Israeli terrorism kills 195

[faceless]

Scores killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza
At least 195 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded across the Gaza Strip in massive Israeli air strikes on the Hamas-run enclave.
By Subhajit Banerjee and agencies
27 Dec 2008

Israel has launched a massive wave of air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza after warning of a fiery riposte to ongoing rocket fire, officials said. Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu told army radio the massive bombardment of Gaza was only just beginning. The bombardments killed at least 70 people in Gaza City itself, most of them believed to have been inside Hamas police headquarters, medics said.

The mid-morning air raids followed days of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel by militants inside Gaza, which the Jewish state had warned would be met with harsh reprisals. "This is only just the beginning of an operation launched after a security cabinet decision. It could take time. We have not fixed a timeline and we will act according to the situation on the ground," Benayahu said.

Thick black smoke billowed over Gaza city, where the port and security installations of the Islamist Hamas group were badly damaged. Television footage showed dead bodies scattered on the ground and wounded and dead being carried away by distraught rescuers. There was widespread damage to buildings. The Gaza police chief was reportedly among those killed.

The Israeli military said the air strikes were launched in a bid to stop "terrorist attacks" from the Hamas-run enclave. "Our aviation intervened massively on Saturday against Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip to stop the terrorist attacks of the past several weeks against Israeli civilian installations," an army spokesman said. "We had warned the civilian population in the Gaza Strip of our attacks and Hamas, which hides within this population, is solely responsible for this situation," he said. "Our operations will continue and will be expanded if necessary," he said.

Israeli leaders had threatened to carry out a major operation into the Islamist-controlled territory in a bid to halt rocket and mortar attacks by militant groups after a six-month truce ended on December 19. Israeli media on Friday had reported an imminent operation in the Gaza Strip, but said it would probably be limited in scope and not a full-scale invasion.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli air campaign was "criminal" and called for the international community to intervene. On Friday, 13 rockets and mortar rounds hit southern Israel, causing no casualties but damaging a house that was unoccupied at the time. Two Palestinian girls were killed when what was thought to be a stray rocket or mortar round hit their house in the north of the territory.

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Can you imagine the coverage if it was Israelis who'd died in such numbers?

[faceless]

The photos only show the policemen killed of course...

[faceless]

US veto blocks UN anti-Israel resolution
28 Dec 2008

The UN Security Council has been unable to force an end to Israeli attacks against Gaza due to the intervention of the United States.

Washington once again used its veto powers on Sunday to block a resolution calling for an end to the massive ongoing Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip. The council has only been able to issue a 'non-binding' statement that calls on Israel to voluntarily bring all its military activities in the besieged region to an immediate end.

The statement comes as Israel has begun a fresh wave of air strikes on Gaza on Sunday, killing at least six people. At least 230 people were killed and 800 wounded in similar attacks on Saturday. The number of Palestinian deaths has so far risen to 271. The council called on the parties to address the humanitarian crisis in the territory but has not criticized the Israeli air attacks.

Croatian UN Ambassador Neven Jurica read out the non-binding statement on behalf of the 15-member body that "called for an immediate halt to all violence" and on the parties "to stop immediately all military activities. The members of the Security Council expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza," he said, as the president of the council.

The council also requested the opening of border crossings into Gaza to address the serious humanitarian and economic needs in Gaza and to ensure medical treatment and a continuous supply of food and fuel.

US representative to the UNSC, Zalmay Khalilzad, defended the Israeli move, saying Tel Aviv has the right to self-defense. "I regret the loss of any of all innocent life," he said, adding that Hamas rockets precipitated this situation.

Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip say they fire rockets into Israel in retaliation for the daily Israeli attacks against them. Unlike the state-of-the-art Israeli weapons and ammunition, the home-made Qassam rockets rarely cause casualties.

The US, a staunch ally to Israel, has so far vetoed over 40 anti-Israeli resolutions sought by the council since 1972. Since 2004, Washington has prevented the adoption of four other resolutions that called for Tel Aviv to halt its operations in the Gaza Strip.

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[luke]

The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

from the independent

theres a couple of interesting articles at lenins tomb here and here and on the heathlander

Israeli air strikes represent massive violations of international law'

The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Convention, both in regard to the obligations of an occupying power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the air strikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiry on December26.

The Israeli air strikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they have caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries which have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza, which itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of which country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all member states, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Written by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

[luke]

UN official says Israel responsible for breaking truce with Gaza

Palestinians in Gaza believed Israel had called a 48-hour lull in retaliatory attacks with Hamas when Israel Air Force warplanes launched a massive bombardment of militant installations in the Gaza Strip, a UN official said Monday.

Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, raised the possible violation of an informal truce in a video press conference with UN reporters from her base in Gaza.

Israel's UN Mission referred any comment on the reported lull to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office in Jerusalem. Olmert's office did not answer telephone calls for comment early Tuesday morning.

Abu Zayd said Palestinians in Gaza were surprised when Israeli warplanes sent more than 100 tons of bombs crashing down on key security installations in Hamas-ruled Gaza starting Saturday morning because it was in the middle of the lull.

The offensive began eight days after a six-month truce between Israel and the militants expired. During that time, the Israel Defense Forces said Palestinian militants fired some 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets, and 10 times that number over the past year.

Israel had sent mixed signals on Friday regarding its plans for Gaza. Israeli defense officials said politicians had approved a large-scale incursion into the territory. But at the same time, Israel appeared open to international pressure against an invasion, prying open its border with Gaza to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid.

"What we understood here (was) that there was a 48-hour lull to be called, and this was called by the Israelis," Abu Zayd said. "They said they would wait 48 hours. That was on Friday morning, I believe, until Sunday morning, and that they were going to evaluate."

"There was only one rocket that went out on Friday, so it was obvious that Hamas was trying, again, to observe that truce to get this back under control," she said.

"Then, everything got loose on Saturday morning at 11:30 a.m. We were all at work and very much surprised by this," Abu Zayd said.

When the Israeli offensive began, neither Defense Minister Ehud Barak nor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made any mention of a lull.

Abu Zayd mentioned the lull when she was asked whether the population of Gaza was aware that this was all commenced by the Hamas government unilaterally ending the cease-fire and firing rockets.

"I don't think they think the truce was violated first by Hamas," she said.

"I think they saw that Hamas had observed the truce quite strictly for almost six months, certainly for four of the six months, and that they got nothing in turn - because there was to be kind of a deal," Abu Zayd said.

"If there were no rockets, the crossings would be opened," she said. "The crossings were not opened at all.

from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051211.html

[Aja]

If i say Jews or if I say Arabs i really have no choice ... If I say life or if i say death ....does it make my choice any different ....

so sad .............

[luke]

President of General Assembly: Israel committing "wanton aggression" in the Gaza Strip

The behavior by Israel in bombarding Gaza is simply the commission of wanton aggression by a very powerful state against a territory that it illegally occupies.

Time has come to take firm action if the United Nations does not want to be rightly accused of complicity by omission.

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment - The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians - The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response - The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from a university.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law - regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations.

I call on all member states, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move expeditiously not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Mr. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann is president of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. He issued this statement at UN Headquarters in New York on 27 December 2008.

[faceless]

www.iacenter.org/gazapetition/

I will never forget what Israel has done - and when their time comes I won't shed a single tear. I feel sorry for those Israelis who aren't party to being cold blooded murderers, but it's up to them to sort this.

If anyone reading this thinks that I'm biased in favour of the Palestinians, you're not fucking wrong.

[nico]

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Obama urged to speak up over Gaza attacks
Friday, 2 January 2009

Former model Bianca Jagger and singer Annie Lennox joined human rights campaigners today to call on American president elect Barack Obama to speak up against the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and the comedian Alexei Sayle also added their support to the campaign to end the violence.

Speaking at a press conference in central London, Ms Jagger said: "I would like to make an appeal to president elect Obama to speak up. People throughout the world were hopeful when he was elected and we must appeal to him to ask for the immediate cessation of the bombardment of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip."

The press conference was called ahead of a demonstration tomorrow that is expected to see thousands of people rally along the Embankment in London before marching to Trafalgar Square to demand an immediate end to the Israeli attacks.

Annie Lennox spoke of her shock at watching scenes of the bombing on television. She said: "A few days after Christmas I came downstairs, put the television on, and saw smoke pyres coming from buildings and I was shocked to the core because I was thinking as a mother and as a human being. How was this going to be the solution to peace?"

Comedian Alexei Sayle said he was speaking out because it was important for Jewish voices to be heard. He said: "I want to feel proud of Israel, I want to be proud of my people but I am ashamed." Also present at the press conference were the writer Tariq Ali, Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Respect MP George Galloway.

Over 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded since Israel began its aerial campaign on Saturday, Gaza health officials said. The UN said the death toll in Gaza included more than 60 civilians, 34 of them children. Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one eighth of Israel's population within rocket range.

The demonstration is the culmination of days of smaller protests around the country and outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington, central London. Another demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in London is planned. More than 30 organisations, including the British Muslim Initiative and the Stop the War Coalition have joined forces to organise the protest.

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[major.tom]

This is an interesting paragraph:

[luke]

also, the figure of 60 civilians is misleading - the un themselves have said this figure only includes woman and children - men are not counted but will obviously be among those killed.

[major.tom]

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Gaza ghetto is destroyed and the world stays silent
Tom Shields
SundayHerald.co.uk

IT IS a tried and tested recipe for dealing with a civilian population perceived as the enemy. Make them prisoners in their own houses and streets, behind walls and high wire fences. Have your army and police force guard the gates to prevent free movement of people. Blockade food and other essential supplies.

When the people behind the walls rise up in defiance, crush them with all the military power at your disposal. It worked for Nazi Germany in the Warsaw ghetto during the second world war. It's working for the Israelis today in the Gaza Strip.

It is an appropriate analogy. In their operations to exterminate Hamas in the enclosed spaces of Gaza, the Israeli forces are said to use techniques employed by the Germans in their assault on the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. Israel will deny any similarity to Nazi strategy. But the response to the Hamas rocket attacks on Jewish settlements has been totally inappropriate.

In the last couple of years, about 15 Israelis had been killed by Hamas rockets. The death toll in Gaza last week was 430 and rising. Israel says it is targeting Hamas but some 40 children have been killed by the air strikes. One child was decapitated on Friday while playing in the street in the town of Khan Yunis. After the bombs and air strikes, a land invasion with tanks and bulldozers is likely to complete the task. The indiscriminate destruction appears not so much a response to Hamas rockets, as part of a long-term plan to level the urban landscape of the Gaza Strip and drive its inhabitants into the sea.

With the sophisticated military technology available, the Israeli forces should have been able to target more surgically the rocket launchers and the Hamas leaders who ordered the attacks. The iron fist approach is preferred, providing further shades of Nazi Germany, when the assassination of one SS officer would be punished by the razing to the ground of an entire village.

These Hamas leaders and their trigger-happy rocketeers stand culpable. Their Qassam missiles have largely missed any Israeli military targets. They sometimes kill sheep and chickens. Occasionally humans, including young Israeli children, die in these pointless attacks.

From time to time, Hamas manages to land a Qassam or two on its own people. These casualties will be of little concern. The Hamas leadership must know that for every futile rocket launched at Israel, the people of Gaza will suffer 100 or 1000-fold.

Every Israeli atrocity strengthens Hamas's importance in the eyes of the populace. A state of war suits the fundamentalists. There are reports of Hamas gunmen using the chaos in Gaza last week to liquidate Fatah and other Palestinians who stand against them.

If the people of Gaza turn to Hamas, it is because the world has turned its back on Palestine. The US condones Israel's oppression of Palestine and provides the money and military equipment to expedite the genocide.

Most of the rest of the world, including Britain, merely look on. (That fellow Tony Blair, co-producer of the Iraq war and now the world's peace envoy to Palestine, has been remarkably quiet this last week on the subject of how much damage can be done by deadly weapons in the space of 45 minutes.) The world has stood idly by while Israel has set up a system of apartheid which, by comparison, makes the hated regime of South Africa's Dr Verwoerd and his fellow Boers seem like the attention of kindly uncles. With walls, fences, modern roads only for the use of Jews and ubiquitous army checkpoints, Palestinians are routinely corralled and denied access to their places of work, hospitals, homes of friends and relatives. There is little freedom of movement.

As a small but significant example of the isolation which Israel imposes, the Palestine national football team are not allowed to play any matches in their own country.

Even in times of relative peace, Palestinians can expect pretty raw treatment at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force. The IDF will normally stand by and allow militant Jewish settlers to harass and menace Palestinians at gunpoint in an ongoing process of ejecting them from land they have lived on for generations.

To the neutral observer, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that peaceful co-existence is not on the agenda. The extremists in the Israeli state will not be satisfied until only Jews occupy the Holy Land.

So, what can be done? Nothing, while the US continues to bankroll the Israeli military machine and sanction the use of these weapons against a largely defenceless Palestinian population. Nothing, while international criticism of Israel's aggression remains muted.

Israel, a nation born out of great suffering, is rapidly depleting its reserves of world sympathy. There will be no peace until the modern Israel is perceived by the international community as an outcast and is treated as such. Just as the white supremacists of South Africa were. This would be a sad fate for the many good and peace-loving Israelis. Like the people I have met on visits who are hospitable and welcoming.

On a balmy night on the seafront in Tel Aviv, it can truly seem to be a land of milk and honey. If you forget that a lot of the prosperity is based on the theft of land from Palestinians. Many Israelis are active in campaigning for Palestinian rights and face opprobrium from fellow citizens for doing so. It is a faint hope and an unlikely one that the anti-war movement will have any real impact on Israeli politics. Certainly not while Hamas continues to lob missiles or send suicide bombers to kill Israeli civilians.

Palestine will never be freed by armed struggle or invasion by neighbouring Arab states. There may be a slender possibility that passive resistance could work. This would require the emergence of an inspirational leader, a Ghandi or a Mandela. Someone who could lead his people away from fighting and sufficiently shame the Israeli warmongers in the face of world opinion.

I fear these are merely the dreams of a pacifist who wants to give peace a chance. I wouldn't rush down to Ladbrokes to place a wager on such an outcome. You would get better odds that the Middle East conflict will end in an exchange of nuclear warheads. The men of violence are well and truly in control of the biblical lands.

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