Eh Din condemns the armed agression unleashed by the Zionist leaders of Israel against the peoples of Palestine. We call upon all the peace loving and democratic people of the world to support the Palestinaian and Israeli people in their just stand against the unbridled terror of the Israeli military; the destruction of roads, bridges, power stations and other buildings. We condemn the massacre of innocent civilians and the kidnapping of democratically elected officials in the West Bank. We demand that the Government of Israel be held to account for its crimes against humanity.
Criminal Israeli Assault on Gaza
Israelis Terrorize Civilians,Vandalize Media, Bomb Charities (Palestine Media Center)
Palestinians Prepare for Peace, Israelis Practice War (Raji Sourani)
The Score: 9,000 Prisoners to 1? (James Brooks)
And Israel Shall Be Safe Again (Ramzy Baroud)
Criminal Israeli Assault on Gaza
Since the Israel began its criminal military assault on Gaza June 28, the occupation forces have bombed water pipelines and the principal electricity station, leaving the majority of the population without electricity. Until July 2 when Israel temporarily re-opened its main cargo crossing into Gaza, no shipments of food, fuel and medical supplies were allowed in. Several bridges connecting the north and south of the Strip have been bombed while portions of Palestinian territory have been reoccupied. The Interior Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office have also been bombed while high-ranking figures from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank have been detained, including cabinet ministers, MPs and a number of elected mayors. Parts of northern Gaza have now been reoccupied using armoured vehicles, including the sites of three former Israeli settlements. Furthermore, Israel violated Syrian airspace by provocatively flying over the summer home of President Bashar Al-Assad while he was in residence.
The Israeli assault -- called "Operation Summer Rains" -- involves some 5,000 soldiers, hundreds of tanks and other military hardware including low-flying F-16 fighter jets that are purposely causing sonic booms to terrorize the population. Israel used the capture of an Israeli soldier on June 25 by the Palestinian resistance as an excuse to launch this brutal attack. However, many point out that the capture of the soldier is a pretext for an attack that has been in the works for weeks, if not months, as evidenced by the rapid mobilization of occupation troops instead of using diplomatic means to resolve the issue. Israel has also called for foreign citizens and journalists to leave Gaza as it plans to intensify the assault.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh condemned the attack as a war crime and called on the United Nations and all its institutions to immediately intervene and put an end to the Israeli atrocities. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the invasion is a crime against humanity and collective punishment against the Palestinian people.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said the assault was a planned attempt to undermine the Palestinian presidency and government. "Israel already succeeded in demolishing Gaza's economy by enforcing a siege against the territory following its withdrawal. Now it appears to be following that up by destroying its civil infrastructure and political institutions. It is the responsibility of all civilized peoples and governments to demand an immediate end to this Israeli assault on the basic rights of the Palestinian people," he said.
Arab and Islamic nations renewed efforts at the United Nations for a Security Council resolution demanding that Israel immediately pull out of Gaza and release all Palestinian officials it has kidnapped.
Ambassadors from the 57 countries making up the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) met in New York to adopt a statement condemning Israel's military assault in Gaza and its arrest and detention of Palestinian officials. It called on the UN Security Council to "act promptly" to pressure Israel to "cease its aggression" against Palestinian civilians and seek emergency aid for Gaza.
Arab and Islamic groups at the UN have approved a draft resolution proposed by the delegations of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. It was presented to the Secretary of UN Human Rights Council to make it an official document to be submitted to the Council's extraordinary meeting to study Israel violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories. The draft calls for stopping the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip as well as halting the continued Israeli violations against Palestinians, and condemning Israeli arrests of Palestinian officials and ministers.
Demonstrations against the attack have also been held in cities around the world. Iranian officials denounced the assault and criticized the big powers for claiming to support democracy but rejecting the democratically-elected Palestinian government. The Yemeni government denounced the attack as a "terrorist aggression." Jordan, Malaysia, Venezuela and Cuba also denounced the assault. Brazilian media reported that the Israeli ambassador was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Relations to inform her of the Brazilian government's "extreme concern."
Meanwhile, Canada, the U.S. and the European Union are issuing statements aimed at disinforming public opinion; they call on "both sides" to show restraint, making it an issue of the captured soldier and not Israel's genocidal policy to dispossess and eliminate the Palestinian people.
Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay stated: "Canada is concerned about the escalation in violence and urges all sides to act with restraint and take all measures possible to protect innocent civilian lives and reduce tensions.... We understand the gravity of this situation for Israel and recognize its right to protect its citizens."
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner stated: "All sides need to consider their responsibilities extremely carefully. Both sides must step back from the brink before this becomes a crisis that neither can control."
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said: "Israel has the right to defend itself and the lives of its citizens. In any actions the government of Israel may undertake, the United States urges that it ensures that innocent civilians are not harmed, and also that it avoid the unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure. All parties ought to take every measure to restore the security situation in Gaza."
Such statements cover up that the very aim is to destroy the infrastructure in Gaza, undermine and paralyze the Palestinian government and collectively punish the Palestinian people for not giving up their resistance and defending their right to self-determination and to live with dignity. Again and again Israel is allowed to act with impunity -- arrogantly flouting international law and countless United Nations resolutions -- based on the economic, military and political support it receives from the U.S., the big European powers and countries like Canada. It must not pass!
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Israelis Terrorize Civilians,
Vandalize Media, Bomb Charities
- Palestine Media Center, July 3, 2006 -
Using the release of the Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit as a pretext, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his occupation forces to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, terrorize Palestinian civilians with sonic booms, thin them to starvation, disrupt traffic, electricity supply, and access to water, bomb soccer fields, schools, TV stations, cultural centers and charities, vandalize hospitals, and in mafia-style kidnap cabinet ministers, mayors and parliamentarians, revoke Palestinian residency in Jerusalem, and bomb the offices of the prime minister and the interior minister.
Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday: "I take personal responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. I want no one to sleep at night in Gaza."
Israel kidnapped on June 28 about 100 members of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers, legislators and senior officials, the Government of Israel acknowledged in a statement on Thursday.
Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Nasseruddin Al-Shae'r was not among those kidnapped as was initially reported on Thursday.
Al-Shae'r said Wednesday the Israeli invasion of Gaza could not have been launched without a U.S. green light.
Israel's deputy Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, said on Sunday his country would prosecute the kidnapped Palestinian government officials: "They will be put to trial," he told CNN.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) pushed their tanks and troops backed by warplanes into northern Gaza Strip overnight Monday in the second stage of "Operation Summer Rains," which began at midnight on Tuesday, and shootouts were reported with Palestinian defenders.
Christer Nordahl, the deputy director UNRWA, told Reuters Sunday: "We estimate that 25,000 people could be forced to flee Beit Hanoun if Israel attacks in the north" of Gaza Strip.
The IOF shot dead four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip Monday, including two in the vicinity of the Israeli-reoccupied Gaza airport. Another Palestinian wounded in an Israeli air strike died of his wounds in Gaza early in the day. An Israeli warplane the same day targeted a car in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, killing one Palestinian.
Israeli air and artillery attacks began shortly after Cpl Gilad Shalit, 19, was captured in a daring Palestinian attack on an IOF military base on June 25.
Israel's General Security Service (Shin Bet) head, Yuval Diskin, told the cabinet meeting on Sunday that the Israeli operations in Gaza "could take weeks or even months."
Israeli aircraft sent missiles tearing through the office of Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, on Sunday. Israeli warplanes bombed a building of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior at dawn Sunday, killing a night guard in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accompanied by Haniyeh inspected the rubble of the premiership building on Monday.
Abbas on Wednesday condemned the Israeli invasion of Gaza as a "crime against humanity" and a "collective punishment" against the Palestinian people.
IOF sealed off and banned entry to and exit from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, besieging Abbas, Haniyeh and top officials of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) as leading anti-occupation activists went underground.
Abbas however told reporters that he had no intention to leave Gaza until the Israeli invasion stops.
Palestinians in Gaza Strip are preparing for what they feared could be a long Israeli invasion, and tried despite their meager resources amid an exacerbating food and humanitarian crisis to stock up on food, candles and batteries for radios.
Closure of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt for the 6th consecutive day is stranding more than 4,000 Palestinians in two Egyptian towns.
UN's World Food Programme (WFP) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Israel Friday to allow urgent medical and food supplies into Gaza Strip.
Israel on Friday revoked the Jerusalem residency of four Palestinian lawmakers, including a Cabinet minister, Israel's Interior Ministry said.
The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was scheduled to convene in an emergency session in Ramallah and Gaza on Monday to debate the deteriorating situation in the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in 1967.
Israeli War on Infrastructure
"Israel is now openly engaged in infrastructure warfare, the wanton destruction of the basic platforms of human survival," Mike Whitney wrote on Monday.
IOF warplanes bombed the soccer field of the Islamic University in Gaza late Wednesday after destroying the only power plant in the strip early in the day, plunging Gaza Strip into darkness and depriving about one million Palestinians from electricity for months to come, hitting very hard not only households but also hospitals and schools.
Water supplies were also cut early Wednesday by bombing water pipelines, after destroying three bridges linking the south and north of the Gaza Strip.
Al-Arqam school, a cultural center and a charity in Gaza city were bombed to rubble by the IOF warplanes.
The IOF also damaged the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children's facilities in Gaza City. When IOF warplanes caused massive sonic booms and nearby explosions in air strikes, the windows of the Palestinian NGO's building shattered. As a result, several deaf vocational trainees were injured from the shattered glass.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights six power transformers were destroyed, which provide an estimated 45 per cent of the electricity in Gaza for approximately half the population.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Gaza Electrical Distribution Company estimates it will take nine months to procure replacement transformers.
The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility manages the 132 water wells in Gaza, which is powered by GEDCO. Since back-up generators are needed to keep water flowing, there is concern about the financial and physical stability of using back-up generators because the IOF closed off the energy pipeline into Gaza.
The Associated Press reported that the "Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed the Gaza Strip and began razing farmland east of Khan Younis."
When the tanks withdrew from a spot of a farm land in A'basan in the southern Gaza Strip, they left a trail of destruction in their wake, AFP reported Monday.
Palestinian families, uprooted from their homes during Saturday's day-long operation, returned after dawn to ransacked homes. Israeli tanks and bulldozers had destroyed storehouses, knocked down bedroom walls and uprooted olive trees.
Soldiers battered down doors and upturned furniture in what an IOF spokeswoman said was an attempt to locate a tunnel Palestinians were reportedly digging towards Israeli positions along the Gaza border east of the city of Khan Younis.
Terrorizing Civilians
Israel is deploying a terrifying new tactic against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip by letting loose deafening "sound bombs" that cause widespread fear, induce miscarriages and traumatize children.
The Palestinian health ministry says the sonic booms have led to miscarriages and heart problems. The United Nations has demanded an end to the tactic, saying it causes panic attacks in children. The shockwaves have also damaged buildings by cracking walls and smashing thousands of windows.
"I have never heard such a loud explosion. I thought it was right over the top of my building," said the owner, Tareq Dayyeh. "Sometimes you hear the rockets the Israelis fire but this was different. I felt like I was in the middle of a bomb. When I ran out the door I thought I might find the rest of the street was gone."
Sonic booms are caused by aircraft when the fly beyond the sound barrier. When a warplane flies at low altitudes above civilian populations, the terrorizing sound as the aircraft "wakes" traumatizes children (Donald Macintyre, November 2005) and causes infrastructure damage.
Last year the petition filed by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reported an increase in miscarriages from sonic booms as well.
War on Charities
Meanwhile the IOF were raiding, confiscating and sealing off several institutions and humanitarian services charities in several West Bank cities, towns and refugee camps, in Jenin and Bethlehem on Sunday and in Jericho on Monday.
The IOF troops were also vandalizing media outlets and hospitals.
On Monday they raided a local newspaper in Ramallah and the Nablus local TV station.
Separately, according to Ynet, the IOF soldiers caused a great deal of damage to the Nablus hospital property while searching for a suspect whom they failed to detain.
Palestinian sources in the hospital told Ynet that soldiers destroyed equipment and caused severe damage during the search. Activists from Physicians for Human Rights said that during the search, soldiers made all the hospital employees assemble on one floor and interrupted their work.
The Israeli Physicians for Human Rights organization condemned the soldiers' conduct in the hospital. The organization stated that, "Hospitals and hospital staff must be excluded from all military operations."
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Palestinians Prepare for Peace, Israelis Practice War
- Raji Sourani*, Electronic Indifada, July 2, 2006 -
As the Palestinian factions prepare for peace, the Israeli military has continued to commit grave breaches of international law and inflict further suffering against the civilian population of the OPT.
For the past three and a half years Israel has worked to isolate the Palestinian people by refusing to recognise their legitimate representatives (the PLO) as partners for peace. This strategy of unilateralism has taken place while very positive developments have taken place on the Palestinian side. In the past week these developments have included:
- Acceptance of the Prisoners' Peace Plan by both HAMAS and Fatah;
- The three conditions set by the EU/USA have been met and accepted;
- An agreement, for the resolution of the internal disputes, has been reached.
Accordingly the only remaining obstacle to full implementation of the internationally accepted desire to see a Palestinian state are the Israeli authorities, who have continued their attacks on the Gaza Strip since implementation of the unilateral Disengagement Plan in September 2005. One of the most notable of these attacks was the recent killing of seven members of the same family on a beach in the northern Gaza Strip. The constant Israeli assaults on civilians in the Gaza Strip has provoked a response from the Palestinian resistance, such as the military operation at Kerem Shalom on the border between Gaza and Israel. During this operation one Israeli soldier was captured and taken prisoner.
Upon the capture of the Israeli soldier, Israel did not seek to engage with the Palestinians, preferring instead to unilaterally take military action to recover the captured soldier.
When undertaking military action, Israel is obliged to act within the confines of the Fourth Geneva Convention and to apply the principles of proportionality and distinction. Instead the Israeli military has inflicted a policy of collective punishment against the impoverished civilian population of the OPT:
- Gaza has been completely sealed off from the outside world for people and goods, including basic humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine;
- The main power station in Gaza, a private civilian facility, was destroyed by an Israeli missile attack -- this has resulted in 80% of the population being denied electricity. Electricity is also essential for powering water pumps and sanitation facilities. The power station will take six months to repair;
- The three main bridges in Gaza, connecting the north and the south of the Strip, were destroyed by further Israeli missile attacks. Consequently, the north and south of Gaza have been isolated from each other in a fashion reminiscent of Israel's policy throughout the al Aqsa intifada;
- Israeli warplanes (F16s) and Apache Helicopter gunships are constantly in the skies over Gaza and have been carrying out bombardment of the densely populated civilian areas, including using one tonne bombs;
- F16s have been flying low and breaking the sound barrier over Gaza, causing "sonic booms" that are as loud as actual bombardments. These sonic booms have caused widespread terror among the population, particularly among children, the infirm and the elderly. The timing of the sonic booms has been designed to terrorise the general population;
- 200-300 artillery shells per day are being pounded into the northern part of the Gaza Strip, many of them as little as 200 metres away from the homes of Palestinian civilian families;
- Most of the HAMAS leadership in the West Bank has been detained, including eight government ministers and twenty-five members of the Palestinian Legislative Council;
- Due to the siege imposed on Gaza it will run out of the depleted emergency supplies of fuel within days. This means that hospitals, water supplies, and sewage treatment will all be affected as emergency power generators grind to a halt. This will cause a further deepening of the already catastrophic humanitarian situation.
The scale and type of the Israeli military operations indicate that this operation was premeditated, and must have been planned for some time. On a number of occasions, in the run-up and aftermath of the redeployment from Gaza, the Israeli military threatened to initiate a full-scale ground operation similar to Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in 2002.
In the past number of months Israel has employed a number of measures to bring down the HAMAS government: the economic blackmail and sanctions against the Palestinian Authority as punishment for the Palestinians' exercise of their democratic rights; the ongoing isolation imposed on the Gaza Strip since the Israeli "disengagement" in 2005; the withholding of Palestinian tax revenues by the Israeli authorities; the international political boycott of the legitimately elected HAMAS government. Fuelled by the failure of these measures to bring about the desired result, Israel chose a military option.
The U.S. has continued to offer protection to Israel for these ongoing activities while the EU has steadfastly maintained its conspiracy of silence against the Palestinian people -- both continue to maintain economic blackmail and sanctions against the Palestinian people.
Palestinians cannot be expected to become "good victims" and to remain silent or inactive in the face of these provocations and the grave breaches of international law. Since 1967 Palestinians have called for an immediate end to this belligerent occupation and the comprehensive implementation of international humanitarian law.
By continuing to support Israel the EU/USA are creating an environment conducive to the rule of jungle not the rule of law. They have brought the rules of Bin Laden -- not the rules of international humanitarian law. Thus, anyone who qualifies as a protected person under international humanitarian law is at a serious risk in the current environment.
Accordingly Israel's so-called "Operation Summer Rain" won't see clean water falling on the Gaza Strip but will swell the river of mud flowing through the area. Israel's operation will therefore perpetuate the violence to produce a long, hot, filthy summer of human rights violations across the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
* Raji Sourani is a human rights lawyer in the Gaza Strip and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
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The Score: 9,000 Prisoners to 1?
Destroying the Gaza Strip
James Brooks*, CounterPunch, July 4, 2006
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost no time in exploiting Hamas' capture of an Israeli soldier to justify Israel's long-planned re-occupation of the Gaza Strip and mass arrest of the Hamas leadership. In his haste, he has inadvertently achieved a rare thing. He has managed to reduce the absurdity of Israel's position to a known ratio: 9000 to 1.
Nine thousand captured Palestinians languish in Israel's notorious "security prisons," including 380 children and 115 women. Every day Israeli troops and Border Police kidnap, interrogate, torture and imprison Palestinians, often by the dozen. The arrest raids never stop, regardless of summits, truces, or cease-fires. It is estimated that 650,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel since the current occupation began in 1967.
Arrest and incarceration is such a common experience that it has become a virtual rite of passage for Palestinian boys; men go to prison. In the past year we've read several reports of pre-teen boys, some as young as 8, approaching Israeli soldiers and asking, even begging, to be arrested.
But God forbid that even one of Israel's tender teen warriors should be captured in battle, as young Gilat Shalit was. That would be going too far. That would justify blowing up key bridges and destroying the electricity source of two-thirds of the Gaza Strip. Columns of invading tanks and scores of U.S-supplied jet fighters and combat helicopters would be required to hunt for the missing soldier, and attack the Palestinian Interior Ministry. From top to bottom, little Gaza would be subjected to yet another round of fierce shelling from land, air, and sea. All in a day's hunt.
After years of bargaining with Hizbullah "terrorists" over prisoners captured during Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Israelis know that this hysteria over a single soldier is only a ruse. But that doesn't stop them from falling for it all over again, and Olmert appears to have public support for his new version of total war on the Gaza Strip, cynically code named "Operation Summer Rains." The score is 9000 to 1 and the Israelis are outraged. It should be 9000 to 0.
Accelerating Humanitarian Catastrophe
The western world seemed surprised by the scale and severity of Israel's collective punishment. As if it could join the war on Hamas by destroying Palestine's economy and not also encourage lawless Israel to destroy Hamas by any means necessary.
European and UN diplomats have expressed concern that the economic siege is succeeding too quickly. The fundamentals of social order and sheer survival in the occupied territories are collapsing sooner than anticipated, while the band-aid of humanitarian aid promised by the Quartet remains on the drawing board, largely due to persistent U.S. obstruction.
In 2003, international aid agencies compared the economy of the occupied Gaza Strip to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Malnutrition was endemic, poverty rates were over 50 percent, and unemployment was chronically high.
It is far worse today. Prior to this week's operation, Gaza faced a "humanitarian catastrophe" according to the UN and others. The international economic embargo has compounded the damage already inflicted by Israel's repeated closures of Gaza's borders, which have been shut more than they've been open this year. Most of an entire harvest has rotted while awaiting shipment. For several months Gaza has been living a hand-to-mouth existence. More than once the Strip has run out of critical staples like flour, sugar, and salt.
Now more than 800,000 people have no electricity. The Israeli attack on the central substation's transformer was precisely devastating -- repairs are expected to take several months. For most, no power means no water.
Perhaps Israel disagreed with its European allies. Perhaps it decided the Palestinians weren't starving fast enough, so thirst, disease, and heat prostration had to be added to "the mix" of tactics to "persuade" the Palestinian people to abandon the government they elected.
The citizens of Gaza now have no access to the outside world, very little food and water, no fuel, and little or no electricity, refrigeration, and air conditioning in the middle of a brutally hot summer. The Israeli army is back in force, a third of the bankrupt Palestinian Legislative Council is in Israeli jails, and the unpaid and unsupplied health care system has essentially collapsed.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who is responsible for the day-to-day operations of this expanding nightmare, has assured us that he is a "man who seeks peace...I do not look forward to battle." When this Moroccan-born labor leader and Peace Now member took the helm of Israel's Labor Party last year, he was greeted with a blizzard of liberal hosannas hailing a political "earthquake," the return of Israel's peace movement, and other wonders.
As if Israel's aspiring politicians hadn't always climbed to the top on the backs of dead Palestinians. Now the peaceful Mr. Peretz is indictable for war crimes perpetrated in the planning and conduct of Operation Summer Rain. He is on his way.
Dangers of the Peace Process
In its latest step up the escalator of compound violence, Israel has deployed a new blunt instrument to ensure that "there is no partner for peace." Now, if it decides it doesn't like a Palestinian diplomat, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar for example, it can simply imprison him on terrorism charges. And if it doesn't like the results of a free and fair Palestinian election, it can simply kidnap the elected government. This week, more than 60 Hamas party members of the Palestinian government have been arrested, including the heads of several ministries.
One challenge in following and predicting the path of Israel's foreign policy is that one can never be sure whether the next move will be a diplomatic proposal or an assassination.
The murders of Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte in 1948 and Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin in 2004 (and probably Yasser Arafat, as well) bookend more than five decades of chronically violent diplomatic relations, in which the assassination of difficult leaders has always been an option.
It was recently revealed that in 1953, future Prime Minister Menachem Begin directed a failed plot to assassinate West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, simply to stop a reparations agreement the Chancellor was negotiating with the Israeli government.
True to form, Israel has now delivered a letter to PA President Mahmoud Abbas in which it threatens to assassinate Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh if Gilat Shalit is not released unharmed.
So now it's a soldier for a prime minister. Any equation can be made, as long as it is wildly disproportionate and morally untenable. The point is always the same: the life of a Palestinian is barely worth consideration in comparison to the life of a Jew. Their value belongs to a different order of magnitude. A number of Israeli rabbis question the very humanity of Palestinians. While attempting to apologize for the recent deaths of 14 Palestinian civilians by Israeli shelling, Mr. Olmert reportedly asserted that "threatened" Israeli lives are "even more important."
How can Israel deliberately destroy the economy and critical infrastructure of a starving people, arrest their government, and threaten to assassinate their leader, while the "international community" does nothing?
The U.S. government's determination to join Israel in destroying the Palestinians is obvious. Perhaps the EU's obsession with gathering Israel into its future Mediterranean empire has shriveled its moral obligation to the Palestinians down to spare change and servings of Javier Solana's hypocrisy.
Or maybe today's moral paralysis is the cumulative effect of doing nothing to stop Israel's crimes for the past fifty-eight years. Perhaps moral cowardice grows with repetition, until war crimes become an "understandable and measured response" and fascism is welcome at the front door. Whatever the causes, the trend seems clear: International law is dying with the Palestinians.
* James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.
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And Israel Shall Be Safe Again
- Ramzy Baroud, July 5, 2006 -
The June 25 Palestinian fighters' raid on an Israeli military post near the Gaza-Egypt border has sent Israel "scrambling to defend itself," the voice of a BBC news reporter declared on the evening news.
The report was followed by an unchallenging interview with a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, then another with an Israeli daily newspaper reporter in Washington. No Palestinian voice was heard for days. The two Israelis communicated the same, tired, albeit ominous discourse that seems to understand, thus convey any event based on the misguided assumption that only Israeli lives matter.
There was hardly any international news source in English -- including those originating from Middle Eastern Arab countries -- that accepted the Palestinian predawn attack on the Israeli military base as a clear act of retaliation and a dignified one at that. After all, Israel has murdered scores of Palestinian civilians in the last few weeks, while Palestinians have refrained from following the same course, instead targeting the same Israeli soldiers who have inflicted untold hurt on the residents of Gaza.
Could it be possible that Middle East arms of major news media have mistakenly overlooked what has been happening in the Gaza Strip since the supposed Israeli withdrawal in September 2005?
It all started with extremely loud sonic booms, mock bombardments and Israeli fighter jets flying low over the overpopulated and impoverished Gaza Strip. Palestinians called on the international community to interfere to stop Israeli provocations. Their calls, as usual, fell on deaf ears
With such scare tactics, Israel wished to convey to Palestinians a loud and clear message: there is nothing for you to celebrate; we're still the masters of your destiny, and unlike the South Lebanon 2000 withdrawal, we are leaving Gaza triumphantly, and possibly just temporarily.
Soon, Israel's mock attacks became more genuine, while the international community continued to turn a blind eye to what would soon become another routine in 'liberated' Gaza. As far the media was concerned, there was hardly much to report, since Hamas, along with other Palestinian factions refused to respond to the provocations with violent retaliation, confining themselves to a unilateral ceasefire they'd reached with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo earlier.
Fed up the with the Palestinian response -- or lack thereof -- Israeli officials coupled their scare tactics with menacing, specific threats, with a bottom line that no Palestinian was immune from Israeli targeted assassinations. Indeed, they lived up to their words.
In an interesting turn of events, Hamas won the parliamentary elections in January 2006 in an astounding display of transparency and democratic process. John Hughes of the Christian Science Monitor echoed the mainstream media line that something went horribly wrong in the Middle East and that the "Hamas victory is a setback" to whatever imaginary peace process Hughes knows of.
Comforted by the unconditional support of the U.S. government, Israel's violent intimidation and scare tactics became much more abound. This time however, the Israeli war on the Palestinians became an extension of an international one, led by the United States along with the ever-compliant United Nations and European Union. While Western donors held back their aid to the point of creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the Occupied Territories, the U.S. led a campaign of political coercion -- in a rare display of unity between Democrats and Republicans and all of "Israel's friends" in the media.
Western media quickly coined various mantras to justify why ordinary Palestinians must suffer for choosing a parliament in a democratic election: because Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and renounces violence, among other pretexts that seem to fit so well in Israel's political agenda. Top Israeli government advisor Dov Weissglas, optimistic as he had always been, wished to see the humor in starving Palestinians. The economic siege "is like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won't starve to death."
Apparently Israel was enjoying the show: getting the world to punish an occupied nation while completely losing sight of Israel’s colonial expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is the most fitting manifestation of the proverbial dream come true. Of course, Israel can never be content with such limited roles. It was time to turn up the heat one more notch; the sporadic violence was about to be upgraded to intense violence, reaching Palestinian civilians of all ages. In the matter of seven weeks, ending on June 21 with the killing of a pregnant woman, her unborn child and her brother and injuring 14 of the same family -- Israel had killed 90 Palestinians, the great majority of whom were civilians. They included the killing of seven members of the same family while picnicking at a beach near the small Gaza town of Beit Lahia on June 9.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz justified the wanton killing of civilians, along with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as an unintended mistake, vowing to continue to fight 'terrorists' who fire homemade rockets against the neighboring Israeli town of Sderot. In the same period in which 90 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more maimed and wounded, Israeli army radio reported one injury resulting from rocket fire. No other source has confirmed the lone injury claim.
However, Western media, including the BBC, is incessantly determined to equate blowing up Palestinian families with Israeli allegations of Palestinian rocket attacks: it's a tit for tat, or so it seems. It’s equally valid, according to ignorant media dictates, to starve a nation because its government refuses to recognize its military occupier.
The U.S. administration defended the June 9 murder of a Gaza family as an Israeli right to defend itself. BBC International refused to see the Palestinian attack on an Israeli military installation on June 25, as a Palestinian right to self-defense. To the contrary, it was Israel who once again went "scrambling to defend itself." It's unclear how many Palestinians must die before Israel delivers a convincing "blow" to its unruly neighbors, and before life goes back to the way it was intended to be: Palestinians being starved, humiliated and slaughtered at the hands of Israel in their dissolute Gaza ghettos. Only then, shall Israel be safe once more
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