http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=GgMzheC0qBs

Killing Them Where They Hide: Israel Targets U.N. School Havens in Gaza

Killing Them Where They Hide: Israel Targets U.N. School Havens in Gaza
by C. L. Cook
If there was any doubt Israel's latest campaign of death and horror visited against the refugee populations of the Gaza ghetto was anything other than a war of extermination, this latest outrage should dispel finally that.

Thousands of Gazans have fled their homes, many at the telephoned advice of the Israeli Defense Forces themselves, this being Israel's version of humanitarian warfare - ringing up victims before bombing their homes. Where does a walled-in population run when their homes are being bombed and strafed and run over by tanks?

For many Gazans the answer was the United Nations-run schools. There they sought shelter, but if they believed there they would find haven the Israeli Defense Forces proved them wrong today, (though to be fair, Israel's IDF has a record of repeatedly targeting the U.N. in Palestine and Lebanon). The message Israel would send the Palestinians, if not the world, is; "We will kill you where you hide."

Below unsanctioned video from Al Jazeera's Mosaic program, found at Link TV here.

Gaza Time Line from Behind the Lines

Dear Friends,

Below are two articles on the horrific situation unfolding in Gaza. One is an eyewitness account carried in the British newspaper The Guardian. The Israeli government is keeping all journalists out of Gaza, so this article cuts through the wall of silence which surrounds the use of high tech weaponry against a largely defenseless, impoverished civilian population. The second article is a Norwegian report on the use of depleted uranium against the civilians of Gaza.

You can view these articles and more on the International Clearinghouse site: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Unconscionably, the Harper government is in full support of the U.S. blocking the call for a ceasefire at the U.N. Security Council. This amounts to a green light for the killing to continue.

Please circulate these articles and raise in any way you can, in the media and with the government and opposition MPs, the demand for an immediate ceasefire and the opening up of the border crossings into Gaza for access to urgently needed food, fuel, medicine and relief supplies for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.

It is only through public pressure from citizens across the globe that the bloodshed taking place can be stopped. Every voice counts.

Sincerely,

David Orchard

==================================================
DAVID ORCHARD CAMPAIGN FOR CANADA
National office: P.O. Box 1983, Saskatoon, S7K 3S5
Tel: (306) 664-8443 fax: (306) 244-3790
Toll free: 1-877-WE STAND (937-8263)
Toronto tel: (416) 778-7027 fax: (416) 778-6348
Vancouver tel: (604) 215-5580 fax: (604) 215-5523
davidorchard@sasktel.net OR ccaftnat@sasktel.net
website: http://www.davidorchard.com
==================================================


Do Israel pilots feel happy killing innocent women and children?

A Palestinian in Gaza chronicles life under Israeli bombardment

By Fida Qishta

The Guardian, January 04, 2009

Saturday 27 December

I go to visit friends in the Block J neighbourhood in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. While I am in a friend's house, my phone rings. It's a friend from Gaza City, calling for a chat. Suddenly I hear the sound of an explosion at his end. At the same time I hear an explosion in Rafah too. Just outside, somewhere near. My friend says: "Fida, they are attacking nearby." I say: "They are attacking here too."

I run into the street and everybody is running, children and grown-ups, all looking to see if their relatives and friends are alive. It is the time for children to go to school for the second shift, after the first shift finishes at 11.30am.Naama is aged 13. This is what she tells me: "I was sitting in the classroom with my friends when the attack happened. We were scared and we ran out of our school. Our headmaster asked us to go home. We saw fire everywhere."

People are looking at the remains of a police station. There are still bodies under the wreckage. It is scary because the attack isn't over, and from where we are we can see an Israeli airplane attacking another police station.

At the hospital, I speak to a wounded police officer, aged 39. "We were at the police station," he said. "The Israeli planes came and suddenly the building collapsed on us. I saw four dead bodies near me. They were in pieces. Outside there were more bodies. Everyone was shouting. I lost consciousness and then found myself in hospital."

Later I am at home with my family. We've just received a phone call on our land line. It's the Israeli defence ministry, and they say that any house that has guns or weapons will be targeted next, without warning and without any announcement. Just to let you know, we don't have any weapons in our house. If we die please defend my family.

Sunday 28 December

I wake up at 7 am after an Israeli F-16 attack. Our house is shaking. We all try to imagine what has happened, but we want to at least know where the attack was. It is so scary. We try to open the main door to our flat, but it's stuck shut after the attack. I have to climb out of the window to leave the house. I am shocked when I find out our neighbour's pharmacy was the target. It is just 60 metres from our house. They targeted a pharmacy. I still can't believe it.

Om Mohammed says: "They [Israeli forces] attack everywhere. They have gone crazy. The Gaza Strip is just going to die ... it's going to die. We were sleeping. Suddenly we heard a bomb. We woke up and we didn't know where to go. We couldn't see through the dust. We called to each other. We thought our house had been hit, not the street. What can I say? You saw it with your own eyes. What is our guilt? Are we terrorists? I don't carry a gun, neither does my girl.

"There's no medicine. No drinks, no water, no gas. We are suffering from hunger. They attack us. What does Israel want? Can it be worse than this? I don't think so. Would they accept this for themselves?

"Look at the children. What are they guilty of? They were sleeping at 7am. All the night they didn't sleep. This child was traumatised during the attack. Do they have rockets to attack with?"

Monday 29 December

The Israeli army is destroying the tunnels that go from Rafah into Egypt. For the past year and a half the Israeli government has intensified the economic blockade of Gaza by closing all the border crossings that allow aid and essential supplies to reach Palestinians in Gaza. This forced Palestinians to dig tunnels to Egypt to survive. >From our house we can hear the explosions and the house is shaking.At night we can't go out. No one goes out. If you go out you will risk your life. You don't know where the bombs will fall. My mother is so sad. She watches me writing my reports and says: "Fida, will it make any difference?"

Before the attack started we got some food aid from the EU. It's not much, but it's enough, we're not starving. But some of our friends have nothing. My mum warns me: "Fida, don't leave the house, it's too dangerous outside." Then she goes out to share our food with the neighbours who have nothing.

Wednesday 31 December

11.40 pm: a powerful air strike somewhere nearby. I was sleeping but the blast wakes me up. I see my mum looking from the window. She points at one of the refugee camps. "The attack was there," she said.

I went back to sleep – not because I don't care, but because I can't deal with it. If the attack was really aimed at one of the camps that means hundreds are going to be injured or even killed, the houses destroyed. I really can't imagine it.

Thursday 1 January

In the morning I get up early and call a friend who lives in Alshabora camp. He confirms the attack had hit there and I go to meet him.

It looks like an earthquake. Many houses have been damaged, and many people have been wounded. The people who had escaped injury were trying to clean the place up – they have nowhere else to go. But the biggest shock is when I ask about the target. It was the children's playground.

"We heard a strong explosion happen, but with all the smoke and the dust we couldn't see well, and the electricity was off," I am told by a small child.

"We saw everything fall down – the window broke on us. We went downstairs, and people were saying that the playground's been targeted. This park is not a member of Hamas, it's a park for playing. It's for civilians – so why did they attack it?," asks one 12-year-old girl who lives nearby.

The target was a civilian area – but there was no warning, not one phone call from the Israeli army to tell civilians to beware.

I visit the main hospital in Rafah. There are so many injured people, most of them children. In one ward, I meet four children aged five or six. They are in deep shock. They can't speak, they just look at you.

Only one child could say his name: "Abdel Rahman". That's all he can say. Otherwise, he just stares. He's five. His ear was wounded by shrapnel, his head is covered by bandages.

There is a 16-year-old girl also suffering from shrapnel injuries. Three of her brothers were killed; all her family were injured. She looks like a zombie and says nothing at all. Her mother is dying in the intensive care unit.

The hospital manger, Abu Youssef Alnajar, gives the statistics for 1 January: two dead – a young man aged 22 and a woman aged 33; 59 injured – 16 children, 18 women and the rest old people. Most of them had been sleeping when the bombs dropped.

I go back home and the first thing I do is take a shower. I feel really upset after what I have seen. As always I am trying to cope with the situation but sometimes it is too much to deal with.

A short message to the pilots in the Israeli F-16s: does it make you feel happy to kill Palestinian children and women? Do you feel it's your duty? Killing every child and woman, man and teenager in Gaza? I don't know what exactly you feel, what exactly you think, but please think of your mother and sister, your son and daughter.

Friday 2 January

I am in the hospital again. An ambulance crew has been called out to help an injured man somewhere near the ruins of the old Gaza airport. He's a civilian, one of the bedouin who tend their sheep in that area. Four shepherds saw an explosion and went to investigate – when they arrived at the scene there was a second bomb and they were injured. An ambulance managed to rescue three of the men. But one of their friends is still there, bleeding.

The ambulance crew are afraid to go back for him. The wounded man is just 50 metres away from the green line so they are afraid the Israeli soldiers will target them. Outside there are still planes in the air. I have just heard a big explosion on the border area.

• Fida Qishta is a freelance Palestinian television producer and writer based in Gaza's southern township of Rafah

======

Depleted uranium found in Gaza victims
Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:16:21 GMT

Medics tell Press TV they have found traces of depleted uranium in some Gaza residents wounded in Israel's ground offensive on the strip.

Norwegian medics told Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari that some of the victims who have been wounded since Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip on December 27 have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies.

The report comes after Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground operation after eight days of intensive attacks by Israeli air and naval forces on the impoverished region.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Sunday that the wide-ranging ground offensive in the Gaza Strip would be "full of surprises."

A ground offensive in the densely-populated Gaza is expected to drastically increase the death toll of the civilian population.

The latest assaults bring the number of Palestinians killed to over 488 with 2790 others wounded. The UN says that about 25 percent of the casualties were civilian deaths - including at least 34 children.

According to Israeli army officials, at least 30 of its soldiers have been wounded since the start of the ground campaign.

Amid global condemnation of the ongoing violence in the region, the UN Security Council failed to agree on a united approach to resolve the crisis.

"Once again, the world is watching in dismay the dysfunctionality of the Security Council," UN General Assembly chief Miguel d'Escoto said Sunday.

According to diplomatic sources, the US blocked a Security Council resolution, with US Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff arguing that an official statement that criticizes both Israel and Hamas would not be helpful.

The White House has so far declined to comment on whether an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza is a justified measure.

AA/DT/CS/MD

© Press TV 2007. All Rights Reserved.

The Secret Georges Bank Review

Chronicle Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada


The secret Georges Bank review

JIM MEEK
Sun. Dec 28 - 7:20 AM


IF YOU DON'T know what's happening with the Georges Bank oil and gas review, join the crowd. Almost a year after Energy Minister Richard Hurlburt first beat a drum to support petroleum exploration in the rich fishing hole, all is silent.

But the silence can't quite hide a flurry of underground activity.

This fall, Nova Scotia's government quietly directed $150,000 toward the South West Shore Development Authority to "examine economic opportunities from potential offshore oil and gas activities."

The agreement, struck with Hurlburt's department, also says the authority should "look at environmental and social risks" linked to drilling on the moratorium lands on Georges Bank and on adjacent offshore lands.

Why my charge of secrecy here?

First, Hurlburt's department didn't release the authority agreement until after I had asked for it. Secondly, no official news release has been issued to date to describe this use of taxpayers' money.

And lastly, the words Georges Bank are not mentioned once in the authority agreement, though it is clear that the primary focus of the work will be the debate surrounding possible oil and gas activity on the rich fishing hole.

I also learned that the authority has hired a researcher, Yarmouth Harbour Master Garth Atkinson, to put together some background on the Georges Bank story and the effects of the industry in other parts of the province. (The harbour master's job is a federal appointment.)

When I phoned Atkinson, he said he'd rather his name was not used in print, adding he is now trying to "catch up with the file." Atkinson, now making money sourced from two levels of government, said I should speak instead with Clifford Hood.

Hood, a fisheries lawyer and former Yarmouth deputy mayor, told me he is now the unpaid chairman of the Ocean First Task Force. Under the authority agreement, the task force will conduct community consultations in the Tri-County area of southern Nova Scotia. Overall, it will look at the effects of possible oil and gas activity on Georges Bank if the Canadian moratorium expires in 2012.

Hood would be the first to concede that he now comes down on the Prorigs side of this debate, not the Norigs side led by the fishing industry. Cliff has made his money from a fisheries law practice, but it's clear to him that a little economic diversity wouldn't hurt down Yarmouth way.

Speaking of Yarmouth, Hood, Hurlburt and Atkinson are all like-minded gentlemen of that community. Nothing the matter with that, I suppose, but given the close ties between the minister and the lawyer, a little more transparency is in order here.

Hood was not appointed by the minister as chairman of the Ocean Firsts Task Force; the development authority gave him the position. But it would hardly be a stretch to suggest that Cliff would not have the job in the absence of Hurlburt's tacit approval.

Put that together with Hurlburt's early support for oil and gas exploration, and you've got yourself a political problem. Last February, Hurlburt referred in a Halifax breakfast speech to "the tremendous resources on Georges Bank," adding that the fish and oil industries could "coexist" offshore.

Before that speech, at his party's 2008 annual meeting, Hurlburt was more direct when he was asked about the moratorium: "It's safe to do drilling in our offshore," he said.

Given this history, it is clear Hurlburt's credibility rests on an impartial review of oil and gas activity on Georges Bank. The authority contract and cast of characters doesn't help establish his neutrality - quite the opposite, in fact. (I say that with some regret, for Hood is both a straight shooter and a friend; we have fought battles together.)

The danger here is that the politics of the authority's work will undermine the more important scientific review of Georges Bank that is just getting underway.


Lord knows, after 20 years of moratorium, Nova Scotia needs a dispassionate, evidence-based review of the potential and risks of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Maine.


But who will believe the science is pure if the politics is already seen to be poisoned?





( jmeek@herald.ca)

Bush Family Fortunes: A Treasonous Tradition

The Daddy Bush Connection with JFK's Assassination? Please check out these links.
by W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

www.opednews.com


The links are below:



http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thenixonbushconnectiontothekennedyassassination.htm

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=JFK%27s+assassination+and+the+Bush+Family&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/dead_kennedys/161963.html

http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/FbiMemoPhotoLinkBushJfk.htm

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/War%20on%20Drugs%20Scam/Order%20of%20Skull%20&%20Bones/bush_bones_jfk_assassination.htm

http://www.geocities.com/vienna/strasse/7676/pagesix.html

http://edward.de.leau.net/jfk-ii-assassination-study-many-ties-to-the-bush-crime-family-20081216.html

http://www.ctrl.org/essay2/MCIJFKA1.html

http://www.amazon.com/JFK-II-Connection-John-Hankey/dp/B000AAIUWA


This is merely a small sample of many, many more sites where these came from. Some may be over the top (or not), but most of them are as historically/factually substantive as the 9/11 “inside job” scenario -- so[me] validated by scientific evidence, on the spot observations, and pictures of IMPLODING, not exploding, towers!

It is limitlessly suspicious that Bush Sr. and Jr. have their hands all over the two most consecutively treasonous events which have defined American history as much as the Civil War.

The trail to the truth of JFK’s assassination may be cold, but it would be a virtual act of God if it helped to confirm the engineering of 9/11 by George W. Bush, and his fascist elite masters -- and vise versa for JFK's assassination. Could 9/11 ironically be the event that also leads to the truth of JFK's assassination! What a twofer that would be?



Like father, like son?

W. Christopher Epler (Bill)


ps: Naturally it's also a matter of historical record that GRANDFATHER Prescott Bush tried to engineer a Nazi coup D'etat in America in the 30's. The archetypal treason family of Bush's -- who also made much (most?) of their fortune with connections with the Germany's WW2 evil incarnate Third Reich.

http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/

[Anna in Palestine] Gaza Massacres; The Time is Now

[Anna in Palestine] Gaza Massacres; The Time is Now

Gaza Massacres; The Time is Now by Anna Baltzer

Please, everyone, stop what you're doing. This is not just any report
from Palestine, but the worst in my lifetime, the worst in 40 years.
At this moment, Israel is raining bombs down on Gaza, an enclosed tiny
area that is home to 1.5 million men, women, and children, most of
them innocent civilians. This space is tightly sealed by Israel, which
constantly denies Gazans electricity, food, medicine, and the ability
to leave. Gaza is one big prison being bombed from above. The death
toll is up to 428 in the past 7 days. That's more than the number of
Israelis killed in the last 7 years. This is what I would call a massacre.

Yes, more Palestinians killed in 7 days than Israelis in 7 years, and
yet no comments from President Bush or President-elect Obama.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice places blame solely on Hamas for
holding Gazans "hostage," as if Israel's actions were beyond judgment.
Would Rice ever respond to a Palestinian attack on Israelis by blaming
the Israeli government for holding its citizens hostage with their
army's violence?

I am writing you from Jordan. I arrived the day after the attacks
began. The day before they began, my friend and colleague Hannah had
asked me to deliver a book of poetry to her friend Summer in Gaza,
hoping I'd manage to make it on a Free Gaza boat. Since then, these
boats bringing unarmed witnesses to Gaza (www.freegaza.org) have been
attacked in international waters, and Summer's house has been blown to
pieces, her brother almost died under the rubble, and her father
desperately needs an operation but the hospitals are overflowing. In
every home or shop I enter in Jordan, people are huddled watching the
stories unfold: a family killed in their home, a university destroyed,
a pharmacy blown to pieces, countless bloody babies screaming or
worse, silent.

I wonder if people in the US are also seeing the bodies and faces or,
as I fear, only some rubble and angry Gazans. The day after attacks
began, Israel's largest newspaper Yediot Aharonot covered almost the
entire front page with the words, "500,000 Israelis Under Attack!" In
smaller font, one could learn that in addition to 1 Israeli, 225
Palestinians had also been killed. It was surreal. Consider where you
are getting your news, and what is not being told to you.

For example, the stated purpose of the attack is to drive out Hamas,
i.e. to kill anyone in Hamas and scare the rest into turning against
Hamas. Not only does this tactic not work (brutality fosters
violence), but it clearly fits the definition of terrorism: unlawful
violence intended to frighten or coerce a people or government in
order to achieve a political or ideological agenda. Israel is
operating as a terrorist state in the true sense of the word.

Hamas is also a terrorist organization by this definition, so it would
be easy to simplify the conflict as "an endless cycle of violence"
were there no historical context. But there is a context, and there
are alternatives: Let us remember that Hamas was elected after an
intentional shift away from violence towards a mainstream political
agenda. Hamas stopped its attacks and began offering the Palestinian
people an alternative to the corruption of Fatah. Hamas was
democratically elected and immediately strangled by a US-led boycott,
preventing the government from functioning. Hamas continued to hold to
its one-sided ceasefire (totaling almost 2 years), meanwhile the US
and Israel began to train and arm the opposition government, Fatah,
which they preferred. In response to plans for a coup in Gaza
(anti-democratic takeover by the US-supported opposition government),
Hamas secured its control (again, democratically-elected whether or
not we like them) over Gaza, and continues to offer Israel an
indefinite ceasefire--no more violent attacks, period--if Israel
simply complies with international law. The Arab League (comprised of
22 Arab nation members) has offered the same. These offers are
dismissed by Israel and silenced in the US media. Israel says it has
tried everything else, but it has not tried the most obvious:
complying with international law and accepting repeated offers for a
peaceful resolution.

As events unfold in Gaza neither the media nor the people are silent
here in Jordan, where people refuse to go on as if nothing were
happening to their brothers and sisters (sometimes literally--more
than 60% of Jordan's population is Palestinian refugees). Just one day
after attacks began, the king of Jordan gave blood to send to Gaza and
inspired hundreds of others to do the same (meanwhile President Bush
was on vacation in Texas). Spontaneous demonstrations have erupted at
least twice here in the capitol today, and thousands are protesting in
various major cities around the Middle East and around the world.

Please, wherever you are, do something. Write a letter to the editor.
Get a large group to inundate your congressperson at once. Protest!
There are demonstrations being organized around the US. If there isn't
one happening near you, then do what I would do: buy a poster-board
and large marker and write something on it ("Gazans Are People Too,"
"Massacre in Gaza: Silence is Complicity," "Our Weapons Are Killing
Palestinian Children," or anything you can think of). Go outside and
stand on a busy corner with it. Force others to confront the reality.
Talk to people, invite them to join you. People around the world are
empowered enough to take to the streets; we have no excuse not to. The
time is now.

------
http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/

Attacks Condemned as Supplies Dwindle

Attacks Condemned as Supplies Dwindle and Deaths Rise
by Michael Jansen
Published on Friday, January 2, 2009 by the Irish Times

Deposed Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh yesterday called for an immediate halt to the Israeli attack on Gaza, lifting of the siege and opening of all crossings.


"This war does not target just Hamas and the government, it is targeting Palestinians and their cause," he stated in a televised address as Gaza's death toll rose to 417.

Some 2,070 Gazans have been wounded since Israel's offensive began on Saturday. Among the latest targets were the Palestinian legislative council building and a complex housing the ministries of health, education and transport, all facilities belonging to the Palestinian National Authority and built with donations from Europe and elsewhere.

Dr Ziad Abu Amr, an independent legislator from Gaza, said he and colleagues had made fruit- less protests against the "total destruction" of Gaza but there is international "complicity" with Israel. He said these institutions will have to be rebuilt before governance can be restored.

A doctor who lives in Gaza city asserted, "We have never, never, never heard such explosions." His family survives by staying home. They eat rice and vegetables. Meat cannot be stored because there is no electricity: "I managed to get a small bag of bread because the lady [at the bakery] had promised me a few loaves."

His specialised clinic does not have equipment to treat wounded. "They all go to the [government] Shifa hospital. But it does not have the means to deal with all the casualties . . . Many doctors and nurses cannot reach the hospital because of the bombing," he said.

He planned to walk to his clinic to conduct emergency surgery, although he was uncertain whether anaesthetic was available.

Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who reached Gaza on Wednesday, said Gaza is a "complete man-made disaster. It's cold, there's no food, no fuel. At the main hospital [Shifa] all the windows have been blown out."

At the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, he saw two field hospitals and 30 tonnes of medical supplies waiting to enter Gaza. He said the Israelis are using outlawed fuel air bombs and depleted uranium warheads. Many bodies are shredded and burnt.

While women and children comprise 25 per cent of the fatalities, they make up 40 per cent of the wounded. "Civilians are the targets, they are the victims," said Dr Gilbert.

Although the UN yesterday opened ration distribution centres for refugees for the first time in two weeks, humanitarian co-ordinator Maxwell Gaylard warned, "Without the violence stopping, it is extremely difficult to get food to people who need it. We cannot assess where the most urgent needs are. And it is too dangerous for civilians to leave their homes to seek urgent medical treatment, buy supplies and assist people in distress."

Israel has to open goods crossings for wheat, grain and other basic foods to feed the 1.1 million civilians dependent on food aid and to allow fuel to flow.

"Gaza's hospitals are facing their largest-ever trauma caseloads . . . They must have reliable power."



© 2009 irishtimes.com

Murder Party

Party to Murder
by Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven years, to update a previous column on Gaza.

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza—the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering—wonder why we are hated?

Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. “Expose thyself to what wretches feel,” King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, “and show the heavens more just.”

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk’s unflinching honesty has enraged Israel. He was banned from entering the country on Dec. 14 during his attempt to visit Gaza and the West Bank.

“After being denied entry I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems,” he said. “At this point I was treated not as a U.N. representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search, and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed. I was separated from my two U.N. companions, who were allowed to enter Israel. At this point I was taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away, required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room, taken to a locked, tiny room that had five other detainees, smelled of urine and filth, and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food, and either lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.”

The foreign press has been, like Falk, barred by Israel from entering Gaza to report on the destruction.

Israel’s stated aim of halting homemade rockets fired from Gaza into Israel remains unfulfilled. Gaza militants have fired more than 100 rockets and mortars into Israel, killing four people and wounding nearly two dozen more, since Israel unleashed its air assault. Israel has threatened to launch a ground assault and has called up 6,500 army reservists. It has massed tanks on the Gaza border and declared the area a closed military zone.

The rocket attacks by Hamas are, as Falk points out, also criminal violations of international law. But as Falk notes, “... such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”

“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk has said of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”



Before the air assaults, Gaza spent 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. Most of Gaza is now without power. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

“It is macabre,” Falk said of the blockade. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”

“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”

The point of the Israeli attack, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel.

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks by Palestinians. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. Dozens of tunnels had been the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel had permitted the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel. This ended, however, on Sunday when Israeli fighter jets bombed over 40 tunnels along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The Israeli military said that the tunnels, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Egypt has sealed its border and refused to let distraught Palestinians enter its territory.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. A family that loses a child in an airstrike does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

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