Israel Attacks Gaza Again, December 2008
[Updated with email from Ewa Jaciewicz]
Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning'
By Ewa Jasiewicz
As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal
in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the
internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows
nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the
house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.
UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al
Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another
was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.
Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge
the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only
perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their
lifetimes.
Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that
shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and
unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of
humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity,
fuel and freedom of movement.
Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating
theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to
transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had
12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.
There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and
blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.
Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire
hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and
lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the
spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red
Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.
Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had
over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the
operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were
sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital
in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short
space of time.’
And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this
morning, ‘This is only the beginning.’
But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective
punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It
has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread,
revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking:
If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?
11.30am
Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border
village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven
there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief
Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided
villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents
about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves,
family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for
Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks
were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on
the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us
the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would
shoot into his fields.
Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile
attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire
from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by
the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family,
caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.
I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us
off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16
bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas
authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit
Hanoon.
We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to
Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police
station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of
dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere
Bala, Diere Balak – take care.
Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had
soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable
market before impacting on its target.
Civilians Dead
There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead
donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and
splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken
English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead,
many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head
threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this!
Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they
are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are
they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader,
present during the attack.
He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking
them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a
small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his
legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain
and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.
The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of
concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree
split the road.
We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache
helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK ’s
Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares –
a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.
Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force
headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road.
‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.
We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be
target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The
apaches rumbled above.
Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work
smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the
ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around
20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a
motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.
Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under
the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it
everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a
captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3
feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks,
blocks and debris to reach the man.
We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the
men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and
speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without
interruption.
Hospitals on the brink
Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief,
horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed
by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of
shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not
even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who,
because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred,
in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.
The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against
the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds
temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically
injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in
scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel
cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area,
wards and operating theatres.
We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care
unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting
downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk
again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six
months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to
show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was
making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.
A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The
hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground,
Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic
police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying
force.
At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the
hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to
cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah,’ there is not god but Allah.
Who cares?
And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out
for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the
brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in
and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said
to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world?
Where is the action to stop these attacks?’
Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she
had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near
Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s
attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down
her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We
didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the
biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.
The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa
hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one
group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head
injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the
weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a
teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’.
He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of
human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’
It’s true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human
Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva
Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague
Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help
generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity
for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to
as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the
realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied
or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on
’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps
in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate
from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both
here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by
Israel , with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported
this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against
Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on
Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.
In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza ’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into
a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the
morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for
civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and
exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of
a lack of access to essential medicines.
A light
There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At
the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you
consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel
and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running
from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in
the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education,
see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are
reportedly big enough to drive through.
Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel,
there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to
make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring
the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take
on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end
of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of
international governmental complicity and silence?
There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity
in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of
conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn
a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring
injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and
pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and
occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and
for a genuine Just Peace.
Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light
at the end of the Gazan tunnel.
-----
Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer,
and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for
the Free Gaza Movement.
[Press release from Free Gaza -- c455]
For Immediate Release
International Witnesses Speak Out from Gaza
For More Information, please visit http://www.FreeGaza.org, or see contact details below.
(Besieged Gaza, Palestine - 27th December 2008) - Human Rights Defenders from Lebanon, the UK, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia are present in Gaza and are witnessing and documenting the current Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Due to Israel's policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement's boats. FREE GAZA boats have broken Israel's siege of Gaza five times in the past four months.
"At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars - anything that can move is bringing injured to
the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the blood banks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp."
- Eva Bartlett (Canada) International Solidarity Movement
"Israeli missles tore through a children's playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza"
- Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movement
"The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital."
- Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza
"The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5 year old girl ran sobbing into my arms."
- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement
"This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now calls of revenge are everywhere."
- Dr. Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre
"As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I live in Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the bodies. As we arrived one more was found."
- Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement
"The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight year little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and the Israel's message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion outside!"
- Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement
-----
Human Rights Defenders in Gaza (available for interviews):
Dr. Eyad Sarraj (Arabic and English) +972 599400424
Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Co-Coordinator in Gaza (Polish, Arabic, and
English) - +972 59 8700497
Dr. Haider Eid (English and Arabic) + 972 59 9441766
Sharon Lock (English) +972 59 8826513
Vittorio Arrigoni (Italian) +972 59 8378945
Fida Qishta (English and Arabic) +972 599681669
Jenny Linnel (English) +972 59 87653777
Natalie Abu Shakra (Arabic and English) 0598336 328
For more information on the Free Gaza Movement (FREE GAZA) or the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) contact in the West Bank:
Adam Taylor (ISM) - 972 59 8503948
Lubna Masarwa (FREE GAZA) - 972 50 5633044
###########
The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel's draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza.
[Many more first person accounts of "Black Saturday" to be found at http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml -- c455]
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Free Gaza Ship "Dignity" Emergency Mission
[The Dignity will be making an emergency trip back to Gaza (from Cyprus) with medical supplies -- and Cynthia McKinney! -- c455]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sunday 28th December 2008
For more information, contact.
(Gaza) Ewa Jasiewicz, +970 598 700 497 / freelance@mailworks.org
(Cyprus) Eliza Ernshire, +357 99 081 767/ eliza.ernshire@gmail.com
(U.S.) Ramzi Kysia, +1 703 994 5422/ rrkysia@yahoo.com
(Larnaca, Cyprus) The Free Gaza movement will hold a press conference at 16:30, Monday, December 29 at the port in Larnaca. The organization is sending in the DIGNITY on an emergency mission of mercy to Gaza loaded with three to four tons of urgently needed medical supplies.
On board are four physicians, including Dr. Elena Theoharous, a surgeon and Member of Parliament in Cyprus. Also going are The Hon. Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, and Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera reporter and former detainee at Guantanamo.
Dr Khaled from the Shifa hospital ICU in Gaza City told us on Saturday that the majority of cases are critical shrapnel wounds from Israeli gunboats and helicopters, with an approximate 80% who will not survive.
The medical supply list includes bandages, splints and rubber gloves, items that any medical community should have access to, but, because of Israel's policies of collective punishment, these supplies are not available.
Eliza Ernshire, one of the Free Gaza organizers says, "We have calls for surgeons willing to go into Gaza and work there throughout this crisis. The doctors inside are exhausted and unable to cope with the number of wounded. We will do our best to send in the DIGNITY as often as we can over the next few weeks, bringing in physicians and medical supplies.
The media is welcome to come to the port at 16:30 to interview the passengers.
###########
The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, physicians, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel's draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza.
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thank you for posting, Casseia/UFPJ action
beat me to it. this better be on the f'n world news tonight!!!!
Here's a notice from UFPJ:
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Take Action to Protest Israeli Attack on Gaza
Mid-morning Saturday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched a series of deadly air strikes on the occupied Gaza Strip. As we write this, an estimated 275 people have been killed. Hundreds of innocent people have been wounded. According to news reports today, Israel plans to keep these attacks going and has brought scores of tanks to the border with Gaza. These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip which has been going on for years and has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life. All of this is happening in the most densely populated and one of the poorest areas of the world. Israel is carrying out these attacks with F-16 fighter jets and missiles provided by U.S. taxpayers. From 2001-2006, the United States transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts to fly its fleet of F-16's. In July 2008, the United States gave Israel 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel. Last year, the United States signed a $1.3 billion contract with Raytheon to transfer to Israel thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and 'bunker buster' missiles. Israel's lethal attack on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military and political support of the United States. We need to take action now to protest this attack and demand an immediate cease-fire. The U.S. Campaign to End the Israel Occupation (a member group pf UFPJ) has issued an action alert with these suggestions -- we urge you to take action today!
In addition, the Middle East Children's Alliance (another member group of UFPJ) is working with health organizations in Gaza to procure the most-needed medicines and send them directly to Gaza with the help of the Free Gaza Movement. You can make a secure online contribution now.
Background Information Below are three articles you may want to read for background information and reports on the Gaza crisis. 'If Gaza Falls...', Sara Roy, Professor at Harvard's Center For Middle Eastern Studies and author of 'Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict'. 'Gaza Massacres Must Spur Us To Action', Ali Abunimah, Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 'One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse' (Metropolitan Books, 2006). 'Report on Gaza', Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Update December 22, 2008.
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Help us continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE To subscribe, visit www.unitedforpeace.org/email Click here to edit your subscription | Click here to unsubscribe |
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‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone.
Where is the world?"
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where were you when we needed you?!
ironically, the same chant of the right-wing Israeli Jews...
now they say, fuck the world, they never cared about us, we will do whatever we want.Â
as truth and justice advocates, we need to assure the Palestinians that there is response, there is concern, there will be action!!! Â
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Tijuana/San Diego Analogy
[I like analogies and having spent time in both San Diego and Tijuana, I especially liked the turn-about use of this one by "Bedouin" at Portland indymedia, responding to some dickhead clueless enough to use "Larry Craig" as his pseudonym. (Unless he is making some kind of ubersnarky indirect characterization of Zionism as a form of "wide stance.")-- c455]
Larry's "points" will spare you from having to turn to the CNN Website report on the bombing of the ghetto/prison camp, which includes the same Mexico/San Diego smokescreen analogy-for-the-gullible put forth by the Israel Minister of Defense. (I'm sure this was an oversight on your part, Larry, but failure to including attribution when using someone else's ideas or points, giving the impression that a point is originally one's own in a public statement, is one definition of plagiarism.)
Let's see . . . out of the blue, for no reason, Mexico starts to send rockets into San Diego. Is that it?
And what would that paragon of international cooperation, the U.S., do? Well, I guess the only option would be to bomb urban areas of civilians, civil servants, graduating cops, women, children, elderly, dogs, cattle -- oh, and those terrorists upon which successive Israeli governments, becoming more fossilized "our way or the highway" Zionist, have become so dependent upon to keep nationalist fervor and obedience functioning. (What does that remind you of, you creatures under the care and guidance of the Homeland Security state?)
So, Larry, what would you think might bring Mexico to send mortar shells and rockets, ineffectively, furtively, crudely but nevertheless randomly, potentially deadly and damaging into San Diego?
Last I heard, shipping and commerce with the world at large, autonomous production and trade of goods and services, external recognition of fair election results, among a lot of things that free nations and peoples are given to do in more or less mutual respect and recognition for the sovereignty and mutual aid and interests, are expressed and functioning in Mexico. How much of this would the U.S. have to subvert, take away from Mexico (or not even allow to see the light of day in the first place, from day one, so to speak) not to mention administering perverse recreations like daily sound-barrier busting overflights, turning embargo faucets on and off on whims, among a bigger list of arbitrary harassing acts administered by bored conscripts inserted into Mexico and on its borders) before rockets and mortars would land randomly and inaccurately in the San Diego golf courses, swimming pools and shopping mall parking lots?
While it's arguable that the lands on which the greater San Diego area, among other territory, was usurped from the Mexican state of the time in years past, during the initial and final formations of the European expansion into the "new world", that usurpation didn't begin a saga of no exit from a ghetto/prison camp culture foisted on the displaced Mexicans, with no promise of a different future, and a curious state of genocide by anonymous attrition in slow motion.
But that's a hypothetical, curiously myopic analogy extending on the snap-shot "what if" given by Ehud Barak (and Larry). Let's take it back to something more equivalent. Say that a culturally coherent group of vigilantes in the U.S., with a history of suffering oppression and second class citizenship, and prone to a self-given identity and assumption of special license invaded a poorly armed, casually organized, essentially self-sufficient, peaceful Mexico. Under an extreme, minority ideology that persists among the invaders, with no intention of even co-existing with the Mexicans, the invaders began occupying over half of the country, seizing land under cultivation and not, infrastructure and resources, displacing Mexicans, and forcing Mexicans, under overt and covert terrorist acts to escape as refugees to other countries, to become overwhelmingly stateless, and those Mexicans remaining, in an incubator tended by the invaders, dominated by successions of governments hewing to self-justification for crimes, to grow perpetual civil disorder among the in-country Mexican exiles. At the same time the strategic and tactical missions (I leave it to you to guess what those might be, maybe reflecting on the phrase, "A land without a people, for a people without a land".) of the extremist-led vigilantes to concentrate the Mexican in-country refugees is less than half of their original territory, collapsing into virtual tenant dependency and second-class citizenship in their own land, descending into squalor and desperation.
Say this state of affairs proceeds without effective setback for the extremist ideologue-led invaders, perfecting more and more control over the evicted Mexican refugees, still in-country, steadily and morbidly erasing, uprooting, demolishing the history, place names and religious sites, but never too fast or too focused. Instead, the nefarious policy proceeds with a steady chip here, and scuff there, with a periodic, more bloody "retaliation" for acts of resistance by the in-country exiles. The invaders, now more than ever engulfed by the extremist ideology, develop an economy and security state identity that reinforces itself periodically, refreshes its apparent existential need for victim-hood as crucial for the self-defined exceptionalism that they embrace in lieu of having to live as equals and with justice with those whose land they invaded.
Now, Larry and/or Ehud Barak) why would the in-country exiled Mexicans want to lob rockets and mortars into the settlements and parks, the irrigated, leisurely landscaped swards, the litter-free, bourgeois boulevards in what were lands on which the Mexicans lived, worked and cultivated, handed down from generation to generation, now held by and for the invaders exclusively without a dint of legal process or even a ghost of intent to remedy the usurpation, to engage in egalitarian community? Why would the Mexicans seek to express themselves in response to the grinding down, by an invader government consumed by a hostile, arrogant ideology of loony exclusivity among the rest of the human race, of the invader invoked attempts to disintegrate their existence as a people on the land they have inhabited for hundreds of years, under waves of comparatively more benign occupation, developing a rich culture revealed as peaceful and non-aggressive.
Larry, and similarly, another commenter,"goforit", take similar positions, not unlike a chronic posture maintained by Zionism apologists. That is to say that every overt aggression or military action from the Israeli forces directed against Palestinian people is framed as provoked by actions of Palestinian resistance "for no reason" other than pointing, without a glimmer of analysis, at some sort of gratuitous terrorism. Thus, this latest Israeli bombing of the Gaza ghetto/prison camp, wouldn't have happened if there were no rockets coming from Gaza. Why are rockets being launched from Gaza? That doesn't seem to be of concern to the Zionist "retaliators".
And besides, it's election time in Israel. It's time to beat-up on the captive scapegoats. The same scapegoats who are kept on call, and can be depended upon to be sufficiently hostile and reactive in response to the daily, insidious pokes, prods, insults, thuggery played out against the bigger background of genocidal attrition, as if self-administered! Always there to provide reinforcement to a cultural addiction to victim-hood. The corollary to this is the deployment of Israeli citizens as fodder, as provaceteurs -- yes, and as unfortunate victims of Palestinian resistance from time to time.
What would a Zionist ideology-dominated Israeli government be like without Palestinian resistance?
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Dignity to enter "closed military zone"
[Keep an eye out later tonight, when it is likely that the Israeli Navy will try to prevent the Dignity from reaching Gaza. -- c455]
The Dignity has left Cyprus & should arrive in Gaza tomorrow around 10am (local). Watch here for updates and check the website, www.freegaza.org as well. Israel has declared Gaza a 'closed military zone', making sure no one can witness the atrocities. Our boat is going to challenge that closure.
This morning, six little girls in one family were murdered as they stood in front of their house. Israel says they don't target civilians. They do.
The passenger list is below and includes Cynthia McKinney, a journalist from CNN and three physicians who will stay in Gaza to assist the overworked doctors there. We will also be sending out the list of medicines on board.
(UK) Denis Healey, Captain
Captain of the Dignity, Denis has been involved with boats for 45 years, beginning with small fishing boats in Portsmouth. He learned to sail while atschool and has been part of the sea ever since. He's a certified yachtmaster and has also worked on heavy marine equipment from yachts to large dredgers. This is his fourth trip to Gaza.
(Greece) Giorgios Klontzas, Relief Captain
Cpt. Klontzas is an experienced sailor and human rights activist. This will be his fourth trip to Gaza.
(Greece) Nikolas Bolos, First Mate
Nikolas is a chemical engineer and human rights activist. He has served as a crewmember on several Free Gaza voyages, including the first one in August.
(Jordan) Othman Abu Falah
Othman is a senior producer with Al-Jazeera Television. He will remain in Gaza to report on the ongoing military onslaught.
(USA) Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia is a former U.S. Congresswoman from Georgia, and the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate. She is traveling to Gaza to assess the ongoing conflict.
(Australia) Renee Bowyer
Renee is a schoolteacher and human rights activist. She will remain in Gaza to do human rights monitoring and reporting.
(Ireland) Caoimhe Butterly
Caoimhe is a reknowned human rights activist and Gaza Coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. She will be remaining in Gaza to do human rights monitoring, assist with relief efforts, and work on project development with Free Gaza.
(Cyprus) Ekaterini Christodulou
Ekaterini is a well-known and respected freelance journalist in Cyprus. She is traveling to Gaza to report on the conflict.
(Sudan) Sami El-Haj
Sami is a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and head of the human rights section at Al-Jazeera Television. He will remain in Gaza to report on the ongoing military onslaught.
(UK) Dr. David Halpin
Dr. Halpin is an experienced orthopaedic surgeon, medical professor, and ship's captain. He has organized humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza on several occasions with the Dove and Dolphin. He is traveling to Gaza to volunteer in hospitals and clinics.
(Germany) Dr. Mohamed Issa
Dr. Issa is a pediatric surgeon from Germany. He is traveling to Gaza to volunteer in hospitals and clinics.
(Cyprus) Dr. Elena Theoharous, MP
Dr. Theoharous is a surgeon and a Member of the Cypriot Parliament. She is traveling to Gaza to assess the ongoing conflict, assist with humanitarian relief efforts, and volunteer in hospitals.
(UK/Tunisia) Fathi Jaouadi
Fathi is a television producer and human rights activist. He will remain in Gaza to do human rights monitoring and reporting.
(Cyprus) Martha Paisi
Martha is a senior research fellow and experienced human rights activist. She is traveling to Gaza to do human rights work and to assist with humanitarian relief efforts.
(UK) Karl Penhaul
Karl Penhaul is a video correspondent for CNN, based out of Bogotá, Colombia. Appointed to this position in February 2004, he covers breaking news around the world utilizing CNN's new laptop-based 'Digital Newsgathering' system. He is traveling to Gaza to report on the ongoing conflict.
(Iraq) Thaer Shaker
Thaer is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera television. He will remain in Gaza to report on the ongoing military onslaught.
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Zionism=Nazism
What you will never hear on the "news" is occupied.Since 1948-1967 and beyond Israel has stolen land and made the lives of the people there a living hell.Occupied/stolen and now once again bombing the people they have deliberately starved and denied medicine and other basic goods.Yes Ahmajididad was right when he said Zionism should be erased from the pages of history.
In my opinion Israel doesnt have the right to exist .Why should a bunch of white Western/Eastern European Judaen converts who have not so much as a drop of Semetic blood have the right to the indigenous peoples(Jews,Muslims,Christians) land because in some thousands of years old book writen by mortal men said God (if there really is one) gave it to them?Thats my rant.I can hardly look at the "news" without blowing a gasket at the lies and ommisions.
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Happy New Year and Welcome to Judeo-Fascism Week in Gaza!
A warm hello to all the WTCD islanders, unregistered regular readers, and casual visitors (both governmental and non),
I apologize for being a party to the seasonal “lull (chirp, chirp) in the conversation†here, but if you were wondering where I was, I confess to spending ALL my spare time over the last four weeks putting together my piece on the LeHI/Stern Gang’s attempted alliance with the Nazis and the Fascists. I am now beginning to put together another section of Wired for Terror - Part Three on the Irgun/LeHI prison break out of Acre, followed by the Irgun’s kidnapping and hanging of two British sergeants, and the “British Kristallnacht†which occurred in the aftermath of these events.
Word to Gretavo: Although it’s been a busy time lately, I have read all the comments you have been posting on those other forums (Harvard Crimson, etc.) – absolutely frickin’ fabulous, Great great job! You were wipin’ the floor with somathem fools, and edumacatin’ all those who apparently are operating under the delusion that the informational chairs they are sitting on have more than one or two legs.
Throughout this upcoming year, in the court of public opinion and information awareness, we will continue to fight, tooth and nail, the demonic and soulless “powers-that-be.â€
A family relation recently asked me—after receiving a three-hour earful of info from me on what’s goin’ on in this world; who’s running the show; and how it is being done—“What does all your information achieve? There is nothing we can really do about any of this?†To which I replied, that although certainly incapable of funding, equipping, and training a 200,000 man revolutionary fighting force, she was not as powerless as she was led to believe. I told this young woman that she should bravely remove her head from the sands of her nice, comfy fantasy world of what she thinks is going on; educate herself about the hardcore reality of the national and global situation; and then educate others. In this way, she could become an individual catalyst for creating mass real-politiko awareness. Once a certain level of mass awareness is reached, the majority can simply refuse to endorse, support, and play along with the giant con game now being perpetrated and played out by the miniscule minority of evil, old demonic men behind the curtain.
It is very hard to launch a fake war based upon a false flag terror operation and get away with it when an awakened public doesn’t buy into it anymore, as they reply in the aftermath: “It’s just those G-d damned fucking Israelis and their treasonous, dual national Zionist-American servants attacking us again for the 14th unpunished time.†Fool us once big-time (cf. 9/11), fine; try it again, and the awakened public will get out their “How to Build a Gallows†kits and handbooks, and begin exercising their legal rights of making “Citizen’s Arrests,†‘cause we ain’t buyin’ that old “the Arab and/or Persian terrorists did it†crap any mo’. We now know exactly who’s been behind all this terror since 1948, why they are doing it, and their modus operandi as well. Lazy as hell, they haven’t changed their operational tactics since frickin’ 1935, including the ones used in the latest Chabad Lubavitch terror op in Mumbai, which closely resembled in many interesting ways the LeHI’s gunning down of British paratroopers at sunset in the parking lot of the 6th Airborne in 1946.
As I write, however, rumour has it that folks are beginning to warm up the seats for the new Nuremburg trials to start, where members of the Israeli Knesset and their Bush-Cheney administration lackeys will soon find reserved chairs and severe judgment, meted out to some using the ol’ â€Saddam twisted rope-trap door method.â€
Word out to the Zio-Nazis: This has all gotten real old, real fast, and everyone is really, really tired of getting attacked by you accursed, Khazar, fake-Jew, anti-Semite m-thrfuckers. The actual Semitic peoples of the Holy Land, i.e. the Semitic Palestinian Christians and Muslims are especially tired of your act and psychopathic depravities (as the Gaza death toll mounts and the world turns a blind eye to a real Holocaust)! And yes, we will take back our media, but for now, here’s my advice. Quit while you’re ahead. Do not walk down this road that you have begun to walk down.
of the Anti-Semitic, Outlaw Terror State
of Apartheid “Israel†– Enemy of G-d and Humanity.
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Welcome back Lazlo
Always look forward to your posts.
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Glad to read you, again, Laz
I put in a plug for your work here on a blog over at AmericanFreePress (by Mark Glen). He is arguing that the essence of jewish writings -- from the Torah not just the Talmud -- makes judaism inherently racist. I tried to make my point about the fact that some (usually but not always secular) jews appear not to be speaking out because their voices are repressed. Here is the article:
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/the-hanukah-massacre-on-gaz...
Here's my comment:
An Observor Says:
December 30, 2008 at 2:54 pm
And here, by the way, is a note about circumcision (from the comments section) that I never considered before (I hate circ due to infant pain and the destruction of sexual pleasure later on for all concerned):
Philalethes Says:
December 29, 2008 at 10:56 pm
See also Genesis 17:
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him … I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. … and thou shalt be a father of many nations … and kings shall come out of thee. … And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession … This is my covenant … Every man child among you shall be circumcised. … And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you … he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. … And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.
Anyone who has become involved in the effort to end the barbaric practice of infant male circumcision will have noticed that even among modern, secularized Jews (including the great majority in occupied Palestine) this is the one element of their tradition which they seem utterly unwilling to abandon. They may shave their beards, eat trefah foods (40 years ago a non-observant Jew joked to me that it was permissible to eat pork, “so long as it’s from a circumcised pigâ€), work on the Sabbath, etc., etc., and never attend religious services, but still they adamantly insist on torturing and mutilating their sons. And will loudly cry “Anti-Semitism!!!†at the least questioning of this custom, even as practiced among non-Jews (see below).
So why do nearly all Jews cling so fiercely to this atavistic atrocity, even when they’ve abandoned every other element of their traditional culture? I believe it’s because of what surrounds it in the quote above: it’s the cornerstone of Jewish “exceptionalismâ€, the pervasive belief among Jews that they are not only different from other people, but also “specialâ€, such that the rules that apply to ordinary people do not apply to them, and they are, in fact, destined to rule over “the nations†(â€haGoyim†in Hebrew). Note the final sentence: If you’re not circumcised, you cannot claim this special “covenant†status, even if born of a Jewish mother.
And note in particular: “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised….†Not only the Jews themselves — Abraham’s family — but also their slaves must be circumcised.
The practice of infant male circumcision was introduced to the English-speaking nations at just the same time that the modern Zionist movement was born (late 19th century); heavily promoted by Jews in the medical establishment (both then and now), the idea found fertile ground especially in the United States, which was created in great part by fanatical Christian sects (remember the Puritans?) who like to imagine themselves the modern heirs of the Biblical “covenant†(e.g. “white people are the real Jewsâ€) — and who remain the greatest non-Jewish “enablers†of the Zionist program.
Of course, the Jews/Zionists regard these wannabe-Jew groups merely as “useful idiots†— “house goyimâ€, perhaps, but goyim nonetheless, fit only to be ruled and used by the Chosen People. But they do have their uses, for now.
Infant male circumcision was universalized in the United States during and after World War II — the period when the center of world power moved from Britain to the U.S.; in the 1950s the British “national health†program quit paying for circumcision, which has gradually receded in popularity there, even as it has become firmly embedded as a cornerstone of “American†culture. Can it be merely “coincidence†that in this same period the United States became (and remains) the new guarantor of the Zionist “dream�
Every day in America more than 3000 baby boys are subjected to the ancient Semitic human sacrifice ritual of circumcision; not only are they severely traumatized for life, but the mark of our nation’s subjection to the original “Master Race†is carved permanently into their infant flesh.Â
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"It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
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not religious; it’s pretty clear that the so-called holy books were
written by humans for nefarious human purposes. But clearly some groups
are trying to outmaneuver other groups. This article does seem to
implicate all jews (who claim to be religious or who are secular and
don’t speak out against the carnage), which makes me nervous. I do know
jews who speak out - and who are working to investigate the truth about
Israel, 9/11, etc. (See website: wtcdemolition.com/blog, and
specifically the blog writings of Lazlo Toth.) I came across this book
recently, “Synagogue of Satan†which is a simple time-line of events
since 740 AD (or BCE), which implicates not all jews but the elite jews
with money/power (i.e., Rothschields and their heirs without the RC
name). It’s got some errors (e.g., ‘jews were warned about 9/11′ - no,
Israelis were warned), but is quite interesting. I think that we must
be careful about our rhetoric here. I know the author here has deftly
pointed out that the Torah has racist, violent content, so it’s not all
the Talmud. But be aware that, because of the monopoly of powerful
interests in the US, the views of jews who disagree with this racist
crap are being suppressed.