"[I]t hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified." Quote from Noam Chompsky
Or, as Amnesty International describes, the blockade of Gaza has been for 1.4 million Gazans, "a form of collective punishment," as well as "a flagrant violation of international law." Moreover, whatever justification the Israeli state provides, "the blockade is collectively punishing the entire population of Gaza, the majority of whom are children, rather than targeting the Hamas administration or armed groups."
The various definitions of terrorism are poignant, especially when applied to Israeli actions against Gazan civilians. Thus it is instructive to recall Operation Cast Lead, a one-sided slaughter, where B'Tselem found that the "magnitude of the harm to the local population was unprecedented." Moreover, it found that 1,387 Palestinians were killed during the operation, 773 of them not having taken part in the conflict, and of that number, 320 were children and teenagers. That is compared to the 9 Israelis killed by Palestinians, 3 of whom were civilians.
Above quotes from article by James Connolly
Israel Hamas War Highlights Horrific Palestinian Living Conditions by James Connolly at policymic.com, Nov. 17, 2012
As we have seen president Obama and the US media gives little time to those civilians killed by the American drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama argues that any male 16 years of age or above is to be counted as a terrorists even if not an actual terrorists. So on this score on foreign policy Obama still doesn't see the hypocrisy in all of this.
Israel bombing civilian infrastructure government buildings more attacks on buildings housing journalist blowing up a football stadium
American media still claiming Israel has a right to destroy civilian infrastructur and to murder civilians in Gaza
Western media not bothered by Israel's attacks on Middle Eastern Media.
So is playing football and other team sports a threat ot Israel.
So once again the propaganda machine of Israel is distracting Americans and other Westerners to forget about the long suffering Palestinians but to concentrate on the unwarranted deaths of 3 or 4 Israelis or a busload compared to the over 150 deaths in Gaza and the wounding of close to a thousand Civilians in Gaza . But the Israelis claim that even a toddler will one day just grow up to be a "terrorists" well they are partially correct if the Israelis refuse to trate the people of Gaza and the West Bank fairly and justly and remove its Apartheid style Walls and checkpoints and its Jews only highways and laws which make life a misery for most Palestinians or Arabs in those areas but also within Israel itself.
'Media Bunker' Peppers Internet With Propaganda Tweets And Facebook Posts by Lauren Bohn via Huffington Post ,Nov. 21, 2012
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli government is trying to pre-empt a publicity pounding over its Gaza offensive by aggressively pushing out its version of events, furiously tweeting and Facebook posting updates from a "media bunker."-------
The instant they heard about a bus bombing in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, scores of tech-savvy youth in Israel's government media command center in Jerusalem sprang into action.
They began flooding social media with updates and created a graphic exclaiming: "We didn't send in our ground troops, but they sent in theirs! (at)IsraelUnderFire."
In an operation attached to Israel's press office, hundreds of volunteers produce and post instant videos and graphics about the latest twists in the Gaza offensive from Israel's point of view. Its Facebook site, "Israel Under Fire," has gained more than 24,000 "likes" over the last week.
Israel began its campaign of airstrikes in Gaza last week following months of rocket fire from Gaza-based Palestinian militants. More than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed in the violence.
"People need to put themselves in Israelis' shoes," said Natan Epstein, 22, putting the finishing touches on an animation of Manhattan under a simulated rocket attack. "And luckily we don't need a biased media to help us do that anymore."
"We're removing the media middle men," said Daniel Seaman, deputy director general of Israel's Ministry of Public Diplomacy, as youth buzzed around with computers and smartphones. "They used to say the Elders of Zion controlled the media. Well, here are the youngsters of Zion who are running it."
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My take on this issue follows:
As we have seen during other conflicts between Israel and Gaza the Western Media and especially the American media including some journalist who otherwise appear progressive or at least a bit objective even for them the killing of Israelis is a great crime while the deaths of Gaza's civilians is treated as if those deaths were of little real meaning.
President Obama mentioned the deaths of Israelis but acted as if those in Gaza who were killed were all Hamas terrorists or some splinter group of Hamas and therefore getting what they deserved. But most of those killed in this latest conflict were innocent civilians as it was in the 2008-2009 Caste Lead operation . But most of the Mainstream Media then and now ignore the facts or claim the numbers of casualties is just part of Hamas' propaganda while whatever the Israeli well oiled well financed propaganda machine delivers via the media must be true since the Israeli government is always in the right .
So starving and killing the people of Gaza is therefore justified whether man woman or toddler since all are to be punsihed for any Israeli deaths . As I have suggested this is part of Biblical seige mentality in which amongst the enemy there are no innocents. So I will still ask where are the people of Gaza to go into the sea.
It is I know from President Obama or the American media to be objective about this issue since according to their religious paradigm Israel is the nation first chosen by God and in order for Biblical prophecies to be fulfilled Israel must regain all of the land promised to the ancient Israelites by God or Elohim.
It is also a matter of inapropriately responding to the collective guilt of the West and that it did nothing to stop Hitler's final solution since anti-Semitism was bred in the bone of most citizens of Western Civilization . So to assuage this guilt the USA and other nations fear or dred criticizing Israel in the way that they would some other nation.
For instance it took a while but even the USA eventually caved in to international pressure to stop supporting the South African Apartheid system Even in the 1980s there were still Americans and even Canadians who saw nothing amiss in the White supremacists rule over a majority made up of Black African people .
The colonialist conservative and even the liberal view was that in some way Black Africans were better off basically living like slave under the Africaaner Regime. In the USA influential politicians and business people were more interested in making a profit off this injustice in South Africa which included Senator Jesse Helms and Sen. John McCain and their white supremacist friends.
Now we have a similar issue over the Israeli Apartheid system which treats the Palestinians as third class citizens whom the Israeli are happy to have around when they need their man power but when they don't they do not want to recognize them as human beings let alone citizens or equals to other Israelis where religious or secular.
And once again America currently the Obama Regime is the major stumbling block to bring justice to the situation in the Israeli Apartheid Regime.
If the USA threatened to cut off financial aid and military aid to Israel they could get Israel to stop their horrifying oppression of the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza and those in the Occupied territories .
But first the US government and its bought and paid for media should try if they can to see the Palestinians and all Arabs and all Muslims as being part of the human race and not just some sort of disease or vermin that must be contained and or destroyed .
If Americans and the Media in general can begin to see Latinos as human and as equal citizens and therefore treat Latino Americans as equals then they can begin to see the human face of Latino American citizens and those Latinos risking their live to cross the border into the USA.
What many Americans and those outside of America have been hoping that surely president Obama have managed to become the first black president would have a better understanding of racial, ethnic and religious bigotry, prejudices and hatred which are erroneously sterotype a whole people because they appear to be different and imposing negative stereotypes on a people because of the acts of a few.
So when Obama states that Israel has a right to defend itself it does not enter his mind even for a second that just maybe the oppressed people in Gaza also have a right to defend themselves even if it were and is for them a hopless situation as they continue to watch their loved one suffering from malnutrition and diseases and medical problems all due to the Israeli Seige on Gaza.
When the Gazan people build their own companies the Israelis eventually will interfer by either not allowing products in to keep the business going or to alllow an Arab business to export goods in a reasonable fashion and then eventually Israel bombs that business or Industrial plant to leve the Palestinians barely struggling to get by.
Even schools, hospitals, TV stations and other media outlets and even buildings schools etc. run by the United Nations and even Commercial Banks in Gaza and government buildings which hand out food and welfare payments and police stations and of course fishing boats or Palestinians going to the seashore for a break or a picnic all are according to Israel and President Obama supposedly justified legitimate targets for the Israeli War Machine since the USA appears to hate, loathe, and despise the Palestinians and most Arabs and Muslims as much as the Israelis do.
Obama should take it to heart that racism and injustice is not unique in its treatment of African-Americans or Latino Americans but such bigotry and prejudices are a global issue affecting negatively the lives of not just Palestinians but also the Rhuhinga Muslims in Burma or other groups such as the Roma in Europe or the native aboriginal people of various Latin American countries which are often ruled by those with a European pedigree such as being Spanish, British, Portuguese , French, German , Dutch and so forth.
Israel Hamas War Highlights Horrific Palestinian Living Conditions by James Connolly at policymic.com, Nov. 17, 2012
Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, Israel is currently preparing for another ground invasion of Gaza in order to punish the crippled population for resisting oppression. As is to be expected, both sides will float justifications for their actions, but the fact remains: Gazans have been forced to live under appalling conditions, and they have been subjected to extreme acts of Israeli terrorism. Thus, their resistance should come as no surprise, even if it is bound to fail.
Based on accounts from inside Gaza, it is less an occupied territory than what Noam Chomsky calls an open-air prison:
"[I]t hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified."
Or, as Amnesty International describes, the blockade of Gaza has been for 1.4 million Gazans, "a form of collective punishment," as well as "a flagrant violation of international law." Moreover, whatever justification the Israeli state provides, "the blockade is collectively punishing the entire population of Gaza, the majority of whom are children, rather than targeting the Hamas administration or armed groups."
The various definitions of terrorism are poignant, especially when applied to Israeli actions against Gazan civilians. Thus it is instructive to recall Operation Cast Lead, a one-sided slaughter, where B'Tselem found that the "magnitude of the harm to the local population was unprecedented." Moreover, it found that 1,387 Palestinians were killed during the operation, 773 of them not having taken part in the conflict, and of that number, 320 were children and teenagers. That is compared to the 9 Israelis killed by Palestinians, 3 of whom were civilians.
As the Goldstone report found, Israeli forces "launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome." Moreover, "the consequences of the Israeli attacks against civilians were aggravated by their subsequent refusal to allow the evacuation of the wounded or to permit access to ambulances." And as for "attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza," the report found that "there was a deliberate and systematic policy on the part of the Israeli armed forces to target industrial sites [food production, sewage treatment, etc etc] and water installations." One of these industrial sites was the Al Bader flour mill, the only flour mill in the Gaza strip. It is no wonder then, that Gazans have a hard time, bettering their living conditions and livelihoods.
Perhaps a more telling, and more chilling, assessment of the current state of Gaza is found in a recent UN report that predicts that Gaza won't even be a "livable" place by 2020. Moreover, this report does not take into account the aftermath of this new conflict. If Operation Cast Lead was indicative of Israeli military tactics, then perhaps the UN will be forced to move that date closer to 2012.
This pure terror and destruction of living conditions and livelihoods of the Gazans on the part of Israel, is not just relegated to the Gaza Strip; instead it is in line with a systematic Israeli state policy of territorial expansion and terror against the Palestinians in the West Bank as well. As Ha'aretz reports, Benjamin Netanyahu's government "has quietly doubled the portion of Israel's national budget allocated to Jewish settlements in the West Bank." And as Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz explained, the expansion of funding to the illegal settlements was done quietly so that "elements in Israel and abroad" would not be aware of it happening thus preventing any attempts at stopping it.
Yes the kind hearted Israelis supposedly are making sure that the Palestinians in Gaza only get enough food to put them barely above the malnutrition rate. There is something rather cruel and calculating about the attitude and policies of the Israel supposedly enlightened government it sounds more and more like a plan to ethnic cleanse greater israel of most of the Palestinians by slowly starving them while allowing disease to run rampant and to not allow the free flow of food and goods and medical supplies into Gaza. Instead the people of Gaza swallow their pride for a time begging for a few more crumbs from the prosperous people of Israel until they snap and decide it is better to die like a human being than to die like a dog in the streets of Gaza.
Israel Gaza Blockade: Calories Calculated By Israelis To Avoid Malnutrition from Reuters via Huffington, Oct. 17,2012
JERUSALEM, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Israel calculated the number of calories Palestinians would need to avoid malnutrition under its blockade of the Gaza Strip, according to a study which the Supreme Court forced the government to release.
"It was part of a research paper that came up in two discussions and that we never made use of," Defence Ministry official Guy Inbar said on Wednesday after the document was published by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that petitioned to receive it.
Release of the document, presented in January 2008, shed new light on the thinking that helped to shape the blockade that Israel tightened in 2007 after the Gaza Strip was seized by the Hamas Islamist movement.
Palestinians described the restrictions, which drew international criticism and were eased in 2010, as collective punishment stifling their economy.
The study, "Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip - The Red Lines", estimated the required daily calorie intake in the territory at 2,279 per person.
The document said that "in order to maintain the basic fabric of life" in the area, Israel would allow in 106 trucks with food and other essential goods every day. Gisha said some 400 trucks delivered goods to Gaza before the blockade.
Last week Israel delivered 935 truckloads of basic goods and construction material to the territory which has a population of 1.6 million.
The calorie calculation was based on a model formulated by Israel's Health Ministry and was largely in line with average Israeli consumption. According to Britain's National Health Service, the average man needs 2,500 calories to maintain his weight and a woman requires 2,000.
Wikileaks has published diplomatic cables that showed Israel told U.S. officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza's economy "on the brink of collapse" while avoiding a humanitarian crisis.
To circumvent the blockade, Palestinians have brought in tonnes of goods through smuggling tunnels dug under Gaza's border with Egypt.
Malnutrition widespread amongst Palestinian children By Harvey Thompson via World Socialist Website,16 August 2002
A study released August 5 reveals a drastic deterioration in the health of thousands of Palestinian children since the beginning of the Israeli military crackdown.
The report, by the US Agency for International Development, showed more than one-fifth of young Palestinian children are malnourished. This is more than a threefold increase since the last study two years ago. The plight of children under 5 years of age was particularly alarming. Twenty-two percent of Palestinian children under age 5 were malnourished, up from seven percent in an agency survey two years ago. Of that number, nine percent suffered from acute malnutrition—resulting from poor nutrition over the short term—and 13 percent suffered from chronic malnutrition—longer-term deficiencies that can result in stunted growth. About 20 percent of children under 5 had some form of anaemia.
The study, carried out by Johns Hopkins University and the humanitarian group CARE, found that the Gaza Strip was particularly hard hit, with 13 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, putting it on the same level as Nigeria, Somalia and Bangladesh.
A market survey also showed shortages of protein-rich foods, such as fish and chicken, among retailers. About half of retailers and wholesalers surveyed said they had shortages of infant formula.
About half of the 1,000 households surveyed in June said they had to borrow money to buy food. Some 70 percent of Palestinians are now living on $2 a day.
Following the release of the report, the Palestinian Health Minister, Riad Zanoun, declared a state of emergency. “I call on the international community to work to end the real reason behind the health deterioration, which is the occupation, the curfew and the Israeli army. Without the real intervention of the world, all our efforts will only be temporary ones,” said Zanoun. Palestinian officials have called on the US to provide health experts, vitamins and medical equipment.
As damning as the USAID study is of the affects of the recent Israeli offensive against the Palestinians, another earlier report paints an even bleaker picture.
The study, released just four days before the USAID report, was conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics for UNICEF and was taken between March 23 and June 30. No data was collected in April due to a six-week-long Israeli raid on Palestinian cities in the West Bank that effectively shut down government offices.
The study surveyed 5,228 households (as opposed to the USAID’s 1,000 sample), including 3,684 children, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. It found that 45.5 percent of Palestinian children aged 6 months to 5 years are suffering from chronic malnutrition (a four-fold increase since September 2000), their growth having been stunted as a result of poor diet. Another 32.5 percent have acute malnutrition, where they were found to weigh less than they should for their age or height group.
Compared to statistics from 2000, the survey found a 22.6 percent increase in the number of children suffering from moderate stunting due to malnutrition and a 36 percent increase in the number of children who are underweight for their age. There was an increase of 50 percent in the number of children suffering from low weight for their height.
Around 65 percent of households surveyed said they had faced difficulties getting food for their families during the 22-month-long Palestinian uprising due to Israeli curfews and loss of income as a result of Israel travel restrictions and blockages. A total of 85 percent surveyed specifically blamed Israeli blockades
The Economic Impact of the Conflict on Israelis and Palestinians Palestinian malnutrition at African levels under Israeli curbs, say MPs By Ben Russell of the UK Independent via If Americans Knew.org, February 5, 2004
Malnutrition rates in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank are as bad as those in sub-Saharan Africa, MPs said yesterday. They warned that the Israeli security fence around the occupied territories was “destroying the Palestinian economy and creating widespread poverty”.
The all-party Commons International Development Committee called for European Union trade sanctions to be imposed on Israel until it allowed the free export of goods from the West Bank and Gaza.
The committee’s report also condemned suicide bombings as “morally abhorrent” and “a catastrophic tactic that has done great harm to the Palestinian cause”.
MPs called on the Palestinian Authority to be more vocal in its condemnation of attacks. “Israel’s security measures are preventing Palestinians from accessing services as well as inhibiting humanitarian and development work,” the MPs said. “They are destroying the Palestinian economy and creating widespread poverty.”
and so it goes,
GORD.
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