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UNICEF: Gaza children continue to suffer physically and psychologically

[ 30/04/2009 - 10:14 AM ]

NEW YORK, (PIC)-- The UN children's fund (UNICEF) reported Tuesday that children in Gaza continue to suffer both physically and psychologically despite the Israeli war which ended 100 days ago, stressing the need for allowing in supplies and materials needed for recovery and rehabilitation. The UNICEF said that five children have died while at least 14 others were injured in unexploded ordnance-related incidents since the end of the 22-day Israeli war. The UNICEF underlined that the Israeli war on Gaza took a heavy toll on children’s psychological wellbeing, adding that a recent UN study reaffirmed that mental health, anxiety and stress are the main health problems in Gaza. According to the latest figures, 65 essential drugs were out of stock at Gaza’s central store, the UNICEF noted. In another context, defense for children international (DCI) said that the number of children arrested and detained by Israel has risen by about 40 percent compared to the number for the same period last year. DCI explained that the Israeli occupation authority intensified arrest of Palestinian children during the last two months, whereby the end of February 2009, the number of Palestinian children in detention had reached a peak of 423, one of the highest since the start of the second Intifada. DCI added that it noted in early 2009 a worrying increase in arrests of children between the ages of 12 and 13 years old when it documented the arrest of 10 children compared to three children for the whole year of 2008. Since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000, the IOA has arrested about 6,700 Palestinian children, currently 423 of them are being held in Israeli prisons in the occupied Palestinian lands and inside Israel in contravention of international law. Six of these children are girls and an additional six are being held in administrative detention without charge or trial, DCI elaborated. Palestinian child prisoners are exposed to different types of torture, abuse and degrading treatment at the hands of Israeli soldiers and policemen during their arrest and interrogation, DCI said. DCI highlighted that these Israeli violations aim to break the Palestinian child prisoners psychologically and extract quick confessions to indict them before Israeli military courts which do not provide fair trials to them. It noted that once Palestinian children are sent to Israeli prisons, they are deprived of their rights guaranteed in the UN convention on the rights of children and the fourth Geneva convention, adding that they are deprived of proper medical care, and are often blackmailed if they seek medical treatment.

Soldiers Confirm Israel's War Crimes in Gaza

'Anyone who’s in there is a terrorist', said the commander.

By Kim Bullimore Testimony given by Israeli soldiers involved in Israel’s 22-day December-January assault on Gaza to a pre-military preparatory program at the Oranim Academic College in Israel on February 13, and which the March 18 Haaretz daily began printing daily excerpts of, revealed that they repeatedly committed crimes with impunity in Gaza. One soldier, a squad commander, revealed that his unit was instructed to open fire in densely populated areas without warning. “We were supposed to go in with an armoured personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally meaning “cruel”] to burst through the lower door [of Palestinian houses], to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified — we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?” He said his commanding officers “said this was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled. I didn’t really understand: On the one hand they don’t really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they’re telling us they hadn’t fled so it’s their fault.” The squad commander said that Palestinian civilians were suppose to be given five minutes’ warning to leave their houses. However, many soldiers under his command challenged this, one soldier saying, “Anyone who’s in there is a terrorist”. According to the squad commander, that sentiment was backed up by other soldiers under his command who said, “We need to murder any person who’s in there ... any person who’s in Gaza is a terrorist”. ‘Do Anything You Want’ According to the squad commander, the soldiers believed that “inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want”. He went on to say that commanding officers did little to counter this attitude and that it was permissible “to write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can”. The squad commander also related that soldiers under his command killed an old woman was who walking down the road. When asked why this happened, he responded, “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: you see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn’t see any weapon.” According to another soldier, the descriptions of the squad commander were accurate. A third soldier said that lax rules of conduct within the attacking Israeli army also resulted in the death of many Palestinian civilians. In one incident, Israeli troops occupied a Palestinian house for several days, detaining the family who owned the house. According to the soldier, after a few days an order came through to release the family. However, not all the soldiers were informed “and they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go”. As a result, a mother and her two children were shot dead. Click here to read more.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Continue to Impose a Total Siege on the Gaza Strip

A Palestinian child standing near the debris of her family's house, which was destroyed by Israeli Occupation Forces in East Jerusalem.

• 20 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children, were wounded by IOF gunfire in the West Bank.

• A number of these civilians were wounded by Israeli settlers during a joint attack with IOF.

• IOF conducted 28 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

• IOF arrested 32 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children.

• IOF halted technical preparations related to a reception site intended for the Pope’s visit.

• IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.

• IOF imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian Christians during Easter.

• IOF troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 5 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children.

• IOF have continued measures aimed at the changing the demographic majority of east Jerusalem’s population.

• IOF started to establish a new settlement neighborhood in the al-Sawahra area, southeast of Jerusalem.

• Media reports disclosed a plan to connect "Kidar" settlement with "Ma'ale Adomim" settlement and annex 12,000 donums[1] of Palestinian land.

• IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

• IOF resumed the establishment of a settler road to the south of Hebron.

• Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the north and south of the West Bank.

Summary

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (23 – 28 April 2009):

Shooting: During the reporting period, 20 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children, were wounded by IOF and Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

On 24 April 2009, 12 Palestinian civilians, including two children, were wounded when Israeli settlers and IOF troops attacked 'Ourif village, south of Nablus. This joint attack was the second of its kind in the West Bank this April; IOF and Israeli settlers launched a similar attack on Safa village, north of Hebron, on 08 April, in which 9 Palestinian civilians were wounded.

On 26 April 2009, an Israeli settler fired at a Palestinian child in Madama village, south of Nablus. The child was seriously wounded by a gunshot that entered the back and exited the chest.

On the same day, a Palestinian civilian was wounded when IOF moved into Rantis village, northwest of Ramallah, and opened fire indiscriminately.

Also on the same day, IOF troops positioned at Tarqoumia crossing, southwest of Hebron, fired at an old Palestinian man, wounding him.

During the reporting period, 5 Palestinian civilians, including two children, were wounded when IOF used force against peaceful demonstrations organized to protest the construction of the Annexation Wall.

Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 28 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. IOF arrested 32 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children.

During the reporting period, IOF stormed the public yard opposite 'Aaida refugee camp, north of Bethlehem. The yard was being readied in advance of the Pope’s intended visit. IOF forced workers to stop technical and construction preparations.

On 24 April 2009, IOF conducted a joint operation with Israeli settlers against 'Ourif village, south of Nablus. Both forces fired at Palestinian civilians, wounding 12 of them.

Restrictions on Movement: IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Click here to read more.

Tunnels Become a Lifeline

Erin Cunningham

RAFAH, Apr 29, 2009 (IPS) - Pick-up trucks speed westward on the Barth highway that flanks the Israeli border in Egypt's North Sinai region, stacked high with cartons of petrol. They are headed "for Gaza", the Bedouin residents of Barth village say – through the tunnels that burrow under the Egypt-Gaza border and are filling Gaza's aid gap in the aftermath of Israel's deadly assault on the territory. The hundreds of subterranean passages that have fuelled Gaza's economy since its borders were hermetically sealed by Israel and Egypt in 2007 were one of the primary targets of Israel's three-week Operation Cast Lead. Now largely rebuilt in the wake of a war that destroyed much of the strip's infrastructure and agricultural land, the tunnels that provide Gaza with food, fuel, medicine and other consumer goods may have become even more crucial as an economic lifeline, the World Food Programme (WFP) says. During the war, economic activity in the Gaza Strip came to a grinding halt. Over 20,000 buildings were destroyed, including many factories. Gaza's Private Sector Coordinating Council estimates the losses in the private sector as a result of the war to be 1.5 billion dollars. Since the Jan. 18 ceasefire, Israel has continued to operate its commercial crossings at minimal capacity. Only 35 percent of the 613 million dollars in funding requested by the United Nations (UN) Flash Appeal for Gaza has been received for reconstruction efforts. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that on average 127 aid trucks a day are entering Gaza, compared to 475 per day prior to the Hamas takeover. "If Israel opened the borders, the tunnel business would end in a second," says Abu Hussein, a Palestinian who manages a tunnel on the Gaza side of the border. "But what are we supposed to do? These tunnels feed the people, give them what they need and give us jobs." Before the war smuggling through tunnels, which the UN said last year was so widespread that it amounted to an industry, was generating some 650 million dollars in cash each year. Analysts estimate that at least two-thirds of the goods sold across the Gaza Strip come from the tunnels, and that they employ some 12,000 Palestinians from all over the territory. Gaza's unemployment rate, according to the UN, stood at 45 percent before the war. It is the highest in the world. During the assault, Rafah's underground tunnels were pummelled by Israeli bombs for three weeks. Israel claimed its air force destroyed 80 percent of the tunnels, about 600 of them, used by Hamas to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. But Palestinians working the tunnels on the Gaza side say while the bombs did damage some of the underground network, they almost always targeted just the entrance of the tunnel and to a depth of just ten metres. Since the tunnels can reach as deep as 25 metres, rebuilding was simply a matter of digging a new entry point a few metres from the original hole, smugglers say. And the reconstruction began the morning after the ceasefire was called Jan. 18. "Before the war, the tunnel began there," says Abu Hussein, pointing to a hole 10 metres behind him. "It cost about 6,000 dollars to dig again here and reinforce the walls." The rest of the tunnel, all the way to Egypt, was unscathed. After the war, food, medical supplies and other goods immediately began to pour in, picking up where the commercial crossings - that allow in only what Israel deems as "essential" - leave off. Click here to read more.

Physicians offer chilling account of Gaza atrocities
By Marc Abizeid, Special to The Daily Star

April 28, 2009


BEIRUT: Renowned Chinese-English physician Dr. Swee Ang gave a moving testimony on Saturday of Israel's destruction in the Gaza Strip as witnessed in her recent trip to the tiny Palestinian enclave. "Cluster bombs, deliberate assassinations of whole families that they would line up and shoot," Ang said as she listed a number of acts committed by Israel during its 22-day assault on Gaza in December and January that left over 1,400 Palestinians dead.
"The Israelis would wait until the ambulances got the wounded and then attack them, killing and injuring the drivers," she continued.

Ang and Norwegian physician Hans Husum were invited to offer an assessment of the situation in Gaza during the "Wounds of Gaza" lecture at the UNESCO Palace organized by the Sabra Shatila Foundation.

Ang, who bears distinct Asian features, also remarked that Israelis couldn't distinguish her from the Palestinians during her visit - a fact that made her proud.

"The Israelis attacked me in London for saying that 1.5 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Gaza, but I will show you the evidence," she said while presenting nauseating photographs taken during her visit of charred victims burned with phosphorous and large civilian buildings collapsed with vacuum bombs.

"I was very angry when I learned that Israeli tanks would come in front of a house and first fire a normal shell to break open the wall, then shoot a phosphorous shell into it," she said.

Husum, equally angered by the war in Gaza, lashed out at the United States which he said provided Israel with the experimental Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME weapons, to test on the Palestinians.

"This weapon tears the flesh off the bone, it opens up the chest, ... it kills a lot of people," he said, adding that the "new kind of wars" like in Gaza and Israel's summer 2006 war on Lebanon were launched not to make conventional military advancements, but rather with the aim of breaking the will of the people.
He went on to predict that the next war in Lebanon would be an urban one, systematically targeting cities in order to "break society" because, as he put, "humanitarian law is dead - it's out."

"I've been a war surgeon for 30 years. I've seen a lot, but I am shocked," he said. "If the aim of the enemy is to scare us into subjugation and to put us down on our knees, then we have to stand up - we do not bend down."

MIDEAST: Aid Rots Outside Gaza
By Erin Cunningham

Aid meant for Gaza going waste in Egypt. Credit:Erin Cunningham

AL-ARISH, Egypt, Apr 15 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt's North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza's 1.5 million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums and on airport runways across Egypt's North Sinai governorate.

Egypt shares a 14-kilometre border with Gaza that has been closed more or less permanently since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the territory in June 2007.

Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian- based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around Al- Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometres from Gaza's border.

Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah crossing.

"To be honest, most of this aid will never make it to Gaza," a local government official told IPS on condition of anonymity. "A lot of the food here will have to be thrown away

Click here: Egypt, Israel Block Mass Aid To Gaza - Food Rots to read more.

It's a Lieberman Government
By Uri Avnery – Israel

April 04, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -On the first day of the new Israeli government, the fog cleared: it's a Lieberman government.

The day started with a celebration at the President’s office. All the members of this bloated government – 30 ministers and 8 deputy ministers – were dressed up in their best finery and posed for a group photo. Binyamin Netanyahu read an uninspired speech, which included the worn-out clichés that are necessary to set the world at ease: the government is committed to peace, it will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, bla-bla-bla.

Avigdor Lieberman hurried from there to the foreign Office, for the ceremonial change of ministers. He, too, made a speech – but it was not a routine speech at all.

“Si vis pacem, para bellum – if you want peace, prepare for war,” declared the new Foreign Minister. When a diplomat quotes this ancient Roman saying, the world pays no attention to the first part, but only to the second. Coming from the mouth of the already infamous Lieberman, it was a clear threat: the new government is entering upon a path of war, not of peace.

With this sentence, Lieberman negated Netanyahu’s speech and made headlines around the world. He confirmed the worst apprehensions connected with the creation of this government.

Not content with quoting the Romans, he explained specifically why he used this motto. Concessions, he said, do not bring peace, but quite the reverse. The world respected and admired Israel when it won the Six-day war.

Two fallacies in one sentence. Returning occupied territory is not a “concession”. When a thief is compelled to return stolen property, or when a squatter vacates an apartment that does not belong to him, that is not a “concession”. And the admiration for Israel in 1967 came from a world that saw us as a little, valiant country that had stood up to mighty armies out to destroy us. But today’s Israel looks like a brutal Goliath, while the occupied Palestinians are now viewed as a David with his slingshot, fighting for his life.

With this speech, Lieberman succeeded in stirring the world, but even more in humiliating Netanyahu. He exposed the peace declarations of the new Prime Minister as nothing but soap bubbles.

Click here: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22353.htm to read more.

Israel admits no Hamas rockets were fired during Ceasefire

Falk: The Palestinian people have the right to resistance

NEW JERSEY, (PIC)-- Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to resistance, self-determination and the establishment of their independent state.
In a press statement, Falk stated that the last war on the Gaza Strip revealed the huge disparity between the Israeli army which is equipped with all kinds of weapons and the unarmed Palestinians who live under an unjust siege, reiterating that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza.
The UN official underscored that Israel has a colonial, violent and criminal nature, adding that Israel waged a war on Gaza because the Palestinians hold one of its soldiers while there are more than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails.
As for trying Israeli leaders on charges of war crimes, the UN official said the UN General Assembly according to its charter has the right to form an international court to try Israeli leaders, pointing out that he will submit recommendations urging the UN to move from investigation into Israeli war crimes to the stage of leveling charges.

From: http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7U2O5W6xF%2f%2fwUtNqtg0yG2bg91fqyQLG1Dz%2bBpnF%2f3mdVgTfy9SK1KVEK6NvY7PSMXk1uqjXrPkRKskME5KW9o9yBdpWW6%2f%2fcdx2xY1T7CGE%3d

Changing the rules of war
George Bisharat, The Electronic Intifada, 2 April 2009

The extent of Israel's brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him."What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to reclassify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war -- including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects -- the standard permits far greater uses of force.Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the occupied territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced "targeted killings" since the 1970s -- always denying that it did so -- but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.Former US President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.Today, most observers -- including Amnesty International -- tacitly accept Israel's framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel's actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel's lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations.

Click here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10442.shtml to read more.

Report excoriates Israel's use of white phosphorous in Gaza
Marian Houk, The Electronic Intifada, 1 April 2009

Israel's recent use of white phosphorus bombs in densely populated areas of Gaza violated the rules of war, according to report issued by a leading human rights organization last week. The 71-pages-long Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, entitled "Rain of Fire: Israel's Unlawful Use of White Phosphorous in Gaza," states that even before the group's researchers were able to enter Gaza, they had watched from adjacent perimeter areas in Israel as white phosphorus bombs exploded in the air over densely-packed residential areas in the Gaza Strip.Israeli troops began using white phosphorus in Gaza after the ground phase of the military offensive started on 3 January, a week into the invasion of the Strip, and continued until the ceasefire two weeks later, according to HRW. The report notes that it was the first time that the Israeli military had ever used white phosphorus in the densely-populated coastal Strip, despite numerous previous ground incursions. The report also notes that Israel used white phosphorus twice in Lebanon, in 1982 and in 2006.The Israeli military was well aware of the effects of white phosphorus and the extreme danger it poses to civilians, HRW says in the report. According to the group, if the Israeli army actually intended to use white phosphorus for its obscurant effect, it could only have done so lawfully in open areas, and not in downtown Gaza City, or downtown Beit Lahiya.The report states that far safer alternatives are available -- such as the very effective smoke artillery manufactured by Israel Military Industries, that does not burn.Ground-exploded white phosphorous creates a much thicker and more effective smokescreen than shells detonated in the air, HRW says, but that was not the tactic Israeli troops employed.

Click here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10436.shtml to read more.

"Why Should Anyone Believe a Nation of Liars, War Mongers and Land Thieves?"
Posted by Greg Bacon at http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/

When a nation engages in serial lying about recent and past actions, can that nation be believed about anything?
-Lies told about the "claims" on West Bank Palestinian land they've stolen, saying the land belonged to them since the 18th Century
Lies told about the reasons for invading Gaza in 2008
-Lies told about who broke that cease-fire and the next several that were proposed Lies told about the reasons for invading Lebanon in 2006
-Lies told about the savage, brutal and unprovoked attack on the USS LibertyLies told about the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard
-Lies told about events surrounding 9/11Lies told about the AIPAC Lobby's influence on Congress
-Lies told about that stolen pension fund money that made "aliyah" to Israel in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme
-Lies told about the reasons it launched the 1967 Six Day War of Aggression against its neighbors
-Lies told about the still at large Israeli spy that has infiltrated the White House known as "Mega"
-Lies told about its involvement in getting the US to invade IraqLies now being told about the non-existent Iranian nuclear program
-Lies told about the 300 or so nukes that nation of liars, war mongers and land thieves has and is ready to use, along with lies about its robust biological and chemical weapons programs.

So why would anyone believe anything that nation of liars, war mongers and land thieves, Israel, says about the Holocaust™?

Israel accused of indiscriminate phosphorus use in Gaza
Human Rights Watch report claims Israel committed war crimes in its use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 March 2009 16.00 GMT

Israel's military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.
In a 71-page report, the rights group said the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells in populated areas of Gaza was not incidental or accidental, but revealed "a pattern or policy of conduct".
It said the Israeli military used white phosphorus in a "deliberate or reckless" way. The report says:
• Israel was aware of the dangers of white phosphorus.
• It chose not to use alternative and less dangerous smoke shells.
• In one case, Israel even ignored repeated warnings from UN staff before hitting the main UN compound in Gaza with white phosphorus shells on 15 January.

"In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops," said Fred Abrahams, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher. "It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safe smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died." He said senior commanders should be held to account.
Human Rights Watch called on the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to launch an international commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of violations of international law in the Gaza war by the Israeli military and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

Click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/25/israel-white-phosphorus-gaza to read more.

Click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/mar/26/gaza-white-phosphorus-human-rights to hear audio.

AlJazeera report from January 11 2009 on Israel's use of White Phosphorus

Gaza Tragedy Going Unreported

March 25, 2009Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reported from the Gaza Strip during Israel's 23-day offensive that ended via unilateral ceasefires in the middle of January. Here she describes what the territory is like on her return.

A porter gives me my first greeting as I cross to the Gazan side of the Erez border with Israel."You said you'd be back in a couple of weeks, it's been more than a month!"It's nice to know I have been missed. Strangely, it felt like I was coming home.In fact, it's been almost two months since I left Gaza, shortly after the end of Israel's offensive on the territory.Everything looks exactly the same. Everyone looks exactly the same and, worst of all, as I quickly discover, everyone still feels exactly the same - frustrated and isolated.In two months, there has been no reconstruction, the siege has tightened and Israel has kept its crossings with Gaza almost permanently closed.Subtle changesHowever, Israel has made subtle changes in the last few weeks.Fishermen can now fish up to three miles off the coast of Gaza only. It was double that before the war.Many of Gaza's 3,000 fishermen have given up and don't go out to work any more because the water is too crowded.Israel has closed one of the commercial crossings into Gaza for no apparent reason. The other two working crossings for goods have had more restrictions placed on their opening times.Humanitarian aid is still dripping in - about 100 trucks a day - but supplies fall well short of what Gaza needs. And 50,000 people have no clean water. Gaza City experiences electricity cuts of up to 12 hours a day.As disappointed as I was with the lack of reconstruction, it is not surprising - what is surprising is the lack of foreign journalists in Gaza. Again.When I left after the war, there were 400 international journalists covering this "uncovered" story.Complaining they had been locked out, forced to report on Gaza from the periphery. They came, they saw and they left - story over?There is no military operation in Gaza, but there is still a tragedy taking place worth reporting. It's the same story it has been for two years: siege, occupation, violence, the strangulation of a population.They ignored it before the war and they are ignoring it again now. I'm not sure why I am so surprised.Nowhere to goOne thing that is new are the tents ... tents, tents everywhere - every size, every colour and they have one thing in common ... none are withstanding the terrible weather.Over the past few days there have been severe gales and low temperatures and the tents are falling like paper.And in Gaza, when your tent is blown away, there is not much anyone can do for you.Now 100,000 people are homeless and what strikes me as so unfair is that they are not even allowed to be refugees.Not allowed to flee the war zone and start afresh, in a different place as other people caught in other conflicts are permitted.They are living on top or underneath or beside or even inside what is left of their homes.The same homes that hold such painful memories of Israel's 23-day onslaught.That is where they are forced to live in their tents.And those are the luckier ones.

An Army of Extremists
By Christopher Hitchens

March 25, 2009 "Slate" -- Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.
I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army "chaplain" in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as "the enemies of Israel." Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, "Germans." There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi's exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General's Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich's support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army's behalf.
The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a "political" statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It's not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:
Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, "You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord's community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man."
Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.

Click here: http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/to read more

Incriminating Evidence Of Israeli War Crimes
By Stephen Lendman3-25-9

Throughout its history, Israel has willfully and repeatedly committed crimes of war and against humanity, always with impunity. Yet under customary legal standards and norms (including Geneva, Hague, the UN Charter, S.C. and G.A. resolutions), it's lawless, a serial abuser, a threat to the region and humanity, mostly as an oppressive occupier. Attacking Gaza is the latest episode in its six-decade reign of terror satisfying the definition of genocide against defenseless Palestinian civilians. This article covers more evidence from some disturbing but unsurprising newly published information.

On March 19, in the first of a series of articles, Haaretz headlined: "IDF killed civilians in Gaza under loose rules of engagement." Military correspondent Amos Harel revealed Israeli soldier and pilot ("dirty secret") testimonies of being ordered to kill unarmed civilians and destroy their property - accounts at variance with official claims that only military targets were attacked and that "Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation." Defense Minister Ehud Barak calls the IDF "the most moral army in the world."

"Moral" examples included an infantry squad leader recounting the shooting of a mother and her two children: "There was a house with a family inside....We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family....The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left," after which a rooftop sniper "shot them straight away....I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he (followed orders, and, besides, Palestinian lives are) less important" than our own soldiers.

Other incidents included:

-- a squad leader telling of a company commander ordering an elderly Palestinian woman to be shot and killed;

-- soldiers saying "we should kill everyone (in the center of Gaza); everyone there is a terrorist;"

-- soldiers writing "death to the Arabs on walls" and spitting on family pictures;

-- a squad leader saying: "At the beginning, the directive was to enter a house with an armored vehicle, break the door down, (and) start shooting inside - I call it murder - to shoot at everyone we identify;" commanders called it OK "because everyone left in the city is culpable because they didn't run away;"

-- soldiers ordered to indiscriminately destroy property and farmland;

-- orders given to enter a house, "switch on loudspeakers and tell (occupants) you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed;"

Click here: http://www.rense.com/general85/incrim.htm to read more.

Will Israel Be Brought To Book?
The evidence of war crimes in Gaza is a challenge to universal justice: will western-backed perpetrators ever stand trial?
By Seumas Milne

March 23, 2009 "The Guardian" -- - Evidence of the scale of Israel's war crimes in its January onslaught on Gaza is becoming unanswerable. Clancy Chassay's three films investigating allegations against Israeli forces in the Gaza strip, released by the Guardian today, include important new accounts of the flagrant breaches of the laws of war that marked the three-week campaign – now estimated to have left at least 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 13 Israelis dead.
The films provide compelling testimony of Israel's use of Palestinian teenagers as human shields; the targeting of hospitals, clinics and medical workers, including with phosphorus bombs; and attacks on civilians, including women and children – sometimes waving white flags – from hunter-killer drones whose targeting systems are so powerful they can identify the colour of a person's clothes.
Naturally, the Israeli occupation forces' spokesperson insists to Chassay that they make every effort to avoid killing civilians and denies using human shields or targeting medical workers – while at the same time explaining that medics in war zones "take the risk upon themselves". By banning journalists from entering Gaza during its punitive devastation of the strip, the Israeli government avoided independent investigations of the stream of war crimes accusations while the attack was going on.
But now journalists and human rights organisations are back inside, doing the painstaking work, the question is whether Israel's government and military commanders will be held to account for what they unleashed on the Palestinians of Gaza – or whether, like their US and British sponsors in Iraq and Afghanistan, they can carry out war crimes with impunity.
It's not as if Clancy's reports are unique or uncorroborated by other evidence. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that a group of Israelis soldiers had admitted intentionally shooting dead an unarmed Palestinian mother and her two children, as well as an elderly Palestinian woman, in Gaza in January. As one explained: "The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way".

Click here: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22285.htm to read more.

Israel’s War Crimes

Israel blamed its earlier wars on the threat to its security, even that against Lebanon in 1982. However, its assault on Gaza was not justified and there are international calls for an investigation. But is there the political will to make Israel account for its war crimes?
By Richard Falk

March 21, 2009 "Le Monde diplomatique" -- -For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world. Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states – especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States – has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability. To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests.In my view, what made the Gaza attacks launched on 27 December different from the main wars fought by Israel over the years was that the weapons and tactics used devastated an essentially defenceless civilian population. The one-sidedness of the encounter was so stark, as signalled by the relative casualties on both sides (more than 100 to 1; 1300-plus Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis, and several of these by friendly fire), that most commentators refrained from attaching the label “war”.The Israelis and their friends talk of “retaliation” and “the right of Israel to defend itself”. Critics described the attacks as a “massacre” or relied on the language of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the past Israeli uses of force were often widely condemned, especially by Arab governments, including charges that the UN Charter was being violated, but there was an implicit acknowledgement that Israel was using force in a war mode. War crimes charges (to the extent they were made) came only from radical governments and the extreme left.The early Israeli wars were fought against Arab neighbours which were quite literally challenging Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state. The outbreaks of force were of an inter-governmental nature; and even when Israel exhibited its military superiority in the June 1967 six day war, it was treated within the framework of normal world politics, and though it may have been unlawful, it was not criminal.But from the 1982 Lebanon war this started to change. The main target then was the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in southern Lebanon. But the war is now mainly remembered for its ending, with the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Although this atrocity was the work of a Lebanese Christian militia, Israeli acquiescence, control and complicity were clearly part of the picture. Still, this was an incident which, though alarming, was not the whole of the military operation, which Israel justified as necessary due to the Lebanese government’s inability to prevent its territory from being used to threaten Israeli security.

Click here: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22264.htm to read more.

Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles – the dreaded drones – caused at least 48 deaths in Gaza during the 23-day offensive
Clancy Chassay

Mounir al-Jarah slowly takes down the bricks he used to wall up the entrance to his sister's courtyard. Inside, flesh still clings to the walls; blood-soaked furniture and family items lie broken and mangled.
Mounir's eyes search around the old house as he recounts the events of 16 January, when a rocket fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle killed his sister, her husband and four of her children.
Sitting around drinking tea with the family in their small courtyard, Mounir heard the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone, clearly visible in the sky above.
He went inside for a moment and, as he returned, he saw a ball of light hurtling down toward him. There was a loud explosion and he was thrown backward. He gathered himself and stumbled out into the courtyard, where he saw the scene he says will never leave him.
"We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt – his eyes were gone. Wahid's father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn't see her head anywhere."
All six members of the family had been blown to pieces, coating each wall of the narrow enclosure with blood and body matter.
"You cannot imagine the scene: a family all sitting around together and then, in a matter of seconds, they were cut to pieces. Even the next day we found limbs and body parts on the roof, feet and hands," Mounir says.

Civilian casualties from Israeli drones Link to this video

Click here: http://uruknet.info/?p=m52863&hd=&size=1&l=e to read more.