42 killed by Israeli fire at UN school in Jabaliya Refugee Camp
Forces killed at least 42 Palestinians at a UN school housing displaced people in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip late on Tuesday afternoon, medical officials confirmed. According to initial reports, the school was destroyed, collapsing on top of Palestinians who took shelter inside from the intense bombardment by Israeli air and ground forces.
10 IOF troops killed and 30 others wounded
At least 10 IOF soldiers were killed and 30 others were wounded, Monday night, when Qassam fighters lured them in a trap. Qassam sources told PIC correspondent that the fighters managed to lure a group of infantry elite soldiers into a booby-trapped building in the northern Gaza Strip, detonated the explosives planted in the building and clashed with the soldiers until helicopters arrived and bombed the area around the building to evacuate the dead and injured soldiers.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7EeigGkBiArjE0upA2v6zpiMcJAA%2b1SLXU48fMdMMEkH8pWXMDJQ9GJbkRu3FS%2bstwqTCFgbpWEHiDF59KzebhtFnQ9ReNOaP5LqJWf14Hic%3d
3 soldiers killed
According to the IDF Spokesman's Unit, the grave incident occurred when a tank accidentally fired a live round at a building which the troops, who were on patrol in the area, were in. IDF explored the possibility that the building collapsed due to the detonation of explosives in it – an option which was ruled out as the details of the incident unfolded.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651165,00.html
Infant lightly hurt in rocket attack on Gedera
Grad fired from northern Gaza explodes near house; three-month-old girl hurt, several people treated for shock. Earlier, rockets fired at Netivot, Eshkol Regional Council.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651267,00.html
Gaza babies at risk of hypothermia
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=29578
Israel closes in on Gaza City
Witnesses report big explosions and intense fighting near centre of the city.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/20091603745328330.html
Israel's Ground Invasion Leading To Higher Civilian Casualties
At least 540 people have been killed in the territory in the last 10 days, with more than 80 deaths reported since the Israeli ground offensive began on Saturday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200915143237167997.html
URGENT! Report from Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza - Bomb Blows Hole in Hospital Wall; No Electricity, No Water, Streets Covered in Blood
I was able to speak to Suhalia Tarazi, Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this morning. I took notes and I am sharing with you as best I can her situation in Gaza: "The situation is terrible. The injured are in their homes and unable to get to the hospital and the International Red Cross can't reach them. Gaza is now divided into three areas. 20% of the staff including 2 doctors are now unable to get to the hospital. Unfortunately a bomb went off in Jerusalem Square, right outside the hospital, only 30 meters away and it blew a hole in the hospital wall.
http://gazasiege.blogspot.com/2009/01/urgent-report-from-ahli-arab-hospital.html
Gaza hospitals under fire
Israeli forces fired in the immediate vicinity of three hospitals in the Gaza Strip on Monday, witnesses and medical personnel told Ma'an. The Al-Wafa Hospital eastern Gaza Strip received warning that they would be shelled, but the hosptial administration and staff refused to evacuate on account of the number of injured people being treated there. Some of the wounded have been injured so severely that they cannot be safely transferred.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34641
Gaza: wounded people dying while waiting for ambulances
As the number of casualties continues to rise in the Gaza Strip, the ICRC is focusing on arranging safe passage for Palestine Red Crescent ambulances, which collect the wounded and transport them to hospitals.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EDIS-7MZQC7?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Officials warn: Gaza infrastructures near breaking point
Between 600,000 and 700,000 Gazans have no water, some of them going on a week. About one million have no electricity, raw sewage is running in the streets in some places and various localities, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, face the threat of sewer backups.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052984.html
Eyewitnesses/Testimonials/Analysis
Gaza City doctor: most of the injured are women and children
Gaza City's largest hospital, Al Shifa, is in shambles as it attempts to function. Dozens of victims remain in the corridors, the upstairs windows are blown out, supplies are limited and doctors are exhausted. Emergency room doctor Issa Khamis says the medical staff is struggling to cope with the situation and the large numbers of victims.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4415&Itemid=1
Witnesses: Israeli missiles, shells hit 26 Gaza homes
Israeli army warplanes, tanks and naval vessels on Tuesday continued, for the eleventh consecutive day, striking on targets, mainly houses, all over the Gaza Strip, witnesses and medics said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/06/content_10614763.htm
B'Tselem: Testimony: Life in Gaza under siege and bombardment
The al-Masri family hardly dare leave the house and live on bread and tea.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/5/report_from_gaza_city_palestinian_journalist
B'Tselem - Testimony: children witness two women shot in taxi
On 4 January, soldiers opened fire from a tank toward a passenger taxi outside Gaza City. The four children in the taxi witnessed their mother and another woman killed.
http://www.btselem.org/english/Testimonies/20090104_Women_killed_in_car_by_tankfire.asp
B'Tselem -Testimony: Toddler and girl killed in their home by bombing
A-Nasalah family was in their home when near-by structure was bombed a number of times. A-Moaz, 2.5 years old and Eyon, 16, were killed.
http://www.btselem.org/english/testimonies/20090101_children_from_a_nasleh_family_killed_in_bombing.asp
B'Tselem - Ambulance and team fired at while evacuating wounded people
On 4 January, a medical team was fired at while evacuating wounded people in Beit Lahiya. A paramedic and one of the wounded people were killed.
http://www.btselem.org/english/testimonies/20090104_firing_on_ambulace_and_medical_team_in_beit_lahiya.asp
B'Tselem - Testimony: Man loses father and brothers in Gaza bombing
On 27 Dec., Jaber …was urgently called home from work by a neighbor. He arrived to find his house destroyed and family members wounded or killed.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/20081227_Three_family_members_killed_in_bombing_witness_Hweij.asp
Life in the midst of Gaza conflict, through the eyes of a Palestinian teenager
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-7N29QG?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Voices from the frontline: 'Everyone is looking for their relatives to kiss them goodbye'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/palestine-gaza-israel
It's really hard to post from here
Every time I manage to make it back to Gaza to write for a period, a new calamity. "They're shelling Awda hospital," in Jabaliya, the news reports. Our internationals there at the moment report it was two shells at a police post next to the hospital, one hospital worker getting shrapnel to the head, but surviving.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2009/01/05/it%E2%80%99s-really-hard-to-post-from-here/
B'Tselem: Killing of Nizar Rayan with his wives and children breaches laws of war
On Thursday, 1 Jan. '09, the Israeli air force bombed the house of Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas official, in the Jabalya refugee camp. The blast killed Rayan, his four wives, and their eleven children, ranging in age from 1-12 years old. According to the army spokesperson, "the house served as a large munitions warehouse and as a war room. Under the house was an escape tunnel for terrorist members of Hamas's military wing."
http://www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20090104_Killing_of_Nizar_Rian_and_13_Family_member.asp
Injured Gaza family still awaits evacuation, by Amira Hass
As of last night, almost 48 hours after a shell struck the isolated A'aiedy family home in a farming area in the eastern Gaza Strip, all attempts to evacuate the injured family members have failed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052983.html
Wounded Gaza family lay bleeding for 20 hours, by Amira Hass
Three hours after the Israel Defense Forces began their ground operation in the Gaza Strip, at about 10:30 P.M. Saturday night, a shell or missile hit the house owned by Hussein al A'aiedy and his brothers. Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area east of Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood. Five of them were wounded in the strike: Two women in their eighties (his mother and aunt), his 14-year-old son, his 13-year-old niece and his 10-year-old nephew.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052606.html
Gaza: 'The ambulances don't stop arriving'
Hazem Balousha visits Gaza's Shifa hospital and meets grieving relatives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/jan/06/gaza-hazem-balousha
Gazans seek escape from frontline of Israeli advance
AFP - To his mother pleading from the balcony to get back inside their Gaza home, Ziyad answers with all the bravado of his nine years: "Don't be afraid, Mum, I prefer to die a martyr than to live in this constant horror."
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090105/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazachildren
Man speaks from Gaza after family home is seized and children killed
The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes. For a week the Samouni family had taken shelter in their small, single-storey home in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, and there they survived wave after wave of Israeli bombing and artillery strikes. Then came Israel's ground offensive, the next phase in what Israel argues is a necessary and justified battle against the Palestinian militants firing rockets out of Gaza.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel
Two strikes, and another family lay buried in rubble
The extended Abu Eysha family were asleep when their three-storey house five minutes from Gaza's coast was hit by the first air attack early yesterday. Five minutes and another air strike later, Amer Abu Eysha, 50, who used to work as a tiler in Israel, his 30- year-old wife, Naheel, and three of his children lay dead under a pile of rubble.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/two-strikes-and-another-family-lay-buried-in-rubble-1228136.html
Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians
'They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage'... Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that that he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Norwegian_doctor_in_Gaza_Israel_targeting_0105.html
Resisting to protect our own
All Palestinian factions have united and are out facing the enemy, using all of their military capabilities that they collectively have. Although these capabilities are incomparable to the military strength exerted by Israel, yet it has made us more certain than ever that Palestinians will fight to the very end to protect their own. Safa Joudeh writes from the Gaza Strip.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10117.shtml
Gaza war diary: No restraint
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091516616572788.html
Israeli F16 Attack Kills Father of Palestinian Journalist; Israel Bombs UN School, Killing Three
The UN says around a quarter of the dead are civilians, but that figure only counts women and children, excluding adult males. Today, we will look at one of those men killed. I am joined by Fares Akram. He is the Gaza correspondent for The Independent of London. His father was killed in an Israeli F16 attack on Saturday. His wife is nine months pregnant. We also speak with UNRWA's Christopher Gunness on the Israeli bombing of an UN school that killed three people.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/6/israel_f16_attack_kills_father_of
Besieged families flee homes for shelter under UN flag
Mahmoud Khalil looked around the classroom and decided the safest place for his children was under the desks. UN officials had reassured the father of five he and his family would be protected by the large blue and white flag flying above the UN-run school turned refugee shelter. But with the sound of large explosions on the edge of Jabaliya refugee camp, just north of Gaza City, and his children still terrified from the trauma of their escape, Khalil was taking no chances.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-palestine-israel
No exit for civilians in Gaza in the midst of war
"The current conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is having a devastating impact on civilians. An immediate ceasefire is essential. But with bleak prospects for one in the near term, reducing civilian suffering must be the priority of all actors. Israel must allow full access for humanitarian supplies to the territory. Civilians need to have the minimum freedom of movement to access humanitarian distribution points and hospitals. Both the Israeli armed forces and Hamas must respect civilian infrastructure, avoiding unwarranted damage to essential services.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-7N29UQ?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Border Control / Settler justice
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Malka Aviv emerged from her anonymity a month ago, in the wake of her decision to release arrested Hebron settler Ze'ev Braude, who is suspected of having shot Palestinians after the evacuation of the "House of Contention" and wounding a father and son.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053011.html
Profiles of victims
Palestinian Holocaust Museum
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/01/palestinian-holocaust-museum.html
PA and Arab reactions to the attacks on Gaza
Report: Saudi Recommendation to Weaken Hizbullah and Hamas
Head of the Saudi National Security Council reportedly visited Washington in December and held a number of meetings with top U.S. administration officials to whom he recommended weakening Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The purpose behind Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz's recommendation is to tangibly target and weaken the maneuverable capacity of both Iran and Syria, ultimately limiting the capabilities of the militant groups, according to a report carried by the daily al-Akhbar. Prince Bandar held a chain of meetings with current Bush and Obama administration figures, and officials who are expected to play a major role in the Middle East under the new U.S. president, the newspaper said. Prince Bandar reportedly told his U.S. hosts that he speaks for all Gulf Cooperation Council countries including key Arab states and players such as Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and March 14 Forces in Lebanon.
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&AF82FAC78B98FB3AC2257535002CA12C
Egypt's Mubarak to EU: Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza
Hamas must not be allowed to win its conflict with the Israel Defense Forces, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told a delegation of European foreign ministers in a closed conversation Monday. The comment occurred even as Hamas, for the first time since the fighting began, sent representatives to Cairo to discuss a cease-fire. Following a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, Hamas officials said they had received an Egyptian proposal and would consider it.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052974.html
Police break up pro-Gaza university protest
RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian police have broken up a pro-Gaza march at a major West Bank university. About 200 students marched Monday from the main gate of Bir Zeit University. They chanted "With our sprit, with our blood, we support you, Gaza!" They also chanted slogans criticizing the Israeli military operation in Gaza.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/01/05/news/ML-Palestinians-Gaza-March.php
Analysis: Abbas tries to regain foothold in Gaza
However, he's still widely seen in the Palestinian areas as aloof and uncaring. The impression has been deepened by the crackdown of his security forces on anti-Israeli protests in the West Bank. There were some signs that the Gaza fighting has boosted Hamas at Abbas' expense. In the West Bank city of Nablus, Abdel Ghani Marmash, a longtime supporter of Abbas' Fatah movement, said he's switching to Hamas. "I was arrested 19 times by the Israelis" as a Fatah supporter, he said. "Today, I am honored to follow the Hamas flag. At a time like this, all Palestinians are Hamas."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_palestinians_abbas__foothold_analysis
SPIEGEL: Does Hamas share responsibility for the Israeli air strikes?
Mohammad Dahlan: With their rockets, they gave Israel a pretext for the war. Hamas is one of the worst organizations in the region. People are afraid of the Islamists and no one in Gaza dares to express criticism. Otherwise they face imprisonment or even death. Just like Israel, Hamas shows no consideration for ordinary people -- its fighters fire rockets right from the heart of residential areas."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,599459,00.html
Egypt bars doctors from entering Gaza Strip
RAFAH - Frustration is mounting at Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, where many local and foreign doctors are stuck after Egyptian
authorities denied them entry into the coastal area now under an Israeli ground invasion. Anesthesiologist Dimitrios Mognie from Greece idles his time at a cafe near the border, drinking tea and chatting with other doctors, aid workers and curious Egyptians.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053171.html
Cairo aborted proposal for holding emergency Islamic summit
Egypt has foiled an Iranian idea to hold an emergency Islamic summit conference to discuss the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip after earlier aborting the convening of an Arab summit.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/
Egypt faces renewed spectre of Gaza responsibility
AFP - Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip may be a thorn in Israel's side, but the embattled territory has for decades also been a headache for Egypt, which fears once more becoming its de facto master.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090105/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazaegypthistory
ANALYSIS / Egypt emerges as big winner from Gaza crisis
Egypt is the big winner, for the moment, from the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Despite fierce attacks against it of a magnitude not seen since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, it appears that the Egyptian gamble has again paid off: the heads of Hamas in Damascus are scheduled to arrive in Cairo to discuss the situation, in a move that signifies a bowing of the head toward Egypt, the most "stable island" in the camp of moderate Arab nations.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052890.html
Egypt government feels its people's ire
Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza and the participation of the Egyptian regime in the isolation of its population. Last Wednesday, the state responded with a major crackdown in which tens of protestors and journalists were assaulted and arrested. Per Bjoerklund reports from Cairo.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10121.shtml
Fifty arrested for organising protests in Egypt
Police have arrested 50 members of the opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood for organising protests in Cairo against Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip. A security official said that yesterday's arrests followed calls by the outlawed Brotherhood to its members and to other opposition groups to stage more demonstrations to protest against the Israeli offensive.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/fifty-arrested-for-organising-protests-1228138.html
West Bank feels betrayed by its leaders
In the West Bank the gap between the public and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widening, following disappointment that Abbas has pointed out explicitly Hamas' responsibility in the crisis over Israel's offensive on Gaza.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/west-bank-feels-betrayed-by-its-leaders-1229264.html
'Iran pledged that Hezbollah won't respond to Gaza op'
Lebanon's parliament majority leader Saad Hariri on Monday claimed that Hezbollah would not respond to Israel's devastating offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053014.html
Arabs pushing new Gaza ceasefire at UN: Palestinian FM
AFP - Arab states plan to introduce a new draft resolution in the UN Security Council aimed at securing an immediate end to the "Israeli aggression" in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said on Monday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090105/wl_mideast_afp/mideastgazaconflictun
Bush Plan Eliminated Obstacle to Gaza Assault
Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the leading faction in a fully legitimate government. But the George W. Bush administration helped Israel eliminate that obstacle by deliberately provoking Hamas to seize power in Gaza. That plan was aimed at getting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the democratically elected Hamas government -- something Bush had tried unsuccessfully to do for many months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/05/bush-plan-eliminated-obst_n_155385.html
Iran Threatens To Break Israel's Gaza Blockade
It is hard to imagine how much worse the situation could get, but the confrontation in Gaza could see a dangerous escalation in the coming days as Iran threatens to break the Israeli blockade and deliver urgently needed medical supplies and other aid to the coastal strip.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14607
Israel Blocks Reporters From Gaza War Zone
EREZ CROSSING, Israel — Israel scrapped arrangements Monday to allow the first foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip since the military launched its offensive against Palestinian militants, adding to mounting media frustration at being locked out of the war zone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/05/israel-blocks-reporters-f_n_155336.html
Media rights group slams Israel's treatment of press in conflict
AFP - Israel deliberately targeted Hamas-run media installations in its bombing campaign on Gaza and is practising media censorship, a journalist rights group said Monday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090105/wl_mideast_afp/
Al Jazeera English Beats Israel's Ban on Reporters in Gaza with Exclusive Coverage
Some may call it propaganda but I call it hardcore reporting. If you are not watching Al Jazeera English's coverage of the War on Gaza, you are missing much, if not, most of the story. Israel has invaded Gaza, divided it, and banned foreign journalists from entering -- but Al Jazeera English was inside before the war began, and its reporting is as inexorable, though more precise, than Israel's "surgical attacks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-shihabeldin/al-jazeera-english-beats_b_155125.html
Shooting Back: Israeli occupation filmed by 100 Palestinian cameras
In a graphic and hard-hitting film, Peter Beaumont speaks to Palestinians filming abuse from settlers and Israeli armed forces as part of a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/jul/30/beaumont.palestine
Gaza Coverage and the Informed Heart
The present Israeli onslaught in Gaza viewed through the prism of the mainstream western media has such an air of unreality. Israeli 'hasbara' or propaganda efforts have even invaded the blogosphere. Over fifty blogs have direct access to Israeli officials to perpetuate the ongoing myth that Palestinians are to blame for the carnage.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14609
Media should be allowed to shed the light on Gaza
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article766
Taghreed El-Khodor: her propaganda services intensify
Taghreed is back today, and on her own. Finally, she notices the civilian casualties in the strip, but that does not derail her main agenda: to basically appease her Zionist editors. She starts her article by giving a graphic description at the hospital and she admits that civilians casualties are overwhelming, but then she stops and remembers that her agenda is not about the victims of about their welfare.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/taghreed-el-khodor-her-propaganda.html
Please support ISM Palestine's work in Gaza and the West Bank
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2009/01/05/please-support-ism-palestines-work-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/
Appeal from University teachers
The Palestinian Association of University Teachers in Gaza calls upon all peace-loving, freedom-loving nations, NGOs, universities, intellectuals, cultural and academic institutions, trade unions and syndicates, as well as human rights organizations all over the world.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/01/appeal-from-university-teachers.html
Video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel
http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2009/01/must-see-video-doctor-decries-israeli.html
Pictures of the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian children
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/hamas-fighters-killed-in-action.html
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/hamas-terrorist-cell.html
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/hamas-terrrorists-everywhere.html
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/israeli-terrorist-victories.html
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/01/face-of-hamas-terrorist.html
Solidarity
FREE GAZA CAMPAIGN: ISRAEL ON NOTICE, WE ARE COMING
There is a time when silence is complicity and inaction is unacceptable. The ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have lead to the death of over 550 Palestinians, including children and women, and the injury of thousands, with the death and injury toll rapidly rising. Massive violations of international humanitarian law are being committed by Israel, both with regard to its obligations as an Occupying Power and in its conduct of hostilities.
http://www.freegaza.org/index.php?module=latest_news&id=92cf461fe6536f8d8e5060d17469ff5a&offset=
Mauritania withdraws its ambassador to Israel
Mauritania, one of only three Arab League countries that enjoys full diplomatic ties with Israel, has withdrawn its ambassador in Israel in protest over the Gaza offensive, a foreign ministry source said Monday.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/01/05/63578.html
Mystery Saudi tycoon gives 6.7 million dlrs for Gazans
A mystery Saudi business tycoon has donated 25 million riyals (6.7 million dollars) to help Gazans suffering under Israel's assault on the Palestinian enclave, state news agency SPA said on Monday.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-7N23CQ?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Chiapas, Mexico, Sub-Commander Marcos: "Our word, a murmur, a loud voice, and then a shout they hear in Gaza"
The following is a partial translation of a story run in the Mexican daily "La Jornada" regarding Subcomandante Marcos' statements yesterday, on the struggle in Gaza.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/01/our-word-murmur-loud-voice-and-shout.html
Iraq: Journalists stage sit-in to show solidarity with Palestinians
"This sit-in aims to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who are being targeted by the Israeli aggression," the president of the syndicate told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, noting that the Thi-Qar journalists proved they support the Palestinian people and with the Gazans.
http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=105833
Over 2,000 Protest Israel Gaza Aggression in Haifa
http://almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=69315&language=en
Tulkarem residents rally in support of Gaza Palestinians
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34679
Diabetics in Dheisheh Refugee Camp demonstrate in support of Gaza
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4419&Itemid=1
Jayyous for Gaza
http://stopthewall.org/photos/1811.shtml
Afghans Rally in Support of Palestinians
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article
/2009/01/05/AR2009010503217.html?wprss=rss_world%2Fmideast
Israeli Professor Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/5/israeli_professor_neve_gordon_condemns_israeli
Collective action in West Bank continues as tanks roll into Gaza
http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1812.shtml
Pro-Palestinian protests outside
Feinstein's office, Federal Building
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=
/c/a/2009/01/05/MNU4153SE1.DTL&feed=rss.news
Police bar east Jerusalem
procession protesting IDF op in Gaza
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=12
31167263869&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Protests for Gazan Human Rights Continue
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/01/protests-for-gazan-human-rights.html
Protesters march through S.F. against Israeli offensive
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/05/BAU4153SE1.DTL
Video: NY Protests against Gaza attacks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7RQDSnFEwY&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KPQFbRKLj4&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJD-v7r6MCA&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShZSgr8J1pw&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae_1ad9nNUA&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJ652KazaM&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAX3E64CO8I&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjrRiYn0l-Y&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krGX1FIP9FU&feature=channel_page
Protesters target US Embassy over Israel's Gaza rampage
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=98865
A Song for Gaza, Shadia Mansour
http://illuminarcy.blogspot.com/2009/01/song-for-gaza.html
Commentary/Analysis/Opinions
This brutality will never break our will to be free, Khalid Mish'al
For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/c
ommentisfree/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas
Offensive traumatises generation of children
JERUSALEM // The four-storey building of the Community Mental
Health Programme in Gaza City is damaged, its walls still standing but
the offices of its 150 employees wrecked by an Israeli bombing raid last week.
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090106/FOREIGN/135660612/1002/rss
A lottery of life and death for Gaza ambulance medics
On one side are the badly wounded, desperate to get out to medical attention; on the other are the bodybags of those who failed to make it waiting to be sent back in for burial. The no man's land of Rafah's border crossing, strewn with barbed wire and reverberating with nearby bomb blasts, is a grim patch between the Gazan and Egyptian borders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/rafah-border-crossing-ambulances-doctors
Candidate who wants Olmert's job once
'sought deaths of 70 Palestinians a day'
A leading candidate to be Israel's next premier called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day when he was head of the military during the second intifada, according to a best-selling book by two Israeli journalists.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/candidate-
who-wants-olmerts-job-once-sought-deaths-of-70-palestinians-a-day-882628.html
"War of the Tunnels: Economic Aspects of the Israeli Attack on Gaza"
The Hamas party in Gaza was able to put some dents into the Israeli mechanism of exploitation. By breaking through the fence to Rafah in early 2008, and later by importing goods from Egypt via underground tunnels to supplement the diet of beleaguered Gazans under siege, Hamas has been able to smuggle goods into the Gaza Strip without paying customs to Israel.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hever050109.html
One of the more shocking sentences I've read lately about Israeli settlements
Then there's the settlements issue. In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can't recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/jan/05/israel-gaza-settlements
ANALYSIS / Price of stubborness over Gaza exit is dead soldiers
Those who want to treat the delay in creating a diplomatic exit strategy for the war in Gaza as if it were a divine decree must take into account that at the end of this determination are casualties. The repeated delays in moving ahead with Operation Cast Lead, first before the ground operation and now the slow way Israel is seeking 'exit points' have a price. We are now beginning to pay it.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053121.html
Israelis watch bombardment of Gaza town
A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists. Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he had carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."
http://www.kansascity.com/451/story/965572.html
Conditioning Gaza: preparing to deploy international forces in Palestine?
The Israeli attack on Gaza is likely timed to coincide with the February elections in Israel and this month's inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama in anticipation of launching a comprehensive Middle East peace plan. The ultimate goal of the Gaza invasion is to create the conditions to introduce international troops into Palestine.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=98851
Has Israel's response exceeded its right to defend itself?
If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense? Of course not. Yet such belligerence seems to inform Israel's latest pummeling of the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed. Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/05/EDHQ152R05.DTL&type=printable
White flag, black flag
Exactly one week ago I asked in this column how many Palestinians and Israelis must die before both sides hold their fire and tahadiyeh II is signed. The answer came, ostensibly, on Saturday, a few hours before the Israel Defense Forces stormed the Gaza Strip. Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal announced on the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Web site that he was prepared not only for a "cessation of aggression" - he proposed going back to the arrangement at the Rafah crrossing as of 2005, before Hamas won the elections and later took over the region. That arrangement was for the crossing to be managed jointly by Egypt, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority presidency and Hamas.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052621.html
Twilight Zone / Trumpeting for war By Gideon Levy
That's how it is here: Opposition to peace is always legitimate and patriotic; opposition to war is always traitorous, anti-Israel and should be hushed while broadcasting his television show "London & Kirschenbaum" this week, Yaron London acknowledged they had run into problems: "We had some trouble as we were preparing this program. We know the broad consensus is in favor of the operation - to strike them hard, but there are also other voices, not only Arab Israelis, but Jews, too. We found a few Jews who believe the operation must be halted, or shouldn't have been launched at all, and that political negotiations should be held. This is not my view. I called for a different line in articles I've written. But their voice needs to be heard, too. Wall-to-wall consensus spells disaster. But they were too frightened. Other voices are being terrorized into silence."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051968.html
Ten Myths about Gaza
It is known that truth is the first casualty in wars. The current war on Gaza is no different. Below is a list of 10 myths perpetuated by Israel and repeated ad nauseum by many in the media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daoud-kuttab/ten-myths-about-gaza_b_155182.html
Gaza Endures, West Bank Maybe Next
Watching what has happened to Gaza over the past few years, particularly since December 27, 2008 when the Israeli operation "Cast Lead" began, one can't help but wonder how far off this same treatment is for the West Bank. The two main differences between Gaza and the West Bank vis-Ã -vis Israel are the level of Israeli control over each territory and the nature of the governing authorities in each.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14605
Innocent blood flows in Gaza and Iraq as world powers look on
The war in Gaza reminds me of the war in Iraq. When President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the whole world watched as his marauding troops, using state-of-the art weaponry tore the country to pieces. Instead of the paradise Bush promised the Iraqis, there have been rivers of innocent blood that is still flowing five years after the invasion.
http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2009-01-06\kurd.htm
Modernity cuts through Israeli Propaganda
If there is anything at all to be glad about this week, it's that the Israeli Propaganda Machine (IPM) has been completely discredited, in spite of the ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza (an action determined illegal by Israel's own Supreme Court). Much of this has to do with some advances in New Media. A good indication of Israel's PR failure at containing shameful news is the eminently absorbing Facebook News Feed.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/01/modernity-cuts-through-israeli.html
Israel in Gaza: Self-Defense or Slaughter?
According to the latest approximations of Amnesty International, 400 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been killed and 2,000 wounded by Israel's air and sea bombardment. Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets report that rockets from Gaza have killed 4 Israelis (15 had been killed in previous rocket attacks beginning after Israel's withdrawal) and wounded at least several persons. To many observers, apparently including the government of Turkey which has been cooperating with Israel on several fronts, the rather dramatic asymmetry of casualties implies the unconscionable slaughter of a stateless huddle of impoverished people lacking any air defense capability or shelters capable of resisting Israeli bombs, lacking indeed regular armed forces of any kind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-farer/israel-in-gaza-self-defen_b_154937.html
Roseanne Barr: Israel is a 'Nazi state'
Former television star Roseanne Barr has denounced Israel's military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, labeling Israel a "Nazi state.", A screen shot of Roseanne..., A screen shot of Roseanne Barr's personal blog., Photo: www.roseanneworld.com/blog, In a post on her personal blog, which appears at her Web site, Roseanne World, the comedienne, who is Jewish, wrote on December 30 that she had planned to travel with pro-Palestinian activists on a protest boat sailing from Cyprus to Gaza.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230733139909&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Consider the Realities of Gaza, By WILLIAM COOK
As the Israeli military launched an "all out war" with Hamas in the Gaza strip, as casualties mounted to 400 dead and another 1450 wounded, as tanks and troops massed in the area just outside the wall that imprisons the people of Gaza, as preparations for a ground assault into the "closed military zone" around the Gaza strip moved forward, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday the 27th "… instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel's international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip." (Haaretz, 12/28/08). "An aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign" needed to be launched simultaneously with the estimated "60 raids" that now pummel Gaza each day, raids that, in human terms, have taken the lives of five children, all girls, of the Ba'losha family killed in Bait Lahia City north of Gaza and three children from the Al Absi family in Rafah refugee camp as Israeli rockets collapsed their roof. (freepalestine.ps, Sameh, Habeeb).
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook01052009.html
Abeer's Baby
Abeer was excited when I called her today. "It's my time, Jen!" she told me breathlessly. "The baby might come today or tomorrow—any moment now!" Last time I saw Abeer, a year ago, she had shown me pictures of her fiancé, who is a teacher, and last time we spoke, months ago, she told me she was pregnant. But I had no idea how far along she was and that she was about to give birth now.
http://www.counterpunch.org/marlowe01052009.html
Phoning Home to Gaza
My family was in Denver for the holidays when we awoke to peddling images of bombardment. Gaza was on fire. 250 people dead. From our television set we quickly tuned into the perversions of war, watching reports from both American and Arab media. We are safe. We do not smell burned flesh, hear cries of agony or see before us military planes. We view from a distance, but feel none of the anxiety and melancholy that the rest of our family feels in the besieged coastal strip.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hammad01052009.html
Gaza: Where families die together
I've had this open for two hours now, trying to write and finish earlier than usual so that I can get some real sleep tonight. But the words weren't coming out. The constant, continuous and very real fear that every conversation with my family in Gaza might be the last, the hard-hitting anxiety I feel every time I hear of an air strike on Gaza City or Khan Younis, the dismay I feel at the continued justifications of mass murder has left me mentally and physically exhausted.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/01/gaza-where-families-die-together.html
Robert Fisk: Bring in the peacekeepers? It's not as easy as it sounds
Do I hear the braying of the UN donkey in Gaza? On his Middle East tour, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, may well be mentioning that well-known Eeyore figure on the East River, always so willing to send its peacekeepers on Mission Impossible. The Palestinians have been trying to internationalise their conflict with the Israelis ever since Yasser Arafat pleaded for UN forces to protect the Palestinians after the failure of the Oslo agreement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-bring-in-the-peacekeepers-its-not-as-easy-as-it-sounds-1228137.html
Gaza Phone Tag
http://www.counterpunch.org/khalidi01052009.html
On Gaza
All day I've been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I've been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.
http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/ israel_palestine/on_gaza12-08. html
Gaza and India
The horror and the massacres continue in Gaza. The scenes of carnage being broadcast by Al-Jazeera are unbearably painful. Police stations, schools, universities, ministries, houses, crowded mosques, ambulances, paramedics, etc. were and are being targeted by the Israeli air force and now ground troops have entered to "finish the job" as the Israelis call it. Hundreds of innocents have been killed and thousands injured and there seems to be no end in sight.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hussain01052009.html
Israel's pathetic psy-ops
It is a revealing measure of the paucity or non-existence of Israel's actual, on-the-ground intelligence network inside Gaza today (as in Lebanon in 2006) that the IDF's psy-ops department feels obliged to launch thousands of leaflets and undertake frantic robo-calling and robo-texting in order to beg anyone-- anyone at all!-- in Gaza to become an informer.
http://justworldnews.org/archives/003306.html
Israel; Always the Victim
Israel has successfully portrayed itself as the victim with the duty to defend its people, but the reality is that everyone has the right to defend its people and to live in security. These are not luxuries to be enjoyed by Israelis alone in the Middle East. The Israelis insist that the latest violence began when Hamas "ended" a six month truce. I didn't know there was a truce.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14603
Avrum Burg: Can the Jewish People Survive Without an Enemy?
Avrum Burg is the scion of one of Israel's founding families — his father was the deputy speaker of the first Knesset, and Burg himself later became speaker of the legislature, and a member of Israel's cabinet. His position at the heart of the Israeli establishment makes all the more remarkable his critique of the Jewish State, which he claims has lost its sense of moral purpose. In his new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes (Palgrave/MacMillan), he argues that an obsession with an exaggerated sense of threats to Jewish survival cultivated by Israel and its most fervent backers actually impedes the realization of Judaism's higher goals. He discussed his ideas with TIME.com's Tony Karon.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/01/06/avrum-burg-can-the-jewish-people-survive-without-an-enemy/
Israel as Mini-Me
The affinity runs deeper: we are both settler states. The Puritans, who escaped oppression in the Old World only to mete out oppression in the New, unfolded their Zionist project in the 17th century with their "city built upon a hill" as the New Jerusalem. Pity any settler--Quaker, Anabaptist--who didn't embrace this vision. But the early American Zionists and their successors were considerably harsher toward the Native Americans who were pushed further and further west, an expulsion as tragic as the Palestinian nakba of 1948. America, like Israel, believed in the "redemption of the land...by settling it." And today, after some backsliding in the redemption department, the reservations of Indian Country, with their limited sovereignty, represent our own two-state solution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/israel-as-mini-me_b_155529.html
Well Done, Brave Israeli Airman
What's it like, firing missiles at people you can't see? Does it help to keep saying that you are not deliberately targeting civilians? Does this enable you to sleep well at night or do you have nightmares of the women and children you killed, in their homes, in their beds, in their kitchens and living rooms, in their schools and markets and mosques? What do you feel when the mission is over? That you did a good job? Would you still think that you had done a good job if you were made to look at the dead and dismembered bodies that are your particular contribution to the Middle East 'peace process'?
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14606
Disarming Palestine
Those of us who originate from that unholy land, are gripped by helplessness, disgust and depression during those recurring depredations inflicted on the Palestinians, as they are now in Gaza, whose inhabitants had been systematically starved and reduced to misery for years. It's as if the most insightful, humane reflection, all the rationality and political analysis, is inadequate to explain the horrors that unfold with awful predictability.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14610
Obama fiddles while Gaza burns
Barack Obama has remained silent about the war Israel launched in Gaza, which has killed 540 in 10 days. Instead he's letting spokeswoman Brooke Anderson issue statements that do not call for peace: "President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/06/barack-obama-israel-gaza
Iraq
Monday: 4 Iraqis Killed, 37 Wounded
http://www.antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=14002
Iraqi killed as US troops open fire on car
AFP - American troops opened fire and killed a passenger in a car in central Iraq after the vehicle failed to heed warnings to keep its distance from a military convoy, the US military said Tuesday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090106/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestus
Victims of Blackwater shooting await guards' trial (AP)
AP - Iraqis wounded by gunfire in a Baghdad square 15 months ago are awaiting with guarded hopes the beginning of court proceedings against five former private Blackwater Worldwide security guards.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_blackwater
Forces killed at least 42 Palestinians at a UN school housing displaced people in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip late on Tuesday afternoon, medical officials confirmed. According to initial reports, the school was destroyed, collapsing on top of Palestinians who took shelter inside from the intense bombardment by Israeli air and ground forces.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34678
12 killed as Gaza building collapses
Palestinians report entire family buried under building leveled by IAF in neighborhood of Zeitun; among dead six children aged one to 12.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651610,00.html
Palestinians: 20 killed in IDF attacks
Army strikes in Deir al-Balah, Jabalya, Gaza City; UN official says at least 500 Palestinians killed since Operation Cast Lead launched.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651200,00.html
Israeli offensive continues, over 550 killed and 2700 wounded
A Palestinian woman, her four children, were killed in a recent Israeli air strike in Gaza, and more Palestinian civilians are being killed by the hour as the Israeli army continues its air strikes and ground offensive against the residents of Gaza. At least 550 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed and more than 2700 were wounded.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58348
Eighty-nine children and 30 women amongst Gaza's confirmed dead
On the 10th day of its aggression on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has seriously escalated its military operations, targeting mostly civilian targets, particularly homes. Air strikes and artillery shells hit tens of homes. IOF also targeted medical facilities and ambulances. A Civil Defense team was hit as it tried to fight a fire following the bombardment of a clinic.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10120.shtml
26 Residential buildings and schools targeted in Gaza
More than 26 residential buildings and schools were targeted by Israeli fire on Tuesday, causing more casualties amongst women and children, witnesses in Gaza said. Sources at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said five dead bodies arrived at the medical center in a civilian car after their homes were shelled. The sources asserted that several homes were bombarded in eastern Gaza City, and that ambulances could not access the area to evacuate victims because Israeli forces are shooting at ambulances.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34671
12 anti-war demonstrators arrested in J'lem and Haifa
Hundreds of Haifa University Students came out against IDF operation in Gaza Strip, clash with police. National Democratic Assembly member hospitalized with broken foot.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651586,00.html
Israeli police arrest 300 Palestinian-Israelis since Gaza attacks began
More than 300 Palestinian youth have been arrested by Israeli police since the beginning of offensive in the Gaza Strip. All of those arrested have Jerusalem or Israeli ID cards. The youth have been placed for the most part in administrative detention, or put away on minor changes for short periods of time.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34668
Hamas: Palestinian fighter blows self up inside Israeli tank
A Palestinian has committed the first suicide bombing in fighting with invading Israeli forces in Gaza, Hamas' armed forces said on Tuesday.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34675
12 killed as Gaza building collapses
Palestinians report entire family buried under building leveled by IAF in neighborhood of Zeitun; among dead six children aged one to 12.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Palestinians: 20 killed in IDF attacks
Army strikes in Deir al-Balah, Jabalya, Gaza City; UN official says at least 500 Palestinians killed since Operation Cast Lead launched.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Israeli offensive continues, over 550 killed and 2700 wounded
A Palestinian woman, her four children, were killed in a recent Israeli air strike in Gaza, and more Palestinian civilians are being killed by the hour as the Israeli army continues its air strikes and ground offensive against the residents of Gaza. At least 550 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed and more than 2700 were wounded.
http://www.imemc.org/article/
Eighty-nine children and 30 women amongst Gaza's confirmed dead
On the 10th day of its aggression on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has seriously escalated its military operations, targeting mostly civilian targets, particularly homes. Air strikes and artillery shells hit tens of homes. IOF also targeted medical facilities and ambulances. A Civil Defense team was hit as it tried to fight a fire following the bombardment of a clinic.
http://electronicintifada.net/
26 Residential buildings and schools targeted in Gaza
More than 26 residential buildings and schools were targeted by Israeli fire on Tuesday, causing more casualties amongst women and children, witnesses in Gaza said. Sources at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said five dead bodies arrived at the medical center in a civilian car after their homes were shelled. The sources asserted that several homes were bombarded in eastern Gaza City, and that ambulances could not access the area to evacuate victims because Israeli forces are shooting at ambulances.
http://www.maannews.net/en/
12 anti-war demonstrators arrested in J'lem and Haifa
Hundreds of Haifa University Students came out against IDF operation in Gaza Strip, clash with police. National Democratic Assembly member hospitalized with broken foot.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Israeli police arrest 300 Palestinian-Israelis since Gaza attacks began
More than 300 Palestinian youth have been arrested by Israeli police since the beginning of offensive in the Gaza Strip. All of those arrested have Jerusalem or Israeli ID cards. The youth have been placed for the most part in administrative detention, or put away on minor changes for short periods of time.
http://www.maannews.net/en/
Hamas: Palestinian fighter blows self up inside Israeli tank
A Palestinian has committed the first suicide bombing in fighting with invading Israeli forces in Gaza, Hamas' armed forces said on Tuesday.
http://www.maannews.net/en/
10 IOF troops killed and 30 others wounded
At least 10 IOF soldiers were killed and 30 others were wounded, Monday night, when Qassam fighters lured them in a trap. Qassam sources told PIC correspondent that the fighters managed to lure a group of infantry elite soldiers into a booby-trapped building in the northern Gaza Strip, detonated the explosives planted in the building and clashed with the soldiers until helicopters arrived and bombed the area around the building to evacuate the dead and injured soldiers.
http://www.palestine-info.co.
3 soldiers killed
According to the IDF Spokesman's Unit, the grave incident occurred when a tank accidentally fired a live round at a building which the troops, who were on patrol in the area, were in. IDF explored the possibility that the building collapsed due to the detonation of explosives in it – an option which was ruled out as the details of the incident unfolded.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Infant lightly hurt in rocket attack on Gedera
Grad fired from northern Gaza explodes near house; three-month-old girl hurt, several people treated for shock. Earlier, rockets fired at Netivot, Eshkol Regional Council.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Gaza babies at risk of hypothermia
http://www.middle-east-online.
Israel closes in on Gaza City
Witnesses report big explosions and intense fighting near centre of the city.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
Israel's Ground Invasion Leading To Higher Civilian Casualties
At least 540 people have been killed in the territory in the last 10 days, with more than 80 deaths reported since the Israeli ground offensive began on Saturday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
URGENT! Report from Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza - Bomb Blows Hole in Hospital Wall; No Electricity, No Water, Streets Covered in Blood
I was able to speak to Suhalia Tarazi, Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this morning. I took notes and I am sharing with you as best I can her situation in Gaza: "The situation is terrible. The injured are in their homes and unable to get to the hospital and the International Red Cross can't reach them. Gaza is now divided into three areas. 20% of the staff including 2 doctors are now unable to get to the hospital. Unfortunately a bomb went off in Jerusalem Square, right outside the hospital, only 30 meters away and it blew a hole in the hospital wall.
http://gazasiege.blogspot.com/
Gaza hospitals under fire
Israeli forces fired in the immediate vicinity of three hospitals in the Gaza Strip on Monday, witnesses and medical personnel told Ma'an. The Al-Wafa Hospital eastern Gaza Strip received warning that they would be shelled, but the hosptial administration and staff refused to evacuate on account of the number of injured people being treated there. Some of the wounded have been injured so severely that they cannot be safely transferred.
http://www.maannews.net/en/
Gaza: wounded people dying while waiting for ambulances
As the number of casualties continues to rise in the Gaza Strip, the ICRC is focusing on arranging safe passage for Palestine Red Crescent ambulances, which collect the wounded and transport them to hospitals.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/
Officials warn: Gaza infrastructures near breaking point
Between 600,000 and 700,000 Gazans have no water, some of them going on a week. About one million have no electricity, raw sewage is running in the streets in some places and various localities, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, face the threat of sewer backups.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Eyewitnesses/Testimonials/
Gaza City doctor: most of the injured are women and children
Gaza City's largest hospital, Al Shifa, is in shambles as it attempts to function. Dozens of victims remain in the corridors, the upstairs windows are blown out, supplies are limited and doctors are exhausted. Emergency room doctor Issa Khamis says the medical staff is struggling to cope with the situation and the large numbers of victims.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.
Witnesses: Israeli missiles, shells hit 26 Gaza homes
Israeli army warplanes, tanks and naval vessels on Tuesday continued, for the eleventh consecutive day, striking on targets, mainly houses, all over the Gaza Strip, witnesses and medics said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/
B'Tselem: Testimony: Life in Gaza under siege and bombardment
The al-Masri family hardly dare leave the house and live on bread and tea.
Report From Gaza City: Palestinian Journalist Sameh Habeeb on Gaza Under Siege
http://www.democracynow.org/
B'Tselem - Testimony: children witness two women shot in taxi
On 4 January, soldiers opened fire from a tank toward a passenger taxi outside Gaza City. The four children in the taxi witnessed their mother and another woman killed.
http://www.btselem.org/
B'Tselem -Testimony: Toddler and girl killed in their home by bombing
A-Nasalah family was in their home when near-by structure was bombed a number of times. A-Moaz, 2.5 years old and Eyon, 16, were killed.
http://www.btselem.org/
B'Tselem - Ambulance and team fired at while evacuating wounded people
On 4 January, a medical team was fired at while evacuating wounded people in Beit Lahiya. A paramedic and one of the wounded people were killed.
http://www.btselem.org/
B'Tselem - Testimony: Man loses father and brothers in Gaza bombing
On 27 Dec., Jaber …was urgently called home from work by a neighbor. He arrived to find his house destroyed and family members wounded or killed.
http://www.btselem.org/
Life in the midst of Gaza conflict, through the eyes of a Palestinian teenager
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/
Voices from the frontline: 'Everyone is looking for their relatives to kiss them goodbye'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
It's really hard to post from here
Every time I manage to make it back to Gaza to write for a period, a new calamity. "They're shelling Awda hospital," in Jabaliya, the news reports. Our internationals there at the moment report it was two shells at a police post next to the hospital, one hospital worker getting shrapnel to the head, but surviving.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/
B'Tselem: Killing of Nizar Rayan with his wives and children breaches laws of war
On Thursday, 1 Jan. '09, the Israeli air force bombed the house of Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas official, in the Jabalya refugee camp. The blast killed Rayan, his four wives, and their eleven children, ranging in age from 1-12 years old. According to the army spokesperson, "the house served as a large munitions warehouse and as a war room. Under the house was an escape tunnel for terrorist members of Hamas's military wing."
http://www.btselem.org/
Injured Gaza family still awaits evacuation, by Amira Hass
As of last night, almost 48 hours after a shell struck the isolated A'aiedy family home in a farming area in the eastern Gaza Strip, all attempts to evacuate the injured family members have failed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Wounded Gaza family lay bleeding for 20 hours, by Amira Hass
Three hours after the Israel Defense Forces began their ground operation in the Gaza Strip, at about 10:30 P.M. Saturday night, a shell or missile hit the house owned by Hussein al A'aiedy and his brothers. Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area east of Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood. Five of them were wounded in the strike: Two women in their eighties (his mother and aunt), his 14-year-old son, his 13-year-old niece and his 10-year-old nephew.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Gaza: 'The ambulances don't stop arriving'
Hazem Balousha visits Gaza's Shifa hospital and meets grieving relatives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Gazans seek escape from frontline of Israeli advance
AFP - To his mother pleading from the balcony to get back inside their Gaza home, Ziyad answers with all the bravado of his nine years: "Don't be afraid, Mum, I prefer to die a martyr than to live in this constant horror."
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/
Man speaks from Gaza after family home is seized and children killed
The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes. For a week the Samouni family had taken shelter in their small, single-storey home in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, and there they survived wave after wave of Israeli bombing and artillery strikes. Then came Israel's ground offensive, the next phase in what Israel argues is a necessary and justified battle against the Palestinian militants firing rockets out of Gaza.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Two strikes, and another family lay buried in rubble
The extended Abu Eysha family were asleep when their three-storey house five minutes from Gaza's coast was hit by the first air attack early yesterday. Five minutes and another air strike later, Amer Abu Eysha, 50, who used to work as a tiler in Israel, his 30- year-old wife, Naheel, and three of his children lay dead under a pile of rubble.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians
'They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage'... Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that that he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/
Resisting to protect our own
All Palestinian factions have united and are out facing the enemy, using all of their military capabilities that they collectively have. Although these capabilities are incomparable to the military strength exerted by Israel, yet it has made us more certain than ever that Palestinians will fight to the very end to protect their own. Safa Joudeh writes from the Gaza Strip.
http://electronicintifada.net/
Gaza war diary: No restraint
http://english.aljazeera.net/
Israeli F16 Attack Kills Father of Palestinian Journalist; Israel Bombs UN School, Killing Three
The UN says around a quarter of the dead are civilians, but that figure only counts women and children, excluding adult males. Today, we will look at one of those men killed. I am joined by Fares Akram. He is the Gaza correspondent for The Independent of London. His father was killed in an Israeli F16 attack on Saturday. His wife is nine months pregnant. We also speak with UNRWA's Christopher Gunness on the Israeli bombing of an UN school that killed three people.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Besieged families flee homes for shelter under UN flag
Mahmoud Khalil looked around the classroom and decided the safest place for his children was under the desks. UN officials had reassured the father of five he and his family would be protected by the large blue and white flag flying above the UN-run school turned refugee shelter. But with the sound of large explosions on the edge of Jabaliya refugee camp, just north of Gaza City, and his children still terrified from the trauma of their escape, Khalil was taking no chances.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
No exit for civilians in Gaza in the midst of war
"The current conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is having a devastating impact on civilians. An immediate ceasefire is essential. But with bleak prospects for one in the near term, reducing civilian suffering must be the priority of all actors. Israel must allow full access for humanitarian supplies to the territory. Civilians need to have the minimum freedom of movement to access humanitarian distribution points and hospitals. Both the Israeli armed forces and Hamas must respect civilian infrastructure, avoiding unwarranted damage to essential services.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/
Border Control / Settler justice
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Malka Aviv emerged from her anonymity a month ago, in the wake of her decision to release arrested Hebron settler Ze'ev Braude, who is suspected of having shot Palestinians after the evacuation of the "House of Contention" and wounding a father and son.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Profiles of victims
Palestinian Holocaust Museum
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/
PA and Arab reactions to the attacks on Gaza
Report: Saudi Recommendation to Weaken Hizbullah and Hamas
Head of the Saudi National Security Council reportedly visited Washington in December and held a number of meetings with top U.S. administration officials to whom he recommended weakening Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The purpose behind Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz's recommendation is to tangibly target and weaken the maneuverable capacity of both Iran and Syria, ultimately limiting the capabilities of the militant groups, according to a report carried by the daily al-Akhbar. Prince Bandar held a chain of meetings with current Bush and Obama administration figures, and officials who are expected to play a major role in the Middle East under the new U.S. president, the newspaper said. Prince Bandar reportedly told his U.S. hosts that he speaks for all Gulf Cooperation Council countries including key Arab states and players such as Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and March 14 Forces in Lebanon.
http://www.naharnet.com/
Egypt's Mubarak to EU: Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza
Hamas must not be allowed to win its conflict with the Israel Defense Forces, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told a delegation of European foreign ministers in a closed conversation Monday. The comment occurred even as Hamas, for the first time since the fighting began, sent representatives to Cairo to discuss a cease-fire. Following a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, Hamas officials said they had received an Egyptian proposal and would consider it.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Police break up pro-Gaza university protest
RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian police have broken up a pro-Gaza march at a major West Bank university. About 200 students marched Monday from the main gate of Bir Zeit University. They chanted "With our sprit, with our blood, we support you, Gaza!" They also chanted slogans criticizing the Israeli military operation in Gaza.
http://www.iht.com/articles/
Analysis: Abbas tries to regain foothold in Gaza
However, he's still widely seen in the Palestinian areas as aloof and uncaring. The impression has been deepened by the crackdown of his security forces on anti-Israeli protests in the West Bank. There were some signs that the Gaza fighting has boosted Hamas at Abbas' expense. In the West Bank city of Nablus, Abdel Ghani Marmash, a longtime supporter of Abbas' Fatah movement, said he's switching to Hamas. "I was arrested 19 times by the Israelis" as a Fatah supporter, he said. "Today, I am honored to follow the Hamas flag. At a time like this, all Palestinians are Hamas."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
SPIEGEL: Does Hamas share responsibility for the Israeli air strikes?
Mohammad Dahlan: With their rockets, they gave Israel a pretext for the war. Hamas is one of the worst organizations in the region. People are afraid of the Islamists and no one in Gaza dares to express criticism. Otherwise they face imprisonment or even death. Just like Israel, Hamas shows no consideration for ordinary people -- its fighters fire rockets right from the heart of residential areas."
http://www.spiegel.de/
Egypt bars doctors from entering Gaza Strip
RAFAH - Frustration is mounting at Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, where many local and foreign doctors are stuck after Egyptian
authorities denied them entry into the coastal area now under an Israeli ground invasion. Anesthesiologist Dimitrios Mognie from Greece idles his time at a cafe near the border, drinking tea and chatting with other doctors, aid workers and curious Egyptians.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Cairo aborted proposal for holding emergency Islamic summit
Egypt has foiled an Iranian idea to hold an emergency Islamic summit conference to discuss the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip after earlier aborting the convening of an Arab summit.
http://www.palestine-info.co.
Egypt faces renewed spectre of Gaza responsibility
AFP - Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip may be a thorn in Israel's side, but the embattled territory has for decades also been a headache for Egypt, which fears once more becoming its de facto master.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/
ANALYSIS / Egypt emerges as big winner from Gaza crisis
Egypt is the big winner, for the moment, from the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Despite fierce attacks against it of a magnitude not seen since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, it appears that the Egyptian gamble has again paid off: the heads of Hamas in Damascus are scheduled to arrive in Cairo to discuss the situation, in a move that signifies a bowing of the head toward Egypt, the most "stable island" in the camp of moderate Arab nations.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Egypt government feels its people's ire
Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza and the participation of the Egyptian regime in the isolation of its population. Last Wednesday, the state responded with a major crackdown in which tens of protestors and journalists were assaulted and arrested. Per Bjoerklund reports from Cairo.
http://electronicintifada.net/
Fifty arrested for organising protests in Egypt
Police have arrested 50 members of the opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood for organising protests in Cairo against Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip. A security official said that yesterday's arrests followed calls by the outlawed Brotherhood to its members and to other opposition groups to stage more demonstrations to protest against the Israeli offensive.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
West Bank feels betrayed by its leaders
In the West Bank the gap between the public and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widening, following disappointment that Abbas has pointed out explicitly Hamas' responsibility in the crisis over Israel's offensive on Gaza.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
'Iran pledged that Hezbollah won't respond to Gaza op'
Lebanon's parliament majority leader Saad Hariri on Monday claimed that Hezbollah would not respond to Israel's devastating offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Arabs pushing new Gaza ceasefire at UN: Palestinian FM
AFP - Arab states plan to introduce a new draft resolution in the UN Security Council aimed at securing an immediate end to the "Israeli aggression" in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said on Monday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/
Bush Plan Eliminated Obstacle to Gaza Assault
Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the leading faction in a fully legitimate government. But the George W. Bush administration helped Israel eliminate that obstacle by deliberately provoking Hamas to seize power in Gaza. That plan was aimed at getting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the democratically elected Hamas government -- something Bush had tried unsuccessfully to do for many months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Iran Threatens To Break Israel's Gaza Blockade
It is hard to imagine how much worse the situation could get, but the confrontation in Gaza could see a dangerous escalation in the coming days as Iran threatens to break the Israeli blockade and deliver urgently needed medical supplies and other aid to the coastal strip.
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Israel Blocks Reporters From Gaza War Zone
EREZ CROSSING, Israel — Israel scrapped arrangements Monday to allow the first foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip since the military launched its offensive against Palestinian militants, adding to mounting media frustration at being locked out of the war zone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Media rights group slams Israel's treatment of press in conflict
AFP - Israel deliberately targeted Hamas-run media installations in its bombing campaign on Gaza and is practising media censorship, a journalist rights group said Monday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/
Al Jazeera English Beats Israel's Ban on Reporters in Gaza with Exclusive Coverage
Some may call it propaganda but I call it hardcore reporting. If you are not watching Al Jazeera English's coverage of the War on Gaza, you are missing much, if not, most of the story. Israel has invaded Gaza, divided it, and banned foreign journalists from entering -- but Al Jazeera English was inside before the war began, and its reporting is as inexorable, though more precise, than Israel's "surgical attacks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Shooting Back: Israeli occupation filmed by 100 Palestinian cameras
In a graphic and hard-hitting film, Peter Beaumont speaks to Palestinians filming abuse from settlers and Israeli armed forces as part of a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Gaza Coverage and the Informed Heart
The present Israeli onslaught in Gaza viewed through the prism of the mainstream western media has such an air of unreality. Israeli 'hasbara' or propaganda efforts have even invaded the blogosphere. Over fifty blogs have direct access to Israeli officials to perpetuate the ongoing myth that Palestinians are to blame for the carnage.
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Media should be allowed to shed the light on Gaza
http://www.palestinemonitor.
Taghreed El-Khodor: her propaganda services intensify
Taghreed is back today, and on her own. Finally, she notices the civilian casualties in the strip, but that does not derail her main agenda: to basically appease her Zionist editors. She starts her article by giving a graphic description at the hospital and she admits that civilians casualties are overwhelming, but then she stops and remembers that her agenda is not about the victims of about their welfare.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Please support ISM Palestine's work in Gaza and the West Bank
http://www.palsolidarity.org/
Appeal from University teachers
The Palestinian Association of University Teachers in Gaza calls upon all peace-loving, freedom-loving nations, NGOs, universities, intellectuals, cultural and academic institutions, trade unions and syndicates, as well as human rights organizations all over the world.
http://jewssansfrontieres.
Video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://palestinianpundit.
Pictures of the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian children
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Solidarity
FREE GAZA CAMPAIGN: ISRAEL ON NOTICE, WE ARE COMING
There is a time when silence is complicity and inaction is unacceptable. The ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have lead to the death of over 550 Palestinians, including children and women, and the injury of thousands, with the death and injury toll rapidly rising. Massive violations of international humanitarian law are being committed by Israel, both with regard to its obligations as an Occupying Power and in its conduct of hostilities.
http://www.freegaza.org/index.
Mauritania withdraws its ambassador to Israel
Mauritania, one of only three Arab League countries that enjoys full diplomatic ties with Israel, has withdrawn its ambassador in Israel in protest over the Gaza offensive, a foreign ministry source said Monday.
http://www.alarabiya.net/
Mystery Saudi tycoon gives 6.7 million dlrs for Gazans
A mystery Saudi business tycoon has donated 25 million riyals (6.7 million dollars) to help Gazans suffering under Israel's assault on the Palestinian enclave, state news agency SPA said on Monday.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/
Chiapas, Mexico, Sub-Commander Marcos: "Our word, a murmur, a loud voice, and then a shout they hear in Gaza"
The following is a partial translation of a story run in the Mexican daily "La Jornada" regarding Subcomandante Marcos' statements yesterday, on the struggle in Gaza.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/
Iraq: Journalists stage sit-in to show solidarity with Palestinians
"This sit-in aims to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who are being targeted by the Israeli aggression," the president of the syndicate told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, noting that the Thi-Qar journalists proved they support the Palestinian people and with the Gazans.
http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=
Over 2,000 Protest Israel Gaza Aggression in Haifa
http://almanar.com.lb/
Tulkarem residents rally in support of Gaza Palestinians
http://www.maannews.net/en/
Diabetics in Dheisheh Refugee Camp demonstrate in support of Gaza
http://english.pnn.ps/index.
Jayyous for Gaza
http://stopthewall.org/photos/
Afghans Rally in Support of Palestinians
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
/2009/
Israeli Professor Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza
http://www.democracynow.org/
Collective action in West Bank continues as tanks roll into Gaza
http://stopthewall.org/
Pro-Palestinian protests outside
Feinstein's office, Federal Building
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
/c/a/2009/01/05/
Police bar east Jerusalem
procession protesting IDF op in Gaza
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
31167263869&
Protests for Gazan Human Rights Continue
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/
Protesters march through S.F. against Israeli offensive
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
Video: NY Protests against Gaza attacks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Protesters target US Embassy over Israel's Gaza rampage
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
A Song for Gaza, Shadia Mansour
http://illuminarcy.blogspot.
Commentary/Analysis/Opinions
This brutality will never break our will to be free, Khalid Mish'al
For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
ommentisfree/2009/jan/06/
Offensive traumatises generation of children
JERUSALEM // The four-storey building of the Community Mental
Health Programme in Gaza City is damaged, its walls still standing but
the offices of its 150 employees wrecked by an Israeli bombing raid last week.
http://www.thenational.ae/
A lottery of life and death for Gaza ambulance medics
On one side are the badly wounded, desperate to get out to medical attention; on the other are the bodybags of those who failed to make it waiting to be sent back in for burial. The no man's land of Rafah's border crossing, strewn with barbed wire and reverberating with nearby bomb blasts, is a grim patch between the Gazan and Egyptian borders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Candidate who wants Olmert's job once
'sought deaths of 70 Palestinians a day'
A leading candidate to be Israel's next premier called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day when he was head of the military during the second intifada, according to a best-selling book by two Israeli journalists.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
who-wants-olmerts-
"War of the Tunnels: Economic Aspects of the Israeli Attack on Gaza"
The Hamas party in Gaza was able to put some dents into the Israeli mechanism of exploitation. By breaking through the fence to Rafah in early 2008, and later by importing goods from Egypt via underground tunnels to supplement the diet of beleaguered Gazans under siege, Hamas has been able to smuggle goods into the Gaza Strip without paying customs to Israel.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.
One of the more shocking sentences I've read lately about Israeli settlements
Then there's the settlements issue. In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can't recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
ANALYSIS / Price of stubborness over Gaza exit is dead soldiers
Those who want to treat the delay in creating a diplomatic exit strategy for the war in Gaza as if it were a divine decree must take into account that at the end of this determination are casualties. The repeated delays in moving ahead with Operation Cast Lead, first before the ground operation and now the slow way Israel is seeking 'exit points' have a price. We are now beginning to pay it.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Israelis watch bombardment of Gaza town
A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists. Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he had carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."
http://www.kansascity.com/451/
Conditioning Gaza: preparing to deploy international forces in Palestine?
The Israeli attack on Gaza is likely timed to coincide with the February elections in Israel and this month's inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama in anticipation of launching a comprehensive Middle East peace plan. The ultimate goal of the Gaza invasion is to create the conditions to introduce international troops into Palestine.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
Has Israel's response exceeded its right to defend itself?
If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense? Of course not. Yet such belligerence seems to inform Israel's latest pummeling of the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed. Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
White flag, black flag
Exactly one week ago I asked in this column how many Palestinians and Israelis must die before both sides hold their fire and tahadiyeh II is signed. The answer came, ostensibly, on Saturday, a few hours before the Israel Defense Forces stormed the Gaza Strip. Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal announced on the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Web site that he was prepared not only for a "cessation of aggression" - he proposed going back to the arrangement at the Rafah crrossing as of 2005, before Hamas won the elections and later took over the region. That arrangement was for the crossing to be managed jointly by Egypt, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority presidency and Hamas.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Twilight Zone / Trumpeting for war By Gideon Levy
That's how it is here: Opposition to peace is always legitimate and patriotic; opposition to war is always traitorous, anti-Israel and should be hushed while broadcasting his television show "London & Kirschenbaum" this week, Yaron London acknowledged they had run into problems: "We had some trouble as we were preparing this program. We know the broad consensus is in favor of the operation - to strike them hard, but there are also other voices, not only Arab Israelis, but Jews, too. We found a few Jews who believe the operation must be halted, or shouldn't have been launched at all, and that political negotiations should be held. This is not my view. I called for a different line in articles I've written. But their voice needs to be heard, too. Wall-to-wall consensus spells disaster. But they were too frightened. Other voices are being terrorized into silence."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Ten Myths about Gaza
It is known that truth is the first casualty in wars. The current war on Gaza is no different. Below is a list of 10 myths perpetuated by Israel and repeated ad nauseum by many in the media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Gaza Endures, West Bank Maybe Next
Watching what has happened to Gaza over the past few years, particularly since December 27, 2008 when the Israeli operation "Cast Lead" began, one can't help but wonder how far off this same treatment is for the West Bank. The two main differences between Gaza and the West Bank vis-Ã -vis Israel are the level of Israeli control over each territory and the nature of the governing authorities in each.
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Innocent blood flows in Gaza and Iraq as world powers look on
The war in Gaza reminds me of the war in Iraq. When President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the whole world watched as his marauding troops, using state-of-the art weaponry tore the country to pieces. Instead of the paradise Bush promised the Iraqis, there have been rivers of innocent blood that is still flowing five years after the invasion.
http://www.azzaman.com/
Modernity cuts through Israeli Propaganda
If there is anything at all to be glad about this week, it's that the Israeli Propaganda Machine (IPM) has been completely discredited, in spite of the ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza (an action determined illegal by Israel's own Supreme Court). Much of this has to do with some advances in New Media. A good indication of Israel's PR failure at containing shameful news is the eminently absorbing Facebook News Feed.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/
Israel in Gaza: Self-Defense or Slaughter?
According to the latest approximations of Amnesty International, 400 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been killed and 2,000 wounded by Israel's air and sea bombardment. Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets report that rockets from Gaza have killed 4 Israelis (15 had been killed in previous rocket attacks beginning after Israel's withdrawal) and wounded at least several persons. To many observers, apparently including the government of Turkey which has been cooperating with Israel on several fronts, the rather dramatic asymmetry of casualties implies the unconscionable slaughter of a stateless huddle of impoverished people lacking any air defense capability or shelters capable of resisting Israeli bombs, lacking indeed regular armed forces of any kind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Roseanne Barr: Israel is a 'Nazi state'
Former television star Roseanne Barr has denounced Israel's military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, labeling Israel a "Nazi state.", A screen shot of Roseanne..., A screen shot of Roseanne Barr's personal blog., Photo: www.roseanneworld.com/blog, In a post on her personal blog, which appears at her Web site, Roseanne World, the comedienne, who is Jewish, wrote on December 30 that she had planned to travel with pro-Palestinian activists on a protest boat sailing from Cyprus to Gaza.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
Consider the Realities of Gaza, By WILLIAM COOK
As the Israeli military launched an "all out war" with Hamas in the Gaza strip, as casualties mounted to 400 dead and another 1450 wounded, as tanks and troops massed in the area just outside the wall that imprisons the people of Gaza, as preparations for a ground assault into the "closed military zone" around the Gaza strip moved forward, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday the 27th "… instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel's international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip." (Haaretz, 12/28/08). "An aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign" needed to be launched simultaneously with the estimated "60 raids" that now pummel Gaza each day, raids that, in human terms, have taken the lives of five children, all girls, of the Ba'losha family killed in Bait Lahia City north of Gaza and three children from the Al Absi family in Rafah refugee camp as Israeli rockets collapsed their roof. (freepalestine.ps, Sameh, Habeeb).
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Abeer's Baby
Abeer was excited when I called her today. "It's my time, Jen!" she told me breathlessly. "The baby might come today or tomorrow—any moment now!" Last time I saw Abeer, a year ago, she had shown me pictures of her fiancé, who is a teacher, and last time we spoke, months ago, she told me she was pregnant. But I had no idea how far along she was and that she was about to give birth now.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Phoning Home to Gaza
My family was in Denver for the holidays when we awoke to peddling images of bombardment. Gaza was on fire. 250 people dead. From our television set we quickly tuned into the perversions of war, watching reports from both American and Arab media. We are safe. We do not smell burned flesh, hear cries of agony or see before us military planes. We view from a distance, but feel none of the anxiety and melancholy that the rest of our family feels in the besieged coastal strip.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Gaza: Where families die together
I've had this open for two hours now, trying to write and finish earlier than usual so that I can get some real sleep tonight. But the words weren't coming out. The constant, continuous and very real fear that every conversation with my family in Gaza might be the last, the hard-hitting anxiety I feel every time I hear of an air strike on Gaza City or Khan Younis, the dismay I feel at the continued justifications of mass murder has left me mentally and physically exhausted.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/
Robert Fisk: Bring in the peacekeepers? It's not as easy as it sounds
Do I hear the braying of the UN donkey in Gaza? On his Middle East tour, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, may well be mentioning that well-known Eeyore figure on the East River, always so willing to send its peacekeepers on Mission Impossible. The Palestinians have been trying to internationalise their conflict with the Israelis ever since Yasser Arafat pleaded for UN forces to protect the Palestinians after the failure of the Oslo agreement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Gaza Phone Tag
http://www.counterpunch.org/
On Gaza
All day I've been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I've been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.
http://www.starhawk.org/activi
Gaza and India
The horror and the massacres continue in Gaza. The scenes of carnage being broadcast by Al-Jazeera are unbearably painful. Police stations, schools, universities, ministries, houses, crowded mosques, ambulances, paramedics, etc. were and are being targeted by the Israeli air force and now ground troops have entered to "finish the job" as the Israelis call it. Hundreds of innocents have been killed and thousands injured and there seems to be no end in sight.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Israel's pathetic psy-ops
It is a revealing measure of the paucity or non-existence of Israel's actual, on-the-ground intelligence network inside Gaza today (as in Lebanon in 2006) that the IDF's psy-ops department feels obliged to launch thousands of leaflets and undertake frantic robo-calling and robo-texting in order to beg anyone-- anyone at all!-- in Gaza to become an informer.
http://justworldnews.org/
Israel; Always the Victim
Israel has successfully portrayed itself as the victim with the duty to defend its people, but the reality is that everyone has the right to defend its people and to live in security. These are not luxuries to be enjoyed by Israelis alone in the Middle East. The Israelis insist that the latest violence began when Hamas "ended" a six month truce. I didn't know there was a truce.
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Avrum Burg: Can the Jewish People Survive Without an Enemy?
Avrum Burg is the scion of one of Israel's founding families — his father was the deputy speaker of the first Knesset, and Burg himself later became speaker of the legislature, and a member of Israel's cabinet. His position at the heart of the Israeli establishment makes all the more remarkable his critique of the Jewish State, which he claims has lost its sense of moral purpose. In his new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes (Palgrave/MacMillan), he argues that an obsession with an exaggerated sense of threats to Jewish survival cultivated by Israel and its most fervent backers actually impedes the realization of Judaism's higher goals. He discussed his ideas with TIME.com's Tony Karon.
http://palestinethinktank.com/
Israel as Mini-Me
The affinity runs deeper: we are both settler states. The Puritans, who escaped oppression in the Old World only to mete out oppression in the New, unfolded their Zionist project in the 17th century with their "city built upon a hill" as the New Jerusalem. Pity any settler--Quaker, Anabaptist--who didn't embrace this vision. But the early American Zionists and their successors were considerably harsher toward the Native Americans who were pushed further and further west, an expulsion as tragic as the Palestinian nakba of 1948. America, like Israel, believed in the "redemption of the land...by settling it." And today, after some backsliding in the redemption department, the reservations of Indian Country, with their limited sovereignty, represent our own two-state solution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Well Done, Brave Israeli Airman
What's it like, firing missiles at people you can't see? Does it help to keep saying that you are not deliberately targeting civilians? Does this enable you to sleep well at night or do you have nightmares of the women and children you killed, in their homes, in their beds, in their kitchens and living rooms, in their schools and markets and mosques? What do you feel when the mission is over? That you did a good job? Would you still think that you had done a good job if you were made to look at the dead and dismembered bodies that are your particular contribution to the Middle East 'peace process'?
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Disarming Palestine
Those of us who originate from that unholy land, are gripped by helplessness, disgust and depression during those recurring depredations inflicted on the Palestinians, as they are now in Gaza, whose inhabitants had been systematically starved and reduced to misery for years. It's as if the most insightful, humane reflection, all the rationality and political analysis, is inadequate to explain the horrors that unfold with awful predictability.
http://palestinechronicle.com/
Obama fiddles while Gaza burns
Barack Obama has remained silent about the war Israel launched in Gaza, which has killed 540 in 10 days. Instead he's letting spokeswoman Brooke Anderson issue statements that do not call for peace: "President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Iraq
Monday: 4 Iraqis Killed, 37 Wounded
http://www.antiwar.com/
Iraqi killed as US troops open fire on car
AFP - American troops opened fire and killed a passenger in a car in central Iraq after the vehicle failed to heed warnings to keep its distance from a military convoy, the US military said Tuesday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/
Victims of Blackwater shooting await guards' trial (AP)
AP - Iraqis wounded by gunfire in a Baghdad square 15 months ago are awaiting with guarded hopes the beginning of court proceedings against five former private Blackwater Worldwide security guards.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
Sadr movement: U.S. should agree to go
The Sadr Movement supports any agreement that would lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the group's foreign relations spokesman said Friday.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/
Two US soldiers charged with murdering Iraqi prisoner
Staff Sergeant Hal Warner and First Lieutenant Michael Behenna were each charged with multiple offences following the death of Ali Mansur Mohammed, the US military said, without providing details on how he died.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/
Pentagon OKs over $10 bln in arms sales for Iraq
The U.S. Department of Defense approved up to $10.7 billion in arms sales for Iraq over the past week, including a $2.16 billion sale of M1A1 Abrams tanks built by General Dynamics Corp (GD.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
http://in.reuters.com/article/
Iraq: Warning over plight of Iraqi widows
A women's rights activist and a Baghdad government official agree that the government needs to take action to help the huge number of widows in Iraq - but they disagree on how to proceed. "Iraqi widows, especially internally displaced widows in camps, are having a tough time. Most have more than one child and are finding it very hard to feed them," said Mazin al-Shihan, head of Baghdad's Displacement Committee.
http://in.reuters.com/article/
Source: British Territory Used for US "Terrorism Interrogation"
In 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorism suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.
http://www.time.com/time/
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