Song for Gaza
Are there any words left for the atrocities in which the the Israeli government is self-righteously revelling, in a pre election obscene blood orgy. Genocidal and depraved, flaunting its mighty weapons before the eyes of the world,it, Israel has rendered itself devoid of humanity, killing with impunity (827 people thus far) including humanitarian workers, medics, ambulances, hospitals, mosques, shops and hundreds of homes while governments, restricted by the hasbara-ridden ignorant, religiously superstitious, errant and culpable US government – let them never think that they are ‘good’ again, are suckered into the malignant victimhood of a pariah, necrophilic, human rights violating state. For Israel’s malevolent war crimes and crimes against humanity continue despite UNSC 1860, and their iniquities are beyond words. People have had no water for five days – a friend said that denying water was a favourite method of destruction used by the IOF as it saves using bullets on children, who dehydrate quicker than adults. Dead and wounded lie everywhere under rubble. Nowhere is safe, and there is no exit or place to hide because the Palestinian people’s foul jailor has locked in 1.5 million.
Whilst playing a terrified victim, Israel has viciously, inexcusably oppressed the Palestinian people, with a series of Machiavellian strategies denying their legitimate aspirations for 65 years.
Stalinesque is not too strong a descriptive word to use for the Israeli government’s actions.
America may have invited a bitter fate in return for its immorality, and indulging of its perverse most favoured state in its refusal to condemn, its inability to perceive war crimes involved in thesupply of weapons which are employed by the 4th most militarised state on the planet to commit collective punishment on a million and a half people. Possibly that is what the ghouls of finance, the trogs from the weapons industry, want – these parasites must feast from their loungerooms on the corpses of the wretched and dispossessed.
Would any other western nation, except for the similarly afflicted US, commit acts of such barbarity?
Anyone who is complicit in this abomination should seek medical attention as soon as possible – yet can there be a cure for virulent national sociopathy?
For a far better written first hand narration and background than I can provide, visit Rafahkid in the rubble that is Rafah.
The Gaza Dilemma
In a convincing wrapup of events leading to the holocaust being perpetrated on the essentially defenceless people of Gaza, John Pilger refers to the Dagan Plan.
Behind this sordid game is the “Dagan Plan,” named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a “solution” that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel’s destruction and to “blame” for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. “We have never had it so good,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. “The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.” In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power.” Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity.”
When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.”
Although the UN has passed Resolution 1860 calling for a cease fire, Israel is continuing its strikes against anything that moves or doesn’t move in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
This is unacceptable. The US may already been dragged into being accomplice to war crimes on the eve of Obama’s inauguration – is this Bush’s last petulant tantrum too?
Francis A. Boyle An Israeli War Crimes Tribunal – An Israeli War Crimes Tribunal (ICTI) May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War
Not that again – still at least some folks are waking up to the Machiavellian possibilities neocons may be hoping to ignite in these last desperate days of Straussian ponderosity.
Ari Shavit writes in Haaretz of that perennial classic, the White Man’s Burden
George E. Bisharat Israel Is Committing War Crimes – Hamas’s violations are no justification for Israel’s actions.
Pentagon denies arms shipment to Israel linked with Gaza fighting – interesting because the first time we looked the story said US was sending 3000 tons of ammo on a merchant ship.
In fact, here it is sitting on Reuters UK. So who’s the anonymous informant, and which story is true? ??
U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel
Fri Jan 9, 2009 11:42pm GMT
By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.
The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as “ammunition” on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
A “hazardous material” designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.
“Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot,” one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
“This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven’t seen much of it quoted in the market over the years,” he added.
The U.S. Defense Department, contacted by Reuters on Friday in Washington, had no immediate comment.
The MSC transports amour and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces aboard its own fleet, but regularly hires merchant ships if logistics so require.
The request for the ship was made on December 31, with the first leg of the charter to arrive no later than January 25 and the second at the end of the month.
The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further.
CHARTERS “RARE”
Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare.
Israel is one of America’s closest allies and both nations regularly sell arms to each other.
A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be “irregular” and linked to the Gaza offensive.
The ship hired by the MSC in December was for a much larger cargo of arms, tender documents showed.
That stipulated a ship to be chartered for 42 days capable of carrying 989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod.
The tender document said the vessel had to be capable of “carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight,” which specialist brokers said was a very large quantity.
The ship was requested early last month to load on December 15.
In September, the U.S. Congress approved the sale of 1,000 bunker-buster missiles to Israel. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world.
The Jerusalem Post, citing defense officials, reported last week that a first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were used in penetrating Hamas’s underground rocket launcher sites.
(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; editing by Michael Roddy)
UPDATE ON SHIP
Greek bloggers used Twitter to pressure the Greek government to halt the arms transfer.
Delivery of the munitions was suspended, just as the Greek government was coming under fire from opposition parties, and Amnesty International was calling for an arms embargo.
At first, official sources contested the story from the international news agency Reuters on January 9. But it was picked up by Twitter users and investigated after Indy.gr – an offshoot of the Indymedia Athens group – provided a translation of the article in Greek.
ADDENDA
1:10 p.m. Here’s one for the Israel Info Guys in Tel Aviv and New York.
You know the “human shields” line that Hamas hides behind civilians, especially women and children, to conduct their nefarious activities? Well, a released Gazan detainee has offered an inconvenient twist — at least for Israel:
In the first day (of the ground offensive) special forces stormed Beit Lahiya. Maybe a thousand soldiers landed on rooftops then began arresting people….They used us as human shields in military positions they established inside Gaza Strip before they drove us to a prison in Beersheba. They made us sleep on gravel, or on the sand. They stripped us of our clothes.
And here’s a little footnote: “They used a bulldozer to pile up the bodies of the dead.”
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim – How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
@AJGaza: UN says more than 15,000 people are now internally displaced after fleeing their homes in an attempt to avoid the fighting in #Gaza
Israelis protest against their government’s attack of Gaza
Independent Australian Jewish Voices has protested against Israel’s offensive and collective punishment of the Gazan people.
We are Australian Jews who join thousands in Israel and around the world condemning ongoing Israeli military attacks on Gaza. Together with Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, we condemn the current war as “inhuman, superfluous” and “abominable”.
While Israel has the right to protect its citizens and to demand an end to the crime of Palestinian rockets that target civilians, this cannot be used as a pretext for the grossly disproportionate military assault on Gaza because it was Israel that violated the fragile truce on November 4, 2008. Furthermore, Israel ignored Hamas’ diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the cease-fire since it expired on December 19.
The war on the population of Gaza comes after the Israeli blockade that had already created a severe humanitarian crisis under which the Palestinians suffered from lack of food, electricity, medicines, hospital equipment and other basic necessities of life. The blockade was condemned by the UN as a violation of international law and, like the massive Israeli air-strikes, constitutes illegal collective punishment prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
We call for an immediate end to attacks on civilians by Palestinians and Israelis. However, since Palestinians have no means of self-defence against the most powerful military force in the Middle East, we particularly call on Israel to end its brutal assault on the vulnerable Palestinian people of Gaza and to reconsider its rejection of the UN Security Council’s call for a cease-fire.
Israel has refused to accept Hamas’ consistent offer of negotiations since its election win in 2006.
As Syd Walker points out, the IAJV highlights the facts which the Israeli hasbara machine is desperately attempting to counter.
Hell in #Gaza – Atrocities by Israel’s IDF Against Children
Rafah Exodus
7th January 2009
7th January 2009
Shortly before midnight last night missiles began raining down on Rafah in one of the heaviest Israeli air strikes since the current atrocities began. Continuous sorties pounded the southern Gaza city for over 12 hours. Many homes were destroyed or severely damaged, especially in the neighbourhoods along the border with Egypt.
Residents reported mass leaflet drops in these neighbourhoods by Israeli ‘planes this afternoon. The papers ordered them to leave their homes in the areas stretching from the borderline all the way back to Sea Street, the main street running through the heart of Rafah, parallel to the border. This area is hundreds of metres deep and the site of thousands of homes. Most of these areas are refugee camps, where residents are being made refugees yet again, some for the third or fourth time following the mass home demolitions of 2003 and 2004 by Israeli military D-9 bulldozers.
A three hour respite was announced in the local media and residents saw this as the last possible opportunity to salvage some of their belongings despite F-16 fighter jets remaining in the skies over Rafah during this time. There were scenes of people picking through the rubble, children carrying bundles, donkey carts piled with bedding and trucks loaded with furniture.
Where will these families go? They are afraid to seek sanctuary in local UNRWA schools following yesterday’s massacres in Jabaliya. They are being temporarily absorbed by the rest of Rafah’s population – friends, neighbours, relatives. We have a friend in Yibna, directly on the border, who refuses to leave his home. We spoke to one woman in Al Barazil who has a family of 12 and simply doesn’t know where to go and another woman in Block J who is literally in the street tonight. Her father is in his nineties. – Photo & text courtesy of Rafahkid
The UN Office for the Coordination Affairs – Occupied Palestinian Territory has released its weekly report detailing the effect of Israel’s illegal aggression against the civilian population in Gaza. Some excerpts follow:
Since the Israeli military operation “Cast lead” began on 27 December until 8 January (4:00PM), 758 Palestinians have been killed – approximately 42% of whom were women (60) and children (257) according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The number of children fatalities has increased by 250% since the beginning of ground operation on 3 January. 56% of Gaza’s population are children.
There is no safe space in the Gaza Strip – no safe haven, no bomb shelters, and the borders are closed and civilians have no place to flee. UNRWA facilities being used as shelters are not constructed to withstand bombardments as they are mostly schools and office buildings.
View an ISM video of the razing of Rafah. – more than 180 homes were bombed to smithereens in the Zionist pogrom against the people of Gaza. One man says it was a repeat of the events in 2004 when Zionists bombed the same area without warning, while people were sleeping.
From 3 to 7 January, the IDF prevented medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded. In of the one gravest incidents since the beginning of operations, according to several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot-soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children), warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately thirty. Those who survived and were able, walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to the hospital in civilian vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital.
The severity of the electricity situation was underscored when on 5 January, generators at MoH ambulance stations, vaccines stores, labs and warehouses shut down for lack of fuel until UNRWA delivered fuel to the MoH. At Shifa hospital, generator failure could prove to be catastrophic as 70 intensive care patients, including 30 in the neonatal department, are reliant on machines.
Although 232 truckloads of flour have entered Gaza since 30 December, no wheat grain has been allowed into Gaza since the beginning of the hostilities. The Ministry of National Economy in Gaza ordered flour mills to allocate the available wheat flour to bakeries and distribute it under its supervision. As of 6 January, only nine bakeries in Gaza were operational, due to the paucity of flour and cooking gas, and bread prices have nearly doubled since the Israeli offensive began.
Via Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother – From Dick Gordon on NPR’s NC station, WUNC: Hear what life is like for ordinary people in Gaza right now and how parents are keeping their children entertained despite the Israeli onslaught.