Peace 4 the Middle East

Chris Hedges condemns Israeli Gaza Massacre

2009-03-01T23:21:00.004+03:00

Chris Hedges, author, spoke at a Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting at Ethical Culture Society January 13, 2009 condemning Israel and US complicity in Israel's murderous destruction of Gaza

Global boycott movement marks its successes

2009-03-01T23:17:00.000+03:00

Jeff Handmaker, The Electronic Intifada, 20 February 2009

Responding to the many calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, solidarity movements around the world have marked many successes. It is important for human rights advocates to build on this momentum and seize the opportunity to do what is within their power to try and hold Israel accountable for its abuses of human rights and other international laws.

Since the initial BDS call by Palestinian intellectuals and academics in October 2003, which was followed by separate calls for sports, arts, economic and other calls for BDS, there has been a seismic shift in the global solidarity movement for human rights in Israel-Palestine. Lawyers, doctors, academics, students, trade unionists, school teachers and many other activists have marked successes around the world. Their efforts are an inspiring reflection of the South African anti-apartheid movement, where BDS was also used very effectively.

In first few weeks of 2009 alone, European, North American and South African solidarity movements have made remarkable progress:

A growing number of politicians in Europe and North America have put forward uncomfortable, probing questions to their governments and clearly want to do more. One example is the "Break the Silence" campaign within the Dutch Labor Party.
Numerous letters and opinion pieces have been published by prominent figures in major national newspapers, including statement by prominent lawyers and professors published by The Sunday Times on 11 January 2009.
The global "Derail Veolia" campaign has grown in leaps and bounds. An important success was the decision by the Stockholm municipality to cancel an agreement with Veolia Transport, on the basis of its involvement in the Jerusalem light-rail project, to the tune of several billion euros.
There have been calls for international investigations of war crimes from the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the head of UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestine refugees) and the UN Secretary General as well as scores of high-profile international lawyers around the world.
The European Parliament managed to halt negotiations on strengthening the trading relationship between the EU and Israel in the framework of the Association Agreement and there are new, emboldened efforts to try and get the Association Agreement suspended altogether.
Countless demonstrations have taken place in villages, towns and cities around the world, from Cape Town to Swansea and from Stockholm to Montreal and they are attracting decent publicity. Where there has been no television crew present, activists have made effective use of online resources such as YouTube.
In South Africa there was a major success when dockworkers affiliated with SATAWU and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) refused to unload a ship containing Israeli goods. The story made national headlines for several days.
Academic boycott is taking hold in academic institutions around the world -- students in particular have been leading the way on this, but academics also.

Israel's 22-day-long bombardment of Gaza, the greatest use of military force in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1967 and what several commentators have already referred to as the Palestinian Sharpeville, has greatly fueled BDS efforts.

Especially before the blockade and recent carnage in Gaza, some activists raised concerns that by pursuing BDS, they may be curtailing dialogue, isolating progressive elements within Israel or even harming Palestinians. However, these concerns have greatly diminished as activists have realized how effective a mechanism BDS really is. In any event, the existence of a dialogue towards a just and sustainable peace between Palestinians and Israel is clearly non-existent, and there is little incentive on the part of Israel to engage in this any time soon. Progressive elements within Israel are still very marginal, but growing and many of these courageous, progressive Israelis have themselves called for BDS against Israel. As for harm against Palestinians, the fact that Palestinians themselves have called for BDS should be as clear a sign as any that the cost of not responding to the call causes far more harm.

Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, activists should continue to grasp the opportunities that BDS offers and build up the momentum that has been generated. As Israeli apartheid week, taking place worldwide from 1-8 March (see http://apartheidweek.org), solidarity activists should continue to work within the narrow, but highly significant space that exists for them to try and hold the Israeli government, and their own governments, accountable for abuses of human rights and humanitarian law against Palestinians.

Jeff Handmaker is an author, a human rights lawyer, and a researcher and university lecturer in human rights at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. A version of this article was originally published by Indymedia US.

The dismantling of Israel Document: Israel is an outlawed entity

2009-03-01T22:43:00.000+03:00

The dismantling of Israel Document: Israel is an outlawed entity

In the name of God
The Lord of all human beings

The authors of this document are a group of youth who do not belong to a political trend or party, and do not have any ethnic, racist, or religious agenda. We uphold humanity and the right of all humans to live with dignity and peace regardless of religion, color, race, political beliefs, ethnicity, and nationality.
We announce our full respect of all principles and creeds, and our support to righteousness and justice against oppression, suppression, murder, usurpation of rights, and distortion of facts.

As advocates for human rights and values, we believe in dismantling what is internationally recognized as “the state of Israel”.
This document states our legitimate and humanitarian arguments.

First: Israel is not a state according to the international definition.

The definition of a state is: “A state is a political association with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population.”
In reference to the above definition, we can construe that:
- Israel is not a political association; it is a religious-ethnic racist association.
- Israel is not a sovereign state, it depends entirely on US political, economical, and militarily support, making it an American colony, rather than a sovereign state.
Consecutive US administrations unremittingly state its commitment to Israeli security. According to international norms, every state is committed only to its own security, and no state on earth is committed to another state’s security, except the United States of America which is committed to Israeli security.
It would be more realistic and precise if Israel is recognized as a US colony.

Second: Israel is an internationally outlawed entity and must be prosecuted.
Although Israel is the creation of the United Nations — created after Zionist terrorist groups assassinated Folk Bernadette, the Count of Weisberg, who acquired legal proofs to avert the foundation of Israel — yet, Israel, from its very inception, was a deviant entity that never conformed to international laws or UN Security Council resolutions, relying on the US veto.

1- Israel was founded by terrorist groups prosecuted of bombing civilians in hotels, cinemas, and markets: Lehi, Stern, Revisionist Zionist group, Irgun, and Haganah.
2- Israel has violated 35 UN Security Council resolutions and, protected by the US veto, has not been prosecuted.
3- Israel maintains occupation, deliberately targets civilians, reporters, and doctors, and it prevents the arrival of aid to the injured.
4- Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel develops weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, and deliberately targets civilians with internationally prohibited weapons.
5- Israel violates the political and civil rights of its own citizens despite its claims of being a democracy. Israel has banned a number of Israeli political parties from nomination in the late elections because members of these parties are from Arab origins. This decree was issued according to discriminating and racist measures which are against international law and are reminiscent of the obsolete South African apartheid system.
Israeli officials announce openly that they believe in the “purgation” of the “Jewish State” from non-Jewish citizens. Tzipi Livni said that in the case of founding the Palestinian state, all Israelis from Arab origins would have to leave Israel to the Palestinian state in order to “purify” Israel.

Third: Zionism contradicts articles of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

1- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Articles breached by Israel:

Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colors, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

- Zionism is based mainly on discrimination. It is rooted in the idea of the “Chosen People”. Such a misinterpretation for the Torah explains the discrimination practiced by Israel against Palestinians and Arab-Israeli citizens as seen in occupation, blockade, targeting civilians, land confiscation, building an apartheid wall, and deprivation of political, social, and economical rights. All these atrocities are directed to Arabs because of their ethnicity and religions.
- N.B.: Such violations are totally condemned by religious Jews, and as human beings we believe that Zionism and Israel are the greatest anti-Semites in the world as they defame Judaism, distort the Jewish image, and monopolize what they think is the right interpretation of Judaism, which is completely rejected by anti-Zionist Jews.

Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

- From the moment Israel was founded, it was mainly based on depriving people from their rights of life, liberty and security. It started with the Deir Yassin massacre, which was executed by the Zionist terrorist groups. This massacre was the seed of the Zionist state. Immediately after the foundation of Israel, several massacres against civilians took place. As there is no space to mention all of them here, so we will mention only a few of them: al-Dawayma massacre (1948), Kafr Kassem massacre (1965), and the most recent massacre took place in Gaza (2008/2009). Israel officials stated frequently that they deliberately target civilians to put pressure on groups that resist them.
- Israel bombed UN buildings and staff several times in Lebanon and Palestine.
- Israel targets civilians and UN buildings with internationally prohibited weapons.
- Israel refused to receive the UN deputy after the Jenin massacre (2002).

Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

- Israel practices unrelenting torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian prisoners, civilians seized at checkpoints, children on their way to schools, and civilian inhabitants of the Occupied Territories.
- Israeli soldiers handcuff and blindfold civilians and children seized at checkpoints. They also take children as human shields to protect themselves from the rocks thrown by other children.
- Palestinian homes are also subject to daily incursions by Israeli soldiers directing their rifles toward children and women to terrify them.

Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

- Israel from its very beginning expelled Palestinians from their lands, demolished their homes. As a result, Palestinians are now living as refugees in different countries.
- Israel denies the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
- Israel is imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, many of whom are children and women.
- Reports as well as eyewitnesses assert that during the recent aggression on Gaza (2008/2009), Israel arrested more than one thousand Palestinians over the age of 16 and placed them in dangerous areas, often using them as human shields.
- During the war on Gaza (2008/2009), the Israeli army arrested injured civilians and deliberately left them bleeding, preventing medical crews from reaching them.
- Witnesses assert that during the war (2008/2009), the Israeli army used injured civilians as human shields by placing them in holes dug right in front of tanks, jeopardizing their lives by placing them on the line of fire.
- Witnesses testify that Israeli soldiers used a number of families as human shields during breaking into homes in Gaza (2008/2009).
- The Israeli army used homes in Gaza as military observation points and military bases, detaining families in these homes to use them as human shields.
- Till now, there are more than 200 citizens under the custody of the Israeli army, some of whom were subjected to direct investigation, torment, and extortion.
- The Israeli army refused to cooperate with the Red Cross, Palestinian authorities, and human rights organizations which demanded that Israel reveal the numbers and names of the arrested. Such rejection of cooperation arouses intense apprehension in relation to the safety of the arrested.

Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

- Israel deprives Palestinians from their right to freedom of movement and residence by seizing them at checkpoints for long periods of time that may reach twenty hours or more.
- Israel prevents refugees from returning to their homeland.
- Israel restricts the residence of a huge number of Palestinians and stops them from leaving the country without stating reasons.

Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

- Israel bombs Palestinian cities and stops Palestinian civilians from leaving dangerous spots by the closure of borders and blockade (war on Gaza 2008/2009).

Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

- Israel grants its nationality to any Jew in the world on a religious basis, while it threatens some Arab-Israelis with the revocation of their nationality, because they adopt certain political views that Israel does not agree with.
- After exiling Palestinians from their lands, Israel refuses to grant them the right of return.
- Israel imposes Israeli nationality on residents in the Golan Heights and practices all kinds of intimidations on those who refuse the Israeli nationality.

Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

- Israel confiscates Palestinian lands, expels Palestinians, and banishes them in order to build its own settlements on occupied territories.
- Israel, for decades, uproots and destroys tens of thousands of olive trees, as well as citrus and grape groves. They all belong to the Palestinians for centuries.
- Israel built an apartheid wall on confiscated Palestinian land and divided Palestinian villages into unviable cantons.

Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

We have already pointed out that Israel has denied Arab-Israeli parties participation in elections and exercising their democratic rights because of their ethnic background. Israel refuses, suppresses, and undermines all democratic options of the Palestinian people at the territories under the Palestinian Authority’s rule. It detains democratically elected ministers, deputies, and representatives, and suppresses their freedom without trials or with formal military trials. Detainees do not enjoy the most basic civil rights as individuals and as representatives of the people.

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

- Israel closes border crossings and denies Palestinians access to humanitarian aid as has been the ongoing situation in Gaza.
- Israel exploits Palestinian workers and makes them work for lower wages. Palestinian workers do not enjoy any legal rights inside Israel, further exposing them to ill-treatment and being fired at any time without having any legal rights.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Israel is violating all these articles by putting restrictions on Palestinian workers, detaining them for long hours at the crossings and checkpoints. Israel is also politically exploiting most of them by asking them to reveal security information to its intelligence agency about Palestinian officials and citizens in order to kill or arrest them, in exchange for the workers’ wages and rights.
Israel has made the humanitarian situation and living conditions of Palestinians a living hell.
Many Palestinian pregnant women give birth at the crossings and checkpoints in the open. The Israeli army does not offer any assistance or facilities to transport pregnant women and patients.
Hundreds die annually at the crossings after having been denied access to hospitals and aid. Palestinian children are born and grow up under bombardment and blockade, and among scenes of death and destruction, depriving them of their most basic rights as children.
Israel imposes on children a life in an environment of perpetual war, depriving them from their rights to learn and to go safely to schools.
Schools have been bombed many times, and the proportion of dead Palestinian children is the highest in modern wars. Among these children many infants are shot dead at point-blank range.

Israel breaches most, if not all, the articles of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political rights in relation with its conduct to Palestinians and residents in the occupied Golan Height’s.

PART 1

Article 1
1- All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
2- All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.
3- The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

- Israel is occupying Palestinian territories and the Golan heights, refusing to conform to Security Council resolutions stating that Israel must retreat from the occupied lands.
- Israel denies Palestinians and tenants of the Golan's their right of self-determination, and denies their rights of freedom in determining their political status, pursuing their economic, social and cultural development, and uses fierce and illegal force to prevent them from practicing the mentioned rights.
- Israel targets prominent Palestinian cultural figures. In 1970, Israel assassinated the prominent Palestinian literary figure Ghassan Kanafani. In 1987, Israel assassinated the prominent Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali.
- Israel prevents Palestinians from reaching their schools, and prevents them from joining universities, and when they try to acquire grants abroad, it stops them from traveling.

PART II
Article 2
Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Where not already provided for by existing legislative or other measures, each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take the necessary steps. in accordance with its constitutional processes and with the provisions of the present Covenant, to adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in the present Covenant.
Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes:
To ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity; to ensure that any person claiming such a remedy shall have his rights thereto determined by competent judicial, administrative or legislative authorities, or by any other competent authority provided for by the legal system of the State, and to develop the possibilities of judicial remedy;
To ensure that the competent authorities shall enforce such remedies when granted.

- Israel breaches this article. Arab citizens in Israel are denied all the rights that are granted to any Jewish Israel. Jews in Israel are allowed to own and carry weapons, practice rituals of their religion — even if those rituals include extremist or racist activities like cursing other religions and races — and Jews are allowed to point their weapons at any non-Jewish citizens walking in the streets. Such acts are not illegal according to Israeli law.
- Non-Jewish citizens are forced to join the army, placed in the line of fire, and their lives are jeopardized deliberately, while Jews serving in the army are highly protected.
- Non-Jewish citizens are compelled to serve in the army in Arab districts, and forced to attack their own people. If they refuse, they face imprisonment.
- Israel deprives non-Jewish citizens from practicing rituals of their religions frequently, and if they allow them, the army sieges the church or the mosque.
- Israel prevents men under the age of fifty to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque and force them to pray in the streets surrounded by tanks and rifles.
- Arabs arrested by Israel are denied all their rights, exposed to torment and receive fake trials in which the judge deals with the prisoner according to religion and race, not according to the legal situation.
- More than ten thousand Arabs are incarcerated in Israeli prisons because of their political views. Many of them have not undergone any trials.

Article 4
In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, color, sex, language, religion or social origin.
No derogation from articles 6, 7, 8 (paragraphs 1 and 2), 11, 15, 16 and 18 may be made under this provision.
Any State Party to the present Covenant availing itself of the right of derogation shall immediately inform the other States Parties to the present Covenant, through the intermediary of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, of the provisions from which it has derogated and of the reasons by which it was actuated. A further communication shall be made, through the same intermediary, on the date on which it terminates such derogation.

Israel violates all these points in the above article. Under the pretext of protecting Israeli security, Israel divests all Arab citizens from security.
Protected by US veto, Israel never complies with UN Security Council resolutions.

Article 9
Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.
Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.
Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgment.
Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.
Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.

Palestinians under Israeli occupation do not enjoy any security. Israeli forces break up homes and subject civilians to arbitrary arrest. They are deprived of their freedom without any legal pretext and without even knowing the reason of their arrest.
They receive inhumane treatment during their arrest.
After arresting one Palestinian, frequently, Israeli army bulldozes his or her home, and abuses his or her family.
After arrest, Palestinians are subjected to fierce torture.
Israeli courts do not apply the law on the Palestinians. They take a prior hostile position toward the prosecuted according to race and religion.

Article 10
All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.
Accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be segregated from convicted persons and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons;
Accused juvenile persons shall be separated from adults and brought as speedily as possible for adjudication.
The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation. Juvenile offenders shall be segregated from adults and be accorded treatment appropriate to their age and legal status.

- Any Palestinian or Arab arrested by Israeli forces is treated with indignity and inhumanely.
- Every Palestinian arrested by Israeli forces is subjected to torture.
- Palestinians arrested for political reasons are put in the same cells with criminals.
- Palestinian juvenile persons are put in the same cells with criminal adults.
- More than ten thousand Palestinians and Arabs are imprisoned and subjected to inhumane conditions. Many of them are children, women, and pregnant women.
- Pregnant Arab women imprisoned in Israeli jails give birth in the prison, and the babies are not allowed to go to relatives' custody outside the prison.

Article 12
Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.
Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.
The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.

- Israel deprives millions of refugees from returning to their country from which they were expelled by force.
- Israel arbitrarily deprives Palestinian youths from leaving the country to receive an education abroad. It also deprives them from receiving education in their country.

Article 14
All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law. The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (ordre public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgment rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or the guardianship of children.
Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
In the determination of any criminal charge against him, everyone shall be entitled to the following minimum guarantees, in full equality:
To be informed promptly and in detail in a language which he understands of the nature and cause of the charge against him;
To have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defense and to communicate with counsel of his own choosing;
To be tried without undue delay;
To be tried in his presence, and to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing; to be informed, if he does not have legal assistance, of this right; and to have legal assistance assigned to him, in any case where the interests of justice so require, and without payment by him in any such case if he does not have sufficient means to pay for it;
To examine, or have examined, the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him;
To have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court;
Not to be compelled to testify against oneself or to confess guilt.
In the case of juvenile persons, the procedure shall be such as will take account of their age and the desirability of promoting their rehabilitation.
Everyone convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law.
When a person has by a final decision been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice, the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction shall be compensated according to law, unless it is proved that the non-disclosure of the unknown fact in time is wholly or partly attributable to him.
No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.

- Every single item in this article is violated by Israel when it comes to Palestinians and Arabs.
- Israeli courts defuse the action of Israeli law when it deals with Palestinians and Arabs. They are found guilty before they even step into the courtroom.
- Israeli courts often dismiss attorneys assigned by the accused and assign other ones who are known of their prejudice against Arabs as a race.

Article 17
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Israel violates this article under international cover. Israeli forces storms into Palestinian homes without any respect for privacy, abuses families, especially children.
Concerning the unlawful attacks on a person’s honor and reputation:
During the past years there have been constant attacks against Muslims and Arabs that are known as "Islamophobia" and "Arabo-phobia". Such an organized denigration, depicting Muslims and Arabs as "terrorists", "backwards", and "uncivilized" people was meant to give excuses and justify all illegal military atrocities waged against Arab and Muslim population, starting with Israeli massacres, the US invasion of Afghanistan, the illegal occupation in Iraq and ending with the most notorious prisons in the world: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
Such a campaign caused a great damage to all Muslim and Arab population worldwide. May Muslims, Arabs and even some Sikhs and Hindus (because they resemble Middle Eastern Muslims in color and features) were subjected to persecution, job loss, arrest and racist homicides.
Many Arab and Muslim nations were damaged economically, politically and militarily with the full support of both states and mobs.
Inhuman crimes and internationally prohibited acts were directed to Muslims and Arabs, collectively and individually word wide.
International media, relentlessly, broadcasts materials contains hate speech against Muslims and Arabs. FOX news persistently broadcasts materials arouse hatred towards Muslims, International News papers….etc).
Now, after taking steps toward closing Guantanamo Bay and retreating from Iraq, we demand the following:
1- Official apology from all those who convicted actions of material and moral atrocities against Muslims and Arabs which cause them great damages collectively and individually.
2- The immediate cease of any kind of hatred action whether militarily, economically or speech hatred.
3- Legal international condemnation of all offensives against Muslims and Arabs.
4- This spread hatred policies were meant to be a cover for inhuman war crimes executed by Israel and the world powers. Such policies have to be internationally condemned with official declaration and new legislations to protect Muslim and Arab subject from persecution.
5- Arabs are Semites, yet, they are not allowed to resort to the anti-Semite international law when they are attacked, therefore, it is essential to issue a new law to protect Arabs and Muslims.
6- Suitable financial, political and moral compensations for Arabs and Muslims have to be attributed immediately.

Article 20
Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Israeli politicians lead war propaganda and use it in election campaigns in which they repeatedly echo the call for war using racist tones against Arabs and threatening them with genocide.
By monitoring the Israeli politicians' statements since the foundation of Israel until now, we find constant campaigns led by politicians and religious leaders waged against Arabs, describing them with the most racist descriptions inciting soldiers to kill them for racist, religious, and security reasons.

Article 25
Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions:
To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;
To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors;
To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country.

Palestinians do not enjoy any political rights under the occupation. Israel does not respect the election results of the Palestinian people, and does not recognize the Palestinian people's representatives. Moreover, Israel arrests elected Palestinian MPs with disregard to their parliamentary immunity.
Arab-Israelis are not allowed to occupy leading posts no matter how qualified they are.
In employment, Jews have the priority over any Arab, even if the Arabs are more qualified.

Article 27
In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

Israel violates this article as mention above in the document.
Israel breaches all items of Part IV of the Covenant. It does not permit the establishment of any international human rights committees to follow up the rights of people under occupation, or assist in the prosecution of criminals who take part in killings, genocide, arrest and imprisonment against the people. The United Nations and the international community are responsible for this part, but cannot prosecute Israel, its leaders, officers or soldiers. At the same time, Israel prevents the work of any international inquiring committee, whatever its reasons and goals are.
This part is not recognized or practiced by Israel, nor practiced at all on Israel by any international organization.

It is obvious to any researcher that Israel has clearly violated all international documents, charters and treaties. It is very strange indeed that Israel and its officials had never been prosecuted or held accountable for their actions.
As for the economic part of the International Covenant, below we show how Israel deals with this aspect:

Article 1
1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

- We have mentioned earlier in the civil and political covenants how Israel violates this article by occupying Palestinian land, building the separation wall, placing Gaza under siege, and building settlements on Palestinian land whose owners have documents of ownership, deploying barriers between cities and villages, and stopping Palestinians for long hours on these barriers, including the workers who lose their jobs because of permanent delay.
- Israel has seized all fresh water resources in the West Bank and Golan Heights. It is establishing settlements on fertile land after the expulsion of its inhabitants and confiscation of the land. It builds its army camps near freshwater resources.Israel also had and is still cutting off hundreds of thousands of olive and citrus trees which belong to Palestinians, destroying their orchards and vineyards and confiscating them to construct the separation wall and build settlements or military barracks.

PART III
Article 6
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.
2. The steps to be taken by a State Party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programs, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.

- Most of the Palestinian youth are unemployed due to harassment at Israeli checkpoints. They are delayed for long hours and asked to provide information about their own people in order to facilitate their transit to work. At the same time, Israel has bombed most factories in Gaza after a suffocating siege where it denied Gaza the entry of any raw materials or spare parts for machines. Israel bombards small workshops, continuously pounding them to the ground and claiming that the resistance fighters are using them to manufacture explosives. These claims have often proved to be untrue because these workshops are very small and do not have any facilities for manufacturing any explosives or the like.
- All these items are not available in Gaza or the West Bank because of the policies of the occupation. No efficiency or technology is available in schools and educational institutes because of the poverty, siege, and restrictions. A Palestinian worker can not find a decent job except in Israel and most employed workers lose their jobs for the reasons mentioned earlier (delaying at checkpoints or being questioned by Israeli intelligence).

Article 7
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favorable conditions of work which ensure, in particular:
(a) Remuneration which provides all workers, as a minimum, with:
(i) Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind, in particular women being guaranteed conditions of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal work;
(ii) A decent living for themselves and their families in accordance with the provisions of the present Covenant;
(b) Safe and healthy working conditions;
(c) Equal opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his employment to an appropriate higher level, subject to no considerations other than those of seniority and competence;
(d) Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays

Such conditions cannot be obtained under the constraints mentioned earlier as a result of the occupation. Palestinian women work in very bad conditions under the occupation in dilapidated old factories. Palestinian women working as teachers are always vulnerable to danger and stop working as schools often close for security reasons. Workers do not get paid often because Israel denies the entry of money to Gaza and prevents the entry of private banking remittances of employee salaries. Gaza often witnesses strikes because workers do not receive their salaries for months, therefore, they do not have the minimum requirements of employments and payments. They cannot get paid most of the year.

Article 10
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that:
1. The widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society, particularly for its establishment and while it is responsible for the care and education of dependent children. Marriage must be entered into with the free consent of the intending spouses.
2. Special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth. During such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.
3. Special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children and young persons without any discrimination for reasons of parentage or other conditions. Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. Their employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development should be punishable by law. States should also set age limits below which the paid employment of child labor should be prohibited and punishable by law.

- There is no protection for an individual or family under the Israeli occupation. Almost every Palestinian family is divided in several countries because of the displacement, and each Palestinian house has victims because of the Israeli bombardment. This article and many others cannot even be applied on Palestinians under the relocation, displacement, killings, bombings, and intimidation.
- Many Palestinian mothers, whether working or not, have given birth at checkpoints and on the way to hospitals because of the restriction policy at the crossings, and long waits with no distinction between patients and pregnant women or ordinary people.
- Palestinian children are exposed to death in the streets and on the way to schools. Many of them are forced to leave schools and work to support their families due to the death of the father or the mother, or because of extreme poverty caused by the continuous blockade and the starvation policy imposed on Gaza by Israel.

Article 11
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.
2. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programs, which are needed:
(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;
(b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.

- We have stated previously and it is well known that the Israeli blockade makes the application of such articles impossible. Israel has bombed relief warehouses, even those belonging to the UNRWA, as happened in Gaza recently.
- Israel has been imposing a suffocating siege, shelling relief agencies and warehouses, and preventing Palestinians from importing goods, food and medicines from abroad.

Article 12
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:
(a) The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child;
(b) The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene;
(c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases;
(d) The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.

- Palestinian hospitals and clinics have no modern equipment, and there is no electricity most of the time because Israel prevents fuel and gas from reaching Gaza. It also prevents the import of medical equipment. Palestinian patients often die because of simple medical causes which can easily be cured, as a lot of medicines are not available and cannot be imported because of the blockade.
- We've described previously the situations in hospitals and how babies are born in primitive conditions on crossings which cause their death due to the lack of basic conditions of life that the newborn needs and the requirements of special monitoring and care at hospitals.
In addition to the foregoing reasons, Israel has bombed populated Palestinian areas with internationally prohibited weapons such as phosphorus bombs, and this poses a threat to people's health as well as the environment in general.
Israel has bombed ambulances and paramedics were killed and prevented from reaching victims who die as a result. This has happened in all Israeli wars in southern Lebanon, the West Bank, Jenin, and Gaza recently.
In all wars Israel targeted ambulances and paramedics; the archives of these wars are available.

Article 13
1- The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

In addition to the previously mentioned status of Palestinian schools and students, Israeli curriculums are full of racial lessons, songs and stories inciting hatred against Arabs, showing them as primitive criminals who deserve to be killed, displaced and abused. This may be the most dangerous thing in the world facing children, to teach them the culture of hatred and racism. These children will not make peace in the future nor will they have any mercy on those whom they consider enemies. They grow up and learn that the "other" deserves to be killed. Israeli curriculums which contain a lot of this racism can be checked for details. Photos have also been published by international news agencies that show how young Israeli children were signing their names on the missiles of the Israeli army in Lebanon war in July 2006.

It should be noted here that Israel has breached and violated most of the Geneva Convention items relating to people's status and how to deal with them during wars and conflicts. All the violations that have been mentioned earlier in this document are explicit violations of the provisions of this treaty which is known to all countries and human rights and international organizations.

From the above mentioned, we find it clear that the so-called state of Israel, is a racial entity not entitled to live. It prevents decent living and peace for all its neighbors and those under its control, specifically non-Jews. It is an entity that is not governed by any basis of legal or ethical standards like the rest of the world.

Israel is a criminal entity based on murder and destruction, and poses a danger to humanity, environment, and all forms of life.
Hereby, as we place this document in front of all mankind, we express our clear resentment and rejection of the obvious silence of most international and humanitarian organizations, and even the bias of some of these organizations against the victim and their support of the aggressor. We put this responsibility before everyone who believes in humanity, and people's rights to enjoy all the noble standards of civilization.

Sign The dismantling of Israel Document: Israel is an outlawed entity Petition

Nawara Negm
Joe Ghanem
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ElBaradei: Ignoring Israel undermines NPT

2009-02-20T22:06:00.001+03:00

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:11:59 GMT

The UN nuclear chief says a double-standard approach to Israel's nukes has undermined the non-proliferation regime.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Monday that Arab nations believe that Israel has undermined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and this is a major obstacle to nuclear disarmament.

"What compounds the problem is that the nuclear non-proliferation regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of Arab public opinion because of the perceived double-standards concerning Israel, the only state in the region outside the NPT and known to possess nuclear weapons," he wrote in The Herald Tribune.

Israel is largely believed to posses the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East and has refused to sign the NPT or put its nuclear facilities under the UN supervision.

Former US president Jimmy Carter confirmed in May 2008 that Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

ElBaradei's remarks come amid speculations that the new administration of Barack Obama intends to engage Iran in direct negotiations over the country's nuclear program.

The UN nuclear watchdog has been investigating the Iranian program but its findings are often ignored by the international community.

"The UN and related agencies must be given adequate authority and funding and put in the hands of leaders who have vision, courage and credibility," the UN official added.

ElBaradei also blamed the US and Israel's unilateral policies for encouraging other nations to develop nuclear arms.

"Above all, we need to halt the glaring breach of core principles of international law such as limitations on the unilateral use of force, proportionality in self-defense and the protection of civilians during hostilities in order to avoid a repeat of the civilian carnage in Iraq and, most recently, in Gaza."

Source

Blackwater Changes Its Name to Xe

2009-02-15T00:23:00.002+03:00

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning the brand name that has been tarnished by its work in Iraq, settling on Xe (pronounced zee) as the new name for its family of two dozen businesses.

Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, the subsidiary that conducts much of the company’s overseas operations and domestic training, has been renamed U.S. Training Center Inc., the company said Friday.

The company’s rebranding effort grew more urgent after Blackwater guards in Baghdad were involved in a shooting episode in September 2007 that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Blackwater’s president, Gary Jackson, said in a memo to employees that the new name reflected the company’s shift away from providing private security. He has said the company is going to focus on training.

Last month, Iraqi leaders said they would not renew Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq; the State Department said later that it would not renew Blackwater’s contract to protect diplomats when it expired in May.

A Blackwater spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell, acknowledged the need to shake the company’s past in Iraq. “Certainly that is an aspect of our work that we feel we were defined by,” she said.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14blackwater.html

Israel mobilizes forces on Lebanon border

2009-02-15T00:17:00.001+03:00

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:18:59 GMT

Israeli forces along the Lebanese border are now on full alert.

Israel has reportedly mobilized its forces along its northern borders amid concerns that Tel Aviv may be planning to provoke Lebanon.

The Lebanon Files news agency reported Thursday that Israeli military forces were seen heavily patrolling the northern border.

The news comes amid Israeli suggestions that the Lebanese Hezbollah may launch retaliatory attacks for the assassination of its top commander, Imad Mughniyah, who was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus last February.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has recently touched on the issue, threatening to launch a massive military attack against Lebanon should Hezbollah try to retaliate for the assassination.

Israel's counter terrorism bureau has also issued warnings, claiming that Hezbollah was seeking to target or abduct Israelis abroad.

Hezbollah has vowed to avenge the murder of its commander, saying all evidence gathered so far indicate the involvement of Israeli spy agency Mossad in the assassination.

Last week, the Israeli military carried out a mock attack over Lebanese border regions and launched reconnaissance flights over the country.

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=85499&sectionid=351020202

Canada becomes Israel

2009-02-13T02:55:00.000+03:00

Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 12 February 2009

(EI Illustration)

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper's government publicly supported Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel's actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally.

In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January,The Jerusalem Post reported that "Israel's interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy." This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela.

Prior to the recent bombing in Gaza, the Harper government made it abundantly clear that it would support Israel no matter what that country did. It publicly endorsed Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights and in January 2008 refused to criticize illegal Israeli settlement construction at Har Homa near Jerusalem (even Washington publicly criticized these settlements). Canada was also the first country (after Israel) to cut off financial aid to the elected Hamas government and Ottawa has provided millions of dollars as well as personnel to create a US-trained Palestinian police force to act as a counterweight to the Hamas government and to oversee Israel's occupation.

Harper's support for Israel is extreme, but despite what many well-meaning commentators claim, it is not a break from Canada's role as an "honest broker" in the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is a long history of Canadian support for Zionism, a European settler ideology that has violently dispossessed Palestinians for more than six decades.

The idea for a Middle Eastern Jewish homeland to serve Western imperial interests has a long history in Canada. Since at least the 1870s Christian Zionists called for their biblical prophesies to be fulfilled under British auspices. By November 1915, Solicitor General (and then Prime Minister) Arthur Meighen publicly proclaimed, "I think I can speak for those of the Christian faith when I express the wish that God speed the day when the land of your [Jewish] forefathers shall be yours again. This task I hope will be performed by that champion of liberty the world over -- the British Empire." Two decades later Prime Minister RB Bennett began a national radio broadcast of the United Palestine Appeal with a speech about how the Balfour declaration and British control over Palestine was a step towards Biblical prophecies. "Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled," he noted. "The restoration of Zion has begun."

During the 1947 UN negotiations over the British mandate of historic Palestine, Canada played an important role in creating Israel. Lester Pearson (then under-secretary of state for External Affairs) who chaired two different UN committees dealing with the mandate and Supreme Court Justice Ivan C. Rand, a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), played central roles in the negotiations that led to partition. InState in the Making, David Horowitz (the first governor of the Bank of Israel and first director general of Israel's ministry of finance) writes: "It may be said that Canada more than any other country played a decisive part in all stages of the UNO [United Nations Organization] discussions of Palestine."

The UN's 1948 partition plan gave the new Jewish state the majority of Palestine despite the Jewish population owning roughly seven percent of the land and representing a third of the population. Rand's assistant on UNSCOP, Leon Mayrand, provides a window into the dominant mindset at External Affairs: "The Arabs were bound to be vocal opponents of partition but they should not be taken too seriously. The great majority were not yet committed nationalists and the Arab chiefs could be appeased through financial concessions, especially if these accompanied a clearly declared will to impose a settlement whatever the means necessary." A dissident within External Affairs, the department's only Middle East expert, Elizabeth MacCallum, claimed Ottawa supported partition, "because we didn't give two hoots for democracy."

Above all else support for partition was driven by a geostrategic worldview. An internal report circulated at External Affairs explained: "The plan of partition gives to the western powers the opportunity to establish an independent, progressive Jewish state in the Eastern Mediterranean with close economic and cultural ties with the West generally and in particular with the United States." The Ottawa mandarins largely supported Israel as a possible western outpost in the heart of the (oil-producing) Middle East.

When the first Palestinian intifada broke out in 1987, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney told the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) that Israel's brutal suppression of rock throwing Palestinian youth was handling the situation with "restraint." When questioned by a CBC reporter about the similarity between the plight of Palestinians and Blacks in South Africa, Mulroney replied that any comparison between Israel and South Africa was "false and odious and should never be mentioned in the same breath."

A decade later, Ottawa signed a free trade agreement with Israel. It was only Canada's fourth free trade agreement. Begun January 1997, the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement includes the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of where Israel's custom laws are applied.

The political motivation for supporting Israel has not changed significantly over the years. The government in Ottawa today receives limited electoral support from the Jewish community, but is close to a right-wing Christian Zionist movement. Most importantly, the Harper government strongly supports Western (US-led) imperialism in the Middle East. This is why Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy in Venezuela.

Yves Engler is the author of the forthcoming Canada on the World Stage: A Force for Good or Bad Actor? and other books. He can be reached at yvesengler A T hotmail D O T com

America! here is your money (Israel)

2009-02-10T23:48:00.000+03:00

Open letter to the President of Israel, by Jean-Moïse Braitberg: *

2009-02-08T23:04:00.001+03:00

* Published in Le Monde, Paris on 28 January 2009

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you, to ask you to contact those who are authorized to do so, to remove the name of my grandfather from the memorial at Yad Vashem, which is dedicated to the Jewish victims ofNational Socialism. It says "Moshe Brajtberg, gassed in 1943 in Treblinka."

The rest of my family also perished in the various of the camps to which they were deported. I beg you. Mr. President, to do this, because that which has happened in Gaza, and in other places, and has defined the fate of the Arab peoples of Palestine for 60 years now, disqualifies - to my mind -Israel to be the center which is dedicated to remember the suffering of the Jews, and by extension, that of all of mankind.

Understand me: ever since I was a child I have lived among survivors of the death camps. I saw the numbers tattooed on their arms and heard the stories of their tortures. I experienced the unbearable mourning and shared the nightmares.

I learned that these crimes shall never again take place, that no person, ever again, shall despise another for his ethnicity or religion, and rob him of his elementary Human Rights, just as he has a right to a life lived in decent circumstances, with the hope of better things for his family.

Still, Mr. President, I have noticed that despite innumerable Resolutions of the international community, despite the obvious injustices to which the Palestinians have been heirs since 1948, despite the hopes of Oslo, and despite the repeated recognition on the part of the Palestinian authorities that Israeli Jews have the right to live in peace and security, the only answer of successive Israeli governments has been brute force, blood shed, incarceration, constant controls, colonization and expropriations.

You will tell me, Mr. President, that it is legitimate for a country to defend itself against rockets aimed at its people, or kamikazis who take many innocents with them in death. To which I will answer that my human sympathies do not ask after the nationality of the victim.

You, on the other hand, lead a nation that means to represent the Jews in their entirety, but also claim to preserve the memory of the victims of National Socialism. That is what touches me and is unbearable to me. While you write the names of my loved ones at Yad Vashem, in the heart of Israel, the state holds the memory of my family prisoner behind the barbed wire of Zionism, in order to make them hostages of a so-called authority which - day after day - practices injustice.

So I beg you to take away the name of my grandfather from the memorial that testifies to the horrors suffered by the Jews, so that it can no longer be used to justify the horror which is visited upon the Palestinians.

Veuillez agréer, monsieur le president, l'assurance de ma respectueuse considération.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ ____
* Published in Le Monde, Paris on 28 January 2009

http://www.lemonde. fr/archives/ article/2009/ 01/28/effacez- le-nom-de- mon-grand- pere-a-yad- vashem_1147635_ 0.html

Fear and trauma in Gaza's schools

2009-02-07T23:32:00.000+03:00

By Alex Dziadosz in Gaza

Counselors and teachers are addressing the trauma and fears of students in Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]

As students filed into the courtyard of Asma elementary school in Gaza City for the first time since the Israeli offensive began, they were greeted by a bleak reminder of the violence that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands injured.
A hole punched by an Israeli rocket scarred the courtyard latrine and blood soiled the wall beside it.

Asma is one of over 600 schools in Gaza - most of which reopened on January 24 - that is today facing a large number of post-war operational challenges.
Educators across the Gaza Strip are now considering whether to reschedule exams which were abandoned when Israel began bombing the territory on December 27.
Teachers are also faced with the task of teaching in rooms which had served as shelters for dozens of refugees.
Addressing the trauma

On their first day back to class, most children meandered in the courtyard, eating bread and cheese provided by the school and playing with their friends. Inside the classrooms, debris left by the scores of refugees housed there until a few days ago still covered the floors – a box of tomatoes, empty bottles and, in some rooms, the shattered remnants of boards and chairs used for firewood in the absence of gas and electricity.
Many teachers say that a normal curriculum cannot be administered until students have been treated for trauma from the deaths of their classmates and family members.
"In the morning when I was working among the students, some of them were very frightened," said Amirah Hamdan, a teacher at Asma who handles the morning attendance call.
"They thought that the war would start again because they were in the school."
Other teachers and administrators say they will take the next few days to help the school's nearly 900 students put the war behind them and return to their studies, but the first day made it clear that this will take time.
Students at the Asma school were mostly glad to return, though many were still shaken by the violence of the past few weeks.

Nour Abdel All, 10, says she lost two of her seven brothers during the war and is worried that she will lose more.
When she is old enough to work, she says, she would like to teach human rights, an attitude inspired by the loss of her brothers.
The bombing terrified her and she is still scared - particularly of the Israeli fighter jets.
"I pray that God will one day burn them all," she says
School exams
Suha Dawoud, a supervisor at Asma, says her daughter was one of many students who had been taking her annual exams when the Israeli attacks began.
"They [the students] are not in a state of mind in which they can concentrate and focus," says Dawoud.
"Even the most disciplined student would not be able to cope with examinations after the horrible scenes they have watched either on TV or on the ground."
However, many students had been performing poorly at school even before Israel launched the war on Gaza on December 27.
The Israeli blockade has stifled the local economy forcing many students to reportedly abandoned their studies and seek employment.
Turning to education

Several schools in Gaza were damaged in the Israeli attacks [AFP]
Many Palestinians see education as one of the few paths available to them to leave the territories in search of better lives.
In recent decades, the West Bank and Gaza Strip have posted better high school enrolment rates than Lebanon and higher literacy rates than Egypt and Yemen.

The Palestinian territories and diaspora have produced many influential academics, such as Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and Mahmoud Darwish.
"Our goal is to keep the wheel of education going, because education is what our children have. It is their actual wealth," says Dawoud.
"We do not have resources here in Gaza. We do not have raw materials or industry. We have nothing other than education itself."
Educators like Dawoud are also up against the prevailing atmosphere of occupation and violence.
Graffiti depicting armed and masked men cover the walls, the faces of fallen "martyrs" glare down from lamppost signs, and digital gunfire sputters from internet cafes as rows of children sit enthralled by military-themed video games.
Even in Dawoud's classes, the air of violence is there.
As a kind of therapy, she often gives children papers and pencils and asks them to draw what they are feeling.
"You might be shocked," she says.
"Blood, destruction, people killing each other; guns are in their paintings and drawings."
Angry students
At the Palestine Secondary School for Boys, a government-run school for some 700 students in Gaza City, administrators have decided to cancel exams altogether.
They had been scheduled for December 29 – two days after the Israeli assault began.
El-Khalily, the school's manager, told Al Jazeera that on their first day back, teachers did not hold regular class session but instead chose to help students cope with what they had seen and heard during the war.
Two students from the school were killed during the war and another five were wounded.
Teachers at the school are worried that student anger could lead to violence and failing grades in the days ahead.
"Maybe a teacher is explaining a lesson and the student is in another mental place," says Nour El-Deen, an English teacher.
"His body is with the teacher, yes, but his mind is out. He is thinking of destruction, demolition."

Source: Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/crisisingaza/2009/01/200912553199345.html

The Calculus of Death - Israel and the Bomb

2009-02-06T15:37:00.001+03:00

By JULES RABIN

Can Israel be trusted with the nuclear bombs it steadfastly refuses to admit owning?

On the evidence of events in Gaza, I think not. Here's why.

In the last week of December, when Israel lost patience over a series of rocket attacks from Gaza that killed three Israelis in as many days, on top of 25 more who had been killed in the same manner in the eight years preceding, the Israeli armed forces retaliated with sustained and overwhelming attacks on the entirety of densely populated Gaza.

Under intense Israeli bombardment and tank fire, over 1,300 Gazans, a third of them children, were killed in the 21 days of the Israeli onslaught — a stunningly great number of them under circumstances that have opened Israel to charges of committing war crimes.

Mark the ratio: 1,300 Palestinian lives, fighters and civilians, taken in skewed payment for the original three Israelis, whose deaths were the proximate cause — call it the last straw after eight years of rocket attacks from Gaza — of the assault on Gaza.

And mark the overwhelming swiftness of the reaction. It took Israel a mere 22 days to present the people of Gaza with a definitive version of the type of blunt lesson that the Hamas government of Gaza had been trying for eight years of intermittent rocket attacks to teach Israel.

With those ratios in mind — the 1,300 Palestinian deaths achieved in 22 days and the 28 Israeli deaths inflicted in eight years — it's fair to ask how might an Israel in possession of an arsenal of nuclear weapons react if instead of a ragtag force of guerillas like that of Hamas it were threatened by a modern army like its own, equipped with tanks and attack jets. If, say, as happened with Gaza, a major Israeli city were to undergo an assault of 22 days duration that turned a great part of it into rubble, and caused a thousand Israeli deaths.

On the showing of the overwhelming scale of its punitive assault on Gaza, could we expect Israel to show restraint — nuclear restraint — in the event of an assault by an armed force more nearly matching its own? When there is no other lesson on earth, militarily speaking, that can be taught as swiftly and conclusively as the one the nuclear bombteaches?

In the calculus of death, how many lives of the "other" will the taking of the life of a single Israeli, or three, or a thousand, be worth, finally, tomorrow and the next day and the last day of all?

Jules Rabin is a writer, political critic, and longtime resident of Marshfield, Vermont.

http://counterpunch.org/rabin01302009.html

See also the YouTube video about Dimona, based on Mordechai Vanunu's revelations, at

Israeli students call Barak 'murderer'

2009-01-25T22:25:00.002+03:00

Israeli students call Barak 'murderer'
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=82968&sectionid=351020202
Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:12:46 GMT

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has cancelled his visit to a university in Tel Aviv after being called a 'murderer' by the students.

Barak canceled his visit to Tel Aviv University's Law Department, after a graffiti sprayed on the walls of the building called him a 'murderer', Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported Monday.

The incident came after Israel launched a unilateral all-out military offensive against the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,300 people including women and children.

The graffiti was drawn on the entryway to the Law Department ahead of the defense minister's visit.

Tel Aviv has been internationally condemned for launching the war on Gaza which eventually failed to achieve even the primary goals set in the beginning of offensive.

--------------

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

2009-01-25T21:48:00.001+03:00

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians.
Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in
another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in
"purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead - almost all civilians, most of them
children and women - in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700
Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana
massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them
children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were
ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an
Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and
Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and
prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the
old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties.
"Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet
another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And
every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse
to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands.
Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours
earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be
alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be
too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if
it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After
covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East - by
Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops - I
suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting
our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are
fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our
safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now
being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for
these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here
are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the
Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins,
that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an
armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent
refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing
Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission
of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was
blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel.
After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996,
the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the
base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 - a war started when
Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border - were simply
dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies
of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a
graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The
people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were
then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and
stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli
pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed
them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't
even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance
carrying civilians from a neighbouring village - again after they were
ordered to leave by Israel - and killed three children and two women. The
Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was
untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to
the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was
that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these
scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie - heaven
knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime - and
we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost
certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very
definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff
and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't.
Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six
Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment
killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around
Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a
week, thousands over the years since 1948 - when the Israeli massacre at
Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part
of Palestine that was to become Israel - is on a quite different scale.
This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the
level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs
himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on
the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we
will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

-------------------------------

UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza

2009-01-24T23:46:00.002+03:00

Look at this fair openion from a jewish MP.

Israel = Nazi

-----------------------------

Israel accused of war crimes ahead of Ban's visit

2009-01-21T21:58:00.002+03:00

---------------------------------------------

Tuesday 20 January 2009

As the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to visit both southern Israel and the devastated Gaza strip, human rights NGO Amnesty International said it was "undeniable" that Israel used illegal white phosphorous bombs.

AFP - Tension eased in Gaza early on Tuesday as a fragile ceasefire entered its third day, with residents struggling to absorb the devastation caused by Israel's deadly 22-day assault on the territory.

As dawn approached, there were no reports of shooting, rockets or any other unrest by either side for the first time since Israel launched its massive assault on December 27.

Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on Sunday and begun pulling back from Gaza City while Hamas and other militant groups kept to a week-long truce.

As some kind of normalcy began to return to the battered enclave, UN chief Ban Ki-moon was to make his first visit to witness first hand the extent of the destruction which left more than 1,300 people dead.

It would also be the first visit by a foreign leader to the impoverished territory since Hamas violently seized power there in June 2007, ousting forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The secretary general was also to visit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, five kilometres (three miles) from the Gaza border, which has taken the brunt of the rocket fire since 2001.

Some stores raised their metal shutters as Hamas police reappeared on the streets to direct traffic and people dug through the rubble to recover what they could -- clothes, a television, books, tins of food.

Najette Manah, three small children in tow, clutched a box of rice that she found amid the debris of what used to be her home.

"We don't have homes any more. I don't have anything any more," she said.

Statistics released by the Palestinian bureau of statistics showed some 4,100 homes were totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged in the three-week war.

Despite the devastation, Hamas' armed wing called the war a "divine victory" and vowed to rearm, warning Israel it would face more rocket attacks if it did not withdraw all its forces by next Sunday.

Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades' spokesman Abu Obeida said Hamas lost only 48 fighters, although Israel said it killed more than 500. He also claimed Israel lost "at least 80 soldiers". The army listed 10 killed.

Groups linked to the secular Fatah movement reported 37 combatants killed, Islamic Jihad 34, the Popular Resistance Committees 17 and the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine 13.

Gaza medics said more than 1,300 Palestinians, nearly a third of them children, were killed in the war.

"Our arsenal of rockets has not been affected and we continued to fire them during the war without interruption. We are still able to launch them," Abu Obeida said, adding that efforts to halt arms smuggling into Gaza would also fail.

"Let them do what they want. Bringing in weapons for the resistance and making them is our mission and we know full well how to acquire weapons."

Israel meanwhile again came under fire for using excessive force, with Amnesty International saying it was "undeniable" that Israel had used white phosphorus in crowded civilian areas, contrary to international law.

"We saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges," said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert touring Gaza as part of a four-person fact-finding team.

White phosphorus can be used as a smokescreen on an open battlefield but is banned in densely populated areas. Israel has said all the weapons it used in the war are allowed under international law.

At an Arab summit in Kuwait, beleaguered Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas made a renewed appeal for national unity between Hamas and Fatah.

"What is needed and necessary now is that all Palestinians should meet to reach an agreement," Abbas said, calling for the formation of a national unity government to organise fresh presidential and parliamentary elections.

In Qatar last Friday, Hamas for the first time attended a regional summit as a representative of the Palestinians, a political coup that raised fears among Abbas's supporters that the internal rift may be hardening.

At a parallel meeting of the Arab League in Kuwait, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah called for "practical steps to stabilise the ceasefire" while Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced a billion dollars to rebuild the battered territory.

----------------------------------

My comment:

Israel used the white phosphorus during its terrorist attack on Gaza as they are using the firwork during christmas festival

----------------------------------

UN chief arrives in war-torn Gaza Strip

2009-01-21T21:54:00.001+03:00

-------------------------------

Tuesday 20 January 2009

http://www.france24.com/en/20090120-un-chief-ban-ki-moon-arrives-gaza-strip-conflict-israel

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the devastated Gaza Strip Tuesday, in the first visit by an international leader to the coastal strip following Israel's deadly 22-day offensive.

AFP - UN chief Ban Ki-moon paid a first visit to the war-battered Gaza Strip on Tuesday where Israeli troops remain deployed on the third day of a ceasefire.

Hours before the inauguration of US president-elect Barack Obama, the army said a total troop pullout from Gaza was not under discussion.

"For the moment, no one is talking about the total withdrawal of troops," said army spokeswoman Avital Liebovich.

However the ceasefire appeared to be holding.

But Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian farmer in the north of the strip on Tuesday, doctors said.

An Israeli army spokesman said she could not confirm the report that the man had been killed near the town of Jabailya by shots fired by troops close to Gaza's border with Israel.

And two Palestinian children died in Gaza City when an Israeli shell they had been playing with exploded, doctors said.

Israel launched its massive assault on December 27 and started to pull out gradually from the territory on Sunday as Hamas and other militant groups pledged a week-long ceasefire.

With an air of normalcy returning, Ban entered the strip mid-morning to witness the extent of the destruction which killed more than 1,300 people, including some 400 children, and wounded at least 5,300 others.

It was the first visit by a foreign leader to the impoverished territory since Hamas, an Islamist group boycotted by the West as a terror outfit, violently seized power in June 2007, ousting forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The secretary general was to tour a UN-run school hit by an Israeli bombardment, Palestinian sources said.

Following his visit to Gaza, the UN chief was due to visit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, five kilometres (three miles) from the Gaza border, that has taken the brunt of Palestinian rocket fire since 2000.

Gazans say the tide of global hope that has surged with Obama's election victory has not washed over the Gaza Strip.

"Obama won't bring my husband back to life," said Leila Khalil. "He was martyred and left me with six children to feed on my own. And Obama won't repair our house that was damaged in the (air) raids."

For Khalil, Obama, who was to be inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States later om Tuesday, will not alter the historically pro-Israel US policy on the Middle East.

"No one cares about us," she said. "If we can't even count on Arab presidents, what can we hope for from an American president when they've always supported Israel?"

The Palestinian bureau of statistics reported 4,100 homes totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged in Israel's deadliest ever assault on Gaza.

Despite the devastation, Hamas called the war a "divine victory" and vowed to rearm, warning Israel it would face more rocket attacks if it did not withdraw all forces by Sunday.

In Kuwait, an Arab summit was concluded on Tuesday with aid pledges to help rebuild the Gaza Strip, but without a specific fund or political unity on the Gaza war.

Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah called for "practical steps to stabilise the ceasefire," while Saudi King Abdullah pledged one billion dollars to rebuild the battered territory.

Abbas, the beleaguered Palestinian president, made a renewed appeal on Monday for national unity between Hamas and his secular Fatah.

The rebuilding of Gaza looks set to become another battleground with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warning that Israel did not want Hamas to take control of reconstruction.

"Israel believes that the reconstruction process must be led by international organisations in cooperation with the UN, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority," he told visiting Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

His foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, also warned that Israel will not open Gaza's border crossings without progress on the fate of an Israeli soldier who has been held hostage in the enclave for nearly three years.

Hamas has demanded that Israel open the coastal strip's borders and the European Union, along with key nations in Europe, have also urged Israel to open the crossings to help secure a lasting ceasefire.

Israel considers Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement that is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, a terror organisation.
----------------------------------------------------

UN chief wants full investigation into school bombings

2009-01-21T21:48:00.000+03:00

Tuesday 20 January 2009
http://www.france24.com/en/20090120-un-ban-ki-moon-gaza-israel-palestinian-territories-school-bombings

AFP - UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called for those responsible for the bombing of UN-run buildings and schools in Gaza to be held accountable following Israel's 22-day war on Hamas.

"It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack on the United Nations," Ban said, speaking outside the still-smouldering main UN compound in Gaza City that was bombed during the war.

"There must be a full investigation, a full explanation to make sure it never happens again. There should be accountability through a proper judiciary system," he said.

Ban, describing the scenes in post-war Gaza "heartbreaking," became the first world leader to visit the enclave since Israel halted the deadliest offensive it has ever launched on the Palestinian territory, which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement since June 2007.

The UN compound where he spoke was hit by Israeli shells on January 15, setting a warehouse alight, burning tonnes of badly needed food aid and sending a massive column of black smoke into the air above Gaza City for hours.

Another four UN buildings -- schools where Gazans were sheltering from the fighting -- were struck by Israel in the course of the fighting. More than 40 people were killed in one such attack, according to medics and UN officials.

"I'm just appalled. I'm not able to decribe how I'm feeling, having seen this site of the bombing of the United Nations compound. Everyone is now smelling, this morning, still, it is still burning," Ban said.

"I have protested many times and today I am protesting again in the strongest terms and condemning it. I have asked for a full investigation and to make those responsible people accountable."

Ban went on to accuse Israel of using "excessive force" in the conflict, but he also condemned Palestinian rocket fire on southern Israel, calling it "completely unacceptable."

Israel has said it made very effort to prevent the deaths of civilians and said it was fired upon from inside or near each of the UN sites in question, a charge often disputed by UN workers.

After touring the scenes of devastation left by the three-week-long campaign in which Israel pummelled the territory with air strikes and tanks shells and destroyed thousands of houses, Ban said he had seen "heart-breaking scenes."

The UN chief said a "massive international effort" would be required to resolve the Middle East conflict and create a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel, saying he was "more determined than ever to see this achieved."

More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the offensive, nearly a third of them children, according to Palestinian medics. Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians were killed over the same period.

UK: MP makes Israeli troops Nazi link

2009-01-19T23:16:00.002+03:00

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/7834487.stm

Sir Gerald Kaufman is standing by his comments

A prominent Jewish MP has compared the actions of Israeli troops with Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, MP for Gorton in Manchester, drew the parallel during a Commons debate on the Gaza conflict.

Some members of the Jewish community - including his fellow MPs - have questioned the comments.

Louise Ellman MP, of the Labour Friends of Israel group, said the "dreadful" war in Gaza was not comparable to German actions in World War II.

Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, told MPs: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town .. a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."

We had an IRA bomb in Manchester which destroyed much of the centre - we didn't send troops over to Belfast to murder 1,000 Catholics

Sir Gerald Kaufman

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip have passed 1,000, medical sources in Gaza say, but Israel has continued to resist international calls for a ceasefire.

The Israeli government says the action is necessary to prevent Hamas rocket attacks into southern Israel.

Labour MP Louise Ellman said: "The Nazis were about rounding up and exterminating people because of their origins.

"What we're witnessing in Gaza is a dreadful war and the Israelis are trying to stop Hamas continuing to launch rockets from Gaza, targeting and killing and murdering Israeli citizens."

But speaking to the BBC on Friday, Sir Gerald said he was standing by his comments.

"We had an IRA bomb in Manchester which destroyed much of the centre - we didn't send troops over to Belfast to murder 1,000 Catholics."

Sir Gerald said he had been a long-term supporter of Israel and has personally known many of its prime ministers.

But he added: "I am not going to stand by and keep silent when the Israeli troops - with a dreadful government sending them there - kill large numbers of innocent people with no useful result at the end of it all."

--------------------------------

The Independent: British Jews attacked for pro-Gaza solidarity

2009-01-19T23:09:00.001+03:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-jews-attacked-for-progaza-solidarity-1418909.html
By Emily Dugan
Sunday, 18 January 2009

British Jews have been attacked for expressing support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Police confirmed yesterday that they have provided protection to a number of people believed to be victims of UK-based Zionist extremists angered by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel's assault on Gaza has prompted a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, with more than 150 incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation for the protection of Jews. But the past two weeks have also seen aggression within the Jewish community towards those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza.

Rabbi Elchenon Beck, 39, was among six rabbis expressing support for Gaza's Palestinians who were set upon by a gang of what they allege were Zionists while walking back from opposing rallies outside the Israeli Embassy on 6 January. "They were shouting and pushed someone to the floor, so we called the police," Rabbi Beck said. "All the time they are trying to intimidate us, but we get used to it."

Rabbi Aharon Cohen, a Palestinian sympathiser and member of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, had his letter box destroyed by a powerful firework after attending the peace march in Manchester this month.

Mark Gardner, of the CST, said it had not kept records of attacks within the Jewish community, but condemned those using the situation in Israel to justify violence in Britain.

"There's passionate political debate," he said, "but what's vitally important is that it does not spill over so that we become participants in a war by proxy."

--------------------------------------

Israel calls a halt to its assault on Gaza

2009-01-18T12:11:00.005+03:00

-------------------------------------------

Actually Israeli did not finish its aggression completely till the time I am doing this post.

-------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/17/israel-halts-gaza-assault

Israel called a halt to its bombardment of Gaza last night after winning American and European pledges of support to shut down the Hamas weapons supply pipeline.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in effect declared Hamas was broken, saying that its power is diminishing. "The conditions have been created that our aims, as declared, were attained fully, and beyond," he said in a televised address. "The campaign has proven Israel's power and strengthened its deterrence."

But Hamas said it would keep fighting for as long as Israeli troops remained in Gaza. "A unilateral ceasefire does not mean ending the aggression and ending the siege," a spokesman said. "These constitute acts of war, so this will not mean an end to resistance."

Israel's security cabinet backed Olmert's proposal for what he called a unilateral ceasefire, effective from midnight last night, that would end three weeks of bombardment by air, sea and land that has claimed the lives of about 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children and young people.

Olmert declared that the operation had achieved its primary goals of curbing Hamas rocket fire into Israel - although it has failed to stop it completely, with 20 missiles fired into Israel on Friday alone - and securing Egypt's border with Gaza to end weapons smuggling into the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli defence officials said the invading forces would remain inside Gaza for several more days before beginning their pullout. Hamas said it would keep attacking as long as thousands of Israeli soldiers and tanks continued to occupy swaths of the Palestinian enclave.

Of Hamas, Olmert said: "If they continue shooting, we will act to protect our citizens." He said Hamas had been "badly hit" by the assault on Gaza, and described it as a proxy of Iran.

Olmert also addressed Gazans, saying that Israel does not hate them but launched the assault in order to protect Israeli children. "We feel the pain of every Palestinian child," he said. "Any shout of pain." Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, last night welcomed the ceasefire, saying it would be a "huge relief" and adding that too many lives had already been lost. He also called on Hamas to put an end to rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said on Saturday he was relieved that Israel had called an end to hostilities. "This should be the first step leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza," he said.

Egypt has called a summit of world leaders in Sharm al-Sheikh today to discuss Gaza's future. It was reported that Gordon Brown would attend, along with the French and German leaders, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the UN secretary general. But Olmert is not expected to be there.

The killing continued in the hours before the meeting, with the United Nations refugee agency for Palestinians calling for a war crimes investigation after Israeli forces killed two children when they shelled a school being used as a refugee centre in northern Gaza.

Israel's decision to halt the assault came after an agreement with the US for American intelligence and equipment to help prevent Hamas smuggling weapons into Gaza through tunnels.

Europe has also offered assistance in monitoring weapons shipments from countries such as Iran. With that deal in place, it appears that Israel decided it did not need to make the concessions demanded by Hamas for a ceasefire, particularly the lifting of the economic blockade of Gaza.

Britain has offered naval resources to help stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza, Brown said. The prime minister said he was also prepared to help ensure proper protection and monitoring of crossings into the enclave.

But last night Egypt's foreign minister dismissed a US-Israeli agreement aimed at cutting off weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip, raising questions about how effective it would be in preventing arms from reaching Hamas. The US and Israel can "do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people", Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters.

The Israeli ceasefire also came after the exiled head of Hamas's political wing, Khaled Meshaal, told Arab leaders that the Islamist movement would not accept any ceasefire which did not provide for a full Israeli pullout and the opening of Gaza's borders. The unilateral move is also apparently intended to end the fighting before Barack Obama is sworn in as US president this week.

Ahead of the security cabinet meeting, Israel kept up its bombardment, killing two boys sheltering at a UN school and severing their mother's legs. At least five people died in other parts of the Gaza Strip. Yesterday the UN called for a war crimes investigation, saying that it had provided GPS co-ordinates and other details of the school to the Israeli military to protect civilians sheltering there.

"When you have a direct hit of a UN school, you have to have an investigation," said the UN spokesman, Christopher Gunness.

A demonstration in London against Israeli attacks on Gaza ended in violence last night after protesters looted and damaged shops. Scotland Yard said it was investigating the damage.

--------------------------------------

More holocaust survivors

2009-01-17T21:56:00.001+03:00

What the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors do to Palestinians?

Menachem Begin

(started as a wanted terrorist - ended as a prime minister)

Sheikh Yassin

(started as preacher - ended.....

bombed by Israeli army while praying

Publish

Tell the world

copyrights reserved for humanity

Nowhere to Run to, Nowhere to Hide The UN in Israel's Crosshairs

2009-01-17T21:08:00.001+03:00

--------------------------------------------------------

By RANNIE AMIRI

History will record Israel’s onslaught in Gaza as noteworthy not only for the wide destruction of institutions of state and civil society, but for the deliberate targeting of the United Nations and the refugees it aided and sheltered. And it certainly would not be the first time Israel has done so.

On Jan. 15, in its most brazen act yet, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) shelled the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Words Agency (UNRWA), the primary body responsible for feeding and assisting Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and beyond. At the time of the attack, the compound housed more than 700 civilians seeking shelter from the war and its warehouses stored thousands of pounds of critical, and desperately needed, food and humanitarian supplies.

Even more sinister was the weapon employed: White Phosphorus (WP).

WP is known to cause severe, deep, and difficult to treat burns when it comes in contact with skin. Despite denials by the IDF, there is evidence of its use in Gaza and reports detailing significant burn injuries to civilians as a result. Its use as a weapon is a flagrant violation of international law and the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

WP bombs and shells are classified as incendiary devices and the structures they hit continue burn for long periods since the fires they cause are not extinguished by conventional means (water, fire extinguishers, etc).

As food, fuel and other supplies went up in flames at the headquarters—a location well-known to the Israelis who were given its precise GPS coordinates—UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness aptly remarked, “What more stark symbolism do you need?”

Indeed, the sordid history and pattern of Israel’s intentional targeting of UN compounds and schools in Lebanon and Gaza is ripe with symbolism, as is the usual flurry of contradictory excuses, apologies and justifications that predictably follow.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak deemed this most recent attack a “grave mistake” while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was justified because missiles were allegedly launched there.

This very same sequence of events has been played out time and time again: a UN facility targeting refugees Israel helped create is shelled, a subsequent apology, excuse, and justification issued (usually that it was being used by ‘militants’), then little to no evidence substantiating the attack presented.

The following all share in this tragic history; where the innocent were massacred, and the assumption that the humanitarian auspices of the UN could protect non-combatants from Israeli shelling, shattered.

Qana, 1996

The year was 1996 and Israel was only six weeks away from upcoming elections (sound familiar?). Prime Minister Shimon Peres was expecting a stiff challenge from Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu. At the time, Israel was occupying southern Lebanon. Along with its proxy militia, the South Lebanese Army, they continued to fruitlessly battle Hezbollah despite their repeated failure to eradicate the group’s resistance. What Israel really needed to do, and has done prior to all its military adventures, was provoke the enemy enough to elicit a significant response. That response would then be used as pretext for initiating an all-out assault.

It came on March 30 when an Israeli gunship fired on two men, both civilians, working on a water tower in Yater, Lebanon, killing both. Hezbollah retaliated by firing missiles into northern Israel. Then, when a teenager died after a roadside bomb exploded in the village of Barashit and Hezbollah again responded with rockets, Peres had what he needed. Under the pretense of stopping the attacks and protecting the country’s northern border, “Operation Grapes of Wrath” was launched on April 11.

It didn’t take long before Israel committed its first wartime atrocity. On April 18, a UN compound in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, where more than 800 civilians had sought refuge, was shelled. One hundred and six civilians were massacred.

Peres said, “We did not know that several hundred people were concentrated in that camp. It came to us as a bitter surprise.” The military claimed it was due to “incorrect targeting based on erroneous data.” That was hard to believe, however, considering they had long been made aware of the compound’s location. In fact, a UNIFIL soldier filmed a drone and helicopters flying above the facility at the time of the attack. Tired allegations that Hezbollah fighters were using civilians as ‘human shields’ also fell flat.

A UN investigation concluded that: “The pattern of impacts is inconsistent with a normal overshooting of the declared target (the mortar site) … as suggested by the Israeli forces; during the shelling, there was a perceptible shift in the weight of fire from the mortar site to the United Nations compound”; and it was “unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.”

The investigation conducted by Amnesty International succinctly stated: “The IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound … The IDF have failed to substantiate their claim that the attack was a mistake.”

The shifting explanations and excuses the Israelis had offered were solely for appeasing the international community. They knew their real message had been delivered.

Jabaliya, 2009

The assault on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead” is almost into itsfourth week. It was on Jan. 6, though, that the single largest loss of life since the beginning of the campaign occurred. Not surprisingly, it was another UN facility that was targeted. This time it was the Al-Fakhura girls school located in the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City. Two-hundred eighty families had taken refuge there, numbering 1,674 people. Most came from the town of Beit Lahiya to the north after being ordered to evacuate by the IDF.

Despite the school flying the distinctive UN flag and its location by GPS coordinates known, Israeli tank shells struck the school, spraying shrapnel inside and outside the building. Forty-six people were killed (including 20 children) and 55 wounded. Paramedics and eyewitnesses reported seeing “limbs and meat” in the street afterward.

As with Qana, the same justifications for the attack—conducted “according to procedures”—were put forth by the Israelis and just as quickly refuted.

It was alleged that Hamas fighters were operating out of the school. John Ging, director of the UNRWA in Gaza vehemently denied this, saying all people taking shelter there had been thoroughly vetted and there were “…no military people inside the school; it is fully controlled.”

The Israelis then decided to release footage of the purported “militant gunfire” coming from the school. But not only did the footage date back to 2007, it was of a different school, in a different city! (and not run by the UN).

It was ultimately acknowledged that no shooting came from there. According to Gunness:

“In briefings senior officers conducted for foreign diplomats, they admitted the shelling to which IDF forces in Jabaliya were responding did not originate from the school” (Haaretz, 11 Jan 2009).

Many different and often contradictory stories have since been issued by the Israelis. As before, the underlining message had been effectively delivered.

Other UN schools – Al-Shouka, Asma

Al-Shouka school in Rafah and Asma primary school in Gaza City were also bombed by the Israelis in “Operation Cast Lead”. At Asma, three cousins were killed among the 400 people housed there who had fled fighting to the north.

So what were the Qana and Jabaliya massacres and the deliberate attack on Gaza’s UN headquarters meant to illustrate?

It is that not only sympathizers, but any civilian located in remote proximity to Israel’s enemies will be targeted. In addition, retribution will not only be exacted against the UN in general for the countless resolutions it has levied against Israel, but against the UNRWA specifically for the body’s assistance and advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. All are extensions of the doctrine of collective punishment, but with a particularly ominous message for civilians:

There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. There is not an institution or organization on earth that will be able to protect you from us.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri at yahoo dot com.

http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri01162009.html

===========================

Killed by Israel, Eaten by Dogs

2009-01-16T11:39:00.001+03:00

====================================

Killed by Israel, Eaten by Dogs

By Ola Attallah, IOL Correspondent

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1231760488574&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout

Nearly 300 children have fallen victim to the ongoing Israeli onslaught. (Reuters)

GAZA CITY - "Oh, God! I have never seen such a terrible scene," cried Kayed Abu Aukal.

The emergency doctor could not believe himself seeing the remains of what was days back Shahd, a full-fleshed 4-year-old Palestinian girl.

She died when an Israeli shell was fired at the backyard of her home in the Jabalya refugee camp northern Gaza strip, where she was playing.

When her parents attempted to rush to the rescue of their kid, who fell to the ground amid a pool of her blood, rains of Israeli bullets kept them a distance.

For the next five days Shahd's which was left lying in the open left for dogs to tear out.

"The dogs did leave one single part of the poor baby's body intact," said a tearful Abu Aukal.

"We have seen heart-breaking scenes over the past 18 days. We picked up children whose bodies were torn or burnt, but nothing like this."

For five days Shahd's brother, Matar, and cousin, Mohamed, tried in vain to reach her body. They were fired at by the Israeli occupation forces every time.

Seeing the body of the little angel torn to piece by the assaulting dogs, the two made one final attempt, and it was their last.

They were showered by Israeli bullets before they could reach Shahd's body, joining a long list of more than 920 Palestinians killed by Israel since December 27.

Deliberate

Omran Zayda, a young neighbor, said the Israelis knew very well what they were doing.

"They chased her family and prevented them from reaching to her body, knowing that the dogs would eat it," he said.

"They are not just killing our children, they are intentionally doing so in the most heinous and inhuman ways."

Zayda said words, and even cameras, can not describe the horrific scene.

"You can never imagine what the dogs have done to her innocent body," he said, fighting back his tears.

Many Palestinians insist Shahd was not the first or only such case.

In Jabalya, when Abd Rabu's family was trying to bury three of its dead, the Israeli forces started firing at them, witnesses said.

They then released their dogs at the bodies, deserted by mourners who sought shelter from the Israeli gunfire, they added.

"What happened was awful and unthinkable," Saad Abd Rabu, the deceased uncle, told IOL.

"Our sons died before our eyes and we were even prevented from burying them," he cried.

"The Israelis just released their dogs at their bodies, as even they have not done enough."

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Israel’s righteous fury and its victims in Gaza

2009-01-16T01:27:00.001+03:00

http://ilanpappe.com/?p=82

Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2009

My visit back home to the Galilee coincided with the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza. The state, through its media and with the help of its academia, broadcasted one unanimous voice — even louder than the one heard during the criminal attack against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel is engulfed once more with righteous fury that translates into destructive policies in the Gaza Strip. This appalling self-justification for the inhumanity and impunity is not just annoying, it is a subject worth dwelling on, if one wants to understand the international immunity for the massacre that rages on in Gaza.

It is based first and foremost on sheer lies transmitted with a newspeak reminiscent of darker days in 1930s Europe. Every half an hour a news bulletin on the radio and television describes the victims of Gaza as terrorists and Israel’s massive killings of them as an act of self-defense. Israel presents itself to its own people as the righteous victim that defends itself against a great evil. The academic world is recruited to explain how demonic and monstrous is the Palestinian struggle, if it is led by Hamas. These are the same scholars who demonized the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in an earlier era and delegitimized his Fatah movement during the second Palestinian intifada.

But the lies and distorted representations are not the worst part of it. It is the direct attack on the last vestiges of humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people that is most enraging. The Palestinians in Israel have shown their solidarity with the people of Gaza and are now branded as a fifth column in the Jewish state; their right to remain in their homeland cast as doubtful given their lack of support for the Israeli aggression. Those among them who agree — wrongly, in my opinion — to appear in the local media are interrogated, and not interviewed, as if they were inmates in the Shin Bet’s prison. Their appearance is prefaced and followed by humiliating racist remarks and they are met with accusations of being a fifth column, an irrational and fanatical people. And yet this is not the basest practice. There are a few Palestinian children from the occupied territories treated for cancer in Israeli hospitals. God knows what price their families have paid for them to be admitted there. The Israel Radio daily goes to the hospital to demand the poor parents tell the Israeli audience how right Israel is in its attack and how evil is Hamas in its defense.

There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its “surgical” operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.

This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli, and before that Zionist, dispossession of Palestine. Every act whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction was always portrayed as morally just and as a pure act of self-defense reluctantly perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings. In his excellent volume The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, Gabi Piterberg explores the ideological origins and historical progression of this righteous fury. Today in Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, from the academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.

It is crucial to explore the ideological origins of this attitude and derive the necessary political conclusions form its prevalence. This righteous fury shields the society and politicians in Israel from any external rebuke or criticism. But far worse, it is translated always into destructive policies against the Palestinians. With no internal mechanism of criticism and no external pressure, every Palestinian becomes a potential target of this fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state it can inevitably only end in more massive killings, massacres and ethnic cleansing.

The self-righteousness is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. It explains why the Israeli Jewish society would not be moved by words of wisdom, logical persuasion or diplomatic dialogue. And if one does not want to endorse violence as the means of opposing it, there is only one way forward: challenging head-on this righteousness as an evil ideology meant to cover human atrocities. Another name for this ideology is Zionism and an international rebuke for Zionism, not just for particular Israeli policies, is the only way of countering this self-righteousness. We have to try and explain not only to the world, but also to the Israelis themselves, that Zionism is an ideology that endorses ethnic cleansing, occupation and now massive massacres. What is needed now is not just a condemnation of the present massacre but also delegitimization of the ideology that produced that policy and justifies it morally and politically. Let us hope that significant voices in the world will tell the Jewish state that this ideology and the overall conduct of the state are intolerable and unacceptable and as long as they persist, Israel will be boycotted and subject to sanctions.

But I am not naive. I know that even the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinians would not be enough to produce such a shift in the Western public opinion; it is even more unlikely that the crimes committed in Gaza would move the European governments to change their policy towards Palestine.

And yet, we cannot allow 2009 to be just another year, less significant than 2008, the commemorative year of the Nakba, that did not fulfill the great hopes we all had for its potential to dramatically transform the Western world’s attitude to Palestine and the Palestinians.

It seems that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as discrete events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system. In this new year, we have to try to realign the public opinion to the history of Palestine and to the evils of the Zionist ideology as the best means of both explaining genocidal operations such as the current one in Gaza and as a way of pre-empting worse things to come.

Academically, this has already been done. Our main challenge is to find an efficient to explain the connection between the Zionist ideology and the past policies of destruction, to the present crisis. It may be easier to do it while, under the most terrible circumstances, the world’s attention is directed to Palestine once more. It would be even more difficult at times when the situation seems to be “calmer” and less dramatic. In such “relaxed” moments, the short attention span of the Western media would marginalize once more the Palestinian tragedy and neglect it either because of horrific genocides in Africa or the economic crisis and ecological doomsday scenarios in the rest of the world. While the Western media is not likely to be interested in any historical stockpiling, it is only through a historical evaluation that the magnitude of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people throughout the past 60 years can be exposed. Therefore, it is the role of an activist academia and an alternative media to insist on this historical context. These agents should not scoff from educating the public opinion and hopefully even influence the more conscientious politicians to view events in a wider historical perspective.

Similarly, we may be able to find the popular, as distinct from the high brow academic, way of explaining clearly that Israel’s policy — in the last 60 years — stems from a racist hegemonic ideology called Zionism, shielded by endless layers of righteous fury. Despite the predictable accusation of anti-Semitism and what have you, it is time to associate in the public mind the Zionist ideology with the by now familiar historical landmarks of the land: the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of the Palestinians in Israel during the days of the military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre of Gaza. Very much as the Apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology — in its most consensual and simplistic variety — allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern that cannot only be discussed in the academic ivory towers, but has to be part of the political discourse on the contemporary reality in Palestine today.

Some of us, namely those committed to justice and peace in Palestine, unwittingly evade this debate by focusing, and this is understandable, on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) — the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Struggling against the criminal policies there is an urgent mission. But this should not convey the message that the powers that be in the West adopted gladly by a cue from Israel, that Palestine is only in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and that the Palestinians are only the people living in those territories. We should expand the representation of Palestine geographically and demographically by telling the historical narrative of the events in 1948 and ever since and demand equal human and civil rights to all the people who live, or used to live, in what today is Israel and the OPT.

By connecting the Zionist ideology and the policies of the past with the present atrocities, we will be able to provide a clear and logical explanation for the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Challenging by nonviolent means a self-righteous ideological state that allows itself, aided by a mute world, to dispossess and destroy the indigenous people of Palestine, is a just and moral cause. It is also an effective way of galvanizing the public opinion not only against the present genocidal policies in Gaza, but hopefully one that would prevent future atrocities. But more importantly than anything else it will puncture the balloon of self-righteous fury that suffocates the Palestinians every times it inflates. It will help end the Western immunity to Israel’s impunity. Without that immunity, one hopes more and more people in Israel will begin to see the real nature of the crimes committed in their name and their fury would be directed against those who trapped them and the Palestinians in this unnecessary cycle of bloodshed and violence.

Ilan Pappe is chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter.

Israel Is Committing War Crimes - article from The Wall Street Journal

2009-01-15T17:14:00.003+03:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154826952369919.html

Hamas's violations are no justification for Israel's actions. Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts. The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them -- as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable -- to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting. Israel had not suffered an "armed attack" immediately prior to its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Since firing the first Kassam rocket into Israel in 2002, Hamas and other Palestinian groups have loosed thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israel, causing about two dozen Israeli deaths and widespread fear. As indiscriminate attacks on civilians, these were war crimes. During roughly the same period, Israeli forces killed about 2,700 Palestinians in Gaza by targeted killings, aerial bombings, in raids, etc., according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. But on June 19, 2008, Hamas and Israel commenced a six-month truce. Neither side complied perfectly. Israel refused to substantially ease the suffocating siege of Gaza imposed in June 2007. Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire -- typically after Israel killed or seized Hamas members in the West Bank, where the truce did not apply. Either one or no Israelis were killed (reports differ) by rockets in the half year leading up to the current attack. Israel then broke the truce on Nov. 4, raiding the Gaza Strip and killing a Palestinian. Hamas retaliated with rocket fire; Israel then killed five more Palestinians. In the following days, Hamas continued rocket fire -- yet still no Israelis died. Israel cannot claim self-defense against this escalation, because it was provoked by Israel's own violation. An armed attack that is not justified by self-defense is a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg Principles affirmed by U.N. Resolution 95, aggression is a crime against peace. Israel has also failed to adequately discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets. Israel's American-made F-16s and Apache helicopters have destroyed mosques, the education and justice ministries, a university, prisons, courts and police stations. These institutions were part of Gaza's civilian infrastructure. And when nonmilitary institutions are targeted, civilians die. Many killed in the last week were young police recruits with no military roles. Civilian employees in the Hamas-led government deserve the protections of international law like all others. Hamas's ideology -- which employees may or may not share -- is abhorrent, but civilized nations do not kill people merely for what they think. Deliberate attacks on civilians that lack strict military necessity are war crimes. Israel's current violations of international law extend a long pattern of abuse of the rights of Gaza Palestinians. Eighty percent of Gaza's 1.5 million residents are Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homes or fled in fear of Jewish terrorist attacks in 1948. For 60 years, Israel has denied the internationally recognized rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes -- because they are not Jews. Although Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, it continues to tightly regulate Gaza's coast, airspace and borders. Thus, Israel remains an occupying power with a legal duty to protect Gaza's civilian population. But Israel's 18-month siege of the Gaza Strip preceding the current crisis violated this obligation egregiously. It brought economic activity to a near standstill, left children hungry and malnourished, and denied Palestinian students opportunities to study abroad. Israel should be held accountable for its crimes, and the U.S. should stop abetting it with unconditional military and diplomatic support.

Mr. Bisharat is a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
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Petition to British PM about Sanctions on Israel because of Massacre in Gaza - British Citizens only

2009-01-15T16:48:00.004+03:00

===============
You must be a British citizen to sign this petition to the PM to start sanctions against Israel. Please forward to anyone who qualifies.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Israel-Sanctions/

More details from petition creator

Israeli must be punished for its failure to adhere to the Geneva convention concerning the collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza. Israeli tactics are cruel, malicious and demonstrate that Israel is 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.

Show all signatories

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UN chief condemns Israeli shelling of UN compound

2009-01-15T15:02:00.007+03:00

A Unitet Nations worker is seen as smoke billows from Israeli bombardment at the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. Witnesses and U.N. officials said that Israeli shells struck the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City.The U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed 'strong protest and outrage' to Israel over the shelling of the compound. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

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JERUSALEM – The U.N. chief says he has expressed "strong protest and outrage" to Israel over the shelling of a United Nations compound in Gaza City.

Ban Ki-moon is demanding an investigation into Thursday's shelling. He says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has told him it was a "grave mistake."

Israeli shells damaged the international organization's headquarters in Gaza City, according to witnesses and U.N. officials. U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness says at least three people were wounded.

Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza on Dec. 27.

From Yahoo news.

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Smoke and fire are seen during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. Israeli tanks shelled downtown Gaza City on Thursday and ground troops thrust deep into a crowded neighborhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover and ratcheting up the pressure on Gaza's Hamas rulers to accept a proposed cease-fire to end a devastating Israeli offensive. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

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Israeli artillery shells explode over Gaza City. A wing of a hospital in Gaza City has caught fire after it was hit in an Israeli strike, (AFP/Mohammed Abed)

This is a white phosphorus bomb which is prohibited inside civilian areas or when civilians are suspected

But Israel supported by USA is above any human or UN laws

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Testing new weapons on the same old victims....

2009-01-14T21:19:00.003+03:00

A bag of floor and cooking oil,

if you survive....the killings.

(Modern) wounds that shall kill the victim,

but.....10 days later.

After that one has asked himself

"How worse could it get ,"

We hear today that

Israel is testing a multitude

of new weaponry and new annunciations

in its adventure into Gazza.

I am sure that the weapon's-factories

shall reimburse to Israel the price of all those weapons

if the results would be satisfactory .

Otherwise , the Pentagon shall pay for it all

provided they get a copy of the result-reports.

And to be honest and fair ,

the surviving-parents of those victims

shall get a bag of floor , 3 litters of cooking oil

and a copy of Bush's Road Map ....

from the same Pentagon.

In the meantime laboratory rabbits

and white-mouses are spared

because the Gazza-population

is for real !!!

Sherlock Hommos

Weapons-evaluation-tester

14.01.09
----------------------------------------

Urgent call to Greek people

2009-01-14T14:56:00.003+03:00

A Palestinian child lost his leg from the Israeli-American bombs

Jan 10, 2009 The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls upon the Greek movement, the Greek people and all international progressive forces to halt the planned shipment of U.S. arms to Israel from the Greek port of Astakos. International media reports have revealed that the U.S. Navy is attempting to ship 325 20-foot containers of ammunition, over 3000 tons, in an emergency shipment of arms to aid the occupation in its ongoing war crimes against thePalestinian people in Gaza. The PFLP is calling upon the people of the world, and particularly the Greek movement to act to stop this shipment of arms. The U.S. has been attempting to hire a merchant ship to transport the weaponry to the Israelis at Asdud port in mid- to late January. This weaponry must not be allowed to enter the hands of the Israelis, where it will be used to massacre our people in Gaza! It must be stopped by all means! These bombs are going to be used in Israel's wars - against Palestinians, Lebanese, Arabs, Iranians, and the people of the region. This emergency shipment indicates that the occupier is demanding ever more weaponry in its futile war of massacres against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance. The demand of the Palestinian people, the Arab people, and all progressive forces - including the progressive forces in the U.S. - is the international isolation and the end of all U.S. aid to Israel. The U.S. government, however is Israel's strategic partner, and is committed to partnering with Israel in its massacres and crimes against our people. If they will not stop the arms shipment, the people of Greece and the people of the world must stop it for them! The PFLP salutes the Greek people - your unconditional solidarity and your mass demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people have sent a strong and powerful message of support, combined with aid, volunteers, and action on the ground. Your own courageous struggles for justice have inspired us and people around the world. We are calling upon: 1. All Greek companies and all shipping companies to refuse to carry any shipment of arms to Israel. Any shipping company who carries these weapons has the blood of the people of Gaza on its hands! 2. Greek workers and all port workers to refuse to load the cargo for any shipment of arms to Israel. The strong hands of Greek workers and Greek labor should not be sullied with this dangerous cargo! 3. The Greek government to prohibit the use of its port to ship arms to the occupation state massacring our people! 4. The Greek people, the Greek movement, and all international and progressive forces to take action to stop any such shipment from loading or leaving the port of Astakos! The PFLP is calling for your continuing unconditional solidarity and support to prevent the U.S. and Israel from using the land and ports of the Greek people a supply base for occupation, massacres, and crimes. The Greek people have a proud history and present of struggle. The relationship between the Arab people and the Greek people is strong and powerful and we call upon you today to march with us once again toward victory and justice for the Palestinian people and block this arms shipment! Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine January 10, 2009

Gaza survivors' four days without water

2009-01-12T16:16:00.001+03:00

Friday, 9 January 2009

Gaza survivors' four days without water

The ICRC has accused the Israeli army of failing to evacuate and care for the wounded

By Rushdie Aboualaf
BBC News, Gaza City

Sameh, aged three, and Ahmad, 18 months, cry all the time.

As she sits on the bed in al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, their mother Fatima al-Shamouny, 36, tries to comfort them.

But as she tells their - and her own - story, she sobs too.

The boys were found on Wednesday, with their dead father and unconscious mother nearby, four days after the emergency services said they began trying to reach the neighbourhood.

They were among 30 people Palestinian Red Crescent workers said they evacuated from Zeitoun, a south-eastern suburb of Gaza City, on Wednesday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the paramedics found "shocking" scenes of wounded people huddled together in houses among dead bodies, weak after having had no food or water for several days.

In one home, the agency said, four small children were found sitting close to their dead mothers, "too weak to stand on their own".

It is not clear if Sameh and Ahmad were in that particular house - it may be that the unconscious Fatima was initially thought to be dead - but she says she and her toddlers were among those who had a long wait for help.

Survivors' accounts

The ICRC has accused the Israeli military of failing to live up to its obligations under international law to facilitate the evacuation or to care for the wounded.

The agency said it had been requesting safe passage for its ambulances to access the neighbourhood since 3 January, but only received permission to do so from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) four days later.

The details of exactly what happened at the Shamouny family compound are still sketchy.

Survivors have told the BBC that 26 of the extended family's 65 members died in Israeli military operations.

We spent days without food, without water - the wounded were bleeding for four days

Wael Faris al-Shamouny

Their accounts of shelling, and then ground troops surrounding their homes, cannot be independently verified.

Fatima, who was wounded in the chest, says two of her sons, her husband, her aunt, her uncle and her brother-in-law were all killed.

"One of my sons crawled to our neighbour's house - he was injured - and he called some of the local radio stations to ask for help. But the help arrived late. Everybody had died," she said.

"On the third day, I passed out. I don't know what happened until I found myself here in the hospital," she said.

Wael Faris al-Shamouny, 39, another member of the extended family, smoked and sipped black coffee as he sat on the floor in the hospital corridor.

He says he lost five sons and his wife, and believes some of the dead may have survived if given medical treatment earlier.

"We tried to help them, but we didn't have first aid things in our house. We spent days without food, without water - the wounded were bleeding for four days," he said.

"The ambulances came and they saved who they saved. There are still pieces of my wife, my sons and my cousins' bodies in the house."

ICRC criticism

The ICRC said the wounded had to be transported about a kilometre on a hand-pulled donkey cart because large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the neighbourhood.

The minimum is to treat these [injured] people, to feed these people, give them water, and keep them in a safe place

Katarina Ritz
ICRC's head of mission in Jerusalem

Katarina Ritz, the ICRC's head of mission in Jerusalem, said experienced Palestinian emergency workers wept at the scenes they were confronted with.

She said Israeli troops were within about 100m of the houses in question, and that the ICRC believes the soldiers "must have been aware" of the presence of the wounded people, because of repeated requests from aid agencies for access.

Under international law, she said, even if there are security concerns meaning the injured cannot be evacuated, "the minimum is to treat these people, to feed these people, give them water, and keep them in a safe place".

The Israeli military said it was investigating the case. It said it is "engaged in a battle with the Hamas terrorist organisation that has deliberately used Palestinian civilians as human shields".

And it stressed it works in "close co-operation with international aid organisations during the fighting, so that civilians can be provided with assistance".

'Difficult' co-operation

Earlier in the week, an ICRC spokeswoman told the BBC attempts to co-ordinate safe passage for ambulances were so slow that people were dying as they waited.

Not all ambulance drivers in Gaza have been waiting for co-ordination with the Israeli military, and health officials in Gaza say 10 paramedics have been killed trying to rescue the wounded since the Israeli operation began.

Israeli Defence Ministry Spokesman Peter Lerner said that co-ordinating the movements of ambulances has been "extremely difficult because of heavy gunfire".

He said that even during the three-hour lull Israel declared to allow humanitarian operations, Hamas militants continued to shoot at Israeli forces.

Outside the hospital, as Fatima Shamouny told her story, dozens of people gathered as Thursday's ICRC-led convoy of ambulances prepared to leave.

They came with addresses where they believed injured people were trapped.

One man's hands shook so much with fear that he had to ask for help writing the directions down.

Finally, the convoy received clearance, and drove away.

It was headed back to Zeitoun, where the ICRC said there were reports of more injured people stranded, and another area in northern Gaza, which ICRC workers had not even reached yet.

Olmert ready for talks with Abbas

2006-09-10T01:22:00.000+03:00

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he is ready to begin talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to advance peace efforts.

Mr Olmert said the meeting was not conditional on the release of the Israeli soldier, Cpl Gilad Shalit, held by Palestinian militants.

But he said the soldier's release would be at the top of the agenda.

His remarks came after a meeting with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is seeking to revive the peace process.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talks, Talks, Talks. All what Israel has is just talking about peace. More than 20 years Israel is talking about peace with Palestinians wih no actions.

But, what they are really doing seriously is killing of Palestinians on daily basis. May be they want to finish Palestinians so if they are forced to peace one day, there will be no Palestinians.

"The Jerusalem Declaration On Christian Zionism"

2006-09-02T11:07:00.000+03:00

Statement by the Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches In Jerusalem

08/25/06

Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel.
The Christian Zionist programme provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice today.

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from the ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state as well as peace and security in the entire region.

We call upon all Churches that remain silent, to break their silence and speak for reconciliation with justice in the Holy Land.

Therefore, we commit ourselves to the following principles as an alternative way:

We affirm that all people are created in the image of God. In turn they are called to honor the dignity of every human being and to respect their inalienable rights.

We affirm that Israelis and Palestinians are capable of living together within peace, justice and security.

We affirm that Palestinians are one people, both Muslim and Christian. We reject all attempts to subvert and fragment their unity.

We call upon all people to reject the narrow world view of Christian Zionism and other ideologies that privilege one people at the expense of others.

We are committed to non-violent resistance as the most effective means to end the illegal occupation in order to attain a just and lasting peace.

With urgency we warn that Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonization, apartheid and empire-building.

God demands that justice be done. No enduring peace, security or reconciliation is possible without the foundation of justice. The demands of justice will not disappear. The struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently.

"What does the Lord require of you, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

This is where we take our stand. We stand for justice. We can do no other. Justice alone guarantees a peace that will lead to reconciliation with a life of security and prosperity for all the peoples of our Land. By standing on the side of justice, we open ourselves to the work of peace - and working for peace makes us children of God.

"God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." (2 Cor 5:19)

His Beattitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah
Latin Patriarchate, Jerusalem

Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad,
Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem

Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal,
Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East

Bishop Munib Younan,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land

http://www.j-diocese.com/DiocesanNews/view.asp?selected=238#slbl238

'Living in a cage'

2006-09-01T14:14:00.000+03:00

From the news:

Since late June, Israel has also been conducting a large-scale military offensive in the coastal Gaza Strip, after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier.

More than 200 civilian Palestinians have died, while 11 Israeli civilians have been wounded by rocket fire from Gaza.

The border crossings are really closed. They cannot get anything out, this is crippling their economy.

There is not enough electricity, there is not enough water. There are social conditions on an intolerable level at the moment.

My comment:

Then they are coming everyday and say (in a baby face): Why arab & muslims hate Israel & its blind-supporter USA?!!!!!
This is disgusting.

UN denounces Israel cluster bombs

2006-08-31T02:10:00.000+03:00

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"Every day, people are maimed, wounded and killed by these weapons - it shouldn't have happened"
Jan EgelandUN humanitarian chief

"What's shocking and completely immoral is: 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," he said.

The UN ceasefire resolution which ended the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was agreed by the Security Council on Friday, 11 August, and came into effect on Monday, 14 August.

These Israeli are terrorists and against humanity, anti-Arab & anti-Muslim they enjoy the killing of Arab not only during their offensive actions but also after the cease fire and for long time after.Israelis are blood suckers.

The devastation made by Israeli to the life and the lives of Palastinians

2006-08-30T00:21:00.000+03:00

I invited every Human being to visit this link:

http://www.zajel.org/gallery/cat.asp?iCat=76

What if this building is your home?

This is the democracy USA & UK brought to Iraq

2006-08-29T23:55:00.000+03:00

They are talking about a very special kind of democracy. See this example:

By William Neikirk
Tribune senior correspondent

08/27/06 "Chicago Tribune" -- -- WASHINGTON -- Abeer Qassim al-Janabi is not a household name, though perhaps she should be. The 14-year-old girl was repeatedly raped, then shot to death in her home March 12. Her body was set on fire. Her mother, father and sister also were murdered.

It happened in Iraq, in the village of Mahmoudiya near Baghdad, in the so-called Triangle of Death, the most stressful, violent place in a stressful, violent country. The alleged perpetrators: American troops.

Before the incident, the soldiers allegedly downed whiskey, played cards and hit golf balls. Afterward, they dined on grilled chicken wings.

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Bush & Blair I wish I will see a day in which you will the same experience of Abeer Qassim.

Israel terrorism in Palastine

2006-08-29T23:46:00.000+03:00

Peace 4 the Middle East

Zionism Army in Jenin kill 64-year-old man holding a flashlight



Israel Defense Forces troops killed a 64-year-old man in Jenin on Sunday, it was released for publication Monday. Palestinian sources said Monday that Sabri Khalil worked as a night watchman at a local school. After he shined his flashlight on a passing car, soldiers patrolling the city shot him in the chest, killing him. The IDF confirmed that soldiers shot a Palestinian standing on a rooftop, saying he had apparently been holding a weapon at the time. An army spokesman said that in retrospect, it appears that the man was holding a flashlight.

from Haaretz newspaper

A lot of these terrorist incidents are happining on daily basis by the Israeli terrorists soldiers. But, who will act aganist this if they are Palastinians?!!!!

Israeli rocket hits Reuters car

2006-08-27T11:23:00.000+03:00

From BBC: ( At least one rocket hit the car as the cameraman was filming, knocking him unconscious, while the second man received serious leg wounds.

The Reuters car was clearly marked all over as a media vehicle.

The Israeli army said the car had not been identified as press and expressed regret that journalists had been hurt.)

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Although their weapons are intelligent it hits the press car.

I knew now what is the meaning of intelligent weapons, It is the targeting of civilians. That is in the Israeli's dictionary.

Peace 4 the Middle East: Looking for peace in a restless area since the establishment of Israel

2006-08-27T02:10:00.000+03:00

Peace 4 the Middle East: Looking for peace in a restless area since the establishment of Israel

Looking for peace in a restless area since the establishment of Israel

2006-08-27T01:51:00.000+03:00