Gaza News From Around the Net

*Link to complete coverage of Gaza Massacre on MM*

As part of our duty to try to at the least stay informed on some of what is happening, I made this post to just highlight some news stories around the internet. Please feel free to add more current news in the comments section.

Separating the Truth from the Hype

The invasion was mapped out months ago, right down to the bullet points that were passed out to friends in the media. Nothing was left to chance. That said, the public relations campaign was on full display over the weekend when Israeli ground troops and armored divisions swept into Gaza unopposed. CNN had a coterie of ardent Zionists on hand to justify the invasion in a carefully scripted analysis of developments.
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The media has worked in concert with the IDF throughout, spinning a rationale from whole cloth and cheerleading from every available soapbox. But recent polls show that the public has remained skeptical. Anti-Israel protests have sprung up in capitals across the world, and support for Israel is at its nadir. . Many people are simply shocked to see the most advanced, technological weaponry in the world being used in densely populated areas where collateral damage is bound to be heavy. It just makes Israel look like a bully while the media looks like an enabler. So far, the war has been a public relations catastrophe. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed and 2,400 wounded in a debacle of Biblical proportions. Every day, new photographs circulate on the internet showing the carnage produced by the steady bombardment. On Monday, the IDF killed two more Palestinian families, in two separate incidents. The mother, father and eight children were killed when their house was bombed by an American made F-16 early Monday morning.

Gaza is Still Waiting on Obama

 ”I think that no country would accept missiles landing on the heads of its citizens”, said Obama at the same visit in Sderot, looking, once again, only at the Israeli experience. “Israelis should not have to live in danger in their homes and schools.” No, Israelis should not, but neither should Palestinians. And one should remember, there is no parity here. Israel is an occupying power, whose policy and practices are channelled to protect this occupation and fight the various ways of resistance to it the Palestinians have practiced: from deporting non-violent Palestinian activists and jailing political leaders, to assassinating others some of who were moderate and others radical and possibly prospective suicide bombers. The Israeli vision for the Palestinian future is on display for all to see, built in cement and barbed wire of the so-called security wall around the Gaza Strip, around and through Jerusalem, and in the West Bank, with hundreds of thousands of settlements and an ongoing land confiscation and siege. Apparently, until the Palestinians will agree to this distorted vision, until they will agree to live in a fragmented political territory made of enclaves enclosed between high walls surrounded with check points and gates the keys of which are in the hands of Israel, Sderot and Gaza, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Nablus and Jenin will not be safe. Is this the future the new presidency will offer the Palestinians and the Israelis? Is this the change we should believe in?

**Correction, he's now officially “concerned”

Egypt Bars Doctors From Entering Gaza – I am speechless.

But wait.. Israel says it will allow a humanitarian corridor! Forgive me for this example, but that sounds akin to chopping off someone's legs and then gifting them a new pair of shoes to make up for it. No word yet on whether this corridor will stop Israel from targetting ambulances.

Israel's New War Ethic

Nor was I surprised that no mention was made of the fact that 80 percent of Gaza's inhabitants are unable to support themselves and are therefore dependent on humanitarian assistance–and this figure is increasing daily. Indeed, nothing was said about the severe food crisis in Gaza, which manifests itself in shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk and canned foods, or about the total lack of fuel for heating houses and buildings during these cold winter months, the absence of cooking gas, and the shortage of running water. The viewer has no way of knowing that the Palestinian health system is barely functioning or that some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza are now living without any electricity at all due to the damage caused by the air strikes.

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

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

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

Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza:

Israel is allegedly using white phosphorous gas, an illegal chemical weapon that burns to the bone. Dr. Mads Gilbert, a member of a Norwegian triage medical team working in Gaza, has documented Israel's use of Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), which cuts its victims to pieces and reportedly causes cancer in survivors. Gilbert, who has worked in several conflict zones, said the situation in Gaza is the worst he has ever seen. Two United Nations schools have been hit by airstrikes, killing at least 30 people. The New York Times reported on Monday that Gazan hospitals are full of civilians, not Hamas fighters.

The targeting of civilians violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel cannot distinguish between civilians and military targets, they are illegal. But Israel's air and ground attack in Gaza violates Geneva in four ways. First, it constitutes collective punishment of the entire population in Gaza for the acts of a few militants. Second, it targets civilians, as evidenced by the large numbers of civilian casualties. Third, it is a disproportionate response to the rockets fired into Israel. Fourth, an occupying power has an obligation to ensure food and medical supplies to the occupied population; Israel's blockade has created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ralph Nader – America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility in Gaza:

The deliberate suspension of your power to stop this terrorizing of 1.5 million people, mostly refugees, blockaded for months by air, sea and land in their tiny slice of land, is in cowardly contrast to the position taken by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. That year he single handedly stopped the British, French and Israeli aircraft attack against Egypt during the Suez Canal dispute.
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There are no rockets coming from the West Bank into Israel. Yet the Israeli government is still sending raiders into that essentially occupied territory, still further entrenching its colonial outposts, still taking water and land and increasing the checkpoints This is going on despite a most amenable West Bank leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whom you have met with at the White House and praised repeatedly. Is it all vague words and no real initiatives with you and your emissary Condoleezza Rice?

Consider the Realities of Gaza:

Not mentioned by Livni, though reported in the same newspaper on the same day, was an article by Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about.” Ravid discloses that Olmert had “instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” Interesting how propaganda precedes perception and negates reality.
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The world has been and is again being told how the people of Israel are victims of Hamas' rockets that “pour” or “shower” their villages. Let's consider the reality rather than the propaganda. Israel sets up Sderot as the suffering example of this terrorist action and provides tours for journalists and diplomats including Barak Obama. One step into Gaza and you will see real devastation, not remains of rockets that landed in fields or hit a building causing no deaths. Both Gaza and the West Bank speak vividly the results of military incursions, home demolitions, bulldozed farm land and fruit trees, and the most insidious icon of human brutality, the Wall of Fear erected by Ariel Sharon.
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What is terror if not the forced imprisonment of 1.5 million people locked behind gates and walls of steel while a state of the art military including land, air and sea forces pummel the people day and night in a merciless barrage of devastation and mayhem? What civilized state in this community of nations could believe that Israel “advances the interest of all” by such devastation of a helpless neighbor? What civilized state could support, what Livni, without blushing, calls the “forces of peace and co-existence” that determine the agenda in the mid-east? Consider the reality not the propaganda.  

Phoning Home to Gaza

Thinking of Mohamad's children I ask him how they are coping with sights and sounds of death.

Mohamad said his 6-year-old son Munir stands at the window and pretends to shoot down Israeli apaches and fighter jets that fly overhead. His two-year-old daughter Saja cries every time she hears renewed sounds of bombardment and runs to hide.

Venezuela Expels Israeli Ambassador (Why do they have more backbone than any of the Muslim countries?):

Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador to the country Tuesday and accused Israel of attempting to carry out “genocide” against the Palestinian people.

“In this tragic and indignant hour, the people of Venezuela manifest their unconditional solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people, share in the sadness that overcomes thousands of families through the loss of their loved ones, and extends to them a hand by affirming that the government of Venezuela will not rest until it sees those responsible for these criminal atrocities severely punished.”

 The Silent Partner:

The forced removal of a civilian population is the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing and a war crime.

In the past several days the U.S. government has made its support for Israel's murderous assault on Gaza crystal clear. The U.S. was informed before Israel launched its attacks (and was reportedly involved in months of Israeli planning), and now CNN reports (January 4, 2009) that the U.S. military was “aware in advance of Israel's plans to enter Gaza.”
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The U.S., together with Israel, has a number of intertwining objectives it hopes to achieve with this military assault in Gaza. It wants to even more forcefully assert and hammer down the dominance of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. As part of its so-called “war on terror,” the U.S. wants to further undermine and push back Islamic fundamentalist forces that pose a challenge to the U.S. empire. And it wants to brutally put down the struggle of the Palestinian people and break their will to resist.
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Yet there is absolutely nothing just or legitimate about Israel's targeting of Hamas.

For one, it was Israel that first broke the ceasefire in November and has refused to negotiate its renewal (while planning this attack for its own strategic objectives for over six months). Israel's war is aimed at strengthening its stranglehold on Palestine, by defeating Islamic fundamentalist forces like Hamas that pose an obstacle to unfettered US-Israeli control. As one senior military officer put it, Israel's goal was “making Hamas lose their will or lose their weapons.”
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The U.S. has also opposed calls for a cease fire, blaming Hamas for the fighting and demanding it stop firing rockets before Israel is required to halt its military assault-in effect blocking any diplomatic moves that could in any way impede Israel's attack.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is like the Nazis confining people in the Warsaw ghetto during World War 2 and then seizing on their resistance to declare, “we're are being attacked and anyone who says anything about the situation has to first agree on that-and before anything can be done to resolve the situation, the people in the Warsaw ghetto have to stop attacking us.”

Israel Broke the Cease-Fire First

The 'Democratic' State of Israel is censoring the media (but some are at least still fighting to get ground coverage):

Israel is deliberately targetting civilians (they even hit a school):

Aerosol Arabic Mural for Gaza

May Allah (swt) grant the Ummah victory, and grant the Palestinians victory over their evil oppressors.

Please, make dua for our brothers and sisters, it is the least we can do, and at the same time it is one of the most important things we can do.

*Urging Believers to Make Qunoot

“The believers in their affection, compassion and love for one another is like one single body. If a part of it suffers from pain, the whole body will suffer in pain.” (Muslim)