Discuss & Debate | Share | Learn

www.ask.or.tz

Our Partners
Is there any injustice taking place around the world? Iraq ring a bell? if so, how much injustice? Any war crimes? Who is to blame? What can we, the youths do about it? This is the place to dissect the truth, and rant on about politics.
#12436
Growing evidence emerged today of the bloodiest single incident of the Gaza conflict when around 70 corpses were found by a Palestinian paramedic near a bombed-out house.

By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem

January 08, 2009 "The Telegraph" --- Mohammed Shaheen, a volunteer with Palestinian Red Crescent, was in the first convoy of ambulances to reach the site of the blast in Zeitoun since it was first occupied then shelled by the Israeli army.

His testimony confirmed accounts, first reported in The Telegraph, from survivors of the extended al Samouni clan who said they feared between 60 and 70 family members had been killed.

"Inside the Samouni house I saw about ten bodies and outside another sixty,'' Mr Shaheen said.

"I was not able to count them accurately because there was not much time and we were looking for wounded people.

"We found fifteen people still alive but injured so we took them in the ambulances.

"I could see an Israeli army bulldozer knocking down houses nearby but we ran out of time and the Israeli soldiers started shooting at us.

"We had to leave about eight injured people behind because we could not get to them and it was no longer safe for us to stay.'' Mr Shaheen was in a convoy led by a jeep from the International Committee of the Red Cross that made its way down war-damaged tracks past demolished houses to the town of Zeitoun.

Concerns had been growing that Zeitoun had witnessed massive civilian casualties after surviving members of the Samouni clan reached Gaza City three days ago.

They said that after the Israeli army first took the town on Saturday night soldiers had ordered about 100 members of the clan to gather in a single house owned by Wael Samouni around dawn on Sunday.

At 6.35am on Monday the house was repeatedly shelled with appalling loss of civilian life.

A handful of survivors, some wounded, others carrying dead or dying infants, made it on foot to Gaza's main north-south road before they were given lifts to hospital. Three small children were buried in Gaza City that afternoon.

According to the survivors between 60 and 70 family members had been killed by shrapnel and falling masonry.

Convoys of ambulances twice headed to the area to look for wounded but they were driven back by Israeli shooting.

During today's three hour lull in offensive operations by Israel, the ICRC led the rescue convoy in although it took a long time for the convoy to make its way down war-damaged.

According to Mr Shaheen, the death toll was as high as described by the survivors.

VIDEO OF THE ABOVE CARNAGE @ http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e21682.htm
User avatar
By abuali
#12437
Listen To The Victims

Palestinians describe life and death while under attack in Gaza

3 Minute Video - Posted January 08, 2009

WARNING

This web page contains pictures of those killed in Israel's attack on Gaza

WARNING

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e21684.htm
#12438
Red Cross Finds Starving Children with 12 Corpses in Gaza 'House of Horrors'

Image



(Reuters) - The ICRC believes there are more wounded sheltering in the ruins of shelled houses in Gaza and has demanded that the Israeli military provide access for a search

By Martin Fletcher, in Jerusalem

January 08, 2009 "The Times" -- -The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of "unacceptable" conduct and breaching international humanitarian law after discovering four emaciated children living next to the corpses of their mothers and other adults in bomb-shattered houses in Gaza City.

The ICRC said that it had spent four days seeking Israeli guarantees of safe passage so that it could gain access to the houses in the badly damaged Zaytun neighbourhood of the city. It was finally allowed to send in a rescue team and four Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulances yesterday afternoon and said today that what they found was shocking.

In one house they discovered four small children, alive but too weak to stand, next to the bodies of their dead mothers. In all their were 12 dead bodies lying on mattresses.

In another house they found 15 survivors of the Israeli bombardment, several of them wounded, and in a third, three corpses. At that point they were ordered to leave by Israeli soldiers manning a post some 80 metres away, but they refused to do so.

The children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances by donkey cart because earth walls erected by the Israeli army made it impossible to bring the vehicles close enough to the houses. In all, the rescue team removed 18 wounded and 12 others who were extremely exhausted. It took away two corpses and plans to return to fetch 13 more tomorrow.

The ICRC said that it believed there were more wounded sheltering in the ruins of other houses in the same neighbourhood, and in an unusually robust public statement issued by the organisation's Geneva headquarters it demanded that the Israeli military grant it immediate access to search for them.

"This is a shocking incident," Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."

The ICRC accused the Israeli military of failing to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and remove the wounded, and called the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.

The ICRC's charges were another setback for the Israeli military. On Tuesday it killed more than 40 people in a bomb attack on a UN school in the Gaza Strip that it claimed was being used by a Hamas mortar team, and international aid organisations say that its 13-day offensive is creating a humanitarian catastrophe among Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

The Israel Defence Forces did not respond directly to the charges, but issued a statement that it was battling a terrorist organisation — Hamas — that was deliberately using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

It said the IDF was working closely with international aid organisations during the fighting so that civilians could receive assistance, and continued: "The IDF in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians.

Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation."
User avatar
By abuali
#12439
Masters In Distortion Of The Truth

By Yvonne Ridley

January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- The media coverage of the war in Gaza by Western television companies is largely unfair and biased because of a refusal to show viewers the real images of the victims.

One of the reasons for this is Israel’s decision not to allow the Western media in to Gaza.

In addition to this outrageous censorship by a so-called democracy, we get the usual arguments that most of the images shown by the Arab media are too shocking to show the viewing public in the West.

Admittedly, the horrific clip sent to me of a child’s head lying detached, among debris in Gaza did make me gasp.

But this is war and this is real and if the Western media did show these sort of images may be the general public would wake up to the full horrors of what happens when bombs are dropped on civilian populat ions.

The re is no such reticence in the Arab media which is why more people with satellites are switching on to television from the Middle East to watch the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

And one rising media star is the fledgling Press TV, broadcast from Iran, and recently introduced to the Sky platform 515. It is fast becoming the first station of choice for the viewing public - especially the english-speaking across Europe - who simply want the truth, no matter who shocking or unpalatable it may be.

There are around half a dozen Palestinian journalists on the ground with Press TV crews revealing the full horrors of the war as it unfolds. I am amazed by their dedication and courage and I salute each and every one of them ... some are my personal friends.

Yes, I do present a show for the station, but I have also worked as a journalist for more than three decades covering conflicts and their aftermaths from The Falklands, first and second Gulf wars, the Irish Troubles, as well as Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq for a variety of print and electronic media.

And one thing common in each conflict is the constant battle by journalists and war correspondents to get to the truth of the matter, but the battle to tell the truth is becoming more and more difficult despite the amazing technology now available.

People in powerful places who do terrible things do not want the truth to get out, which is why journalists are finding themselves banned20or censored more and more.

You see the truth is a very strong and influential weapon which can be used against those people.

Sadly when it is twisted and manipulated it can wreak even more havoc.

The Israeli war machine is masterful in its complete distortion of the truth which is why the state continues to go unpunished for its failure to adhere to the Geneva convention concerning the collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza.

Israeli tacti cs are cruel, malicious and demonstrate that its leaders are not interested in the peace process or a Palestinian State.

They are creating the ideal breeding ground for extremism, sabotaging peace efforts and squandering the good will they have been given.

Five years ago, the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction ... it was a lie eagerly repeated by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to fool the media into supporting an illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq.

And it worked.

To their eternal shame, most of the western media fell in line and swallowed the lie - with the exception of a few journalists most have kept quiet about this collective cock up. The New York Times did issue a front page apology later, but the damage had been done and public perception was difficult to change.

Sadly, many of the same news organisations and the same journalists have learned nothing from that shameful period. At the beginning of this war, Israel trotted out only the flimsy excuse of the Hamas rockets as justification for unleashing its brand of Shock and Awe in Gaza.

Hamas rockets have killed just over 20 Israelis since 2001 whereas Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 700 including more than 200 children in the last 13 days. The seriously maimed and injured is running in to thousands as I write.

But the ‘Hamas rocket’ excuse went unchallenged in the West, although to its full credit the Israeli media revealed days later that Operation Cast Lead wa s a long-planned campaign six months in the making aimed at crushing democratically elected Hamas.

Yes, I admit the rockets do exist but they are nothing more than metal barrels of junk fuelled by fertiliser. As one colleague remarked they’re mere slingshots compared to the shells, million dollar missiles and bunker-busting bombs used by Israel.

Some argue the Qassam rockets are used out of desperation, I personally think they’re more of a two-fingered gesture from a people who have suffered a brutal, medieval siege at the hands of Israel for years.

Despite its amazing war machine, and its state-of-the-art-technology these little rockets rarely show up on any military radars. The Israelis don’t know about them until they9 9ve landed and that’s what hacks them off.

Yet Israeli leaders and their supporters continue to present absurd propaganda about Hamas rockets which are far less sophisticated than anything the IRA ever used in mainland Britain during the height of The Troubles. Mind you, the IRA was funded and backed by US dollars whereas the Hamas military wing has no such generous donors.

I don’t recall the British Government ordering cruise missiles to be launched on Belfast in retaliation for the misery and suffering of IRA bombing campaigns in London, Manchester, Birmingham and other places. I can’t ever recall Apache Attack Helicopters hover ing outside the Sinn Fein offices in the Falls Road or targetted assassinations of IRA leaders.

Most journalists with an ounce of investigation skills would realise that the Hamas Rocket excuse is a sham.

But it continues to be used as an excuse for unleashing what has been described by various people, including Jewish peace activists, as a holocaust and genocide.
Millions across the world have demonstrated - anger and anarchy on the streets has been witness across all continents but the only ones who look away are the Western leaders and the servile media.

The gaggle of belly-dancing Middle Eastern leaders are largely a disgrace and are about as much use as the increasingly toothless United Nations, but there is a backlash coming and it’s coming from ordinary citizens across the world.

People power, the sort of power which inspired the Iranian and Cuban revolutions, the toppling of brutal dictators like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, is emerging.

The Western media can either catch up with the agenda instead of trying to follow the Zionist agenda by continuing to peddle big lies. The viewing piblic have largely lost trust in the mainstream media, especially in the wake of Iraq.

Quite simply, the public has become cynical and jaded and can not be lied to any more. if the mainstream media is to regain any credibility journalists need to challenge israeli and Western leaders.

The truth is a powerful weapon and it is true that...

ISRAEL targets civilians - more than two thirds of the dead are women and children. So why allow Tzipi Livni to say: “Gaza Strip being controlled by Hamas, and the price is being paid by Israeli children and Palestinian children, but the blame is and the address is Hamas.” This is a clear lie. What Israeli children have been killed? The only dead children are in Gaza.

HAMAS is a political organisation which has a military wing and not the other way around. It was democratically elected by the people who were sick of the previous corrupt politicians who let them down.

ISRAEL broke the ceasefire on November 4 2008 - a fact finally acknowledged on CNN nearly two months later in a discussion show although the BBC, Fox and other western media have yet to mention this.

HAMAS does not use civilians as human shields - again, where is the evidence? Israel needs to put up or shut up, but the media never demands to see the evidence.
ISRAEL says it cares about civilians and warns them in advance of the bombing raids in their area - well so did the IRA but I don’t remember anyone congratulating them on their humanitarian actions.

And beware of the latest lie about to hit the media about Hamas commander Mahmoud Zahar who, according to the Zionist propaganda said Jewish children across the world are targets. A guest columnist in The Guardian quoted Zahar as saying: “The Zionists have legitimised the killing of their children by killing our children. They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people."

This is not what he said. Unfortunately the Arabic translation was incorrect and those who should know better have failed to check the original speech against the transcript.

The damage has now been done and it remains to see if an apology or correction will follow.

As Sir Winston Churchill said: “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.”

*Yvonne Ridley presents The Agenda show on Press TV every Thursday. She and film-maker Haq Nawaz recently returned from Gaza for a documentary which will be shown on Press TV later this spring. To watch Press TV live without satellite download http://www.presstv.com
User avatar
By abuali
#12441
Rockets from Lebanon hit Israel

Several rockets fired from Lebanon have hit northern Israel, Israeli police say.

At least three rockets landed in the town of Nahariya, about 8km south of the Lebanese border, on Thursday causing slight injuries.

The attack was followed by reports of a second missile strike, but officials later said it was a false alarm.

The Israeli military fired mortars into southern Lebanon in response to the initial attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in southern Israel, said analysts were suggesting that the rocket attack could have been carried out by Palestinians in southern Lebanon.

She said the firing of rockets from Lebanon "could mean the opening of a second front" in the war on Gaza which has left at least 700 Palestinians dead.

Military alert

The Israeli military has been on alert in the north since it intensified the Gaza offensive, which it says is aimed at stopping rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

"We took into account there would be an attempt by Palestinian groups to express solidarity," Shalom Simchon, an Israeli cabinet minister, said.

Lebanon is home to more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UN figures.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from northern Israel, said one of the rockets hit a retirement home.

"The residents of the home are very distressed by what has happened," he said. "People here haven't got to the stage they have in the south where many people have left their homes."

Hamas denial

The Palestinian Hamas group, which has been targeted by the ongoing Israeli aerial and ground assault on Gaza, denied it carried out the attack from southern Lebanon.

"Hamas is pursuing its combat inside Palestine and our principle is not to use any other Arab soil to respond to the occupation," Raafat Morra, a Hamas spokesman, told the AFP news agency.



Tarek Mitri, Lebanon's information minister, said the Hezbollah movement, which fought a war with Israel in 2006, had made it clear it was not behind the rocket attack.

"Hezbollah has assured us that they remain committed to stability and Resolution 1701 and that is a euphemism for saying they are not involved," he said, referring the UN Security Council resolution that ended the conflict.

The last time Katyushas were fired from Lebanon was in June 2007. Hezbollah denied responsibility and Israel blamed an unnamed Palestinian group.

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera it was "taking immediate measures to identify the perpetrators of the attack".

"Additional troops have been deployed on the ground and patrols have been intensified across all our areas of operation to prevent any further incidents," he said.

Conflict warning

On Wednesday, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, warned that "all possibilities" were open against Israel as he gave a speech condemning Israel's offensive in Gaza and voicing support for Hamas.

About 1,200 mostly Lebanese civilians were killed as the Shia Muslim movement fought the Israeli military.

Addressing tens of thousands of supporters via video link at his stronghold in Beirut's suburbs, Nasrallah said: "I say to [Ehud] Olmert [Israel's prime minister], the loser, the vanquished in Lebanon that 'you cannot overcome Hamas or Hezbollah'."

The comments marked the first time he has spoken so openly on the possibility of a renewed conflict with Israel since the war in Gaza began on December 27.

Nasrallah warned that the 2006 conflict would be "but a walk in the park" compared to what awaits Israel if it launches a new offensive on Lebanon.

"We have to act as though all possibilities are real and open [against Israel] and we must always be ready for any eventuality.

"We are ready to sacrifice our souls, our brothers and sisters, our children, our loved ones for what we believe in."
User avatar
By abuali
#12445
America’s Shame

By Paul Craig Roberts

January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine doesn’t?

This is the question of our time.

For sixty years Israelis have been stealing Palestine from Palestinians. There are maps available on the Internet and in Israeli publications showing the shrinkage over time of what was once Palestine into what Palestine is today--a small number of unconnected ghettos or bantustans.

Palestine became “the occupied territory” from which Palestinians were ejected and Israeli settlements built for “settlers.” Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are full of refugee camps in which Palestinians driven off their lands by Israeli force have been living for decades.

Driving people off their land is strictly illegal under international law, but Israel has been getting away with it for decades.

Gaza is a concentration camp of 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven from their homes and villages and collected in the Gaza Ghetto.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was created 60 years ago in
1949 to administer refugee camps for Palestinians driven from their lands by Israel. As of 2002, the registered Palestinian refugee population was 3.9 million.

Caterpillar Tractor makes a special bulldozer for Israel that is designed to knock down Palestinian homes and to uproot their orchards. In 2003 an American protester, Rachel Corrie, stood in front of one of these Caterpillars and was run over and crushed.

Nothing happened. The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.

They have been doing so for 60 years, and they show no sign of stopping.

Currently they are murdering women and children in the ghetto that they have created for Palestinians in Gaza. The entire world knows this. The Red Cross protests it. But the Israelis brazenly claim that they are killing “Hamas terrorists who are a threat to Israel’s existence.”

The American media knows that this is a lie, but does not say so.

Israel has been able to slowly exterminate a people for sixty years without provoking sufficient outrage to stop it.

The United States, “Christian America,” has been Israel’s greatest enabler in its long-term murder of the Palestinian people. Millions of “evangelical Christians” endorse Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The rest of the world condemns the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Ghetto. Last week the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution requiring a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli SS from Gaza.

The United States abstained.

While the rest of the world condemns Israel’s inhumanity, the US Congress--I should say the US Knesset--rushed to endorse the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The US Senate endorsed Israel’s massacre of Palestinians with a vote of 100-0.

The US House of Representatives voted 430-5 to endorse Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.

The resolutions endorsed by 100% of the US Senate and 99% of the House were written by AIPAC, as were the speeches praising Israel for its inhumanity.

The US Congress was proud to show that it is Israel’s puppet even when it comes to murdering women and children.

The President of the United States was proud to block effective action by the UN Security Council by ordering the Secretary of State to abstain.

Be a Proud American. Swagger and strut. Pretend that you are not besmirched by the shame that your government has heaped upon you. Take refuge in your ignorance, fostered by 60 years of Israeli lies, that the murder of Palestinians and the theft of their lands is “Israel’s right of self-defense.”
#12446
The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians

By Professor Francis A. Boyle

January 12, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.

But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:

Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.

Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much touted “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide.

Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.

Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!

The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of “humanitarian intervention” against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel – shudder the thought!. The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Rather than rein in the Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today’s world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.

Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.

(from “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions,” now at Amazon.com)
#12450
Q: Does Israel target children and civilians?
A: YES

Here is the proof. THEY HAVE DONE IT BEFORE AND ARE DOING IT AGAIN, WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE
Image
Image
Image
Image

Yesterday (15 July 2006) Israel gave the people of Ter Hafra village in South Lebanon two hours to leave their village or face destruction. Those who were able to flee went to the nearby UN base. The UN refused to shelter these children, not wanting to take responsibility after the Qana massacre in 1996 when Israel massacred the civilians taking shelter in the UN headquaters. Left on the open road without shelter these fleeing civilians made easy picking for the Israeli airforce with their US donated F-16 fighter planes. Most of the victims were children, their bodies burnt in the precision targeted missle attack. The photos are from Associated Press but it seems no western media is prepared to show them.
source:http://inminds.co.uk/index.html
#12458
Children of Gaza, Run to the Angels

By Suzanne Baroud - Jan 9, 2008

Ironically, it was in Palestine, 20 years ago, that I
concluded that there is no God. For how could a God, who
claims to love all and treat all with impartiality, allow
such horrors like those in Palestine to happen?

This unbelief grew stronger with each curfew, with each
strike that mourned the death of yet one more martyr, with a
decapitation induced by gunfire in the main square on a
sunny Ramallah afternoon so many years ago. But it was
cemented the day I had to tell one of my fifth grade
students that his brother had just been taken away by the
Israeli army. His expression, his body going limp, the
shuddering of his shoulders as he wept with his
classmates…that's what finally did it.

Nearly 20 years have passed since that day, and I have now
married into a Gazan family. I am a wife and mother, the
sister and aunt of so many kids living the horror of what
Gaza has become. As we watch the footage of Israel's
onslaught, I hear myself, whispering as I see one more
martyred child, "Run to the angels….run." After
so many years, this living nightmare is fostering a burning
desire to believe once again in the afterlife.

Caged, starved, sniped, suffocated. They are slaughtered
like sheep, but the leaders of the free world just cannot
seem to find a moment to comment. Golfing, vacationing,
Obama, Bush, even the EU, they just aren't important
enough. My mutterings have become a like a canter. I call
out to these stricken and shattered little bodies, who
frankly never experienced life to lose it. The only
consolation to offer is the respite found in death.

A crowd gathers, shrouded in gas, smoke and dust. In the
front stand eight young fathers, each holding a white
swaddled bundle of what used to be a son, a daughter. For a
few moments there is no screaming, no chanting or crying,
but a moment of quiet and stillness that presses one to
wonder just whom has been granted the greater mercy, the
toddler who caught the snipers bullet, or the young father,
who will have to find some way to live beyond this moment?

A young boy sits on the sidewalk beside his mother. She is
propped up against the wall of a collapsed building and her
life is bleeding out all over the sidewalk. It is spattered
on his face and smeared on his shirt. She uses the last of
her strength to lift her arm and clutch his cheek in her
palm and then she is gone. He rests his head in his hands
and cries. He is all alone.

The camera zooms in on the scene of a freshly detonated
building, a civilian home. A little girls brown curly hair
covered in dust and eyes wide open is all that can be found
of her. Her mother wails and pulls her hair while her father
frantically searches among the rubble for the rest of his
daughter, where could she be? I whisper again, "you
will be made whole again in Paradise. Run to the
angels".

What amazing faith. What strong devotion that a father
loses his mother, father, wife and eight children, that this
man before anything can assert, "God is Great, Thank
God for Everything". He holds his child, now still and
ashen, he smothers him with kisses and then gently pulls
back the sheet to expose two bullet holes in his chest. He
then tenderly places the child beside his brother and again,
pulls the sheet back of his youngest son to reveal a single
snipers bullet to the chest. He can barely compose himself
and he moans to the sympathizing camera man, "God is
Great, Thank God for Everything".

An old and wrinkled Imam so lovingly cradles a little
girl's lifeless body, as if mishandling her now could
inflict more pain, he mumbles a benediction and gently lies
her beside her sisters and her brothers in the mass grave. I
try to comfort her, saying, "Finally, a place of
safety. Rest beside your sister. Your brother. Put your
fears to rest and meet your beloved Prophet and the many of
your little friends who have fallen before you."

Hospitals, schools, mosques, civilian homes, UN shelters,
all worthy targets. Doctors, medicines, food and water,
truckloads of relief from all corners of the world line up
for miles at the Egyptian border but they are refused entry.
Security is high, food is scarce, water is completely gone.

Faith seems to spring forth in the strangest of moments.
For me, it seems to be coming full circle out of desperation
and in agony, for the sake of the snow-white souls of the
many bloodied and dismembered innocents of Gaza.

UN workers coordinate with Israelis to get civilians to
safety inside a UN school. Hundreds are tucked inside the
mutually agreed safe haven. Soon after, the school comes
under Israeli fire. Bruised and battered refugees stare
Satan in the face, clad in his fatigues. Hundreds wounded,
scores dead, many lost and unaccounted for.

Governments negotiate a cease-fire. Rumors buzz of
conspiracies. The US President-elect is forever silent.
Parents search beneath the collapsed walls for what remains
of their children. Shattered concrete, random arms and legs,
broken glass, tossed together in a bloody hodge-podge. But,
in my mind, I see them whole, their little bodies swiftly
being swept up into Paradise and I call out to them,
"Run!"

- Suzanne Baroud is the Managing Editor of
PalestineChronicle.com.
#12459
What You Need To Know About Israel's "Colonies"

Video

Anna Baltzer, a young Jewish American, went to the West Bank to discover the realities of daily life for Palestinians under the occupation. What she found would change her outlook on the conflict forever. She wrote this book to give voice to the stories of the people who welcomed her with open arms as their lives crumbled around them. For five months, Baltzer lived and worked with farmers, Palestinian and Israeli activists, and the families of political prisoners, traveling with them across endless checkpoints and roadblocks to reach hospitals, universities, and olive groves.

Baltzer witnessed firsthand the environmental devastation brought on by expanding settlements and outposts and the destruction wrought by Israels Security Fence, which separates many families from each other, their communities, their land, and basic human services. What emerges from Baltzers journal is not a sensationalist tale of suicide bombers and conspiracies, but a compelling and inspiring description of the trials of daily life under the occupation. Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American graduate of Columbia University, Fulbright scholar, and two-time volunteer with the International Womens Peace Service in the West Bank, where she documented human rights abuses and supported the nonviolent resistance movement to the occupation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCBJjCiLGc&e
#12460
Israel Accused of War Crimes Over 12-hour Assault on Gaza Village

White flags ignored and houses bulldozed with families inside, claim residents

By Fida Qishta in Khuza'a and Peter Beaumont in London

January 18, 2009 "The Observer" -- Israel stands accused of perpetrating a series of war crimes during a sustained 12-hour assault on a village in southern Gaza last week in which 14 people died.

In testimony collected from residents of the village of Khuza'a by the Observer, it is claimed that Israeli soldiers entering the village:

• attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside;

• killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags;

• opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded;

• used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.

If the allegations are upheld, all the incidents would constitute breaches of the Geneva conventions.

The denunciations over what happened in Khuza'a follow repeated claims of possible human rights violations from the Red Cross, the UN and human rights organisations.

The Israeli army announced yesterday that it was investigating "at the highest level" five other attacks against civilians in Gaza, involving two UN facilities and a hospital. It added that in all cases initial investigations suggested soldiers were responding to fire. "These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence," said Yigal Palmor, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman.

Concern over what occurred in the village of Khuza'a in the early hours of Tuesday was first raised by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. Although an Israeli military spokesman said he had "no information that this alleged incident took place", witness statements collected by the Observer are consistent and match testimony gathered by B'Tselem.

There is also strong visible evidence that Khuza'a came under a sustained attack from tanks and bulldozers that smashed some buildings to pieces.

Pictures taken by photographer Bruno Stevens in the aftermath show heavy damage - and still burning phosphorus. "What I can tell you is that many, many houses were shelled and that they used white phosphorus," said Stevens yesterday, one of the first western journalists to get into Gaza. "It appears to have been indiscriminate." Stevens added that homes near the village that had not been hit by shell fire had been set on fire.

The village of Khuza'a is around 500 metres from the border with Israel. According to B'Tselem, its field researcher in Gaza was contacted last Tuesday by resident Munir Shafik al-Najar, who said that Israeli bulldozers had begun destroying homes at 2.30am.

When Rawhiya al-Najar, aged 50, stepped out of her house waving a white flag, so that the rest of the family could leave the house, she was allegedly shot by Israeli soldiers nearby.

The second alleged incident was on Tuesday afternoon, when Israeli troops ordered 30 residents to leave their homes and walk to a school in the village centre. After travelling 20 metres, troops fired on the group, allegedly killing three.

Further detailed accounts of what occurred were supplied in interviews given to a Palestinian researcher who has been working for the Observer, following the decision by Israel to ban foreign media from the Gaza Strip. Iman al-Najar, 29, said she watched as bulldozers started to destroy neighbours' homes and saw terrified villagers flee from their houses as masonry collapsed.

"By 6am the tanks and bulldozers had reached our house," Iman recalled. "We went on the roofs and tried to show we were civilians with white flags. Everyone was carrying a white flag. We told them we are civilians. We don't have any weapons. The soldiers started to destroy the houses even if the people were in them." Describing the death of Rawhiya, Iman says they were ordered by Israeli soldiers to move to the centre of the town. As they did, Israeli troops opened fire. Rawhiya was at the front of the group, says Iman.

Marwan Abu Raeda, 40, a paramedic working for the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: "At 8am we received a phone call from Khuza'a. They told us about the injured woman. I went immediately. I was 60 or 70 metres away from the injured woman when the Israeli forces started to shoot at me." As he drove into another street, he came under fire again. Twelve hours later, when Rawhiya was finally reached, she was dead.

Iman said she ended up in an area of rubble where a large group of people had sought cover in a deep hole among the debris of demolished houses. It is then, she says, that bulldozers began to push the rubble from each side. "They wanted to bury us alive," she said.
User avatar
By abuali
#12461
"We Are The Authors Of This Tragedy"

By George Galloway - Video

George Galloway's powerful speech in the House of Commons debate on Gaza, Thu 15 Jan 2009 (5.30pm), highlighting the hypocrisy and brazen double-standards of Western foreign policy towards Israel policies, including assassinations and other war crimes.

VIDEO

#12464
THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY

The next few posts are going to be graphic. I am going to post photos i received in an email which attempts to compare what Nazis did and the atrocities Israel is committing.

The photos are explicit and shocking. Be warned.
Ramadhan Daily Duas- # 17

Dua for Day 17 | Holy Month of Ramadhan O Allah, […]

https://youtu.be/hk2bRbbavCY?si=6Y53rBBj5rHfPNmw

Ramadan Daily Duas - # 16

*Dua for Day 16 | Holy Month of Ramadhan* O Allah[…]

Ramadan Daily Duas - # 15

Dua for Day 15 | Holy Month of Ramadhan O Allah G[…]

Ask4help Counseling Helpline