AS THE WORLD SQUIRMSã
Friday,
January 09, 2009
|
Note: Some items contained herein may have additional
formatting, emphasis and hotlinks added for context and perspective ~ Owen |
Gaza Carnage! 765 Slaughtered – Olmert to
Escalate
Growing
Calls for a Truce as Civilian Deaths Soar
AntiWar.com
January 8, 2009
RED CROSS: Gaza Children Found With
Mothers’ Corpses
January 9, 2009
The New York Times
PARIS — The
International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered
“shocking” scenes — including small children next to their mothers’ corpses —
when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza
battered by Israeli shelling. It accused Israel of failing to meet obligations
to care for the wounded in areas of combat. (Read More)
RED
CROSS: Israeli Behavior in Gaza Shocking
AntiWar.com
January
8, 2009
The Israeli
military declined to comment on the specifics of the latest atrocities, but
insists that it “in no way intentionally targets
civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save
civilian lives.” The
claim carries considerably less weight
after the Israeli military intentionally attacked a UN-run school full of
civilians on
Tuesday and unsuccessfully tried to blame Hamas. (Read More)
A child injured in the Israeli bombardment of a UN school
yesterday is taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City
UN:
Israel Admits Its Earlier Allegations of Weapons Fire From UN School Were False
The Earth Times
January 7, 2009
Jerusalem - Israel told foreign diplomats Wednesday that
Palestinian militants had not fired rockets from within a United Nations'
school, a UN official said. Israeli military officials said on Tuesday
that militants had fired rockets from within the school, and that attack
provoked Israeli artillery fire which landed near the school and killed more
than 40 Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, many of whom were seeking
refuge from fighting.
"The
Israeli army is briefing diplomats privately that the militant fire from Jablia
yesterday did not come from inside the UNRWA school compound, but from the
outside," said Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief Works Agency,
which aids Palestinian refugees.
Gunness
said the claim was a "major allegation against a neutral UN development
agency" which "within a day turns out to be completely
baseless." (Read More)
Media Eyeless in Gaza at Key Moment
Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib
IPS
January
7, 2009
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (IPS)
- Consumed by coverage of the Nov. 4 presidential election, U.S. mainstream
media ignored a key Israeli military attack on a Hamas target that some
Palestinians claim marked the effective end of the ceasefire between the two
sides and set the stage for the current round of bloodletting.
While the major U.S. news wire
Associated Press (AP) reported that the attack, in which six members of Hamas's
military wing were killed by Israeli ground forces, threatened the ceasefire,
its report was carried by only a handful of small newspapers around the
country.
The Nov 4 raid -- and the escalation that followed -- also
went unreported by the major U.S. network and cable television new programmes,
according to a search of the Nexis database for all English-language news
coverage between Nov. 4 and 7.
But the military action, which was followed up by an aerial
attack that killed at least one other Palestinian, appears to have dealt a
fatal blow to the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire that had taken effect Jun. 19 and
largely held for some four and a half months.
In retaliation for the attack, Hamas launched some 35 Qassam rockets into
Israeli territory Nov. 5 which, in turn, provoked Israel to severely tighten its
then-17-month-old economic siege of the Palestinian territory.
"While neither side ever completely respected the ceasefire
terms, the
Israeli raid was far and away the biggest violation," said Stephen Zunes,
an expert on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the University of San
Francisco.
"It was a huge, huge provocation, and it now
appears to me that it was actually intended to get Hamas to break off the
ceasefire," he added. (Read More)
UN
and Red Cross add to outcry on Gaza war
International Herald Tribune (IHT)
January 9, 2009
JERUSALEM: International aid groups lashed out at
Israel on Thursday over the war in Gaza, saying that access to civilians in need
is poor, relief workers are being hurt and killed, and Israel is woefully
neglecting its obligations to Palestinians who are trapped, some among rotting
corpses in a nightmarish landscape of deprivation.
The United Nations declared a suspension of its aid operations
after one of its drivers was killed and two others were wounded despite driving
United Nations-flagged vehicles and coordinating their movements with the
Israeli military. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for
an investigation by Israel for a second time in a week after the more than 40
deaths near a United Nations school from Israeli tank fire on Tuesday. (Read More)
Israeli Attacks on Its Staff
Forces UN to Suspend Gazan Aid Operations
BBC – London, UK
January 8, 2009
Israeli Troops Kill UN Aid Truck Driver
AntiWar.com
January 8, 2009
Shortly before
Israel was scheduled to start another three hour humanitarian pause in its now
nearly two week long attack on the Gaza Strip, an Israeli tank attacked a United Nations aid truck at
the Erez border crossing,
killing the driver and seriously wounding another aid worker. (Read More)
Dennis Kucinich: US Weapons Used To Kill Children Paid
For By US Taxpayers
Video
Youtube.com
January 8, 2009
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) argues that
Israel cannot claim self-defense when fighting a weak enemy with no air force,
navy or army. If Israel is not engaged in self-defense then it is engaged in an
offensive. And Kucinich points out that the US gave Israel all those weapons
only on condition that they not be used for aggression.
Washington Seeking Ammo Ships for
Israel?
By Nathan Hedges
Wired.com
January
7, 2009
On Dec. 31, just two days after Israel launched its current
offensive against Hamas, U.S. Military Sealift Command issued a solicitation for two container vessels to ship
ammunition from Greece to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The description of the vessels required
was brief:
Required: Request US
or foreign flag container vessel (coaster) to move approximately 168 TEU's
[standard twenty-foot containers] in each of two
consecutive voyages both containing ammunition.
Bids were requested by Jan. 5, but that does not mean a shipment
will happen. "Funds are not currently available for this
procurement," the solicitation states. "In the event funds remain
unavailable, this procurement will be cancelled without an award being
made." (Read More)
Washington’s Treasonous,
Israel-First Senate Votes to Support Israeli Genocide
Reuters
January 8, 2009
The
U.S. Senate voiced strong support on Thursday for Israel's battle against Hamas
militants in Gaza, while urging a ceasefire that would prevent Hamas from
launching any more rockets into Israel.
The chamber agreed on a voice vote to the non-binding resolution co-sponsored
by Democratic and Republican party leaders in the chamber.
"When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond
with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to
defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a
Nevada Democrat, said before the vote. … Co-sponsor and Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican said before the vote: "The Israelis
... are responding exactly the same way we would."
The House was expected to pass a similar resolution. (Read More)
Iraqi cleric urges attacks on US
troops over Gaza
AP
January 8, 2009
Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis
to kill US troops in Iraq in revenge for the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza. "I call upon
the honest Iraqi resistance to carry out revenge operations against the great
accomplice of the Zionist enemy,"
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from Baghdad attacked the international community
for its silence in the face of what he called Israeli brutality, and he put
pressure on Jordan, Egypt and Turkey (without naming them) to break off
diplomatic relations with Israel.
Tens of thousands of Shiite Iraqis staged processions in Karbala and elsewhere
in mourning for Imam Husayn, the martyred grandson of the Prophet. Some were shouting, "Every Day
is Ashura and every land is Karbala." This is a
revolutionary slogan and likely referred at least in part to the oppression of
the Gazans.
Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the
West so much, we will ask
By Robert Fisk
The Independent – London,
UK
January 7, 2009
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians.
Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another.
Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of
arms". But why should we be surprised?
Have we
forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and
women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian
dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese
civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre
of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in
2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that
same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is
amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers
and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis
take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every
possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli
ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and
prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire
has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the
courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians,
the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What happened
was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a
description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been
committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many
mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi
troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my
reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international
terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for
our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And
so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza. (Read More)
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