Archive for January, 2009

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Bush’s Last War Crime?

January 6, 2009

by Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation, January  5, 2009

The Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched Saturday, might very well be George W. Bush’s last and final war crime. For eight years, Bush has coupled unparalled ignorance of the Middle East with supreme arrogance. It is precisely that deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance that is on display now, as a politically motivated Israeli invasion of Gaza unfolds with the full support of the Bush administration.

In his weekly radio address, delivered as Israeli tanks and armor rumbled into the Gaza Strip, Bush declared:

“This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas — a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel’s destruction. … Another one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable. And promises from Hamas will not suffice — there must be monitoring mechanisms in place to help ensure that smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups in Gaza comes to an end. I urge all parties to pressure Hamas to turn away from terror.”

A more sweeping endorsement of Israel’s action is hard to imagine. Writing in the Post, columnist Jim Hoagland, a reliable, neoconservative-allied scribbler, describes it this way:

“He did not just give Israel a green light to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas once that radical movement foolishly renounced a six-month-old truce. Bush knocked down the traffic light post and waved the Israelis through the intersection.”

Personally, I find Hamas despicable. It is a right-wing Islamist group with open terrorist inclinations, motivated by a fanciful notion that it can defeat Israel with its pinprick attacks. I’ve also written extensively, including in my book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, how Israel created Hamas systematically and deliberately during the 1970s and 1980s, building up the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmed Yassin’s proto-Hamas movement as a counterweight to Fatah.

But Israel could easily have absorbed the rockets launched by Hamas, nearly all of which crash harmlessly in remote areas, if it had truly sought to work out an accommodation with the Palestinians. Most important, Israel could have endorsed and supported efforts by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others to create a lasting accord between Hamas and Fatah. Instead, Israel did the opposite, meeting each of Hamas’ acts of violence with far greater violence of its own.

As I’ve written in this space earlier, the outcome of Israel’s action is likely to be to strengthen, not weaken, Hamas. It will also have the following collateral effects: it will undermine the moderate wing of the Palestinian movement, perhaps fatally. It will weaken the government of Egypt, boosting the power of the radical-right Muslim Brotherhood there, to the point where Egypt’s regime could collapse, with incalculable consequences. It will boost radicalism across the region, especially its Islamist variant, in Lebanon and Iraq in particular, and help Iran gain traction among otherwise unreceptive Arab populations.

Hamas is unlikely to seek a deal now. Having watched Israel blunder into Lebanon two years ago, in a futile effort to eradicate Hezbollah, only to see that movement emerge victorious and take control of part of Lebanon’s own government, Hamas is not going to sue for peace. In that, they may be wrong, since Gaza is not Lebanon. In Gaza, Hamas has no access to resupply its armaments, and the territory on which it operates is extremely limited. So it is going to suffer severe military losses and vast casualties against the lethal Israeli Defense Forces.

Israel’s objectives aren’t clear. Israeli hawks, including Bibi Netanyahu — appearing Sunday on CNN’s Late Edition — insist that Israel cannot stop its action until Hamas is utterly defeated, whatever that means. In the New York Times, two top Israeli leaders are quoted to the effect that Israel’s objective is regime change and the elimination of Hamas. Foreign Minister Livni put it this way:

“There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”

And Haim Ramon, the vice premier, said:

“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern. That is the most important thing.”

But in trying to eliminate Hamas, Israel will revive Hamas, which has been losing popularity dramatically until the current explosion. With Barack Obama maintaining his sphinx-like silence, it’s the Bush-Cheney-Rice administration that remains in charge. They clearly have no intention of intervening, unless Israel gets into trouble and requests help. The Swampland blog at Time suggests that Obama’s approach might be different from Bush’s:

“No doubt, the Israelis want the operation to be over before the Obama inauguration–it’s not neighborly to present your most important potential ally with a crisis at his moment of ascension. But it is very easy to get to stuck, and hurt, in alley-fighting. I hope that Israel is working as hard behind the scenes to arrange a quick cease fire as it is fighting on the ground. It would be nice if we had a President of the United States with the credibility and ingenuity to make it happen. Perhaps we soon will.”

I’m not convinced. So far, at least, Obama has given no indication that he’d do anything different. I’d like to think he would. Some of his advisers, before the election, told me that they thought Obama would talk to Hamas. Let’s hope so.

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U.N. Diplomats Frustrated at Gaza Impasse

January 6, 2009

By Haider Rizvi | Inter Press Service


UNITED NATIONS, Jan 5 (IPS) – Disappointed with the Security Council’s inaction regarding the worsening situation in Gaza, diplomats from numerous nations of the global South are close to taking the case of Israeli aggression to the U.N. General Assembly.

“It seems like they will wait for another day or two about what happens at the Security Council. If the Council does not take any action, they will be going to the General Assembly soon,” a diplomatic source told IPS on condition of anonymity.

U.N. and Gaza health officials have reported more than 550 Palestinian dead and around 2,500 wounded since the offensive began on Dec. 27.

Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran and Venezuela are in favour of asking the 192-member General Assembly to adopt a resolution deploring Israeli killing of civilians and calling for an immediate ceasefire, the source said.

However, the source added that some Arab countries and others are expressing reservations about such a move.

Unlike the Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly does not have the power to implement its resolutions by force. But its verdict on international issues of war and peace is considered as important because it is based on majority vote on an equal basis.

In a statement Monday, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which enjoys a solid majority in the General Assembly, said it was deeply disappointed at the “inability of the Security Council to uphold its responsibilities in maintaining international peace and security.”

The 118-member group of developing nations called for Israel to end the “collective punishment” of the Palestinians, and abide by all its obligations as the occupying power under international law and relevant U.N. resolutions and that it does so “unconditionally”.

That demand is not acceptable to Israel’s closest ally, the United States, which enjoys veto power in the 15-member Security Council. On Saturday, the U.S. blocked a Council presidential statement calling for an immediate ceasefire by both sides.

“We want this thing to end,” argued the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, before informal Security Council consultations started Monday evening. “But [first] practical engagements that are workable and durable have to be made.”

When pressed by a journalist to explain what he really meant by the term “practical arrangements”, the U.S. envoy responded with an air of vagueness: “Ceasefire that deals with both the rockets and [the Israeli military action].”

“We want an arrangement that can endure,” he said, adding that his country was against an unconditional ceasefire because it feared that Hamas would use it to rearm itself as Hezbollah did in Lebanon in 2006.

Conversations with a number of diplomatic observers suggest the U.S. is not going to change its stance before the new administration takes charge in Washington, and that until then, the Israelis would continue their military operation Gaza.

Describing the situation as “alarming”, the U.N. chief for humanitarian operations, John Holmes, said Monday that civilian casualties were steadily rising as Israeli ground operations have now intensified with ongoing aerial bombing.

“We look urgently for a ceasefire,” he told reporters. “We don’t know the exact number of casualties. The reports say they are over 500. The casualties are rising. Hospitals are struggling with growing casualties. Power is lacking.”

The U.N. relief agency UNRWA’s John Ging called the situation in Gaza “a shocking state of affairs”. In a teleconference, Ging, who entered Gaza Monday, said: “The streets are empty. It’s really horrible. People are terrorised and terrified. There is nowhere to flee.”

Holmes said he had repeatedly called for ceasefire on humanitarian grounds but “I don’t see any response to my appeal.” The U.N. official said the aid crisis in Gaza was worsening day by day.

Facing the possibility of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann has repeatedly called for a ceasefire while terming the deadly Israeli attacks a “monstrosity”.

On Monday, his spokesperson, Enrique Yeves, strongly criticised the Council for its failure to adopt a statement. “This organisation was established to establish peace,” he said, adding that contrary to the hopes of many, it failed to stop “the massacre in Gaza”.

“Why the Council is not making decisions? Why the people are dying every day?” he asked at a briefing.

On Monday, Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the 22-member Arab League, called the Israeli actions in Gaza “naked aggression” and demanded an immediate halt to military operations in the occupied territory.

“We want the Council to act decisively and swiftly,” he told reporters before attending a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and several Arab foreign ministers at U.N. headquarters.

For his part, Ban expressed cautious optimism about the outcome of the meeting.

“We have agreed to work very closely so that the Security Council can take decisive and swift and credible action for a binding resolution,” he said. “We will continue to work closely in the coming days with the Council and other key leaders in the region.”

Ban said he was going to Washington Tuesday to discuss the current phase of the Middle East crisis with President George W. Bush, whose term expires in two weeks. When asked what he was going to tell Bush, Ban said: “I am going to stress that this situation should come to an end and [that] the civilian population should be fully protected.”

While Ban flies to Washington Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is due to arrive at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Experts on conflict resolution and human rights law say it is a must that the Security Council takes a firm and immediate action to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza. In this context, they are recommending a number of practical measures.

“The Council can start by a strong resolution condemning attacks by civilians on both Israel and [the Palestinian militant group] Hamas, demanding that such acts cease immediately,” said the London-based Amnesty International’s Malcolm Smart.

In a statement, Amnesty said it wants the Council to urge Israel to lift restrictions on the passage of humanitarian aid to Gaza and allow aid workers and journalists to have unhindered access to the occupied territories under attack.

Experts at the International Crisis Group (ICG) have also suggested similar measures and more.

“Third parties viewed as credible and trustworthy by both parties must push to end this before the toll escalates or before Israel’s land incursions turn into a venture of uncertain scope, undetermined consequences and all too familiar human cost,” said ICG’s Robert Belcher.

In Belcher’s view, Israel might win militarily and even topple Hamas, “but with clear exit and day-after scenario, a discredited Palestinian Authority and debilitated peace process, it might not be a political win.”

“There are signs important actors — European in particular, the U.S. far less so — have learned from the experience of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war that time is of the essence,” he said. “It’s not clear whether this bitter lesson will translate into quicker action.”

“But,” according to the ICG analyst, “devising a ceasefire acceptable to both sides is not beyond reach.”

At the moment, no one really knows if such suggestions are going to work or not.

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Life gets worse for Palestinians in Gaza

January 6, 2009

For the first eight days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, many Palestinians trapped inside the territory believed that living conditions could not get any worse. They were wrong.

By Tim Butcher on the Israel-Gaza border | Telegraph, UK,
 Last Updated: 6:36PM GMT 04 Jan 2009

1 of 2 Images
A young Palestinian girl cries during a funeral in northern Gaza - Life gets worse for Palestinians in Gaza

A young Palestinian girl cries during a funeral in northern Gaza Photo: REUTERS

With Israeli infantry and tanks striking across the border and taking up positions to the north and south of Gaza City, life for the area’s 1.5 million people has become even more dangerous and miserable.

All road travel is hazardous because Israeli spotters treat any vehicle as a potential threat. There were reports yesterday of an ambulance being hit as it did its rounds, with four crew members seriously injured. All United Nations aid workers have been told they need Israeli permission for any movement, rendering the delivery of aid considerably more difficult.

Engineers who are needed to patch up damaged electricity cables or water pumps are being forced to stay at home. Consequently, there is no immediate answer to power cuts and water shortages.

At least five civilians were killed by two large explosions in Palestine Square, a large open space in the centre of Gaza City normally full of shoppers and taxi drivers. Witnesses said the explosions came from two bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes, although there was no way to confirm this. Israel has barred the international media from reaching Gaza.

Reports suggest that a few shoppers from Gaza’s nearby Old City ventured into the square when a trader started selling vegetables. Shops have closed in Gaza since the Israeli assault began on Dec 27 and families have grown desperate for fresh food.

The two explosions went off in the middle of group of people, killing five and injuring forty more.

Witnesses at Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, described seeing the wounded arriving for treatment with horrific injuries.

Some had limbs hanging off, while one man had lost part of his torso. So strong was the flow of blood from the wounded that the hospital’s floors were smeared red.

A foreign doctor volunteering for the Red Crescent at Shifa described the conditions for patients as a “nightmare”. Many have been horribly disfigured by flying shrapnel. “A lot of people are being cut down,” said the doctor. “The situation is terrible. People are leaving their homes. Everyone is terrified.”

A local reporter who reached the square shortly after the explosions described a scene of utter chaos. “Where is Nadia, my daughter, where is she?” screamed one frantic shopper, before Nadia was found unharmed, hiding in a clothes shop.

News of the incident in Palestine Square spread quickly through Gaza, sending a clear message – no place was safe now that Israel’s ground offensive had begun.

No sooner had the wounded in Palestine Square been helped than news came of another incident. Five civilians were killed in a mosque in the town of Beit Lahiya.

The normally bustling streets of Gaza City were largely empty last night and a power cut ensured the densely populated area was in darkness.

But gunmen from the different Palestinian factions, who have in the past fought fierce turf battles among themselves, patrolled some streets together.

They wore different headbands to show their allegiance: green for Hamas, black for Islamic Jihad and yellow for Fatah. Instead of dividing the Palestinians and isolating Hamas, Israel’s operation may be uniting their opponents into a common front.

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Chinese police hunt authors of democracy charter

January 6, 2009

From The Times
January 6, 2009

Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia

(AFP/Getty Images)

Liu Xiaobo, with his wife Liu Xia, has been in detention since December 8

Jane Macartney in Beijing

Chinese police have begun questioning writers, artists and intellectuals who dared to sign a new charter demanding political reforms. It is a move that sets the mood for the year in which the Communist Party will mark the 60th anniversary of its rule.

From across China, reports are emerging of officials and even police calling in some of the 303 people who put their names to Charter 08, a document calling for greater civil rights and an end to the political dominance of the Communist Party.

The co-author, the literary critic Liu Xiaobo, has been in detention since December 8, the day before the bold manifesto was published online.

Another signatory, Xu Youyu, a professor of philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has written an open letter describing how he was notified by his superiors that the charter was “nonsense” and he should retract his signature. He refused.

Other signatories have been questioned but declined to be identified for fear of reprisals. One source told The Times: “People are being called in and questioned about who organised the manifesto and whether they had signed in person. We hear that the leaders at the top have decided that they cannot tolerate Charter 08.”

The interrogations had, so far, been mostly polite, he said. The aim appeared to be to identify the organisers.

Mr Liu, 53, one of four leading intellectuals who joined the student protesters in Tiananmen Square as they demanded greater democracy in 1989, was detained almost a month ago for his role in putting together the manifesto. His wife, Liu Xia, was allowed to visit him on New Year’s Day at a secret location outside Beijing. A source close to the family said: “She was not allowed to see where she was taken and Liu Xiaobo didn’t know where he was being held. He is being taken care of and is well fed but he undergoes interrogation every day.”

The source said that Mr Liu, who has spent several years either serving a jail sentence or in detention, was in good spirits but was allowed no access to books, television or newspapers. “He could not tell his wife very much, because the police were present throughout their two-hour meeting and lunch together.”

Mr Liu’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said that he was being held under a form of house arrest called residential surveillance but legal procedure had been violated because Mr Liu had been removed from his home. Residential surveillance can last for up to six months, and renewal is possible. That means Mr Liu could be held until after the sensitive 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square protest.

Among the signatories to Charter 08 is the former top party official Bao Tong, who put his name to the document describing himself as “a citizen”. In an essay written from his Beijing home, he wrote: “Would the powers that be please tell 1.3 billion people why freedom is a crime?” Mr Bao was jailed for seven years after the 1989 crackdown and lives under close surveillance.

Charter 08: the demands

— China . . . must divest itself of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an “enlightened overlord” or an “honest official”

— Must “turn toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law”

— Charter calls for 19 points of change, including rights to freedom of expression and assembly; the separation of powers of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government; election of public servants; and a guarantee of human rights

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Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorus shells

January 5, 2009

From The Times, UK,
December 5, 2008

Artillery shells explode above Gaza City

(Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli artillery shells explode with a chemical agent designed to create smokescreen for ground forces

Image :1 of 5

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Opinion: Michael Lerner | Brown calls for ceasefire | Europe split on response | Comment: James Bone | Israel splits Gaza | Doctors overwhelmed | Analysis: Colonel Lior Lotan | Leading article

Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.

As the Israeli army stormed to the edges of Gaza City and the Palestinian death toll topped 500, the tell-tale shells could be seen spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops’ advance. “These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in,” said one Israeli security expert. Burning blobs of phosphorus would cause severe injuries to anyone caught beneath them and force would-be snipers or operators of remote-controlled booby traps to take cover. Israel admitted using white phosphorus during its 2006 war with Lebanon.

The use of the weapon in the Gaza Strip, one of the world’s mostly densely population areas, is likely to ignite yet more controversy over Israel’s offensive, in which more than 2,300 Palestinians have been wounded.

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The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. However, Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”

The Israeli military last night denied using phosphorus, but refused to say what had been deployed. “Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law,” said Captain Ishai David, spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces. “We are pressing ahead with the second stage of operations, entering troops in the Gaza Strip to seize areas from which rockets are being launched into Israel.”

The civilian toll in the first 24 hours of the ground offensive — launched after a week of bombardment from air, land and sea— was at least 64 dead. Among those killed were five members of a family who died when an Israeli tank shell hit their car and a paramedic who died when a tank blasted his ambulance. Doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.

The Israeli army also suffered its first fatality of the offensive when one of its soldiers was killed by mortar fire. More than 30 soldiers were wounded by mortars, mines and sniper fire.

Israel has brushed aside calls for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, where medical supplies are running short.

With increasingly angry anti-Israeli protests spreading around the world, Gordon Brown described the violence in Gaza as “a dangerous moment”.

White phosphorus: the smoke-screen chemical that can burn to the bone

— White phosphorus bursts into a deep-yellow flame when it is exposed to oxygen, producing a thick white smoke

— It is used as a smokescreen or for incendiary devices, but can also be deployed as an anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing potentially fatal burns

— Phosphorus burns are almost always second or third-degree because the particles do not stop burning on contact with skin until they have entirely disappeared — it is not unknown for them to reach the bone

— Geneva conventions ban the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon against civilians, but its use as a smokescreen is not prohibited by international law

— Israel previously used white phosphorus during its war with Lebanon in 2006

— It has been used frequently by British and US forces in recent wars, notably during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its use was criticised widely

— White phosphorus has the slang name “Willy Pete”, which dates from the First World War. It was commonly used in the Vietnam era

Source: Times archives

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Israel is Immune From Criticism

January 5, 2009

A Galaxy of Partisan Propagandists

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | Counterpunch, January 5, 2008

The state of Israel has descended – plummeted – to one of the lowest levels of conscious barbarity that is currently evident in this horrible world.

Any nation that has behaved towards a subject people, as Israel has to Palestinians, is worthy only of utter contempt. On Sunday January 4 I heard a rabbi on the BBC’s morning religious program saying that he supported Israel’s air strikes on Gaza. A man of God actually endorsed the killing of hundreds of people. To say that I was – and am – aghast at the sentiment expressed is to put it very mildly. This religious leader, a person supposed to spread and preach tolerance, patience, charity and peace, was supporting war crimes of immense gravity. His approval of the killing of Arabs was blood-chilling.

And this rabbi was British. Here we have a British citizen supporting hatred and bigotry on a BBC religious program. But of course he isn’t really British. He is an Israeli religious propagandist of British citizenship whose main allegiance is to Israel. There are thousands like him in the UK and the US. They unconditionally promote Tel Aviv’s plans and policy and wield amazing influence over politicians and businesses. Killing Palestinians is Israeli policy, and these people spare no effort to justify it.

Here’s a resident of Gaza talking to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the horrors experienced by Palestinians (and congratulations to Haaretz for having the courage to print it): “I keep the children away from the windows because the F-16s are in the air; I forbid them to play below because it’s dangerous. They’re bombing us from the sea and from the east, they’re bombing us from the air. When the telephone works, people tell us about relatives or friends who were killed. My wife cries all the time. At night she hugs the children and cries. It’s cold and the windows are open; there’s fire and smoke in open areas; at home there’s no water, no electricity, no heating gas. And you [the Israelis] say there’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tell me, are you normal?”

No, they’re not, is the short answer, and the ruthlessness is epitomised by the evil Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who is using the Gaza war to establish her credentials as a reliably hard-nosed barbarian. She declares “there is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.”

It was reported on January 5 that Israeli troops are using white phosphorus (WP) artillery shells in Gaza, supposedly to create smoke screens to conceal their advance.

American troops used WP – fondly known as Willy Pete – in their destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, and the US tried to lie its way out of the war crime, but junior officers unintentionally blew the lies apart by writing in the magazine Field Artillery that “WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions . . . and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against insurgents in trench lines and spider holes . . . We fired ‘shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents using WP to flush them out and high explosive shells (HE) to take them out.” In fact WP is an effective killer, and anyone who inhales particles will suffer a particularly hideous and painful death. As recorded by The Independent newspaper in Britain “In the aftermath of the battle [at Fallujah], the State Department’s Counter Misinformation Office issued a statement saying that WP was only “used very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night [which isn’t the propose of a smoke-shell], not at enemy fighters.” When The Independent confronted the State Department with the first-hand accounts of soldiers who participated, an official accepted the mistake and undertook to correct its website.” Big deal. Lie, lie and lie again, until you’re found out and it’s impossible to deny the facts. And the Israelis seem to be taking the example, as usual, and are stoutly denying what has been seen by independent witnesses.

Article two, Protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons states: “It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by incendiary weapons.” But Israel is only following the US example. “Shake and bake” is such an attractive military option that it would be a shame to spoil their fun, especially when it has rabbinical approval.

Here is part of what is laid out in Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977 . . . General Protection Against Effects of Hostilities: “Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

Israel, supported energetically by Washington (and using US-supplied aircraft, bombs and rockets), has caused “incidental loss of life” and general civilian casualties on an enormous scale. The Israeli military and the Israeli people knew full well that their genocidal attack on Gaza would kill civilians. The use of white phosphorous in built-up areas is worthy of the Nazis at their most brutal. Stalin and Mao would nod approvingly. It wasn’t considered important that there would be countless civilian deaths. Nobody cares, and least of all American politicians. The next secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, refuses to comment on the atrocities. The incoming vice-president has been silent. President-elect Obama? As Reuters reported : “Obama . . . has not commented on the Middle East crisis since Israel launched attacks on Gaza nine days ago. His advisers insist that only President George W Bush can speak for America until then.” But it was noted that “The president-elect has commented on the global economic crisis and his plans to try to pull the US economy out of recession.”

Of course he has. And were it not for the power of Israel in America he would no doubt comment adversely on the slaughter in Gaza, because he is a decent man.

But Mr Obama dare not criticize Israel, even for its use of chemical shells. Nor can any American who wishes to enter or remain engaged in politics. The kiss of political death in the United States of America is to censure Israel. It can’t be done.

And that is why apartheid is permitted in Israel; it’s why the mass-punishment blockade was enforced months before the attack went in; and it’s why the near-genocide in Gaza is allowed to continue.

Does anyone remember the hearing on the so-called Israeli-Palestine peace process in the US House of Representatives in February 2007? Of course not. It was a farce. And why was it such a revolting and hideous charade? – Because it was a three card trick.

The main witness, of the three cards who were called, was one Martin Indyk, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which is the richest and most powerful lobby group in the country (two of whose members are currently under a mysteriously delayed investigation for spying for Israel). From there, inevitably, he went to be US ambassador in Tel Aviv. (And, incidentally, whose book on the Middle East was the subject of a glowing review in last week’s Economist.) Another witness was David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded by Indyk; it’s all very chummy in pro-Israel sewers), which is funded extensively by American interests that support Zionism. (Among other connections, it is closely associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.) And was the third witness a counter-balance to two energetic supporters of Zion? Could he or she present a rather less biased view of the Middle East? Perhaps a person who would make the point that Israel has contemptuously ignored UN Security Council resolutions concerning illegal occupation of Palestinian lands?

Not a bit. The third member was a comic quasi-intellectual character called Daniel Pipes who once declared that Muslim immigrants to the US were “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene.” (Germanic? – How quaint.) Pipes founded the Middle East Forum (MEF) which encourages university students in America to report lecturers and professors who they consider to be anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. (In Hitler’s Germany there were awards given to young people who identified and reported those they thought to be pro-Jewish; I know a very elderly German lady who did this when she was 15. She is now terribly ashamed at the memory, because she actually informed on her own father. How times change. Or don’t, of course.)

In 2006 Pipes was given the ‘Guardian of Zion’ award, an annual prize to a prominent supporter of Israel, by the Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

With a galaxy of partisan propagandists like Indyk, Makovsky and Pipes being the only people selected to give evidence on Israel-Palestine to the nation’s legislators in Washington, there was no chance whatever that the Congressional Sub-Committee would be presented with a balanced view of the Israel-Palestine problem. The deck was stacked, and the legislators listened. They had no choice, because of the power of the Israel lobby. They’ve been shaken and baked.

There is little doubt that the bias towards Israel will continue in the legislature and administration of the United States of America, no matter what Obama might really think, and no matter how many Palestinian children the Zionists have slaughtered. The Israelis are behaving like genocidal filth, but those who stay silent about their atrocities are not far behind in the gutter stakes.

Brian Cloughley‘s book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and will be published in the US in May by Skyhorse (New York).

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Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Palestine, Peace Movement, Uncategorized, US policy, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Israeli savagery in Gaza

January 5, 2009

Eric Ruder reports on Israel’s savage invasion into one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Socialist Worker, January 5, 2009

Israeli tanks mass on border before ground invasion of Gaza (Rafael Ben-Ari | Chameleons Eye)Israeli tanks mass on border before ground invasion of Gaza (Rafael Ben-Ari | Chameleons Eye)

THE ISRAELI military stormed into Gaza January 3 with thousands of troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers, inflicting a new round of death and suffering on Gaza’s population.

“This will not be easy, and it will not be short,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Israeli television as the ground invasion began. Major Gen. Yoav Galant, a top commander of Israel’s ground forces, told reporters that the aim of the operation was to “send Gaza decades into the past” and inflict “the maximum number of enemy casualties.”

The latest surge of Israel’s violence pushed the death toll among Palestinians to more than 500 and the injured to more than 2,500 as the weekend came to an end. More than one in three people in Gaza has no access to water and electricity, and sewage flows in the streets.

After a week of punishing air strikes and then heavy artillery barrages, Gaza’s residents live in a state of constant fear. As Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent, reported:

The Israeli military continues to pound targets everywhere in the territory. On the eighth day of attacks, people here are very much terrorized by what is going on. The Israeli military is engaging in very aggressive psychological warfare.

They have been dropping leaflets warning Palestinians that they have to flee their homes, and warning that anyone who lives in an area that could be a possible target that their home will be targeted as well. So that is causing a ripple effect of fear, but the question is where do 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza go?

What you can do

Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have already taken place in cities around the country, with more planned for the coming days. Contact local organizers for details where you live.

For updates on the current situation, plus commentary and analysis on the background to the war, read the Electronic Intifada Web site. Electronic Intifada Executive Director Ali Abunimah’s “Gaza massacres must spur us to action” is a good starting point for further reading.

You can also find updated coverage on conditions in Gaza and the efforts of activists to stand up to the Israeli war at the Free Gaza Web site.

Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S. “War on Terror,” by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad, documents the apartheid-like conditions that Palestinians live under today.

For background on Israel’s war and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, read The Struggle for Palestine, a collection of essays edited by Lance Selfa on the history of the occupation and Palestinian resistance.

Despite the scale of the human suffering, the U.S. government–predictably enough–blocked a proposed United Nations Security Council statement that expressed concern at the escalating violence between Israel and Hamas, and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, according to the Associated Press.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

WITH THEIR incursion, Israeli forces encircled Gaza City and effectively sliced the territory into northern and southern halves. But rather than enter Gaza’s population centers, Israeli troops remained poised on the outskirts, sending columns of troops and tanks to seize strategic hilltops above urban areas–putting them in the position of the military equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

At the opening of the ground offensive January 4, the New York Times faithfully reported the assertion by Israeli Defense Ministry spokesperson Shlomo Dror that “Hamas can stop it whenever it wants,” by stopping its rocket fire.

This idea–that Hamas provoked Israel into attacking Gaza, and therefore bears primary responsibility for the bloodshed–serves as the primary justification for the Israeli military’s war crimes. But it was Israel that broke the truce with Hamas–back on November 5, with an attack that killed six Palestinians. Until that point, the Palestinians had scrupulously abided by the 5-month-old truce, only firing rockets after Israel attacked.

But Israel has never needed the excuse of Palestinian attacks to unleash violence. As Ilan Pappe, part of a school of “new historians” in Israel that has challenged many of the central myths of the country’s founding, wrote:

There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its “surgical” operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way, of course, on the other.

This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli, and before that Zionist, dispossession of Palestine. Every act–whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction–was always portrayed as morally just and as a pure act of self-defense, reluctantly perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings…

Today in Israel, from left to right, from [the conservative party] Likud to [the centrist party] Kadima, from academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

AS THE superpower of the Middle East, Israel has used its massive military superiority to physically annihilate the civilian and government infrastructure of Gaza. But it still faces a thorny problem. “Though Israel has struck at hundreds of targets across the Gaza Strip, it has yet to seriously injure Hamas’s fighting force,” according to the Christian Science Monitor.

This is the same problem that every conventional military power pitted against a resistance movement must contend with–from the French forces occupying Algeria in the 1950s, to the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s, to the American occupiers in Iraq today.

“One of the most important things in this conflict between state and non=state actors is what is the meaning of victory,” said Eitan Azani, a former Israeli colonel at the Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “A lot of people from [Hamas] dying? A collapse? Or most of the operational capability destroyed? This is up for debate. We are in a very complicated situation.”

The harder Israel tries to pound Gaza’s residents into submission from afar, the more fierce becomes support for the Hamas resistance fighters that Israel is seeking to isolate. But if Israeli troops attempt to fight Hamas militants at close quarters, conventional military superiority would be transformed from an advantage into a weakness–tanks and troops would become targets for a resistance that can choose when and where to strike, and then slip away.

In the words of Israeli-based journalist Jonathan Cook:

Gaza, as Israelis know only too well, is one mammoth refugee camp. Its narrow alleys, incapable of being negotiated by Merkava tanks, will force Israeli soldiers out into the open. Gaza, in the Israeli imagination, is a death trap.

Similarly, no one has forgotten the heavy toll on Israeli soldiers during the ground war [against Lebanon] with Hezbollah in 2006. In a country such as Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the firing line.

That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak, leader of the Labor Party, will take lightly with an election in six weeks.

This dilemma has caused anxiety within the Israeli establishment about how to avoid the defeat the Israeli military suffered in 2006 when a month-long assault on Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives, while Israeli troops were killed, injured and captured.

In this sense, despite the overwhelming force that Israel is using, it’s too soon to say that it has won. “The main risk for Israel is that it will drag out into a full occupation of the Gaza Strip,” worried Shlomo Brom, former director of the Israeli army’s planning division. “If we have very few casualties in this operation, it may lead some to ask why don’t we topple Hamas?”

Meanwhile, around the world, there has been an outpouring of solidarity for the people of Gaza–from Palestinians living in Israel, who staged a huge demonstration over the weekend; to Arab citizens around the Middle East; to supporters of Palestinian rights in Europe and the U.S.

This is critical to bringing pressure to bear on Israel–and its chief backer, the U.S.

Building this pressure will require patient explanation and sustained campaigning against the central justifications offered by Israel for its war of terror against the people of Gaza. It’s Israel, not Hamas, that can end this conflict at any time. When Israel ends its occupation of the Palestinian homeland, then the resistance will end.

As Ilan Pappe put it:

Despite the predictable accusation of anti-Semitism and what have you, it is time to associate in the public mind the Zionist ideology with the by-now familiar historical landmarks of the land: the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of the Palestinians in Israel during the days of the military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre of Gaza.

Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology–in its most consensual and simplistic variety–allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them…

By connecting the Zionist ideology and the policies of the past with the present atrocities, we will be able to provide a clear and logical explanation for the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Challenging by nonviolent means a self-righteous ideological state that allows itself, aided by a mute world, to dispossess and destroy the indigenous people of Palestine is a just and moral cause.

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The Gaza Invasion a Monstrosity, Says UN Leader

January 5, 2009

The Sydney Morning Herald, January 4, 2008

by Ian Munro

NEW YORK – In an extraordinary outburst, the president of the United Nations General Assembly has branded Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza a “monstrosity” and a marked failure for the UN.

[This image provided by the United Nations, shows Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, president-elect of the 63rd Session of the UN General Assembly, speaking to the GA in June 2008 at UN headquarters in New York. (AFP/UN/File/Eskinder Debebe)]This image provided by the United Nations, shows Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, president-elect of the 63rd Session of the UN General Assembly, speaking to the GA in June 2008 at UN headquarters in New York. (AFP/UN/File/Eskinder Debebe)

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, of Nicaragua, blasted the Israeli action on Saturday as the UN Security Council convened its third Gaza emergency session.”I think it’s a monstrosity; there’s no other way to name it,” Mr Brockmann said. “Once again, the world is watching in dismay the dysfunctionality of the Security Council.”

His remarks were seen as putting a slight upon the United States, which again prevented the council from issuing an agreed statement on the crisis.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, lamented Israel’s incursion after a week-long bombardment of Gaza that had already killed at least 460 people and injured thousands more.

Israel has said it is targeting Hamas militants and resources, but according to early estimates about one quarter of those killed were civilians.

Mr Ban had expressed his extreme disappointment to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and had called for an immediate end to the ground operation, his spokesman said.

The Security Council failed to reach agreement on the Israeli action because the US again blocked consensus during the late-night emergency meeting.

Hamas must stop smuggling arms into Gaza and cease its rocket attacks on Israel, which were the “root cause” of violence in the region, said the deputy permanent representative for the US, Alejandro Wolff.

Mr Wolff said there was no point in the Security Council issuing a statement that Hamas would not honour. “We are not going to equate the actions of Israel, a member state of the United Nations, with the actions of the terrorist group Hamas. There is no equivalence there.”

Asked his reaction to Mr Brockmann’s criticism of the Security Council, Mr Wolff said: “I would urge him to focus on the dysfunctionality of other parts of this organisation.”

Mr Wolff said the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza was directly attributable to Hamas. “The problems the civilians are facing in Gaza are a function of how Hamas operates. It’s a very densely populated area [with] Hamas deliberately melding into the population.”

Israel began amassing troops and armoured vehicles on its border with the Gaza Strip days into the bombardment. Since last Monday UN officials have expressed fears about the impact of a land invasion.

Gaza has limited power and is reliant on Israeli co-operation for emergency supplies of medicines, food and fuel.

The UN has repeatedly called for a ceasefire but to no effect. Israel has continued to target Hamas militants in the territory, and Hamas has persisted with rocket attacks on cities in southern Israel.

Since the conflict began nine days ago the UN has accused Israel of a disproportionate response to the attacks and of breaching international law with its blockade, which it said punishes the mainly civilian population.

The UN spokesman for Mr Ban said he had told Mr Olmert the ground invasion would only intensify the suffering of Gaza’s 1.5 million civilians.

The UN has not been alone in trying to broker a ceasefire; attempts by the European Union, the US and Russia have failed too.

The invasion began just hours after the EU announced it was sending a delegation to try to negotiate a ceasefire.

The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the decision to send ground forces into Gaza was a “dangerous military escalation”.

The US Department of State said any ceasefire must not allow a return to the status quo. “We are working towards a ceasefire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante, where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza and to condemn the people of Gaza to a life of misery,” a departmental spokesman said.

Copyright © 2009. The Sydney Morning Heral

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In the US, Gaza is a different war

January 5, 2009
Al Jazeera, Jan 5, 2008
By Habib Battah
The mainstream US media has been careful to balance images of Gazan suffering with those of Israelis, leading to accusations it is not reflecting the unequal death toll [EPA]

The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel’s war on Gaza.On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.

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If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.

What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians – would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?

Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government’s relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel’s version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.

For example, the newspaper’s lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers’ photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel’s military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.

To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?

Context stripped

Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.

By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.

Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC’s Martin Fletcher on December 30: “In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket – while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle.”

Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.

When number of deaths did appear – sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen – it was identified as the number of “people killed” rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians.

No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as “rising tensions in the Middle East” by news anchors.

With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear.

ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as “Mideast Violence”. And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll.

On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets.

The reporter’s script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing “everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis”. And with that McGregor-Wood signed off.

Palestinian perspective missing

There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead.

For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.

In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks.

The US media has been accused of prioritising Israel’s version of events [EPA]

Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other’s views.Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged.

Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. “How many people did we kill in Germany?” Scarborough posed.

The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. “They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table,” he said repeatedly.

Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough’s characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature.

According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it “very clear” that they were uninterested in peace talks.

Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, “could not be trusted”, according to Bill Clinton, the former US president.

Gregory then added that Hamas had “undercut the peace process” and actually welcomed the attacks.

“The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn’t want the ceasefire,” he said.

Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be “crushed” but voicing concern over the cost of such action.

Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention.

Victim’s perspective

Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel’s dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.

For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed.

The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors.

On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin’s new grandchild.

Most US networks have reported exclusively from Israel [GALLO/GETTY]

On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story.For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households.

Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves.

The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established.

The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood.

Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant.

Palestinian voices

The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live.

Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions.

The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including  BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals.

On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements?

For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a “durable” ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets.

Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas.

Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply “the Palestinian resistance”.

While American analysts map out Israel’s strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one.

Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.

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Civilian deaths mount in Gaza war

January 5, 2009
Al Jazera, January 5, 2008

Women and children are among the many
Palestinian casualties [AFP]

Palestinian civilians are continuing to suffer as the Israeli military pushes deeper into the Gaza Strip.

At least 540 people have been killed in the territory in the last 10 days, with more than 80 deaths reported since the Israeli ground offensive began on Saturday.

Among the dead on Monday was a family of seven from Shati refugee camp, who were killed by Israeli navy shelling.

Three siblings from one family, as well as a girl and her grandfather, also died in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza during artillery shelling.

Emergency medical services have also come under attack with the al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya being hit by two Israeli shells, foreign human rights actvists said.

“Two consecutive shells just landed in the busy car park 15 metres from the entrance to the emergency room,” Alberto Arce of the International Solidarity Movement said in a statement.

“The entrance of the emergency room was damaged. At the time of the shelling ambulances were bringing in the wounded that keep pouring in.”

Medics killed

On Sunday, an Israeli raid killed at least four paramedics as they tried to reach wounded Palestinians. Ambulances have also been hit in the attacks, Palestinian sources said.

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Israeli government officials say they are not targeting civilians, but only seeking to halt rocket fire from the Palestinian Hamas movement governing Gaza.

There are also fears that the humanitarian situation will further deteriorate as the strip, home to 1.5 million people, is suffering from acute shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies.The UN has warned that there were “critical gaps” in aid reaching Gaza, despite claims from Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, that there was no crisis and that aid was getting through.

Christopher Gunness, the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) spokesman, said the idea that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, was absurd.

“The organisation for which I work – Unrwa – has approximately 9,000 to 10,000 workers on the ground. They are speaking with the ordinary civilians in Gaza… People are suffering,” he said.

“A quarter of all those being killed now are civilians. So when I hear people say we’re doing our best to avoid civilian casualties that rings very hollow indeed.”

About 250,000 people in the northern part of Gaza are also reported to be without electricity. The main power plant has been shut down for lack of fuel due to Israel’s blockade.

Defiant Hamas

Despite the crisis in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official, said the group was heading for “victory” against the Israeli military.

Map


Israeli positions in Gaza

He said that Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz-e-din al-Qassam Brigades, had “given the most beautiful performances during its confrontation with the army that the world thought invincible”.

Palestinian factions have continued to launch rockets into southern Israel, despite more than a week of aerial bombardment by Israel and the ground offensive.

One Israeli soldier has been confirmed killed in the Gaza assault so far, with at least 49 others wounded. Four Israelis have also been killed by Palestinian rockets.

The International Red Cross and world leaders have appealed to both Israel and Hamas to stop targeting civilians and work to restore a ceasefire.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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