Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts

Palestinian teenager shot by Israeli Soldiers, Another Ceasefire Broken by Israel to add to their long list

Israeli Defense Forces soldiers reportedly just shot another child in the tiny Gaza Strip this week. The Palestinian teenager was from the city of Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza according to our sources.
Doctors in the region say that Jalal Abu Jarad, 16, had been shot by IDF soldiers in the left foot while doing nothing other than working on his fathers farm. The farm is based in a Bedouin Village in Beit Lahia.
Immediately after being shot by the IDF soldier, Abu Jarad was raced on an ambulance to Kamal Adwan Hospital where he was treated and his injuries were assessed.
After his condition was deemed moderate, he was later transferred to the much lager, and well-known Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for further treatment.
Just last Sunday, IDF soldiers shot another Gazan and arrested fisherman off the Gaza coast for doing nothing more than fishing. All of this is in clear violation of the ceasefire deal which had been signed on August 26.
You can expect that once Hamas begins firing rockets in response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will act like Gaza was the first to break the ceasefire.
(Article by M.A. Hussein and R. Abraham; image used for illustrative purposes) VIA CCN

Share:

Two More Civilians In Gaza Killed By Israeli Bomb

Two Gazan youths were just killed along with three others who were injured by an Israeli bomb. The ordinance exploded Friday in the al-Shujaiyya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City.
Ambulances from the Shujaiyya area raced to the area immediately, but there the two casualties had already died instantly when the Israeli bomb exploded unexpectedly.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said that the two casualties were Ayman Ziad Abu Jibba, 23, and Abdullah Jibril Abu Aser, 23.
Al-Qidra said that the bodies had been taken to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where they were confirmed and pronounced dead.
The Gaza Strip is littered unexploded Israeli ordinances like this. In August, some six Gazan children were killed in similar blasts.
Police explosives teams have been trying to safely detonate these Israeli bombs, but hundreds still remain.
(Article by M.A. Hussein and R. Abraham; image via The Weekly Zaman)
Share:

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition to Sail to Gaza Again

​
Responding to the Israeli aggression and the  complicity of world governments

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) met in Istanbul in the shadow of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza. We have watched atrocities being committed against an already besieged population. In the two day meeting (August 10th and 11th), the FFC concluded that it is the responsibility of civil society worldwide to sail to Gaza and challenge the Israeli blockade, the source of most problems facing the Palestinian population of Gaza.

We plan to sail to Gaza during 2014, the UN International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People: http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/solidarity.htm?OpenForm

This initiative, following in the footsteps of the 2010 and 2011 flotillas as well as other attempts to challenge the blockade of Gaza (between 2008 and 2014), is expected to include a wider and more diverse international participation.  This new flotilla is a reflection of the growing worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people; from the US to Malaysia, from Scandinavia to South Africa.

"Calls to end the blockade of Gaza need to move from words to actions," said Ann Ighe, chairperson of Ship to Gaza and member of the FFC. We invite all interested citizens worldwide to participate in this initiative in any way you can."
These boats are also expected to carry Palestinian commercial products purchased by buyers worldwide to complete the work of Gaza's Ark, the cargo boat built by the Palestinians and the FFC in Gaza and was bombed by Israel on July 11th.

"We urge all governments to defend Human Rights and the right of the Palestinian people to freedom of movement, to facilitate the sailing of our ships to Gaza. It is their responsibility," added Ehab Lotayef of the coalition.
In addition to sailing to Gaza, the FFC will organize demonstrations at sea and in ports worldwide over the next months. Along with other projects, the initiative will support the right of Palestinians to operate international marine lines in and out of the port of Gaza.

We support the Palestinian demand to open the port of Gaza to international marine traffic. The FFC also will work on twinning ports in the Mediterranean and beyond, with Gaza City, as a sign of solidarity and support.

Finally, we assert that all that we do is peaceful, civil society driven non-governmental actions.

Freedom Flotilla Coalition members:

European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza
Freedom Flotilla Italia

Gaza's Ark
IHH
International Committee for Breaking the Siege on Gaza (ICBSG)
Rumbo a Gaza
Ship to Gaza Greece
Ship to Gaza Norway
Ship to Gaza Sweden

also participating in the project:
Palestine Solidarity Alliance - South Africa
Free Gaza
Haluan Palestin - Malaysia
Life Line to Gaza - Jordan
Miles of Smiles
Sahabat Al-Aqsha
Share:

The Resistance Will Continue Says The Majority Of Gaza: Over 2,000 Palestinians In Gaza Did Not Die For Nothing - We Only Want What The Rest Of The World Already Has!


Large marches in Gaza in support of Palestinian resistance

Thousands of Gazans marched on Thursday in support of Palestinian resistance’s demands and the Palestinian negotiating team in Cairo.
Member of Palestinian Legislative Council Mushir al-Masri said during the march that Gaza today is united behind Palestinian resistance topped by Qassam Brigades and Hamas Movement despite the Israeli killing of around 2000 citizens and the injury of 10,000 others mostly children and women in addition to hundreds of destroyed homes, mosques, and schools.
These huge numbers of participants including men, women, and children came to show their total support for the Palestinian resistance and the negotiating team in Cairo, he continued.
He added that the Palestinian negotiating team must realize that the Palestinian people, who sacrificed their beloved ones along the past month, will not agree to any truce agreement unless their demands are met.
Al-Masri called on the Egyptian authorities to support the Palestinian people’s fair, legitimate, and humanitarian demands, stressing the importance of Palestinian unity.
“The enemy must well recognize that our resistance fighters are ready for any scenario in case our demands are not met,” he said addressing Israeli leaders.
He pointed to Israel’s attempts to achieve a political victory after its defeat on the ground, saying that disarming Palestinian resistance is non-debatable.
This is a historic moment and a strategic shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict, he noted.
He confirmed that hundreds of Israeli casualties were not declared to the media outlets.
Share:

Palestinians in Gazs are still dying from wounds sustained in Israeli Operation Gaza Genocide

Three Palestinians have succumbed to wounds sustained in the Israeli offensive on Gaza since the start of a 72-hour ceasefire Tuesday, a health ministry spokesman said.  Fayiz Ismail Abu Hammad, 34, succumbed to wounds he sustained during an Israeli shelling on Khan Younis, Ashraf al-Qidra said.  He said Salah Ahmad al-Ghouti, 22, succumbed to wounds sustained during shelling on Rafah on Monday.  And 12-year-old Nidal Raed Eleiwa also succumbed to his wounds.  The latest deaths brought the death toll of the Israeli assault on Gaza to 1,875, al-Qidra said.  Some 9,567 Palestinians have been wounded throughout the offensive.
Share:

4 Year oldYamin found alive 4 days after his family members we're murdered by by Israeli airstrike that bombed his home

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) – Family 

relatives of four-year-old 

Yamin Abu Jabir found him 

alive in hospital after they 

spent four days looking for 

his dead body with the belief 



that he was killed along with the rest of his family.

The relatives were killed by an Israeli airstrike at their home 


in al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Muhammad Jabir Abu, a cousin of Yamin’s father, said he 


believed that the child was dead under the rubble, but he 

was confused as bulldozers failed to find the child’s body 

after digging in the rubble for four days. 

Moving from one hospital to another across the Gaza Strip, 


relatives finally found Yamin on the fifth day at Shifa 

Hospital in Gaza City. His face was wrapped with a white 

cloth and his hand was set in plaster, but fortunately a 

relative approached him and recognized him. 

Muhammad highlighted that his cousin’s family were 


gathered on Tuesday, the second day of the Eid al-Fitr 

holiday, in an attempt to create a positive atmosphere 

which could soften the tension and fear caused by the 

ongoing Israeli airstrikes everywhere in the coastal enclave. 

However, he added, the good moments were interrupted by 


an Israeli missile which killed 22 members of the family 

leaving four-year-old Yamin alone as he turned out to be 

the only survivor.

Neighbors and ambulance service officers who hurried to 


evacuate the victims took Yamin to the Al-Aqsa Martys 

Hospital in Deir al-Balah where he was admitted to an 

intensive care unit. 

He was then transferred to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City by a 


young volunteer Muhammad Abu Zeid who escorted him 

and remained attached to him hoping that some relative 

would recognize him. 

“When Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was bombarded, and chaos 


prevailed amongst medical staffs, I grabbed the child on my 

own and took him to Shifa Hospital,” he said. 

Abu Zeid highlighted that medics wrote the word 


“unidentified” on Yamin’s file because nobody came to ask 

about him. 

The Israeli military offensive on Gaza has claimed the lives 


of about 400 children in addition to thousands who were 

injured. 
Share:

Israeli strike kills 8-year-old girl despite truce

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces targeted a home in Gaza City early Monday, killing a young girl and injuring dozens of Palestinians just minutes after a humanitarian ceasefire came into effect, health officials said.

Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said an airstrike hit the home of the al-Bakri family in al-Shati camp, killing eight-year-old Aseel Muhammad al-Bakri and leaving 30 people injured.

The wounded, among them children, were taken to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Less than an hour later, Israeli forces shelled a house in al-Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, causing injuries, a Ma'an reporter said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the incidents.

Israel unilaterally announced a humanitarian ceasefire from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. on Monday. The ceasefire was to apply across the Gaza Strip, excluding areas east of Rafah.

But Hamas officials told Palestinians in Gaza to be wary of the truce.

"The unilateral ceasefire announced by Israel is an attempt to divert the attention from Israeli massacres," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, calling on Palestinians to proceed with caution.

The Hamas movement "doesn't trust such a ceasefire," Abu Zuhri said.
A photo provided by the Ministry of Health shows a child who
sustained wounds after his home was struck in al-Shati camp.

According to the Ministry of Health, the Israeli offensive on Gaza has left over 1,822 Palestinians dead, including 398 children. Some 9,370 Palestinians have been injured, 2,744 of them children.

Approximately 373,000 children are in need of psychological support as a result of the trauma of the war, according to UN figures.

Over a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes throughout the assault.

Share:

Gaza crisis spiralling out of control

The crisis in Gaza is fast spiralling out of control with water supplies critically low and a public health crisis imminent, Oxfam warned today. The collapse of the latest brief ceasefire announcement means many more lives will be at risk.
Israeli bombardment on Gaza July 24th 2014

Conditions are increasingly desperate in overcrowded schools and buildings where up to 450,000 people are sheltering. Many people are getting as little as three litres of safe water a day, far below international emergency standards. Massive destruction of water and sewage systems and electricity supplies has reduced water supply to Gaza's entire population of 1.8 million people. Spills of raw sewage threaten to contaminate water sources and the threat of disease is rising. There are already reports of 30 cases of meningitis, as well as skin diseases among children and cases of gastroenteritis.

Oxfam teams and local partners are working around the clock to supply water to 70,000 people, but the massive destruction of infrastructure and the ongoing Israeli bombardment means aid workers are increasingly overwhelmed and struggling to meet even basic needs.

The destruction of Gaza's only power plant earlier this week has plunged much of Gaza into darkness and left vital water pumps struggling to keep going. Three of Gaza's four main power supplies have now been completely destroyed or extensively damaged by the violence of the past few weeks, cutting off more than 80 percent of Gaza's power. Most municipal water supplies have now stopped running.

"The outrageous level of destruction is much worse than anything we have seen in previous military operations and the situation is getting worse by the hour. Tens of thousands of families have fled but are trapped with nowhere safe to escape, sheltering in horrific conditions and terrified to move. The international community's response to such suffering has so far been shamefully weak. Every day that this goes on is putting many more civilian lives at risk," said Nishant Pandey, head of Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.

Hospitals that Oxfam works with are struggling to cope. Six of the nine busiest hospitals in Gaza have been directly hit or badly damaged, with three of them now closed. Another four Oxfam-supported health clinics and many others have been damaged or shut. Many health facilities are running short of fuel to keep life-saving operations going.

"Oxfam condemns the rockets that continue to be fired from Gaza towards Israel, but this does not justify Israel's outrageously disproportionate use of force which has killed so many civilians and destroyed so much of Gaza. All civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, have the right to live in security, but military operations that bring such levels of death and destruction will not make anyone safer in the long term," said Pandey.

Oxfam said the international community must do much more to ensure an urgent and permanent ceasefire, but that lasting peace will only be possible with an end to the ongoing blockade of Gaza. For the past seven years people in Gaza have been living under an Israeli blockade which prevents the free flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza, devastating the economy and severely restricting people's livelihoods. 
Share:

Israeli truce to ‘improve’ killing operation Gaza Genocide

It is simply a matter of recognizing and understanding that the Zionist regime is an artificial and illegitimate state that has been unjustly imposed on the people of Palestine for the past 66 years.

That historical crime, and its ongoing criminal, genocidal occupation, must be stopped.


The Israeli regime is cynically using “humanitarian ceasefires” as a way of luring Palestinian civilians into further killing zones with the diabolical aim of “improving” its genocidal operation, which has been dubbed with the Orwellian name “Protective Edge.”
On Friday morning, the Tel Aviv administration of Benjamin Netanyahu had declared a 72-hour truce. But the so-called cessation of Israeli violence was no reprieve for the death-trapped Palestinian population. Far from it.
Palestinian children killed and wounded in Israel's 'Operation Protective Edge'
Palestinian children killed and wounded in Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’
In the next hours more than 40 Palestinians were slaughtered when Israeli tanks and soldiers started firing on the Rafah Crossing on the Gaza border with Egypt.
In another location, near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, a whole village was flattened by Israeli tanks, also on Friday. The number of dead is not yet known but media reports described the “stench of death everywhere.”
In other words, a day of supposed “peace” was just another day of killing, wounding and destruction by Israeli forces.
The term “humanitarian ceasefire” is yet another Orwellian misnomer that means the opposite in reality. As noted in an earlier column, the Israeli forces are using these periods for reloading and refueling their killing machine – with fresh supplies from American government arms depots in the region.
This is the third time that the Israeli regime has declared a truce since it began pounding the Gaza Strip on July 8. Why bother calling these meaningless ceasefires?
Partly, it is a bid by the criminal Israeli regime to deflect mounting international outrage over the obscene spectacle of innocent civilians being mass murdered. The slaughter of children while asleep in United Nations’ shelters has even prompted Israel’s sponsor in Washington this week to issue words of unusual rebuke (while also reloading the Israeli tanks and guns.)
Partly, as noted above, these seeming pauses in Israeli state terrorism are also a logistical means of re-grouping and replenishing military forces.
But what is now becoming clear too is that the Israelis are using the cover of “ceasefires” as a way to increase the pernicious efficiency of killing the Palestinian population.
When a “humanitarian ceasefire” is called, obviously the 1.7 million Gaza population – at least 25 per cent of whom have been made homeless over the past three weeks – desperately grasp the chance to find meager food and water rations, or to find their missing loved ones, rush to hospitals, or try to flee to what they consider a safer location.
As people circulate under a false sense of relative security, the Israeli killing machine finds more targets to eliminate.
The killing of more than 40 people at the Rafah Crossing on Friday was nothing more than a gratuitous slaying of desperate civilians trying to find a safer refuge.
Earlier this week, the same murderous ploy was seen at Shujayea market when 15 people were killed by Israeli artillery. It was on the same day, Wednesday, that the UN school at Jabaliya was hit by Israeli tanks killing 20 civilians, including many children.
The Israelis that day had called a “humanitarian truce” and people reportedly ventured out to Shujayea market to eke out whatever basic supplies they could find. After the first Israeli shell struck the marketplace, an ambulance arrived to tend the injured. Within seconds, as graphic video footage shows, two more shells slammed into the street, killing and wounding many more, including the rescue workers.
As soon as Israeli ceasefires are called in Gaza, it is noticed that a temporary lull is accompanied by increased drone flights in the sky above the 40-kilometre-long coastal enclave. It can be safely surmised that these drones are relaying pictures of population movements. From the rubble of artillery-stricken buildings incurred over previous days, families will emerge to seek a safer shelter and basics of food and water at markets.
That’s when the Israeli killing machine can then strike again with nefarious success.
For let’s be clear, when Netanyahu and his regime talk about “wiping out the Palestinian resistance” that purpose is not limited to militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian resistance is the Palestinian people. The Zionist machine will never stop its murdering process while there are Palestinian people still alive on this earth.
So while America, Egypt and other Arab states scurry from capital to capital issuing portentous words about “trying to implement a ceasefire” such diplomacy should be dismissed with contempt.
Washington and its Arab satraps are not honest brokers in the slightest. They are indulging a terrorist Israeli regime to give itself a diplomatic cover to continue its brutality, an opportunity to reload, and a means by which to target Palestinian people more efficiently.
The US and pseudo Arab leaders are complicit in Israeli genocide. The whole notion of these protagonists implementing a ceasefire or mediating for Palestinians interests needs to be obliterated for the pathetic charade that it is.
There will be no genuine ceasefire leading to lasting peace in the land of Palestine until the American, European and Arab-backed Israeli regime is finally terminated and dismantled. This has nothing to do with killing Israeli civilians.
It is simply a matter of recognizing and understanding that the Zionist regime is an artificial and illegitimate state that has been unjustly imposed on the people of Palestine for the past 66 years. That historical crime, and its ongoing criminal, genocidal occupation, must be stopped.
Peace cannot exist without justice.
Source: Press TV

Share:

The Superhumans of Gaza

Close your eyes and visualize a child that you know and love dearly. The child can be your son, daughter, sibling, nephew or niece, grandson or granddaughter or even the child of a friend. Next, imagine that child playing innocently. Now imagine a bomb falling fatally near that child with his/her little body parts flying in different directions. If you are repulsed from this mental exercise, good. That means you have at least a shred or more of human feelings which I can address.

By Rifat Audeh

The issue is this: That mental exercise is not something imaginary for the Palestinian people of Gaza, rather, it is their daily living hell.
Genocide is defined in the dictionary as "the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group." For close to a month now, Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. At the time of this writing, 1600 Palestinians have been murdered by the Israeli military with the vast majority of them being civilians according to global media outlets and international human rights sources, although that number keeps changing by the hour. Also at the time of this writing, 360 of these civilians are children.

On July 12, 2014, Israel shelled a rehabilitation center for persons with disabilities in Beit Lahia, killing two disabled women who could not have escaped in time even if they tried. It killed four children from the same family on July 16th , who were merely playing soccer on the beach in clear view and far from any infrastructure whatsoever. NBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldin witnessed the crime. It has shelled numerous hospitals in the Gaza Strip and on another occasion bombed children playing on the rooftop of their home.  On the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid El-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, supposedly a time for festivity and celebration, Israel massacred 10 civilians including 8 children at a playground.

Countless other cold-blooded indiscriminate killings have been perpetrated by the Israeli military machine, funded primarily by US taxpayers, and amongst the most prevalent is the repetitive shelling of UN shelters/schools housing thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians trying to flee Israel's bombs. The latest such attack took place on July 30, and finally drew condemnation from the White House. More than 3000 civilians were seeking shelter in the UNRWA school because they thought that with it being under the auspices of the UN they would be safe there and because many peoples' homes were completely destroyed by Israeli bombing. According to UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl, the exact location of the school was communicated to the Israeli authorities 17 times, with the last notification made just hours before the shelling. More than sixteen people were killed and dozens injured, with many victims being women and children. It is no wonder that the UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness broke down and began crying after a live interview on the events in Gaza. Prior to the strike of July 30, there was also a strike on July 24, killing 13 and wounding more than 200 Palestinians. The shelling on July 24th was the fourth in as many days by the Israeli military of a UN school or shelter.

In much of the Western corporate-owned media and particularly in the USA, one either does not see or hear all this –while the images are being broadcast 24/7 on satellite channels in the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the world – or one listens to incredulous justifications by such news outlets and even US officials and others parroting the Israeli line. Among the most outrageous of these claims is that the resistance factions such as Hamas are placing their rocket launchers among the civilian population and therefore are putting the civilians at risk, as Israel is supposedly targeting these launchers only and militants.
This is utter nonsense.  

Firstly, no reporters on the ground have found any evidence to date that civilians are being used as human shields. Actually to the contrary, the BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen reporting from Gaza has stated outright that this is not the case. Next, and as was mentioned already, children were killed in open spaces and plain view on a beach and in a playground. The exact coordinates of the UNRWA schools and shelters full of civilians were conveyed and well-known to Israel's precision-guided munitions when they were directly hit by them. Further, the aforementioned claim implies that the resistance factions -which include Hamas and others- have descended on Gaza from abroad. This is false. The freedom fighters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Al-Aqsa Brigades and others are from Gaza. This means they live there with their families and that is where they earn their livelihoods and have shops, businesses, schools, companies and universities. Does anyone in their right mind believe that they would attempt to jeopardize the well-being of their families, relatives, friends, colleagues and loved-ones by placing weaponry near them?  The Israeli lie is easily exposed for anyone willing to open their eyes. A final point to be made in this regard is that under international law, even if human shields were being used, Israel's obligations to protect these civilians would still apply.  

Indeed, if one wishes to compare between the two sides, namely Israel and the Palestinian resistance, it is clear that the resistance has taken the moral high ground, although they are continuously being pushed by Israel to the point of desperation with the barbaric murders Israel continues to perpetrate. According to Israeli sources, 63 Israeli soldiers have been killed thus far along with 3 Israeli civilians, while there have been 1600 Palestinians killed and 8750 wounded. Therefore, 5% of the Israeli dead are civilians, while estimates of human rights groups and the OCHA place the percentage of Palestinian civilian dead to be no less than 64%.  This means that the Israeli military is deliberately and cowardly targeting civilians while the Palestinian resistance is targeting soldiers. Undoubtedly, Israeli apologists will argue as they constantly have, that the reason Israeli civilian casualties are so low is because the Iron Dome has intercepted most of the rockets fired by the resistance and therefore it is not due to a lack of trying by the resistance or the "saboteurs" as these apologists might call them. Yet according to Debkafile, an Israeli military intelligence website, an analysis it published on July 23rd  titled "IDF Commanders: Time for decisive war move after IDF victories in Shejaiya, E. Rafah and Khan Younes" exposed the following: "Most of the nearly 2,000 rockets fired over the last 16 days did not miss Israel’s urban centers by chance, although many were deflected by Iron Dome interceptors. Hamas was focusing on strategic targets, such Israeli Air Force bases and facilities in the south and center." To simplify, this hawkish Israeli site itself is acknowledging that the Palestinian resistance is targeting military sites and not "soft targets" of civilians. Clearly, if one looks closely enough and scrutinizes, a crack appears every so often in the fortified wall of Israeli lies and propaganda.

The statement from Debkafile above actually is consistent with the announcement made by Mohammed Deif, the commander of Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. In a televised speech broadcast on July 29, he stated that "We have preferred to confront and kill the military and the elite soldiers of the enemy as opposed to attacking civilians..at a time when this criminal enemy sheds the blood of civilians, commits massacres and destroys entire neighborhoods upon the residents thereof…".

What evidence is there to Deif's claim above? The Palestinian resistance has been utilizing tunnels to carry out their operations against the Israeli occupation forces. Several of these tunnels reach behind enemy lines into Israeli territory and this was actually one of the excuses that Israel used to launch its war against Gaza; namely to destroy these tunnels. The resistance executed a number of operations by infiltrating behind enemy lines through these tunnels and attacking soldiers and military bases. The last such operation was conducted July 28 in broad daylight on a military base and videotaped and eventually broadcast on Israeli media. The resistance fighters could have easily targeted unarmed Israeli civilians during their infiltrations which would have been much easier, and more importantly less risky without jeopardizing their own lives. Yet they chose not to do so.

It should be noted that to get a better idea of the racism and hatred abundant in Israel today and among pro-Israel supporters, one needs to merely view the comments on various stories on Israeli news websites.  Such comments include statements like "There are NO CIVILIANS in Gaza", "Stupid Israeli leadership, no ground troops needed, just level Gaza to the ground", "Modest proposal for a 2-state solution: Alive (Jews) and Dead (Arabs). Now that's a 2-state solution that has a chance of working", and others. To be fair, peoples' comments do not necessarily represent the policies of a state. However, they do reflect a prevalent attitude in Israeli society.

In summary, Israel is no stranger to killing innocent civilians, and this has been a long-standing practice of the state. The indiscriminate killing of Palestinians at UNRWA schools for example is reminiscent of the Al-Fakhura school murders. Yet the killing of civilians by Israel has not been limited to Palestinians. Rachel Corrie, an American activist, was deliberately crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. Thomas Hurndall, a British activist, was shot by a sniper in the head the same year as was Brian Avery, another American activist who was shot in the face. In 2010, ten Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara ship in the Freedom Flotilla were shot and killed by the Israeli navy in international waters. Also in international waters, Israel killed 34 American sailors and wounded more than 170 aboard the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. Then, as now, Israel continues to act with impunity. However, the list of Israeli crimes committed for decades is too long to mention here. (It just came to the author's attention that an Israeli soldier named David Ovadia was bragging online about killing 13 children.)  

The question that the Israel right-or-wrong crowd – who are always quick to condemn Palestinians for basically refusing to die quietly – must ask themselves, is this: If the opening "mental exercise" in this piece was perpetrated against the infant child that they know, what would they be capable of doing? And what would they do?
If anything, it is amazing how patient, disciplined and forgiving the Palestinians have been thus far in the face of one of the ugliest forms of genocide history has ever witnessed. 

Rifat Audeh is a Palestinian-Canadian human rights activist and media analyst. His activities included helping organize divestment conferences throughout the USA, the co-founding of a media watchdog group in Michigan and participation in the Freedom Flotilla. His writings have appeared in numerous newspapers and websites.
 
 
(List of hyperlinks according to their order in the piece above:
















Share:

Gaza crisis is a ‘major defeat’ for humanity

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon volunteering at a Gaza hospital, called the conflict a “major defeat for the development of humanity,” in an interview with Al Arabiya News Channel.


Gilbert practices in Gaza’s al-Shifa’a Hospital, where he and Palestinian medical personnel have worked to save the lives of hundreds of civilians who were injured during Israel’s strikes on the Gaza strip.


“What we see playing out under our eyes is the total lack of respect for international humanitarian laws,” he told the interviewer, in reference to the Israeli army’s ongoing offensive against the Gaza Strip, which has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people. 


Gilbert previously invited U.S. President Barack Obama to spend a night in the hospital to see the consequences of the Israeli assault on the Palestinian enclave.