Illustration by Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Flotilla attack was a well-planned act of premeditated murder in international waters, the Netanyahu government (on June 14) announcing an inquiry commission this writer discussed in a same-day article.

It explained the planned whitewash of a grievous crime against humanity, one Israel mustn't be allowed to get away with despite it being minor by comparison with far greater ones, Cast Lead most prominent recently.

The internal commission is illegitimate, even with international observers (chosen for supporting Israel), nonetheless endorsed by the White House, its paymaster/partner in crime, colluding in the coverup.

Called an Independent Public Commission, Netanyahu said it will demonstrate clearly "to the entire world that the state of Israel acts according to law, transparently and with full responsibility."

In his released statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs endorsed the announcement as an "important step forward," saying "the structure and terms of reference of Israel's proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation."

The administration was silent after the May 31 massacre, only saying it regretted the loss of life, its usual boilerplate cover for Israeli belligerence, partnered with our own globally.

Commission Members - Chosen for Coverup

Two voting members include former Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Jacob Tirkel, its head. A conservative jurist, his experience entails handling military court appeals, virtually always favoring Israel over Palestinian plaintiffs.

Amos Horev, the other voting member, is a retired major general, prominent in Israel's military-industrial complex, a reliable choice, like Tirkel, to whitewash IDF crimes.

Two non-voting foreign observers include David Trimble, an Ulster, Northern Ireland unionist allied with its power structure that used death squads during "The Troubles" to kill people for being Catholic. He's also a member of the Netanyahu/Dore Gold-established "Friends of Israel," a "worldwide Christian ministry....fostering solidarity with (the right of) the Jewish people....to live in their ancient homeland, Israel," no matter that for centuries it was historic Palestine.

General Ken Warkin (ret.) was also chosen, former head of Canada's military judiciary, involved in the coverup of the Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group's early 1990s Somalia atrocities.

Like past Israeli and Washington commissions, whitewash is assured this time, the bogus investigation to produce lies, distortion, omissions, false conclusions, and exoneration of cold-blooded murder, ordered by top government and military officials who'll walk away scot- free, what Israel planned by appointing an earlier investigation into Operation Cast Lead.

Its conclusion was preordained, on the mind of a Haaretz June 15 editorial writer who said:

"A committee whose makeup and authority are perceived as predetermined will be unable to satisfy international leaders and their constituencies abroad who demanded the inquiry in the first place."

"....the committee's membership nor its authority is suited to meet the challenges posed by the affair. (It's more) a public relations tool (than a body able) to bring justice to bear on those found responsible for the operation's failings....It would have....been better if the (committee) had never been born, sparing us the deceptive appearance of a real investigation," what this commission will dutifully avoid doing.

A same day Gush Shalom (GS - Israel's "hard core" peace movement) called the commission "toothless and powerless, (its) terms of reference exclude in advance all the main points which should be investigated." GS will petition Israel's High Court to challenge it, though prevailing against supportive justices faces near impossible odds.

The commission's mandate excludes days of cabinet planning to interdict and slaughter designated Flotilla activists, nor will it consider eyewitness accounts from passengers called "terrorists."

Instead, it will rely on IDF testimonies, whitewashing what happened, including fake video footage to show Israel's version of events, not the accurate recording showing commandos firing from helicopters before ever landing aboard, shooting passengers in the head at point blank range, and dumping bodies, and perhaps live activists, overboard to perish at sea, to hide the true death toll, believed to be at least 15, not the official nine reported, though at first Israeli radio said 19.

Netanyahu's commission will avoid truth, presenting the IDF's sanitized version of events instead, Israel's customary type coverup, why an independent investigation is essential. More on that below.

Internal Findings from Cast Lead Investigations

On April 29, 2009, IDF Chief of Staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi approved and authorized publication of the findings of five investigative teams, headed by colonels and composed of officers, not in the Gaza war's chain of command. They investigated five issues:

• claims about UN and international facilities fired on;
• incidents involving shootings at medical facilities, buildings, vehicles and crews;
• others harming civilians;
• the use of white phosphorous weapons; and
• damage to infrastructure and buildings.

At the same time, an overall IDF investigation reviewed the entire operation to "verif(y it) at various levels." In other words, to assure the five investigative teams absolved Israel of any culpability.

Unsurprisingly, they concluded that:

"throughout the fighting in Gaza, the IDF operated in accordance with international law. The IDF maintained a high professional and moral level while facing an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover amidst uninvolved civilians in the Gaza strip and using them as human shields."

It continued at some length justifying Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, repeated in a sixth investigation and one by Major General Avichai Mandelblit, Military Advocate General, concluding on February 24, 2010 from two investigations into Israel's human shield usage that:

"There is no dispute that during the military conflagration the use of human shields was completely forbidden," his investigation finding no basis that IDF troops hid behind noncombatants during the war, despite clear evidence they did and committed grievous crimes throughout the 23-day assault against a civilian population.

Instead, he added that "while we regret, of course, any harm to civilians, we emphasize that the responsibility for that lies solely at the doorstep of the Hamas organization, following its use of the civilian population for its despicable purposes," - Israel's customary response, blaming victims for its own crimes, Mandelblit repeating a scripted judgment, no matter how compelling the evidence against it, what the Goldstone Commission and other human rights groups concluded.

Often far less than impartial, so did Human Rights Watch (HRW) after conducting its own investigation saying:

A year after the war's end, neither side conducted serious investigations to determine whether or not war crimes were committed, failing to explain that Israel launched a premeditated attack against defenseless civilians, protected by Hamas and other resistance forces armed with homemade rockets and light arms against a powerful military invader using the latest Washington-supplied weapons and technology to commit mass-murder and devastation.

HRW agreed, calling Israeli attacks "indiscriminate, disproportionate (and) at times seemingly deliberate, in violation of the laws of war," causing vast destruction and large numbers of deaths and injuries - IDF investigations providing cover for serious crimes, bogus "after-action reports....in which an officer in the chain of command interviews soldiers involved, with no testimony from victims or witnesses," that at most results in minor disciplinary action against lower-ranking participants, never the high command, HRW adding:

"....they are not a substitute for impartial and thorough investigations into laws-of-war violations."

In other words, the entire process was bogus, the IDF absolving itself and government officials of any culpability, the planned outcome from Netanyahu's commission, its members to deliver judgments he wants, why HRW titled its report, "Turning a Blind Eye," Israel and Washington's exculpatory self-examinations, no matter how compelling the evidence against them.

Calls for an Independent Commission

On June 2, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution (32 - 3 with nine abstentions, including Britain, France, Japan and South Korea) calling for an independent fact-finding mission into Israel's Flotilla attack, similar to the one leading to the Goldstone Commission.

Sponsored by Arab states, it harshly condemned Israel "in the strongest terms" for violating international law at sea, also calling on Tel Aviv to lift the Gaza blockade and supply immediate humanitarian aid in the form of food, medicines, fuel, and other essentials.

Other human rights organizations voiced support:

• Amnesty International (AI) wants "an independent inquiry into the incident;"
• Human Rights Watch calls for "A prompt, credible, and impartial investigation....to determine whether the lethal force used by Israeli commandos was necessary to protect lives and whether it could have been avoided;" and
• a coalition of 30 human rights organizations demands an "end to impunity

....following Israel('s Flotilla) attack," saying:

"We, the undersigned organisations (sic)....are shocked by Israel's killing and injury of civilians carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza, (and) call on the international community to immediately take all appropriate measures in response to this unacceptable violence."

"This tragedy is the result of the prolonged impunity granted to Israel by the international community, despite Israel's documented, persistent disregard for international and humanitarian law in (Occupied Palestine) and its violation of fundamental human rights, including the right to life."

Israel is criminally liable, including for maintaining a genocidal Gaza siege. The 30 organizations also called for its immediate lifting, and urged the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Prosecutor "to make an urgent determination regarding the opening of an investigation into the" OPT situation, and for the UN Secretary-General to use all measures at his disposal to act, not abstain beyond his disingenuous rhetoric, best not said unless followed by specific measures aimed at holding culpable parties accountable and achieving justice for aggrieved victims at long last, something neither he or his predecessors have done.

The following organizations endorsed the statement:

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)
Turkish Coalition for the ICC
Track Impunity Always (TRIAL)
Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists
Gender Justice Initiative
Fondazione Internazionale Lelio Basso (Italy)
Cairo Institute for Human Rights
University College Dublin (Ireland)
Uganda Joint Christian Council
Human Rights Network - Uganda
Uganda Women and Children organization (UWCO)
Hope After Rape (HAR, Uganda)
Disabled Women's Network & Resource Organisation in Uganda (DWMRO)
Cameroon Coalition for Human Rights
Iranian Islamic Human Rights Commission
Kituo Cha Sheria (Kenya)
Coalition for Justice and Accountability (Sierra Leone)
Colombian Commission of Jurists
Network Movement for Democracy Human Rights (Sierra Leone)
Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights
Indonesian Civil Society Coalition for the ICC
Ligue pour la Paix et les Droits de l'Homme (Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC))
Synergie des ONG's Congolaise pour les Victims
Femme pour la Paix, le Developpement et les Droit de l'Homme (DRC)
Sierra Leone Coalition for the ICC
Association Espanola De Derecho International De Derechos Humanos
Justice Without Frontiers
Lebanese Centre for International law and Human Rights
La Coalition Marocain Pour La Cour Penal Internationale
Institute for Justice and Reconciliation

In a separate statement, B'Tselem demanded an "immediate, independent and effective investigation....carried out by a group that is not affiliated with the Israel army - (to include) testimonies of eyewitnesses....who participated in the flotilla."

The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel also called for an immediate independent international investigation, accusing Israel of violating international law by attacking civilians with disproportionate force.

Free Gaza, other Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, along with others worldwide demand the same thing, saying Israel must be held accountable.

Global nations (including Turkey, Arab states, Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Sweden, Russia, China and many others) called for appropriate actions in response to Israel's unjustified attack, including an open, independent investigation, an airing of all relevant facts, and accountability for those responsible for crimes in international waters.

Countries only expressing regret for the lives lost included America, Israel, Canada, Britain, Japan, Australia, and several others, including Pope Benedict in the Vatican, a loyal ally of imperial aggression like his predecessors.

Posted on numerous sites, including Palestine Chronicle, Uruknet, Countercurrents and others, writer Ahmed Amr, former NileMedia.com editor, made "The Case For An Impartial Turkish Inquiry," since nine of their citizens were murdered, one a Turkish America, Furkan Dogan, the Obama administration dismissive, though he was shot four times in the head at point blank range, clearly an assassination.

Given Turkey's outrage over the attack, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan calling it "state terrorism," its Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, saying it was "banditry and piracy," and their country's street expressing outrage in protest, "A robust inquiry might uncover some uncomfortable truths (and) make the Mediterranean a safe neighborhood for one and all."

Indeed so if regional states had leaders and officials credentials as distinguished as the Free Gaza Movement, one of the Flotilla's organizers.

Its Board of Advisors includes:

• James Abourezk, former US Senator from South Dakota, the first Arab-American to hold that office, and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC);
• M. Cherif Bassiouni, Distinguished Research Professor of Law emeritus, Depaul University, as well as a UN international human rights and humanitarian law consultant;
• Noam Chomsky, noted linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, lecturer, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute Professor emeritus;
• Gretta Duisenberg, international human rights activist, board member of "One Justice," an international Paris and Geneva-based legal group, and honorary president of the Hebron-based Arab Centre for Research and Studies on Palestine;
• Jeff Halper, Israeli Professor of Anthropology, political activist, author, lecturer and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD);
• Archbishop Theodosius (Atallah) Hanna, Archbishop of Sebaste from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem;
• Peter Hansen, former UNWRA Commissioner-General and Assistant UN Secretary-General;
• John Pilger, noted author, journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker, including his 2002 film, "Palestine is still the issue;"
• Leila Sharaf, a Jordanian Senator, former Minister of Information, and former board member of the Arab Organization for Human Rights;
• Aengus O. Snodaigh, Irish political leader and activist;
• Baroness Jenny Tonge, human rights activist and member of the British House of Lords; and
• Naomi Klein, lecturer and noted author, including "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

Its Advisory Council includes:

• Dr. Mona El-Farra, physician, human/women's rights activist, and Deputy Director of the Union of Health Work Committees in Gaza;
• Mahfouz Kabariti, human rights activist and President of the Palestinian Sailing Federation and Fishing & Marine Sports Association in Gaza;
• Jamal El-Khoudary, Chairman of the Popular Committee Against the Siege and independent parliament member in Gaza;
• Dr. Eyad Sarraj, physician and Gaza-based human rights activist; and
• Amjad Al-Shawa, human rights activist and Director of the Gaza-based Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO).

Israel and Washington call these noted activists "terrorists." People of conscience call them heroic for years of activism and dedication.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Illustration by David Dees

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
--Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Speech, 1986

Dear Mr. President Barack Obama:

Again, congratulations on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Hundreds of Millions of people around the world hoped and prayed that this prize will give you the courage, motivation, and strong will to bring peace to the world, most especially in Palestine.

But Israel in its humiliating defiant "slap and insult" to you and your government's stated policy to freeze settlement construction, even temporarily, continues unabated to build more illegal settlements, demolishing more Palestinian homes, expelling Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, continuing its inhumane siege of Gaza, now for 3 years, continuing to build the Apartheid Wall that annexes more Palestinian land; steals water from Palestinians, and allowing daily settler violence against Palestinian civilians including children; all with total impunity knowing that our government always "caves" in to the assault by Israel's powerful lobbies such as AIPAC with support from an AIPAC compliant Congress and a media that portrays Israel as infallible. Former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) upon leaving the Senate noted: "You can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here."

Your wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing daily civilian deaths with no end in sight. Iraq is still occupied by our military and mercenaries and when we allegedly leave we would've established permanent military bases to ensure oil and contain Iran. You're blind adoption of Israel's demand to bomb Iran is a repeat of the same lies and media hysteria that pushed us into devastating Iraq.

But first I feel compelled for the record to inform you that I am a SEMITE while Elie Wiesel and the rest of the American Jewish community are not.

It is you Mr. President who's been disrespectfully called an "Anti Semite" by Hagai Ben-Artzi, Netanyahu's brother in law.

Sir, If the U.S., the most powerful nation on earth can easily be "slapped" and "insulted" and still remain politically paralyzed to respond and deal with a small nation who's very founding and support is due to this nation, do you then expect the Palestinians to have any say in their future or for that matter Arab leaders who's regimes are dependent on our protection?

What conceivable concessions can the Palestinians offer Israel except to voluntarily leave their remaining land, a mere 12% of their previous homeland.

You began your presidency with some chutzpah in dealing with Israel but like all previous Presidents you've retracted any semblance of courage in dealing with the Israeli Palestinian issue or facing down Israel, the little nation that could.

You've gone out of your way to appease the Jewish community, having lunch with Elie Wiesel (imagine a U.S. President meeting with one Jew to comfort his concern about Jerusalem, ignoring Christian and Muslim concerns), sending Clinton to comfort the American Jewish Community on Israel while joining the Zionist call of the wild to attack Iran, forcing General Petreus to withdraw his remarks that link the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a direct threat to the lives of our military men and women in the Muslim world, and your repetitive reassurance to Israel that their "security" is sacrosanct while it is the brutal military aggressor, occupier and dictator of millions of Palestinians. Mr. President, what about the security of Palestinians who are killed on a daily basis either by Israeli troops or terrorist settlers? You've been unable to convince Israel to even allow meager food, water, and medicines into besieged Gaza.

On May 10 you announced your nomination of Elena Kagan as the third Jewish American to the Supreme Court, if confirmed, making the Jewish constitution of the Supreme Court to be one third although they only make up 1.7% of the U.S. population. The Supreme Court has no Protestant Justice despite their constituting the largest percentage of the U.S. population. I am confident that this appointment of a lawyer with no judicial experience is just another appeasement to the Jewish community to comfort their concern about your Israeli policy and to keep their money flowing to the Democratic Party. They needn't worry. No politician at any level in America dares to speak out against Israel if he/she seeks office. It's a death sentence.

The entire world wants Israel to end its illegal Occupation as per hundreds of U.N. Resolutions but your administration is adopting the hypocritical position that it's Iran, not Israel, that is in violation of Security Council Resolutions.

Israel and its supporters have brilliantly succeeded in inflaming one Arab/Muslim nation after another to divert the world's attention from its murderous regime in the Occupied Territories. First it was Egypt, then Libya, Lebanon, Syria, then Iraq, Darfur, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and now Iran. Does anyone remember Darfur after years of hysterical obsession by our politicians and media? The media has passed on to Israel's diversion du jour, Iran, deliberately not reporting that a peace agreement has been reached between the Sudanese government and the militias in Darfur.

As Ariel Sharon said: "The Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches."

What incredible manifestation of Jewish power exists then that one Jew, Elie Wiesel, is able to convene a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, accompanied by the hapless George Clooney, to discuss the situation in Darfur. No other ethnic American could convene the Security Council on any other issue.

Our government has been Israel's poodle and patsy since 1948. Pity the American people whose consumer obsession and disinterest in governmental affairs, except along party or single issue lines, has created a void in Washington D.C. that is filled by powerful Corporate and foreign interests.

Mr. President, your Cairo words now run hollow, your courage is wanting, thus peace in the Holy Land is once again dead until the next President picks up the mantle of a "peace process" knowing he too shall fail.

Again in our capitol Wall Street comes before Main Street and our national interest is subservient to Israel's interest. Our citizens continue to pay hundreds of billions of dollars of their hard earned tax dollars during periods of ballooning deficits to a rich nation, Israel, while our young men and women in the military die for a forced "passionate attachment" to a foreign nation.

With all due respect Mr. President, the love and enthusiasm you received in Denver upon your election is slipping wide and fast. How ironic, how tragic, that a black President ignores what it means to be enslaved by white European colonial powers.

The persecuted Jews of Europe are now the brutal persecutors in Palestine with our money, weapons, and vetoes.

For 62 years Israel has foiled and sabotaged every American, U.N., and International peace initiative as it strives for a "Greater Israel", an Israel without Arab Christians and Muslims. The followers of Jesus Christ have been intimidated into silence about the brutality and ethnic cleansing of their Christian brethren in the Holy Land

Mr. President, under Jewish influence, you and Congress immediately rejected the much respected and accepted Goldstone report on Israel's "war crimes" in Gaza without even reading its content and evidence. That's power that no American person or group can ever dream of achieving.

How hypocritical and ironic that Netanyahu at the U.N. General Assembly chastised the world for its "silence" on Iran's nuclear program with these words: "Have you no shame, have you no decency?" Where is Israel's shame and decency in its commission of "war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide" against millions of Palestinians made refugees in their own homeland.

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country ... There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it is simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army"
--David Ben Gurion, in Nahum Goldman, 'The Jewish Paradox', translated by Steve Cox, 1978

How will your conscience, Mr. President, answer God when your held accountable for failing to use America's power and might to bring peace to the Holy Land choosing instead to appease a small minority of Jewish Americans whose policies run counter to the majority of Jewish Americans who want a two state solution, simply to keep your power, rain in Jewish millions, and through shameful appeasement seek their support for a second term. Like every American politician you've sold your soul to kosher dollars and thus the legacy of your memory and soul will join the tragic dustbin of failed men in the annals of humanity. .

I am confident that your administration's feigned work for peace will again be blown in the wind of history.

With due respect, I remain

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

Armenian Genocide Map

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The hypocrisy of the American legislators has never stopped to amaze me. On Thursday March 4^th The House Foreign Affairs Committee had approved, by 23 to 22 votes, a non-binding resolution to condemn WWI-era massacre of Armenians on the hands of the Ottoman troops that began in 1915 as an act of planned genocide.

Acknowledging, recognizing, and condemning genocides, ethnic cleansings, massacres, and even killing of one human is the duty of all countries of the world. Yet ignoring or recognizing genocide for political gains is a very shameful hypocrisy.

This was not the first time the Committee had voted on this issue, but the resolutions were blocked from moving to the House floor for full voting. The American administration feared adverse effects on the diplomatic relationship, especially the military cooperation, between the US and Turkey that might have devastating effects on the American interests in the region including its alleged war on terror, its occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and the Iranian alleged nuclear threat.

First in 2000 the House Committee had approved a resolution to recognize the Armenian massacre as genocide. President Clinton, at the time, succeeded in persuading the Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, to withdraw the measure before the full House could vote on it.  In October 2007, the Committee, again, passed a similar resolution by 27 to 21 votes. The American administration, then, was still relying heavily on Turkish military bases for quick delivery of supplies to its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, noted that about 70% of all air cargo sent to Iraq passed through or came from Turkey, as did 30% of fuel, and virtually all the new armored vehicles designed to withstand mines and bombs. Avoiding the use of the world genocide, President Bush danced around the subject saying: "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915, but this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

So what motivated members of Committee to pass the resolution for the third time although Representative Dan Burton reminded them that "We have troops in the field, and we run the risk of losing a base of operation in Turkey" ?

Turkey, as any observer can notice, had lately shifted its foreign policies. Although a Middle Eastern country Turkey longed to become a member of the EU, but unfortunately transferring your eastern roots to the west seemed to be a difficult matter. After so many years of applying for membership to EU, and adopting all the imposed harsh conditions to become a member besides serving NATO for 58 years, Turkey finally recognized that the EU will not accept Turkey especially after admitting many of the old Warsaw countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia among others) so easily.  It seems that Turkey, finally, contented to remain Middle Eastern and decided to re-establish its position in the region.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focused on internal economic and social improvements. The public debt as percentage of annual gross domestic product declined from 74% in 2002 to 39% in 2009. Turkey has become the seventeenth strongest economical power in the world. In April 2006 the government announced a social security reform package including free medical services for everyone under the age of 18 regardless of whether they pay premiums to any social security organization or not. This is an improvement the US, the richest country in the whole world, has not yet implemented for its citizens.

Erdogan improved Turkish political relations with its old adversaries and its neighbors. Through an aggressive plan of allowing use of Kurdish language and reverting original Kurdish names to their cities Erdogan ended the quarter-century-long conflict with the Kurds. He also improved relationships with Greece, Armenia, and Iraq. Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia and first to visit Iraq in 33 years. Last August 31^st Turkey and Armenia signed a protocol in Zurich to improve relations between the two countries. In Iraq Turkey signed 48 trade agreements.

Erdogan had significantly improved Turkish diplomatic relations with Syria. Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, travelled to Turkey for the first official visit by a Syrian President in 57 years. In late 2004 Erdogan signed a free trade agreement with Syria, and in 2009 visa restrictions between the two countries have been lifted. Erdogan had also functioned, although for a brief period, as a mediator in indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria.

Asserting its position in the Middle East Turkey decided to play a more active role in the political affairs of the region. Erdogan has established a trilateral pact with Iran and Syria. He also expressed political support for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas in their resistance of Israeli occupation. He faced Israeli president, Shimon Perez, in Davos conference January 2009 and severely criticized Israel's December 2009 onslaught against Palestinian civilians in Gaza before walking out in protest over Perez's lies. This stand gained Erdogan huge popularity in the Arab and Moslem population.

Turkey had a change of heart, and decided to walk the path of freedom from Western influence. Turkey decided to become an independent and a major player in the Middle East in solidarity with its Arab neighbors. Turkey had committed the ultimate sin, in the eyes of the West and Israel, when it sided with Syria and Iran, and especially when it opposed and criticized Israel something many leaders, especially the Arabs, did not dare to do.

It was decided that Erdogan's government has to go before it becomes any stronger!!!

The Turkish "Zaman" newspaper reported on Jan. 3^rd 2009 that Israel plans to overthrow Erdogan's government because of his support for the Palestinian cause. It revealed that Israel provides support for opposition Turkish forces to topple the government. This was confirmed when the government arrested 49 military officers planning a coup. The newspaper confirmed that Israel helped in 1997 the Turkish neo-conservative to topple the then coalition government headed by Necmettin Erbakan. The Israeli war ministry leaked to the media in 2007 a report stressing the need to oust Erdogan's government through a similar plan.

Zionist conspiracies against Turkey started way back in June of 1896 when Sultan Abdel Hamid refused to sell Palestine to Zionist Herzl. Since then, and up to the present, Zionists schemed to embarrass and to weaken successive Turkish governments. This started with the Armenian genocide in 1915.

After WWI the Allied forces occupied large parts of the Ottoman Empire. Financing and arming Anatolia Armenian French Zionists incited the Armenians to revolt against the Empire to establish an independent Armenian state. The Armenians attacked The Turks, destroyed their cities and killed their women and children. Yet their revolt was brutally crushed by the "Young Turks Revolution", who also toppled Abdul Hamid's empire. It was revealed later that the "Young Turk Revolution" was actually a Jewish takeover (Jewish Young Turks) that was financed and armed by the Zionist Israelite Community of Salonika to topple the Ottoman Empire and to get rid of influential rich Armenians. This was revealed through letters to "The London Times" between June and August of 1911 under the title of "Jews and the situation in Albania". See also "The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians" by Christopher Jon Bjerknes.

Although the reports of Lieutenants Emory Noles and Arthur Sutherland, who were sent by the American administration to investigate the situation in Turkish Anatolia, reported massacres on both sides, only the Turkish massacres of Armenians were publicized.

Another chapter of the Zionist war against Turkey is being played. Israel tried to belittle Turkey when Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon publicly humiliated Turkey's ambassador in front of press cameras. The extremist Zionist Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman was sent to Greece, to Cypress and to Azerbaijan to inflame old hostilities against Turkey. A Turkish military coup attempt had failed and its planners, 49 military officers, were imprisoned.  Ignoring real historical events American Foreign Affair Committee, under the influence of AIPAC, passed its resolutions notably by very narrow margins, to condemn what was termed Armenian Genocide.

The question that begs itself here is what moral grounds this Committee has earned to pass such resolution? On what ethical basis do they condemn one genocide and not others? What about the genocide of 40 million American Indians to establish the US?  What about the nuclear genocide of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the killing fields of Vietnam and Korea, the aerial bombing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the present genocides of millions of Moslems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq?

Jews, and AIPAC in specific, should remember the genocide of 110 million Africans, victims of 113 years of slave industry, by Jewish slave traders, the genocide of 35 million Kulaks by Russian Jewish Cheka agents in 1932, the genocide of 100 million Christians including their priests between 1920-1940 by the Jewish Bolshevik Commisars under the leadership of Jewish Kaganovich, Stalin's brother-in-law, the Zionist expulsion and genocide of 16 million ethnic Germans from Silesia and the Volga at the end of WWII, and the still ongoing 62 years Zionist Israeli genocide of Palestinians.  More Zionist Jewish genocides can be found here.

The term Armenian Genocide refers to the total of 1.5 million Armenians killed in an alleged systematic campaign by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of Armenians, as well as Turks and other nationalities, were killed during WWII, but denies that it was a planned genocide.

This is so much fuss about past historical events that could not be changed. Yet one hopes that we would learn from them to prevent any further future genocidal crimes. Today the whole world is faced with an ongoing four years old audacious, premeditated, deliberate, and systematic genocide of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Zionists and Israeli leaders meet annually in what they call Herzliya Conference to strategize more effective genocidal methods against Palestinians. Would these Hippocratic leaders do anything about this genocide?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A fully pre-meditated international crime of genocide has been taking place during the last 62 years in the heart of the Arab World. The victims are the Palestinian people especially those in the Gaza Strip. The assassin is the worst ever terrorist group deceptively called the Israeli Defense Forces under the leadership of the theocratically most racist "god's chosen" deceitfully self-proclaimed "democratic Jewish-only" Israel. Israel had been created, financed, armed, and politically protected by, mainly, British and American rapture-vision-obsessed Talmudist power elites consisting of profit-seeking financiers and military-industrial complex.

In December 2008 this Israeli Terrorist Forces added another war crime to its long list of war crimes against the Palestinians since 1948. One more time the international political community had become an accomplice to one more Israeli war crime either by being a passive silent witness or by becoming an active participant and protector of Israeli war criminals. One more international war crime had been perpetrated against the Palestinians. It is an international crime since multi political regimes; Israeli, American, European and even Arab governments, had joined in this crime that is STILL GOING ON up to this very minute.

For almost the last three years Israel had subjected Gaza to an illegal economic siege, which in itself constitutes a crime against humanity. Israel had, and still is, preventing the entry into Gaza of vital life sustaining products such as food stuff, fuel, medicine and needed medical equipment, water purification equipment and many building materials. This is a genocidal crime using hunger and thirst as weapons.

Starting late December of 2008 and for continuous 22 days Israeli terrorist army had perpetrated a genocidal war crime against Gaza Palestinians. The Israeli army, known to be the fourth powerful army in the world, attacked unarmed civilian Palestinians of Gaza comprising mostly of children, women, and old people. There was no regular army in Gaza to face the well equipped, well trained to murder Israeli army. Only few male civilians, who took it on themselves to carry the light arms they could obtain to resist the Israeli war criminals in order to protect their own families.

The Israeli military radio station announced that half of the Israeli air force had conducted 2500 air sorties dropping a total of 1,000,000 KG of explosives on the civilian families of Gaza. This is not counting the shells fired by the artillery and tanks. They had used high precision GPS-guided bombs to destroy vital locations such as the UN food warehouse and schools, government buildings, hospitals and medical clinics, religious buildings and civilian institutions.

From his observation of the video taped explosions in Gaza, the British weapons expert Dy Williams concluded that the Israeli army had used DIME bombs to guarantee murder of victims, Phosphorous bombs producing 900 centigrade degrees of heat, and DU bombs producing 5,000 centigrade degrees of heat, that is equal to the heat of the sun surface. The Israeli soldiers, themselves, had admitted and boasted to "Breaking The Silence" organization of committing war crimes in Gaza. These included, among many, the deliberate murder of civilians including women and children, using civilians as human shields, shelling homes after hording groups of civilians inside, destroying and vandalizing properties and civilian homes, and writing hate and racial graffiti on walls.

Israeli criminal leaders were not satisfied with mere destruction of Gaza infrastructures, contaminating agricultural land and water, and murdering some 1500 Palestinians. They had carefully chosen the most lethal weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that will cause the death of Palestinians, who survived the attack, and the death of their future born generations. Besides their devastating environmental contamination effects the Israeli bombs were found to have long lasting reproductive toxic, carcinogenic, genotoxic, fetotoxic and pathogenic effects on humans.

A study titled "Craters Gaza 2006/09 and respectively WP Bomb Gaza 2009" published on www.newweapons.org was done by Prof. Mario Barbieri CNR, Rome, Prof. Maurizio Barbieri, University of Rome, and Prof. Paola Manduca, University of Genova. They analyzed dirt samples from four bomb craters in Gaza, and residual components of spent Israeli bombs. Their analyses found unusual concentrations of Molybdenum (male sperm toxicant), copper, nickel, cadmium and Mercury (carcinogenics), Tungsten (genotoxic and fetotoxic), Zinc and Manganese (carcinogenic and fetotoxic) Aluminium (fetotoxic and pathogen affecting nervous system and kidneys), and Cobalt (DNA repair inhibitor and mutagenic).

Even now, after a year of the Israeli barbaric war crimes against Gaza, the Israeli air force bombards life vital centers, while the Israeli army use bulldozers to raze fertile farm lands, destroy crops, and shoot farmers. The Israeli attack boats have become worse than the Somali pirates. They attack and sink Palestinian fishing boats. They fire at, kidnap, and confiscate international humanitarian aid materials loaded on boats of "Free Gaza" organizations.

In a blatant violating of all international laws and a disdain to all humanitarian appeals the terrorist Israeli state had severely tightened its military siege against the Gaza Strip after the end of its last onslaught in January 2009. Palestinians in Gaza are living without clean drinking water, bare minimum food, without electricity, and without the necessary medical supplies. This is a real holocaust. A holocaust is the premeditated plan to exterminate masses of people (such as the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza), whether through gassing, incendiary phosphorous, DU and WMD bombs, hunger and thirst, or any other means leading to mass death.

Instead of coming to the aid of Palestinians the UN reverted to its old tactic of blaming the Palestinian victims and Ban KI-moon requesting a permanent cease fire. In its meeting the UN had totally ignored the Palestinian elected Hamas government; a major part of this conflict. Rather it listened to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who humiliatingly begged the UN for help, promising to do "everything" to secure peace. In an indirect way he blamed Hamas government and did not even criticize Israel's aggression.

The UNSC issued Resolution 1860 that ignored realities of Israeli genocide of Palestinians, exonerated the Israeli terrorists, blamed the Palestinian victims (as usual) and equated them with the Israeli terrorist army. It stressed the urgency of and called for an immediate durable ceasefire leading to full withdrawal of Israeli forces. It called for efforts to prevent alleged illicit trafficking of arms into Gaza (but not the sale of arms to Israel). Thus denying the Palestinians any means of defending their lives against terrorist Israel. It misrepresented the conflict as a humanitarian crisis by calling the international community to provide humanitarian aid to alleviate the suffering of Gazans. This is not a humanitarian crisis; an Israeli occupation. It is a political conflict with grave humanitarian consequences. This is a genocidal holocaust of 1.5 Palestinians through thirst, starvation and use of WMD. THIS IS BLATANT NAKED WAR CRIMES.

Ban Ki-moon was sent to visit Gaza after the Israeli onslaught. He cared only to check the bombed UN warehouse and schools but not the civilian sufferings. He cared more about buildings than humans. He later expressed his "pleasure" that Israeli leaders had agreed to meet with UN representatives to discuss precautions that further "accidental bombing" of UN facilities could be avoided. Thus meeting with Israeli war criminals has become a UN pleasure. He stated, further, that he would close any investigation into Israel's war crimes.

Whatever Israel bombs and destroys Western donors volunteer to pay for. These donor countries pledged $4.5 Billion for Gaza reconstruction on the condition that such money is paid to Abbas' Palestinian Authority and not Hamas. After a whole year of the onslaught, Gaza Palestinians had never received one cent of that money, and no reconstruction had even started. Most of the money had gone into the private pockets of Abbas' gang and to his security forces.

After the failure of Israeli siege of Gaza and its onslaught on the Strip to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government The Western countries stepped in to produce harsher measures. In February 2009 experts from nine Western countries (US, UK, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Norway) met in Copenhagen to discuss ways of combating alleged weapons smuggling into Gaza. Their main concentration was to use Egypt as a land front to further tighten the siege against Gaza, specifically to target the underground tunnels Gazans use to smuggle in food stuff, goods, and fuel. They also decided to send NATO warships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf to intercept alleged weapon smuggling from Iran to Gaza.

At the end of January 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent a frigate with helicopters to the waters off Gaza to combat arms smuggling into Palestinian territories. He ordered his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to coordinate closely with the US and EU to come up with more effective ways to fight arms smuggling on land and sea. Sarkozy said: "We have pledged to help Israel and Egypt with all the technical, military, naval and diplomatic ways to help end the smuggling of weapons into Gaza."

British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, issued an order to deploy the British Navy to the region to help fight weapons smuggling. "We'll send Royal Navy to help fight weapon smuggling" He stated courageously. Latest British scandal came this month when its Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said that UK is urgently looking into reforming its laws to protect Israeli war criminals, such as Tzibi Levni, from being arrested.

Germany sent end of January border police exports and equipment to detect and destroy tunnels in Gaza Strip. German Deputy Interior Minister, August Hanning, claimed that Egypt had requested the detection equipment and the technical skills.

The newly elected American President at the time Barak Obama had also sent American vessels into the region to board all suspected vessels of smuggling weapons. He also had asked the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, to help combat arms smuggling. The US had sent surveillance cameras and underground sound sensors to Egypt to be installed on the border with Gaza. Recently the US Army Corps of Engineers had constructed treated steel plates and is helping Egypt install them as an underground wall on the Gaza border to prevent tunnel digging.

While denying Palestinians acquire any arms for self defense the US and EU member states are major arms exporters to Israel. According to figures from Brussels the European Union member states authorized the export of €200 million in arms exports to Israel in 2007, with France far and away the Israel's biggest European weapons supplier. According to the EU's 2008 report on arms export licenses, published in December for the 2007 calendar year and consolidating the accounts that member states must annually submit, 18 member states authorized a total of 1,018 such licenses to Israel worth €199,409,348.

The US is the largest arms exporter to Israel. Successive American Administration had sold Israel the latest and most technologically and most devastating weapons. According to Amnesty International the US had provided Israel with $8.3 Billion worth or weapons between 2004 and 2007. In 2002 the US granted Israel $21 Billion worth in military aid. Israel's 2006 war against Lebanon and its 2008/09 war against Gaza were carried using American weapons. Still Obama's administration had delivered late last January 14,000 tons of weapons to Israel delivered by the German cargo ship, Wehr Elbe, to Israeli port of Ashdod. Recently, peace prize winner, President Obama has signed off $2.775 Billion in further defense aid for Israel, a part of the $30 Billion over 10 years. Last Monday 12/21 Obama has approved a defense spending bill that includes $2.2 Million in funds for Israel's missile defense program, more than double what was approved last year. All this while American economy is collapsing, housing crisis is exacerbating, and unemployment rate is rising. It seems for Obama administration the Israeli citizen is more important than the American tax payer. Also refer to my article "Arming Terrorist Israel".

EU and US don't mind breaking their own laws for the sake of arming terrorist Israel. Under Criterion 2 of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, Member States are supposed to "deny an export license if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression, or be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian laws". Israel is proved to commit both offenses.

The US breaks three of its own arms export laws; US Arms Export Control Act (P.L. 80-829), Foreign Assistance Act (P.L. 97-195), and the Leahy Law (Foreign Ops Appropriation Act).

With such extraordinary consorted international efforts and the use of such amassed technical and military powers one would imagine that Israel, EU and US are fighting a war against a great global enemy not impoverished and starved civilians trying to survive on a small and narrow war-scorched strip of land. The reality is that this international power is fighting the resisting spirit of these people against colonial occupation. They are afraid that such spirit may spread over and impede their own occupation in the region. To destroy this spirit these Western governments are willing to unconditionally support terrorist Israel financially, militarily and politically, on the expense of their citizens tax payers despite their own economic crises and joblessness.

The worst accomplices in this international crime are the Arab governmental regimes, who are supposed to protect their Palestinian brothers from such a holocaust. Rather than united in one nation, one government, one military, and one economy Arab leaders had, instead, asserted the division of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Thus they keep themselves weak and vulnerable to foreign occupation, interference and control that can be overtly and covertly seen in almost every Arab state. The Arab League is just a tool to keep the leaders in a chaotic disagreement unable to make any national decision. For the last 61 years they have watched Palestinian land gradually gobbled by the Zionist occupation and had not taken any significant action to free Palestine. Rather they spend their Billion oil money in buying obsolete weapons to rust in the desert. Finally they stopped financing Palestine freedom fighters and surrendered the penniless Palestinian Authority to the merciless manipulation of the pro-Israeli Western donor countries. While some had completely withdrawn from the Arab/Israeli conflict, others like Jordanian and Egyptian regimes had actively contributed to the suppression of all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.

During the Israeli 22 days onslaught on Gaza Arab leaders kept coming up with unreasonable excuses for not convening an urgent summit meeting. When they finally did meet, they, as usual, agreed to disagree on how to deal with the Israeli aggression. They finally begged the UN to interfere. Such delay gave Israelis longer time to murder more Palestinians and destroy more homes.

The Arab League, later on, issued a resolution calling for breaking Israel's siege of Gaza, yet they donated money to Abbas' security forces, controlled by American general Dayton, to oppose the democratically elected Hamas government. Instead of feeding the starving Palestinians in Gaza the League is spending $50 Million to protect the lives of endangered marine turtles on 8000 square meters coast land off Al-Arish in Egypt. What a humanitarian gesture!

Like all colonial puppet local regimes, the present Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his thugs, had hijacked the Palestinian leadership and offered Palestine and its people on the Israeli alter to glorify a genocidal god and his chosen people. My previous articles (here and here) discuss the betrayal of the present Palestinian Authority. This betrayal was recently exposed by Israeli audio and video recording of these so-called Palestinian leaders urging the Israelis to attack Gaza to finish off the elected Hamas government regardless of any Palestinian casualties. Abbas and his PA had also tried to muffle Goldstone's Report about Israel's crime.

Besides crushing dissidents and any form of pro-Palestinian solidarity, Jordan has become a training campground for Abbas' security forces under the supervision of the American General Keith Dayton. Dayton had established a twin sister of the American School of Assassins to suppress Palestinian resistance. It was reported that about four thousands trainees of this School were ready to enter and control Gaza after the anticipated destruction of Hamas government.

Besides suppressing and robbing its own citizens for the last 28 years, Hosni Mubarak's Egyptian regime has played the most active role, second to Israel, in opposing elected Palestinian government and in the destruction of Gaza and starving its people. To ease Mubarak's conscious for participating in such genocide of his Arab brothers his regime is paid a handsome $2 Billion in the form of American Aid.

Mubarak's regime has committed crimes against humanity by fully participating in the Israeli siege against Gaza. Rather than helping the next door homeless and hungry Arab brothers of Gaza Strip the Mubarak's regime preferred to send, last May, an airplane full with humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka on the opposite side of the globe. This regime was a stubborn obstacle in the face of every international solidarity movement and organizations, who tried to break the siege against Gaza. The regime blocked the entry of thousands of tons of badly needed food aid to Gaza; letting them rot in the desert heat, and finally burn them as spoiled food. Under the deceptive banner of "fighting arms smuggling into Gaza" it erected the most sophisticated surveillance equipment to detect and prevent life-sustaining materials delivered to Gaza through tunnels.

This month, December 2009, Egyptian Mubarak's regime, with the help of American Army Corps Engineers, is building an underground steel wall to block tunnel digging, and is running underground pipes to flood the existing tunnels with sea waters.

Egyptian regime has opposed the elected Hamas Palestinian leadership and sided with the Western puppet Abbas, whose presidency has expired. It has sabotaged all reconciliation attempts between the two Palestinian factions by imposing harsh conditions against Hamas government and altering the text of agreements before signature.

The Egyptian policy towards their Palestinian brothers in Gaza, many of whom carry Egyptian citizenship, was reflected in the confession of its Foreign Minister, Ahmad Aboul-Gheti, in 11th of November 2008 when he stated that Egypt was closing Rafah Crossing with Gaza to punish a Palestinian faction (Hamas). Opening the Crossing, in his opinion, constitutes recognition of Hamas' legitimacy.

Unlike the silence over the Holocaust during WWII conscientious citizens of these same international criminal governments are actively mobilized to act against terrorist Israel and the genocidal policies of their governments. Through Breaking Gaza Siege Campaigns many of them, such as Viva Palestina and The Hope convoys, are delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. They have also organized boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns to boycott companies that sustain Israeli occupation on Palestine such as Motorola and Caterpillar, as well as academic and cultural boycott of all Israeli academic and cultural institutions, all of them are supported by the Israeli government. The effects of these campaigns had penetrated the blindly pro-Zionist American congress, where on December 18th Representatives Jim McDermott and Keith Ellison are seeking signature on a "Dear Colleague" letter to President Obama criticizing Israel's siege of Gaza. Representatives Jim Moran and Bob Inglis are also seeking signatures on another "Dear Colleague" letter to Secretary of State Clinton urging her to pressure Israeli government to end the ban on student travel from Gaza to the West Bank.

This week protests are organized in major countries around the world in US, UK, France, Turkey, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Poland, Denmark, Greece, Jordan, and occupied Palestine (Israel), commemorating the first anniversary of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza.

Under the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction we are witnessing Western courts issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders (Tzibi Livni) and army generals (former military chief Moshe Yaalon and General Doron Almog) for committing war crimes. International lawyers are filing for more arrest warrants against more Israeli war criminals. Soon Israeli leaders will be chased across the globe as war criminals the same way Israel had chased German Nazis as war criminals.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

A documentary on Gaza Genocide.

The film begins with the entry of the fifth and last Free Gaza Movement boat to make it to Gaza before covering the impact of the siege and harrowing events during the 22-day assault including attacks on Civil Defence centres, paramedics, children, and the UN HQ.

Part 1/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aU1H-knuSw

Part 2/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpkS_orYM9E

Part 3/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArXv-qrbthc

Part 4/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvFXz8wkkFQ

Part 5/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjXFopL4uLM

Part 6/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA4ShI-QMYc

By Vittorio Arrigoni
6:05 PM, Marna house, Gaza city

An acrid smell of sulphur fills the air while the sky is shaken by earth-shattering rumbles. My ears are now deaf to the explosions while my eyes are all out of tears from all the corpses. I stand in front of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza's main hospital, and we've just received Israel's terrible threat that they intend to bomb its under construction wing. This would be nothing new, as Wea'm hospital was bombed just yesterday, along with a medicine warehouse in Rafah, the Islamic university, which was also destroyed, along with various mosques scattered along the Strip. Not to mention many CIVILIAN structures.

Apparently, they can no longer find "sensible" targets, the air force and the navy is killing time targeting places of worship, schools and hospitals. It's another 9/11 every single hour, every minute around here, and tomorrow is always a new day of mourning, always identical to the previous one. You notice the helicopters and airplanes constantly overhead, you see a flash, but you're already a goner and it's too late to take flight. There are no bunkers against the bombs in the Strip and no place is really safe. I can't contact my friends in Rafah, not even those who live North of Gaza City, hopefully because the phone lines are overloaded. Hopefully. I haven't slept in 60 hours, and same goes for every Gazan.

Yesterday three other ISM members and I spent the entire night at the al Awda hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp. We were there because we were fearing the much dreaded ground raid that never happened. But the Israeli tanks are posted all along the Strip's border, and their corpse-hungry creaks will apparently form a funeral march tonight. Around 11:30 PM a bomb fell about 800 metres from the hospital, the shock wave blow several windows apart, injuring the injured. An ambulance arrived, then they blew up a mosque, thankfully empty at that time. Unfortunately, though it actually has nothing to do with bad luck but with the criminal and terroristic will to massacre civilians, the Israeli bomb has also struck the building adjacent to the mosque, which was also destroyed. We watched as the tiny bodies of six little sisters were pulled out of the rubble - five are dead, one is in life-threatening conditions. They laid the little girls out on the blackened asphalt, and they looked like broken dolls, disposed of as they were no longer usable.

This wasn't a mistake, but a voluntary, and cynical horror. We're at a toll of 320 dead, more than a thousand wounded and, according to a doctor at Shifa, 60% of these are destined to die in the next few hours or days, after a prolonged agony.There are many missing, and for the last two days despairing wives have been searching for their husbands or children in hospitals, often to no avail.

The morgue is a macabre spectacle. A nurse told me that after hours of searching, a Palestinian woman recognised her husband from his amputated hand. All that's left of her husband, and the wedding band on her finger from the eternal love they had sworn one another. Out of a house inhabited by two families, very little has remained of their bodies. They showed their relatives half of one bust and three legs.

Right now, one of our Free Gaza Movement boats is leaving the port in Larnaca, Cyprus. I spoke to my friends on board. They've heroically amassed medicine and steeped it everywhere in the boat. It should reach the port of Gaza tomorrow around 8:00 AM. Here's to hoping that the port will still exist after another night of endless bombing. I'll be in touch with them for the entire night. Please, someone stop this nightmare.

Choosing to remain silent means somehow lending support to the genocide unfolding right now. Shout out your indignation, in every capital of the "civilised" world, in every city, in every square, covering our own screams of pain and terror. A slice of humanity is dying in pitiful in a useless listening.

I received a message from the photojournalist and peace activist Sameh Habeeb from Gaza while I was looking at the news in the Austrian TV, which pierced my ears with talk about the rockets which Hamas supposedly shoots at the "innocent Israeli occupation" which has jailed one and half million in Gaza since before Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out.

This rocket picture was published at the ORF website (Pic Credit: MOHAMED SABER/EPA/ORF)

The rockets shown on Austrian TV looked to me like the fancy Bengala Rockets which are shot here while celebrating new year, and the clips shown on TV raise many questions:

- The picture published at the ORF website is credited to "MOHAMED SABER/EPA". Those are two first names and no family name. Who is this person? Why does he not present himself with a family name as any Arab would do? Does he exist at all or is he a fabrication?

- The rockets depicted in that picture (and on the video) look more like the fancy bengalas which can be bought in many shops all over the world before festivities than any known weapon.

- These so-called "rockets" appear to not have place for fuel or an engine, but they are supposed to fly 10-15Km ? How do they accomplish this miracle?

- How did ORF and other western media come into possession of this video which supposedly shows "Hamas fighters" shooting rockets from between fruit trees? Was it distributed by the Israeli embassy? Neither Austrian nor other western journalists are known to go to Gaza, so they can only have received them from the Israeli government, and that is what a link to exactly there from the ORF page suggests.

- If the firing of these rockets from Gaza can be doubted, from where else could they have been fired? From within Israeli territory perhaps? Could it be that the firing of these rockets is a propaganda campaign implemented by the IDF in order to "justify" a long-planned massacre against the people of Gaza?

- Could it be that the IDF is using the inhabitants of Sderot, Asqelon and other places around Gaza in order to construct a justification for genocide against a people who are already half hungered to death?

- Why did nobody ask these questions before showing the clip at several European TV stations? If western media are not sloppy in their research and their checking of sources but still publish material which is obvious propaganda, is it possible to say that this irresponsible and less than professional attitude, the wholesale regurgitation of Israeli propaganda, is tantamount to complicity in the genocide against the Palestinian people?

Even in the unlikely case that these rockets are "real", they would be an understandable yet lamentable reaction to years of illegal siege and murderous mayhem perpetrated by the Israeli regime. In this case they would be "rockets of hunger", wholly justified under international law, which allows an invaded people to defend itself with anything at their disposal.

The Israeli occupational regime is preparing to slaughter the besieged people of Gaza, and it is known that they are currently running a strong propaganda campaign around the world, controlling the international public opinion and turning their own crimes against humanity into "reactions" of the Gaza rockets.

The hungry people of Gaza under the Israeli blockade. (Pic Credit: Sameh Habeeb)

The less than objective international media has adopted the Israeli propaganda wholesale, and continues repeating their falsified stories as a preparation for destroying Gaza over the heads of one and a half million mostly defenseless people, of whom about half are children.

Non of the European media has shown an objective picture about the real situation in Gaza, which is in fact and effect a concentration camp. Even during the previous truce between Israel and Gaza, the criminal state of Israel continued its blockade to hunger out and destroy to the Palestinians in Gaza.

I would ask the well-paid international dispensers of propaganda and the world governments some simple questions:

If somebody jails you in a ghetto for over six years, or even six days, denying you the most basic of human rights, continues blockading the ghetto, killing the sick people, occupying the sky, shelling, and killing people for no discernible reason, will you stay a peaceful people for even a second?
Is there any peace under the continued hunger and blockade?

This is the story of Gaza and of these useless rockets which you are using to justify the Israeli genocide, murdering, and jailing and starving people.

The message from the hungry people of Gaza, a voice lost under western propaganda and which more people should hear, follows. And here are more photos of the hungry Palestinians of Gaza.

Sameh Habeeb writes:

My Misery in Gaza pushed me to report on the Hunger of my people. I stopped by al shanty bakery mid of Gaza City. It is one of the biggest bakeries across Gaza which provides tens of thousands with bread. Hundreds of people crowded outside the bakery in a very long long row waiting for bag of bread. Children, women and men were awaiting the chance to have the bread which is totally running out in Gaza.

Abed Mas’od, 24, is a labour working in Al shanty bakery. I spoke to him whilst he was very busy preparing bread for thousands. I managed to get some information out of him.

Before the deadly crisis of bread which started 2 days ago; this bakery was preparing 30 bags of flour. But with today it makes around 100 each bag weights 60 Kilograms. Abed refers to this rise of bread-making quantity to the unrecorded request of population for bread which came after Israel ban flour into Gaza and closed borders.

"Our bakery is out of bread since days and what we have is only for another 24 hours. In fact, we have stopped our work yesterday as we ran out of flour. Now, we use grain (fodder) used for animals which will finish in hours." Bakery labor said.

Amongst the crowd a woman’s voice arose above all people in the row. She started to scream and appealed for God requesting a salvation and easing for life conditions. I came closer to the woman, then introduced myself and then started to ask her some questions. The woman, Om Ali Shoman,45, with a pale bleak face draws the suffering of entire populations.

She said, "This is our destiny. It’s a conspiracy machinated against us. What’s the fault of my children at home to stay with no bread. Did they fire rockets? Did they kill Israelis? Are they holding guns?

The number of Gaza bakeries is 47 but now the working ones are 14 only.
Normally, Gaza needs 450 tons of flour; 100 goes for bakeries and 300 for house use. Part of the house share flour is being provided by UNRWA which halted its work lately. The remaining flour and wheat quantities would be covering the needs of people except for few days.

Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com

By Stephen Lendman

Imagine life under these conditions:

Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self- determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished.

Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from settling its population on conquered land.

Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water. Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed, and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier.

Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground and from the air. Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed, arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and slaughtered on any pretext, including for your right of self-defense. Having no rights on your own land in your own country for over six decades and counting. Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed Arabs, and fundamentalist extremists. Victimized by a slow-motion genocide to destroy you.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel has conducted state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians for decades and intensively in Gaza. In a September 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "Genocide in Gaza" he wrote:

"A genocide is taking place in Gaza....An average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. (It's become) a daily business, now reported (only) in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts. The chief culprits are the Israeli pilots who have a field day," like shooting fish in a barrel. Why not, they're only Muslims, so who'll notice or care.

International law expert Francis Boyle does and in March 1998 proposed that "the Provisional Government of (Palestine) and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague for violating the" Genocide Convention. He stated that "Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and the) lawsuit would....demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world."

Israel is a serial human rights international law abuser. The UN Human Rights Commission affirms that it violates nearly all 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and is guilty of grievous war crimes. The Commission also determined that as an occupying power Israel has committed crimes against humanity as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter.

Geneva, Nuremberg and other international human rights laws guarantee what Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: that everyone "has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Article 6 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also affirms it in saying that every "human being has the inherent right to life." Official Israeli policy is to deny it to Palestinians under occupation, especially Gazans under siege.

On November 5, it was egregiously tightened after Israel closed all commercial crossings and banned virtually all permissible items - previously severely restricted and in limited amounts.

On November 21, Haaretz reported that Karen AbuZayd, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) commissioner-general said Gaza faces a humanitarian "catastrophe" if Israel maintains its blockade. She called the current closure the gravest since the early days of the Second Intifada eight years ago. "It's been closed for so much longer than ever before....and we have nothing in our warehouses....It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster."

Out of Gaza's 1.5 million population, UNRWA provides vitally needed rations for 820,000 of its refugees, and the UN World Food Program aids another 200,000 people. They supply about 60% of daily needs, now effectively shut off and nearly exhausted - including food, medicines, fuel, and other basic essentials.

On November 17, 31 containers of foods and medicines were allowed in through Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, southeast of Rafah. It was closed, along with other border crossings, for the previous two weeks. These amounts are hugely deficient and amount to less than 10% of what entered Gaza before Israel's June 2007 imposed siege.

Also allowed in was 427,000 liters of fuel or barely enough to operate Gaza's power plant for a day. It's effectively shut down, and at least 30% of the population is without electricity and around 70% experiences lengthy power outages for days or weeks.

On November 20, AP reported that Israeli officials "stood by (their) decision to shut cargo crossings into the Gaza Strip, brushing off pleas to ease the blockade from United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon." Of course, the Strip has been mostly isolated since Israel's imposed siege 18 months ago that created a humanitarian crisis now intensified.

Why so was stated to the Jerusalem Post by senior IDF General Amos Gilad: Because "Hamas is committed to the destruction of the state....It (also) wants to take over the PLO." Unmentioned are the facts that refute this assertion. After Ismail Haniyeh became Hamas prime minister in 2006, he offered the Bush administration peace and a long-term truce in return for an end to Israel's (illegal) occupation. He was rebuffed the way he is from Israel for the same offer.

Again why so? Israel and Washington are allied in a joint enterprise and need enemies, aka "terrorists." While maintaining an illusory "peace process," none whatever exists nor is any effort made to address equity for the Palestinians. What matters is joint- control of the region. Israel as the local hegemon. America as part of its world empire and all vital resources in it, especially oil, of course.

In the 1980s, former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir admitted that Israel waged war against Lebanon in 1982 because there was "a terrible danger....not so much a military one as a political one." So a pretext was arranged the way it always is to invent threats and avoid resolution.

In January 2006, it was policy again after Hamas won a resounding democratic majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). As a result, they and the Palestinians paid dearly. Israel, America and the West ended all outside aid, imposed a crippling economic embargo and sanctions, and politically isolated the ruling Hamas government. An intensive crackdown followed that continues to this day - regular interventions, attacks, ruthless repression, and the imposition of a medieval siege on Gaza, now intensified.

On November 19, the Territory's largest flour mill shut down for a lack of wheat, and the UN suspended cash grants to 98,000 poor Gazans because of a shortage of Israeli currency.

The world community has been silent. Conditions continue to deteriorate, and Christian Aid is speaking out. It accused Israel of collective punishment in violation of international law. Under Fourth Geneva's Article 33:

"No protected person (under occupation) may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measure of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited (as well as) Reprisals against protected persons and their property."

Costa Dabbagh from the Near East Council of Churches (a Christian Aid partner) says "Simply letting food into Gaza is not enough," and precious little is arriving. Its people "are fed and kept alive without dignity and the international community should be blamed for it." It's "not acceptable to be waiting for food to come. (Gazans) want to live freely with Israel and other countries in peace. (They're) not against any individual or government (but) are against imprisonment."

They're also against starving, extreme deprivation, no effective outside aid, and no support from world or other Arab leaders in their behalf. At the moment, three of five mills have stopped operating, and the two others are about to for lack of wheat. Several bakeries are closed for lack of flour, fuel, cooking gas and electricity.

Of Gaza's 72 bakeries, 47 produce Syrian bread (the most popular kind); 29 of them stopped operating; eight others are at partial capacity; 10 bake Iraqi bread, and 15 others different varieties and pastries. None are in full operation, and all may have to close for lack of supplies and power. Gazans are being strangled and starved.

Health facilities are also in crisis and their patients endangered because of their limited ability to provide services. In addition, 45 vital medicines are embargoed and unavailable. Another unconscionable act.

Shifa Hospital is Gaza's largest and seriously hampered. Besides a lack of power, medicines and other supplies, its equipment needs repair and has no readily available spare parts. Its main generator is in disrepair. Its MRI machine can't operate without electricity. It's short on gas for disinfection and to prepare food for patients. Concern is growing that much other essential equipment may also stop working or have to shut down for lack of power.

Shifa's director, Hassan Khalaf, and the Red Cross describe the situation as critical. Lives are at risk. The intensive care unit can't operate. Electronic equipment in the newborn baby unit doesn't function, and the staff has to manually pump oxygen to all infants. In addition, stocks of about 160 essential medicines have run out and another 120 are running low. Shifa can't run very long under these conditions.

Nor can Gaza's other hospitals and all other operations in the Territory - an intolerable situation barely reported on in the dominant US media. Inverting the truth, they portray Israel heroically as a democratic island in a hostile Arab sea.

They won't explain that Israel is obligated to provide essentials under Fourth Geneva's Article 55. It states:

"To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other (essential) articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate." Israel continues to violate this law and all others.

As Andrea Becker of the UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians states: For Israelis, "international law was tossed aside long ago." The result for Gazans is "exhaustion gripping hold of (them) all. Survival leaves (them) little if no room for political engagement - and beyond exhaustion, anger and frustration are all that is left."

A Partial Border Reopening

On November 24, Haaretz reported that "Israel partially (opened) its border crossings with the Gaza Strip (today) to allow the transfer of humanitarian aid (after) all but completely (keeping them) shut for (the past) 19 days." Defense officials let in "44 trucks with basic goods....through Kerem Shalom crossings" in the South.

According to the Ma'an News Agency, another 200 truckloads of UN humanitarian aid and 25 more containing food will also be allowed through Kerem Shalom. This is helpful but woefully short of what the Strip needs regularly to care for its 1.5 million people, most of whom rely solely or mainly on outside aid.

Whether this additional aid will even arrive is now open to question, according to Haaretz (on November 25). It reported that Israel "closed its crossings with Gaza again," supposedly after two Qassam rockets were fired on Sunday, one on Monday, and another on Tuesday. Unmentioned are the regular and devastating IDF attacks against Palestinian civilians who have little more than crude weapons for self-defense and are no match against Israel's overpowering force.

According to Haaretz on November 26, some aid may be forthcoming and surprisingly from Libya. It "sent a ship carrying 3000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza" to break Israel's blockade. The International Middle East Media Center called on other Arab states to do the same - flout the blockade and send aid even with no assurance Israel will allow it in. It's been very effective preventing most everything so far and shows no signs of relenting.

A Shocking Red Cross Report

On November 15, the London Independent headlined an article titled; "Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel." Writer Donald Macintyre referred to a leaked Red Cross report he called "explosive."

It chronicled "the devastating effect of the siege that Israel imposed after Hamas (took control of Gaza) in June 2007 and notes that the dramatic fall in living standards triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of (Gaza's population). Alarming deficiencies (showed up) in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D."

The report goes on to say that "heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40%, is causing progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of (the) population. That in turn is forcing people to cut household expenditures down to survival levels."

Chronic malnutrition is rising steadily, and "micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern." Since 2007, the reported cited a switch to "low cost/high energy" cereals, sugar and oil and away from higher-cost animal products, fresh fruits and vegetables. This type diet assures long-term harmful consequences for people on it.

The Red Cross said that "the (18 month) embargo has had a devastating effect for a large proportion of households who have had to make major changes on the composition of their food basket." They now rely 80% on cereals, sugar and oil. In addition, people are selling assets, cutting back on clothing and children's education, scavenging for discarded items, and doing virtually anything to survive.

The report refers to economic disintegration and that prolonging the current situation risks permanently damaging households and their capacity to recover. The study was conducted from May to July 2008.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, had little response except to say that the people of Gaza were being "held hostage" to Hamas' "extremist and nihilist" ideology. In fact, Hamas wants peace, has repeatedly been conciliatory, and its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said earlier that armed struggle would cease "if the Zionists ended (their) occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians."

That offer is repeatedly rejected. More recently, Hamas offered to maintain peace and recognize Israel in return for a Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders, its Occupied Territories. That, as well, is a non-starter for Israel. It conflicts with its West Bank plan to colonize the Territory and ethnically cleanse its rightful inhabitants in violation of international law.

Israeli Clampdown on Human Rights Organizations and the Media

Over 20 human rights organizations sought entry to Gaza but were denied to prevent them from seeing and reporting on conditions on the ground. A delegation representing the Coordination Forum of The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) arrived at Erez Crossing with the required permit and were still prevented from entering.

International journalists are also banned. The AP head and Israeli Foreign Press Association chairman, Steven Gutkin, said journalists called and complained. In response, the association appealed to the government without success. "We consider it a serious problem for freedom of the press. We think that journalists have to be placed in a special category. A blanket ban on people going into Gaza should not apply to journalists," Gutkin explained.

"We are hoping that this is not the start of a policy of banning journalists from Gaza. We would like to point out that when times are tough, and when things heat up, it is important for journalists to be able to enter" and report on it.

A BBC media crew was also refused entry along with Conny Mus from Dutch television station RTL after being told he and his crew had permission.

Even Haaretz objected in a recent editorial titled: "Open Gaza to media coverage." It stated: "To serve their function sufficiently, representatives of the Israeli and international press must be in Gaza, just like in any other conflict region around the world. There is no way to cover (events there) without free access...."

Haaretz called on the Israel Press Council, journalist associations, editors, writers, and the public to "raise their voices in protest." It also asked the defense establishment "to immediately lift the media closure."

The Israeli press has been banned from entering Gaza for the past two years. Only Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass has been there. She then left and could only get back in by sea, and not easily or safely.

Orwell would appreciate how Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Peter Lerner responded: "There is no decision not to allow journalists in." The Israeli foreign ministry said no restrictive order was issued in spite of clear evidence it's being enforced.

Hostilities in Gazan Waters

The Israeli navy is also in action. It arrested three human rights activists: Darlene Wallach from America, Andrew Muncie from Britain, and Vittorio Arrigoni from Italy as they accompanied Gaza fishermen in waters nowhere near ones under Israeli control. The three were imprisoned, are on hunger strike in protest, and may face deportation or worse as Israeli justice is harsh and not forthcoming against opponents of its policies.

Under the Oslo Accords, Palestinians can fish as far out as 30 kilometers. Forty thousand fishermen and their dependents rely on their catch for their livelihoods and sustenance. Israel egregiously impedes them, and after Hamas took control of Gaza, it restricted fishing to within six kilometers of shore (in less productive shallow waters) and rigorously enforces it. Those exceeding the limit risk being shot or arrested and their boats confiscated or destroyed - another serious international law violation.

Saber Al-Hissie is one of them. He's been fishing in Gazan waters for 15 years, his father and grandfather before him. He spent half his life at sea, "but every day we face problems from Israeli gunboats," he explained. "They follow us, and then they start shooting at us because they want to force us to stop working."

Thousands of fishermen live in Gaza, mostly in and around Gaza City where the main harbor is located. Al-Hissie is one of them and describes the restrictions Israel imposes on him and others trying to earn a living from the sea.

"If we sail six miles out to sea, then maybe we will be safe. But if we go any further, the Israelis always harass us. They circle the boats, they shoot towards us, and recently they started using water cannon to attack us." He won't exceed the limit to protect his boat, but it's scared with bullet holes anyway.

He and others aren't safe wherever they fish. They're harassed and attacked daily. "Unless you see it for yourself, you cannot believe the situation we are facing," he explains. It decimated local fishing. Ten years ago, Gazan fishermen caught about 3000 tons a year. It's now less than 500 and another part of the Gaza siege, Israel's war on its people, and its ongoing slow-motion genocide. "We just want to fish and support our families," says Saber. "We are not committing any crimes, but they are."

End the Israeli Blockade and Stop the Genocide

On November 24, UN General Assembly president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann said Israel's treatment of the Palestinians was like "the apartheid of an earlier era." His remarks were at an annual debate marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He added: "We must not be afraid to call something what it is" since the UN passed the International Convention against the crime of apartheid.

Israel's response was familiar. Its UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, called Brockmann an "Israel hater." He's a 75-year old Catholic priest. If he were Jewish, she'd have accused him of being "self- hating."

On November 20, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, called for an immediate end to Israel's blockade. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) audaciously expressed shock at what it called a one-sided statement.

The High Commissioner's call came after mounting reports of human rights and humanitarian concerns. For its part, Israel claims its siege is a necessary response to mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli towns and military posts. They're little more than pin pricks and only occur in response to sustained and brutal Israeli attacks against Gazan civilians, including men, women and children - a long-standing practice for decades with overwhelming force against light arms and homemade weapons as well as children throwing rocks. It hardly justifies a medieval siege against 1.5 million people and the horrific fallout it causes. And for what?

For five months through November 3, Hamas and Israel were at peace as a result of an agreed on Egyptian-brockered hudna (or truce). On November 4 it ended when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered Gaza (without cause) and killed six Hamas officers supposedly because of tunnels close to the Kisufim roadblock. Thereafter, and in spite of both sides calling for peace, IDF hostilities continued.

Israel is a serial aggressor. Hamas responds in self-defense (as do West Bank Palestinians). Reality is turned on its head. Lightly- armed Gazans are called terrorists, and the world's fourth most powerful military its victims.

In fact, Gazans are grievously harmed, impoverished, slaughtered and now starved. Israel claims it as a right. International law is a non-starter, and a state of war exists against innocent men, women and children with no world efforts made to stop it.

The Washington - Israeli axis believes strife, instability, and a "war on terror" can remake the Middle East and place it firmly under their control. No matter that it failed hugely in Iraq, the same in Afghanistan, and for over six decades in Occupied Palestine.

Today starving Gazans won't be silenced. They keep protesting, and according to Hamazah Mansur, head of the Jordanian-based Islamic Action Front's six-member parliamentary bloc: If conditions in the Territory worsens, "Arab rulers should expect an earthquake that would shake their countries and regimes." It's high time something shook them out of their silent complicity with decades of slow- motion genocide, now worse than ever in Gaza under siege.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

by Kim Petersen / via Dissident Voice

In a 60 Minutes interview from 1996, then US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright infamously quipped of the deaths of half a million Iraqi children to maintain US policy: "... we think the price is worth it."¹ On 24 September, a prominent Canadian politician said that the collective punishment of the Palestinian people "... is the right thing to do." The name candidate with Canada’s Liberal Party delivered a shocking statement that is, in essence, advocating a genocide against 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaking at Toronto's Beth Emeth synagogue, hockey hall-of-fame goalie, former federal cabinet minister, and current member of the Canadian parliament for the Ontario riding of York Centre, Ken Dryden sounded like an arch-Zionist:

Stop all aid that flows into Gaza. While that may seem a harsh measure that will hurt Palestinian civilians... it is the right thing to do at this time.² [emphasis added]

Journalist Paul Weinberg considered that Dryden was "trying to out-Israel" his competition from the staunchly pro-Zionist Conservative Party, Rochelle Wilner, a hard-liner and former B'nai Brith president.²

Dryden's campaign manager, Ruth Thorkelson, contradicted her candidate. She stated that the Liberal Party position was for a Canadian government boycott of aid but to indirectly support UN assistance.

Since Palestinians in Gaza were already starving,³ a call for cutting off all aid to Gaza is tantamount to a call for a mass starvation. It is advocating collective punishment - a war crime, as stipulated by the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is advocating genocide.

While with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Christa Rottensteiner argued that cutting all aid could be a war crime, crime against humanity, and/or genocide. The requisites for genocide are there.

The denial of humanitarian assistance could fit into the categories of "killing members of the group", "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", provided that the prerequisites for genocide are fulfilled. What was said for murder as a war crime is also applicable, mutatis mutandis, to genocide.⁴

Wrote Rottensteiner, "[T]he impact of the denial of humanitarian assistance can be just as strong as massacres 'committed with knives'."

So far no word has been forthcoming from Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion on Dryden's racist remarks, which are receiving short thrift in the corporate media. Dion is known to be a sympathizer of Zionism, so this is not surprising.

Dryden is considered to be an "all-star" of the Liberal team, a person who, according to "prominent Liberal strategist" Scott Reid, "can speak to character."⁵

Ron Saba, editor of Montreal Planet magazine, has been indefatigable in exposing the complicity of Canadian politicians in the crimes of Zionism. Dion is near the top of his list. Many of the supporters of Zionism turn out to be politicians from within Canada's corporate-political duopoly of the Conservatives and Liberals. Prime minister Stephan Harper is an unabashed backer of Zionism.⁶

A particular focus of Saba is the racist Jewish National Fund (JNF) which enjoys strong financial support in Canada - illegally. Dion is taciturn on JNF crimes and the illegality of the JNF operating in Canada as a tax-exempt charity. Dion even went so far as to welcome fellow liberal "all-star" Bob Rae, the Liberal candidate in Toronto Centre and a committee member of the JNF, an organization acknowledged as practicing racism towards Arabs by the attorney general of Israel.^{7, 8}

Dryden's racist remarks are inexcusable from any human being and, certainly, from a MP. The right thing for Dryden to do at this time is to resign, and Dion should be calling for that resignation immediately and publicly.

1. Albright does regret the statement. See "Democracy Now! Confronts Madeline Albright on the Iraq Sanctions: Was It Worth The Price?" Democracy Now!, 30 July 2004.
2. See Paul Weinberg, "Israel's party mixer," NOW Magazine, 1-8 October 2008.
3. An Egyptian weekly called it "direct starvation - with grave ramifications in humanitarian terms." Saleh Al-Naami, "Darkness, starvation and imminent death," Al-Ahram, 24-30 January 2008.
4. Christa Rottensteiner, "The denial of humanitarian assistance as a crime under international law," International Review of the Red Cross No. 835, 30 September 1999: 555-582.
5. Craig Offman, "Dion calls up his all-stars," National Post, 20 September 2008.
6. Mike de Souza, "Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, Harper says," The Gazette, 9 May 2008.
7. Editorial, "Who needs the JNF?" Haaretz, 23 September 2006.
8. Meron Benvenisti, "A ridiculous war against the gaps," Haaretz, 29 June 2006.

Ali Abunimah writes:

I read a news article on the website of The Jerusalem Post that Israel's former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu -- one of the most senior theocrats in the Jewish State "ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings" ("Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza," The Jerusalem Post, 30 May, 2007).

The Jerusalem Post reported that Mordechai made this ruling in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert citing biblical authority. The letter was published in a weekly journal distributed in synagogues throughout Israel. The report states that "According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets."

Eliayahu's son, Shmuel Eliayhu, himself chief rabbi of Safad, amplified his father's comments, stating: "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand." He added, "And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."

Read complete story here.

The Twilight Zone / The boy who was buried twice
By Gideon Levy

Abdullah a-Zakh identified his son's body by the belt. The shoes and socks also looked familiar, irrefutable proof that he had lost his son. In the morgue of Shifa Hospital, after hours of searching, he found the bottom part of the boy's body. The next day, when Operation "Gan Na'ul" - "Locked Kindergarten" - ended and the Israel Defense Forces exited the Saja'iya neighborhood of Gaza, leaving behind 22 dead and large-scale destruction, the other body parts were found.

Mohammed was buried twice. He was 14 years old at the time of his death. He was killed last week, three days before the start of the new school year, so he never got to enter ninth grade. Did the planners of the operation give thought to the children who would be killed before giving it the satanic name "Locked Kindergarten"? Did the IDF computer that comes up with the names know that there would be five children and adolescents among the dead? Did they think about the popular song that the operation's name evokes? It was unpleasant, very unpleasant (in the words of the song) this week to see the results of Locked Kindergarten in the Saja'iya neighborhood in the eastern section of Gaza City.

This sprawling, overcrowded residential neighborhood was occupied for almost a week by the IDF. The army wreaked destruction in it. A monstrous bulldozer maliciously potholed a few roads, scarring the asphalt with gaping wounds, for no apparent reason. Houses were hit, street tiling was uprooted, electricity poles were cut down, cars were crushed, dozens of trees were destroyed and 22 residents were killed. For almost a week the tens of thousands of residents lived in terror, some of them unable to leave their homes.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office explained this week: "The IDF operated in Saja'iya as part of the overall activity to create the conditions for the return of Gilad Shalit, damaging the terrorist infrastructures and the firing of Qassam rockets. In the course of the operation, a tunnel was uncovered which was dug from the direction of Saja'iya toward the Karni terminal. This tunnel is only part of the tunnel threat that affects the orderly transit of goods on a daily basis. The IDF does all it can to avoid harming non-involved people and under no circumstances does it intend this."

Now Abdullah a-Zakh is a bereaved father who saw his son's body torn apart. Burdened by suffering and struggle, with long years in Israeli prisons, deported to Lebanon as a member of Hamas and probably an activist in Islamic Jihad, he mourns for his son. On the wall of the mourners' home, which was demolished by the IDF in 1971, Mohammed's photograph hangs next to a photograph of his uncle, who was killed four years ago. And also the photographs of the other children who were killed in Locked Kindergarten, along with Mohammed.

When the children of Saja'iya went to school this week, at the start of the school year, carrying their new schoolbags and also the horrors of the previous week, they found a few empty seats in their classrooms. This week the streets of this neighborhood were more fraught than ever with devastation, mourning and fury.

The zoo of Gaza is locked, too. It's a new zoo, built by France, with a model of the Eiffel Tower at the entrance, but this week it stood empty, the lone lioness downcast in her narrow cell. Two shekels to get in for a child, three for an adult, but the place is locked. No one visits, Gaza can't afford to visit a zoo these days. In the Abed Rabbo neighborhood the residents emerge anxiously from their homes to view the damage inflicted by night, uprooted orchards. This is where the tanks invaded last Saturday night. In Saja'iya the electricity and telephone technicians are laboring to repair the damages of Locked Kindergarten, and farmers are returning to their wrecked plots, trying to salvage what can still be salvaged.

An angry passerby stops us and begins to shout loudly against Israel and Europe, which, he says, is supporting Israel. The bitterness here is great. Next to an apartment building a yellow cab is stuck in the ground, its back pointing skyward, its belly in the earth. Another source of income gone. In the industrial zone at the Karni crossing are containers from Copenhagen that were made in Shanghai, now perforated and savaged from the battles that raged here last week. A Zim shipping lines container is here, too, by the side, as though shy, with Herzl's seven golden stars emblazoned on it. The soldiers did not shoot it.

Half a family was killed here two months ago in a lone house at the edge of the neighborhood: Amana Hajaj, 45, her son Mohammed, 23, and her daughter, Rawan, a girl of six. The family had gathered beneath vine and fig tree in the evening to roast corn on the small barbecue that is still here, when three missiles slammed into the yard. The Hajaj family doesn't live here anymore; only the son, Yasser, a handsome youth of 17, comes every few days to feed the dog that is guarding the house and the chickens in the coop. The family left the house immediately after their tragedy, because of the fear: when you open the iron gate that leads from the house to the street you see an IDF position on the hill at the edge of the horizon to the east, its very presence enough to instill fear in the hearts of those in the exposed house. The grapes of wrath attest to what happened: they still hang, scorched, on the vine in the yard.

On the second day of the school year, children are burning electric cables that they pulled from the houses that were destroyed last week in Saja'iya in order to extract the copper from them. Mourners' tents have been put up in every corner of the neighborhood. A group of grim-faced men sit at the entrance to the home of the boy Hussam a-Sarsawi, too. The bereaved father has gone to the mosque to pray and they are unwilling to talk in his absence. Hussam was 10 years old at the time of his death - one of those who fell in Operation Locked Kindergarten.

The atmosphere on the streets is bleak and tense; the looks of the passersby say it all. In the footsteps of fighters: It's easy to distinguish between the streets the IDF used here and the streets that were not gutted by the tanks. These are the footsteps of devastation. An elegant yellowish villa on a street corner is punctured by bullet holes and half wrecked. This is where the boy Mohammed a-Zakh was killed.

In the courtyard sit the mourning women, in black, among them the bereaved mother, Abir, opposite photographs of the dead and verses from the Koran in the black and gold of Islamic Jihad. Mohammed a-Zakh set up a booth next to his home, to make a little money during the vacation. Every day he sold gum, wafers, biscuits and chips for a pittance to the neighborhood children, and took in about NIS 20 or NIS 30 a day. Last Tuesday, too, he was open for business. There were two days left in the summer vacation. At about 11 A.M. he went up to his mother on the second floor and saw her baking pitas. Afterward he went to the mosque, for the midday prayers, and then went back to his mother to ask for an electric cable - there happened to be power in the neighborhood just then - in order to vacuum the dust from the carpets in the mosque. "You're still making pitas?" he asked.

When he got back from the mosque he noticed that someone had opened the door of his dovecote and that all the doves had flown off. Mohammed ran after one dove and managed to return it to the dovecote, which was in the roof of the house. He then went down to his grandmother's apartment and ate lunch. Afterward he went down to the street and was not seen again alive and well.

Mohammed walked toward Mansura Street, the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, where the tanks were. According to one account, he was asked to go there to see how his uncles, who lived in the line of fire, were doing; another version has it that he went to see the tanks and help the "defenders," as they call themselves in this fighting family. The father of the family, Abdullah, who joined us later for a conversation, has seen his share of struggle. In 1971, when he was 17, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison by Israel for security offenses which he declines to specify. He was released in 1985, after 14 years, in the Jibril deal. A year later he was rearrested and sentenced to four years in prison.

Three years later, in 1992, he was deported to Marj al Zahur, in Lebanon, together with hundreds of Hamas activists, including Ismail Haniyeh, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Mahmoud Zahar and Saeed Seyam, who became leaders of the organization. He was allowed back to Gaza a year later and in 1995 was arrested for brief periods by the Palestinian Authority. He says that everyone claimed he was active in Islamic Jihad, something he denies. Now 54, he works for the Palestinian Authority as a very senior officer, in charge of the veteran fighters. Between one incarceration and another, he fathered eight children, among them Mohammed.

The grandmother closes her eyes. The aunt weeps silently. She relates that in the war of 1956, five members of her family were killed. Abdullah asks the women to move to another part of the courtyard. The marks of mourning and trauma are very apparent on him, as he tells his story: Last Tuesday his sister came to the house and said there was a wounded boy on Mansura Street. Abdullah rushed to Shifa Hospital. "I looked everywhere but couldn't find him. I thought maybe he was in surgery, but no. I had a feeling that Mohammed was a shahid [martyr].

"I thought maybe he was transferred to another hospital and I sent relatives to look in Al-Quds Hospital. They didn't find him there. The feeling that he was a shahid grew stronger. I thought that if he was not in the hospital, he must be lying at the place where he was killed. It would be very hard to get there and get him out. We know that if anyone is wounded there, no one can get close enough to get him out. We know that the army shoots at anyone who approaches there, even at rescue parties. There were cases of people who tried to rescue the wounded and were shot.

"Then I thought he must be in the hospital refrigerator. I asked my cousins to go and check. There were a few shahids there, and they saw them, but they came back and said they did not find Mohammed. The feeling that Mohammed was a shahid grew stronger in me. But there was no announcement.

"I decided to go to the morgue and look. I went in but I didn't find Mohammed. Then I saw half a body, the only one that was not identified. I saw that it was Mohammed's half-body. By the belt. It's a belt that I bought him. And the shoes he wore. I looked at the socks and I knew it was Mohammed. I was sure it was Mohammed. The upper half of the body had disappeared.

"Mohammed was killed by two shells fired by a tank, and both shells hit him. Mohammed is fourteen years and four months old. He was not armed and he didn't know what a weapon was. They saw that he was a boy. Maybe he went there to see the defenders, maybe he wanted to take part. Maybe he threw stones at a tank. They fired a shell at him. That is Mohammed's story and that is the end of Mohammed."

Mohammed was buried that day. The next day, last Wednesday, when the IDF left Mansura, they went to the killing place to look for the other half of Mohammed. They found his body parts together with the body parts of Yusri Abu Jabber, a press photographer for the Al-Quds network, who was also killed there. The rest of Mohammed's body was buried on Wednesday. Abdullah, the father: "Mohammed was a schoolboy. That is the whole story of Mohammed. It happens every day, every day. Can a boy like this, like Mohammed, be a danger to them? And if he was a danger to them, they could have wounded him instead of killing him. They could have thrown a teargas grenade at him. Even if he was a danger to them, you don't fire a shell at him."

The IDF Spokesperson's Office, this week: "The IDF is not aware of a 14-year-old boy being hit other than from media reports, and is not familiar with the circumstances in which he was hit. It should be noted that on the day the report was published there were heavy exchanges of fire, which included the firing of antitank missiles, the detonation of explosive devices, and light-arms fire against IDF forces."

His youngest child, Ibrahim, is on his knees, scribbling on himself with a pen. Abdullah gags every so often. Abir is pregnant, and if it's a boy they will name him Mohammed. "Israel must know that we must live together. We are ready to live in one state, not two states, and all the refugees will return and we will all live in a democratic state, call it Israel or Palestine. I am certain that we are ready to live together. We long to live in a good democracy, but I am sure you [Israelis] will not accept that. Israel will not agree to a two-state solution, either. Israel only wants more and more, and the right wing in Israel wants to destroy us. But Israel, what does it hear?"

This year they didn't buy Mohammed a new schoolbag. He kept putting it off. Photos in the family album: Mohammed as a baby in uniform; Mohammed as a boy in a boat in surging rapids - a studio photomontage; Mohammed with a toy rifle; Mohammed with Yasser Arafat, shaking his hand during a visit Arafat made to the neighborhood; Mohammed against a background of two cardboard Qassam rockets in a photo studio; and the last photograph, taken about a month ago, of the whole family together in the studio, for a group portrait to get a health insurance certificate.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/... [Hat tip: Editerette13]