Exactly. I hate this f'ng ultra-idealism and holier-than-thou attitude taken up by some liberals. If you had a country under constant TERRORIST attack (the key being that your CIVILIANS are targeted, Israel RETALIATES against militants exclusively) you would get fed up and begin getting more aggressive. Kudos to Israel for having the balls to defend its people, and to all you people who hate the U.S. / Israel for the pure sake of being anti-establishment and "imperialism"....grrr...
Israel retaliates agains militants exclusively?
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Yes. Any civilians killed are ACCIDENTAL. Israel's enemies make it a point to go after civilians (see: bus bombings).
You think you can easily prevent hundred pound explosives from causing collateral damage? I'd like to see that.
then why be so careless with houndred pound explosives? and taking out power plants in places were cilivians live, isn't that targeting civilians? maybe not to kill them, but definatly to damage them or break them.
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Ahh the westenr media myth makers know no bounds. These soldiers weren't kidnapped, or seized, or any of that bullshit. They were captured in war, on foriegn territory (if its even possible to call Gaza foriegn territory) whilst undergoing military operations against Palestinians in Gaza and the Lebanese in Lebanon. They were captured, and under the terms of Geneve convention, treated humanely and offered for release in exchange for other POWs.
Is that why members of the IRA were jailed as criminals instead of POW's by Britiain? What were the internment camps all about then? I guess the SAS hit squads were just out having a little fun. Point that finger at your own country and its bloody history before throwing rocks at Israel.
The 2 captured soldiers were conducting military operations. As was Shilit who was captured in Gaza three weeks ago. Prisoners of war, in anybodys eyes, and the 1948 Geneva Convention, but the blood thirsty Israeli Governments.
Again, research your history in Northern Ireland. Could britain, gasp, be an occupying army under your definitions?
Yes. Any civilians killed are ACCIDENTAL. Israel's enemies make it a point to go after civilians (see: bus bombings).
You think you can easily prevent hundred pound explosives from causing collateral damage? I'd like to see that.
do you think you can prevent white phospherous from causing collateral damage?
standin above the crowd
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Exactly. I hate this f'ng ultra-idealism and holier-than-thou attitude taken up by some liberals. If you had a country under constant TERRORIST attack (the key being that your CIVILIANS are targeted, Israel RETALIATES against militants exclusively) you would get fed up and begin getting more aggressive. Kudos to Israel for having the balls to defend its people, and to all you people who hate the U.S. / Israel for the pure sake of being anti-establishment and "imperialism"....grrr...
israel kills 5 palestinian children for every 1 israeli child killed by a palesitinian. for adults, i believe, it's a 3:1 ratio. maybe you can try and rationalize all 3 of those adults are terrorists or just a mistake...but the 5:1 is horrific. also a large % of palesitinian children live in severe malnutrition b/c of the actions of israel
standin above the crowd
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
I'm not totally anti-Israel, but they gotta rein it in a little... Destroying powerplants in civilian areas, destrying Lebanon's only international airport and blockading the seaports? They just escalated into a full blown Israel-Lebanon war overnight.
How else are the Israelis supposed to fight Hezbollah? Maybe if Hezbollah weren't a bunch of rats that have to scurry back to the safety of hiding behind civilians, Israel would have better options to fight them.
How else are the Israelis supposed to fight Hezbollah? Maybe if Hezbollah weren't a bunch of rats that have to scurry back to the safety of hiding behind civilians, Israel would have better options to fight them.
How about providing weapons to Lebanon govt., and Palestinians govt. to erase the terrorist problem?
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
GAZA, Palestine -- As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.
The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" her vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.
In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively. The Palestinian leadership is firmly embedded in the concept of Islamic shura , or mutual consultation; suffice it to say that while we may have differing opinions, we are united in mutual respect and focused on the goal of serving our people. Furthermore, the invasion of Gaza and the kidnapping of our leaders and government officials are meant to undermine the recent accords reached between the government party and our brothers and sisters in Fatah and other factions, on achieving consensus for resolving the conflict. Yet Israeli collective punishment only strengthens our collective resolve to work together.
As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure -- the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?
They think, doubtless, of the hostage soldier, taken in battle -- yet thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law. They think of the pluck and "toughness" of Israel, "standing up" to "terrorists." Yet a nuclear Israel possesses the 13th-largest military force on the planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces. Who is the underdog, supposedly America's traditional favorite, in this case?
I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.
Israel's unilateral movements of the past year will not lead to peace. These acts -- the temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the walling off of the West Bank -- are not strides toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections. Israel's ongoing policies of expansion, military control and assassination mock any notion of sovereignty or bilateralism. Its "separation barrier," running across our land, is hardly a good-faith gesture toward future coexistence.
But there is a remedy, and while it is not easy it is consistent with our long-held beliefs. Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.
Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and $160 billion in taxpayer support for Israel's war-making capacity -- its "defense." Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves if all this blood and treasure could not have bought more tangible results for Palestine if only U.S. policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice.
However, we do not want to live on international welfare and American handouts. We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps. America's complacency in the face of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the coded rhetorical green light: "Israel has a right to defend itself." Was Israel defending itself when it killed eight family members on a Gaza beach last month or three members of the Hajjaj family on Saturday, among them 6-year-old Rawan? I refuse to believe that such inhumanity sits well with the American public.
We present this clear message: If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity and national integrity, Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights. Meanwhile, our right to defend ourselves from occupying soldiers and aggression is a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention. If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality.
The writer is prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority.
Bombing and Denying: Israel's Strategy
by Bashir Abu-Manneh
July 12, 2006
Being in Israel these days is as strange as ever: an Israeli military machine that kills Palestinians daily is wedded to a society that denies their humanity daily. The more Israel punishes Palestinians, destroys their basic infrastructure, eradicates their social institutions, terrorizes them, and forces them to live in fear and despair, the more the Israeli elite and its fourth strongest army in the world obsesses over a primitive Palestinian-made short-range rocket like the "Qassam" (which causes minimal damage and is far from a serious threat to life or property) or a "mastermind of terror" like exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal; breeds doubt over (or, outrightly denies) the Israeli army's killing of scores of families in Gaza; legitimizes the illegal arrest of tens of democratically-elected Palestinian representatives and officials; and presents Palestinians as a nation of terrorists who seek to eradicate Israel. In a colonial twist of logic, Israel accuses Palestinians of wanting to do to them the exact same things that Israel itself is routinely and systematically doing to the Palestinians: destroying their society, denying their national and democratic rights, and dehumanizing them.
For Israel, then, to be Palestinian today is to be subhuman. Racism is thus endemic to present Israeli politics and society. The current conception of Israeli nationhood is premised on the notion that Israeli-Jews are superior human beings. They deserve all the rights and privileges that are systematically denied to others. And from this stems the current conception of Israeli security, which is also particularist to the extreme: in order for Israelis to be safe and secure, Palestinians have to live in a state of permanent occupation, insecurity and fear. Military might, expansionism, and war have been Israel's routine instruments for achieving these ends. Israeli politics has therefore never seriously contemplated the option that Israeli peace and security should be premised on the notion of Palestinian security, freedom, and independence. In a colonial society like Israel, then, universal notions of equality and mutuality are sadly absent. And for this the Israeli elite is mainly responsible. In order to safeguard its own colonial privileges in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it has forced Israeli society to live in what Israeli sociologist Avishai Ehrlich has aptly called 'a permanent war society,' premised on the construction of Arabs and Palestinians as national enemies.* War and occupation are thus not only means of crushing and denying Palestinian national rights of self-determination, but also serve a clear domestic purpose. They are instruments of Israeli self-fashioning: militarizing Israeli society is necessary for the continued domestic domination of Israeli colonial practices. Israeli society is ceaselessly indoctrinated into believing that it exists in a permanent state of existential conflict with the Palestinians, and this in order for the Israeli elite to meet and realize its colonial policies and objectives of land expropriation and expansion (militarizing Israeli society is also a necessary precondition for acting as US watchdog and for serving American imperial interests in the region). One important outcome of such a sustained aggressive agenda is that Israel has become, as Gideon Levy has put it recently in Haaretz (26 March 2006), 'one racist nation.' There is not one Jewish political party in the Knesset, he concluded before the Israeli elections, which believes that Palestinians are equal human beings or equal partners in peace. Such racism can also be gauged in the tragic absence of an Israeli popular peace camp today: not one mass demonstration was organized in Israel to protest the endless shelling of civilians in Gaza in the last two weeks. Popular dissent is clearly absent among Israelis. Even though a significant majority of them (60%) do support the release of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier (as Hamas has offered), their position remains passive and paralyzed. Those demonstrations which did take place in Israel to protest army brutality in Gaza were either spontaneous minority expressions of outrage (like the recent one in front of the home of the Israeli army's Chief of Staff Dan Halutz in Tel-Aviv) or ones that were organized by the Palestinian minority in Israel (in Haifa, Nazareth, and the villages of the Galilee). No Jewish-Israeli popular dissent is legitimate, it seems, when the life of an Israeli soldier is at stake, as the killing of tens of Palestinians (16 in the last 24 hours alone), the wounding of hundreds, and the bombing of beaches, bridges, fields, houses, power plants, and roads is received with cynical and complicit silence.
Also denied is the seemingly endless Palestinian peace offers that have been coming out of occupied Palestine for at least the last month. The prisoners' document has been attacked by the Israeli government as either 'insignificant' or as yet another attempt to legitimize terrorism and destroy the state of Israel! Solidly wedded to the international consensus (rejected by Israel and the US) of ending the illegal occupation, dismantling settlements, creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank (with East Jerusalem as capital), and abiding by international laws and resolutions over the Palestinian refugee problem, the prisoners' document has been resoundingly adopted by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government. As Israeli bombs fall on Gaza, then, Palestinians have yet again shown that they are able and willing to consider a settlement of the question of Palestine in a fair peaceful manner. A peace offer has also been clearly articulated by Prime Minister Haniyeh in the Washington Post (July 11, 2006), modestly asking Americans to support the same rights that sovereign and independent nations enjoy: 'to live in peace, dignity and national integrity' and to create 'a fair and permanent peace' with Israel. Indeed, it is reasonable to argue that in the last couple of weeks Hamas has embarked on what one Israeli strategist before the 1982 invasion of Lebanon called 'a peace offensive' referring to the PLO. And the analogy is powerful and ominous: when 'threatened' by a Hamas ceasefire (which, like the PLO's previous one of 1981-82, also lasted over a year) and real peace, Israel bombs its way out of a diplomatic settlement. 2006 may well be a repetition of 1982 in this regard. And if Israel in 1982 used the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador to London Argov by Palestinian groups not signed on to the PLO ceasefire as an excuse to put into motion a pre-planned invasion of Lebanon in order to crush the PLO, then the capture of soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006 has also been exploited in order to unleash a re-invasion of Gaza planned and hinted at months in advance of the Keren Shalom military operation. Confronted with real peace, Israel responds by waging war: and the 'permanent war society' is actively reproduced. As a result, a permanent peace society is as rejected and as illusive as ever.
As one hears the incessant bombing of southern Lebanon in response to today's (July 12) Hezbollah military incident in Northern Israel (details of which are hourly emerging), it is easy to conclude that another broad and brutal military adventure in Lebanon is also on the horizon. If Hezbollah has sought to force Israel to release the illegally held Lebanese prisoners it still holds captive in Israeli prisons, the Israeli military echelons will most probably respond by unleashing Israeli military might against yet another defenseless Arab nation. As of now: the near future looks bleak, as Israeli rejectionism and military logic dominate.
* Avishai Ehrlich, 'Israel: Conflict, War and Social Change', in Colin Creighton and Martin Shaw (eds.), The Sociology of War and Peace, New York, Sheridan House, 1987, pp121-142.
Bashir Abu-Manneh teaches English at Barnard College, New York.
Is that why members of the IRA were jailed as criminals instead of POW's by Britiain? What were the internment camps all about then? I guess the SAS hit squads were just out having a little fun. Point that finger at your own country and its bloody history before throwing rocks at Israel.
History is a thing of the past. It doesn't matter where I are you are from, Palestinian children, non militant civilians, are being murderd and maimed as we type.
Move along.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Again, research your history in Northern Ireland. Could britain, gasp, be an occupying army under your definitions?
Yes it was. And the IRA had every right to do what they did, to achieve what they wanted. Oppressors out of their homeland. As did the ANC, as dod the 13 States in 1776, as dod Jomo Kenyatta, as did Gandhi, et al, who were all labelled terrorists by those oppressing them.
You not moved along yet? Found any pictures of dead palestinian children to gloat over yet, to stand and shout at "see, this is what you animals get for daring to defend yourself."
Move, along.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
How else are the Israelis supposed to fight Hezbollah? Maybe if Hezbollah weren't a bunch of rats that have to scurry back to the safety of hiding behind civilians, Israel would have better options to fight them.
Maybe if Israel didnt hide behind the US, like rats, we'd all see how this would pan out, you know, if both sides were equal.
If one didn't have nuclear weapons and fighter planes, and the other had stones and homemade bombs no stronger than a couple of the average M20 fireworks.
Israel existed before Hezbollah. Hezbollah exists (since the time of the illegal Israeli occupation of the 80s) to defend Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Just like your government, you support murder and genocide. Move along ,too. Your god awaits.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
But don't debate Dan. If you disagree with him you need "education"
Sounds like an immature little man afraid of debate.
Listen, numbnuts, I wil say this once, give you chance to wash that wax out of your ears. You want a debate, come on, bring something constructive. You can't. You're inane in every way.
The poster stated an erroneous fact about Hezbollah, I corrected, and not only that I posted an independent, unbiased history of the organisation, by an organisation, The BBC, who has its fair share of right wing moments. I couldnt find a more independent report if I went to the Pentagon and knocked on Rumsfelds door.
Don't where that white cloak too tight tonight. Wouldnt want you to get all aspyxhiated on us.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Yes it was. And the IRA had every right to do what they did, to achieve what they wanted. Oppressors out of their homeland. As did the ANC, as dod the 13 States in 1776, as dod Jomo Kenyatta, as did Gandhi, et al, who were all labelled terrorists by those oppressing them.
You not moved along yet? Found any pictures of dead palestinian children to gloat over yet, to stand and shout at "see, this is what you animals get for daring to defend yourself."
Move, along.
Wow, you are an angry little man. I never said anything about supporting the death of Palestinians or Israelis. I was just pointing out to you on your high horse that perhaps you should rail at your government about getting the hell out of the north of Ireland before spewing out so much vile aimed at Israel. You need to stop "moving along" and look at history, not forget it because it is convenient to do so. You crack me up.
History is a thing of the past. It doesn't matter where I are you are from, Palestinian children, non militant civilians, are being murderd and maimed as we type.
Move along.
This statement pretty much stands on its own. Profound. History is a thing of the past. Brilliant.
Blaming the Victim, Gaza
by David Edwards
July 10, 2006
Traditionally, British media reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been heavily biased in favour of the United States' major ally in the region, Israel. A 2002 Glasgow University Media Group report found that television broadcasters were six times as likely to present Israeli attacks as "retaliating" or in some way hitting back as Palestinian attacks. This caused many viewers to believe that the Palestinians were to blame for the conflict. (Greg Philo and Mike Berry, 'Bad News from Israel'; http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/sociology/units/media/israel.htm)
Reporting of the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants at an army post at Kerem Shalom near Gaza demonstrated the same bias. The BBC, ITV News, the Guardian, Independent and most other media described the incident as a "kidnapping". We emailed Guardian journalist David Fickling:
"In today's article, 'Israel detains Hamas ministers,' you write:
"'Israeli troops arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians today as they stepped up their campaign to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend.' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1808570,00.html)
"Why do Israeli militants 'detain' and 'arrest', whereas Palestinian militants 'kidnap'?" (Email, June 29, 2006)
Fickling replied:
"There is a well-attested distinction between arrest - an action carried out by a state as the first step of a well-defined legal process - and kidnap, which is an action carried out by private individuals with no defined outcome, enforceable purpose, or rights of review or release." (Email, June 29, 2006)
In reality there is no "well-defined legal process" protecting the Hamas politicians "arrested" by the Israelis. Of what crimes have they been accused? Are we to believe that they have any rights of review or release whatever? Quite the reverse; the press reports that the subsequent bombings of empty Hamas political offices were intended as a clear signal that Hamas's leaders can be assassinated if Israel so desires.
The media have emphasised the capture of the Israeli soldier as key in escalating tensions. On June 29, Stephen Farrell reported in The Times "a dramatic escalation of the conflict sparked by the abduction". (Farrell, 'Tanks go into Gaza as Jewish settler is murdered,' The Times, June 29, 2006)
On June 30, the Financial Times reported "the rapid escalation of the crisis sparked by last Sunday's kidnap" (Ferry Biedermann and Roula Khalaf, 'Abbas appeals to UN over arrests,' Financial Times, June 30, 2006). The BBC described the Palestinian attack as "a major escalation in cross-border tensions". (BBC World News, June 25, 2006)
Few readers will be aware that on June 24, the day before the "kidnapping", Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip and captured two Palestinians claimed by Israel to be members of Hamas. (See our Guest Media Alert by Jonathan Cook, 'Kidnapped by Israel'; http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php)
Nor have the press suggested that the one-sided nature of the killing in the weeks leading up to the capture of the Israeli soldier might have "sparked" Palestinian actions.
On June 8, the Israeli army assassinated the recently appointed Palestinian head of the security forces of the Interior Ministry, Jamal Abu Samhadana, and three others. On June 9, Israeli shells killed seven members of the same family picnicking on Beit Lahiya beach. Some 32 others were wounded, including 13 children.
On June 13, an Israeli plane fired a missile into a busy Gaza City street, killing 11 people, including two children and two medics. On June 20, the Israeli army killed three Palestinian children and injured 15 others in Gaza with a missile attack. On June 21, the Israelis killed a 35-year old pregnant woman, her brother, and injured 11 others, including 6 children. Then came the Israeli capture of two Palestinians, followed by the Palestinian capture of the Israeli soldier and the killing of the two other soldiers.
After the beach deaths, Hamas, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority, broke an 18-month ceasefire and joined other militant groups in firing Kassam rockets into Israel. The Financial Times reported on June 23 that the missiles, principally targeted towards the Israel town of Sderot, have caused damage and some casualties but no fatalities in the recent barrages. A June 29 Guardian leader noted that the home-made Kassam rockets are "not in the same league as Israel's hi-tech (though not always accurate) weaponry". (Leader, 'Storm over Gaza,' The Guardian, June 29, 2006)
In an interview for Democracy Now, Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago, compared the lethality of Israeli and Palestinian weapons:
"Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005 'til today, the estimates run between 7,000 and 9,000 heavy artillery shells have been shot and fired into Gaza. On the Palestinian side, the estimates are approximately 1,000 Kassam missiles, crude missiles, have been fired into Israel. So we have a ratio of between seven and nine to one.
"Let's look at casualties. In the last six months, approximately 80 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing... There have been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Kassam missiles. Again, we have a huge disproportion, a huge discrepancy." ('AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza,' June 29, 2006; http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/1420258)
Finkelstein also compared the situation with regard to hostages: "let's talk about those 9,000 Palestinians who are effectively hostages being held by Israel. 1,000 of them are administrative detainees... Administrative detainees who are being held without any charges or trial. And the other 8,000 are being held after military courts have convicted them, almost always on the basis of confessions which were extracted by torture. So if we're going to look simply at the numbers, we have one hostage on the Palestinian side, and effectively we have about 9,000 on the Israeli side."
Earlier this month, the Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, published fatality figures for June 2006 in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Forty-two Palestinians, six of them minors, were killed by Israeli armed forces. Twenty-four of the fatalities were bystanders not involved in the conflict. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EKOI-6RC53K?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=isr )
B'Tselem's figures do not include the seven members of the Ghaliya family killed on Beit Lahiya beach. However, a June 17 report by Donald Macintyre in the Independent "cast doubt on crucial elements of the conclusion of the military investigation which absolved Israel of any responsibility". (Macintyre, 'Hospital casts doubt on Israel's version of attack that killed seven Palestinians,' The Independent, June 17, 2006)
According to B'Tselem, in May 2006, 36 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces, one Israeli civilian died from injuries he sustained the previous month. At time of writing, Israeli soldiers have killed a total of six Palestinians since the re-invasion.
Collective Punishment - Frailer Palestinians Are Dying
Having killed many more people in recent weeks, Israel's response to the soldier's capture has been to heap yet more suffering on the Palestinian people. Israel re-invaded Gaza with 5,000 troops on June 27 and then bombed Gaza's only electrical generating station, so depriving half a million people of electricity. Human Rights Watch commented:
"The destruction of the power station could quickly cause a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as electricity is essential to power the water system, sewage treatment, and medical services". ('Gaza: Israeli Offensive Must Limit Harm to Civilians,' June 29, 2006; http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/29/isrlpa13662.htm)
In the same attack, Israel destroyed three bridges, and the main water pipes for two refugee camps. Will Hutton noted in the Observer: "Sealing off access to water and food can only inflict acute discomfort on the people there; already, frailer Palestinians are dying." (Hutton, 'Israel's act of war is inexcusable,' The Observer, July 2, 2006)
The Guardian wrote: "The electricity supply to half of Gaza has been cut, and all supplies of fuel and food have been halted." Amazingly, the same article added: "Israeli aircraft and forces operated without harming anyone." (Conal Urquhart, 'Israel rounds up Hamas politicians,' The Guardian, June 29, 2006)
Prior to these attacks, Save the Children's UK Programme Manager Jan Coffey reported that 78% of the population in Gaza were living below the poverty line with 10% of children under five suffering from chronic malnutrition. In June, the World Food Programme reported that 51% of Palestinians - 2 million people - were unable to meet their food needs without aid, and that in Gaza, "the situation is becoming critical". (Justin Podur, 'Summer rains,' ZNet; http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10500)
The extent of media bias is exemplified by the New York Times which reported July 3: "for all the pyrotechnics, the [Israeli] operation has been relatively restrained". (Ian Fisher and Steven Erlanger, 'Israel steps up Gaza raids in bid to free soldier,' New York Times, July 3, 2006)
This represents the view of Western journalists numbed to the suffering the West and its allies consistently heap on impoverished Third World people. To merely inflict intense suffering on hundreds of thousands of people, rather than to kill them, is "relatively restrained" for elite media executives. On July 2, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that "Israel's 'public diplomacy' efforts", aimed at getting the Western media to support Israeli army operations had borne fruit: "The American newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post have published editorials that placed responsibility for the crisis on Hamas." (Aluf Benn, 'US warns Israel not to harm Abbas or civilians,' Ha'aretz, July 2, 2006) Quite an achievement.
On the BBC's July 3 Newsnight programme, anchor Jeremy Paxman reported breaking news that a Palestinian had been killed and two wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Northern Gaza. Paxman then went on to interview an Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev. Regev said: "Our preference, our chosen policy preference, is that he [Shalit] is released and this can end peacefully." Paxman said not a word in response about the death he had just reported, about the five other deaths, or about people dying because of the attack on the power station.
In a rare departure from Western silence, the Swiss Foreign Ministry declared this week: "A number of actions by the Israeli defense forces in their offensive against the Gaza Strip have violated the principle of proportionality and are to be seen as forms of collective punishment, which is forbidden." (Bradley S. Klapper, 'Switzerland: Israel violating law in Gaza,' Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 3, 2006; http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Switzerland_Israel.html)
The Swiss statement referred to provisions of the 1949 treaty of the Geneva Conventions, regarded as the cornerstone of international law on the obligations of warring and occupying powers. A key section reads:
"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." (Cited, 'PCHR Warns of a Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip,' July 2, 2006; http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2006/66-2006.htm)
At time of writing, the word 'Gaza' has been mentioned in 314 UK newspaper articles over the previous two weeks. The words 'Geneva conventions' have been mentioned in just 12 of these.
It would be a good idea to crowd people in front of israel embassies, etc, and ask for a cheasefire, in order to protect the civilians. Avoiding any sign (burning israel flags, etc) that could divert the attention from the simple request of protecting the civilians
It's interesting the different reactions in the EU and in the USA: the EU will send Solana to try to mediate, while all that Bush did was to give the veto at the UN and tell that israel has the right of self-defence... not a single reference on the civilians killed...
Wow, you are an angry little man. I never said anything about supporting the death of Palestinians or Israelis. I was just pointing out to you on your high horse that perhaps you should rail at your government about getting the hell out of the north of Ireland before spewing out so much vile aimed at Israel. You need to stop "moving along" and look at history, not forget it because it is convenient to do so. You crack me up.
Wow, that ole texan imbecilic superiority raises its head again. Just like, fortunatley, ALL americans arent as deep a lover of war, ill educated and backward as you, ALL Englishman did not support the oppression and occupation of Northern Ireland. Check the name, fuck wit, Dan Mac...connecty the dots through that white hood?
Oh and err yeah, there are no longer any British Army units in Northen Ireland. What history do they teach you? Some revisionist to go right along with the creationist you get in science?
Fuck off.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Comments
Israel retaliates agains militants exclusively?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
You think you can easily prevent hundred pound explosives from causing collateral damage? I'd like to see that.
1) Vitalogy
2) Yield
3) Ten
4) No Code
5) Riot Act
6) Vs.
7) Pearl Jam
8) Binaural
then why be so careless with houndred pound explosives? and taking out power plants in places were cilivians live, isn't that targeting civilians? maybe not to kill them, but definatly to damage them or break them.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Is that why members of the IRA were jailed as criminals instead of POW's by Britiain? What were the internment camps all about then? I guess the SAS hit squads were just out having a little fun. Point that finger at your own country and its bloody history before throwing rocks at Israel.
Again, research your history in Northern Ireland. Could britain, gasp, be an occupying army under your definitions?
do you think you can prevent white phospherous from causing collateral damage?
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
israel kills 5 palestinian children for every 1 israeli child killed by a palesitinian. for adults, i believe, it's a 3:1 ratio. maybe you can try and rationalize all 3 of those adults are terrorists or just a mistake...but the 5:1 is horrific. also a large % of palesitinian children live in severe malnutrition b/c of the actions of israel
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
How else are the Israelis supposed to fight Hezbollah? Maybe if Hezbollah weren't a bunch of rats that have to scurry back to the safety of hiding behind civilians, Israel would have better options to fight them.
How about providing weapons to Lebanon govt., and Palestinians govt. to erase the terrorist problem?
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I'm not sure that arming the terrorists is the best way to stop them.
voilà! there's the problem, arming one terrorist group and not the others...
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
by Ismail Haniyeh
July 11, 2006
GAZA, Palestine -- As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.
The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" her vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.
In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively. The Palestinian leadership is firmly embedded in the concept of Islamic shura , or mutual consultation; suffice it to say that while we may have differing opinions, we are united in mutual respect and focused on the goal of serving our people. Furthermore, the invasion of Gaza and the kidnapping of our leaders and government officials are meant to undermine the recent accords reached between the government party and our brothers and sisters in Fatah and other factions, on achieving consensus for resolving the conflict. Yet Israeli collective punishment only strengthens our collective resolve to work together.
As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure -- the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?
They think, doubtless, of the hostage soldier, taken in battle -- yet thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law. They think of the pluck and "toughness" of Israel, "standing up" to "terrorists." Yet a nuclear Israel possesses the 13th-largest military force on the planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces. Who is the underdog, supposedly America's traditional favorite, in this case?
I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.
Israel's unilateral movements of the past year will not lead to peace. These acts -- the temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the walling off of the West Bank -- are not strides toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections. Israel's ongoing policies of expansion, military control and assassination mock any notion of sovereignty or bilateralism. Its "separation barrier," running across our land, is hardly a good-faith gesture toward future coexistence.
But there is a remedy, and while it is not easy it is consistent with our long-held beliefs. Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.
Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and $160 billion in taxpayer support for Israel's war-making capacity -- its "defense." Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves if all this blood and treasure could not have bought more tangible results for Palestine if only U.S. policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice.
However, we do not want to live on international welfare and American handouts. We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps. America's complacency in the face of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the coded rhetorical green light: "Israel has a right to defend itself." Was Israel defending itself when it killed eight family members on a Gaza beach last month or three members of the Hajjaj family on Saturday, among them 6-year-old Rawan? I refuse to believe that such inhumanity sits well with the American public.
We present this clear message: If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity and national integrity, Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights. Meanwhile, our right to defend ourselves from occupying soldiers and aggression is a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention. If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality.
The writer is prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority.
by Bashir Abu-Manneh
July 12, 2006
Being in Israel these days is as strange as ever: an Israeli military machine that kills Palestinians daily is wedded to a society that denies their humanity daily. The more Israel punishes Palestinians, destroys their basic infrastructure, eradicates their social institutions, terrorizes them, and forces them to live in fear and despair, the more the Israeli elite and its fourth strongest army in the world obsesses over a primitive Palestinian-made short-range rocket like the "Qassam" (which causes minimal damage and is far from a serious threat to life or property) or a "mastermind of terror" like exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal; breeds doubt over (or, outrightly denies) the Israeli army's killing of scores of families in Gaza; legitimizes the illegal arrest of tens of democratically-elected Palestinian representatives and officials; and presents Palestinians as a nation of terrorists who seek to eradicate Israel. In a colonial twist of logic, Israel accuses Palestinians of wanting to do to them the exact same things that Israel itself is routinely and systematically doing to the Palestinians: destroying their society, denying their national and democratic rights, and dehumanizing them.
For Israel, then, to be Palestinian today is to be subhuman. Racism is thus endemic to present Israeli politics and society. The current conception of Israeli nationhood is premised on the notion that Israeli-Jews are superior human beings. They deserve all the rights and privileges that are systematically denied to others. And from this stems the current conception of Israeli security, which is also particularist to the extreme: in order for Israelis to be safe and secure, Palestinians have to live in a state of permanent occupation, insecurity and fear. Military might, expansionism, and war have been Israel's routine instruments for achieving these ends. Israeli politics has therefore never seriously contemplated the option that Israeli peace and security should be premised on the notion of Palestinian security, freedom, and independence. In a colonial society like Israel, then, universal notions of equality and mutuality are sadly absent. And for this the Israeli elite is mainly responsible. In order to safeguard its own colonial privileges in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it has forced Israeli society to live in what Israeli sociologist Avishai Ehrlich has aptly called 'a permanent war society,' premised on the construction of Arabs and Palestinians as national enemies.* War and occupation are thus not only means of crushing and denying Palestinian national rights of self-determination, but also serve a clear domestic purpose. They are instruments of Israeli self-fashioning: militarizing Israeli society is necessary for the continued domestic domination of Israeli colonial practices. Israeli society is ceaselessly indoctrinated into believing that it exists in a permanent state of existential conflict with the Palestinians, and this in order for the Israeli elite to meet and realize its colonial policies and objectives of land expropriation and expansion (militarizing Israeli society is also a necessary precondition for acting as US watchdog and for serving American imperial interests in the region). One important outcome of such a sustained aggressive agenda is that Israel has become, as Gideon Levy has put it recently in Haaretz (26 March 2006), 'one racist nation.' There is not one Jewish political party in the Knesset, he concluded before the Israeli elections, which believes that Palestinians are equal human beings or equal partners in peace. Such racism can also be gauged in the tragic absence of an Israeli popular peace camp today: not one mass demonstration was organized in Israel to protest the endless shelling of civilians in Gaza in the last two weeks. Popular dissent is clearly absent among Israelis. Even though a significant majority of them (60%) do support the release of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier (as Hamas has offered), their position remains passive and paralyzed. Those demonstrations which did take place in Israel to protest army brutality in Gaza were either spontaneous minority expressions of outrage (like the recent one in front of the home of the Israeli army's Chief of Staff Dan Halutz in Tel-Aviv) or ones that were organized by the Palestinian minority in Israel (in Haifa, Nazareth, and the villages of the Galilee). No Jewish-Israeli popular dissent is legitimate, it seems, when the life of an Israeli soldier is at stake, as the killing of tens of Palestinians (16 in the last 24 hours alone), the wounding of hundreds, and the bombing of beaches, bridges, fields, houses, power plants, and roads is received with cynical and complicit silence.
Also denied is the seemingly endless Palestinian peace offers that have been coming out of occupied Palestine for at least the last month. The prisoners' document has been attacked by the Israeli government as either 'insignificant' or as yet another attempt to legitimize terrorism and destroy the state of Israel! Solidly wedded to the international consensus (rejected by Israel and the US) of ending the illegal occupation, dismantling settlements, creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank (with East Jerusalem as capital), and abiding by international laws and resolutions over the Palestinian refugee problem, the prisoners' document has been resoundingly adopted by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government. As Israeli bombs fall on Gaza, then, Palestinians have yet again shown that they are able and willing to consider a settlement of the question of Palestine in a fair peaceful manner. A peace offer has also been clearly articulated by Prime Minister Haniyeh in the Washington Post (July 11, 2006), modestly asking Americans to support the same rights that sovereign and independent nations enjoy: 'to live in peace, dignity and national integrity' and to create 'a fair and permanent peace' with Israel. Indeed, it is reasonable to argue that in the last couple of weeks Hamas has embarked on what one Israeli strategist before the 1982 invasion of Lebanon called 'a peace offensive' referring to the PLO. And the analogy is powerful and ominous: when 'threatened' by a Hamas ceasefire (which, like the PLO's previous one of 1981-82, also lasted over a year) and real peace, Israel bombs its way out of a diplomatic settlement. 2006 may well be a repetition of 1982 in this regard. And if Israel in 1982 used the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador to London Argov by Palestinian groups not signed on to the PLO ceasefire as an excuse to put into motion a pre-planned invasion of Lebanon in order to crush the PLO, then the capture of soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006 has also been exploited in order to unleash a re-invasion of Gaza planned and hinted at months in advance of the Keren Shalom military operation. Confronted with real peace, Israel responds by waging war: and the 'permanent war society' is actively reproduced. As a result, a permanent peace society is as rejected and as illusive as ever.
As one hears the incessant bombing of southern Lebanon in response to today's (July 12) Hezbollah military incident in Northern Israel (details of which are hourly emerging), it is easy to conclude that another broad and brutal military adventure in Lebanon is also on the horizon. If Hezbollah has sought to force Israel to release the illegally held Lebanese prisoners it still holds captive in Israeli prisons, the Israeli military echelons will most probably respond by unleashing Israeli military might against yet another defenseless Arab nation. As of now: the near future looks bleak, as Israeli rejectionism and military logic dominate.
* Avishai Ehrlich, 'Israel: Conflict, War and Social Change', in Colin Creighton and Martin Shaw (eds.), The Sociology of War and Peace, New York, Sheridan House, 1987, pp121-142.
Bashir Abu-Manneh teaches English at Barnard College, New York.
History is a thing of the past. It doesn't matter where I are you are from, Palestinian children, non militant civilians, are being murderd and maimed as we type.
Move along.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Yes it was. And the IRA had every right to do what they did, to achieve what they wanted. Oppressors out of their homeland. As did the ANC, as dod the 13 States in 1776, as dod Jomo Kenyatta, as did Gandhi, et al, who were all labelled terrorists by those oppressing them.
You not moved along yet? Found any pictures of dead palestinian children to gloat over yet, to stand and shout at "see, this is what you animals get for daring to defend yourself."
Move, along.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Maybe if Israel didnt hide behind the US, like rats, we'd all see how this would pan out, you know, if both sides were equal.
If one didn't have nuclear weapons and fighter planes, and the other had stones and homemade bombs no stronger than a couple of the average M20 fireworks.
Israel existed before Hezbollah. Hezbollah exists (since the time of the illegal Israeli occupation of the 80s) to defend Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Just like your government, you support murder and genocide. Move along ,too. Your god awaits.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Listen, numbnuts, I wil say this once, give you chance to wash that wax out of your ears. You want a debate, come on, bring something constructive. You can't. You're inane in every way.
The poster stated an erroneous fact about Hezbollah, I corrected, and not only that I posted an independent, unbiased history of the organisation, by an organisation, The BBC, who has its fair share of right wing moments. I couldnt find a more independent report if I went to the Pentagon and knocked on Rumsfelds door.
Don't where that white cloak too tight tonight. Wouldnt want you to get all aspyxhiated on us.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Wow, you are an angry little man. I never said anything about supporting the death of Palestinians or Israelis. I was just pointing out to you on your high horse that perhaps you should rail at your government about getting the hell out of the north of Ireland before spewing out so much vile aimed at Israel. You need to stop "moving along" and look at history, not forget it because it is convenient to do so. You crack me up.
This statement pretty much stands on its own. Profound. History is a thing of the past. Brilliant.
by David Edwards
July 10, 2006
Traditionally, British media reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been heavily biased in favour of the United States' major ally in the region, Israel. A 2002 Glasgow University Media Group report found that television broadcasters were six times as likely to present Israeli attacks as "retaliating" or in some way hitting back as Palestinian attacks. This caused many viewers to believe that the Palestinians were to blame for the conflict. (Greg Philo and Mike Berry, 'Bad News from Israel';
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/sociology/units/media/israel.htm)
Reporting of the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants at an army post at Kerem Shalom near Gaza demonstrated the same bias. The BBC, ITV News, the Guardian, Independent and most other media described the incident as a "kidnapping". We emailed Guardian journalist David Fickling:
"In today's article, 'Israel detains Hamas ministers,' you write:
"'Israeli troops arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians today as they stepped up their campaign to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend.' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1808570,00.html)
"Why do Israeli militants 'detain' and 'arrest', whereas Palestinian militants 'kidnap'?" (Email, June 29, 2006)
Fickling replied:
"There is a well-attested distinction between arrest - an action carried out by a state as the first step of a well-defined legal process - and kidnap, which is an action carried out by private individuals with no defined outcome, enforceable purpose, or rights of review or release." (Email, June 29, 2006)
In reality there is no "well-defined legal process" protecting the Hamas politicians "arrested" by the Israelis. Of what crimes have they been accused? Are we to believe that they have any rights of review or release whatever? Quite the reverse; the press reports that the subsequent bombings of empty Hamas political offices were intended as a clear signal that Hamas's leaders can be assassinated if Israel so desires.
The media have emphasised the capture of the Israeli soldier as key in escalating tensions. On June 29, Stephen Farrell reported in The Times "a dramatic escalation of the conflict sparked by the abduction". (Farrell, 'Tanks go into Gaza as Jewish settler is murdered,' The Times, June 29, 2006)
On June 30, the Financial Times reported "the rapid escalation of the crisis sparked by last Sunday's kidnap" (Ferry Biedermann and Roula Khalaf, 'Abbas appeals to UN over arrests,' Financial Times, June 30, 2006). The BBC described the Palestinian attack as "a major escalation in cross-border tensions". (BBC World News, June 25, 2006)
Few readers will be aware that on June 24, the day before the "kidnapping", Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip and captured two Palestinians claimed by Israel to be members of Hamas. (See our Guest Media Alert by Jonathan Cook, 'Kidnapped by Israel'; http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php)
Nor have the press suggested that the one-sided nature of the killing in the weeks leading up to the capture of the Israeli soldier might have "sparked" Palestinian actions.
On June 8, the Israeli army assassinated the recently appointed Palestinian head of the security forces of the Interior Ministry, Jamal Abu Samhadana, and three others. On June 9, Israeli shells killed seven members of the same family picnicking on Beit Lahiya beach. Some 32 others were wounded, including 13 children.
On June 13, an Israeli plane fired a missile into a busy Gaza City street, killing 11 people, including two children and two medics. On June 20, the Israeli army killed three Palestinian children and injured 15 others in Gaza with a missile attack. On June 21, the Israelis killed a 35-year old pregnant woman, her brother, and injured 11 others, including 6 children. Then came the Israeli capture of two Palestinians, followed by the Palestinian capture of the Israeli soldier and the killing of the two other soldiers.
After the beach deaths, Hamas, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority, broke an 18-month ceasefire and joined other militant groups in firing Kassam rockets into Israel. The Financial Times reported on June 23 that the missiles, principally targeted towards the Israel town of Sderot, have caused damage and some casualties but no fatalities in the recent barrages. A June 29 Guardian leader noted that the home-made Kassam rockets are "not in the same league as Israel's hi-tech (though not always accurate) weaponry". (Leader, 'Storm over Gaza,' The Guardian, June 29, 2006)
In an interview for Democracy Now, Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago, compared the lethality of Israeli and Palestinian weapons:
"Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005 'til today, the estimates run between 7,000 and 9,000 heavy artillery shells have been shot and fired into Gaza. On the Palestinian side, the estimates are approximately 1,000 Kassam missiles, crude missiles, have been fired into Israel. So we have a ratio of between seven and nine to one.
"Let's look at casualties. In the last six months, approximately 80 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing... There have been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Kassam missiles. Again, we have a huge disproportion, a huge discrepancy." ('AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza,' June 29, 2006; http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/1420258)
Finkelstein also compared the situation with regard to hostages: "let's talk about those 9,000 Palestinians who are effectively hostages being held by Israel. 1,000 of them are administrative detainees... Administrative detainees who are being held without any charges or trial. And the other 8,000 are being held after military courts have convicted them, almost always on the basis of confessions which were extracted by torture. So if we're going to look simply at the numbers, we have one hostage on the Palestinian side, and effectively we have about 9,000 on the Israeli side."
Earlier this month, the Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, published fatality figures for June 2006 in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Forty-two Palestinians, six of them minors, were killed by Israeli armed forces. Twenty-four of the fatalities were bystanders not involved in the conflict. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EKOI-6RC53K?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=isr )
B'Tselem's figures do not include the seven members of the Ghaliya family killed on Beit Lahiya beach. However, a June 17 report by Donald Macintyre in the Independent "cast doubt on crucial elements of the conclusion of the military investigation which absolved Israel of any responsibility". (Macintyre, 'Hospital casts doubt on Israel's version of attack that killed seven Palestinians,' The Independent, June 17, 2006)
According to B'Tselem, in May 2006, 36 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces, one Israeli civilian died from injuries he sustained the previous month. At time of writing, Israeli soldiers have killed a total of six Palestinians since the re-invasion.
Collective Punishment - Frailer Palestinians Are Dying
Having killed many more people in recent weeks, Israel's response to the soldier's capture has been to heap yet more suffering on the Palestinian people. Israel re-invaded Gaza with 5,000 troops on June 27 and then bombed Gaza's only electrical generating station, so depriving half a million people of electricity. Human Rights Watch commented:
"The destruction of the power station could quickly cause a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as electricity is essential to power the water system, sewage treatment, and medical services". ('Gaza: Israeli Offensive Must Limit Harm to Civilians,' June 29, 2006; http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/29/isrlpa13662.htm)
In the same attack, Israel destroyed three bridges, and the main water pipes for two refugee camps. Will Hutton noted in the Observer: "Sealing off access to water and food can only inflict acute discomfort on the people there; already, frailer Palestinians are dying." (Hutton, 'Israel's act of war is inexcusable,' The Observer, July 2, 2006)
The Guardian wrote: "The electricity supply to half of Gaza has been cut, and all supplies of fuel and food have been halted." Amazingly, the same article added: "Israeli aircraft and forces operated without harming anyone." (Conal Urquhart, 'Israel rounds up Hamas politicians,' The Guardian, June 29, 2006)
Prior to these attacks, Save the Children's UK Programme Manager Jan Coffey reported that 78% of the population in Gaza were living below the poverty line with 10% of children under five suffering from chronic malnutrition. In June, the World Food Programme reported that 51% of Palestinians - 2 million people - were unable to meet their food needs without aid, and that in Gaza, "the situation is becoming critical". (Justin Podur, 'Summer rains,' ZNet; http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10500)
The extent of media bias is exemplified by the New York Times which reported July 3: "for all the pyrotechnics, the [Israeli] operation has been relatively restrained". (Ian Fisher and Steven Erlanger, 'Israel steps up Gaza raids in bid to free soldier,' New York Times, July 3, 2006)
This represents the view of Western journalists numbed to the suffering the West and its allies consistently heap on impoverished Third World people. To merely inflict intense suffering on hundreds of thousands of people, rather than to kill them, is "relatively restrained" for elite media executives. On July 2, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that "Israel's 'public diplomacy' efforts", aimed at getting the Western media to support Israeli army operations had borne fruit: "The American newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post have published editorials that placed responsibility for the crisis on Hamas." (Aluf Benn, 'US warns Israel not to harm Abbas or civilians,' Ha'aretz, July 2, 2006) Quite an achievement.
On the BBC's July 3 Newsnight programme, anchor Jeremy Paxman reported breaking news that a Palestinian had been killed and two wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Northern Gaza. Paxman then went on to interview an Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev. Regev said: "Our preference, our chosen policy preference, is that he [Shalit] is released and this can end peacefully." Paxman said not a word in response about the death he had just reported, about the five other deaths, or about people dying because of the attack on the power station.
In a rare departure from Western silence, the Swiss Foreign Ministry declared this week: "A number of actions by the Israeli defense forces in their offensive against the Gaza Strip have violated the principle of proportionality and are to be seen as forms of collective punishment, which is forbidden." (Bradley S. Klapper, 'Switzerland: Israel violating law in Gaza,' Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 3, 2006;
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Switzerland_Israel.html)
The Swiss statement referred to provisions of the 1949 treaty of the Geneva Conventions, regarded as the cornerstone of international law on the obligations of warring and occupying powers. A key section reads:
"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." (Cited, 'PCHR Warns of a Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip,' July 2, 2006; http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2006/66-2006.htm)
At time of writing, the word 'Gaza' has been mentioned in 314 UK newspaper articles over the previous two weeks. The words 'Geneva conventions' have been mentioned in just 12 of these.
www.amnesty.org.uk
www.amnesty.org.uk
If something bigger is coming.. the start was the reckless invasion of Iraq.
Wow, that ole texan imbecilic superiority raises its head again. Just like, fortunatley, ALL americans arent as deep a lover of war, ill educated and backward as you, ALL Englishman did not support the oppression and occupation of Northern Ireland. Check the name, fuck wit, Dan Mac...connecty the dots through that white hood?
Oh and err yeah, there are no longer any British Army units in Northen Ireland. What history do they teach you? Some revisionist to go right along with the creationist you get in science?
Fuck off.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!