Human Rights

January 10, 2009December 13, 2020

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

From Enduring America 9/1/09:

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

January 9, 2009December 13, 2020

Sunday Leader editor & Columbo government critic assassinated

Outspoken government critic and editor of the Sunday Leader in Columbo, Lasantha Wickramatunga was assassinated as he drove to work yesterday by unidentified gunmen on motorbikes.

There have been several attacks on and attempts to intimidate journalists in Sri Lanka in recent times while the government has been engaged in bloody campaigns against LTTE troops in the northern Tamil areas.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa condemned the killing of Mr. Wickramatunga as an attempt to discredit the government while the Leader of the Opposition and a former Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, accused the government of silencing its critics.

Mr. Rajapaksa described Mr. Wickramatunga as a close friend and a courageous journalist and maintained “the heinous crime points to the grave dangers faced by the democratic social order of our country, and the existence of forces that will go to the furthest extremes in using terror and criminality to damage our social fabric and bring disrepute to the country.”

Addressing a news conference along with other Opposition leaders, Mr. Wickremesinghe alleged that the murder of the Sunday Leader editor was part of an anti-democratic conspiracy.

The Committee to Protect Journalists “called on concerned ambassadors in Colombo to weigh in forcefully and immediately with President Mahinda Rajapaksa to put an end to the attacks raining down on Sri Lanka’s media.”

The killing follows the January 6 early morning assault by about 15 masked gunmen on Maharaja TV (MTV) studios outside Colombo. Earlier, some state media had called the station “unpatriotic” for its coverage of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). CPJ called for an impartial parliamentary inquiry into the attack, saying the government has been a prime suspect in attacks on journalists in the past. Rajapaksa has condemned today’s killing as well as the attack on MTV.

Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator said

“The assassination of Lasantha Wickramatunga signals that the government is unable or unwilling to protect the country’s journalists who dare to report critically. The international community in Colombo must act quickly to bring pressure on President Rajapaksa to reverse this murderous trend.”

The Sunday Leader is well known for being critical of Rajapaksa’s government. In a recent editorial, the paper accused the president of stepping up the war with the secessionist LTTE in order to stay in power.

Wickramatunga’s editorial admonished the Columbo government severely for its pre-election tactics:

What is perhaps most offensive about Rajapakse’s attempts to manipulate the electorate in the face of an election is how much he takes for granted the fickleness of his Sinhala-Buddhist following. Nothing could better personify the “Sinhalaya modaya” stereotype than the President’s disdain for his own people. And they love him for it. So long as a steady stream of Tamils are exterminated, there is little to impede Rajapakse’s cruise to yet another victory.

The dead journalist also criticised the UNP opposition for its non-committal policies:

Sadly for both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Karu Jayasuriya, they have failed to convey effectively to the country their concerns about the issues of our time. As a party, the UNP is yet to decide whether or not it supports the war and if so, whether it subscribes, for example, to the present practice of aerially bombarding Tamil villages labelled as LTTE hideouts in the north.

To say it opposes the war but nevertheless congratulate the army on capturing Paranthan or Killinochchi, however, is morally and intellectually dishonest. After all, the government would not dare bombing LTTE hideouts in the south – let us say in Wellawatte – for fear of collateral damage. Yet, in the remote townships of the Wanni, such bombardment has now become routine, with enormous cost to the civilian population.

The attacks on Tamil villages by Sri Lanka’s government mirror those of Israel on the people of Gaza. Both parties under attack have had national aspirations under occupation for 60 years, and both peoples can trace continuous existence in their native lands. Before British rule, Tamil and Sinhalese coexisted in two kingdoms –

the Tamil Kingdom comprising the north and eastern parts and the Sinhalese Kingdom(s) the western & southern parts of Ceylon. There were brief periods when the whole of Ceylon came under a single ruler. Otherwise, there existed two or more Kingdoms and the Tamil Kingdom always one of them. The Tamil Kingdom, later came to be called the Jaffna Kingdom existed as a separate polity for centuries. The first war between a Tamil King who ruled Anuradhapura and a Sinhalese king from the south was fought in the 2nd century BC.

In the case of Palestine however, Zionist colonialisation of Palestinian land began in the 1880s with the advent of kibbutzs set up by European Jews.

When Sri Lanka declared independence from the British in 1948, its constitution incorporated the state with its official religion as Buddhism. The Tamil people are predominantly Hindu. Success in the first election by Sinhalese Buddhist candidates enabled the passing of

“the Ceylon (Parliamentary Elections) Amendment Act No.48 of 1949 which deprived the Tamils of their franchise as well. This category of Tamils who had 7 seats in the Parliament and held balance of power in a further 20-30 electorates failed to elect even a single member in the elections to the parliament held in 1953.”

Tamils were further marginalised in 1956 with the passing of the Sinhala Only Act:

The enactment of this Act, quite contrary to the hitherto official policy of recognising both Sinhalese and Tamil as Official languages, made Tamils second class citizens in their country of birth overnight.

The Tamil people staged a non-violent demonstration against the stripping of their rights and were met with violence.

The peaceful Satyragraha by the Tamils to protest against the Sinhala Only language policy at Galle Face Green overlooking the Parliament in Colombo was broken up by Sinhalese hoodlums. This was followed by Island wide riots in which hundreds of Tamils lost their lives and property worth millions destroyed. The 1956 riots was the beginning of a series of racially motivated Tamil pogroms by Sinhalese covertly encouraged by successive governments and overtly supported by the security forces. These pogroms with increased ferocity and venom were repeated in 1958, 1961, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983.

The government of Sri Lanka has still failed to address the just, legitimate rights of the Tamil people, instead pursuing violent means to crush “the Other”. As usual, violence met with violence in return. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) are claimed to be “the official army of the Tamil people”.

@Jinjirrie http://is.gd/eX8R Lasantha Wickramatunga ed of Sunday Leader & govt critic shot by unidentified gunmen in Columbo http://is.gd/eXak

January 9, 2009December 13, 2020

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.

January 9, 2009December 13, 2020

Hell in #Gaza – Atrocities by Israel’s IDF Against Children

Rafah Exodus
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.

January 9, 2009December 13, 2020

UN Aid Convoy Attacked by Israel – US Senate Accomplice to Atrocities

Israel continues to contravene international law in Gaza, commiting yet more horrendous atrocities in the prosecution of its detestable collective punishment of Gaza’s citizens.

A UN agency halted operations in Gaza after a deadly strike on an aid convoy on Thursday that prompted UN chief Ban Ki-moon to issue his second call in a week for an Israeli investigation.

“Operations will remain suspended until Israeli authorities can guarantee the safety and security of our staff,” said Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that had been distributing food aid to about half of Gaza’s 1.5 million population.

The decision came after one man was killed and two others were wounded when a UN-flagged convoy of trucks was hit by two tank shells en route to the border with Israel to pick up humanitarian assistance.

The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident.

Later two UN armoured vehicles that escorted an ambulance to recover the body of a local staff member in Gaza City came under small arms fire during the daily three-hour humanitarian lull Israel has declared in its Gaza offensive, a UN official said.

“The secretary-general condemns the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) firing on a United Nations aid convoy in Gaza,” a spokesman for Ban Ki-Moon said in a statement.

“The UN is in close touch with the Israeli authorities about full investigation of this and other incidents,” the statement said.

US senate complicity in genocide

Pretty picture courtesy of our perceptive Auntie Ziona

Despite large public protests across the US, the Israel-owned US Senate has unanimously voted in one-sided ignorance and perfidy to explicitly back America’s colonialist accomplice in war crimes with no mention of the suffering of the people of Gaza caused by Israel’s aggression. The American people have shown they are not party to the slaughter of Gazans, yet their elected representatives choose to vote with those who funded their campaigns rather than those whom they are supposed to represent – the ordinary, decent American even when Israel’s attacks “are in direct violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, and even when the attacks have been condemned by the United Nations.”

Critics have challenged the wording of the bill for its misrepresentation of the conflict, given that the democratically-elected Hamas party had abided by an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire for nearly six months, even through numerous Israeli violations and the Israeli-imposed siege warfare that resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 Palestinian patients due to the lack of medical care.

The US Campaign to End the Occupation also challenged the notion of Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’, saying that the Jewish nature of the state of Israel has resulted in an inherent apartheid system that privileges those of Jewish origin above non-Jewish residents, including the indigenous Palestinian population. They say that this makes the state of Israel inherently undemocratic, in that its entire legal system discriminates against non-Jews.
…

No Senator chose to address the reports of Israeli targeting of Palestinian civilians (human rights groups have estimated that 90% of casualties over the last three days have been civilians), the censorship of the media by Israel, the Israeli military’s use of unconventional weapons against civilians, the targeting of schools, hospitals, mosques, ambulances, journalists and humanitarian aid convoys by the Israeli military during the current aggression against Gaza.

Did Israel take this Senate approbation as an implicit carte blanche to flaunt its impunity by perpetrating its latest attack on UN humanitarian aid vehicles?

The extent of regard affluent Israel exhibits for life and dignity in Gaza is miniscule, its coverups and shallow justifications monstrous. Civilians and international aid agencies are being treated as troublesome insects. Israel’s behaviours to its hapless neighbours, who happen to be sitting on supplies of gas Israel would like, is on par with some of the worst human rights violatons in modern history.

It is difficult to read information as below and not cry out to America – why are you allowing Israel to get away with this? is Israel really so important to you that you must acquiesce to the interminable persecution of the wretched of the earth? why do you supply your weapons to Israel in support of its counter-productive aggression against its neighbours?

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday accused Israel of failing to help wounded people in one area after rescuers found four small children too weak to stand up and huddling next to their dead mothers.

It said Israeli soldiers tried to force the rescuers to leave when they finally reached the wounded in Gaza City’s shell-blasted Zeitun neighbourhood on Wednesday, four days after safe passage had been requested.

“This is a shocking incident,” said Pierre Wettach, who heads the ICRC’s delegation for Israel and the Palestinian territories. “The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded.”

The ICRC said that more wounded people are sheltering in destroyed houses.

@Gazamom Samuni Family #Gaza lose 12 more after Red Cross recovers decomposing bodies; 4 children found alive next to dead mother Btselem

How can this be happening? Israel, a country which wishes to join the EU community, has moved into a dark zone, a place where malevolent outrages outside all human decency are acceptable.

The US Congress is due to vote today on a heinous bill approving Israel’s impunity from war crimes in lock step with the Senate.

The House bill “expresses vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders and recognizes its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas’ unceasing aggression.”

Photo courtesy of Rafahkid

Will the US Government only be satisfied when Israel has flattened all the homes in Gaza and killed the entire one and a half million population?

Do not the people of Gaza deserve defence from Israel’s ethnic cleansing?

View the latest video coverage of the effects of Israel’s attack on the Gazan people.

Following one of the heaviest air strikes on Rafah so far, many homes were destroyed or severely damaged yesterday, especially in the neighbourhoods along the border with Egypt. Residents reported mass leaflet drops in these neighbourhoods by Israeli ‘planes yesterday afternoon ordering thousands of people to leave their homes. This resulted in a mass evacuation. Below is a translation of the leaflet dropped yesterday:

“Citizens of Rafah

Due to Hamas using your houses to smuggle and store ammunition, the Israeli Defence Force will attack your homes from Sea Street to the Egyptian border. To the people who live in these areas: Block O, Al Brazil camp, Al Shora area and Qishta area, all homes beyond Sea Street must be evacuated. You have from the time you receive this leaflet until 7.00am the following morning. For you and your children’s safety follow what this leaflet says.

The leadership of the Israeli Defence Force”

And how do people beleive this is true that all the famiilies houses are Hamas houses….the lies are crazy but not as crazy as those who believe them.

Jimmy Carter speaks with Obama and calls Israel’s attack “disproportionate”.

765 people have now been killed by Israel in Gaza, the majority of them civilians.

While the UN Security Council has called for an immediate, durable cease fire, the US abstained from voting.

Fourteen of the council’s members voted in favour of the compromise resolution worked out in three days of intense bargaining involving several Arab foreign ministers, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

The call for a ceasefire comes after the main UN agency operating in the Gaza Strip halted its operations after an attack on a truck convoy and amid mounting calls for Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.

…

But aid agencies complain relief workers and medics are at high risk and that civilians have nowhere to flee.

From the Washington Post:

The 15-nation council adopted the resolution by a 14-0 vote. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cast the sole abstention but said the United States supports the text and objectives of the resolution.

The resolution demands an “immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza,” according to U.S. and Arab officials. It marked a sharp reversal by the Bush administration, which had refused to allow passage of a cease-fire resolution without binding assurances that Hamas would halt its rocket attacks against Israel.

The resolution expresses “grave concern” over the “deepening humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, and it calls for more international aid and “unimpeded” distribution of food, fuel, medical treatment and other humanitarian assistance. The text makes no mention of Hamas’s practice of launching missiles into Israeli territory. Instead, it “condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism.”

@AJGaza: Resolution 1860 calls for an immediate and durable ceasefire and for unimpeded access for humanitarian aid workers

@AJGaza: #Gaza resolution does not contain a timetable for withdrawl of Israeli troops from Gaza strip

@AJGaza: Before the UN Security Council adopted the resolution, Israel had said the ground offensive in #Gaza would be widened and deepened

@AJGaza: Palestinian FM: “We fear … that Israel will delay it’s acceptance and implementation of the ceasefire”

Laila El-Haddad looks at Israeli propaganda techniques used to minimise public relations fallout and reaffirm Israel as an innocent victim.