According to AFP “France, Britain and Germany have offered to help prevent arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip.” Why don’t they offer to help get aid into Gaza? Seeing as Israel has been ramming aid shipments in international waters, a grave act of lawlessness and piracy to quote Chomsky:
Category: Gaza
Gaza in Ruins
Gaza in Ruins: A news special from Al Jazeera.
The Gaza Strip is a land in ruins, devastated by 22 days of war. In this news special from Gaza, Al Jazeera focuses on the damage from the war – the human, physical and political damage suffered by people here, people already weakened by an 18-month siege at the hands of Israel.
Come on Down For Your Freedom Medals
John Pilger puts forward his nominations for Bush freedom medals.
On 13 January, George W. Bush presented “presidential freedom medals,” said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is “responsible for than 90 per cent of all cases of torture”.
Utter failure for Israel
Gideon Levy opines that the Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel.
On the morrow of the return of the last Israeli soldier from Gaza, we can determine with certainty that they had all gone out there in vain. This war ended in utter failure for Israel.
The BBC refuses to broadcast Gaza charity appeal
The indispensable Media Lens has an important Rapid Response Media Alert. The BBC has already used your license fees to feed you foreign state propaganda, now it also wants you to be complicit in Israeli crimes. Don’t hesitate to register your protest.
Numerous members of the public have written to us expressing their bewilderment at the violence of Israel’s 22-day attack on Gaza killing upwards of 1,300 people and wounding 4,200. To many witnessing the onslaught on their TV screens (especially Al Jazeera) this appeared to be an act of state sadism.
Israeli forces repeatedly bombed schools (including UN schools), medical centres, hospitals, ambulances, UN buildings, power plants, sewage plants, roads, bridges and civilian homes.
On January 15, Helpdoctors.org reported that Al Quds hospital had been “again the target of bombing”. Some 50 patients, 30 in wheelchairs, fled as the burning hospital was “totally destroyed”.
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Alarm Spreads Over Use of Lethal New Weapons
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.
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The Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Gilbert Achcar
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.
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Profound psychological damage in Gaza
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.
Israeli War Crimes on Channel 4
A number of people I’ve spoken to have said they think the media response to the Gaza massacre has been good, mainly due to the images of brutal destruction that could not been hidden. However I disagree. If we look at this news clip, one of the better ones, it is noticeable that the coverage is very superficial.
Chomsky, “Exterminate all the Brutes”: Gaza 2009
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.”
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