In recent days, officials and drivers at the crossing said that the trickle of trucks passing through this month had all but stopped. None went on Thursday. Friday and Saturday are days off, so nothing passed. On Sunday, a few trucks went through, aid workers said. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing.
Continue reading “Israel delays aid trucks from Egypt to Gaza”
The killing and maiming of Palestinians by Israeli forces continues unabated, despite the ‘cease-fire’ which was put in place almost 10 days ago. As always, Israel’s violations of such agreements are burried deep down Orwell’s memory hole. Here is the report from Eva Bartlett:
At 7.30 am Jan. 22, five days after Israeli authorities declared a ‘ceasefire’ following their 22-day air, land and sea bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunboats renewed shelling off the Gaza city coast, injuring at least six, including four children.
Latest report from Amnesty International’s fact-finding team in Gaza:
Monday January 26: The Israeli army’s use of white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza has captured much of the world’s media interest. However, the Israeli forces also used a variety of other weapons against civilian residential built-up areas throughout the Gaza Strip in the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.
Among these are flechettes – tiny metal darts (4cm long, sharply pointed at the front and with four fins at the rear) that are packed into120mm shells. These shells, generally fired from tanks, explode in the air and scatter some 5,000 to 8,000 flechettes in a conical pattern over an area around 300 metres wide and 100 metres long.
Continue reading “Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians”
Peter Beaumont reports from Jabal Rayas, describing the plight of the children of Gaza, whose fate has been, perhaps irredeemably, compromised by the BBC management’s spineless decision not be broadcast the humanitarian appeal.
Safaa Salam is scared and cold. Last night the 10-year-old girl slept in the ruins of her family house in the Jabal Rayas area of eastern Gaza. So did her four-year-old niece Ghavad. It is not so much a ruin as a cave, the top a tented slab of crumbling concrete, cracked and buckling in the middle.
Continue reading “At the heart of BBC row, the homeless of Gaza”
As more news of the brutality of the Israeli invasion comes to light, medical personnel based in Gaza speak of unprecedented suffering inflicted upon the civilian population. Aside from “clear and undeniable” evidence of the use of white phosphorus, according to Amnesty International, Israel is now accused of deploying so-called Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) and other, hitherto unseen, lethal and indiscriminatory weapons of mass destruction.
Eighteen-year-old Mona Al-Ashkar says she did not immediately know the first explosion at the United Nations (UN) school in Beit Lahiya had blown her left leg off. There was smoke, then chaos, then the pain and disbelief set in once she realised it was gone – completely severed by the weapon that hit her.
Continue reading “Alarm Spreads Over Use of Lethal New Weapons”
An excellent article by Patrick Cockburn about the growing isolation of Israeli society from the crimes of its own state and the creeping intolerance of internal dissent, developments that spell gloom for the Palestinians.
I was watching the superb animated documentary Waltz with Bashir about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It culminates in the massacre of some 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in south Beirut by Christian militiamen introduced there by the Israeli army which observed the butchery from close range.
In the last few minutes the film switches from animation to graphic news footage showing Palestinian women screaming with grief and horror as they discover the bullet-riddled bodies of their families. Then, just behind the women, I saw myself walking with a small group of journalists who had arrived in the camp soon after the killings had stopped.
Continue reading “In Israel, detachment from reality is now the norm”
On a more positive note, the biggest success of the BDS campaign to date. The French company Veolia lost one of the most lucrative public procurement contracts in the EU, partly due to its violations of international law in Jerusalem.
As late as the day before the decision the community council received lists with thousands of signatories from people demanding the county council to choose an operator who should not be associated with violations of international humanitarian law.
Continue reading “Veolia loses 3,5 billion EUR contract in Sweden”
An interview with Gilbert Achcar, Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Conducted on January 10, before the withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, some of his speculations about the future course of events seem irrelevant in retrospect. His analysis of the Palestinian political situation and the wider dynamics of the Middle East, though, remains spot on.
Continue reading “The Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Gilbert Achcar”
A heartwrenching account from Eva Bartlett, who has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza since November 2008, documenting the human rights abuses of the Israeli army. Whilst most of the mainstream media are focusing on the massive material damage caused by the Israeli onslaught, Bartlett offers personal testimony to the barbarity of the invasion and the human tragedies unfolding in Gaza:
The indescribable, terrible, stench still lingers, that of an army which occupied the house for two weeks and left shit and unknown foul smells throughout the house. It is a stench I’ve smelled in other houses in the area occupied by the Israeli army.
In his most recent commentary, an enraged Chomsky provides a detailed analysis of the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza – what he refers to as “politicide, the murder of a nation” – exposing the moral depravity of apologists for state terrorism:
The claim that “our side” never targets civilians is familiar doctrine among those who monopolize the means of violence. And there is some truth to it. We do not generally try to kill particular civilians. Rather, we carry out murderous actions that we know will slaughter many civilians, but without specific intent to kill particular ones. In law, the routine practices might fall under the category of depraved indifference, but that is not an adequate designation for standard imperial practice and doctrine. It is more similar to walking down a street knowing that we might kill ants, but without intent to do so, because they rank so low that it just doesn’t matter. The same is true when Israel carries out actions that it knows will kill the “grasshoppers” and “two-legged beasts” who happen to infest the lands it “liberates.”
Continue reading “Chomsky, “Exterminate all the Brutes”: Gaza 2009″
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