When Jon Snow went to report on the massacre in Gaza, he was barred from entering the conflict zone, along with other Western journalists. The following is a documentary film of his experiences.
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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In Israel, detachment from reality is now the norm
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.
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Two Petitions
If you haven’t already done so, please consider signing these petitions, and please pass the word on. The first is for British citizens and residents only, and it calls for the UK to impose an arms embargo on the apartheid state. The second is for all nationalities, and it calls on the UN General Assembly to create a tribunal to try Zionist war criminals.
The End of Abbas
Obama began his ‘Middle East peace diplomacy’ by calling the ‘key figures’ in Palestine: war criminal Olmert, collaborating dictator Mubarak, and no-longer-president-of-anything Mahmoud Abbas. No calls to the organisation that democratically represents the Palestinians, of course. Here, Mouin Rabbani considers the future of inter-Palestinian relations, and concludes that one thing is certain: the demise of Abbas:
Speaking to his people on January 18, hours after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral suspension of hostilities with a conditional ceasefire of its own, the deposed Palestinian Authority prime minister Ismail Haniyeh devoted several passages of his prepared text to the subject of Palestinian national reconciliation. For perhaps the first time since Hamas’s June 2007 seizure of power in the Gaza Strip, an Islamist leader broached the topic of healing the Palestinian divide without mentioning Mahmoud Abbas by name.
Veolia loses 3,5 billion EUR contract in Sweden
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.
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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.
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