Photomontage, Edna Spennato, 11 Jan 2009.
Ehud Barak must be brought to trial at the Hague to face charges of genocide and infanticide.
Who gave the orders to the IDF death squads to murder so many children at close-range, with a bullet to the head or the middle of the torso ?
Ehud the Great, King of Judea
Click on image to enlarge
Photomontage, Edna Spennato, 11 Jan 2009.
A few days following their defeat against the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza strip, the Israeli "war trio" reportedly approved security arrangements with Egypt aimed at thwarting flow of arms into the besieged strip, apparently seeking to achieve through diplomacy what they have failed to achieve militarily.
Indeed, the limited Israeli cabinet, consisting of Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni approved Thursday night the security arrangements with Egypt aimed at preventing the smuggling of arms into Gaza. The arrangements mostly concern technical matters and Egyptian operating methods to stop the smuggling from within its borders.
"...Israel's war against Hamas was launched, in large part, to send a message to its adversaries: Be afraid. Any attacks on the Jewish state will be met with overwhelming, even brutal, force. Traditionally off-limits sites, like Mosques and hospitals, won't serve as hiding places. Enemy leaders will be hunted down and killed -- even if they're surrounded by their children and wives. ....Israeli leaders believe they've accomplished that task. "The Arab view is now that Israel is a crazed animal, locked in a cage, fuming to get out all the time," a senior Foreign Ministry official tells Danger Room, approvingly. "Now, it's the responsibility of the Arab leadership to keep the animal in the cage, by not provoking it."
24/01/2009 Aid workers who entered Gaza on Friday were appalled by images of homes that had become craters, children sifting through garbage, and the fear expressed by civilians. Two representatives told Israeli electronic site Ynet how they felt after attempting to offer aid to Gazans.
Cassandra Nelson, an aid worker with The Mercy Corps said the pictures displayed by the press did not fully cover the disaster. She and her colleagues met with a number of youths in order to assess their psychological health after the 22 days of Israeli aggression against the Strip.
Nelson said the youths had repeatedly voiced fear that the strikes on Gaza would be renewed. "They said they were afraid the ceasefire was just temporary," she said. "They also said they never knew they could be so scared."
Students were scheduled to go back to school Friday, but Nelson feared they would be incapable of concentrating before their exams as many had lost friends and family members in the war.
Despite the tumultuous aftermath, the war had brought Gazans together, Nelson said. "There's no more 'mine'. You could say it made them better people," she explained. She added that she hoped the crossings would be opened soon so that humanitarian aid could get through.
Twelve representatives of the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel organization also toured Gaza on Friday. Dr. Mahmid Mahmoud told Ynet he had been shocked by the sights to which he was exposed at the hospital.
"I've never felt such pain. There are children without arms and legs at the hospitals. I couldn't have imagined the occurrences here in my worst nightmares, when you see it you start to cry. It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life," he said, adding that he hoped a Jewish delegation would tour Gaza to witness the destruction.
Salah Haj Yihye, head of PHR-Israel's clinics, said he had come across many people sitting upon the wreckage of their homes with stunned expressions. "We were in Zaitun neighborhood and we heard the story of a family in which close to 30 people were killed," he said.
"One of the men cried and told us how he had lost his father and mother and how his year-old baby died in his arms. They said they had pleaded with the soldiers to allow them to evacuate the injured but were answered negatively."
Yihye, an Israeli Arab, said he felt trapped between Israel and his people. "I am part of the Palestinian people, but also part of Israel and a loyal citizen," he said. "I am inside this conflict and my heart pains me. I would like the State to stop hurting the weak and poor. From what we can see the damage was done only to civilians." He said the destruction in Gaza constituted "war crimes".
Holmes demands opening of Gaza crossings, expressing shock at death toll
[ 24/01/2009 - 09:19 AM ]
Many people around the world, especially Arabs, have been looking to the Obama administration, hoping that his call for change will extend to fairness for Palestinians. They might as well hope for rain in the middle of the Arabian Desert in July, notes Paul J. Balles.
The United Nations says some 50,800 Palestinians are now homeless and 400,000 are without running water.
Israel, in a disgustingly conciliatory mood, says it will allow 143 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid into Gaza, plus 60,000 litres of fuel.
Disgustingly conciliatory because they kept aid from getting to the needy long before the latest conflict and all during it. Instead of starving Gaza into submission, Israel decided to slaughter as many as their US-supplied sophisticated armaments could manage.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports 1,314 Palestinians were killed during the conflict, including more than 400 children. More than 5,000 people were injured, nearly 2,000 of them children.
All of 13 Israelis were killed in what Israel consistently calls self-defence. Nine of those were military, four of whom were killed by friendly fire. When Israel called a ceasefire on Saturday [17 January], it brazenly announced it had met its war aims.
Hamas declared a "great victory" over Israel when it announced its own truce. Was that Israel’s aim? Or did it include the disappearance of entire neighbourhoods as reported by BBC's Christian Fraser?
"Isn't it Time for a War Crimes Tribunal?" headlines Robert Fisk, adding: It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza."
Fisk also points out "history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November 2008. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors."
Since September 2005, Gaza has been nothing but a refugee camp. Israel simply transferred the Israeli settlers who had been in Gaza to the West Bank. This expanded the Israeli occupation and left the Palestinians isolated in Bantustans.
It's obvious simply from their behaviour that the Israelis want to have Egypt annex and take over the responsibility for controlling Gaza. At the same time, they want to force an exodus of West Bank Palestinians to Jordan.
Noam Chomsky has noted: "… Gaza should be turned into a cage, a prison basically, with Israel attacking it at will, and meanwhile in the West Bank we'll take what we want. There was nothing secret about it."
Chomsky supported his conclusion by referring to a speech by Ehud Olmert in May 2006: "He simply announced to a joint session of Congress and to rousing applause, that the historic right of Jews to the entire land of Israel is beyond question."
How will the Israelis accomplish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? Chomsky, again, is quite clear: "... they have sufficient military control over the West Bank to terrorize the population into passivity."
Meanwhile, the West and the corrupt minions among Palestinians, like Mahmoud Abbas, talk of ridiculous ideals of a two-state solution. Salah Bardaweel, spokesman for Hamas, reports that “Abbas, the acting Palestinian Authority chief, played a key role in the war and in assassinating Hamas's senior political leaders, through his spies in the coastal strip”.
Despite its propaganda, Israel has never made a serious effort to negotiate toward a Palestinian state. When Israel speaks about Hamas using its ceasefires to rearm itself with its ineffective rockets through tunnels to Egypt, it is projecting. It is Israel which has been stalling serious negotiations in order to further terrorize the Palestinians.
"The only thing Israel has proved it can do militarily better than anyone else," writes Yvonne Ridley, "is kill innocent women and children. And in its genocidal drive to wipe the Palestinian people from existence it has dealt itself a fatal blow."
Chris Hedges reminds the US that the Palestinian reaction to Israeli occupation should be familiar to Israelis:
Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, says that the Israeli government will have no dealings with Hamas terrorists. But Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, the chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, which fought against the British occupation of Palestine. The underground Jewish group set off a massive bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, a blast in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews. These Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Tell me the moral difference between Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern gang and Hamas. I fail to see one.
It’s not enough that Israel has become the best-armed and largest gang of terrorist thugs in the world. Anyone aware of what happened in the UN with a ceasefire proposal to be voted on must have realized that Israel controls America when Olmert had Bush call off a vote by the US, which drafted the proposal.
Why? “I [Olmert] spoke with him [Bush]; I told him: You can't vote for this proposal. He said: listen, I don't know, I didn't see, don't know what it says. I told him: I know, and you can't vote for it! He then instructed the secretary of state, and she did not vote for it."
Writing in Counterpunch, Brian Cloughley says: "The worst of all the barbarians who are killing children and their mothers and fathers in Gaza are the Israeli pilots who mercilessly bomb houses occupied by terrified families. And they are staunchly supported by the House of Representatives of the United States of America." The US Senate has also supported the savagery. Cloughley adds:
These pilots, these vile little war-gamers of the skies, these latter-day examples of what Tom Wolfe called “The Right Stuff”, can zoom over towns full of traumatized children and happily heave and hurl their bombs and rockets to kill yet more Palestinian kids without the remotest chance of being shot down. How heroic; how truly gladiatorial. How contemptible.
Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying its use of white phosphorus in Gaza was indiscriminate and illegal. When a young burn victim in Vietnam was photographed running down a road in flame, Americans protested vigorously. When Israel burns Gaza’s children with phosphorous, the media ignores it.
Obama's unbridled support for Israel doesn't bode well. He's been doing everything he can to play both sides of the political spectrum, and the political spectrum in the US is all one-sided when it comes to Israel. The secretary of state is as mesmerized by Israel as is the US Congress and the administration.
“During the July 2006 Lebanon war, Barack Obama stood up strongly for Israel's right to defend itself from Hezbollah raids and rocket attacks,” reports the new White House website. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel,” concludes the entry.
They defend and support the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and have advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met. They have called for continuing US cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defence systems.
It will be interesting to see how long it will take Americans suffering as a result of the financial crisis to object to the continuing Israeli bailout. Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel will surely come under scrutiny as unnecessary financial diversions from needed benefits to Americans.
Many people around the world, especially Arabs, have been looking to the Obama administration, hoping that his call for change will extend to fairness for Palestinians. They might as well hope for rain in the middle of the Arabian Desert in July.
Alternatively, visit the White House website and respond to the new administration’s invitation to comment, claiming that “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history”. The address is http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact. Let them know that you know that Israel is not the innocent victim that the propaganda makes it out to be.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see pballes.com. This article appeared in Redress Information & Analysis.
January 24, 2009 at 7:52 am (Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, Photography, War Crimes)
Abdul Rahim Abu Halima, 14, (wearing a yellow T-shirt) was killed when his home was hit by a white phosphorous artillery shell on 4 January. He died with two of his brothers, Zayed, eight, and Hamza, six, his sister Shahed, who was 15 months old, and their father Saad Allah, 45. “He was a very active boy, a little bit nervous sometimes, but he was good at football,” said his brother Mahmoud, 20. “I loved him so very much. He was a wonderful boy.”
Adham Mutair, 17, was shot at his home near Beit Lahiya, Gaza, on 9 January. Israeli tanks had taken up positions around the houses and Adham was shot when he went onto the roof to check the family’s pigeons. He died the next day. “We haven’t even had a chance to set up a funeral tent to mourn him properly,” said his uncle Khader, 53. “I don’t think the rest of the world understands how painful our lives are here.”
Amal Abed Rabbo, two, pictured after she died in an attack at the village of Izbit Abed Rabbo, on January 7, 2009. According to her father Khalid, 30, Amal and her sister Souad, seven, were killed by gunfire from an Israeli tank after soldiers ordered the family out of their house. Another sister, Samer, four, survived the attack but is paralysed below the waist. “Amal was just learning to talk,” said Khalid. “I want to know from the Israeli army: why did they kill my daughters?”
Amira Qirm, 15, in her bed at Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Amira was injured in an Israeli attack that killed her father, brother and sister
Lina Hassan, 10, was killed by an Israeli shell which hit her as she walked to the shops next to a UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. “She asked me for a shekel to go to the shops to buy something for her and her brothers and sisters,” said her father Abdul, 37. “I heard the shell and I ran out. I saw her body lying on the ground … Was my daughter Hamas? Do you think a 10-year-old even knows the difference between Hamas and Fatah?”
Mohammad Shaqoura, 9, was also killed by Israeli shelling at the UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. He was playing marbles in the street outside with his friends in the middle of the afternoon. “I went to help the injured. I didn’t realise Mohammad was one of them,” said his father Basim, 40. “I try to talk about him as much as possible with my other children. But it’s hard for them to understand.”
Ghaida Abu Eisha, eight, who was killed along with her parents and two brothers when an Israeli missile struck her home in Shamali on 5 January. Saber Abu Eisha, 49, the children’s uncle, said: “Ghaida was in the second grade at school. She was like any little girl, she was pretty, she loved to play. Sometimes she was laughing, sometimes she was crying. She liked to dress up, wearing a bride’s dress, showing off.”
Mohammad Abu Eisha, 10, was also killed in the Israeli missile strike on his family’s home in Shamali on 5 January. Two children survived: Dalal, 12, and Ahmed, five. Both are deeply traumatised. “Whenever they hear a loud noise they fall to the ground,” said their uncle Saber Abu Eisha. “Sometimes I think it’s easier for the people who are dead and it’s harder for those who are living.”
Shahed Abu Sultan, eight, was killed by a bullet apparently fired from a helicopter as she sat on her father’s lap at the doorway to their home in the Jabaliya refugee camp on 5 January. Her father, Hussein, 40, wrote a message to his daughter which hangs on their sitting room wall: “I cried a sea of tears for you but those tears have not calmed my heart because you left, my daughter. I have no tears remaining, but my heart wants to go on crying blood, my daughter, my beloved Shahed.”Photograph: Family photograph
When I saw the photos of the slaughtered Palestinian children in the Guardian's photo gallery and when I read Rory McCarthy's story, 
Confrontations between demonstrators and IOF troops in al-Khalil
May we dare ask? Who are these people who call themselves 'Jews'? Are they a racial group? A tribal group? A religious group? A national group? What are they? The pictures above (from left to right) are An Ethiopian Jew, A European Ashkenazi Jew and a Yemeni Arab Jew.
