great article, take a couple deep breaths before you dove in!
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/israel-and-illegally-occupied-gaza/ there is a alot more to read than what i copied... Before our very eyes, days on end, and with some in the media as accomplices, Israel has indiscriminately killed Palestinian children, women and men, held captive in their Occupied Territory of the Gaza Strip. From land, sea and air, the US-financed and-backed “eleventh strongest military power in the world” is shelling, bombarding and bombing 1.8 million blockaded Palestinians in Gaza, “also described by The Christian Science Monitor as ‘the most foreign-aid dependent society on earth.’” (“BBC Radio Interview,” gregory harms .blogspot.com, Aug. 4, 2014) A besieged people, struggling to flee the “pinpoint” attacks and ground invasion of the self-described “most moral army on the world.”
Guided by “humanitarian” concern for civilians, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) drop leaflets to forewarn Palestinians to flee their homes, or alert them on the phone that they have five minutes to “get out.” (“’Roof Knocking’: The Israeli military’s tactic of Phoning Palestinians it is about to bomb,” By Adam Taylor, The Washington Post, July 9, 2014) The IDF even provides a “knock on the roof” with “a non-explosive device,” that notifies families to leave immediately as a missile strike might only be moments away before” their home “is obliterated.” (“Israel ‘Roof Knocking’ Video Raises Question: Warning or Human Rights Violation?,” By Jeff Stone, International Business Times, July 15, 2014)
But the 1.8 million enclosed Palestinians have no place to go, and no bomb shelters in which to be safe. Even the supposedly recognized neutrality of UN shelters, to which over 200,000 Palestinians sought refuge, is violated. A number of the shelters have been bombed, killing families who had fled to them for safety after being warmed to leave their homes by “the most moral army in the world.” (“At Least 15 Dead as Israel Strikes Gaza Market,” by VOA News, Voice of America, July 30, 2014; “Gaza crisis: Rafah school strike ‘criminal’ – UN chief,” BBC News, Middle East, Aug. 3, 2014)
Originally driven by Israeli military forces to a strip of land the size of Detroit, the Palestinians in Gaza not only live in one of the densest places on earth, they are crowded into what is condemned as the world’s “largest open-air prison.” So, for the IDF, it is almost like a barbaric shooting fish in a barrel. A recent count of the toll as a consequence of “Israel’s right to defend itself”: “nearly 1900 Palestinians dead– including huge numbers of civilians and hundreds of children—and close to 10,000 people injured.” (“’Mission Accomplished’: Israel Withdraws Troops After Nearly 1,900 Killed in Gaza,” by Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, Aug. 5, 2014)
The UN states that 250,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, have been displaced. (“Unicef: A quarter of Gaza’s population displaced,” www.itv.com, Aug. 3, 2014) With “5,510 Gaza homes” bombed into rubble, and “nearly 30,920 others partially damaged. (“5,510 Gaza homes destroyed by Israel: Minister,” www.middleeastmonitor.com, Aug. 3, 2014) Along with the destruction of schools, mosques, factories, market places, hospitals, UN shelters, and the only power plant, which cut the electricity, affecting water supply, sanitation and sewage systems, and medical care. Even Gaza’s children, playing on the beach or sitting on a rooftop, proved to be fair game. This current war crime is against a blockaded people, half of whom are fifteen years of age and younger.
Please define put down their arms? What does disarm mean?
For me, this means turning the whole of gaza into a demilitarised zone: turn over all remaing rockets and firearms to israel or the un. Keep an agreed amount of guns (hand guns, not ak47) for a police force with the goal of keeping law and order. Hamas are the ones officialy in charge, so it is there responsibility to disarm all other weaponised groups in gaza.
I think that if this is done, it will prove to israel and the world that they just want to advance their people instead of killing israelis. In turn, i believe that israel would agree to many (and eventually all) of the current demands. No chance of israel attacking gaza ever again if this is done. All any israeli wants is quiet from the fear of hamas (to all who doubt that people in israel are afraid, pull your head out of your ass).
do you truly believe that israel will meet any of those demands if they disarm?? Do you actually buy that phoney baloney? This is about money, israel will lose alot of it by allowing the Palestinians to have some. If you really think this is about rockets over israel you are eating propaganda for dinner.
Rg, i am not buying any "phoney baloney". I am, as a person who actually lives in israel, telling you the way that i, and many of the people in my country, actually feel. Considering that, despite popular belief here, israel is a real democrocy, the goverment will change if the elected officials do not fufill the wants of the people.
it makes sense on paper. But in reality, Israel is no more of a democracy than America is. We dont get what we want as a people, we get what corporations want for us. The democratic process is there to placate us while we are dragged into wars we dont want. Vietnam and Iraq are the biggest, boldest examples.
The sickness of present-day Israel, on display over the past horrible month of the one-sided slaughter of nearly 2000 Palestinians (including over 400 children) in the fenced-in ghetto of Gaza, has finally reached its nadir with the ugly case of the deliberate Israeli Defense Force murder of captured IDF 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin.
According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, once it was determined that Goldin had been captured by Hamas fighters in the Gaza town of Rafah, the IDF initiated what it calls the “Hannibal Protocol” -- the deliberate liquidation of the captive -- to prevent his being used as a hostage to win concessions from Israel in future truce negotiations with the Palestinians. One reason for the almost instantaneous and ruthless Israeli decision to kill Goldin rather than attempt to rescue him, is that this captured soldier had the misfortune of being related to Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, making him a valuable prize indeed for Hamas.
And so began a massive bombardment of the entire residential area where Goldin was captured.
As Haaretz reports in an editorial about this case of deliberate sacrifice of an IDF officer, headlined “What Happened in Rafah?”, the ensuing high-explosive blitz on the area didn’t just kill Goldin, but also indiscriminately killed over 150 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Indeed, the paper states that the IDF “...shelled and bombed houses and their inhabitants indiscriminately, and as they tried to flee homes, hit them with shells and bombs in the streets.” The fatal bombing of a targeted UN-operated school in Rafah, which was condemned by the US government and by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who called it a “criminal act and a moral outrage,” was part of that Hannibal Protocol action.
Now recall that President Obama was quick to label the Hamas capture of Goldin “barbaric.”
The trouble is, having rather absurdly deployed that term to characterize the capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier who was at the time reportedly exploring a tunnel and trying to capture or kill enemy fighters, though, what then does Obama -- what indeed does any person -- call the indiscriminate slaughter of 150 civilians in the interest of eliminating one of one’s own captured soldier? Certainly the Hannibal Protocol is in itself “barbaric” in its cool calculus of denying the enemy a bargaining chip. But that term hardly seems to capture the horror of what was done by the IDF in this case. Clearly implementing the Hannibal Protocol would have been okayed at the highest level of the Israeli government, particularly with the relative of a top government official involved. And when a military organization or a government moves beyond just killing the captive and his immediate captors to slaughtering everyone in the surrounding area, we’ve moved way beyond a word like “barbaric.”
I’m a journalist, and part of my job is being good with words, but I admit I’m at a bit of a loss here. Perhaps “criminally insane” is appropriate, but that is usually a term applied to an individual. In this case, though, we are talking about a whole government, or at least the military establishment and the senior leaders of that government, taken collectively.
The mind reels. Can an entire government be criminally insane? Certainly what happened with this Hannibal Protocol incident suggests that it can.
Recall, though, that this crime extends well beyond the borders of Israel. For the bombs and shells that were unleashed by the IDF on the people of Rafah as part of this murderous Hannibal Protocol campaign were, for the most part, manufactured and provided, at taxpayer expense, by the United States of America.
This massive war crime is thus as much a US atrocity as it is an Israeli one.
And if the Israeli government is criminally insane, so is the US government for uncritically and unthinkingly backing it.
We knew the US government and its military were criminally insane back in the Vietnam War, when we were told that peasant villages were being burned to the ground by US troops on the theory that “we have to destroy the village in order to save it.” Now we’ve moved a step further towards the depths of insanity in backing an Israeli policy of “slaughtering a village in order to kill one of our own soldiers.” Even in the moral cesspool that was America's war on the Vietnamese people, the US military didn't sink to that -- they stopped at just slaughtering villlages.
still havent found what israel means by their highly ambiguous demand that "hamas must disarm"? anyone? best i can do.... maybe israel wants hamas to place all of there weapons at the curb like trash and israel can go block to block city to city and collect them like a trash truck would. but then how would israel know if all the terrorists left all their weapons at the curb?
still havent found what israel means by their highly ambiguous demand that "hamas must disarm"? anyone? best i can do.... maybe israel wants hamas to place all of there weapons at the curb like trash and israel can go block to block city to city and collect them like a trash truck would. but then how would israel know if all the terrorists left all their weapons at the curb?
I actually allready adressed this.
Still can't believe I met Mike Mccready at the Guggenheim and got a pic with him!!!!!
2010: 9/7/10 - Bilbao
2012: 26-27/6/12 - Amsterdam ~~ 29/6/12 - Werchter ~~ 4-5/7/12 - Berlin
2014: 25/6/14 - Vienna ~~ 26/6/14 - Berlin
What a suprise, you responded to tjis and not to one of the posts actually directed at you over the last 24 hours... I will not waste my time by debunking (as i have done in the past) that ridiculous propoganda of a map you call fact.
So now you want to pretend that the map is not a genuine representation of Palestinian land lost to Israeli theft? Are the Palestinians now living on less than 20% of their original homeland, or aren't they?
Palestinian resistance in Gaza is “fighting for all of us,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert 08/08/2014
Dr. Mads Gilbert: Solidarity with Gaza! If no siege, no tunnels! - If no occupation, no rockets!
“The heart of the Earth beats in Gaza now. It bleeds, but it beats,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert.
The Norwegian emergency surgeon returned to his home city of Tromsø on 31 July, after spending several weeks treating the wounded from Israel’s assault at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
He went straight from the airport to give a spontaneous speech at a large solidarity demonstration for Gaza held at the same time.
Tromsø is twinned with Gaza City.
The newspaper Nordlys made this video, above, of his speech. It is subtitled in English.
“The Palestinian people’s resistance in Gaza today is admirable, it is fair and it is a struggle for all of us. We do not want a world where raw power can be abused, to kill those who struggle for justice.”
Gilbert asks why after all the massacres, all of Israel’s violations of the laws protecting civilians, there are no sanctions on Israel.
He demands to know why the government of Norway is so “quiet” as Palestinians face “one of the most brutal occupation forces of modern history.”
“Solidarity is a powerful weapon,” Gilbert says, ending his address with a call for everyone to get involved in the movement for Palestinian rights.
“Israel is more isolated than ever and they deserve to be,” Gilbert says, endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
It is a powerful 25-minute speech.
We have transcribed the first few minutes, in which Gilbert asks his fellow Norwegians to imagine what their country would be like today if they had not struggled for its liberation from German occupation:
I know you applaud for Gaza. I know you applaud for those who are there, the heroes of Gaza.
This will be no easy appeal to make, because I am now overcome by the mildness, the warmth, the safety, the absence of bombs, jets, blood and death. And then all that we’ve had to keep inside comes to the surface – so forgive me if sometimes I break.
I thought when I got home and met my daughters Siri and Torbjørn, my son-in-law and my grandkids Jenny and Torje, that it is such a mild country we live in.
It so good, with a kind of humanity in all relationships, because we actually built this country on respect for diversity, respect for the individual, respect for human dignity.
And imagine being back in 1945. And I beg to be understood when I say that I am not comparing the German Nazi regime with Israel. I do not.
But I compare occupation with occupation. Imagine that we in 1945 did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier, could not see a bright future or believe our kids had a future. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades. And banished us to the leanest areas. Took the fish in the sea, took the land, took the water, and we became more and more confined.
And here in Tromsø we were actually imprisoned, because here there was so much resistance to the occupation. So we are imprisoned for seven years, because in an election we had chosen the most resilient, those who would not accept the occupation.
Then after seven years of confinement in our city, Tromsø, the occupier began to bomb us. And they began to bomb us the day we made a political alliance with those in the other confined parts of occupied Norway, to say that we Norwegians would stand together against the occupier. Then they began to bomb us.
They bombed our university hospital, then the medical center, then killed our ambulance workers, they bombed schools where those who had lost their homes were trying to seek shelter. Then they cut the power and bombed our power plant. Then they shut off the water supply. What would we have done?
Would we have given up, waved the white flag? No. No, we would not. And this is the situation in Gaza.
This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist. The unbending determination not to submit to the occupation!
It is the Palestinian people’s dignity and humanity that will not accept that they are treated as third, fourth, fifth-ranking people.
In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews “Untermenschen,” subhuman. Today, Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, in the Diaspora are treated as Untermensch, as subhumans who can be bombed, killed, slaughtered by their thousands, without any of those in power reacting.
So I returned home to my free country – and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because we said that occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons. It’s stated in international law.
You are permitted to fight the occupier even with weapons. One should of course respect international law …
If israel gaurentees, with international guarentees, not to attack at all if gaza becomes a demilitirized zone, than there would be no need for them to have weapons. Spend the money on schools and hospitals instead of rockets and tunnels.
What? Like it agreed to abide by the Oslo accords and then breached them almost immediately? Like it agreed to the 2012 ceasefire and then breached it immediately? Sure, past experience has show that they're so trustworthy.
2) unfortuntely, israel has many enemies that would like to erase her from the map (syria, iran, el-quida...). If israel became a demiliterised country, how long do you think that it would take until israel was attacked?
Talking of people being 'erased from the map':
What a suprise, you responded to tjis and not to one of the posts actually directed at you over the last 24 hours... I will not waste my time by debunking (as i have done in the past) that ridiculous propoganda of a map you call fact.
Sure, you wanna debunk this map? What you gonna do? Post some more silly Youtube clips?
Take a look at the sources of this map: U.N, UNISPAL, OCHA, UNHCR, BBC.
If I remember correctly, your previous so-called 'debunking' of this map consisted of posting a photo from a pro-Israel blog, which contained a bunch of lies, such as the lie that because Jordan occupied the West Bank for 20 years, the Palestinians legal ownership of it somehow evaporated into thin air. Are you gonna post that nonsense again for us?
I really question what purpose could possibly be served by posting something like this. Even your message of "the US does what ever Israel requests" is spelled out in such a demeaning way that it couldn't possibly sway the opinion of someone who thinks otherwise, and it will intensify the hatred towards both Israel and the US - something which, go figure, I find to be destructive in terms of negotiating an everlasting peace in the region. This is a pathetic and slanderous and, quite frankly, lazy attack on character, when several sentences could've made the same message visible - even with supporting evidence. JC29856, I'll repeat myself again: why do you feel the urge to degrade the quality of opinion of those who share your stance by resorting to childish 'flame war'-esque nonsense? Not only is it ineffective, but it is hurting your cause.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Yeah, I'll choose this thread out of all the threads to post this in. Nice pictures by the way. I'm sure both side could show something like this if one side was not able to "shoot missiles out of the sky". Anyway, if one side could wipe the other side off the map, it wouldn't matter because some freak who has come to my country would hold some grudge against the other side that it will never go away. So as I see it, have at it over there, and anybody who wants to join the pathetic protests downtown where one side on one side of the street is bickering about it with the other side of the street as if they have not left the flea ridden shit hole where they came from to bring it over here, and still argue about it. I wonder how it will ever stop? Yeah, anyway, feel so strong about it, hop on the next fucking plane from Canada and take up the arms for your favourite side. Do me and many here the BIG favour!
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
I really question what purpose could possibly be served by posting something like this. Even your message of "the US does what ever Israel requests" is spelled out in such a demeaning way that it couldn't possibly sway the opinion of someone who thinks otherwise, and it will intensify the hatred towards both Israel and the US - something which, go figure, I find to be destructive in terms of negotiating an everlasting peace in the region. This is a pathetic and slanderous and, quite frankly, lazy attack on character, when several sentences could've made the same message visible - even with supporting evidence. JC29856, I'll repeat myself again: why do you feel the urge to degrade the quality of opinion of those who share your stance by resorting to childish 'flame war'-esque nonsense? Not only is it ineffective, but it is hurting your cause.
i dont disagree with you, i edited the original post. i think its just a sketch not an actual photo. what about the 2 below it? i think they are real photos not sketches. what about the little girl in the first one, "better his than mine"? how about the mom in the second one, you think she is excited about collecting on the life insurance?
I really question what purpose could possibly be served by posting something like this. Even your message of "the US does what ever Israel requests" is spelled out in such a demeaning way that it couldn't possibly sway the opinion of someone who thinks otherwise, and it will intensify the hatred towards both Israel and the US - something which, go figure, I find to be destructive in terms of negotiating an everlasting peace in the region. This is a pathetic and slanderous and, quite frankly, lazy attack on character, when several sentences could've made the same message visible - even with supporting evidence. JC29856, I'll repeat myself again: why do you feel the urge to degrade the quality of opinion of those who share your stance by resorting to childish 'flame war'-esque nonsense? Not only is it ineffective, but it is hurting your cause.
i dont disagree with you, i edited the original post. i think its just a sketch not an actual photo. what about the 2 below it? i think they are real photos not sketches. what about the little girl in the first one, "better his than mine"? how about the mom in the second one, you think she is excited about collecting on the life insurance?
I'm 100% certain that I didn't say anything about those two photos.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
How Israel Used Its Own Civilians as Human Shields While Assaulting Gaza By Max Blumenthal
Throughout the ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, perhaps no phrase has featured as prominently or persistently in the lexicon of Israeli propaganda as “human shields.” Repeated in stentorian fashion by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a heavily regimented army of 10,000 public relations flacks, the phrase has been ruthlessly deployed to shield Israel from responsibility for the bloodbath it has caused in Gaza. Israel has killed 1,800 civilians in a matter of weeks, including some 430 children, but it was Hamas that forced them to do it.
Like so many Zionist accusations against Palestinian society (“They only understand force,” “They teach their children to hate,” “They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”) the human shields slander is a projection. Israel is the most militarized society on earth, with soldiers and military installations honeycombed throughout its civil society. With full military conscription for all men and women and reserve duty required for all Jews until they reach their 40s, Jewish Israelis alternate constantly between the role of civilian and soldier, blurring the line between the two.
Within one of Tel Aviv’s most densely populated neighborhoods sits Ha’Kirya, the army’s headquarters, a gigantic complex of monolithic buildings that house the offices where attacks on Gaza are planned. The uniformed officers and soldiers who work inside take lunch in the cafes and shop in the malls surrounding their offices, embedding themselves among the civilian population. A military base is nestled in the middle of the campus of Haifa University while Hebrew and Tel Aviv Universities offer military officers free tuition, encouraging their enrollment and allowing them to carry weapons on campus. It is hard to find a henhouse, flophouse, or fieldhouse anywhere in Israel without some kind of military presence.
In an editorial for the Israeli daily, Yedioth Aharonot, veteran Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland argued in favor of collectively punishing Gaza’s civilian population. “In order to guarantee our interests versus the other side’s demands, we must avoid the artificial, wrong and dangerous distinction between the Hamas people, who are ‘the bad guys,’ and Gaza's residents, which are allegedly ‘the good guys.’”
Naturally, Eiland failed to consider the terrible implications of eliminating the distinction between civilians and the armed factions that move among them: If his logic were inverted to apply to Israeli society, where civilians are soldiers and soldiers are civilians, almost every Jewish Israeli citizen could be considered a legitimate target.
Most vulnerable among the Jewish Israeli public are residents of the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Many of these working class development towns and kibbutzim were planted during the 1950s in place of the Palestinians who had just been forcibly expelled. In al-Majdal Asqalan, now known as Ashkelon, Jewish immigrants from the Middle East were literally trucked in to replace the Palestinians who had been held within a barbed wire enclosure before being outcasted to Gaza. Today, these largely neglected communities form a human wall against the demographic threat tucked behind a high-tech cordon sanitaire just to their south.
Not only do Israel’s southern communities exist under the threat of rocket and mortar attacks from those they displaced, they are routinely used as shelters and temporary bases by the Israeli army.
Renan Raz, a 26-year-old waiter and anti-occupation activist now living in Tel Aviv, remembers the anguish he experienced when the army arrived in Dorot, the southern kibbutz where he was born and raised. It was the height of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli assault on that left over 1400 Palestinian Gazans dead, mostly civilians, between December 2008 and January 2009.
“Most of the days soldiers were fighting in the Gaza Strip in the morning and in the evening they were coming back to our kibbutz, bringing their weapons there, they were sleeping there, and sometimes they were practicing [military drills] in the fields, in the kibbutz grass — they were hiding there and making plans,” Raz told me. “The way I saw it, they were using us as human shields.”
Raz recalled, “We were right on the border of the Gaza Strip and they were practicing in the fields with weaponry, whether it’s with their rifle or armored vehicles. I could hear explosions [from the fields] while they were practicing and maybe even shooting things into Gaza.”
“We are a sick military society,” he continued. “You can’t say Hamas is using their civilians as a human shield when it’s obvious that our army is using all of us as human shields. And those of us who live near the Gaza Strip are definitely the biggest human shields.”
Raz remembers being almost alone in raising questions about the presence of the soldiers. “People were so happy, they were really proud of them. Each day after they came out of the Gaza Strip, in the [kibbutz] dining room, if it was lunch or dinner, there was food waiting for them,” he said. “They came into our houses and used our showers and relaxed there. People wrote letters to them after they left the kibbutz thanking them for risking their lives for us. Not only in the kibbutz but all over Israel they are seen as the most sacred thing. People treat them as angels, as people who put their own lives at risk so civilians can live at peace.”
Having already refused army service in defiance of his country’s militarist ethos, Raz turned solidly against the attack on Gaza. “Whenever there was a rocket alarm, all the people around me were shouting, Death to leftists! and Death to Arabs! And I just wanted to have a better life for everyone. I don’t want to be intimidated by the rockets but I also don’t want the people in Gaza to be bombed and massacred for no reason. I realized that this is the oppressed and the oppressor — it wasn’t self-defense.”
During the current assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have returned to the communities surrounding Gaza to bivouac and stage attacks. However, the fear of “terror tunnels” and rockets has led many of the local residents to flee, leaving virtual ghost towns in their wake.
In a recorded message broadcast on July 29 by al-Aqsa television, Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades general commander Mohammad Daif declared that Gaza fighters were exclusively targeting active duty Israeli military personnel and avoiding attacks on civilians. So far, the Qassam Brigades have killed 65 Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians, one Thai worker, and wounded a kibbutz owl.
Comments
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/israel-and-illegally-occupied-gaza/
there is a alot more to read than what i copied...
Before our very eyes, days on end, and with some in the media as accomplices, Israel has indiscriminately killed Palestinian children, women and men, held captive in their Occupied Territory of the Gaza Strip. From land, sea and air, the US-financed and-backed “eleventh strongest military power in the world” is shelling, bombarding and bombing 1.8 million blockaded Palestinians in Gaza, “also described by The Christian Science Monitor as ‘the most foreign-aid dependent society on earth.’” (“BBC Radio Interview,” gregory harms .blogspot.com, Aug. 4, 2014) A besieged people, struggling to flee the “pinpoint” attacks and ground invasion of the self-described “most moral army on the world.”
Guided by “humanitarian” concern for civilians, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) drop leaflets to forewarn Palestinians to flee their homes, or alert them on the phone that they have five minutes to “get out.” (“’Roof Knocking’: The Israeli military’s tactic of Phoning Palestinians it is about to bomb,” By Adam Taylor, The Washington Post, July 9, 2014) The IDF even provides a “knock on the roof” with “a non-explosive device,” that notifies families to leave immediately as a missile strike might only be moments away before” their home “is obliterated.” (“Israel ‘Roof Knocking’ Video Raises Question: Warning or Human Rights Violation?,” By Jeff Stone, International Business Times, July 15, 2014)
But the 1.8 million enclosed Palestinians have no place to go, and no bomb shelters in which to be safe. Even the supposedly recognized neutrality of UN shelters, to which over 200,000 Palestinians sought refuge, is violated. A number of the shelters have been bombed, killing families who had fled to them for safety after being warmed to leave their homes by “the most moral army in the world.” (“At Least 15 Dead as Israel Strikes Gaza Market,” by VOA News, Voice of America, July 30, 2014; “Gaza crisis: Rafah school strike ‘criminal’ – UN chief,” BBC News, Middle East, Aug. 3, 2014)
Originally driven by Israeli military forces to a strip of land the size of Detroit, the Palestinians in Gaza not only live in one of the densest places on earth, they are crowded into what is condemned as the world’s “largest open-air prison.” So, for the IDF, it is almost like a barbaric shooting fish in a barrel. A recent count of the toll as a consequence of “Israel’s right to defend itself”: “nearly 1900 Palestinians dead– including huge numbers of civilians and hundreds of children—and close to 10,000 people injured.” (“’Mission Accomplished’: Israel Withdraws Troops After Nearly 1,900 Killed in Gaza,” by Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, Aug. 5, 2014)
The UN states that 250,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, have been displaced. (“Unicef: A quarter of Gaza’s population displaced,” www.itv.com, Aug. 3, 2014) With “5,510 Gaza homes” bombed into rubble, and “nearly 30,920 others partially damaged. (“5,510 Gaza homes destroyed by Israel: Minister,” www.middleeastmonitor.com, Aug. 3, 2014) Along with the destruction of schools, mosques, factories, market places, hospitals, UN shelters, and the only power plant, which cut the electricity, affecting water supply, sanitation and sewage systems, and medical care. Even Gaza’s children, playing on the beach or sitting on a rooftop, proved to be fair game. This current war crime is against a blockaded people, half of whom are fifteen years of age and younger.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.609279
The sickness of present-day Israel, on display over the past horrible month of the one-sided slaughter of nearly 2000 Palestinians (including over 400 children) in the fenced-in ghetto of Gaza, has finally reached its nadir with the ugly case of the deliberate Israeli Defense Force murder of captured IDF 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin.
According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, once it was determined that Goldin had been captured by Hamas fighters in the Gaza town of Rafah, the IDF initiated what it calls the “Hannibal Protocol” -- the deliberate liquidation of the captive -- to prevent his being used as a hostage to win concessions from Israel in future truce negotiations with the Palestinians. One reason for the almost instantaneous and ruthless Israeli decision to kill Goldin rather than attempt to rescue him, is that this captured soldier had the misfortune of being related to Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, making him a valuable prize indeed for Hamas.
And so began a massive bombardment of the entire residential area where Goldin was captured.
As Haaretz reports in an editorial about this case of deliberate sacrifice of an IDF officer, headlined “What Happened in Rafah?”, the ensuing high-explosive blitz on the area didn’t just kill Goldin, but also indiscriminately killed over 150 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Indeed, the paper states that the IDF “...shelled and bombed houses and their inhabitants indiscriminately, and as they tried to flee homes, hit them with shells and bombs in the streets.” The fatal bombing of a targeted UN-operated school in Rafah, which was condemned by the US government and by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who called it a “criminal act and a moral outrage,” was part of that Hannibal Protocol action.
Now recall that President Obama was quick to label the Hamas capture of Goldin “barbaric.”
The trouble is, having rather absurdly deployed that term to characterize the capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier who was at the time reportedly exploring a tunnel and trying to capture or kill enemy fighters, though, what then does Obama -- what indeed does any person -- call the indiscriminate slaughter of 150 civilians in the interest of eliminating one of one’s own captured soldier?
Certainly the Hannibal Protocol is in itself “barbaric” in its cool calculus of denying the enemy a bargaining chip. But that term hardly seems to capture the horror of what was done by the IDF in this case. Clearly implementing the Hannibal Protocol would have been okayed at the highest level of the Israeli government, particularly with the relative of a top government official involved. And when a military organization or a government moves beyond just killing the captive and his immediate captors to slaughtering everyone in the surrounding area, we’ve moved way beyond a word like “barbaric.”
I’m a journalist, and part of my job is being good with words, but I admit I’m at a bit of a loss here. Perhaps “criminally insane” is appropriate, but that is usually a term applied to an individual. In this case, though, we are talking about a whole government, or at least the military establishment and the senior leaders of that government, taken collectively.
The mind reels. Can an entire government be criminally insane? Certainly what happened with this Hannibal Protocol incident suggests that it can.
Recall, though, that this crime extends well beyond the borders of Israel. For the bombs and shells that were unleashed by the IDF on the people of Rafah as part of this murderous Hannibal Protocol campaign were, for the most part, manufactured and provided, at taxpayer expense, by the United States of America.
This massive war crime is thus as much a US atrocity as it is an Israeli one.
And if the Israeli government is criminally insane, so is the US government for uncritically and unthinkingly backing it.
We knew the US government and its military were criminally insane back in the Vietnam War, when we were told that peasant villages were being burned to the ground by US troops on the theory that “we have to destroy the village in order to save it.” Now we’ve moved a step further towards the depths of insanity in backing an Israeli policy of “slaughtering a village in order to kill one of our own soldiers.” Even in the moral cesspool that was America's war on the Vietnamese people, the US military didn't sink to that -- they stopped at just slaughtering villlages.
anyone?
best i can do.... maybe israel wants hamas to place all of there weapons at the curb like trash and israel can go block to block city to city and collect them like a trash truck would.
but then how would israel know if all the terrorists left all their weapons at the curb?
"like a fucking kid..... ah yeah"
2010: 9/7/10 - Bilbao
2012: 26-27/6/12 - Amsterdam ~~ 29/6/12 - Werchter ~~ 4-5/7/12 - Berlin
2014: 25/6/14 - Vienna ~~ 26/6/14 - Berlin
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-palestinian-resistance-gaza-fighting-all-us-says-dr-mads-gilbert
Video:
Palestinian resistance in Gaza is “fighting for all of us,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert
08/08/2014
Dr. Mads Gilbert: Solidarity with Gaza! If no siege, no tunnels! - If no occupation, no rockets!
“The heart of the Earth beats in Gaza now. It bleeds, but it beats,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert.
The Norwegian emergency surgeon returned to his home city of Tromsø on 31 July, after spending several weeks treating the wounded from Israel’s assault at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
He went straight from the airport to give a spontaneous speech at a large solidarity demonstration for Gaza held at the same time.
Tromsø is twinned with Gaza City.
The newspaper Nordlys made this video, above, of his speech. It is subtitled in English.
“The Palestinian people’s resistance in Gaza today is admirable, it is fair and it is a struggle for all of us. We do not want a world where raw power can be abused, to kill those who struggle for justice.”
Gilbert asks why after all the massacres, all of Israel’s violations of the laws protecting civilians, there are no sanctions on Israel.
He demands to know why the government of Norway is so “quiet” as Palestinians face “one of the most brutal occupation forces of modern history.”
“Solidarity is a powerful weapon,” Gilbert says, ending his address with a call for everyone to get involved in the movement for Palestinian rights.
“Israel is more isolated than ever and they deserve to be,” Gilbert says, endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
It is a powerful 25-minute speech.
We have transcribed the first few minutes, in which Gilbert asks his fellow Norwegians to imagine what their country would be like today if they had not struggled for its liberation from German occupation:
I know you applaud for Gaza. I know you applaud for those who are there, the heroes of Gaza.
This will be no easy appeal to make, because I am now overcome by the mildness, the warmth, the safety, the absence of bombs, jets, blood and death. And then all that we’ve had to keep inside comes to the surface – so forgive me if sometimes I break.
I thought when I got home and met my daughters Siri and Torbjørn, my son-in-law and my grandkids Jenny and Torje, that it is such a mild country we live in.
It so good, with a kind of humanity in all relationships, because we actually built this country on respect for diversity, respect for the individual, respect for human dignity.
And imagine being back in 1945. And I beg to be understood when I say that I am not comparing the German Nazi regime with Israel. I do not.
But I compare occupation with occupation. Imagine that we in 1945 did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier, could not see a bright future or believe our kids had a future. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades. And banished us to the leanest areas. Took the fish in the sea, took the land, took the water, and we became more and more confined.
And here in Tromsø we were actually imprisoned, because here there was so much resistance to the occupation. So we are imprisoned for seven years, because in an election we had chosen the most resilient, those who would not accept the occupation.
Then after seven years of confinement in our city, Tromsø, the occupier began to bomb us. And they began to bomb us the day we made a political alliance with those in the other confined parts of occupied Norway, to say that we Norwegians would stand together against the occupier. Then they began to bomb us.
They bombed our university hospital, then the medical center, then killed our ambulance workers, they bombed schools where those who had lost their homes were trying to seek shelter. Then they cut the power and bombed our power plant. Then they shut off the water supply. What would we have done?
Would we have given up, waved the white flag? No. No, we would not. And this is the situation in Gaza.
This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist. The unbending determination not to submit to the occupation!
It is the Palestinian people’s dignity and humanity that will not accept that they are treated as third, fourth, fifth-ranking people.
In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews “Untermenschen,” subhuman. Today, Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, in the Diaspora are treated as Untermensch, as subhumans who can be bombed, killed, slaughtered by their thousands, without any of those in power reacting.
So I returned home to my free country – and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because we said that occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons. It’s stated in international law.
You are permitted to fight the occupier even with weapons. One should of course respect international law …
Nobody wants to be occupied!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BughrO0CAAAbSic.jpg
Take a look at the sources of this map: U.N, UNISPAL, OCHA, UNHCR, BBC.
If I remember correctly, your previous so-called 'debunking' of this map consisted of posting a photo from a pro-Israel blog, which contained a bunch of lies, such as the lie that because Jordan occupied the West Bank for 20 years, the Palestinians legal ownership of it somehow evaporated into thin air. Are you gonna post that nonsense again for us?
anyone who understands americas many insecurities egotism machoism and narcissism may understand why i post dumb shit like this
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
what about the 2 below it? i think they are real photos not sketches. what about the little girl in the first one, "better his than mine"? how about the mom in the second one, you think she is excited about collecting on the life insurance?
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
http://www.alternet.org/world/6-holocaust-survivors-who-fight-against-israels-treatment-palestinians
How Israel Used Its Own Civilians as Human Shields While Assaulting Gaza
By Max Blumenthal
Throughout the ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, perhaps no phrase has featured as prominently or persistently in the lexicon of Israeli propaganda as “human shields.” Repeated in stentorian fashion by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a heavily regimented army of 10,000 public relations flacks, the phrase has been ruthlessly deployed to shield Israel from responsibility for the bloodbath it has caused in Gaza. Israel has killed 1,800 civilians in a matter of weeks, including some 430 children, but it was Hamas that forced them to do it.
Like so many Zionist accusations against Palestinian society (“They only understand force,” “They teach their children to hate,” “They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”) the human shields slander is a projection. Israel is the most militarized society on earth, with soldiers and military installations honeycombed throughout its civil society. With full military conscription for all men and women and reserve duty required for all Jews until they reach their 40s, Jewish Israelis alternate constantly between the role of civilian and soldier, blurring the line between the two.
Within one of Tel Aviv’s most densely populated neighborhoods sits Ha’Kirya, the army’s headquarters, a gigantic complex of monolithic buildings that house the offices where attacks on Gaza are planned. The uniformed officers and soldiers who work inside take lunch in the cafes and shop in the malls surrounding their offices, embedding themselves among the civilian population. A military base is nestled in the middle of the campus of Haifa University while Hebrew and Tel Aviv Universities offer military officers free tuition, encouraging their enrollment and allowing them to carry weapons on campus. It is hard to find a henhouse, flophouse, or fieldhouse anywhere in Israel without some kind of military presence.
In an editorial for the Israeli daily, Yedioth Aharonot, veteran Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland argued in favor of collectively punishing Gaza’s civilian population. “In order to guarantee our interests versus the other side’s demands, we must avoid the artificial, wrong and dangerous distinction between the Hamas people, who are ‘the bad guys,’ and Gaza's residents, which are allegedly ‘the good guys.’”
Naturally, Eiland failed to consider the terrible implications of eliminating the distinction between civilians and the armed factions that move among them: If his logic were inverted to apply to Israeli society, where civilians are soldiers and soldiers are civilians, almost every Jewish Israeli citizen could be considered a legitimate target.
Most vulnerable among the Jewish Israeli public are residents of the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Many of these working class development towns and kibbutzim were planted during the 1950s in place of the Palestinians who had just been forcibly expelled. In al-Majdal Asqalan, now known as Ashkelon, Jewish immigrants from the Middle East were literally trucked in to replace the Palestinians who had been held within a barbed wire enclosure before being outcasted to Gaza. Today, these largely neglected communities form a human wall against the demographic threat tucked behind a high-tech cordon sanitaire just to their south.
Not only do Israel’s southern communities exist under the threat of rocket and mortar attacks from those they displaced, they are routinely used as shelters and temporary bases by the Israeli army.
Renan Raz, a 26-year-old waiter and anti-occupation activist now living in Tel Aviv, remembers the anguish he experienced when the army arrived in Dorot, the southern kibbutz where he was born and raised. It was the height of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli assault on that left over 1400 Palestinian Gazans dead, mostly civilians, between December 2008 and January 2009.
“Most of the days soldiers were fighting in the Gaza Strip in the morning and in the evening they were coming back to our kibbutz, bringing their weapons there, they were sleeping there, and sometimes they were practicing [military drills] in the fields, in the kibbutz grass — they were hiding there and making plans,” Raz told me. “The way I saw it, they were using us as human shields.”
Raz recalled, “We were right on the border of the Gaza Strip and they were practicing in the fields with weaponry, whether it’s with their rifle or armored vehicles. I could hear explosions [from the fields] while they were practicing and maybe even shooting things into Gaza.”
“We are a sick military society,” he continued. “You can’t say Hamas is using their civilians as a human shield when it’s obvious that our army is using all of us as human shields. And those of us who live near the Gaza Strip are definitely the biggest human shields.”
Raz remembers being almost alone in raising questions about the presence of the soldiers. “People were so happy, they were really proud of them. Each day after they came out of the Gaza Strip, in the [kibbutz] dining room, if it was lunch or dinner, there was food waiting for them,” he said. “They came into our houses and used our showers and relaxed there. People wrote letters to them after they left the kibbutz thanking them for risking their lives for us. Not only in the kibbutz but all over Israel they are seen as the most sacred thing. People treat them as angels, as people who put their own lives at risk so civilians can live at peace.”
Having already refused army service in defiance of his country’s militarist ethos, Raz turned solidly against the attack on Gaza. “Whenever there was a rocket alarm, all the people around me were shouting, Death to leftists! and Death to Arabs! And I just wanted to have a better life for everyone. I don’t want to be intimidated by the rockets but I also don’t want the people in Gaza to be bombed and massacred for no reason. I realized that this is the oppressed and the oppressor — it wasn’t self-defense.”
During the current assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have returned to the communities surrounding Gaza to bivouac and stage attacks. However, the fear of “terror tunnels” and rockets has led many of the local residents to flee, leaving virtual ghost towns in their wake.
In a recorded message broadcast on July 29 by al-Aqsa television, Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades general commander Mohammad Daif declared that Gaza fighters were exclusively targeting active duty Israeli military personnel and avoiding attacks on civilians. So far, the Qassam Brigades have killed 65 Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians, one Thai worker, and wounded a kibbutz owl.