livni’s statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all. What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I’m in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.
Six locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza City. The images are probably not broadcasted on US news channels. There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men were still alive, someone lifts a hand, and another raises his head. They probably died within moments because their bodies were burned, most had lost limbs, some of their guts were hanging out and they were all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home which is close to the two largest universities in Gaza, a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students.
They’d been warned not to stand in groups as it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. Seven were killed, four students and three of our neighbors’ kids, young men who were from the Rayes family and were best friends. As I’m writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside; I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the three Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now they are sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14-year-old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn’t spoken a word since.
What did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mean when he stated that we the people of Gaza weren’t the enemy, that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad which were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out our state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured, Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike, three schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls’ bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.
In all the locations, people are going through the dead, terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren’t working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the ground, weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanish after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.
And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It’s truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor, side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren’t life-threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window and she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home; too many others needed more urgent medical attention. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia.
More than 200 people dead in today’s air raids. That means more than 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow, probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they — actually all of us — would gladly have had Hamas forever sign off every last basic right we’ve been calling for the last few months if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.
The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is OK, but two of my uncles’ homes were damaged,
We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fates have already been sealed.
ei: “Shabbat Shalom” in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli air strike in the town of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 27 December 2008
Shabbat Shalom! “Peaceful Saturday.” I don’t believe that Israeli leaders appreciate the meaning of this Hebrew greeting given at the start of the weekly Jewish day of rest.
No more “Shabbat Shalom,” as on Saturday, 27 December 2008, just a few days before the start of a new year, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on different parts of the Gaza Strip.
A sunny Saturday in Gaza became very dark as pillars of smoke blacked out the sky of the coastal territory, while the smell of blood was everywhere.
In Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, three family members, including a father, a son and a nephew, were all killed as Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on the Rafah police station. The victims were present at the Rafah police station for a routine matter, when the Israeli air strikes occurred. They did not know that their fate awaited them right there on this “Shabbat Shalom.”
That is one example of the killings at what Israel alleges were Hamas “terrorist” outposts. At dozens of locations, entire buildings were torn down, windows of homes were smashed and countless cars damaged. Under the rubble lay dozens of corpses. About 60 Israeli F-16 warplanes attacked up to 100 targets in Gaza today, mainly police stations and charities run by Hamas. One of the Israeli missiles landed in the sports field of the Islamic University of Gaza, home to more than 18,000 students.
Al-Shifa hospital alone, Gaza’s largest, received scores of bodies, and hundreds of injured. According to Dr. Moawiya Abu Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance service at the Hamas-run health ministry, the Israeli air assaults on Gaza claimed the lives of 228 and wounded about 700 others, 120 critically.
Abu Hassanein said that at least 15 of the dead had not been identified because their bodies had been dismembered by the Israeli bombs.
“The death toll is on the rise as many other dead are still under rubble of destroyed buildings everywhere,” Abu Hassanein explained, adding that scores of victims were civilians.
Al-Shifa’s morgue could not take all the bodies while crowds of residents gathered at its gates, trying to learn if their loved ones were among those whom medical staff had not yet identified.
A young man searched among the corpses, trying to determine whether his brother was among them.
“I have been informed by some friends that my brother has been killed today. My brother had been in custody at the Saraya security compound in Gaza City. A friend of mine told me that my brother was killed during shelling of the central Gaza Strip’s police station as he was transferred there shortly before the Israeli strikes,” explained Abu Fadi, a 33-year-old resident of the central Gaza Strip. That police station, on the Salah al-Din road, was completely leveled to the ground by the Israeli air strikes on Saturday.
Others around the morgue were crying over the deaths of their loved ones amid the overpowering smell of blood. Overwhelmed with injured people, Gaza’s health ministry lacks essential medicines and surgical supplies as a direct consequence of Israel’s blockade which was tightened two months ago, according to Abu Hassanein.
An Israeli army spokesperson claimed Hamas knew that Israel would attack locations like police stations, and it was to blame for failing to evacuate them. Ehab al-Ghosein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza, told The Electronic Intifada: “Most of those killed today were security personnel and there were other civilian deaths. But the role of such forces is purely civilian. They are assigned to preserving the security of people and organizing traffic.
The dead “are not fighters,” al-Ghosein added. “We consider these strikes a deliberate action to destroy civil life and to kill as many Palestinians as possible.”
Al-Ghosein also blamed international and Arab parties for the latest Israeli attacks. “What Israel did today was approved by some Arab and international players,” he said.
As the new year approaches, it is unclear what is in store for Gaza as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups ended last week. In response to the crippling blockade and the extrajudicial killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces, resistance groups in Gaza had renewed the firing of crude rockets into southern Israel.
As Israel heads to elections in February, leading politicians have been outbidding each other with promises to attack Gaza and harm Palestinians. In the face of Israel’s escalating violence and siege against Gaza, the United States, European Union and other world powers have done nothing to hold Israel accountable. After today’s bloodshed it remains unclear whether that will change and what fate lies in store for the 1.5 million people imprisoned in the Gaza Strip as Israeli tanks deploy to their borders.
Shabbat Shalom! “Peaceful Saturday.” I don’t believe that Israeli leaders appreciate the meaning of this Hebrew greeting given at the start of the weekly Jewish day of rest.
No more “Shabbat Shalom,” as on Saturday, 27 December 2008, just a few days before the start of a new year, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on different parts of the Gaza Strip.
A sunny Saturday in Gaza became very dark as pillars of smoke blacked out the sky of the coastal territory, while the smell of blood was everywhere.
In Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, three family members, including a father, a son and a nephew, were all killed as Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on the Rafah police station. The victims were present at the Rafah police station for a routine matter, when the Israeli air strikes occurred. They did not know that their fate awaited them right there on this “Shabbat Shalom.”
That is one example of the killings at what Israel alleges were Hamas “terrorist” outposts. At dozens of locations, entire buildings were torn down, windows of homes were smashed and countless cars damaged. Under the rubble lay dozens of corpses. About 60 Israeli F-16 warplanes attacked up to 100 targets in Gaza today, mainly police stations and charities run by Hamas. One of the Israeli missiles landed in the sports field of the Islamic University of Gaza, home to more than 18,000 students.
Al-Shifa hospital alone, Gaza’s largest, received scores of bodies, and hundreds of injured. According to Dr. Moawiya Abu Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance service at the Hamas-run health ministry, the Israeli air assaults on Gaza claimed the lives of 228 and wounded about 700 others, 120 critically.
Abu Hassanein said that at least 15 of the dead had not been identified because their bodies had been dismembered by the Israeli bombs.
“The death toll is on the rise as many other dead are still under rubble of destroyed buildings everywhere,” Abu Hassanein explained, adding that scores of victims were civilians.
Al-Shifa’s morgue could not take all the bodies while crowds of residents gathered at its gates, trying to learn if their loved ones were among those whom medical staff had not yet identified.
A young man searched among the corpses, trying to determine whether his brother was among them.
“I have been informed by some friends that my brother has been killed today. My brother had been in custody at the Saraya security compound in Gaza City. A friend of mine told me that my brother was killed during shelling of the central Gaza Strip’s police station as he was transferred there shortly before the Israeli strikes,” explained Abu Fadi, a 33-year-old resident of the central Gaza Strip. That police station, on the Salah al-Din road, was completely leveled to the ground by the Israeli air strikes on Saturday.
Others around the morgue were crying over the deaths of their loved ones amid the overpowering smell of blood. Overwhelmed with injured people, Gaza’s health ministry lacks essential medicines and surgical supplies as a direct consequence of Israel’s blockade which was tightened two months ago, according to Abu Hassanein.
An Israeli army spokesperson claimed Hamas knew that Israel would attack locations like police stations, and it was to blame for failing to evacuate them. Ehab al-Ghosein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza, told The Electronic Intifada: “Most of those killed today were security personnel and there were other civilian deaths. But the role of such forces is purely civilian. They are assigned to preserving the security of people and organizing traffic.
The dead “are not fighters,” al-Ghosein added. “We consider these strikes a deliberate action to destroy civil life and to kill as many Palestinians as possible.”
Al-Ghosein also blamed international and Arab parties for the latest Israeli attacks. “What Israel did today was approved by some Arab and international players,” he said.
As the new year approaches, it is unclear what is in store for Gaza as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups ended last week. In response to the crippling blockade and the extrajudicial killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces, resistance groups in Gaza had renewed the firing of crude rockets into southern Israel.
As Israel heads to elections in February, leading politicians have been outbidding each other with promises to attack Gaza and harm Palestinians. In the face of Israel’s escalating violence and siege against Gaza, the United States, European Union and other world powers have done nothing to hold Israel accountable. After today’s bloodshed it remains unclear whether that will change and what fate lies in store for the 1.5 million people imprisoned in the Gaza Strip as Israeli tanks deploy to their borders.
ei: Rights orgs: Israel’s willful killings a war crime
The site of an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, 27 December 2008
Palestinian human rights organizations strongly condemn the recent military attacks carried out by the Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008. The attacks began at approximately 11:30am and lasted for approximately three hours.
These attacks have destroyed most of the Gaza security offices including police stations, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians.
More than 350 have been injured with at least 120 critically. The number of deaths resulting from these attacks indicates a willful targeting of the civilian police forces in these locations and a clear violation of the prohibition against willful killings. Willful killings are a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention under Article 147 and therefore, a war crime. Both the time and location of these attacks also indicate a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible with many of the police stations located in civilian population centers and the time of the attacks coinciding with the end of the school day resulting in the deaths of numerous children.
The ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip has left medical facilities in the Strip incapable of meeting the needs of the hundreds more who have been injured which will likely lead to an increase in the number of deaths. According to Israeli officials, these attacks are only the beginning of an open military campaign in Gaza. It is therefore imperative that the international community not stand in silence while Israel moves forward with impunity.
Despite repeated calls from the Palestinian human rights community with regard to Gaza, the international community has failed to act. We are now on the brink of an explosion of violence as result of this failure and are pushed once again to call for action.
In light of the above, Palestinian human rights organizations urge:
Undersigned organizations:
Al-Haq
Addameer Prisoners’ Support & Human Rights Association
Ad-Dameer Association for Human Rights
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights
Defence for Children International
Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights
Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR)
Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center (JLAC)
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession – Musawa
Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS)
Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)
Women’s Studies Center
The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations’ Network – PNGO
Palestinian human rights organizations strongly condemn the recent military attacks carried out by the Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008. The attacks began at approximately 11:30am and lasted for approximately three hours.
These attacks have destroyed most of the Gaza security offices including police stations, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians.
More than 350 have been injured with at least 120 critically. The number of deaths resulting from these attacks indicates a willful targeting of the civilian police forces in these locations and a clear violation of the prohibition against willful killings. Willful killings are a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention under Article 147 and therefore, a war crime. Both the time and location of these attacks also indicate a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible with many of the police stations located in civilian population centers and the time of the attacks coinciding with the end of the school day resulting in the deaths of numerous children.
The ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip has left medical facilities in the Strip incapable of meeting the needs of the hundreds more who have been injured which will likely lead to an increase in the number of deaths. According to Israeli officials, these attacks are only the beginning of an open military campaign in Gaza. It is therefore imperative that the international community not stand in silence while Israel moves forward with impunity.
Despite repeated calls from the Palestinian human rights community with regard to Gaza, the international community has failed to act. We are now on the brink of an explosion of violence as result of this failure and are pushed once again to call for action.
In light of the above, Palestinian human rights organizations urge:
- The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel’s fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
- The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
- The High Contracting Parties to fulfill their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
- EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel.
Undersigned organizations:
Al-Haq
Addameer Prisoners’ Support & Human Rights Association
Ad-Dameer Association for Human Rights
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights
Defence for Children International
Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights
Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR)
Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center (JLAC)
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession – Musawa
Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS)
Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)
Women’s Studies Center
The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations’ Network – PNGO
Israel Starts the Killing Again
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Please forward to media immediately and pick-up the phone and call media outlets immediately to condemn the atrocities being committed in Gaza (Using US taxpayer money and International and Arab Government Acquiescence). Demonstrations are ongoing throughout the West Bank. Here is the press release for the one in Bethlehem (عربي / arabic at Bottom).
A demonstration to condemn the massacres being committed in Gaza.
Palestinian Civil Society organizations in the Bethlehem area, people of various political affiliations, Christians, and Muslims, and all people of conscience in the Bethlehem area are gathering at 5 PM in front of the Church of Nativity and Omar’s mosque in Bethlehem.
Nearly 200 people were reported massacred so far by Israeli war planes bombings of the besieged Gaza strip. Hundreds were reported injured so far. The victims include men, women, and children and the number of victims are expected to rise rapidly. Join us today as we call for ending the massacres, ending the siege on Gaza, for reconciliation between all Palestinians, and for freedom.
For more information:
Khalid AlAzza 0545439263
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh 0598939532
Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour 0599255573
A personal note: I was reading an open letter from a family from Gaza on my computer that talked of the hardships and the lack of food and electricity when my mother ran in to tell me that they are bombing Gaza. I watch a little on the TV and get sick to my stomach. I rushed to the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement and it is buzzing with activities. Thousands will come out today on short notice I am sure just in the Bethlehem area. Please spread the word.
Since this is an emergency posting, I had prepared to send tomorrow my weekly posting and to avoid flooding your inboxes, below is the draft of what I was planning to complete and send tomorrow but events are now likely to escalate beyond anything we all can imagine. May we all see peace…..
Mazin
It is amazing that CNN and some other media outlets who reported on the death of famous Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter mentioned he was Jewish and mentioned his criticism of the US policies but do not mention his persistent criticism of Israel and Zionism. Just in April he signed (with many other well respected Jews of Conscience) a letter that read in part “We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations. We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.” (see We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary, The Guardian, Wednesday 30 April 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/israelandthepalestinians
This is an example of self-censorship in some media. In parallel this same media fails to report the swindles of Zionists appropriately. An example of a story glossed over in its impact and relevance is the story of the way Zionists bilk donors and get rich (see Bernard Madoff: Wall Street Swindler Strikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_29099.shtml )
And some editors (out of ignorance, shoddy journalism, or bias) in the West prefer not to report reality in Palestine. Few really explained Bethlehem under siege this Christmas and few reported on our candle light procession to demand end of colonization of the Shepherds’ field yesterday. Occasionally something does seep into Western Media like this article on reality in Gaza reported by the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7766509.stm
Below are two things on this reality we face here:
Genocidal settlers, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line, 18 – 24 December 2008
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/926/re71.htm
PRESS RELEASE
Free Palestine and Free all Political Prisoners
The One Democratic State Group urges the International community and people of conscience everywhere to demand that Israel respect International law by ending its illegal occupation of all areas occupied since 1967, by respecting and implementing refugees’ right to return, and by freeing all political prisoners including members of the Palestinian legislative council.
Since June 2006, Israel has kidnapped more than 64 elected Palestinian Legislative Council members and cabinet ministers, university lecturers, city mayors and health workers, including Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker, Professor Aziz Adwaik. Professor Adwaik is also Professor of Economics at An Najjah University in Nablus. Ahmed Saadat leader of the PFLP was just “sentenced” to 30 years imprisonment by the illegal military courts of the occupation regime. Israeli forces kidnapped Saadat two years ago from a PA prison in Jericho and kept him in solitary confinement since then. Saadat and other Palestinians refuse to recognize the authority of the court or to appeal to higher occupation courts. Israel currently illegally holds more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners. While Palestinians have different opinions on tactics of resistance to colonial occupation, we all share the same goals of freedom and self-determination and we all recognize the rights and obligations of occupied people to resist per tenets of International law.
The One Democratic State Group calls on the international community, all academic institutions, and all international civil society organizations to demand:
- The immediate release of Ahmed Saadat, Marwan Braghouti, Professor Adwaik, other elected legislatures and all Palestinian political prisoners.
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in international humanitarian law and international human rights law such as the Fourth Geneva Convention.
-An end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, Israeli apartheid and Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.
-Implementation of International law including the rights of refugees to return to their homes and lands.
For Comments contact:
Dr. Asaad Abu Shark + 972 599 322636 (Gaza)
Dr. Haidar Eid + 972 599 441766 (Gaza)
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh +972 598939532 (West Bank)
http://www.odsg.org/co/
Please forward to media immediately and pick-up the phone and call media outlets immediately to condemn the atrocities being committed in Gaza (Using US taxpayer money and International and Arab Government Acquiescence). Demonstrations are ongoing throughout the West Bank. Here is the press release for the one in Bethlehem (عربي / arabic at Bottom).
A demonstration to condemn the massacres being committed in Gaza.
Palestinian Civil Society organizations in the Bethlehem area, people of various political affiliations, Christians, and Muslims, and all people of conscience in the Bethlehem area are gathering at 5 PM in front of the Church of Nativity and Omar’s mosque in Bethlehem.
Nearly 200 people were reported massacred so far by Israeli war planes bombings of the besieged Gaza strip. Hundreds were reported injured so far. The victims include men, women, and children and the number of victims are expected to rise rapidly. Join us today as we call for ending the massacres, ending the siege on Gaza, for reconciliation between all Palestinians, and for freedom.
For more information:
Khalid AlAzza 0545439263
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh 0598939532
Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour 0599255573
A personal note: I was reading an open letter from a family from Gaza on my computer that talked of the hardships and the lack of food and electricity when my mother ran in to tell me that they are bombing Gaza. I watch a little on the TV and get sick to my stomach. I rushed to the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement and it is buzzing with activities. Thousands will come out today on short notice I am sure just in the Bethlehem area. Please spread the word.
Since this is an emergency posting, I had prepared to send tomorrow my weekly posting and to avoid flooding your inboxes, below is the draft of what I was planning to complete and send tomorrow but events are now likely to escalate beyond anything we all can imagine. May we all see peace…..
Mazin
It is amazing that CNN and some other media outlets who reported on the death of famous Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter mentioned he was Jewish and mentioned his criticism of the US policies but do not mention his persistent criticism of Israel and Zionism. Just in April he signed (with many other well respected Jews of Conscience) a letter that read in part “We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations. We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.” (see We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary, The Guardian, Wednesday 30 April 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/israelandthepalestinians
This is an example of self-censorship in some media. In parallel this same media fails to report the swindles of Zionists appropriately. An example of a story glossed over in its impact and relevance is the story of the way Zionists bilk donors and get rich (see Bernard Madoff: Wall Street Swindler Strikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_29099.shtml )
And some editors (out of ignorance, shoddy journalism, or bias) in the West prefer not to report reality in Palestine. Few really explained Bethlehem under siege this Christmas and few reported on our candle light procession to demand end of colonization of the Shepherds’ field yesterday. Occasionally something does seep into Western Media like this article on reality in Gaza reported by the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7766509.stm
Below are two things on this reality we face here:
Genocidal settlers, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line, 18 – 24 December 2008
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/926/re71.htm
PRESS RELEASE
Free Palestine and Free all Political Prisoners
The One Democratic State Group urges the International community and people of conscience everywhere to demand that Israel respect International law by ending its illegal occupation of all areas occupied since 1967, by respecting and implementing refugees’ right to return, and by freeing all political prisoners including members of the Palestinian legislative council.
Since June 2006, Israel has kidnapped more than 64 elected Palestinian Legislative Council members and cabinet ministers, university lecturers, city mayors and health workers, including Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker, Professor Aziz Adwaik. Professor Adwaik is also Professor of Economics at An Najjah University in Nablus. Ahmed Saadat leader of the PFLP was just “sentenced” to 30 years imprisonment by the illegal military courts of the occupation regime. Israeli forces kidnapped Saadat two years ago from a PA prison in Jericho and kept him in solitary confinement since then. Saadat and other Palestinians refuse to recognize the authority of the court or to appeal to higher occupation courts. Israel currently illegally holds more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners. While Palestinians have different opinions on tactics of resistance to colonial occupation, we all share the same goals of freedom and self-determination and we all recognize the rights and obligations of occupied people to resist per tenets of International law.
The One Democratic State Group calls on the international community, all academic institutions, and all international civil society organizations to demand:
- The immediate release of Ahmed Saadat, Marwan Braghouti, Professor Adwaik, other elected legislatures and all Palestinian political prisoners.
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in international humanitarian law and international human rights law such as the Fourth Geneva Convention.
-An end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, Israeli apartheid and Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.
-Implementation of International law including the rights of refugees to return to their homes and lands.
For Comments contact:
Dr. Asaad Abu Shark + 972 599 322636 (Gaza)
Dr. Haidar Eid + 972 599 441766 (Gaza)
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh +972 598939532 (West Bank)
http://www.odsg.org/co/
Days: Jan 18 - 17 - 16 - 15 - 14 - 13 - 12 - 11 - 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Dec 31 - 30 - 29 - 28 - 27