Seamus Milne, The Guardian.co Dec. 30, 2008
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.
From article Party to Murder by Chris Hedges, Dec. 30, 2008 at Truthdig.com
Nowhere to run for those trapped in Gaza-Dec. 30, 2008
Anyway, so the battle over Gaza continues as the death toll of Palestinians rises.
Is the government of Israel just doing this action at this time to win more votes in the upcoming elections.
Are they trying to find out where Obama actually stands once the bombs start dropping.
Are they doing this at this time before President-Elect Obama is sworn in.
Is this just another "Parting Gift " to Israel from the out-going Bush/Cheney Regime.
Condi and the gang all must be pleased as there is little chance now of a peace settlement in the near future. To paraphrase Condi she once said these are the "Birth Pangs" of a New Era in the Middle-East. A middle-East dominated by Israel and the United States and any Middle-East country that doesn't like it will be bombed and taught a lesson. Once again America reaches out to win hearts and minds at the barrel of a gun.
Nowhere to run for those trapped in Gaza-Dec. 30, 2008
Palestinian families are wondering whether they will become the next target after four days of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip.
As Sherine Tadros reports, there are few places to hide, and civilian casualties continue to rise.
As the death toll rises in Gaza most of the Western Media including the United States and Canada spend more time focusing on the concerns of the Israelis than on the carnage in Gaza, The West is not interested in an analysis of the situation beyond what has occurred in the last week or so. The Media refuse to deal with the punishing Siege which and with little or no mention of the Siege of Gaza by the Israelis that has been going on since June 2007.
As we see many in the US media are not interested in serious analysis of the issues concerning Israel and Gaza. They stick to the talking points as handed to them by those in power. In the clip below of John Bolton interviewed on the Bush Regime's main propaganda channel Fox News Neoconservatives and the Bush Regime using Israeli attack on Gaza as an excuse or rationalization pushing for An Attack on Iran. The Fox Faux Journalist/Anchor once again buys into the Neocon/ Bush/ Cheney Regime ideological position in regard to Israel and Palestine and the Occupied Territory. It never occurs to them that the Palestinian People might have justifiable grievances against Israel. There is no concern for the punishing Siege on Gaza which has been going on since 2007. Israel says there is no "Humanitarian Crisis" in Gaza therefore the media says since Israel says this it must be true. It doesn't matter if international organizations disagree. Once again anyone who questions the policies of the current Israeli government or the Bush Regime are depicted as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic and anti-American. What is feared is that Barack Obama may just follow in the steps of the Bush Regime and defend Israel unconditionally.
John Bolton: Gaza conflict may result in US strike against Iranian nukes
And here's more Propaganda from Fox News about the Gaza conflict in this Jan. 1, 2009 report.
There is no mention of the fact that Israel has prevented most foreign journalists from going into Gaza. Israel's government and military has for years distrusted foreign journalists and has refused to protect journalists during times of conflict. The Bush Regime and the American Military and the Pentagon has had a similar view of journalists trying to work in Iraq or Afghanistan. Both Regimes have been more concerned with controlling the flow of information out of these areas of conflict. The only good journalist is one who defends American and Israeli policies without reservation. That's why in Iraq the US insisted on Embedding journalist thereby ensuring they like their former Soviet counterparts tow the party line. And the Mainstream Media treated unembedded journalists as Anti-American and therefore pro-Saddam and pro-terrorists and this continues to this day.
The comparison In this next article is to the Ghettoizing of the Jewish people by the Nazis and not the gassing of the Jews at Auschwitz etc.
"The Holocaust" By Dahlia Wasfi ,Dec. 31, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse"
...In 1940, the Germans began massing Polish Jews into ghettoes prior to their deportation to extermination camps. The largest one was the Warsaw Ghetto, where an uprising—a Jewish insurgency—began in 1943. Today, Gaza is essentially a large ghetto, with a population of around 1.5 million living on about 139 square miles. Israel controls Gaza’s land border, airspace, water, maritime access, and the flow of goods including food and medical supplies. Since June 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade on the people of Gaza, slowly starving them to death, slowly killing them by denial of medical care amidst intermittent gunship airstrikes.
These crimes against humanity are, of course, in violation of the Geneva Conventions—international law established after World War II in the spirit of “never again.” Unlike in Warsaw, Gaza is not the staging area for the extermination camps; Gaza IS the extermination camp...
Qassam rockets fired from Gaza as retaliation for Israeli F-16 airstrikes are the equivalent of the Molotov cocktails used by the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Like the small arms of the Polish Jews, they are no match for the sophisticated weaponry of the invading army. This is why the death toll is so high for the people on the ground in Gaza, and minimal for Israelis. The mainstream media is depicting this as an “all-out war,” as it depicts the illegal occupation of Iraq. But in both cases, you have a starving, essentially unarmed people being assaulted with F-15s/F-16s, cruise missiles, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, tanks, and artillery. This is not war; this is mass murder; this is genocide. And it is American military, financial, and political support that makes this bloodletting possible...
"Self-defence: Israel’s warped self-justification for murder" By Paul J. Balles 31 December 2008 at RedressInformation and Analysis
Paul J. Balles exposes Israel’s warped definition of self-defence, which it uses as a cover for its murder of innocent Palestinians, including women and children, and its destruction of universities, mosques and other civilian infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip.
"Gaza: the logic of colonial power" by Nir Rosen guardian.co.uk,Dec. 29,2008
As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
and on the use of the term"Terrorism" he explains:
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
...Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
...In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
...Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
and:
"Israel's onslaught on Gaza is a crime that cannot succeed"> by Seamus Milne, The Guardian.co Dec. 30, 2008
The US-backed attempt to bring Hamas to heel by overwhelming force is in fact more likely to boost the movement's appeal
Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed". The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe".
Of the ferocity of the assault on one of the most overcrowded and destitute corners of the earth, there is at least no question. In the bloodiest onslaught on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, at least 310 people were killed and more than a thousand reported injured in the first 48 hours alone.
As well as scores of ordinary police officers incinerated in a passing-out parade, at least 56 civilians were said by the UN to have died as Israel used American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian targets it linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic university. Hamas military and political facilities were mostly deserted, while police stations in residential areas were teeming as they were pulverised.
...There has, of course, been no western denunciation of the Israeli slaughter - such aerial destruction is, after all, routinely called in by the US and Britain in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
...Meanwhile, the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been further diminished by being seen as having colluded in the Israeli assault on his own people - as has the already rock-bottom credibility of the Egyptian regime. What is now taking place in the Palestinian territories is a futile crime in which the US and its allies are deeply complicit - and unless Obama is prepared to change course, it is likely to have bitter consequences that will touch us all.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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