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Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?

By Paul Craig Roberts | January 7, 2010

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.

The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox “news.” After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist’s interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself.  In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.

Recently I read a column by an author who has a “convenience theory” about the Underwear Bomber being a Nigerian allegedly trained by al-Qaida in Yemen.  As the U.S. is involved in an undeclared war in Yemen, about which neither the American public nor Congress were informed or consulted, the Underwear Bomb plot provided a convenient excuse for Washington’s new war, regardless of whether it was a real attack or a put-up job.

Once you start to ask yourself about whose agenda is served by events and their news spin, other things come to mind.  For example, last July there was a news report that the government in Yemen had disbanded a terrorist cell, which was operating under the supervision of Israeli intelligence services. According to the news report, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Saba news agency that a terrorist cell was arrested and that the case was referred to judicial authorities “for its links with the Israeli intelligence services.”

Could the Underwear Bomber have been one of the Israeli terrorist recruits?  Certainly Israel has an interest in keeping the US fully engaged militarily against all potential foes of Israel’s territorial expansion.

The thought brought back memory of my Russian studies at Oxford University where I learned that the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs so that they could blame those whom they wanted to arrest.

I next remembered that Francesco Cossiga, the president of Italy from 1985-1992, revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, a false flag operation under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.  The bombings were blamed on communists and were used to discredit communist parties in elections.

An Italian parliamentary investigation unearthed the fact that the attacks were overseen by the CIA. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated in sworn testimony that the attacks targeted innocent civilians, including women and children, in order “to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

What a coincidence. That is exactly what 9/11 succeeded in accomplishing in the U.S.

Among the well-meaning and the gullible in the West, the supposition still exists that government represents the public interest.  Political parties keep this myth alive by fighting over which party best represents the public’s interest.  In truth, government represents private interests, those of the office holders themselves and those of the lobby groups that finance their political campaigns. The public is in the dark as to the real agendas.

The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception.  Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist.  Forged documents, such as the “yellowcake documents,” were leaked to newspapers in order to create news reporting that would bring the public along with the government’s war agenda.

Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program.  Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a “nuclear trigger” mechanism have been revealed as forgeries.

Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the “evidence” to support the case, just as the leaked secret “Downing Street Memo” to the British cabinet informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government that President Bush had already made the decision to invade Iraq and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The willingness of people to believe their rulers and the propaganda ministries that serve the rulers is astonishing.  Many Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.

Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives fought hard with limited success to change the CIA’s role from intelligence agency to a political agency that manufactures facts in support of the neoconservative agenda.  For the Bush Regime creating “new realities” was more important than knowing the facts.

Recently I read a proposal from a person purporting to favor an independent media that stated that we must save the print media from financial failure with government subsidies. Such a subsidy would complete the subservience of the media to government.Even in Stalinist Russia, a totalitarian political system where everyone knew that there was no free press, a gullible or intimidated public and Communist Party enabled Joseph Stalin to put the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution on show trial and execute them as capitalist spies.

In the U.S. we are developing our own show trials.  Sheikh Mohammed’s will be a big one.  As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, once government uses demonized Muslims to get the new justice (sic) system going, the rest of us will be next.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Source

January 10, 2010 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Orange sunset as Ukraine poll heralds turn to Russia

Five years after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, its next presidential election is between two pro-Moscow candidates

By Miriam Elder | The Observer | January 10, 2010

Five years ago, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was hailed as a new start for a country that had begun to look west towards the European Union and Nato. But as voters prepare to go to the polls next Sunday in the first presidential election since they cast out the country’s Soviet-era leadership, Europe’s most famous colour-coded reform movement seems to have run out of steam.

Both of the front-running candidates in the poll have indicated that firmer ties with Russia, whether for pragmatic or ideological reasons, will be a priority. The poll will thus ring the death knell for a pro-western revolution that degenerated into a morass of political infighting, compounded by economic crisis.

Leading the polls is Viktor Yanukovych, a former prime minister whose initial victory as the Russia-backed candidate in 2004 sparked allegations of a rigged vote. His only serious rival is Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister and Moscow’s new favoured candidate. President Viktor Yushchenko, hero of the Orange Revolution, now has an approval rating below 3%. Last week he accused Yanukovych and Tymoshenko of comprising a “single Kremlin coalition”, such was their joint desire for warmer relations with Moscow.

Yanukovych is expected to garner 33.3% of the vote, according to a mid-December opinion poll by Ukraine’s R&B Group, with Tymoshenko scoring 16.6%. A collection of 16 candidates, including Yushchenko, are expected to split 40% of voters between them, while more than 10% of the electorate remain undecided. A second round between the two frontrunners is widely expected – it is scheduled for 7 February – with Yanukovych likely to be in pole position.

Whether Yanukovych or Tymoshenko wins, the goal of Nato membership, still aspired to by Yushchenko, is almost certain to be abandoned. Officials close to the Kremlin have said that Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia was seen as an “existential threat” to Russia.

Yanukovych last week repeated his long-held stance that he would take Ukraine off the path to Nato membership. “Ukraine was and will be a non-aligned nation, as it is now,” he told Ukraine’s Komsomolskaya Pravda.

While he also said he would keep the country out of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Moscow-led defence grouping, he would push to join the economic union being formed by Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Russia has lately favoured economic integration, and pushed for the rouble to become a regional reserve currency, as a means of spreading its influence.

Russia has not openly backed a candidate, unlike in 2004 when it threw all its weight behind Yanukovych. “They don’t want to be in a situation like 2004, where they put all their eggs in one basket and lost Ukraine for some years,” said Alexander Rahr, head of the Russia/Eurasia programme at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Yanukovych is understood to have angered Moscow by supporting Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU. But Tymoshenko has become the unexpected hero of the Kremlin, after tempering the anti-Russian stance that was a hallmark of her 2004 campaign and early premiership. While remaining avowedly pro-EU, she has built a pragmatic alliance with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. The two very publicly ended the drawn-out gas dispute between the two countries last winter and were credited with avoiding a repeat this year. Tymoshenko now calls the Orange Revolution “a revolution of lost opportunities”.

The near annual gas dispute first erupted after the inauguration of the Yushchenko government, when Russia suddenly hiked gas prices on the eve of 2005, eager to stop subsidising a neighbour that was no longer a de facto vassal state. Political punishment came in the form of increasingly aggressive rhetoric over the status of Crimea, an autonomous region on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast that used to form part of Russia. That rhetoric is taken seriously after the Russian-Georgian war over South Ossetia in summer 2008.

Yushchenko – who is sixth in the vote with an expected 3.8% – has lost his traditional support in the country’s western regions to Tymoshenko and lesser-known candidates. Yanukovych has retained his popularity in the Russian-speaking east and south.

In Ukraine the words of the day on Russia are “pragmatism” and “balance”. “Both [Yanukovych and Tymoshenko] will find a balance of interests between Russia and the west,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, of the Kiev-based Penta Centre for Applied Political Studies.

The election comes as Ukraine wallows in a financial crisis that saw the economy shrink by 15% last year. The country is due to repay £12.5bn of foreign, mainly corporate, debt this year, and the hryvnia is down 50% since the crisis began. Kiev became one of the few governments to appeal to the International Monetary Fund for emergency aid, taking more than £10bn in loans. The IMF has frozen delivery of some tranches, citing a lack of internal reforms.

“The enthusiasm of the west vanished very quickly after 2004,” notes Rahr. “We don’t know what to do with Ukraine. We know what we don’t want – we don’t want Ukraine to become part of Russia again. But that’s not enough, and that’s our strategy.”

January 10, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Flour mill targeted ‘for the purpose of denying sustenance’

Part 14 of a series recounting the findings of South African jurist Richard Goldstone’s UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – When the Al-Bader flour mill was destroyed on 9 January 2009, the strike happened without prior warning, raising questions about the efficacy or seriousness of the warnings system used by Israeli forces during their devastating assault on Gaza last winter.

Odder still was that in two prior instances, Israel did warn mill owner Rashad Hamada that its jets intended to strike immanently, leading to two evacuations of the mill, neither of which ended in strikes.

On 30 December 2008, a recorded warning was left on the flour mill’s answering machine by Israeli forces, indicating that his building should be evacuated immediately. The approximately 45 workers in the mill at the time were evacuated.

“We received a recorded message by telephone on a landline asking us to evacuate the mill. This call came from Israel,” Hamada said, in testimony to Richard Goldstone’s UN inquiry.

“We evacuated the factory of all workers, a total evacuation and waited until the next day. The factory was not hit.”

Following the evacuation, Hamada called a business associate in Israel, explained what had happened and asked him for advice. The associate spoke with contacts in the Israeli military, and had been told that, although the mill had been on a list of proposed targets, they had decided not to proceed with the strike. Hamada did not receive any information as to why his mill might have been targeted.

Based on these conversations and the fact that there had been no strike, the mill’s employees returned to work the next day. Work continued for a number of days as flour ran out across the Strip, until a second recorded warning was received on or around 4 January 2009.

“We received another message,” Hamada said. “We were told to evacuate the factory. The factory was evacuated.”

Again, there was no attack. “They were put into a state of fear as a result of the false alarms,” Goldstone’s report states.

Hamada received a call later in the week from his business associate in Israel, who said Israeli forces told him the mill would not be hit. The employees returned to work in light of the information.

Then on 9 January, without warning, “we received a call from the guard telling us that the factory was targeted by air with a missile and that it had caught fire. After 15 minutes, he called us again and told us that there are tanks approaching the area and that the factory was targeted with tank fire. We immediately informed the [Red Cross] and the Civil Defense in order to put out the fire in the mill,” Hamada said.

The flour mill was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F16. The missile struck the floor that housed one of the machines indispensable to the mill’s functioning, completely destroying it. In the next 60 to 90 minutes the mill was hit several times by missiles fired from an Apache helicopter. These missiles hit the upper floors of the factory, destroying more key machinery.

Hamada recounted: “What happened at the mill is a total destruction, a total destruction of the whole production line of the factory. Because this factory, in fact, is vertical, the equipment is set vertically. There are six floors. The production line was destroyed from the sixth floor to the ground floor. Three floors, the fifth, sixth and fourth, were destroyed including all the equipment, total destruction, therefore the building and the equipment. And the other three floors, the first, second and third floors, they were totally burned.”

Adjoining buildings, including the grain store, were not hit. The strikes entirely disabled the factory, which has remained in disrepair because of the siege on building supplies. Even amid subsequent food shortages, a large amount of grain remains at the site but cannot be processed.

“During the war, the mill was working 24 hours a day and we had also been working 24 hours a day one month prior to this date; we were working around the clock,” Hamada said. “As for the targeting, it is because a flour mill [was] working. There were four flour mills that were not producing and were not targeted.”

Israeli forces occupied the disabled building until around 13 January. Hundreds of shells were found on its roof after the soldiers left. They appeared to be 40-mm grenade machine-gun spent cartridges.

Attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza

Goldstone’s team said Hamada and his brother provided information that was corroborated by other representatives of the Gaza business community with whom the investigators discussed the context and consequences of the strike on the flour mill.

The consequences of the strike on the flour mill were significant, his report states. Not only are all the employees out of work, the capacity of Gaza to produce milled flour, the most basic staple ingredient of the local diet, has been greatly diminished. As a result, the population of Gaza is now more dependent on the Israeli authorities’ granting permission for flour and bread to enter the Gaza Strip.

“From what we could see on the ground and from what we had in Gaza, this flour mill was the only flour mill for the past ten years providing for the needs of the Gaza Strip in wheat,” Hamada said. “It is well-known everywhere in Gaza. And in Israel, they know that Al-Bader Flour Mill [which is] the strategic reserve of flour for the strip, was there.”

“There is no flour mill that works except ours and it was shelled. I do not want to give conclusions. It is well-known, this is a flour mill that works and that provides for the needs of the country. It was targeted because we are in a state of war. There is no peace. What I know is that war is war. We hope that all of this will end and will be replaced by peace and that we will forget about these hearings.”

The Israelis have apparently not investigated the flour mill’s destruction, according to the report, nor made any suggestion that the site was targeted for military purposes.

Nevertheless, Hamada rejected any suggestion that the building was at any time used for any purpose by Palestinian armed groups. They pointed out that all of the buildings and factories were surrounded by a high wall and manned by at least one guard at night.

“There is no resistance there,” Hamada said. “After the end of the war, I went to have a look and I asked are there any combatants that died here, any Israelis that died? Not at all, nobody told me of any kind of resistance in the whole area.”

I do not know what they were targeting, I wasn’t there,” Hamada conceded. “However, I saw the results of the firing in the flour mill, … Testimony has to be real, it’s a word of truth, I cannot tell you what they targeted or who they targeted. What I did see are the empty bullets in the factory, on the factory roof, that’s what I saw.”

He added, however, that “All the factories in the eastern region were destroyed. Did they also have resistance? I don’t know, but what I do know is that vital factories were targeted. Why? Because war is war, I say it again, and we want peace, enough war.”

Addressing the UN mission directly, Hamada added: “We do not want words, we want acts. We want the United Nations to take action. We have been suffering for two full years under siege. We did not see the United Nations doing anything for us. We see that in Darfur there is a problem, the whole world goes running to Darfur, in Cambodia and Laos, everywhere in the world, but here, when we speak of the Palestinian people, everybody closes his ears, they do not want to hear about us or our problems.”

Starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited

No other buildings in the industrial compound belonging to the Hamadas were damaged at the time of the strikes. “It appears that the strikes on the flour mill were intentional and precise,” Goldstone’s final report states.

Hamada and his brothers are well-known businessmen. Israeli authorities did not appear to consider them either before or after the military operations to be a threat, given the unrestricted issuance of their Businessman Cards and their ability to travel to Israel afterwards.

“The issuance of a Businessman Card is no trifle, especially in the context of the ongoing restrictions on trade. It is not plausible that the Israeli authorities would issue such a document to any party it regarded with suspicion,” the report notes.

As for whether the flour mill could have been deemed a military objective, Goldstone notes that the building was one of the tallest in the area and would have offered extensive views to Israeli forces. The mission notes that taking control of the building might be deemed a legitimate objective in the circumstances.

“However, by 9 January the Israeli armed forces were fully aware that the flour mill could be evacuated at short notice by using the warning message system. If the reason for attacking the mill was to gain control of it for observation and control purposes, it made no sense to bomb the principal machinery and to destroy the upper floors.

There is also no suggestion that Israeli forces considered the building to be a source of enemy fire, the report states.

“The nature of the strikes on the mill and in particular the precise targeting of crucial machinery on one of the mid-level floors suggests that the intention was to disable its productive capacity,” Goldstone alleges. “There appears to be no plausible justification for the extensive damage to the flour mill if the sole objective was to take control of the building. It thus appears that the only purpose was to put an end to the production of flour in the Gaza Strip.”

According to the report, “there has been a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity would amount to a war crime.”

Having concluded that the strikes were without any military justification, and therefore wanton and unlawful, the mission found it useful to consider if there was any non-military purpose to the strikes. “The aim of the strike, if not military, could only have been to destroy the local capacity to produce flour.” Thus, according to Goldstone, the question is whether such deliberate destruction of the sole remaining flour-producing capacity in the Gaza Strip can be described as having been done for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.

International law, the report describes, prohibits acts whose specific purpose is the denial of sustenance for whatever reason, including starvation, forced displacement or anything else. “In short, the motive for denying sustenance need not be to starve the civilian population. Indeed, the motive is irrelevant.”

Due to the ongoing Israeli-led blockade, Gaza’s civilian population is increasingly dependent on external humanitarian assistance, whose arrival depends on permission from Israeli authorities. While it is not suggested that starvation is imminent, the health and welfare of the population at large have been profoundly affected by the blockade and the military operations.

“The only reason why starvation is not imminent however is precisely the provision of humanitarian assistance. Without such assistance Gaza’s civilian population would not be able to feed itself,” the report notes.

“States cannot escape their obligations not to deny the means of sustenance simply by presuming the international community will fill the gap they have created by deliberately destroying the existing capacity.

“From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law,” the report concludes, “and may constitute a war crime.”

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

In 2009, 80% of U.S. debt was “substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve”

By Bill Gross | PIMCO | Excerpt

Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total – perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. Of course they purchased more 30-year Agency mortgages than Treasuries, but PIMCO and others sold them those mortgages and bought – you guessed it – Treasuries with the proceeds. The conclusion of this fairytale is that the government got to run up a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit, didn’t have to sell much of it to private investors, and lived happily ever – ever – well, not ever after, but certainly in 2009. Now, however, the Fed tells us that they’re “fed up,” or that they think the economy is strong enough for them to gracefully “exit,” or that they’re confident that private investors are capable of absorbing the balance. Not likely.

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Economics | Leave a comment

Army harassment at peaceful tree-planting in Qaryut

International Solidarity Movement | January 8, 2010

An overwhelming force of Israeli military soldiers converged on farmlands outside Qaryut today as villagers attempted to replenish their endangered lands with water and new olive trees. Despite the overbearing army presence, residents’ convictions were strong enough for them to stand their ground and finish work for the day.

Villagers entered the Qaryut’s eastern farmlands following the midday prayer, carrying 200 baby olive trees donated by Palestinian Agricultural Relief and the Ministry of Agriculture. Facing the busy Nablus – Ramallah Road 60 route, and the Israeli settlements of Shilo and Eli behind them they set to work planting the new trees in the land oft neglected by farmers from fear of settler or army reprisal.

As residents worked the land, others began clearing the large earth mound that had been constructed across the small dirt road serving as Qaryut’s sole link to Road 60. Residents reported Israeli bulldozers shifting the earth mound in to place on January 6th, a repeated attempt of the military to block farmers from their land. The villagers’ work alerted the attention of Shilo settler security, who were sighted on the hilltop overlooking the farmland, photographing the proceedings.

Israeli Occupation Forces arrived soon after. One hummer carrying 20 soldiers immediately entered the area, shouting aggressively at the Palestinians that they had no right to be working their own land.

“I decided to approach the captain,” said Rayed, resident of Qaryut and co-organiser of the event. “He started to yell at me in Hebrew and I told him, this is Palestine. We don’t speak Hebrew here, we speak Arabic – or maybe English.”

The captain became enraged, but switched to English and informed Rayed that he and the villagers must return to their homes within 5 minutes, before the soldiers “started their work.”

“I said to him, what work?” recounts Rayed. “What is your work? To kill us? Well, he became very angry at that. But I told him that we will keep planting our trees, this is all we came here to do. The security of Israel will not be compromised by us planting some trees.”

By this time 11 more military jeeps had arrived, comprising a force of some 50 soldiers in total who quickly surrounded the farmland where the villagers continued to work. The trees planted successfully in the ground, the villagers prepared to leave as once again the soldiers became aggressive.

“They started shouting at us for leave, to go home,” says Rayed. “We were already on our way, but we didn’t need them to yell at us. They looked like they were about to attack. The captain approached me and demanded that we not intefere with the roadblock. I told him that the roadblock prevents tractors from accessing the crops, and that it is obvious the purpose of the roadblocks’ location is to make it easier for the settlers to conquest the land. If it was anything else, they’d put it directly at Road 60.”

The roadblock has been an ongoing impediment to Qaryut’s residents freedom of movement, and preventing farmers from accessing their lands. Several successful demonstrations were held last year when international solidarity activists joined hundreds of local protesters in removing the roadblock by hand, only for military bulldozers to rebuild it the following day.

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Iran, Turkey plan to set up joint industrial zone

Press TV – January 9, 2010 10:21:48 GMT

Iran and Turkey plan to set up a joint industrial zone on their shared border, a Turkish official has announced.

Turkish Industry and Trade Minister Nihat Ergun made the remarks after a meeting with Iran’s Industry Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian in Ankara on Friday.

Ergun noted that the two sides have agreed to form a committee to discuss the establishment of the joint industrial area in a way to boost economic cooperation.

”A technical committee consisting of 10 persons from each side has been established. The committee will work on the establishment of an industrial zone on the joint border, ” ILNA news agency quoted Erdun as saying.

The Iranian and Turkish officials also discussed ways of increasing industrial cooperation.

Separately, Turkish State Minister Zafer Caglayan said that Turkey’s exports to Iran reached $1.7 billion in the first 11 months of 2009.

After a meeting with Mehrabian in Ankara on Thursday, Caglayan said Tehran is an important partner for Turkey and that the volume of trade between the two countries has risen to $10 billion in the past eight years.

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Calling Bono – Your Palestinian Gandhis Exist … in Graves and Prisons

By Alison Weir | January 8, 2010

Dear Bono,

In your recent column in the New York Times, “Ten for the Next Ten,” you wrote: “I’ll place my hopes on the possibility — however remote at the moment — that…people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Your hope has already been fulfilled in the Palestinian territories.

Unfortunately, these Palestinian Gandhis and Kings are being killed and imprisoned.

On the day that your op-ed appeared hoping for such leaders, three were languishing in Israeli prisons. No one knows how long they will be held, nor under what conditions; torture is common in Israeli prisons.

At least 19 Palestinians have been killed in the last six years alone during nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s apartheid wall that is confiscating Palestinian cropland and imprisoning Palestinian people. Many others have been killed in other parts of the Palestinian territories while taking part in nonviolent activities. Hundreds more have been detained and imprisoned.

Recently Israel has begun a campaign to incarcerate the leaders of this diverse movement of weekly marches and demonstrations taking place in small Palestinian villages far from media attention.

The first Palestinian Gandhi to be rounded up in this recent purge was young Mohammad Othman, taken on Sept. 22 when he was returning home from speaking in Norway about nonviolent strategies to oppose Israeli oppression and land confiscation. He has now been held for 107 days without charges, much of it in solitary confinement.

The second was Abdallah Abu Rahma, a schoolteacher and farmer taken from his home on Dec. 10, the only one to be charged with a crime. After holding him for several days, Israel finally came up with a charge: “illegal weapons possession” – referring to the peace sign he had fashioned out of the spent teargas cartridges and bullets that Israel had shot at nonviolent demonstrators. (One such cartridge pierced the skull of Tristan Anderson, an American who was photographing the aftermath of a nonviolent march, causing part of his right frontal lobe to be removed.)

The third was Jamal Jumah’, a veteran leader in the grassroots struggle, who was taken by Israeli occupation forces on Dec. 16th and is now being held in shackles and often blindfolded during Kafkaesque Israeli military proceedings.

Palestinians have been engaging in nonviolence for decades.

When I was last in Nablus I learned of a massive nonviolent demonstration that had occurred in 2001 – estimates range from 10,000 to 50,000 Palestinian men, women, and children taking part in a nonviolent march. All sectors of Nablus had joined together in organizing this – public officials, diverse parties, religious, secular, Muslim, Christian.

Modeling their action on images of Dr. Martin Luther King, they marched arm-in-arm, believing that Israel would not kill them and that the world would care. They were wrong on both counts. Israeli forces immediately shot six dead and injured many more. And no one even knows about it. At If Americans Knew we are currently working on a video to try to remedy the last part; there’s nothing we can do about the dead.

But there’s a great deal you can do, Bono. You can use your talent and celebrity to tell the world these facts. You can write a New York Times op-ed about the Palestinian Gandhis in Israeli prisons and call for their freedom. You can sing of these Palestinian Martin Luther Kings you wished for, and by singing save their lives.

For the reality is that nonviolence is only as powerful as its visibility to the world. When it is made invisible through its lack of coverage by the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News, et al, its practitioners are in deadly danger, and their efforts to use nonviolence against injustice are doomed.

In the New York Times you publicly proclaimed your belief in nonviolence. Now is your chance to demonstrate your commitment.

* * *

Killed by Israeli forces while demonstrating against the Israeli wall being built on Palestinian land [http://palsolidarity.org/2009/06/7647]

5 June 2009:
Yousef ‘Akil’ Tsadik Srour, 36
Shot in the chest with 0.22 calibre live ammunition during a demonstration against the Wall in Ni’lin.

April 17, 2009:
Basem Abu Rahme, age 29
Shot in the chest with a high-velocity tear gas projectile during a demonstration against the Wall in Bil’in.

December 28, 2008:
Mohammad Khawaja, age 20
Shot in the head with live ammunition during a demonstration in Ni’lin against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Mohammad died in the hospital on December 31, 2009.

December 28, 2008:
Arafat Khawaja, age 22
Shot in the back with live ammunition in Ni’lin during a demonstration against Israel’s assault on Gaza.

July 30, 2008:
Youssef Ahmed Younes Amirah, age 17
Shot in the head with rubber coated bullets during a demonstration against the Wall in Ni’lin. Youssef died of his wounds on August 4, 2008.

July 29, 2008:
Ahmed Husan Youssef Mousa, age 10
Shot dead while he and several friends tried to remove coils of razor wire from land belonging to the village in Ni’lin.

March 2, 2008:
Mahmoud Muhammad Ahmad Masalmeh, age 15
Shot dead when trying to cut the razor wire portion of the Wall in Beit Awwa.

March 28, 2007:
Muhammad Elias Mahmoud ‘Aweideh, age 15
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Um a-Sharayet – Samiramis.

February 2, 2007:
Taha Muhammad Subhi al-Quljawi, age 16
Shot dead when he and two friends tried to cut the razor wire portion of the Wall in the Qalandiya Refugee Camp. He was wounded in the thigh and died from blood loss after remaining in the field for a long time without treatment.

May 4, 2005:
Jamal Jaber Ibrahim ‘Asi, age 15
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Beit Liqya.

May 4, 2005:
U’dai Mufid Mahmoud ‘Asi, age 14
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Beit Liqya.

February 15, 2005:
‘Alaa’ Muhammad ‘Abd a-Rahman Khalil, age 14
Shot dead while throwing stones at an Israeli vehicle driven by private security guards near the Wall in Betunya.

April 18, 2004:
Islam Hashem Rizik Zhahran, age 14
Shot during a demonstration against the Wall in Deir Abu Mash’al. Islam died of his wounds April 28, 2004.

April 18, 2004:
Diaa’ A-Din ‘Abd al-Karim Ibrahim Abu ‘Eid, age 23
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Biddu.

April 16, 2004:
Hussein Mahmoud ‘Awad ‘Alian, age 17
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Betunya.

February 26, 2004:
Muhammad Da’ud Saleh Badwan, age 21
Shot during a demonstration against the Wall in Biddu. Muhammad died of his wounds on March 3, 2004.

February 26, 2004:
Abdal Rahman Abu ‘Eid, age 17
Died of a heart attack after teargas projectiles were shot into his home during a demonstration against the Wall in Biddu.

February 26, 2004:
Muhammad Fadel Hashem Rian, age 25
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Biddu.

– Hide quoted text –
February 26, 2004:
Zakaria Mahmoud ‘Eid Salem, age 28
Shot dead during a demonstration against the Wall in Biddu.

Notes and Sources:

(1) Israeli was first exposed in the West by the London Times in the late 1970s. Foreign Service Journal [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html] wrote about Israeli torture of Americans in June, 2002, and Addameer [http://addameer.info/?p=496] gives specifics today.

(2) Al Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists – Geneva, writes: [http://freemohammadothman.wordpress.com/2010/01/] “…as part of their repression campaign, which coincided with the release of the Goldstone Report, the Israeli forces have re-launched daily dawn raids in villages affected by the Wall, arresting youths and children, for the purpose of extracting confessions about prominent community leaders advocating against the Wall, and continued to intimidate activists by destroying their private property and threatening them with detention. Finally, Israel has directly targeted the Grassroots “Stop the Wall” Campaign [http://stopthewall.org/index.shtml]by arresting and intimidating its leaders…His village, Jayyous, has been devastated by the Apartheid Wall

(3) Human Rights Watch [http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/12/04/israel-end-arbitrary-detention-rights-activist] found that “”The only reasonable conclusion is that Othman is being punished for his peaceful advocacy…”

(4) Abdallah Abu Rahma was taken [http://www.popularstruggle.org/freeabdallah]when “eleven military jeeps surrounded his house, and Israeli soldiers broke the door, extracted Abdallah from his bed, and, after briefly allowing him to say goodbye to his wife Majida and their three children — seven year-old Luma, five year-old Lian and eight month-old baby Laith, they blindfolded him and took him into custody.”

On Jan. 6th Abdallah wrote: [http://palsolidarity.org/2010/01/10429]:

“I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope…. Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation.

“The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom…”

(5) Tristan Anderson was shot [http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324] with a high-velocity canister after photographing a nonviolent protest in Ni’lin on March 13, 2009. His ambulance was held up for a period of time by Israeli forces before finally being allowed to take him to a hospital. Video of parents’ press conference [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcK_4ksR1fw]

(6) Israeli forces interrogated Jamal Juma’ and then “brought him back home, handcuffed, and searched his house while his wife and three children watched. Then they took him off to prison.” – CounterPunch [http://www.counterpunch.org/hijab12242009.html ] Despite being held for 20 days, [http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2152.shtml] no charges have yet been brought against Jamal.

(7) The Nablus march mentioned above took place on March 30, 2001, on Jerusalem Street in the south of Nablus, leading to the Huwara checkpoint. This was on what Palestinians call the “Day of the Land” or “Land Day” (information on Land Day can be seen at http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/255.shtml).

(8) In our study of the Associated Press, “Deadly Distortion,” [http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ap-report.html] we commented: “…our analysts looked at hundreds of articles that AP published on topics relating to the Israel/Palestine issue, and noted a number of additional patterns that merit further examination… Nonviolence movement. Palestinian resistance efforts have included numerous nonviolent marches and other activities, many joined by international participants, Israeli citizens, and faith-based groups. This nonviolence movement has been an important topic in the Palestinian territories, with growing numbers of people taking part – in 2004 the Palestinian News Network reported on 79 major demonstrations that were exclusively nonviolent. Yet, we did not find any reports in which AP had described a Palestinian demonstration or other activity as nonviolent or utilizing nonviolence.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, [http://www.ifamericansknew.org/] which provides information about Israel-Palestine. She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org. She phoned and faxed Bono’s management company Principle Management [http://www.fanmail.biz/25157.html] at both their New York and Dublin locations in an effort to contact him but has not yet received a reply. She suggests that others may wish to do this as well: 212.765.2330 / fax: 212.765.2372.

Related articles

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets ‘intercept US warplane’

Press TV – January 9, 2010 08:15:32 GMT

Venezuela has scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to ward off a US ‘military plane’ amid reports of “US trespassing the country’s airspace.”

President Hugo Chavez has ordered the fighters to confront a US P-3 maritime patrol aircraft that had purportedly violated Venezuela’s airspace, Reuters quoted the Venezuelan president as saying on Friday.

“They are provoking us … these are warplanes,” Chavez noted, showing a picture of the plane, which he said, had taken off from US military bases on the Netherlands’ Caribbean islands and from neighboring Colombia on two separate occasions.

He said the Venezuelan fighter jets forced the US plane away after the ‘incursions.’

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials have denied the charges and expressed unawareness of the latest development.

“We can confirm no US military aircraft entered Venezuelan airspace today. As a matter of policy we do not fly over a nation’s airspace without prior consent or coordination,” Reuters quoted an unnamed Defense Department Spokesperson as saying on January 8.

The US Southern Command claims that its surveillance operations are ‘only’ meant to counter drug trafficking in South America.

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Amnesty urges Israel to release or try three Palestinians

By Agence France Presse | January 09, 2010

Amnesty urges Israel to release or try three Palestinians

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Human rights group Amnesty International urged Israel on Friday to release or fairly try three Palestinian jailed for protesting against the West Bank separation barrier. The three, two of whom are held without charges, may be “prisoners of conscience, held for legitimately voicing their opposition to the fence/wall,” Amnesty said in a letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“These men have all been involved in campaigning against the building of this construction, much of it on the land of the occupied West Bank, and we fear that this is the real reason for their imprisonment,” said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program.

“If this is the case they must be released immediately and unconditionally,” he said.

Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign, has not been charged with any offence since his arrest on December 16 and has not had access to his lawyer.

He is held under Israeli military law, which applies to the occupied West Bank.

“As someone who holds a Jerusalem ID card, according to Israeli law his case should be handled under the country’s civil, not military, legal system,” the London-based human rights watchdog said.

Mohammad Othman is also held without charge since September 22. He was arrested upon his return from Norway where he met activist groups and campaigned against the wall, Amnesty said.

Abdullah Abu Rahma, who heads Popular Committee Against the Wall in the West Bank village of Bilin, was arrested on December 10.

He has been charged with incitement, stone-throwing, and possession of arms, the latter for collecting spent cartridges and tear gas grenades used by Israeli forces to disperse anti-wall protesters.

“These three men are all well known for their defense of the human rights of Palestinians. In the unlikely event that there are genuine grounds to prosecute these men, they should be charged with recognizable criminal offences and brought promptly to trial in full conformity with international fair trial standards,” said Smart.

January 9, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Afghan Prisoners Challenge Indefinite Detention

By William Fisher | January 08, 2010 | Excerpt

On Thursday, the D.C. circuit court heard oral arguments in a case known as Maqaleh v. Gates – the first legal challenge in U.S. courts on behalf of prisoners detained at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.

The case was brought by the International Justice Network (IJNetwork) on behalf of two Yemenis and one Tunisian citizen, each seized outside of Afghanistan from third countries and held without charge or trial in U.S. custody for more than six years.

Evidence suggests that each man was shuttled through U.S.-run secret prisons (“black sites”) for torture and interrogation, prior to ultimately being transferred to Bagram – itself the site of well-documented human rights violations – where they continue to be subjected to indefinite detention under sole U.S. military custody.

During the entire six-year period he has been in U.S. custody, Maqaleh has not been permitted to see his family and has been denied any access to lawyers or a court of law. Because he is being held virtually incommunicado, his father authorized IJNetwork to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. court seeking his release.

Though his case has now been pending for over three years, the government continues to refuse to allow Maqaleh to communicate with his attorneys.

In April 2009, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Maqaleh and two other petitioners in the case, Amin al-Bakri and Redha al-Najar, have a constitutional right to petition U.S. courts for a writ of habeas corpus.

Judge Bates’ decision was based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo had a constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.

But before any of the Bagram detainees could have his day in court, the Barack Obama administration appealed Judge Bates’ decision, arguing that none of the 600 detainees at Bagram have any rights under U.S. law.

As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, the IJNetwork has called on the Obama administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody – including at Bagram.

Though President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, the Department of Justice continues to defend the George W. Bush administration’s position that individuals held at other U.S.-run military facilities have no legal rights.

Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, arguing for the government, said the circumstances surrounding detention of prisoners at Bagram are unique and do not match the circumstances at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. Katyal noted that Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.

But Tina Foster, executive director of the IJNetwork, who argued for the Bagram detainees, told IPS, “Our clients are three innocent men who have been imprisoned without charge for seven years and haven’t even been told why.”

“The fundamental question at issue in these cases is whether the United States government can seize individuals from peaceful countries anywhere in the world and imprison them without charge indefinitely, based solely on the location of the prison facility where the government decides to detain them,” Foster said.

She added, “The position of the Obama administration is that it can do so, as long as it uses Bagram, instead of Guantanamo, as its legal black hole. This is an extreme position – and one that allows the president to do exactly what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional in the Guantanamo cases.”

IPS

January 8, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

US-Pakistan “diplomatic” dispute escalates

By Ein Katzenfreund | Aletho News | January 9, 2010

The neoconservative Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many other English-language media and even the Chinese news agency Xinhua just wrote in bold headlines that the US has asked Pakistan to stop “harassment” of their “diplomats”. It is quite uncommon that a country tries to escalate diplomatic differences with a friendly country over the mass media, rather than resolving it discreetly. Pakistan is an important “partner” for the United States in its struggle to dominate the Middle East, which it sells to the public as a global war on terror.

In the Wall Street Journal version and the associated Western media, the story of the diplomatic dispute is told somewhat like this: Pakistani authorities and security forces are harassing US diplomats in Pakistan by temporarily arresting them, searching their cars and systematically delaying visa requests. Due to this harassment the US now has difficulty implementing its five-year program to support civilian projects in Pakistan worth 1.5 billion US dollars annually. The Pakistani government demands direct payment so that it can spend the money where it is needed but the US doesn’t do this as it wants full administrative control. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the Pakistani intelligence service ISI is behind the harassment campaign and that the ISI is impeding peace and development in Pakistan. That’s what the story looks like in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The New York Times adds that the US embassy in Islamabad has plans to increase its staff to implement its assistance program in Pakistan from 500 to 800 people and casually states that President Zardari has demanded a cessation of air strikes by US drones on Pakistani territory, and instead proposes that the US give Pakistan the drone technology.

In Pakistan the story appears a bit different. First of all, it is carefully noted in Pakistan that the US hires death squads from the notorious Blackwater outfit as “diplomats”. The US government officially denies that it uses Blackwater for assassinations, but since it was announced that the suicide attack on the secret drone base in Afghanistan’s Khost killed two mercenaries from Blackwater the official claims have been exposed as a blatant lie.

However the troubles of the US in Pakistan are even more serious. Zahid Malik explained on December 7th in the Pakistan Observer in detail that the head of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, personally confronted the CIA boss Leon Panetta with evidence that the US backs warlords and terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of destabilizing Pakistan. The role Stanley McCrystal’s JSOC terrorist group plays in this dirty war is also public knowledge. None of this surprises Pakistanis as everyone in Pakistan knows that the US runs a secret war against Pakistan. This is becoming disastrous for the US because in the eyes of the Pakistani population the US is widely decried as a state sponsor of terrorism and any Pakistani government making common cause with the United States is considered to be treasonous.

The most important point is that the United States under Obama is trying to deceive Pakistan. The US promised to fight alongside Pakistan but they secretly fought against Pakistan and they were caught. It couldn’t be worse for the US. In this situation even the $1.5 billion annual bribe won’t help them out. If the US does not maintain the cooperation of Pakistani security services there will be no reliable transit of supplies for the U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan via Pakistan anymore. Pakistan can add to its demands whatever it wants whenever it wants, because the US is so dependent on the supply routes through Pakistan. Obama would like to increase US troops in Afghanistan by about 30 – 40,000 official soldiers. As for supply routes for his troops in Afghanistan he has the following possibilities: Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. As the US has no internal influence in Iran and Russia, these countries are not ideal options. The result is that if Pakistani supply routes are closed Obama’s occupation of Afghanistan will end and Pakistan wins influence. Until then Pakistan may ask what it wants of the US, and the US must pay whatever the price is. If the US is escalating its diplomatic dispute with Pakistan now in the media, that suggests that the US administration has just now realized what kind of an ugly trap they have fallen into in Afghanistan.

Was this really that hard to foresee? Honestly, who is stupid enough to choose to occupy Afghanistan? OK, the think tank IASPS  proposed it, but they also called for war on Iraq for the reorganization of the Middle East in Israel’s favor. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama still follows this Zionist-designed war policy even though it brings nothing but predictable disaster for the US.

Iran’s Press TV is modest: it reported that five Americans were arrested because they used fake license plates, but that they were released later because the US embassy said that they were diplomats. Oh, but of course when US Marines raided the Algerian embassy in Baghdad it was something entirely different and in no way harassment or a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The author manages a German language news blog at – http://www.mein-parteibuch.com/

January 8, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

‘Hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack’

Part 13 of a series recounting the findings of South African jurist Richard Goldstone’s UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – On 8 January 2009, one year ago today, Israeli artillery shells struck the seventh-floor apartment of Dr Jaber Abu An-Naja, the former PLO ambassador to Senegal and a well-known Fatah politician.

The doctor’s wife and son-in-law were killed immediately as they sat on the balcony eating pastries. His wife was cut in half by the explosion and his son-in-law was thrown from the balcony on to the street below.

His daughter, Ihsan, was seriously injured and taken for treatment to Al-Quds Hospital, a medical center located near Abu An-Naja’s and a number of other civilian apartment buildings on Al-Abraj Street in Gaza’s Tal El Hawa district, which had come under attack for four days.

According to three senior doctors at the hospital and two residents from Al-Abraj Street, at some point between 3 and 6 January several tanks were stationed several hundred meters east of Al-Quds, visible from the hospital’s ambulance depot. Throughout the days of 5-8 January, there was significant artillery fire on apartment buildings nearby to where Abu An-Naja’s relatives were killed.

The shelling on 8 January was just one incident of dozens in and around the area that damaged portions of the hospital and destroyed other buildings in their entirety during Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip, which ended in late January 2009.

Continuous damage to medical buildings

When the air offensive began on 27 December, for instance, a government building opposite the hospital’s administrative building on Al-Abraj Street was almost totally destroyed. The building had previously served as a criminal detention center and is still referred to locally by that designation although it had recently been used for other purposes, including customs administration. The same building was reportedly struck on a number of other occasions after 27 December, after which the site was completely demolished.

Kitty-corner to the hospital, on Jami’at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street, was another building rented to the de facto government and used primarily as a public registry office. At the time of writing, only the ground floor of the building remained. Witnesses, speaking to the Goldstone commission, indicated that the upper floors had been destroyed, probably by artillery fire, on 6 and 7 January.

By 15 January, the area immediately to the south of Al-Quds Hospital (the customs building and the registry building) had been totally or very substantially destroyed. The area to the east on Al-Abraj Street had been significantly attacked by artillery fire.

By this time, several hundred civilians had also gathered in the hospital buildings seeking safety.

The Al-Quds Hospital belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It consists of three buildings facing west toward the sea on the corner of Jami’at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street and Al-Abraj Street in the area of Tel Al-Hawa.

The building nearest the corner was seven stories high. Its principal purposes were administrative and cultural rather than medical. It stored a huge quantity of PRCS archives. The middle building contained the accident and emergency treatment areas as well as other offices of medical and administrative staff. The building furthest from the corner was the main medical building with operating theaters in the basement. About 200 meters east on Al-Abraj Street was the PRCS ambulance depot.

The buildings all suffered significant damage in the course of an Israeli bombardment on 15 January 2009, which included the use of white phosphorous, endangering the lives of staff and more than 50 patients. There was no warning given for any of the attacks.

Direct Attack on the Hospital

During the night of 14 January, Israeli forces began an extended barrage of artillery fire over the area. It continued into the morning of 15 January. Between 8 and 9am doctors in the main building were in the principal meeting room when shells landed on either side of the building. They saw white phosphorous wedges burning near a container of diesel and efforts were successfully made to move those away.

The initial explosions blew out the office windows. The administrative building on the corner was also hit. Because the hospital building was largely constructed out of timber (rare in Gaza), staff were worried that the fire would spread. A witness described how hospital staff, including senior doctors, all sought to break, by hand, the wooden bridge linking the administrative building to the hospital building, in an attempt to prevent the fire from spreading.

Shortly after the initial explosions and fire were observed, a tank shell directly penetrated the rear of the middle hospital building. That part of the building was made of corrugated iron. The shell made a clearly defined home in the hospital wall, and the impact crater continues through the cement wall into the hospital’s pharmacy.The pharmacy was completely destroyed as a result.

An eyewitness said that through the resulting hole, he observed a tank on a road between two buildings about 400 meters east of the building. Although he could not say whether it was this tank that had struck the hospital directly, it was in a direct line in relation to the entry point of the shell.

No civil defense forces were available to fight the fire at the hospital, so medical staff worked on their own to save the building and ensure the safety of the patients.

It was not until 4pm that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to respond and help evacuate patients. Officials at the ICRC made it clear upon arrival that it would be able to carry out this procedure only once. Those not evacuated at 4pm were relocated to the operating theaters of the damaged hospital.

At 8pm, another fire broke out in the hospital. As a result, a total evacuation of remaining patients and those who had sought refuge at the hospital was carried out. It was at this stage that one of the senior doctors took an eight-year-old girl who had been struck by a bullet in the jaw and was critically ill to Ash-Shifa Hospital, where she later died. One of the medical staff at the hospital told the Goldstone commission that there was very heavy fire in the area, and he felt sure there were direct hits by Israeli forces on the ambulance depot.

As the hospital was evacuated, the depot, 200 meters to the east in Al-Abraj Street, sustained damage, and one of its principal buildings was entirely destroyed. Remnants of three PRCS ambulances that had been parked at the entrance to the depot were seen were still visible by summer. Two had been crushed by tanks but not burned out. The other ambulance showed signs of having been struck directly in the front below the windscreen by a missile of some description and having been burned out.

The devastation caused to both the hospital buildings, including the loss of all archives in the administrative building, and the ambulance depot was immense, as was the risk to the safety of the patients.

The Israeli position

In the conclusions of their investigations on 22 April 2009, Israeli authorities did not specifically mention the incident at Al-Quds Hospital, although a portion of it addresses some allegations regarding the use of ambulances. In another report, released in July 2009, the Israeli government quotes part of an article from Newsweek magazine:

One of the most notorious incidents during the war was the Jan. 15 shelling of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society buildings in the downtown Tal-al Hawa part of Gaza City, followed by a shell hitting their Al Quds Hospital next door; the subsequent fire forced all 500 patients to be evacuated. Asked if there were any militants firing from the hospital or the Red Crescent buildings, hospital director general Dr. Khalid Judah chose his words carefully. “I am not able to say if anyone was using the PRCS buildings [the two Palestine Red Crescent Society buildings adjacent to the hospital], but I know for a fact that no one was using the hospital.”

In the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood nearby, however, Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People’s Party, said that resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital. He shrugged that off, having a bigger beef with Hamas. “They failed to win the battle.” Or as his fellow PPP official, Walid al Awad, put it: “It was a mistake to give Israel the excuse to come in.” [para. 173].

While the Israeli government does not comment further on the specific attack, it would appear to invoke these comments to justify the strikes on the hospital and surrounding area.

The final report of Richard Goldstone’s UN inquiry understood that the Israeli government “may consider relying on journalists’ reporting as likely to be treated as more impartial than reliance on its own intelligence information,” but said its investigators were “nonetheless struck by the lack of any suggestion in Israel’s report of July 2009 that there were members of armed groups present in the hospital at the time.”

The report also said it addressed questions to Israel’s government regarding the use of white phosphorous munitions against the hospital and the direct military advantage pursued by their use under the circumstances, but received no reply.

Factual findings

The Goldstone report finds that on the morning of 15 January the hospital building and the administrative building were struck by a number of shells containing white phosphorous and by at least one high explosive shell. “The fires these caused led to panic and chaos among the sick and wounded, necessitated two evacuations in extremely perilous conditions, caused huge financial losses as a result of the damage and put the lives of several hundred civilians including medical staff at very great risk.”

In its conclusions, the mission also notes that as a result of the conditions the attack created, the hospital was unable to provide the necessary care for an eight-year-old girl. “Despite heroic attempts to save her, she died later in another hospital. The girl had been shot by an Israeli sniper. The Mission finds the Israeli armed forces responsible for her death.”

On the issue of armed groups being present in the hospital buildings, the team does not agree that anything in the extract cited from Newsweek magazine justifies the conclusion that the hospital premises were being used by armed groups.

The fact that Dr Judah spoke with certainty about matters within his knowledge “cannot be presumed to mean that he believed other parts of the hospital premises were being used by armed groups,” the Goldstone report notes, speculating that it could have been “journalistic gloss and is tantamount to putting words in the mouth of Dr. Judah.” The comments attributed to Safadi that “resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital” can mean either that people were inside the hospital firing or were in positions outside but near to the hospital, Goldstone adds, “The journalist did not clarify precisely what was meant.”

The mission carried out over eight hours of interviews with senior and junior staff at the hospital, and having sought to verify the matter with others, including journalists who were in the area at that time, concluded that it was unlikely there was any armed presence in any of the hospital buildings at the time of the attack. It also notes that no warning was given at any point of an imminent strike and at no time has the Israeli government suggested such a warning was given, compared to other instances in which they insist they did.

Goldstone’s report states that in reviewing the scene at the time of the strikes, “it is important to bear in mind that a great deal of destruction had already occurred and that buildings with an apparent connection to the local government had been attacked and largely destroyed. As such, Israeli tanks had a relatively clear view of the area immediately to the south of the hospital.

“The Mission also notes that as a result of the attacks on al-Abraj Street by tanks for several days, the scope for resistance, if any, from that particular quarter had been significantly reduced.

The mission concedes that it was aware of reports that there was significant resistance from Palestinian groups in the area on the night of 14 January, in which Israeli troops entered buildings along the street and allegedly used human shields to check if there was any presence of enemy combatants of explosive devices and found none.

Legal findings

Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that civilian hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict. Civilian hospitals’ protection shall cease “only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded,” article 19 states.

“Even in the unlikely event that there was any armed group present on hospital premises, there is no suggestion even by the Israeli authorities that a warning was given to the hospital of an intention to strike it,” the Goldstone report states. “As such the Mission finds on the information before it that Israeli armed forces violated articles 18 and 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“On considering the information before it, the Mission takes the view that there was intent to strike the hospital, as evidenced in particular by the high explosive artillery shell that penetrated the rear of the hospital and destroyed the pharmacy.

“Even if it is suggested that there was no intent to directly strike the hospital but that Palestinian armed groups had taken up positions near al-Quds hospital, the Israeli armed forces would still have been bound to ensure that risk of death, injury or damage to the people in the hospital or the hospital itself would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated in attacking the hospital.

“Taking into account the weapons used, and in particular the use of white phosphorous in and around a hospital that the Israeli armed forces knew was not only dealing with scores of injured and wounded but also giving shelter to several hundred civilians, the Mission finds, based on all the information available to it, that in directly striking the hospital and the ambulance depot the Israeli armed forces in these circumstances violated article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and violated customary international law in relation to proportionality.”

January 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

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