Posts Tagged ‘casualties’

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The ruins of Gaza

June 22, 2009

Laura Durkay describes what she witnessed as part of a Code Pink delegation that visited Gaza earlier in June.

Socialist Worker, June 22, 2009

The American School in Gaza was destroyed during Israel's onslaught (Laura Durkay | SW)The American School in Gaza was destroyed during Israel’s onslaught (Laura Durkay | SW)

“PEOPLE ARE being kept alive.” It was one of the first things that John Ging, the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza told us.

It’s a pretty accurate description of the conditions in Gaza, four months after the end of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which left 1,400 dead, over 5,000 wounded and at least 40,000 homeless. People are being kept alive–and that’s about all.

Four months after the ceasefire, not a brick has been rebuilt in Gaza. Thousands of buildings–from the Palestinian parliament building (heavily damaged) and presidential residence (obliterated), to the Islamic University, the American School, Al Quds Hospital (hit with white phosphorus) and thousands of homes, shops, factories and police stations–stand exactly as they were on January 18, the last day of the war.

Continued >>

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Posted in Commentary, crime, Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized, war crimes, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel?

May 28, 2009

by Paul Craig Roberts | VDARE.com, May 28, 2009

“Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up to’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet the president of the U.S. thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Hamdi, José Padilla, Sami al-Arian, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by former secretary of defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forgo civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question: who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?

Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?

Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts who today rule Israel.

Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to North Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?

Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately 1 million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population?

Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced 4 million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?

Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?

Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?

Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced 1 million refugees?

“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Whom is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Whom is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the U.S. and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the U.S. and Israel for barbaric, murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the U.S. will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?

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Sri Lanka army kills 257 civilians in latest strike against Tamil Tigers

May 10, 2009

• Doctor says latest assault is bloodiest he has seen

• Sri Lanka military denies shells are being used in territory controlled by Tamil Tigers

French surgeons in Sri Lanka
French surgeons performing surgery in the operation room of the French emergency rescue operation hospital near the northern Sri Lankan town of Cheddikulam. Photograph: Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

A massive artillery barrage by the Sri Lankan army last night killed at least 257 civilians and left another 814 wounded in the small strip of territory that remains under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels.

A doctor working in the warzone described the assault as the bloodiest he had seen in the government’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

Dr V Shanmugarajah said he feared many more may have been killed since some bodies were being buried on the spot without being brought to the makeshift hospital he runs.

Shanmugarajah described seeing shells fly through the air, with some falling close to the hospital, forcing many to flee to bunkers for shelter.

The rebel-linked TamilNet website said about 2,000 people were feared dead. It accused Sri Lankan forces of launching the attack, a charge the military denied.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said it was only using small arms in its effort to wipe out the Tamil Tiger rebel group and there “is no shelling taking place”.

The government had sent medical supplies into the warzone in recent days but a shortage of doctors, nurses and helpers has made treatment difficult, Shanmugarajah said.

“We are doing the first aid and some surgeries as quickly as we can. We are doing what is possible. The situation is overwhelming; nothing is within our control,” he said. Shanmugarajah said he had sought the help of volunteers to dig graves.

The government vowed two weeks ago to cease firing heavy weapons into the tiny coastal strip that remained under rebel control in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. But medical officials in the area have reported that air strikes and artillery attacks have continued unabated, despite the presence of an estimated 50,000 civilians in the tiny conflict zone.

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Pakistani government must protect Swat valley civilians

February 16, 2009

Amnesty International, 12 February 2009

According to official estimates, over the past year more than 1,200 people have been killed and between 200,000 and 500,000 have been displaced in the Swat valley as a result of fighting between Pakistani Taleban groups and the military.

The Pakistani government is being urged to act immediately to protect hundreds of thousands of people from insurgents in the Swat valley and elsewhere in the country.

“For the past five years the government’s response to the rise of insurgents in Swat and the Tribal Areas has vacillated between launching often indiscriminate and disproportionate military operations that mostly harm civilians and abandoning Pakistani citizens to abusive insurgent groups,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director.

Since 2007, a local armed group ideologically affiliated with Afghanistan’s Taleban movement has managed to take effective control of nearly 80 percent of the Swat valley territory. The area was once a tourist destination just 100 miles from Islamabad and is normally home to around 1.5 million people.

Over the past two years, radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah and his followers have increasingly established control over the Swat Valley, imposing a de-facto administration. The group has consolidated its control by setting up a parallel justice system with over 70 “courts” to administer “speedy and easy justice”. This means meting out punishments that amount to cruel, degrading, or inhumane treatment. The Pakistani Taleban recently threatened to kill all lawyers and judges if they failed to stop working with the state judicial system.

In Swat, the Pakistani Taleban have committed serious human rights abuses, including the unlawful killing of scores of government workers as well as those whom they view as violating their edicts. The Taleban have publicly whipped men for shaving their beards, destroyed shops for selling music and forcibly prohibited women from leaving their houses unless escorted by a male relative.

The main square of Mingora, the area’s largest city, has been locally dubbed Khooni Chowk, or “bloody square”, in reference to the more than two dozen bodies the Pakistani Taleban have publicly displayed there.

“The Pakistani Taleban have shown their contempt for the lives and rights of the people of the Swat valley, whilst Pakistani military forces have often violated the human rights and safety of the people that they are ostensibly trying to protect,” said Sam Zarifi.

There are an estimated 3,000 Taleban insurgents located in the Swat Valley. They often endanger civilians by seeking shelter in villages, knowing that this might provoke military reaction.

Up to 15,000 government troops are deployed in Swat to root out insurgents. They have used helicopter gunships and heavy artillery in their operations, often in an indiscriminate way, harming civilians as they do so. Tens of thousands of people who have fled the area have cited their fear of government military operations, rather than the Taleban.

“The Pakistani government needs to implement a strategy that focuses on respecting the rights and the well-being of its citizens and refrains from heavy-handed military operations which put civilians at risk. The government should also ensure it does not leave its citizens at the mercy of the Taleban.”

Amnesty International has condemned the Pakistani Taleban’s campaign against education, especially for girls. Over the past 18 months, the Taleban have destroyed more than 170 schools in Swat, including more than 100 girls’ schools. These attacks have disrupted the education of more than 50,000 pupils, from primary to college level, according to official estimates.

The organization urged the government to take protective measures to guarantee that pupils of both genders, including those who have fled their homes, have access to education when schools reopen on 1 March.

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Tamil conflict ‘killing 40 civilians a day’

February 14, 2009

Morning Star Online

(Friday 13 February 2009)

A SRI Lankan health official said on Friday that fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels was killing around 40 civilians a day.

Aid groups have estimated that more than 200,000 civilians are trapped in a tiny strip of land still controlled by the rebels along the north-eastern coast.

Mullaittivu district health officer Dr Thurairajah Varatharajah said that artillery barrages were routinely hitting civilian areas in the region.

He added that the makeshift hospital that he was running in a school in the coastal town of Putumattalan was overwhelmed by casualties.

Dr Varatharajah said that the facility was badly understaffed since most of the doctors and nurses had either fled the war zone or had stopped coming to work and that the hospital was running out of some essential antibiotics and anaesthetics.

He added that civilians in the area had been suffering heavy casualties for three to four weeks as the military pushed the Tamil Tigers into the area, estimating that more than 100 wounded civilians were coming to the hospital every day, most of them with injuries from artillery shells.

Patients and medical staff were forced to evacuate the hospital in the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu last week after it came under heavy shelling for days. The staff, with the help of the Red Cross, set up a makeshift hospital in Putumattalan.

Dr Varatharajah claimed that the area around the hospital had been shelled on Monday, killing 22 people.

The artillery fire appeared to have stopped on Friday after the government declared a 7.5-mile coastal strip that included the hospital a “safe zone” and pledged not to attack it, he said.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for minority Tamils. More than 70,000 people have been killed.

The Sri Lankan government rejected Britain’s decision to appoint a special envoy to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation and help resolve the country’s ethnic conflict.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown named former defence secretary Des Browne as his special envoy for Sri Lanka on Thursday, but President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cabinet called the unilateral decision by Sri Lanka’s former colonial ruler “unhelpful,” noting that London had failed to consult with Colombo before announcing Mr Browne’s appointment.

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Israel holding 42 Palestinians in administrative detention for over two years

February 9, 2009

B’Tselem – Press Releases, 5 Feb. ’09

B’Tselem releases 2008 annual report – among the findings:

Of the 548 Palestinians Israel is detaining without trial, 42 have been held for over two years, according to figures appearing in B’Tselem’s annual report, published today. Twenty-three have been administratively detained for over two and a half years, including three who have been detained between three and four and a half years, and two over four and a half consecutive years. In fact, the vast majority of administrative detainees (372) have been held without charge or trial for at least two consecutive periods.

In 2008, the number of administrative detainees dropped gradually: from 813 in January to 546 in December. Six of the detainees in December were minors. For the first time, Israel held two female minors in administrative detention; both had their detention period extended for a second period. B’Tselem demands that Israel immediately release all administrative detainees, or try them for the offences they are alleged to have committed. The total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli custody at the end of December was 7,904.

Casualties

B’Tselem’s annual report also includes figures on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed during the course of the year (not including in Operation Cast Lead). Up until December 26, Israeli security forces killed 455 Palestinians (including eighty-seven minors). At least 175 of those killed (38 percent) did not take part in the hostilities.

18 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians inside Israel. Eight of them (four minors), were killed in the attack at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, in Jerusalem and Four were killed by rocket attacks and mortar fire. Three Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinias in the Terrritories. Palestinians killed ten members of the Israeli security forces.

Restrictions on movement

In contrast to official Israeli claims, Palestinian freedom of movement did not improve significantly in 2008. There are sixty-three permanent staffed checkpoints inside the West Bank, eighteen of them in the city of Hebron. In addition, the army restricts Palestinian movement on 430 kilometers of roads, on which Israelis are allowed free use. On 137 kilometers of these roads, Palestinian travel is completely prohibited. Forty checkpoints serve as crossing points into Israel, although most are them are located a few kilometers inside the West Bank, and not along the Israeli border. The number of physical obstructions Israel maintained in the West Bank actually increased in 2008. In the first nine months of 2008, the average number of such obstructions was 537, compared with a monthly average of 459 in 2007.

B’Tselem’s annual report surveys many additional violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories during 2008. Among them: house demolition, the continued construction of the separation barrier within the West Bank, settlement expansion and the lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. The report also addresses the systematic lack of accountability for harm caused to Palestinians by Israeli security forces.

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Ralph Nader: Punishing the Palestinians

January 18, 2009

Published on Saturday, January 17, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.

The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.

While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.

There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.

The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians’ fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.

In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters “wildly inaccurate” were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.

Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against “a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population.”

The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.”

Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer’s fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.

Why? The Congressional response: “Hamas terrorists” everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: “They are villagers with guns. They don’t even aim when they shoot.”

Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.
What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month – “state terrorism.” Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.

Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.

None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.

Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:

“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian’s] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”

Doesn’t that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?

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Afghan NATO force hits targets inside Pakistan

July 17, 2008

Jonathon Burch, Reuters North American News Service

July 16, 2008 10:41 EST

KABUL, July 16 (Reuters) – NATO forces in Afghanistan hit targets inside Pakistan with artillery and attack helicopters after coming under rocket fire from across the border, the alliance said on Wednesday.

Tension is high along the border with a sharp rise in attacks in eastern Afghanistan coming from inside Pakistan that Afghan and NATO officials blame on de-facto ceasefires between the Pakistani military and militants in its lawless tribal belt.

Troops from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “received multiple rocket attacks from militants inside Pakistan, July 15,” the alliance said in a statement.

“The troops identified a (compound) as the point of origin of the attacks and responded in self-defence with a combination of fire from attack helicopters and artillery into Pakistan.”

Nine Afghan soldiers were wounded by the rocket attacks and ISAF responded immediately, an ISAF spokesman said. ISAF and the Pakistani army “coordinated their operation closely from the outset. The Pakistani military agreed to assist and search the area if the border firing continued,” the statement said.

Despite cooperation and open lines of communication between army commanders on both sides of the border, Afghan leaders have blamed Pakistani agents for a string of attacks.

These have included a suicide bomb on the Kabul Indian Embassy last week that killed 58 people and an April assassination bid on President Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan rejects the accusations and says the Afghan government is trying to deflect criticism of its own failure to stem the rising tide of Taliban violence.

NO GROUND INCURSION

The U.S. military, which provides the vast majority of troops in eastern Afghanistan, says attacks are up by 40 percent in the area over the last year, partly because of increased penetration of their soldiers into the mountainous region.

Another factor is the ceasefires in Pakistan which help secure the militants’ rear.

But while cross-border firing has gone up from both sides, NATO denied it had any intention of mounting any incursion onto Pakistani soil.

“There is not, nor is there going to be, an incursion of NATO troops into Pakistan. There is no planning for, no mandate for, an incursion of NATO troops into Pakistan,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai told a news briefing in Brussels.

But, he said, NATO troops “have the right to fire back in self-defence into Pakistan.”

Western forces in Afghanistan are coming under increased pressure as the traditional summer fighting season gets into full swing with security analysts predicting July could be the worst month of violence yet since the Taliban’s fall in 2001.

Already more U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq and there are less than a quarter the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have seized the initiative and the headlines in recent weeks with a series of high profile attacks.

U.S. troops pulled out of a remote outpost in northeastern Afghanistan, three days after Taliban militants briefly breached the defences and killed nine U.S. soldiers, the biggest single loss of life for American forces in Afghanistan since 2005.

Foreign troops have also come under pressure in Afghanistan from a series of charges that their aircraft killed civilians.

Four women, four girls and an eight-year-old boy were killed in airstrikes in the western province of Farah on Tuesday, local officials said. (Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Charles Dick)

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