Posts Tagged ‘Civilian
Israel´s Lies, London Review of Books special
WRITTEN BY Henry Siegman
Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Ramzy Baroud – Gaza, A New Middle East Indeed
As Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks in July-August 2006, it had one major objective: to permanently ‘extract’ Hezbollah from the South as a fighting force, and to undermine it as a rising political movement, capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing the ‘friendly’ and ‘moderate’ political regime in Beirut.
As Israeli bombs fell, and with them hundreds of Lebanese civilians, and much of the country’s infrastructure, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sprung into action. She too had one major objective: to delay a ceasefire, which the rest of the international community, save the US and Britain, desperately demanded. Rice, who is merely, but faithfully reiterating the Bush Administration’s policy, hoped that the Israeli bombs would succeed in achieving what her government’s grand policies failed to achieve, namely a New Middle East.
Francis Boyle – The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians
As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims.
Rashid Khalidi – What you don´t know about Gaza
Nearly everything you´ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
Gilad Atzmon – Eine Kleine Nacht Murder: How Israeli Leaders Kill for their People´s Votes
In order to grasp the latest devastating murderous Israeli expedition in Gaza one must deeply comprehend the Israeli identity and its inherent hatred towards anyone who fails to be Jewish and a hatred against Arabs in particular. This hatred is imbued in the Israeli curriculum, it is preached by political leaders and implied by their acts, it is conveyed by cultural figures, even within the so-called ‘Israeli Left’.
I grew up in Israel in the 1970’s people of my generation are nowadays the leaders of the Israeli army, politics, economy, academia and the arts. We were trained to believe that ‘a good Arab is a dead one’. A few weeks before I joined the IDF in the early 1980’s, General Rafael Eitan, the Chief of Staff at the time announced that the “Arabs were stoned cockroaches in a bottle”. He got away with it, he also got away with the murder of many thousands of Lebanese civilians in the 1st Lebanon war. In a word, Israelis manage to get away with murder.
Kawther Salam – The Donkey Who Scared the Israeli Army
The weakest and most coward army in the world, which considers itself as the strongest one targeted and bombed a donkey on the streets of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. The cowards of the Israeli Air forces fired a missile at the donkey which was pulling a cart while Lama and Haya Hamdan, two sister aged 4 and 11, were searching for some food for their impoverished family.
Haya and Lama at the Al-shifa’s hospital cooler.The poor “terrorist” donkey scared the Israeli soldier who was watching him from outside Gaza, using war equipment received from the “friendly” USA. The great scare of the “innocent” Israeli army obliged them to protect, to defend themselves and their criminal state from the big horror of a “terrorist” donkey, probably from “Hamas”. So they in the air force to drop an intelligent GBU-39 bomb at the donkey cart, immediately killing not only the donkey, but also Lama and Haya, the two young sisters.
Israeli forces attack Gaza areas, killing father of three
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have escalated their military attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing a Palestinian and destroying houses and other civilian premises. Meanwhile, Israel’s tight blockade of the Gaza Strip has continued, resulting in an unprecedented deterioration of the humanitarian situation due to severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medical supplies. Daily power outages, which last for long hours in Gaza, have exacerbated this crisis.
According to Al Mezan’s field investigations, at approximately 4:50pm on 17 December, the IOF gunships opened heavy machine gun fire towards Qleibo area, eastern al-Sheikh Zayid town, and the Talet al-Zaitoun area in Jabaliya refugee camp. The firing lasted for more than 15 minutes spreading panic in the area. Five minutes later, IOF fired a missile at the former area; however, no injuries were reported.
Gaza: The untold story
Conquerors came and went, and Gaza stood where it still stands today. This was the recurring lesson for generation. Its modern conquerors are as unpitying as its ancient ones.
It’s incomprehensible that a region such as the Gaza Strip, so rich with history, so saturated with defiance, can be reduced to a few blurbs, sound bites and reductionist assumptions, convenient but deceptive, vacant of any relevant meaning, or even true analytical value.
The fact is that there is more to the Gaza Strip than 1.5 million hungry Palestinians, who are supposedly paying the price for Hamas’s militancy, or Israel’s ‘collective punishment’, whichever way the media decide to brand the problem.
Deaths in Pakistan ‘US strikes’
A suspected US missile strike has killed at least seven people in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region.
One missile hit a vehicle in the village of Wana killing four people, while another strike killed three in a nearby village, both in South Waziristan on Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
“Tribesmen opened fire on the drones after the attacks,” a resident of Wana told Reuters news agency.
America’s chickens come home to roost
Thirty-nine women and children and eight teenagers at a wedding could hardly be mistaken for militants. Yet that’s what the U.S. military said about the 47 civilians murdered in an air strike in Afghanistan (BBC 11/07/08). Do we imagine, for a minute, that anyone vaguely knowing these people would forgive their tormentors and murderers?
“America’s chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.”
By Paul J. Balles