By James M. Wall * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Mahmoud Abu Samra (left) and two of his friends (Source: The Palestine Chronicle)

Mahmoud Abu Samra was killed August 19 in an Israeli air raid near Gaza City. He was 13 years old. The Palestinian news service, Ma’an, tells the story of Mahmoud’s death:

Renewed air strikes across the Gaza Strip late Thursday killed a Palestinian teenager and injured more than a dozen others amid an escalation in violence that left some 20 people dead throughout the day.

Just after midnight Friday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting Gaza City, the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and Khan Younis in the south.

Gaza medical official Adham Abu Salmiya said an air strike on a home near the former intelligence services headquarters in Gaza City killed 13-year-old Mahmoud Abu Samra and injured 18 others.”

Mahmoud (at left in the picture above) is number 150 in the list of 173 men, women and children who have been killed  this year by Israeli forces.

Each person who dies in the struggle against the Occupation, is identified by Palestinians as a Shaheed, the Arabic word for “martyr”.

Some of the men killed are identified as members of the Gaza-based Al Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad. The women and childen are all civilians. They are, also, all Shaheeds.

The website, Occupied Palestine | فلسطين | iRemember… | الشهداء  prints the names of the 173 Shaheeds who have been killed between January 1, 2011, and August 25. The site further indicates that this list includes only those deaths confirmed by media sources. The 173 are recorded in the order in which they died. The list grows as other deaths are recorded.

The site reports that Mahmoud died on April 19, after midnight, which would suggest he was killed in his sleep. The media stories that recorded the deaths may be accessed by clicking on each name listed on the site.

Israel, of course, does not launch air strikes on the spur of the moment. The Israeli air attack that killed Mahmoud after midnight, August 19, had the earmarks of another of those Israeli military strikes already on the drawing board, waiting for a trigger event to justify the action.

Israel’s December, 2008, Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza, was obviously a long planned military assault. At the time, Israel claimed the military assault was a “retaliation” against Gazan rocket fire.

On August 18, 2011, Israel was quick, once again, to blame Gaza “terrorists” (falsely) for the Eilat bus attack. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Israeli news agency, Ynet, “this terror attack originated from Gaza. We will exhaust all measures against the terrorists.”

The Guardian quoted Israeli officials flatly asserting that the PRC was responsible.  The officials even had a scenario that explained how “militants” traveled 125 miles from Gaza into Israel to carry out the attacks.

The Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) was responsible for the attacks near the Red Sea resort of Eilat. A large squad of militants crossed through tunnels from Gaza into Egypt, and then travelled 125 miles (200km) south through the lawless Sinai peninsula before crossing into Egypt north of Eilat, according to officials.

This scenario quickly collapsed, except in US media and political circles, where Israel’s initial cover story was adopted as the Gospel according to Ehud Barak.

American Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein does not believe in that Gospel. He has been tracking the phony Israeli scenario from the outset. He wrote in his Tikun Olam blog:

Al Masry Al Youm, an independent liberal Egyptian newspaper, reports “Egyptian authorities have identified three of the people responsible for carrying out a terrorist attack in Israel, just north of Eilat, on Thursday [August 18], in which seven Israelis were killed, according to an Egyptian security source.

The same source added that one of the men identified is a leader of terrorist cells in Sinai, while another is a fugitive who owns an ammunition factory.”

What is intriguing about this story is that it would explain many things which appeared to be discrepancies when the theory was that Gazans were involved. First, the Israeli bus driver said the attackers wore Egyptian army uniforms. Now, it might be possible for Gazans to get such uniforms, but it would be much easier for Egyptians to do so.

Second, the Israelis themselves have disagreed about the authors of the crime, with [Prime Minister] Netanyahu claiming the Popular Resistance Committee was behind it and the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) spokesperson specifically rejecting her boss’ claim.

All of which leads one to believe that the Israelis don’t have a clue who was behind it.

Israel’s neighbors also rejected the Ehud Barak version. They know the deceptive nature of their enemy. In the August 24, The Palestine Chronicle, Tammy Obeidallah, writes:

Of course, the Israeli spin machine claims the bombardment of Gaza was in response to the [August 18] Eilat operation, although there is no evidence that Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) perpetrated the attack.

He adds:

Israel’s 63-year campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people is neatly packaged as ‘retaliation’ against ‘mortars fired by Palestinian militants’ or the hackneyed ‘homemade rockets.’ Mysteriously, the media never reports on these mortars or rockets until Israeli forces “retaliate” for them; then it serves as an excuse for continued genocide.

If Israeli strikes are ‘retaliation’ we are left to wonder just what the Israeli military was ‘retaliating’ for during the first four months of 2011, when 49 Palestinians in Gaza were murdered during Israeli raids, including a missile strike that killed three children in the same family, all under age 16. A fourth family member also died in that strike and 13 others, mostly children, were wounded.

Obeidallah further ponders whether or not the US main stream media would ever be interested in publishing the names of those Palestinians listed on the “I remember” Palestine Chronicle page. He assumes they would not.

After all, Mahmoud Abu Samra is just another Arabic name which the majority of news anchors could not pronounce correctly. At 13 years of age, his bright eyes and infectious smile were memorialized momentarily on a few social network pages, then joined the sea of images of dead Palestinian children, all victims of a 63-year genocide endorsed by most of the world’s nations.

One week after the launching of Israel’s phony “retaliation” cover story, which led to the death of Mahmoud Abu Samra, Ha’aretz reported that on August 25 that Israel and Egypt had agreed to conduct a joint investigation “of the events surrounding last week’s terror attacks in southern Israel which left eight Israelis dead.”

Having reached a political arrangement with its powerful neighbor, the newly unpredictable Egyptians, Israel continued its attacks against Palestinian “militants” in the Gaza Strip, still claiming the strikes were “retaliatory”.

This time, Israel claimed it was attacking Gaza in response to the firing of more than 20 rockets at southern Israel since Wednesday. Five Palestinians have already been killed in this latest Israeli “retaliation”.

When a nation’s foreign policy is based on a platform of lies, deception becomes that nation’s constant obsession. Without the support and help of the nation it loves, the USA, that obsession becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

What would Israel do without the constant presence of journalists like the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner? Bronner can always be depended upon to serve as a conduit of Israeli spin to American readers.

Bronner, the Times Jerusalem correspondent, writes from the rarefied air of Israel’s government offices. He is always a reliable source of the latest Israeli spin. In his latest weekend update, published August 27, nine days after the Eliat bus bombing, Bronner examined the interaction between Middle East regional powers.

His conclusions are rather obvious: The current Egyptian government is not as Israeli-friendly as Egypt’s deposed dictator, Hosni Muburak, had been.  That would explain why Benjamin Netanyahu and his Congressional pals in Washington, were so upset when President Obama finally faced the inevitable and called on Muburak to step down.

We also learn another obvious fact: Turkey is not happy with Israel for reasons related to Gaza and Mavi Marmara. Bronner cannot bring himself to admit (he is writing an analysis, not a news story) that Israel has no qualms about killing Palestinians.

Turkey does not like to see Israelis randomly killing Palestinians and then telling the lie that radical Palestinians made us do it.  This is the tortured analysis Bronner offers to “explain” the big lie:

Last weekend, [Israeli] officials were contemplating a major military assault on Gaza. But that plan was shelved by the crisis that emerged with Egypt, by the realization that Hamas itself was uninvolved in the terrorist attack and by the worry about how such an assault would affect other countries’ views during the United Nations debate of a Palestinian resolution in September.

Those “other countries” include Turkey, of course.

The plan to create more Shaheeds (martyrs) in Gaza was “shelved” for political expediency? Bronner is finally given the freedom to write that Hamas was not involved (an admission slow to arrive in Israel’s ruling circles). He also was freed up to write that killing Palestinians would “affect other country’s views” when the UN vote is taken September 20?

Amira Hass, Ha’aretz‘ West Bank/Gaza correspondent, does not spend her time in Israeli government offices. She writes from Gaza where she finds persuasive circumstantial evidence that there were no Palestinians involved in the Eilat bombing.

It has been one week since the terror attacks near Eilat, and there is no sign of the traditional mourners’ tents for the relatives of militants killed by the Israel Defense Forces, or indeed any reports of Gazan families who are grieving as a result of IDF actions near the Egyptian border last Thursday. Nor were there reports of families demanding the return of their loved ones’ bodies for burial. A longtime social activist told Haaretz that even in the event that families were instructed to conceal their grief, news like that is difficult to hide in the Strip.

The absence of mourners’ tents reinforces the general sense in the Strip that the perpetrators of the attack were not from Gaza, contrary to Israeli defense establishment claims. Gazans also doubt that members of the Popular Resistance Committees and their military wing (the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades ) were behind the attack. Support for this view can be seen in a report on Monday by the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, according to which Egyptian security forces had identified three of the planners as Egyptians.

Bronner ignores the absence of mourners’ tents in his analysis. Instead he clings to the Israeli spin:

Israeli officials say they are certain from detailed intelligence that the Aug. 18 infiltration that killed eight Israelis was planned and carried out from Gaza by Palestinians associated with a small radical group.

Bronner also writes that “in its pursuit of the killers into Sinai and its assassinations of the group’s leaders in Gaza, Israel found itself with less room to maneuver than in the past.”  In short, Israel is not prepared to stop the killing, just bring it down to pre-August 18 levels.

Not much in the way of progress, but it is a reminder that Israel cannot depend forever on America’s vetoes to clean up the mess it creates for itself.

* James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. Jim launched personal blog April 24, 2008.

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

Searched everywhere on the Arabic media to confirm this, but could not find it except on United Press International:

Saudi Arabia said Monday a rocket fired from inside Yemeni territory exploded on the Saudi side of the border.

Daily al-Watan quoted a security source as saying an explosion, which occurred in the border province of Najran, was caused by a rocket fired from a distance of 25 kilometers (15 miles) inside Yemeni territory.

The source did not say when the incident happened but stressed a joint investigation was being undertaken by the Saudi and Yemeni authorities to identify the source of the rocket.

"Cooperation with the Yemeni authorities is continuing and we will reach the truth soon," the source said.

I was unlucky to read this news on Al-Watan since it was quoted above, as their website seems to be down (since long). How weak is our Arab Electronic media? I hate to answer this question...

Any blogger from Saudi can confirm/deny or explain this incident? I hope it is not another terrorist attack like the one toke place in Aqaba last August.

Update: Story confirmed. From AlwatanDaily - Yemen.