GAZA -The Untold Story And Its Dilemma

[theblackhole]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gEBO-6VRjs&feature=channel_page

a humanitarian disaster....13,000 refugees fled into UN schools for safety ..nobody in GAZA is safe!...children are being killed mindlessly as part of the invasion...a slaughter-house!

 

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GAZA IN CRISIS

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Israeli Professor Under Hamas Rocket Fire, Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza

January 05, 2009

Neve Gordon,chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the author of Israel’s Occupation.

Earlier this morning, three Qassam rockets exploded in open areas in the western Negev in Israel. We go to the region to speak with Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the author of Israel’s Occupation.

An Israeli police officer stands guard next to the remains of a rocket that landed just outside the southern town of Sderot January 1, 2009

Rush Transcript......

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Beersheba right now in Israel to Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He’s author of the book Israel’s Occupation.


We just heard a description of the rockets going as far as the Negev. Can you talk about the effects of what is happening right now in Israel proper and what your thoughts are on this movement that Phyllis Bennis is describing around boycott, around divestment?


NEVE GORDON: Well, we just had a rocket about an hour ago not far from our house. My two children have been sleeping in a bomb shelter for the past week. And yet, I think what Israel is doing is outrageous, as opposed to what Meagan said before. We have here a situation where actually Israel did leave the Gaza Strip three years ago, but it maintains sovereignty in any political science sense of the term. We’ve controlled all the borders. We’ve basically had an economic boycott on the Gaza Strip. And the people there have been living in what one should probably call as a prison. And they’ve been reacting with rockets, because probably that’s the only way that they can react.


And I think what Israel has been doing now has little to do with stopping the rockets, but actually it’s an election move inside Israel. It’s a move to build the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006. And what they’re actually doing is bombing from the air and massacring people, and we have to say no to this from here.


I’m not sure an international boycott on Israel is currently the way to go, because I think what we need is pressure from below, pressure from within Israel. As an Israeli citizen, I still believe in the importance of democracy and in the importance of the Israeli people also making a decision. This should be done through pressure. I agree with Phyllis on that. I think international pressure has to come. I think a divestment of the Occupied Territories and everything made in the Occupied Territories should be the first stage.


I think that Obama has a major role to play. He has been silent. And I think he can pressure the Israeli government into reaching agreement with the Palestinian people. I think today and for the past years, Israel has been the obstacle to peace in the Middle East, because it’s not willing to compromise on the three major issues, which is a return to the 1967 borders, it’s the division of Jerusalem, and it’s a recognition of the right of return of the Palestinians with a stipulation that only a small amount can return back to Israel.


AMY GOODMAN: And do you see the Obama administration, as he’s now constituted it, going in this direction? Do you see any signs of this, Professor Gordon?


NEVE GORDON: I see—I hear silence. Now, I think I’ve written that Obama has an opportunity, because what it needs to bring peace in the Middle East is—or between Israel and the Palestinians is now known. We’ve had the Geneva Accords. We’ve had the Sari Nuseibeh and Ayalon. We’ve had the Arab Initiative. What needs to be done is clear. What is also clear is that regardless of the elections in Israel, the government that will be chosen will not go in the direction of peace.


Now, the third facet is that a majority of Israelis will probably vote for a two-state solution. My suggestion to Obama is to take—to write up an Obama plan, which I say I think is clear what needs to be done, and to go over the Israeli government and to bring it to a referendum to the Israeli people, and ask them, “Do you want a two-state solution?” We have a constellation, a configuration in the Israeli government, that a large minority will control any government and not allow it to make peace, regardless of what happens in the elections. And so, what we need is some kind of intervention from outside to go directly to the people. I think the people of Israel, if the American president will come and say, “Listen, you take it, and if not, you’ll be penalized, too. You take the two-state solution, and if not, you’ll be penalized.” And I think that is probably the way to go for Obama. I don’t know whether he’ll do it or not.



AMY GOODMAN: Neve Gordon, as you said, your kids are in a bomb shelter now. You’re in the Negev. We have seen many images of the rockets, the effect of the rockets hitting Sderot. But we’ve heard little voice from Israelis like you. And I’m wondering, is that an effect of the US media or the Israeli media? Or are those voices not that loud? In Sderot, for example, there is an alternative group that is called Alternative Voices, who actually, despite the rockets there, are calling for an end to the blockade and are calling for a ceasefire, calling for an end to the attack on Gaza. And this is over 1,800 people of Sderot.


NEVE GORDON: There is an alternative movement. This past Saturday—you mentioned protests around the world—I participated in a protest with my children in Tel Aviv. There were about between 5,000 and 10,000 people, which, proportional to the population, is not a small protest. The vast majority—let us not delude ourselves, because the vast majority of the people in Israel do support. There are plenty of voices against. If you read Ha’aretz, the Israeli newspaper, people like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, you’ll see that there are voices that are against.


The problem is that most Israelis say what Meagan said before. They say, “Israel left the Gaza Strip three years ago, and Hamas is still shooting rockets at us.” They forget the details. The details is that Israel maintains sovereignty. The details is that the Palestinians live in a cage. The details is that they don’t get basic foodstuff, that they don’t get electricity, that they don’t get water, and so forth. And when you forget those kinds of details, and all you say is, “Here, we left them. Why are they still shooting at us?” and that’s what the media here has been pumping them with, then you think this war is rational. If you look at what’s been going on in the Gaza Strip in the past three years and you see what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians, you would think that the Palestinian resistance is rational. And that’s what’s missing in the mainstream media here. And so, although there are voices of resistance in Israel and although there was a quite big protest on—actually, two big protests on Saturday, one in Sakhnin and one in Tel Aviv, it is still a really small minority.


AMY GOODMAN: Neve Gordon, I want to thank you for being with us, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, speaking to us from Beersheba. His book is called Israel’s Occupation. Phyllis Bennis, thank you for being with us, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. When we come back, we go back to Gaza.


.

 

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Offensive traumatises generation of children

Jonathan Cook
January 6. 2009

The four-storey building of the Community Mental Health Programme in Gaza City is damaged, its walls still standing but the offices of its 150 employees wrecked by an Israeli bombing raid last week.

Palestinian children from Al-jojo family react after an Israeli F-16 warplane strike and destroyed the neighbouring house of the Dababish family in GazaAbid

As Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants waited anxiously for Israel’s ground invasion to unfold, Ahmad Abu Tawhina, the mental health programme’s director general, said its services were needed more than ever.

Estimates from the United Nations are that at least one quarter of the more than 500 Gazans killed so far in Israel’s operations are women and children. More than five times that number are wounded.

But, psychologists said, none of Gaza’s civilians are being spared feelings of fear and terror as the Israeli army moves deeper into the tiny enclave.

Dr Tawhina admitted there was little in the current circumstances his staff could do. Their computers and records have been destroyed and they are working from home, largely without electricity, phones or the freedom to move about.

Surveys in recent years have shown the rapid deterioration of the mental health of Gazans, especially children, who make up more than half of the Strip’s population.

According to a study by Dr Tawhina’s programme, conducted before Israel’s current operations, every child in Gaza had been exposed to at least nine shocking events. Many had seen people wounded or killed; 95 per cent had heard explosions from shelling and 45 per cent said they had seen Israeli soldiers beating or insulting relatives.

As a result, more than 80 per cent of children were diagnosed as suffering from either moderate or major post-traumatic disorders. The survey found that more than one third of boys between eight and 12 said they wished to die in a suicide attack.

Research conducted by Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, in 2006 similarly discovered that 98 per cent of children had either experienced first hand or witnessed incidents involving shootings or explosions. As a result, bed-wetting, night terrors and emotional disorders were common.

Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist and founder of the mental health programme, said his family was braced for the battles between the Israeli army and Hamas that they fear may soon reach their neighbourhood.

Dr Sarraj has questioned the rationale for Israel’s invasion of Gaza to “root out” militant groups. “When children see that their father is unable to guarantee their safety, they will opt for someone else to do it for them. And that means that one day they will join militant groups, possibly even more extreme than Hamas itself.

“Israel is trying to give itself security, but it is doing exactly the opposite by encouraging more extremism among the Palestinians.”

Before Israel’s tanks started rolling into Gaza on Saturday night, a major topic on local radio shows was how parents could keep their children feeling secure as Israel carried out its aerial bombardment.

Dr Tawhina, a regular guest, had little concrete comfort to offer given that there is nowhere to hide and everywhere is a potential target. Keep children indoors and distract them with games and activities, he said.

The staff of the mental health programme call this Gaza syndrome, a living nightmare of imprisonment under siege and military assault that gets worse by the day.
Mental health workers believe that Israeli policies in Gaza have been designed for some time to inflict maximum psychological damage on Gazans.

After the withdrawal of Jewish settlers in 2005, Israeli fighter planes began regularly creating deafening sonic booms during night-time flights over the Strip. Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, justified the practice, saying: “I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza.”

A year ago, when the blockade of Gaza was already starving inhabitants of food, fuel and medicine, Mr Olmert delivered a speech in which he said: “There is no justification for demanding we allow residents of Gaza to live normal lives while shells and rockets are fired from their streets.”

Nabila Espanioly, a psychologist in Nazareth who specialises in childhood development, said that, although television showed the physical effects of Israel’s invasion on civilians, it would not be there to record the psychological aftershock.

“Children more than adults have not yet developed the mechanisms to cope with feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. The violence Gaza’s children are witnessing and experiencing becomes the model for future behaviour.

“This can already be seen in the role-playing games common among children in the occupied territories of being soldiers and gunmen. In the long-term, they will seek to deal with their psychological trauma and regain a sense of power through violence because they have no other model. We are seeing the next generation of suicide bombers being created right now.”

Ms Espanioly said these post-traumatic effects on children’s mental health were widely understood. “Israeli strategists must be aware of this, so one has to wonder how they think such … attacks on Gaza are going to bring them peace or security.”

 

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More than 40 killed in Gaza school strike
January 6. 2009
GAZA // An Israeli strike has killed at least 42 people who had taken refuge inside a UN school in the Gaza Strip, the third such attack in a day, medics said.

An Israeli army artillery battery fires a smoke bomb into the Gaza Strip from the border on January 6, 2009. Israeli strikes hit two UN-run schools -- one of them crowded with refugees -- in the Gaza Strip today.

The strike hit near a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in the northern town of Jabaliya, they said.

People inside the building had taken refuge from the raging conflict in the territory, witnesses and medics said. The toll quickly rose as rescuers struggled through the rubble.

Earlier in the day, two people were killed when an artillery shell slammed into a school in the southern town of Khan Yunis and three people were killed in an air strike on a school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, medics said.

Israel moved forces into a southern Gaza town today and demanded Hamas be prevented from rearming as a main condition for a ceasefire in an 11-day-old conflict in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed.

“That is the make-or-break issue,” Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said about ensuring an end to weapons smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt frontier.

A senior Israeli official said the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, on a Middle East visit and in partnership with Egypt, was pursuing “a serious initiative” for a ceasefire.

“We are now working on something concrete,” the official said, disclosing talks on the size of an “international presence” along the blockaded Gaza-Egypt border, where Israel wants to stop rockets and other weapons from reaching Hamas through tunnels.

Cutting off Gaza’s smuggling tunnels from Egypt could secure an immediate ceasefire, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said today, while warning that Israel was otherwise in for a protracted campaign.

The former British prime minister said the situation in the Gaza Strip was “hell” as Israel wages Operation Cast Lead against Hamas fighters.

The Quartet, comprising the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, is struggling to mediate the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

“There are circumstances in which we could get an immediate ceasefire, and that’s what people want to see,” Blair told BBC radio in Jerusalem.

“Those circumstances focus very much around clear action to cut off the supply of arms and money through the tunnels that go from Egypt into Gaza.

“That is the one basis on which you can bring a quick halt to this, otherwise I think we’re into a more protracted campaign.”

And he added: “The Egyptians, in principle, are prepared to do this, they want to do it,
they recognise it’s in their own interests as well.

An Israeli tank shell killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded 24 other troops on Monday, in “friendly fire” that raised questions in the Jewish state over whether its leaders should press on with the crushing offensive.

An Israeli officer was killed in a separate incident, apparently also by Israeli fire, the army said.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces pushed into Khan Younis in southern Gaza as the army widened the ground assault it launched four days ago against Hamas militants after a week of air strikes failed to stamp out cross-border rocket fire.

There was intense fighting overnight on the outskirts of the city of Gaza, where residents huddled indoors in fear. Deaths recorded by Palestinian medics reached 574.

Most of the several dozen deaths reported by hospitals in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in recent days have been civilians.

The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since Dec 27 might be close to 700 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.

Many of the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million people lack food, water or power. In southern Israel, schools remained closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets.

Palestinian medics, reporting on casualties before the deaths at the UN school, said 23 Palestinian civilians were killed today, including 10 people who were hit by naval shells along the beach in the central Gaza Strip.

Two militants were also killed in fighting.

Nine Israelis, including three civilians hit in Palestinian rocket attacks, have been killed in the conflict.

At least five rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in Israel today, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28km from Tel Aviv, police said. A three-year-old girl was wounded.

Ceasefire
Mr Regev said Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from the rival Fatah group in 2007, used the previous six-month ceasefire brokered by Cairo to double the range of its rockets from 20km to 40km.

Hamas has demanded a lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza in any future ceasefire.
Israel’s military, describing yesterday’s shelling of an Israeli force by an Israeli tank, said soldiers from the Golani infantry brigade were hit while occupying a building in the northern Gaza Strip.

The brigade’s commander, a colonel, was among the wounded.

The incident caused the military’s highest casualty toll since Israel launched its “Operation Cast Lead” offensive against Hamas.

“This time, we cast lead on ourselves,” said a commentator on Israeli Army Radio, who in an interview with a senior Defence Ministry official questioned whether the operation was achieving its declared goal of halting Hamas rockets, noting there has been little let-up in cross-border fire on Israeli towns.

Columnist Amos Harel, writing in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, said the death of the three Golani brigade soldiers was “a significant first achievement” from Hamas’s perspective.

“For the first time, Israeli TV broadcasts raised the question of whether it was worthwhile for the operation to continue,” Harel wrote.

Israel launched the current offensive after Hamas called off the six-month truce last month and stepped up cross-border rocket attacks in response to Israeli raids and a blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israel, whose leaders fight a parliamentary poll on Feb 10, made clear its priority was securing the safety of its citizens. But heavy Israeli casualties could erode strong public support for the operation.

Israel pulled its troops and more than 8,000 settlers out of Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation in a move that many at the time hoped would lead to a breakthrough for relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinians lift a body near a United Nations school in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip January 6, 2009. Israeli tank fire killed up to 40 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medical sources at two hospitals said.

A wounded Palestinian is carried near a United Nations school in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip January 6, 2009

A Palestinian man stands near bodies outside a United Nations school in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip January 6, 2009.

The body of a Palestinian woman (R) lies near a U.N. school in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip January 6, 2009.

 

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The Unspoken Goal Of Bringing Down Hamas

Amir Oren
Haaretz Correspondent
January 7, 2009

This morning the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip approaches a critical juncture: To be - deeper in, at a higher cost - or not to be. The operation in its current format has exhausted itself. There is no point in pursuing it. The choice now is between going forward, at a price Israeli society is understandably reluctant to pay, or stopping, completing the mission in place and undertaking a unilateral withdrawal without waiting for the false hope of an agreement without Hamas' participation. Additional achievements cannot be expected without further efforts that could prove too late and too great.

Last night's blast, which killed three Israeli troops and wounded about 20 others, was a hint of what could happen if the ground operation is expanded. The IDF is advancing slowly and carefully in the northern Gaza Strip. Israelis, and especially those with loved ones risking their lives in battle, should be grateful to the entire chain of command for their caution. The commanders endanger themselves no less than their soldiers, as last night's events demonstrated.

The troops' measured advance is aimed at giving them superiority in every engagement with Hamas. Israel knows that Hamas seeks the blood of IDF soldiers, Israeli civilians and Palestinians not a party to the conflict. The IDF seeks to minimize the damage to these three groups and maximize it among a fourth group - Hamas members.

The operation is largely meeting its aims on that score, but it has still not achieved its goal. After one and a half weeks of fighting the operation is experiencing tension between the immediate goals and ultimate objectives. The immediate goals are destroying rocket launchers, killing fighters and arresting wanted men for interrogation and to swap for Gilad Shalit. The ultimate objectives are a lasting and stable cease-fire, and a long-term end to arms smuggling into Gaza.

This tension includes the inherent differences among the three highest-ranking entities behind the operation: the political echelon, and within it the conflicts among the Olmert-Barak-Livni trio; Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi; and Southern Command head Yoav Galant. No subordinate rank is capable of providing the rank above it with spectacular results at a minimal effort ?(and above the cabinet is Israeli society as a whole?). We can pay little and get little, or pay a lot and get little, and perhaps - no guarantees - we can pay a lot and get a lot.

As things stand now, Israel will find it hard to translate its military power into policy gains. As long as Hamas can fire into Be'er Sheva and north of the Israel Air Force base at Hatzor, the organization will not submit to Israel's cease-fire terms, despite the hits it has taken.

Operation Cast Lead's table of contents currently has two chapters. The first was the air campaign. The second was the movement of ground forces.

The IDF now faces two main military alternatives. The first is to step up the confrontation with Hamas in Gaza City and its environs. That will entail greater casualties among our soldiers, increase the hardships of the Palestinian population and lead to more calls from the international community to stop the fighting.

The second option is to expand the theater of operations and strive for a target that has not yet been set, which has been concealed or even denied: to bring down the Hamas government. Southern Command is capable of achieving this goal but is not enthusiastic about it, lest the Jabalya refugee camp turn into Somalia. In this context the IDF is afraid of being too successful.

In both cases it will take days before the cabinet that sent in the IDF is able to claim a lasting victory.

In these circumstances, with the IDF attempting to maneuver between two prohibitions - against bringing down Hamas on the one hand, and reaching an agreement with it on the other - Israel is dependent on the mercy of Hamas to allow it to declare victory. For that reason Hamas must agree to a coexistence in Gaza - of the Hamas government, stripped of its rockets; the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along the Philadelphi Route ?(the two battalions trained in Jordan by the United States?); and perhaps also an inter-Arab or international force at the border crossings.

 

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Israeli leaders to debate "final" Gaza push
By Dan Williams
07 Jan 2009

JERUSALEM, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Israeli leaders will debate on Wednesday whether to order their armed forces to storm into the Gaza Strip's urban centres, the planned culmination of an 11-day-old offensive, political sources said.

Escalating from a week-long air assault, Israeli troops and tanks invaded the Hamas-ruled territory on Saturday, clashing with Palestinian guerrillas but not advancing beyond the outskirts of the city of Gaza or other densely populated areas.

Israel called the initial ground sweep the "second stage" of the operation, without saying what could follow. The opacity helped spur a frenzy of international mediation to secure a truce under which Hamas would stop cross-border rocket fire.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet, due to convene on Wednesday, would discuss the third -- and final -- stage of the offensive, two senior political sources said, though the ministers may defer a vote on approving the plan.

"The plan is to enter the urban centres," said one source, declining to be named.

Postponing a final decision on the plan could allow Israel to keep its forces in readiness while maintaining leeway for any breakthrough in possible truce talks led by Egypt.

Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment on Wednesday's meeting, saying: "We do not generally discuss the agendas of the security cabinet."

CHALLENGE

Military analysts believe Israeli forces would be severely challenged by combat in Gaza's congested casbahs and alleyways, where much of their air support would be irrelevant and where Palestinian gunmen would be able to mount hit-and-run ambushes.

Conquering Gaza could amount to a reoccupation of a territory the Jewish state captured from Egypt in a 1967 war and quit in 2005. Israeli leaders have said they do not want to reoccupy Gaza or, for now, to topple the Islamist Hamas group.

Seven Israeli soldiers have died in an offensive that has killed more than 640 Palestinians, at least a quarter of them civilians, medics said. Palestinian rockets, the stated reason for Israel's assault, have killed four Israeli civilians.

Israel said its troops had killed 130 guerrillas since Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since Dec. 27 might be close to 770 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.

According to one Israeli source with knowledge of the security cabinet's discussions, the initial ground sweep was executed well but the military top brass was disappointed by what they saw as relatively little Palestinian resistance.

"The assumption was that our forces could draw out the enemy into open areas where they could be eliminated, but they didn't come out in the number we expected," the source said. "Taking the fight into the populated areas would be much tougher."

Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida said in a speech on Monday: "We have prepared for you, Zionists, thousands of tough fighters who are waiting for you in every street, every alley and at every house, and they will meet you with iron and fire."

 

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Friendly-Fire Deaths Test Israel's Will In Gaza
Published on 01-06-2009

News of two fatal incidents came as Israeli tanks advanced under cover of darkness towards the town of Khan Younis while heavy fighting continued on the eastern edge of Gaza City.

For the first time since operation Cast Lead was launched eleven days ago Israeli newspaper columns started to question putting Israeli ground troops in harm's way inside Gaza.

One column in the Haaretz newspaper carried the headline: "The price of stubbornness over Gaza exit is dead soldiers."

Israel claimed to have killed 130 Palestinian militants in fighting over the last 24 hours although it was impossible to confirm.

Medical sources inside Gaza reported more than 30 Palestinian civilians were killed in the period including a dozen children.

Meanwhile a senior Hamas delegation headed to Cairo in what could be the first move by the Islamist movement towards negotiating a ceasefire.

News of the "friendly fire fatalities" hung over the daily meeting of Israel's war cabinet of Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, Ehud Barak, the defence minister and Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, the armed forces chief.

They received a report about the latest blue-on-blue incident in which an Israeli tank shell killed an officer from the Paratrooper brigade.

It came after an earlier incident in which a house taken over by the field headquarters the Golani brigade was struck by a tank shell.

Two officers and a regular soldier were killed. The brigade commander, Colonel Avi Peled, was injured and has been replaced in the battlefield while he receives hospital treatment.

About 560 Palestinians have been killed since Israel moved to end rocket attacks from Gaza 11 days ago, Palestinian medical officials say.

Aid agencies in Gaza have described appalling conditions for treating casualties inside Gaza with the floors of Shifa, Gaza's biggest hospital, covered in blood and the mortuary overflowing with unclaimed corpses.

Writing a joint piece in Haaretz , Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff said that any delay by the political leadership in withdrawing Israeli soldiers from Gaza risks fatalities.

"Those who want to treat the delay in creating a diplomatic exit strategy for the war in Gaza as if it were a divine decree must take into account that at the end of this determination are casualties.

"The repeated delays in moving ahead with Operation Cast Lead, first before the ground operation and now the slow way Israel is seeking 'exit points' have a price.

"We are now beginning to pay it."

 

[fishbuff]

can you please post pictures of the israeli casualties that were caused by the rockets that were launched by the hamas?

if i keep poking a at tamed tiger persistently with a stick, eventually it will attack me.. right?

 

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Who Broke Ceasefire First-Watch This CNN Video
January 6, 2009.

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if i keep poking a at tamed tiger persistently with a stick, eventually it will attack me.. right?

Read this to understand more on the conflict.

Israel’s New War Ethic
2009-01-06


Not unlike raising animals for slaughter on a farm, the Israeli government maintains that it is providing Palestinians with assistance so that it can have a free hand in attacking them, notes Neve Gordon.


Watching Israeli public television (Channel 1) these days can be an unsettling experience, and lately I've abstained from the practice. But after being stuck for seventy-two hours with our two young children inside a Beer-Sheva apartment, the spouse and I decided to visit my mother, who lives up north, so that our children could play outside far away from the rockets. My mother, like most Israelis, is a devout news consumer, and last night I decided to keep her company in front of the TV.


For the most part, the broadcast was more of the same. There were the usual images and voices of suffering Israeli Jews along with the promulgation of a hyper-nationalist ethos. One story, for example, followed a Jewish mother who had lost her son in Gaza about two years ago. The audience was told that the son has been a soldier in the Golani infantry brigade and together with his company had penetrated the Gaza Strip in an attempt to save the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.


"Because members of his company did not want to hurt civilians, they refrained from opening fire in every direction, which allowed Palestinian militiamen to shoot my boy," the mother stated. When the interviewer asked her about the current assault on Gaza, she answered that, "We should pound and cut them from the air and from the sea," but added that, "We should not kill civilians, only Hamas." The report ended with the interviewer asking the mother what she does when she misses her son, and, as the camera zoomed in on her face, she answered: "I go into his room and hug his bed, because I can no longer hug him."


Thus, despite the ever-increasing loss of life in the Gaza Strip, Israel remains the perpetual victim. Indeed, the last frame with the mother looking straight into the camera leaves the average compassionate viewer -- myself included -- a bit choked up. Over the past few years, I have, however, become a critical consumer of Israeli news, and therefore can see through the perpetuation of the image that Israel and its Jewish majority are the victims and how, regardless of what happens, we are presented as the moral players in this conflict. Therefore, this kind of reportage, where the huge death toll in Gaza is elided and Jewish suffering is underscored, no longer shocks me.


What did manage to unnerve me in the broadcast was one short sentence made by a reporter who covered the entry of a humanitarian aid convoy into the Gaza Strip on Friday.


My mother and I -- like other Israeli viewers -- learned that 170 trucks supplied with basic foodstuff donated by the Turkish government entered Gaza through the Carmi crossing. That the report had nothing to say about the context of this food shipment did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised that no mention was made of the fact that 80 percent of Gaza's inhabitants are unable to support themselves and are therefore dependent on humanitarian assistance -- and this figure is increasing daily. Indeed, nothing was said about the severe food crisis in Gaza, which manifests itself in shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk and canned foods, or about the total lack of fuel for heating houses and buildings during these cold winter months, the absence of cooking gas, and the shortage of running water. The viewer has no way of knowing that the Palestinian health system is barely functioning or that some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza are now living without any electricity at all due to the damage caused by the air strikes.


While the fact that this information was missing from the report did not surprise me, I found myself completely taken aback by the way in which the reporter justified the convoy's entrance into Gaza. Explaining to those viewers who might be wondering why Israel allows humanitarian assistance to the other side during times of war, he declared that if a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe were to explode among the Palestinian civilian population, the international community would pressure Israel to stop the assault.


There is something extremely cynical about how Israel explains its use of humanitarian assistance, and yet such unadulterated explanations actually help uncover an important facet of postmodern warfare. Not unlike raising animals for slaughter on a farm, the Israeli government maintains that it is providing Palestinians with assistance so that it can have a free hand in attacking them. And just as Israel provides basic foodstuff to Palestinians while it continues shooting them, it informs Palestinians -- by phone, no less -- that they must evacuate their homes before F-16 fighter jets begin bombing them.


One notices, then, that in addition to its remote-control, computer game-like qualities, postmodern warfare is also characterized by a bizarre new moral element. It is as if the masters of wars realized that since current wars rarely take place between two armies and are often carried out in the midst of civilian populations, a new just war theory is needed. So these masters of war gathered together philosophers and intellectuals to develop a moral theory for postmodern wars, and today, as Gaza is being destroyed, we can see quite plainly how the new theory is being transformed into praxis.



Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University. His new book, Israel's Occupation, is due out this fall from the University of California Press.

 

[3_M]

Read this to understand more on the conflict.

Israel’s New War Ethic
2009-01-06

Can you just stop spamming the forum with all your articles? What sort of intellectual input did you contribute to the debate other than spamming.

I could just post some articles that refute your articles and you could just do the same in return. And the whole thing will become pretty meaningless.

 

[theblackhole]

Can you just stop spamming the forum with all your articles? What sort of intellectual input did you contribute to the debate other than spamming.

I could just post some articles that refute your articles and you could just do the same in return. And the whole thing will become pretty meaningless.

I don't consider the publication of these great articles as spamming.They provide the Whole Picture - a clearer picture of what is Actually going on in ME. I find these articles very helpful and I don't get to read them in our "normal" media.

Please feel free to provide articles that refute these "truthful" articles.I'll be very interested to read them.

Most of us do not really understand what is actually going in ME.So we reply and respond through our gut feelings and through our emotions minus the facts and the truths.We have our bias of course - our religious,political and racial bias. I thank AWARENESS for all the articles which have made me more informed of what is going on in ME - not only in Gaza itself but the whole global strategy of the Axis-Of-Evil.

Please feel free to refute what I've said and please feel free to "spam" articles which support this Israeli invasion and genocide in Gaza.Thank you.

 

[3_M]

I don't consider the publication of these great articles as spamming.They provide the Whole Picture - a clearer picture of what is Actually going on in ME. I find these articles very helpful and I don't get to read them in our "normal" media.

Please feel free to provide articles that refute these "truthful" articles.I'll be very interested to read them.

Most of us do not really understand what is actually going in ME.So we reply and respond through our gut feelings and through our emotions minus the facts and the truths.We have our bias of course - our religious,political and racial bias. I thank AWARENESS for all the articles which have made me more informed of what is going on in ME - not only in Gaza itself but the whole global strategy of the Axis-Of-Evil.

Please feel free to refute what I've said and please feel free to "spam" articles which support this Israeli invasion and genocide in Gaza.Thank you.

This is a place for discussion and if we want to know the news, we know how to find it. thank you very much .

 

[theblackhole]

This is a place for discussion and if we want to know the news, we know how to find it. thank you very much .

So you know everything in depth in the ME to have an informed discussion? What do you want to discuss? About DIMEs? About Genocide? About Massacre? About Operation Iron Cast? You know everything in depth to participate in an informed and impartial discussion? Honestly I don't. I've to rely on articles by people who are in the know and who have deeply researched into the ME crisis. Of course I don't doubt your ability to google for news and articles.Thank you very much too.

 

[3_M]

So you know everything in depth in the ME to have an informed discussion? What do you want to discuss? About DIMEs? About Genocide? About Massacre? About Operation Iron Cast? You know everything in depth to participate in an informed and impartial discussion? Honestly I don't. I've to rely on articles by people who are in the know and who have deeply researched into the ME crisis. Of course I don't doubt your ability to google for news and articles.Thank you very much too.

I know you want to bash Israel but just do not possess the knowledge to do so on your own. Hence the easy way out is to post articles.

u are always free to take on me on any issues. Only thing is i don't entertain debating with articles.

 

[whoami]

Can you just stop spamming the forum with all your articles? What sort of intellectual input did you contribute to the debate other than spamming.

Hard to swallow the evil truth?

Oh yes. Theres the ignore button.

 

[3_M]

Hard to swallow the evil truth?

Oh yes. Theres the ignore button.

What stopping from ignoring me?

because all things i said hit your soft spot? But take heart, I still think you are marginally better than those 2 fellows.

 

[whoami]

We also want to know the evil truth of Israel i.e. fm the media too.

 

[whoami]

What stopping from ignoring me?

because all things i said hit your soft spot?

You dont get it do u? What I meant was if you cant take his spamming/reply post, theres the ignore button.