Tag: Human Rights

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Israel violating humanitarian law again

Richard Falk at the UN:

WASHINGTON, (PIC)– The UN human rights rapporteur, Richard Falk, has described the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip coupled with the tight siege on it as a serious and blatant violation of the international humanitarian law.

He stressed in a radio interview on Friday that the Palestinians, especially the Gaza Strip inhabitants, need and deserve the world community’s protection a long time ago even before the Israeli military assault started.

Falk said that the Israeli bombing with advanced weapons on a society that is not capable to defend itself follows a human tragedy that resulted from the Israeli blockage on the Strip.

The Israeli tightened siege is a collective punishment that violates international laws, he said, adding that Israel’s claims that it withdrew from the Strip and thus was not an occupying power was not legally or morally true since it continued to impose its control on the Strip’s borders, beaches and air space.

Editorial in the Guardian:

Israel must withdraw and the Arab nations in the region that must persuade Hamas to end its murderous missile attacks and observe the ceasefire. Instead of attacking and putting its citizens at risk, Israel could make this happen by lifting the siege that has only served to strengthen the Islamist group.

But the reality on the ground is that Israel has sent in troops and returned to the failed strategies of the past. A deeper and more terrible tragedy is beckoning.

Further statements by Richard Falk – Israel’s War Crimes

OPERATION CAST LEAD MASSIVE FAIL

ISRAEL MASSIVE FAIL

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Israel’s troops invade Gaza – again

After bombing schools, universities, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, public buildings, homes, market places, chicken farms and numerous other suspected sources of Hamas weaponry in Gaza, Israel is sending troops into the rubble left after the Gazan people have endured eight days of massive air bombardments, an 18 month siege, previous hideous invasions and 60 years of collective punishment and torment.

During the current grotesque, vastly unequal confrontation, about 460 Palestinians have lost their lives with more people buried and unidentified beneath toppled buildings. Last time Israel punished its hapless, impoverished Gazan neighbours, it killed more than 700 people. But this time, the world is watching keenly – will the bar be lifted? does the sociopathic Israeli propaganda machine imagine they have sufficiently brainwashed the world to accept even graver and greater atrocities? this is how Israel conducts its election campaigns – with Palestinians used as expendable human pawns for bloodthirsty oneupmanship within the Israeli elite.

hulk

From Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images – Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Gaza border

While Israel’s monstrous bullying may play well to short-sighted, enraged members of the Israeli public who support violent non-solutions that inevitably blowback against them and potentially the rest of the world as well later, it will not wash with people within Israel and without who are better informed and innoculated against Zionist mock tantrums. The numbers of people who are aware of Israel’s bad faith are growing, despite the collusion of the western media with its deceitful narrative. Those in charge of the Israeli propaganda machine however, may not perceive this.

I fear and feel for the people of Gaza, made scapegoats again as Palestinians have been for 60 years while the world has remained hamstrung by an Israel occupied US. It’s way past time that Israel should declare its borders on the pre 1967 Green Line, give Palestinians back their land, compensate refugees, release prisoners and become good neighbours – if they fail to do this, the time will rapidly approach when the rest of the world, including the US, rejects them as soundly as it did the apartheid regime in South Africa – the US was the last major nation to condemn them as well.

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Tired now, still here’s some shocking links.

Gaza invasion starts: Refugee camp with ISMers in it shelled by tanks

@AJGaza: Israeli authorities refuse to allow International Committee of Red Cross emergency medical team into #Gaza for 2nd day.

UN Gaza Humanitarian Situation Report for 3 January 09 – just horrific. Read it for yourself, I’m choked up by the awful inhumanity contained therein directly caused by Israel’s vicious blockade, consequent bombardment and now ground ‘offensive’ being peddled as ‘defensive’ while their satraps posture with weasel words that it’s not their fault. Alternate pdf download link here.

Fatah-affiliated wing shells Israeli intelligence building

America’s Hidden Role in Hamas’s Rise to Power

Bush repeats the same lie as the Israeli hasbara when in fact it was Israel who breached the cease fire with Hamas on November 4 last year.

Is Israel using cluster bombs on Palestinians?

Meanwhile in the UN:

Riyad Mansour, the permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, told reporters that it was the council’s responsibility “to bring Israel into compliance and to stop this aggression immediately”.

“Israel cannot continue to behave as a state above international law – this is the law of the jungle,” he said.

Earlier, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon urged an immediate end to Israel’s ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

A statement issued by his office said Mr Ban had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and “conveyed his extreme concern and disappointment”.

“He is convinced and alarmed that this escalation will inevitably increase the already heavy suffering of the affected civilian populations,” the statement said.

Israeli video propagadana exposed on the BBC

Who fires those primitive rockets anyway? would Israel run another of its infamous false flag operations to create a pretext for a Gaza invasion?

What can Israel hope to achieve with its disgraceful, deceitful incursion

Ivan Eland adds some perspective:

Even the best outcome for Israel is grim. If the Israeli military invades Gaza on the ground to wipe out Hamas and its military infrastructure and Egypt does not allow Hamas fighters to escape to its territory, the Arab grievance will likely merely morph into a more angry and virulent form after the almost certain eventual Israeli withdrawal. Alternatively, if Hamas is not completely wiped out – either because some fighters successfully melt back into Gaza’s population or because Israel merely threatens a ground invasion but doesn’t follow through – Hamas’s stature will grow in Gaza and the Arab world for successfully withstanding the Israeli goliath – as Hezbollah’s did after the Israeli onslaught against and withdrawal from Lebanon in 2006.

Instead of making peace with the Palestinians and Syrians by eliminating the underlying grievance and giving back their land, or at least answering minor provocations with limited tit-for-tat responses, Israel will likely continue flailing disproportionately against its enemies. This Israeli government policy will make the long-term security situation worse for the Israeli people – with the United States subsidizing and giving the green light to such irresponsible behavior. Same stuff, different year

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Israel, Serial Violator of International Law

Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, relates his recent experiences with the Israeli Government.

It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel’s occupation policy. After being denied entry, I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed.

I was separated from my two UN companions who were allowed to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.

More recently on December 27, Falk stated:

“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.” – Israel’s War Crimes, by Richard Falk

ISRAEL’S RECORD

60 years of Misery and Ethnic cleansing
6 wars
4 million Palestinian Refugees
3 million Occupied Palestinians
1.5 million Abducted – hostages
254 km of an Apartheid Wall
562 Humiliation check-points
20K Political prisoners
400 Children held in Israeli Dungeons
468,831 new settlers on an Occupied land
Disappearance of Palestine
World Leader in UN Violations – 69

Invasion of Gaza may be imminent, with propaganda leaflets dropped in northern Gaza warning people to leave the area.

Israeli tanks and troops have massed on the Gaza border, and an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said ground forces are prepared to enter Gaza when they receive orders to do so.

“Due to the terrorist actions undertaken by terrorist elements from the region of your residences against the state of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces are compelled to respond immediately in the region of your residences. For your safety, you are ordered to leave the area immediately,” the leaflets say.

The geographic area covered by the word “region” was not defined.

SabahBlog has located a copy of previous Israeli dob-in-a rocket-firer propaganda leaflets and has a novel idea for action by peacemakers everywhere.

In 2005, Israel was condemned by Amnesty International for multiple war crimes. No punitive action was taken against the psychotic Zionist entity by the international community then, thus we can expect more of the same atrocities if it invades this time.

UK Protesters

Photo Courtesy Suspect Paki

As people around the world demonstrate against Israel’s war crimes – 1000 shoes have been thrown at the gates of 10 Downing Street – Bush, a war criminal himself for lying the US into the Iraq war and for condoning torture is as usual Israeli occupied territory in his last days in power :

“America’s objectives in the Middle East will remain clear: We seek security and peace for our allies, the free people of Israel. For the Palestinian people, we seek a peaceful and democratic Palestinian state that serves its citizens and respects its neighbors. For all in the region, we seek an end to terror.”

The comments reflected the general tone that the U.S. has historically taken toward Hamas, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist group.

In democratic elections in Palestinian territories backed by the United States in 2006, Hamas won a landslide victory in parliamentary voting.

After the elections, the U.S. government asked the Palestinian Authority to return $50 million in donations for infrastructure improvements. The United States cut off direct, nonhumanitarian aid to Gaza but more than doubled humanitarian aid it funnels through non-governmental groups and the United Nations.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and a member of Hamas’ rival Fatah party, dissolved Gaza’s Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency in 2007. Hamas took control of the territory shortly afterward.

Abbas was to travel to New York on Friday to address the United Nations Security Council, his office said.

On Wednesday, the council debated a Libyan-sponsored draft resolution favored by Arab countries that calls for Israel to immediately cease military attacks against civilians and asks for the protection of the Palestinian people.

The United States indicated that it does not back the resolution, though it does support a cease-fire.
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Rice said Friday that a “durable and sustainable” cease-fire was needed to end the violence in Gaza and in southern Israel.

“We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo,” she said. “It is obvious that should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable and sustainable.”

Seems Abbas is waiting in the wings – soon it will be his turn to be played as a puppet at Israel’s convenience. How long before Israel decides he too is an unsuitable ‘partner for peace’?

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Israel refuses ceasefire again – more killing to do

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who is in hiding from Israeli assassins, called for a ceasefire yesterday while Israel prepared its ground forces for invasion of Gaza and Olmert postured. As a consequence of Israel’s 2 year collective punishment on its people by siege and recently bombings, Gaza is one of the most wretched, impoverished places on the planet.

“What is happening in Gaza is not normal aggression,” said Mr Haniya. “It is a real war, a war without morals, with neither principles nor laws. It is a war of elimination against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. We tell the Palestinian people that you will win, inevitably.”

Earlier, the Israeli security cabinet rejected a French proposal for a 48-hour “humanitarian” ceasefire that would be used to mediate a long-term ceasefire.

“We didn’t initiate the Gaza operation to end it while Israeli towns are still under fire, as they were before the operation,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.

He added that the proposal would be reconsidered when the time was right and only if international monitors took responsibility for enforcing it. As for humanitarian considerations, he said Israel was permitting an unlimited amount of humanitarian supplies to be trucked into the Gaza Strip daily.

Israel is believed to be planning a brief incursion aimed at weakening Hamas’s incentive to resort to violence in the future.

Since Israel’s slaughter is more likely to have the opposite effect of inciting more violence against it, one can only imagine that perpetual retaliation is precisely what Israel desires. When there is no suitable ‘partner for peace’ more land grabs can be justified.

Aid agencies give a contradictory and deeper understanding of the humanitarian crisis. They feel a cease fire is essential.

“After six days of Israeli bombardment, aid agencies say that Gazans are facing a humanitarian crisis with air strikes causing severe problems in getting food, medicine and fuel supplies to the besieged civilian population.

The assessment, by several international relief organisations, contradicts the statement by the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, during a visit to Paris yesterday that “there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce”. While relief shipments were allowed into Gaza by the Israeli authorities in the days before the start of the offensive, they came after weeks of virtually no supplies getting through, the agencies point out.

…

Dr Hassan Khalaf, of the main Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said that Palestinian civilians are paying a terrible price: “We are getting really badly injured people coming in every day. What is the point of saying you are allowing food in for people when you then go on to bomb them? The Israelis may say they are just attacking Hamas but I am seeing children and women coming covered in blood. What we are seeing is a war on the people. The Hamas fighters firing the rockets are at the border, they are not in the city.

“We have organised the hospitals so that different ones are looking after different types of injuries. But the common problem we face is that we are having bad shortages in lots of things, especially anesthetics and antibiotics. We are talking to the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and I hope we shall get some help.”

…

Christine Van Nieuwenhuyse, head of the World Food Programme for Gaza and the West Bank, acknowledged that a “significant amount” of food was allowed in by the Israelis before the start of the air strikes. “But we must not forget this came after weeks when hardly any food had got in at all. One of our warehouses is full but we have another one empty as it is in an area which has seen a lot of bombings.

“Our partners in Gaza are the Ministry of Social Welfare and their officials are not taking part in the distribution process because they feel they might get bombed for working for a Hamas government. This is a serious problem as is the fact that people are finding it difficult to move about. We are facing an acute food crisis.”

Maxwell Gaylard, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for Gaza and the Palestinian territories, said “Gaza is facing a serious emergency, that is a fact. Food supplies have been allowed in but there are huge problems caused by the lack of industrial fuel and this is causing severe problems. To address all these problems we need a ceasefire.”

Does Olmert’s mention of international monitors signal an opportunity for diplomacy? if so, when? after a ground assault killing spree?

After petitions by the Foreign Press Association, Israeli courts have now allowed foreign journalists to enter Gaza..

Israel however, is not complying with the court decision and foreign journalists are still barred. A ground invasion with accompanying atrocities safe from scrutiny by the media is still on the cards.

Is this what Israel is scared the foreign press will see?

Oren Ben-Dur points out the logical outcome from Zionist terror inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza:

No army, however well equipped and trained, can win a combat against increasing number of people who no longer have any reason to care about dying. If there was hatred against Israelis before the Gaza massacre, the hatred after it will be of a different order of magnitude.