UK government faces lawsuit over arms sales to Israel
Press TV – August 17, 2014
The British government is facing unprecedented legal action over its continued arms sale to Israel in the wake of the recent deadly Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.
British law firm, Leigh Day, representing the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), said Saturday that it has written to Business Secretary Vince Cable, calling for the immediate suspension of arms export licenses to Israel.
The law firm said the UK government’s failure to suspend the licenses is illegal, adding that it has been instructed to seek a High Court judicial review of the administration’s reluctance to halt the arms sales to Israel.
A recent report by the British parliamentary committee for arms export controls showed that Israel received around £8 billion in the form of 400 arms licenses from the UK in 2013.
Leigh Day further said there is a risk that British-made weapons may have been used by Israel during its recent onslaught on Gaza in breach of humanitarian and human rights law.
“If arms from the UK are being used to commit crimes against humanitarian law, and human rights law, then export licenses for these materials must be revoked immediately,” said Rosa Curling, representing the CAAT, adding, “If this is not done, the government’s current policy is unlawful and susceptible to legal challenge.”
The British government has come under persistent pressure to toughen its stance against Israel, including by halting arms exports, since Tel Aviv began its onslaught on the besieged Palestinian enclave more than a month ago.
Nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including 470 children, have lost their lives and more than 10,200 have been wounded since the Israeli military unleashed fatal assaults against Gaza on July 8.
Human rights groups say Israeli forces are systematically killing Palestinian children and youths.
Palestine Supporters Block Israeli Ship from Docking on California Coast
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | August 16, 2014
The Israeli cargo ship ‘Zim’ was set to dock in the Oakland port, on Saturday morning. But activists have claimed credit for an announced delay in the ship’s docking, and are planning to stop the ship wherever it tries to dock.
The U.S. activists are following the lead of trade unionists in South Africa, who successfully blocked Israeli ships from docking on several occasions, to protest Israeli aggression against Palestinians and call for a just and lasting peace.
Activists in Oakland, California are gathering Saturday to carry out direct action to stop the ship from being able to dock at the port. And, activists in Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC are also planning to blockade scheduled stops in those ports.
The actions could potentially cost Israeli exporters millions of dollars, if their goods are unable to reach their ports of destination. The exact products on board the Zim are unknown, but they are likely to include Sodastream, a do-it-yourself soda-making device that is manufactured in an Israeli settlement on illegally-seized Palestinian land, Ahava dead sea salts, which are seized from Palestinian land in violation of the Dead Sea Agreement, and Osem brand food products, some of which are manufactured and packaged in Israeli settlements on illegally-seized Palestinian land, in the West Bank.
In their organizing materials, protesters say, “Palestine is calling us to action! Palestinian laborers [and the] Palestinian General Federation Trade Union have called on workers around the world to refuse to handle Israeli goods.”
They say that their “Block the Boat” actions are in response to a call by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which calls for people around the world to “educate and build awareness among the labor movements of the U.S., and urge them to condemn the Israeli aggression and to boycott Israel.”
The Oakland action ran into some complications when the local branch of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, or ILWU, was unable to take a public stand in favor of the action – reportedly because of an active negotiation between the union and management. But individual union members are supporting the action, and are part of Saturday’s blockade.
One of the organizers of the event, Reem Assil of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, told reporters, “Symbolically, for Oakland we can say, ‘Not in our name!’ We’re not going to be complicit and an accomplice to the ongoing genocide and massacres going on.”
In 2010, Oakland activists successfully turned back an Israeli ship, while protesting the Israeli siege on Gaza. But that ship was later able to dock in Los Angeles. This time, activists are coordinating via social media and contact lists to ensure that protesters prepared for direct action will be on hand to meet the ship in Los Angeles, Seattle, or Vancouver, BC if it decides to re-route.
The protesters are calling for an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza, and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Their demands are in sync with the Palestinian core demands, which include equal rights for Palestinian people, the return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in what is now Israel, and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prison camps.
Self-defense or provocation: Israel’s history of breaking ceasefires
IMEU | May 15, 2012
Since Israel’s creation in 1948, Israeli political and military leaders have demonstrated a pattern of repeatedly violating ceasefires with their enemies in order to gain military advantage, for territorial aggrandizement, or to provoke their opponents into carrying out acts of violence that Israel can then exploit politically and/or use to justify military operations already planned.
The following fact sheet provides a brief overview of some of the most high profile and consequential ceasefire violations committed by the Israeli military over the past six decades.
2012 – On November 14, two days after Palestinian factions in Gaza agree to a truce following several days of violence, Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Jabari, threatening to escalate the violence once again after a week in which at least six Palestinian civilians are killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks.
2012 – On March 9, Israel violates an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and assassinates the head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, sparking another round of violence in which at least two dozen Palestinians are killed, including at least four civilians, and scores more wounded. As usual, Israel claims it is acting in self-defense, against an imminent attack being planned by the PRC, while providing no evidence to substantiate the allegation. Following the assassination, Israeli journalist Zvi Bar’el writes in the Haaretz newspaper:
“It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out? “In the absence of a clear answer to that question, one may assume that those who decided to assassinate al-Qaisi once again relied on the ‘measured response’ strategy, in which an Israeli strike draws a reaction, which draws an Israeli counter-reaction.”
Just over two months prior, on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz tells Israel’s Army Radio that Israel will need to attack Gaza again soon to restore its power of “deterrence,” and that the assault must be “swift and painful,” concluding, “We will act when the conditions are right.”
2011 – On October 29, Israel breaks a truce that has maintained calm for two months, killing five Islamic Jihad members in Gaza, including a senior commander. The following day, Egypt brokers another truce that Israel proceeds to immediately violate, killing another four IJ members. In the violence, a total of nine Palestinians and one Israeli are killed.
2008 – In November, Israel violates a ceasefire with Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups that has been in place since June, launching an operation that kills six Hamas members. Militant groups respond by launching rockets into southern Israel, which Israel shortly thereafter uses to justify Operation Cast Lead, its devastating military assault on Gaza beginning on December 27. Over the next three weeks, the Israeli military kills approximately 1400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including more than 300 children. A UN Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone subsequently concludes that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the fighting, a judgment shared by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
2002 – On July 23, hours before a widely reported ceasefire declared by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is scheduled to come into effect, Israel bombs an apartment building in the middle of the night in the densely populated Gaza Strip in order to assassinate Hamas leader Salah Shehada. Fourteen civilians, including nine children, are also killed in the attack, and 50 others wounded, leading to a scuttling of the ceasefire and a continuation of violence.
2002 – On January 14, Israel assassinates Raed Karmi, a militant leader in the Fatah party, following a ceasefire agreed to by all Palestinian militant groups the previous month, leading to its cancellation. Later in January, the first suicide bombing by the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade takes place.
2001 – On November 23, Israel assassinates senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. At the time, Hamas was adhering to an agreement made with PLO head Yasser Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel. Following the killing, respected Israeli military correspondent of the right-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Alex Fishman, writes in a front-page story: “We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 border]… Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line…” A week later, Hamas responds with bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa.
2001 – On July 25, as Israeli and Palestinian Authority security officials meet to shore up a six-week-old ceasefire, Israel assassinates a senior Hamas member in Nablus. Nine days later, Hamas responds with a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria.
1988 – In April, Israel assassinates senior PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia, even as the Reagan administration is trying to organize an international conference to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The US State Department condemns the murder as an “act of political assassination.” In ensuing protests in the occupied territories, a further seven Palestinians are gunned down by Israeli forces.
1982 – Following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June, and after PLO fighters depart Beirut under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire, Israel violates the terms of the agreement and moves its armed forces into the western part of the city, where the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila are located. Shortly thereafter, Israeli soldiers surround the camps and send in their local Christian Phalangist allies – even though the long and bloody history between Palestinians and Phalangists in Lebanon is well known to the Israelis, and despite the fact that the Phalangists’ leader, Bashir Gemayel, has just been assassinated and Palestinians are rumored (incorrectly) to be responsible. Over the next three days, between 800 and 3500 Palestinian refugees, mostly women and children left behind by the PLO fighters, are butchered by the Phalangists as Israeli soldiers look on. In the wake of the massacre, an Israeli commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, deems that Israeli Defense Minister (and future Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon bears “personal responsibility” for the slaughter.
1981-2 – Under Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel repeatedly violates a nine-month-old UN-brokered ceasefire with the PLO in Lebanon in an effort to provoke a response that will justify a large-scale invasion of the country that Sharon has been long planning. When PLO restraint fails to provide Sharon with an adequate pretext, he uses the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to England to justify a massive invasion aimed at destroying the PLO – despite the fact that Israeli intelligence officials believe the PLO has nothing to do with the assassination attempt. In the ensuing invasion, more than 17,000 Lebanese are killed.
1973 – Following a ceasefire agreement arranged by the US and the Soviet Union to end the Yom Kippur War, Israel violates the agreement with a “green light” from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. According to declassified US documents, Kissinger tells the Israelis they can take a “slightly longer” time to adhere to the truce. As a result, Israel launches an attack and surrounds the Egyptian Third Army, causing a major diplomatic crisis between the US and Soviets that pushes the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, with the Soviets threatening to intervene to save their Egyptian allies and the US issuing a Defcon III nuclear alert.
1967 – Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement, launching a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria. Despite claims Israel is acting in self-defense against an impending attack from Egypt, Israeli leaders are well aware that Egypt poses no serious threat. Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli army during the war, says in a 1968 interview that “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” And former Prime Minister Menachem Begin later admits that “Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
1956 – Colluding with Britain and France, Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement by invading Egypt and occupying the Sinai Peninsula. Israel only agrees to withdraw following pressure from US President Dwight Eisenhower.
1949 – Immediately after the UN-brokered Armistice Agreement between Israel and its neighbors goes into effect, the armed forces of the newly-created Israeli state begin violating the truce with encroachments into designated demilitarized zones and military attacks that claim numerous civilian casualties.
Egypt opens Rafah crossing, denies Kuwaiti aid entry to Gaza
Ma’an – August 14, 2014
GAZA CITY – Egyptian authorities denied entry to a Kuwaiti delegation bringing aid to the Gaza Strip on Thursday as it opened the Rafah crossing for humanitarian cases.
Palestinian crossing officials said that injured Palestinians, medical patients and foreign nationals were allowed to use the crossing and Gaza residents in Egypt were allowed to return.
Egyptian security prevented a four-man Kuwaiti delegation carrying medical aid from entering Gaza.
No reason was given for the refusal.
Egyptian authorities have largely kept the Rafah crossing closed since the army ousted President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
The terminal is the only border crossing that most of Gaza’s 1.8 million people can use to leave the enclave.
Israel wants a truce that does not include a halt on assassinations
MEMO | August 13, 2014
While Cairo is witnessing talks about a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and in light of an international effort to reach a long-term truce between Hamas and Israel, Israeli security officials have demanded that the policy of assassinations against the Palestinian leaders should not stop.
Israeli media reports quoted security officials on Tuesday as saying that currently there are three options available, namely: an international effort to extend the cease-fire, or “surrendering” to some of Hamas’ demands, or launching a new aggression against the Gaza Strip. According to the officials themselves, the latter is less likely to happen.
Security officials added that “Hamas has put on the negotiating table demands for a seaport and an airport as a counterweight to Israel’s demand to strip the sector of any weapon,” and that the Israeli security apparatus “wants to test Hamas’ long-term steps, therefore, Hamas must be prevented from achieving anything that could help the movement’s strength grow.”
The security officials explained that the security apparatus demands that the Israeli government “reserves the possibility of returning to the assassinations choice,” adding that “it is prohibited to waive this requirement in the context of the negotiations” taking place in Egypt.
Walla website quoted an Israeli security official as claiming that the assassinations issue is a “point of serious concern among the movement leaders.”
He added, in a sarcastic tone, that “if Hamas wants to control the sector, it should do so from the tunnels and cellars.”
The same security official said an agreement has been reached between the parties involved in Cairo negotiations regarding a section of the demands put forward by Hamas, including the issuance of permits for the exit of a limited number of Palestinians through Erez crossing, under the control of the Shin Bet, and the immediate expansion of the volume of goods coming into the Gaza Strip through Karam Abu Salem crossing, as well as handing over control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing to the Palestinian Authority, so that the crossing would be supervised by both Israel and Egypt.
The Israeli official also confirmed that among the agreements reached was an agreement regarding the transfer of funds from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states into the Gaza Strip, where the parties agreed that this should only happen through the Palestinian Authority and under strict international-Israeli-Egyptian supervision.
U.S. Avoided Threat to Act on Israel’s Civilian Targeting
A Palestinian man salvages items from the rubble of his home destroyed by Israeli strikes on a building in northern Gaza Strip. Aug 7, 2014. UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan
By Gareth Porter | IPS | August 12, 2014
Washington — United Nations officials and human rights organisations have characterised Israeli attacks on civilian targets during the IDF war on Gaza as violations of the laws of war.
During the war, Israeli bombardment leveled whole urban neighbourhoods, leaving more than 10,000 houses destroyed and 30,000 damaged and killing 1,300 civilians, according to U.N. data. Israeli forces also struck six schools providing shelter to refugees under U.N. protection, killing at least 47 refugees and wounding more than 340.
The administration’s public stance in daily briefings in the early days of the war suggested little or no concern about Israeli violations of the laws of war.
But the Barack Obama administration’s public posture during the war signaled to Israel that it would not be held accountable for such violations.
A review of the transcripts of daily press briefings by the State Department during the Israeli attack shows that the Obama administration refused to condemn Israeli attacks on civilian targets in the first three weeks of the war.
U.S. officials were well aware of Israel’s history of rejecting any distinction between military and civilian targets in previous wars in Lebanon and Gaza.
During the 2006 Israeli War in Lebanon, IDF spokesman Jacob Dalal had told the Associated Press that eliminating Hezbollah as a terrorist institution required hitting all Hezbollah institutions, including “grassroots institutions that breed more followers”.
And during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in December 2008 and January 2009, the IDF had shelled a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 42 civilians. The IDF’s justification had been that it was responding to mortar fire from the building, but officials of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) who ran the school had denied that claim.
Given that history, Obama administration policy makers knew that Israel would certainly resort to similar targeting in its Gaza operation unless it believed it would suffer serious consequences for doing so. But the administration’s public stance in daily briefings in the early days of the war suggested little or no concern about Israeli violations of the laws of war.
On July 10, two days after the operation began, State Department spokesperson Jan Psaki was asked in the daily briefing whether the administration was trying to stop the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, as well as the firing of rockets by Hamas.
Psaki’s answer was to recite an Israeli talking point. “There’s a difference,” she said, “between Hamas, a terrorist organisation that’s indiscriminately attacking innocent civilians…in Israel, and the right of Israel to respond and protect their own civilians.”
After four children playing on a beach were killed as journalists watched on July 16, Psaki was asked whether the administration believed Israel was violating the international laws of war. She responded that she was unaware of any discussion of that question.
Psaki said that “tragic event makes clear that Israel must take every possible step to meet its standards for protecting civilians from being killed. We will continue to underscore that point to Israel; the Secretary [of State John Kerry] has made that point directly as well.”
The IDF shelled Al-Wafa Rehabilitation and Geriatric Hospital on July 17, claiming it was a response to launches of rockets 100 metres from the hospital. Psaki was asked the next day whether her failure to warn the Israelis publicly against bombing the hospital had “made any difference”.
She said, “We’re urging all parties to respect the civilian nature of schools and medical facilities….” But she refused to speculate about “what would’ve happened or wouldn’t have happened” had she issued an explicit warning,
On June 16, two days before the ground offensive began, the IDF began dropping leaflets warning the entire populations of the Zeitoun and Shujaiyyeh neighbourhoods to evacuate. It was a clear indication they were to be heavily bombed. IDF bombing and shelling leveled entire blocks of Shujaiyyeh July 20 and 21, citing rockets fired from that neighbourhood.
Kerry was recorded commenting to an aide on an open microphone July 20 that it was a “hell of a pinpoint operation”, revealing the administration’s private view. But instead of warning that the Israeli targeting policy was unacceptable, Kerry declared in a CNN interview that Israel was “under siege from a terrorist organisation”, implying the right to do whatever it believed necessary.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said on July 21 that Kerry had “encouraged” the Israelis to “take steps to prevent civilian casualties”, but she refused to be more specific.
On July 23, Al Wafa hospital was hit by an Israeli airstrike, forcing the staff to evacuate it. The IDF now charged that it had been used as a “command centre and rocket launching site”.
Joe Catron, an American who had been staying at the hospital as part of an international “human shield” to prevent attacks on it, denied that claim, saying he would have heard any rocket launched close to the hospital.
On the same day, three missiles hit a park next to the Al Shifa hospital, killing 10 and wounding 46. The IDF blamed the explosions on Hamas rockets that had fallen short. The idea that three Hamas rockets had fallen short within such short distances from one another, however, was hardly a credible explanation.
The IDF also appeared to target facilities run by the UNRWA. On July 23 and 24, Israeli tank shells hit Palestinian refugees at two different school compounds designated as U.N. shelters, despite intensive communications by U.N. officials to IDF asking to spare them.
An attack on a U.N. refugee shelter at Beit Hanoun elementary school July 24 killed 15 civilians and wounded more than 200. The IDF again claimed a Hamas rocket had fallen short. But it also claimed Hamas fighters had fired on Israeli troops from the compound, then later retreated from the claim.
At the July 24 briefing, Harf read a statement deploring the Beit Hanoun strike and the “rising death toll in Gaza” and said that a UNRWA facility “is not a legitimate target”.
Harf said Israel “could do a bit more” to show restraint. But when a reporter asked if the United States was “willing to take any kind of action” if Israel did not respond to U.S. advice, Harf said the U.S. focus was “getting a ceasefire”, implying that it was not prepared to impose any consequences on Israel for refusing to change its military tactics in Gaza.
On July 25, a reporter at the daily briefing observed that the hospital and schools had been targeted despite reports confirming that there had been no militants or rockets in them.
But Harf refused to accept that characterisation of the situation and repeated the Israeli line that Hamas had used U.N. facilities to “hide rockets”. She said she could not confirm whether there were rockets in “the specific school that was hit”.
The IDF hit another UNRWA school sheltering refugees at Jabaliya refugee camp July 30, killing 10 and wounding more than 100. The IDF acknowledged it had fired several tank shells at the school, claiming again that mortar shells had been fired from there.
That was too much for the Obama administration. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the attack “totally unacceptable and totally indefensible” and even made it clear that there was little doubt that Israel was responsible.
Even then, however, the administration merely repeated its call for Israel to “do more to live up to the high standards that they have set for themselves”, as Earnest put it.
On August 3, the IDF struck yet another refugee facility at the Rafah Boys Prep School A, killing 12 refugees and wounding 27. The IDF said it had been targeting three “terrorists” riding a motorcycle who had passed near the school.
“The suspicion that militants operated nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians,” said Psaki.
But that criticism of Israeli attacks was far too restrained and too late. The IDF had already carried out what appear to have been massive violations of the laws of war.
Alamuddin turns down UN Gaza war crimes role
Al-Akhbar | August 12, 2014
Amal Alamuddin, a British-Lebanese lawyer engaged to Hollywood actor George Clooney, announced on Monday that she would not serve on a UN investigation into human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza.
“I am honored to have received the offer, but given existing commitments — including eight ongoing cases — unfortunately could not accept this role,” she said in a statement.
It was not clear who would replace Alamuddin on the panel.
Israel’s assault on Gaza became an increasingly sensitive topic among celebrities last month. Rihanna’s #FreePalestine tweet garnered 7,000 retweets before it was deleted eight minutes later. The singer later claimed it was an “accident.”
Clooney, an American actor who has previously spoken out against genocide, has remained silent over the month-long assault on Gaza, which killed at least 1,940 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
Hollywood power couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz have faced serious backlash over an open letter they signed last month condemning Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. An article in the British daily The Independent suggested several film executives were unhappy with the couple.
William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, will head the panel. Doudou Diene, a Senegalese veteran UN human rights expert, will also serve.
Wikileaks revealed on Friday that UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon secretly collaborated with Israel and the United States to undermine a UN investigation into Israel’s 2008-2009 assault on Gaza that killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians.
Among other ethical breaches, Ban apparently worked with an Israeli delegation to draft the text of the report’s cover letter.
Navi Pillay, the top UN human rights official, said on July 31 she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its assault on Gaza, and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes.
Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, Gaza’s only power plant and UN premises in violation of the Geneva Conventions, said Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge.
Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri in Gaza said “Hamas welcomes the decision to form an investigation committee into the war crimes committed by the occupation against Gaza and it urges that it begin work as soon as possible.”
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators resumed indirect talks mediated by Egypt on Monday on ending the war, Egypt’s state news agency said, after a new 72-hour truce appeared to be holding.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
SOS: Hospital Ships Needed to Save Gaza’s Children
By Franklin Lamb | Al-Manar | August 12, 2014
The statistics are just beginning to be analyzed—by UN agencies and a myriad of NGO’s whose mandates include salvaging young lives from the nearly incalculable ravages of the five-week (and counting) Zionist aggression upon Gaza. It is of course the third aggression in six years against the 1.8 million Palestinians, sardine-canned into what is increasingly referred to as history’s largest open air prison, but the outcome this time is looking particularly cruel and grim.
As the Netanyahu regime announced (on 8/10/14) that its attacks on Gaza would continue, increasing numbers of obscene calls—for Israel to “finish the job” and “go all the way” etc.—are floating in the Zionist state’s malodorous public echo-chamber, emanating from such figures as the Knesset’s deputy speaker, who advocates driving Palestinians into the Sinai desert and resettling Gaza with Jews.
In Khuza’a “the Israeli military had trapped at least 32 people in a home and then prevented the Red Cross from evacuating them before shelling the area,” reported Lebanese-American journalist Roqayah Chamseddine. Hoping for safe haven, the people in the house sought refuge in the basement of a neighbor’s home, where they found additional families already inside.
“By that point we were 120 people, 10 men and the rest women and children,” Kamel al-Najjar recalled for Human Rights Watch.
After dawn and without warning (no polite leaflets or knocks on the roof apparently), Israel struck the house, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
The toll of the war on Gaza’s children has been “catastrophic,” according to UN agencies. At least 450 have been killed, and those not having their physical bodies buried have found their innocence entombed. It is another casualty in the war—a war against all things daring to live and resist in Gaza. According to Chamseddine:child slaughtering:
“Israel has forced the children of Gaza to lay flowers atop headstones, and watch helplessly as coffins that are filled with not only their most beloved family members, teachers, neighbors, and friends but also their most treasured memories, lullabies, lessons learned and those that will never come, descend into the belly of the earth. Their lips will memorize and form prayers for the dead and the stars that defied the siege that flickered freely high above them will be snatched from their skies,”
Increasingly it is being heard from Gazans that “Israel has stolen everything beautiful in our lives,” and Israel’s barbarity confirms this sentiment.
Middle East analysts point out that it is difficult to recall a time in modern history when there has been so much sustained slaughter of this region’s civilian population, with more than two-thirds of the victims being women and children. For the past year, UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations have lamented a simple reality—that there is not a sufficient level of international aid to save lives and treat those in need of emergency and longer term medical care.
But now something is changing.
The horrors we have just witnessed, especially with respect to traumas inflicted on children, is producing, as should be the case, a major and rapidly growing international focus on salvaging young lives. Descriptions and evaluations of the consequences of Gaza wars are being published and urgently discussed. Some analysts and government officials, including Pentagon planners, are calling for a ‘Medical Marshall Plan,’ to save Gaza’s children. One proposed first step is the dispatching of a humanitarian support group of hospital ships that would sail to Gaza without further delay.
What can and must be done, by the United States and other countries with the naval and medical capacity to do so, is to organize a Hospital Ship flotilla to break the siege of Gaza, to anchor offshore, and to begin caring for the medical needs of all, with a special focus on children and their psychological well-being. Call it a Mercy Mission. Initially it could include the following countries—all well known for their hospital ships with up-and-running medical staffs: the USA, UK, France, China, Russia, Spain, Argentina, and Australia. Within this group of nations are ships with hundreds of patient beds and fully stocked pharmacies. Moreover, it is a group not likely to be interfered with by those who have imposed the inhumane blockade of Gaza (and of course it even includes some of their collaborators in the region), but perhaps most importantly, every country on the list possesses one or more hospital ships that are fully staffed and available to act.
France is reportedly ready to join such an effort and is also working on a related crisis—in Iraq, where it plans delivery of first aid equipment “in the coming hours,” according to the office of Francois Hollande. The French president has “reaffirmed the will of France to stand by the side of civilian victims of continued attacks” in Iraq, and his spokesmen said that “France will do the same thing for Gaza.”
“The European Union is called upon to also take necessary measures with great urgency to respond to immediate humanitarian needs,” the spokesman added.
Hundreds of EU citizens, with their specialized skills in fields of pediatric medicine and child psychology, are reportedly ready to help the children of Gaza. Two fully stocked and staffed American medical ships, the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort, could contribute greatly to the effort. Each ship’s hospital is a full floating medical treatment facility, containing 12 fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed patient capacity, digital radiological services, medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, and intensive care ward; each also has a dental clinic with full services, CT scanner, and two oxygen-producing plants.
Helicopter landing decks are available as well, for patient transports, and the ships also have side ports that could take on patients from Gaza fishing boats and other crafts at sea. In addition to these two mammoth-sized medical vessels, dozens of other US Navy ships also have hospitals on board. For example, in one year, the medical department of the USS George Washington handled over 15,000 out-patient visits, drew almost 27,000 lab samples, filled almost 10,000 prescriptions, took about 2,300 x-rays, and performed 65 surgical operations—and nearly 100 other US ships are capable of doing the same.
Just one example with respect to capacity is illustrative. In April of this year, the USNS Comfort—a converted 70,000-ton tanker—sailed from Norfolk, Virginia carrying 900 doctors, nurses, and engineers, including staff from the U.S. military, civilian agencies, non-government charities, and even foreign navies. The ship is designed to be deployed quickly for four month intensive full service medical assistance; yet similar capacities obtain in certain other US ships and in foreign navies as well. All of these resources must be put to immediate use to save Gaza’s children.
Looking at the longer term, the Pentagon should seriously consider ordering a sufficient number of catamaran transports and shallow-draft littoral ships to fill out the flotilla, vessels capable of delivering aid by sea via the relatively shallow Gaza coastline. The success of breaking the siege of Gaza will likely give impetus to a UN Security Council decision to construct a seaport for Gaza, perhaps with a shipping lane to Cyprus.
Similarly, the UK hospital ship, RFA Argus, designated as a ‘Primary Casualty Receiving Ship,’ is moored in Falmouth, England, and is also uniquely designed for this type of humanitarian crisis; and it, too, is reportedly ready to sail once given the green light by Downing Street.
Five Hospital ships are urgently needed along Gaza’s shoreline at the following locations: opposite Jabaliya and North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, as shown in the map below:
Although attacking a hospital ship is clearly a war crime, the Israeli pattern of targeting medical facilities in Gaza is well known, and threats from the settler movement and the right wing Likud Party to “sink any ship that enters Gaza waters if judged to be aiding the terrorists” must be taken seriously. Yet one imagines the occupation regime would have to think carefully about sinking another US Navy vessel as it did in 1967 with the repeated bombing of the USS Liberty.
Instead of recycling raw combat power, the White House can best meet the demands of a war-weary American public through an emphasis on missions such as those the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are designed for. Poll after US public opinion poll reveal that Americans believe their humanitarian values are best reflected when our navy is tailored for delivering humanitarian aid to places like Gaza, and not by delivering munitions to occupying colonial regimes.
Egypt imposes incapacitating conditions on relief convoys delivering aid to Gaza
MEMO | August 11, 2014
An official Egyptian document has revealed that Egyptian authorities are imposing incapacitating conditions on relief convoys seeking to deliver medical and food aid to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.
The document addressed the “regulatory rules for the entry of aid convoys to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing at this stage.”
The document, which was handed by the Egyptian authorities to the Arab branches of the Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations during their latest meeting in Jordan, stated that the Egyptian authorities have obliged relief organisations seeking to deliver aid to Gaza to submit a request to Egypt through the foreign ministries of the countries in which they operate. The request should include a list of the aid items that the organisations plan to take into Gaza through Rafah.
Relief agencies must then wait for the approval of the Egyptian foreign ministry before they start sending aid to Gaza.
The document specified that aid items must arrive at either the Ismailiya Airport or at Port Said. Aid agencies are required to pay the cost of unloading and shipping the food and medical aid items in any of the two locations.
Relief agencies are banned from providing construction material, gas cylinders, fuel, or funds into Gaza, according to the document, which also notified the Red Cross and Red Crescent that only a limited number of persons will be allowed to accompany the aid items into Gaza.
The document further stressed that journalists who seek to cross to Gaza must provide their names and passport information to the Egyptian authorities beforehand, and they must obtain approval from their countries’ foreign ministries or Cairo embassies. However, Egypt reserves the right to refuse people entry into Gaza through the Rafah crossing without specifying the reasons for this decision.
With regards medical teams, the document noted that doctors are required to submit requests to their countries’ foreign ministries and coordinate with the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah before they can obtain the Egyptian authorities’ approval to enter Gaza.
The head of the Algerian Red Crescent Saida Benhabyles, who is also a former minister, said in a press conference held in the Algerian capital that the Egyptian authorities want to put the logo of the Egyptian Red Crescent along with the logo of any aid or relief agency delivering aid into Gaza.
Benhabyles announced that, due to the Egyptian conditions, the Algerian Red Crescent had to cancel a donation campaign that had aimed to deliver blood to Gaza.
Jewish Lobby got journalist fired over a ‘Gaza Cartoon’
Rehmat’s World | August 7, 2014
![remote+control+bombing+of+Gaza[1]](https://rehmat1.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/remotecontrolbombingofgaza1.jpg)
Mike Carlton, 68, Australia’s veteran journalist and author, has resigned after his employer Sydney Morning Herald suspended him under pressure from country’s powerful Jewish Lobby.
Australian Jewish groups had slammed the newspaper over Carlton’s July 26 column in which he accused the Zionist entity of “waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population”. The column was accompanied by a cartoon (shown above), which was widely condemned as “anti-Jew” by leaders of country’s organized Jewry which also threatened to take legal action against the newspaper under country’s “Hate Law”.
Initially, the newspaper defended the cartoon, explaining that Le Lievre’s drawing was inspired by “news photographs of Israeli Jews seated in chairs and lounges, observing the Israeli shelling of Gaza.”
But then, as expected, the Jewish Lobby invoked the “Six Million Died” smoking gun to demonize the newspaper. The Australian Jewish News wrote: “Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ on Israel’s part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by ‘a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.’ “This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.”
If I were Carlton, I would have responded: “If the shoes fit, wear them.”
However, in order to avoid further backlash from the Jewish community and the pro-Israel Tony Abbott government, on August 3, Herald published an editorial saying it “unreservedly apologizes” for any hurt caused to the Jewish community. The paper also removed the cartoon based on facts from its website. Dr. Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia welcomed paper’s apology and departure of anti-Semite Mike Carlton.
The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the 30% Australian media which is not owned by the Crypto-Jew billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd..
On October 13, 2010 America’s highest paid Israeli lobbyist Abraham Foxman (nearly $700,000 per year) awarded Murdoch his organization’s (ADL) highest award for looking after Israeli interests through his media empire.
Former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, and former foreign minister, Robert John Carr have claimed that country’s organized Jewry runs Australia.
Israeli Genocide and its Willing Accomplices
By James Petras | The Peoples Voice | August 11, 2014
Introduction
Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.
The purpose of this essay is 4-fold: 1. To identify the nature of the crime – the genocidal character of the armed assault and the sequence leading up to it; 2. To identify the direct perpetrators of the war crimes and their domestic and international accomplices; 3. To explain the ties binding leaders, policymakers, propagandists, accomplices and followers, including their ideologies, material interests and organizational structure which make these crimes not only possible, but met so far with impunity and 4. To identify the larger imperial interests with which Israel allies with the US, and in pursuit of which, the Gaza assault is a horrifying dress rehearsal.
The ‘Morality’ of Prison Guards in a Genocidal State
Policymakers in the genocidal state run a highly militarized society where citizens and soldiers, criminals and professionals, torturers and sociopaths can and do coexist within the same person. Cold rationality is harnessed to mass murder, technology to massive devastation, language to euphemisms and executioners parade themselves as victims (and vice versa). Moral precepts become debased and supplanted by the ethics of mass murder. Moralists, rabbis and ethical philosophers all join to bless the bombs dropped on hospitals and schools and homes and all living things – even the dead and buried do not rest in peace when the cemeteries are bombed.
Rulers, imbued with a genocidal vision, see only military objectives – an oppressed people do not exist – all human existence and institutions in the target areas are to be demolished. The destruction of human life, of Palestinian daily existence has become the ultimate goal of this obscene operation.
The practical decision to exterminate Palestinians was conscious, planned and pursued with implacable resolve at the very top and carried out with savage enthusiasm by Israel’s ‘citizen army’.
The unfolding of this deadly plan began with what appeared a ‘generous’ peace offer. In 2004, Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon ‘granted’ the Palestinians self-government in Gaza and in August 2005 withdrew a few thousand Jewish settlers and their Israeli ground troops. The consequence of this benevolence: Over 1.4 million Palestinians were to be locked and crowded into the most densely packed open air prison in the world: the largest ghetto in history. This was a sickening reminder of the Nazi roundup of Polish Jews herding them into the Warsaw ghetto . . . where they too were granted ‘self-government’. Once the Jewish settlers were removed (and paid up to $300,000 per family ‘compensation’), Israel’s military closed all of Gaza’s entrances and exits. Land, sea and airspace were blockaded and total control imposed on the entrance of food, medicine, school books and the exit of Palestinians for medical treatment, university studies, normal travel and commerce of any kind. This mirrored the Nazi policy toward those trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. Palestinian farmers were shot tending their fields, acts of brutality reminiscent of the Nazi starvation blockade of Leningrad… And the world was appalled!
Gaza and the Ghetto were first set up to be open-air prison camps . . . temporary measures to mask the real plans. Gaza’s young population had grown to over 1.8 million entrapped human beings by 2014. Obviously, if the Gazans could not travel, farm, fish and trade by normal means, they would dig tunnels for supplies and fight against their relegation to the status of caged animals by the Israeli state. The next steps after the successful enclosure would be systematic and pre-meditated: the Zionists, like the Nazis, launched total war against the inevitable acts of resistance by the oppressed. They sent planes, tanks, missiles and bombs to level populated areas, especially neighborhoods where young fighters rose up to resist this unendurable cruelty. The heroic young fighters of Gaza, like their Warsaw predecessors, resisted their totalitarian enemies time and again. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Israeli Jews cheered the devastation while claiming to be the victims and young overseas Jews volunteered to join the IDF in its slaughter of the Palestinians, just as the German population celebrated, along with the overseas German Bund, their leaders’ totalitarian crimes. Their responses were almost identical although in different times and places: Chosen People and Aryans of the world have united against what they both termed ‘terrorists’ claiming their tunnels will become their graves!
In line with this super race mythology, Israel’s killing machine is really most effective at murdering unarmed civilians– invalids who cannot run, doctors who stay to care for the wounded and mothers and children in their flimsy shelters– and rather pathetic when it confronts face to face determined armed resistance fighters. As of 8/6/14 the Israeli Air Force, Navy and artillery slaughtered 1,594 Palestinian civilians –via long distance high tech warfare -compared to 3 civilians in Israel (one Bedouin, one Thai farm worker and an Israeli Jew), a mind-boggling ratio of over 1,500 Palestinian civilians to one of the ‘Chosen’. But when it came to ‘ground fighting’, 64 Israeli soldiers were killed compared to 281 Palestinian partisans, a 4.4 to 1 ratio. Despite all the Israeli air cover support and high tech protective gear, the Israelis took heavy military casualties when their invasion came down to a more level fighting field where poorly equipped partisans are willing to die for their homes and liberation.
The War Criminals: Who are They and What are their Crimes
Clearly the commanding officers of the Israeli armed forces, the self-styled Israel Defense Forces, who are responsible for the systematic land, aerial and maritime attacks on civilians, hospitals, schools, refugee sanctuaries are first in line for the war crimes docket. They should be joined by Israeli military strategists and policy makers who systematically and criminally targeted homes, neighborhoods, water purification and sewage plants, electrical grids and power plants in a deliberate planned effort to destroy any possibility of normal daily existence for almost 2 million Palestinians: They have committed grave Crimes against Humanity, according to the Geneva Conventions and legal standards established at Nuremburg. There is eye-witness testimony and documentation showing middle and lower rank soldiers engaged in wanton shootings of school children, shoppers and mothers with babies fleeing combat zones. War crimes prosecutions cannot be confined merely to a few dozen senior officers – these crimes were committed at all level of the IDF.
Political leaders and policymakers, starting with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet, leading Party and Knesset members, who were the prime movers in launching the blitz against Gaza and justified the massive civilian killings, clearly should be at the center of any International War Crimes Tribunal.
But what about the Israeli public, the great mass of Israeli Jews, who view themselves as morally above world public opinion despite a near-universal revulsion over Israel’s crimes? More than 90% of Israeli Jews gave unstinting support to the ongoing blood bath, knowing, indeed cheering daily from grandstands erected on hills overlooking Gaza, the criminal consequences of their support – they also are an essential part of this criminal enterprise. They celebrated the carnage and they violently attacked the few Israelis who openly questioned this ‘war’. Israelis have no claim to ‘innocent ignorance’; they cannot call this a “tragic conflict between two peoples”. No Israeli can absolve himself by claiming ignorance of the nature of the crimes committed in their name – nor do they want to claim ignorance! The majority of informed Israeli Jews demanded this war from the beginning, many joining racist marches with banners and chants demanding ‘Death to Arabs’! They wear their endorsement of the Gaza holocaust as a badge of honor. Ninety percent of the Jewish citizens in Israel rejected any humanitarian ceasefire: Newspaper columnists and the vast majority of letter writers in the daily press argued openly for extermination! Self-declared war criminals are feted as Israeli heroes by their overseas brethren who hasten to endorse or even join the slaughter. Gidon Levy, Haaretz’s lonely dissident journalist, is spat upon in all the fashionable cafes and has to take his coffee at home now.
What can be said about the ‘moralists’, the famous chief rabbis, who have no qualms in piously urging on the mass slaughter: is there a High Court of Religious Authority to hold these “holy men” accountable for their incitement of war crimes? What about the worldwide network of international Zionist organizations who secure billions of dollars of the murderous arms shipments from the corrupt and craven US Congress and Executive? Are they not accomplices to genocide before and after the fact?
However, it is a blatant, conscious lie and fabrication to claim, like some phony critics on the ‘Left’, that ‘America shares responsibility’ for the Israel’s crimes against Gaza. Who asked the American people to endorse this slaughter? When did the American people organize a “lobby” to buy Congressional votes? Did the American people organize multi-million dollar fundraisers at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria where Republican and Democratic elected leaders pledged to give an additional $225 million dollars in missiles and tanks to Israel, to resupply its arsenal used up in razing thousands of homes and obliterating entire families in Gaza? Any serious researcher, who has looked at American domestic politics, knows that the Presidents of the 52 Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations are complicit in Israel’s terror bombings of Gaza. And polls show that a majority of young Americans sympathize with the rights of the Palestinians…
Is there any clause in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal proceedings which can bring charges against the overseas accomplices to war crimes? What about prominent leftist academics and ‘progressive’ journalists who cover-up for the overseas accomplices by falsely accusing “America” (and implying the American people) in this slaughter?
The Ties that Bind
We have identified a chain linking Israel’s political elite, military command and the mass of the Israeli public directly to war crimes and genocide with the active material complicity of overseas Zionist organizations. They act as one cohesive force plunging forward into the blood and gore of total war against the Palestinians – the original inhabitants and rightful owners of what is now called ‘Israel’.
The question arises: What unites them in this horrible undertaking? What moral blindness so afflicts them that they ignore the bookshelves cluttered with the writings and humanist teachings of Spinoza, Kant, Babel, or Buber? Are these tribal loyalties derived from Old Testament tales of vengeance and infanticide? Are these expressions of an ethno-religious fanaticism linked to the quest for a regional empire and plunder?
Racist ideology and its virulent expression both from high office and the “Jewish Street” are wide-spread and open. Degrading Palestinians, while claiming to be a superior race above the laws of the rest of the world, serves to justify all crimes against the people of Gaza. Near and far, this expression of “collective Jewish identity and solidarity”, based on ethnic-religious superiority always threatened by hostile, inferior ‘native’ people, accounts for the unflinching support by top Hollywood moguls, Ivy League professors, French intellectuals, British peers and prominent investment Wall Street bankers.
Ideological affinities and ethno-religious loyalties aside, many Israeli Jews also have a major, material stake in robbing and expelling the people of Palestine: Seized Palestinian lands result in new cheap subsidized housing, swimming pools for Jews only, developments on lands where olive groves once flourished and extended families had lived and died. Middle and working class Jews obtain free housing; real estate speculators seize choice ocean front properties for luxury condos and tourist destinations. Building contractors secure lucrative construction contracts from the state. Pillage forms an important material basis for Israel’s high standard of living, many times higher than that of Palestinians, much higher that that of Israel’s non-Jewish population and higher even than the Americans who have been forced to subsidize the ‘Jewish State’ for almost 50 years.
Equally important, Israel’s assault on Gaza serves as a testing ground for its weapons of mass destruction and its anti-missile Dome. In this regard, the slaughter in Gaza serves as a dress rehearsal (and a graphic warning) for new wars across the region in association with the US and its clients. NSA analyst Edward Snowden’s latest documents reveal that Israel works in tandem with the US throughout North Africa, the Middle East, The Persian Gulf, South Asia and Islamic countries in choosing targets and making war plans… Greater Israel is no longer the crackpot dream of Jewish visionaries: it is underway and its bloody beginnings in Gaza foreshadow bigger and bloodier wars against humanity in the future.
Conclusion
Israel’s total war against Gaza has provoked condemnation from millions of people around the world, greater outrage at their crimes against humanity, and calls for an international war crimes tribunal. If such a tribunal were to be convoked, the question arises of how wide the net should be cast – where to draw the line between leaders, soldiers, masses and complicit overseas supporters, all implicated to one degree or another? How many ‘willing accomplices’ to mass murder should be investigated and tried?
The rising horror and indignation has isolated Israel from the greater majority of mankind, including from thousands of Jews – but it has hardened its leaders and aroused its powerful core of influential supporters, especially in the US.
Bitter-enders, in their luxurious suites, are on the counter-offensive. Leading Hollywood producers denounce the morally outraged actors who have dared to criticize Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, labeling them ‘anti-Semites’ and threatening them with a lifetime of blacklists from any further work in ‘film or on stage’. Powerful Zionist organizations, not only secure US opposition to any UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli war crimes, but unanimous (100%) Congressional and White House approval and an ‘emergency allocation’ of over $250 million tax-payer dollars’ to re-supply Israel with the bombs and missiles it had dropped on the people of Gaza. The hardliners, who speak for the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, have not relented in their support for Israel’s carnage even in the face of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marching around the world to support the rights of the people of Palestine. The hardliners openly flaunt their blind support for Israel’s war crimes. These fanatics are convinced that every critic of Israel’s war crimes, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or atheist, is an anti-Semite, a pervert or terrorist to be censored or crushed! Inside the Zionist bunker there is an iron-fisted reinforcement of loyalty to Israel, while outside, there is the smooth outpouring of propaganda which minimize Israel’s war crimes and vehement denials of overseas complicity with genocide.
Epilogue: A Dialogue between Zionists
The Right Zionist says to the Left, “Crimes at the service of Greater Israel are virtues.” The Left replies “There are crimes but America is ultimately responsible”.
A shrewd old Zionist observer comments with approval: “It’s our division of labor: the Right Zionists defend Israel and the Left Zionists confuse its critics.”
-###-
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies.
Another Shameful ‘NYT’ Casualty Count
By Greg Mitchell | Pressing Issues | August 8, 2014
Late Friday: Revised version of story now correctly states that “most” of the casualties in Gaza have been civilians, not “many.” Not sure if my widely linked and tweeted complaint (below) had any effect, but hope it did.
On the other hand, in another typical example that suggests the Times, perhaps, bowing to a complaint from IDF: A headline on another Rudoren story that once read: “A Boy At Play in Gaza, an Israeli Missile, a Mourning Family” has been changed to “A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Return to Warfare, a Family in Mourning.” It’s all the more odd because, in a rarity in a Rudoren story, she clearly says that an Israeli drone fired the missile. Then again, she’s in Gaza now. Perhaps her usual IDF spokesman source couldn’t reach her to insist on the usual, “Israel denies… might be Hamas rocket… looking into it….” Note: She does severely under-count the death toll of children, which the UN places at 440 tonight, while Rudoren simply has it at “more than 300.”
Earlier: Along with many others, we’ve critiqued Jodi Rudoren’s major piece for the NYT the other day which reflected Israel’s spin on a supposedly lower civilian body count in Gaza. At least then, Rudoren still admitted a majority of the dead were likely civilians (even if she rejected UN and other counts that put that percentage at 70 to 82% or more).
But in today’s piece, on the end of the ceasefire, written with the other half of the Times’ less-than-dynamic duo, Isabel Kershner, they actually write this: “Since the fighting began on July 8, more than 1,880 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, and 67 have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.” Can you dig it? “Many” of them civilians, which could mean, oh, 100 or so, not the (even in Rudoren’s recent count) 1000 or more. Perhaps the IDF now claims less than half are civilians and Rudoren, with steno pad out, has relayed that without a journalistic filter.
And then then for the Israelis, “mostly soldiers”–when the tally is actually 64 soldiers and 3 civilians. Do the Times’ editors have no shame?
UN tonight updates: about 1,400 of 1,600 dead IDed in Gaza are civilians, with another 300 fighters or not yet IDed. That sure is “many” civilians.
As we noted earlier, the IDF (and needless to say, Rudoren’s) count is based on statistics showing that a large number of young males have died in the shelling. The only explanation? They were militants aiding Hamas and so were somehow precisely targeted as fair game by the Israelis. This, of course, ignores the reality captured by other reporters and videos: the majority of aid workers, medics, ambulance drivers, and others out in the streets trying to help people, dig out the rubble, or go for food and water are… young males. Who often then fall victim to new air strikes. I guess they also all double as Hamas rocketeers.
Featured Video
Iran Walks Out On Peace Deal Due To Trump’s Threats
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
As Hillary Clinton kisses up to Henry Kissinger, RT looks at 4 of his most heinous acts
RT | September 3, 2016
… While Clinton retains the ultimate warmongering seal, RT examines some of Kissinger’s most memorable acts… Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- IRAN WALKS OUT ON PEACE DEAL DUE TO TRUMP’S THREATS – w/ Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi
- Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Gets Unanimous Thumbs-Up Despite Risks, Low Efficacy
- UK Speech Regulator’s Telegram Questions Point Toward Private Chats
- Cuban FM blasts Rubio for ‘chronically lying’ about US fuel blockade
- Al-Jazeera demands punishment for Israeli officials following latest assassination of cameraman
- Iran opens hundreds of legal cases over US, Israeli aggression: Prosecutor general
- Iran delegation protests Trump’s threat at Switzerland talks, weighs ‘proper’ response: Source
- Terms of US capitulation to Iran presage new era for the region
- Strategic Oil Reserve Nears Collapse… US Must Choose: Guns or Butter
- The Story the Media — and the Government — Don’t Want You to Hear
- If Americans Knew
- JNS Policy Summit to kick off in Israel
- Fatalities From Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted
- ‘Reproductive genocide’ in Gaza; death toll in Lebanon tops 4,000 (during a ceasefire) – Daily Update
- Israelis Invaded Lebanon And Then Cried Victim When Their Soldiers Got Killed
- FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches
- Why US presidents from both parties end up cursing Benjamin Netanyahu
- Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
- Deaths in Gaza undercounted, possibly by 100s of thousands; “Psychopath” Ben-Gvir talks trash – Daily Update
- UNICEF: “Trauma is woven into the very fabric of childhood in Gaza”
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- No Tricks Zone
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
Aletho News 