Further Horrific Stories from Gaza in today's Irish Times

by Zoe Lawlor - Personal Capacity Sun Jan 25, 2009 03:24

Come on down for your Freedom Medals

22 Jan 2009

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger writes that "as deserving as Tony Blair is of his George W. Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in his company". Following Israel's assault on Gaza, he offers two additional nominees.

On 13 January, George W. Bush presented “presidential freedom medals”, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is “responsible for than 90 per cent of all cases of torture”.

As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honoured for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush’s ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. The continuity between the two administrations has been as seamless as the transfer of the odious Bono’s allegiance, symbolised by President Obama’s oath-taking on the steps of Congress – where, only days earlier, the House of Representatives, dominated by the new president’s party, the Democrats, voted 390-5 to back Israel’s massacres in Gaza. The supply of American weapons used in the massacres was authorised previously by such a margin. These included the Hellfire missile which sucks the air out of lungs, ruptures livers and amputates arms and legs without the necessity of shrapnel: a “major advance”, according to the specialist literature. As a senator, then president-elect, Obama raised no objection to these state-of-the-art [sic] weapons being rushed to Israel – worth $22 billion in 2008 – in time for the long-planned assault on Gaza’s fenced and helpless population. This is understandable; it is how the system works. On no other issue does Congress and the president, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, give such absolute support. By comparison, the German Reichstag in the 1930s was a treasure of democratic and principled debate.

This is not to say presidents and members of Congress fail to recognise the Israel “lobbyists” in their midst as thugs and political blackmailers, though they never say in public, and indeed disport themselves at Zionist fund-raisers and on paid-for trips to the object of their ardour. But they fear them. As eyes welled on 20 January for the first African-American president, who remembered Cynthia McKinney, the courageous African-American Congresswoman, the first to be elected from Georgia, who spoke out for the Palestinians and was duly driven from office by a Zionist smear campaign? For their part, the Israelis’ current, phoney “unilateral ceasefire” in Gaza is designed not to embarrass, not yet, its new man in the White House, whose single acknowledgement of the “suffering” of the Palestinians has been long eclipsed by his loyalty oaths to Tel Aviv (even promising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which not even Bush did) and his appointment of probably the most pro-Zionist administration for a generation.

As deserving as Blair, Howard and Uribe are of the Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in their company. With the assault on Gaza a defining moment of truth and lies, principle and cowardice, peace and war, justice and injustice, I have two nominees. My first is the government and society of Israel. (I checked; the Freedom Medal can be awarded collectively). “Few of us,” wrote Arthur Miller, “can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

The bleak irony of this should be clear to all in Israel, yet its denial has emboldened a militarist, racist cult that uses every epithet against the Palestinians that was once directed at Jews, with the exception of extermination – and even that is not entirely excluded, as the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilinai, noted last year with his threat of a shoa (holocaust).

In 1948, the year Israel’s right to exist was granted and Palestine’s annulled, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other leading Jews in the United States warned the administration not to get involved with fascists like Menachem Begin who described the Palestinians in the way the Nazis used untermenchen – as “animals on two legs”. He became prime minister of Israel. This fascism, which was not often flaunted openly, was the harbinger of Likud and Kadima. These are today “mainstream” political parties, whose influence, in the treatment of the Palestinians, covers a national “consensus” that is the source of the terror in Palestine: the brutal dispossessions and perfidious controls, the humiliation and cruelty by statute. The mirror of this is domestic violence at home. Conscripted soldiers return from their “war” on Palestinian women and children and make war on their own. Young whites drafted into South Africa’s apartheid army did the same. Inhumanity on such a scale cannot be buried indefinitely. When Desmond Tutu described his experience in Palestine and Israel as “worse than apartheid”, he pointed out that not even in white supremacist South Africa were there the equivalent of “Jews only” roads. Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s bravest dissidents, says his country’s leaders suffer from “moral insanity”: a prerequisite, I should add, for the award of a Bush Freedom Medal.

My other nominee for a Bush Freedom Medal is that amorphous group known as western journalism, which has always made much of its freedom and impartiality. Listen to the way Israeli “spokespersons” and ambassadors are interviewed. How respectfully their official lies are received; how minimally they are challenged. They are one of us, you see: calm and western-sounding, even blonde, female and attractive. The frightened, jabbering voice on the line from Gaza is not one of us. That is the subliminal message. Listen to newsreaders use only the pejoratives for the Palestinians: words like “militants” for resisters to invasion, many of them heroes, a word never used, and “conflict” for massacre. Mark the timeless propaganda that suggests there are two equal powers fighting a “war”, not a stricken people, attacked and starved by the world’s fourth largest military power which ensures they have no places of refuge. And note the omissions - the BBC does not preface its reports with the warning that a foreign power controls its reporters’ movements, as it did in Serbia and Argentina, neither does it explain why it shows but glimpses of the extraordinary coverage of al-Jazeera from within Gaza.

There are the ubiquitous myths, too: that Israel has suffered terribly from thousands of missiles fired from Gaza. In truth, the first homemade Qassam rocket was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001, and the first fatality occurred in June 2004. Some 24 Israelis had been killed in this way, compared with 5000 Palestinians killed, more than half of them in Gaza, at least a third of them children. Now imagine if the 1.5 million Gazans had been Jewish, or Kosovar refugees. “The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to protect the people of Kosovo...”, declared the Guardian on 23 March, 1999. Inexplicably, the Guardian has yet to call for such “an honorable course” to protect the people of Gaza.

Such is the rule of acceptable victims and unacceptable victims. When reporters break this rule they are accused of “anti-Israel bias” and worse, and their life is made a misery by a hyperactive cyber-army that drafts complaints, provides generic material and coaches people all over the world on how to smear as “anti-Jewish” work they have not seen. These vociferous campaigns are complemented by anonymous death threats, which I and others have experienced. Their latest tactic is malicious hacking into websites. But that is desperate, since the times are changing.

Across the world, people once indifferent to the arcane “conflict” in the Middle East, now ask the question the BBC and CNN rarely ask: Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine does not? They ask, too, why do the lawless enjoy such immunity in the pristine world of balance and objectivity? The perfectly-spoken Israeli “spokesman” represents the most lawless regime on earth, exotic tyrannies included, according to a tally of United Nations resolutions defied and Geneva Conventions defiled. In France, 80 organisations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel’s leaders. On 15 January, the fine Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, wrote in Ha’aretz that Israeli generals “will not be the only ones to hide in El Al planes lest they are arrested [overseas]”.

One day, other journalists and their editors and producers may be called upon to not only explain why they did not tell the truth about these criminals but even to stand in the dock with them. No Bush Freedom Medal is worth that.

by Sean Og Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:19

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/J...36968

Here is another - Bteselm field worker murdered by Hamas in Gaza

by Justin Morahan Tue Jan 27, 2009 02:48

"WHITE FLAG INCIDENT" a probable war crime

They were an ordinary family in northeast of Gaza, the Abed Rabbos. They lived within two km of the Israeli border and thought the Israeli soldiers would not harm them.

On the afternoon of 7 January 2009, as the Israelis advanced into Gaza, a tank stopped outside the house of Khaled Abed Rabbo and a loud-hailer ordered the family to come out.

His mother, Souad, his wife and and their three little girls, Amal (2), Samer (4) and Souad (7) all came out with white flags. A soldier emerged from the hatch and opened fire, killing little Amal (2) and Souad (7), injuring Samer (4) seriously and also injuring Souad, the Grannie.

“Amal’s insides poured out. Little Souad was cut across the middle by bullets.” said their father.

From his home, 60 metres away, Samih al Sheikh, an ambulance driver, heard the family screaming and rushed in his ambulance to help

The soldiers ordered him out of the ambulance, forced him to strip down to his underwear and prevented him from going to the injured and dead.

After two hours, the Israelis allowed them to walk to a highway junction, carrying their dead and wounded.

The soldiers shot around their feet and over their heads as they were fleeing. A man with a horse-drawn cart who tried to help them was also shot dead.

Then the Israelis evacuated all the neighbourhood and blew up all the houses, including the home of the Abed Rabbos.

Amal (2) and Souad (7) were buried in one grave in Jabalya cemetery. An uncle took Samer (4) to Belgium, where she has undergone seven operations.

(Source Irish Times 26 January 2009.
Adapted from Lara Marlowe's article as recounted by Khaled Abed Rabbo and his mother Souad)

by Bazooka Joe Tue Jan 27, 2009 08:57

Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki gave orders to Israeli soldiers which outlined a rabbinical edict against showing mercy to civilians. He preached that showing mercy during the battle would be “terribly immoral” and quoted a medieval sage who cautioned Jews not to “be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel.” He told troops that the civilian population of Gaza was not innocent, and urged them to “spare your lives and the lives of your friends and not to show concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/arm....html

by George F. Ryan Fri Jan 30, 2009 12:47

White phosphorus is not an experimental weapon. DIME munitions were apparently also used in Gaza in 2006, so apparently they are not being tested out or being used experimentally here either.

DIME munitions were actually developed to avoid collateral damage, by having an effective but small blast radius. It is made by a combination of conventional high explosive and small particles of a chemically inert metal, such as tungsten. The idea is that the chemically inert metal will not chemically react during the explosion.The HMTA powder acts as micro-shrapnel which is very lethal at close range (about 4 meters or 13 feet), but loses momentum very quickly due to air resistance, coming to a halt within approximately 40 times the diameter of the charge. This increases the probability of killing people within a few meters of the explosion while reducing the probability of causing death and injuries or damage farther away. It is true that humans caught within the blast radius may have limbs amputated, etc. but overall it is calculated to reduce collateral casualties.

by Vincent Fri Jan 30, 2009 18:42

In a chilling account from Gaza of how the Israeli army operated during the invasion large groups of Israeli soldiers are described hiding out, afraid to engage the Hamas fighters, using every method they could to avoid having to fight the resistance. Innocent bystanders were used as human shields, as go betweens held at gunpoint . Dogs, Human shields and rockets and bulldozers were all engaged in order to avoid risking getting hurt in the battle.

Majdi Abed Rabbo was used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers trying to get Hamas fighters to surrender :

" All three men – with Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, wearing camouflage and headbands bearing the insignia of the Izzedine el Qassam brigades – were still alive, though one was badly injured and persuaded Mr Abed Rabbo to tighten the improvised bandage round his right arm. The youngest – perhaps 21 – was taking cover behind fallen masonry from where he could see the Israeli troops who had sent the visitor. Nervously, Mr Abed Rabbo told them: "They sent me back so I can take your weapons. They told me you are dead." It was the youngest who replied defiantly: "Tell the officer, 'If you're a man come up here'." "

The incident describes a protracted event over the course of a few days with Israeli soldiers hiding out until eventually they got bulldozers to bring the building down on top of the Militants hiding within.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/my-....html

by Justin Morahan Mon Feb 02, 2009 00:48

From Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom: "ISRAELI TV VIEWERS have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Pedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.

On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them."

The State of Israel and its army are now apparently afraid of being convicted of war crimes.

According to Gush Shalom, Immediately after the cease-fire, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, promoted a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes.

GS adds "This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning”"