POLITICS, POETRY & SATIRE
CNN video now unavailable.
Airburst bombs shower target areas with many bomblets. In built up areas they kill indiscriminately.
The reporter quotes a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza saying there’s been an increase in casualties coming into his hospital since the beginning of Israel’s abominable incursion. 30% of the casualties are women and children.
Cartoon republished with permission of our delightful Auntie Ziona
Tipsy Livni, electoral hopeful in the forthcoming Israeli election isn’t backward about coming forward on her plans to ethnically cleanse Israeli Arabs from Israel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a frontrunner in the race to become premier, said on Thursday that Arab Israelis should move to a Palestinian state when it is eventually created.
“My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic state of Israel is to have two distinct national entities,” she told a group of secondary school students in Tel Aviv in remarks broadcast by army radio.
“And among other things I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Arab Israelis, and tell them: ‘your national aspirations lie elsewhere.'”
Tipsy is brash about her firmly held tenets as well –
I can understand the eagerness of the international community to see the return to calm,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told European foreign ministers in Jerusalem. “This is our dream as well. This is what we are looking for. Unfortunately, there are those who cannot accept the idea of living in peace in this region.”
Considering it was Israel who broke the ceasefire on November 4, not to mention the 60 year long inflammatory occupation perpetrated on Palestinians in their own land, the creeping land thefts, check point humiliations, apartheid bantustans amongst a litany of travesties, there’s no doubt who is currently the more powerful, brutal instigator of conflict and non-acceptor of peace in the region. Brutality breeds brutality – occupation foments resistance. That the Israeli state is a chronic sufferer of Munschausen’s Sydrome by proxy is a possible diagnosis. Or something worse?
To cover the advances of its illegal, barbaric incursion into Gaza, is Israel is deploying white phosphorus shells?
Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, and the use of white phosphorus (Willy Pete) in civilian areas is forbidden. Israel, which is a serial violator of international conventions in ‘defence’ of its apartheid, racist state, used white phosphorus in its attack on Lebanon in 2006.
The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”
Israel continues to refuse a cease fire which would allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and medical supplies are running dangerously low.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel documents contraventions to the Geneva Conventions and human rights violations as Israel attacks beleaguered, impoverished Gaza on false pretexts. In fact Israel breached the cease fire with Hamas on November 4 in several instances.
Israeli propaganda site Israel Politik, run by the Israeli Consulate in New York, has still failed to publish our refutation of their lies that Hamas breached the cease fire.
Yoram Cohen, till recently Deputy Directory of the Shin Bet confirmed Israel breached the cease fire. He wrote:
a similar account for the Washington Institute.
“Last week, Israeli forces entered Gaza, destroyed an underground border tunnel, and battled Hamas fighters, leaving several militants dead. In response, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired around eighty rockets into southern Israel, including the Israeli city of Ashkelon,” he wrote
“On June 19, 2008, Israel and Hamas began observing an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire, which was intended to last six months with an option to extend. In general, Hamas has observed the ceasefire; the number of attacks and rocket launches has decreased significantly, and Hamas has prevented other Gaza militant organizations from striking Israel,” wrote Cohen.
CNN confirms Israel broke the truce in the video below:
Since fighting began in the Gaza Strip, PHR-Israel has received 6 reports of Israeli Air Force attacks on medical insfrustructure and personnel.
On Jan 4, the UN alerted the world to further Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure.
This morning, an ambulance of Al Awda hospital in the north was shelled, seriously injuring 4 medical staff. Palestine Square in central.
In addition:
It is essential that patients and ambulances are able to reach hospitals, that agencies are able to access warehouses in order to conduct distributions. Currently movement within the Strip is severely challenged.
The latest information on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be downloaded from the UN Office of Coordination of Human Afairs.
The situation is extremely bleak – Israel, with the unrelenting support of its accomplice, the US Bush administration, continues to violate human rights and Geneva Conventions. A hospital ambulance has been shelled and food distribution has been stopped except in southern Gaza. Hospital generators are about to collapse.
Some quotes from the 4th January report:
“Israeli forces are now deployed in several areas of the Gaza Strip with clashes taking place between Israeli forces and militants. Damage and destruction of roads, infrastructure and buildings has been reported, including to a large gas storage facility. The military incursion compounds the humanitarian crisis following more than a week of shelling and an 18-month long blockade of the territory. There is an increased threat to civilians due to combat in densely populated urban areas. Hospitals continue to be overstretched because of the large number of casualties that have accumulated since the beginning of Israeli attacks, and ambulances and medical personnel face dificulties in accessing casualties. Electricity and telecommunications are down over much of the Strip.
Food distributions have been suspended and all crossing points remain closed.”
This morning, an ambulance of Al Awda hospital in the north was shelled, seriously injuring 4 medical staff. Palestine Square in central Gaza City was also hit, reportedly killing 5 civilians and injuring another 40 persons. Prior to the ground incursion, 15 Palestinians were killed and more than 25 injured when the Israeli Air Force bombarded the Ibrahim Al Makadima Mosque in Beit Lahiya.
There is an almost total blackout in the governorates of Gaza, North Gaza, Middle Area, and Khan Yunis. Most of the telephone network (both land lines and cell phones) in Gaza is also not functioning since it
now depends on back-up generators with dwindling fuel stocks.
All of Gaza City hospitals have been without mains electricity for 48 consecutive hours, depending entirely on back-up generators. The hospitals warn that the generators are close to collapse. At the Shifa hospital, collapse would have immediate consequences for 70 intensive care unit (ICU) patients including 30 in the neonatal care who are connected to machines. ICUs throughout the Gaza Strip are overloaded. The
security situation is also preventing medical staff from reaching hospitals.Ambulances are experiencing dificulty in reaching the injured because of continuous ire. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society continues to work around the clock in order to assist the population. From Friday to Saturday midday, its ambulances transported 78 wounded to hospitals. Fifteen fatalities were also transported.
