Israel Attacks Palestinian Dignity

In more ways than one....

Related: Israel fires on US Presidential candidate

And if the Israeli monsters injure or kill her, what is your reaction going to be, Amurka? Forget about the Zionist MSM because they will no doubt demonize her; however, are you going to let the Israelis KILL an AMERICAN CITIZEN? Is that how craven and cowardly you have become towards your Zionist overlords?

Then it truly is AmeriKa!!

"URGENT! Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship! TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!

Date : 12-30-2008

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.

It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!

URGENT! Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship! TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.

It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!

CALL the Israeli Government and demand that it immediately STOP attacking the Dignity and endangering the lives of its passengers!

CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5062 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il

CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:
+972 33697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

--MORE--"

Israel's Shock and Awe

"Shock, Awe and Lies: The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza

Chris Floyd

December 29, 2008 Here is a simple, stone cold fact. You cannot read or hear the truth about what is happening in Gaza from any corporate media in the United States. The only thing you will find there are regurgitations of Israeli spin, which are themselves only regurgitations of the kind of spin that American militarists have put on their own depredations — for centuries now. Up and down the American media and political establishments, you will find nothing but bleatings about Israel being “forced” to launch its vicious blunderbuss attacks against heavily populated Gaza because of the “recent spate of Hamas bombings” since the end of a six-month ceasefire. This is of course a damnable and deliberate lie. Papers in Israel — in Israel, but not the United States — are reporting the truth: the murderous assault on Gaza was planned not only before the six-month ceasefire ended — it was planned before the cease-fire even took effect. Indeed, the cease-fire was part of the military plan to decimate the civilian areas of Gaza; it was a hoax, a scam, a deliberate feint to buy time for military preparations — precisely the same strategy followed by the Bush Regime (and its bipartisan Establishment supporters) in “going to the UN” to seek a “peaceful solution” to the “Iraqi crisis” — when the invasion was already in the works. Haaretz reports on the Israel’s deceit in the latest outrage, in the aptly titled piece, “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about”: Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning. he disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike. Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.. The story also notes that the recent racheting of tension was sparked, deliberately, by a heavy-handed Israeli incursion into Gaza: The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.... While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday - one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued. “Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday,” one defense official said, “but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday.” Not only did this deception lead Hamas to send its officials back to work — it also meant that there was no general warning to the masses of civilians packed like sardines into Gaza’s hellish confines. It meant that civilian casualties would be maximized — especially when the initial assault was launched in the middle of the day, with thousands of schoolchildren out at their lesson. As Glenn Greenwald notes, Israel’s massive bombing of civilian areas — even if couched in terms of “retaliation” for scattershot strikes on Israeli territory by a political faction — constitutes “a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.” Greenwald also adroitly turns Barack Obama’s campaign kowtowing to Israeli militarism on its head: [Obama on the campaign trail]: “The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if — I don’t even care if I was a politician — if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” Can’t the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit: “if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades — or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit — I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing”? But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute. What is the ultimate context of this carnage? The fact that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine had their land taken away from them by force — not in some ancient, historic era, but within the lifetime of many thousands of Palestinians still living. I hold no brief for Hamas; like the Angry Arab, whose coverage of the conflict has been relentless and penetrating, I don’t care for any party based on religious extremism. But as Greenwald notes, every action taken by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups could be characterized as “retaliation” for the theft of their land, not to mention the war crime of collective punishment and genocidal blockades visited upon the Occupied Territories for years. But there is not a single peep of this perspective from America’s ruling class and its media courtiers. Of course, it is a bit much to expect a nation which itself was built on land theft, repression and slaughter to see anything wrong or “disproportionate” in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. What else are you supposed to do when those dang heathen savages come around with their war parties and tomahawks, trying to get back the land that God Almighty has granted to good white folk? Meanwhile, here’s what Israel’s “Manifest Destiny” looks like on the ground in Gaza. From the Maan News Agency (via the Angry Arab, as was the photo above): Death shrouds the hallways of Gaza City's Ash-Shifa medical compound Saturday, its smell creeping in from all corners. mputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead. In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him. Another man stands dazed, in shock after watching his son Mohammed killed during his graduation ceremony at the de facto police headquarters. The father of one of Mohammed's classmates stood next to his son as he was decapitated. The man is still screaming. In the packed hospital waiting room a mother sits silently staring into the distance; her son was pronounced dead shortly after she brought him in… Forty-year-old mother Nawal Al-Lad’a did not find the bodies of her two sons in the medical compound, so she left to look amid the rubble. Husam Farajallah, a university student, was at the hospital collecting the body of his relative. He called what happened in Gaza a “black day” in the lives of all Palestinians, and wondered how the world could watch and do nothing. Medics in Gaza confirmed that the majority of those killed in the day’s attacks were civilians, including men, women and children. Most were cut to pieces, making the job of doctors and medics difficult, and the task of giving bodies back to families painful and gruesome. The medics working in the field continue to dig up bodies from the densely populated urban areas of Gaza City. The scenes remind many Palestinians of the images that came out of the Sabra and Shatila massacres from Beirut in 1982, when thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia. As the death toll climbs and no word on a halt to the attacks has come from Israel, Gazans fear for their lives and loved ones.

--MORE--"

Israel's Wanton Aggression

"Israel's Wanton Aggression On Gaza

Stephen Lendman

It's not the first time and won't be the last. On December 27, AP reported that:

"Israeli aircraft struck Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of simultaneous attacks, and Hamas and medics reported dozens of people were killed."

Haaretz headlined:

"Israel launched (Operation Case Lead) Saturday morning (at around 11:30AM with no warning) the start of a massive offensive against Qassam rocket and mortar fire on its southern communities, targeting dozens of buildings belonging to the ruling Hamas militant group."

AlJazeera.net reported that "Israeli missiles target Gaza," and continued:

"Israel has launched air strikes on Hamas installations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 155 people and causing heavy damage, according to officials and witnesses."

"At least 30 missiles (later over 100 reported) were fired at targets on Saturday (morning), with the head of emergency services in Gaza saying at least 200 people were also wounded." By Sunday afternoon, Ma'an News reported much higher numbers - at least 285 known dead, more expected, and over 900 injured, many seriously.

Among the dead was Gaza's police chief, Tawfiq Jabber, after a missile struck a police graduation ceremony in Gaza City. Other "casualties" (presumed killed) were governor of the Al-Wusta (central) Districts, Ahmad Abu Aashur, and commander of Security and Protection Services (in the government police), Ismail Al-Ja'bari.

The Strip's interior ministry reported that all Gaza security compounds were destroyed. According to Hamas' deputy leader, Mousa Abu Marzook: So far "the aggression (hasn't) stop(ped)....they are targeting all the police headquarters and offices. We will defend our people, we will retaliate against this aggression....our military will retaliate."

Marzook asked the international community to condemn Israel's wanton state terrorism. "Nobody in this world can accept what happened....the international community (must) stand against this and say that it is not acceptable." Former Palestinian information minister, Mustafa Barghauthi, said: Israel didn't attack Hamas, it attacked "the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza. (Israel is guilty of) war crimes." Hamas' leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said "Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre."

In Damascus, Khled Meshal, Hamas' political leader in exile, said Hamas pursued "all peaceful options without results" in calling for new Intifada resistance. The Arab League was tepid in its response. It called an "emergency" Sunday meeting in Cairo, then postponed it until Wednesday, December 31.

Meanwhile, the raids continue; the death and injury toll mounts; vast amounts of despair, anger, and destruction as well; and Fatah leader and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (from Cairo) blamed Hamas for the violence. That provoked outrage from Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. He accused Abbas of "downplay(ing) the sufferings of our people in Gaza, belittl(ing) their pains, (and) providing justification of the holocaust and war waged by Israel."

As always, most of the dead and wounded are civilian men, women and children. No matter, according to Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu saying: Saturday's attack is "only the beginning. The operation was launched following the violation of the terms of the lull by Hamas and the unceasing attacks by Hamas authorities on Israeli civilians in the south of the country."

In fact, "attacks" were the pretext, not the cause of Israel's aggression. Since Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in January 2006, Israel, Washington and the West withheld recognition and more. All outside aid was cut off, an economic embargo and sanctions were imposed, and the legitimate government was isolated and vilified.

The leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, vows as a "strategic objective" to overthrow Hamas by military, economic and diplomatic means. Her main opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, pledges to "topple the Hamas regime" and end its effective resistance against an oppressive occupation.

All along, Hamas has been conciliatory to no avail. Earlier in the year, its leaders agreed to a ceasefire and observed months of it unilaterally, despite repeated Israeli violations and Gaza being under siege. On November 4, it ended after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Strip (without cause) and killed six Hamas officers supposedly to close off tunnels close to the Kisufim roadblock. Thereafter, in spite of both sides calling for peace, IDF hostilities continued.

Israel is a serial aggressor. Hamas responds in self-defense as international law allows. Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the "right of individual or collective self-defense (against an armed attack) until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

On December 21, 1965, the UN General Assembly adopted Res. 2131 titled: "Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty." It called armed intervention, subversion, and all forms of indirect intervention synonymous with aggression and, for the first time, recognized "the legitimacy of struggle by the people under colonial rules (including occupation) to exercise their rights to self-determination and independence."

On November 22, 1974, the General Assembly passed Res. 3236 recognizing that Palestinians have the same right to self-determination as other sovereign states.

On June 8, 1977, Protocol 1 to the August 1949 Geneva Conventions was passed - "relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts." It declared the legitimacy of armed struggle (or resistance) to achieve self-determination as long as no proscribed methods are used. Further, "all states (are urged) to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial territories (including occupied people seeking freedom)."

Rarely do Palestinians get any, and, since 1967, have been some of the most isolated people in the world. For Gazans, no outside aid gets in, except for what Israel occasionally lets UN and humanitarian agencies supply and the little coming through tunnels on Egypt's border. It's never enough and falls woefully short of minimum amounts needed to survive. The result is a growing humanitarian crisis, an entire people on the verge of breakdown, compounded by mass slaughter, destruction, and it's "only beginning" according to the IDF spokesman.

The world community is silent and lets Israel do as it pleases - despite repeated international law violations, willful acts of aggression, grievous harm to four million people under occupation, including 1.5 million under a medieval Gaza siege, now under attack.

Reports were that EU nations and Russia called for (but didn't demand) an end to hostilities. According to Reuters, Washington urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties but stopped short of calling for an end to the attacks. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe blamed Palestinians in saying "Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop." Unsaid was that they respond to IDF violence or that until December 27 no Israeli was killed or injured.

Blame the Victim, Not the Aggressor

On Saturday, Condoleeza Rice accused Hamas for the violence. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could only express "deep alarm," and where was Barack Obama? An AP photo showed him on vacation "working out" at the Semper Fit Center at the Marine Corp Base Hawaii in Kailua, Hawaii on Saturday, and CBS News reported that he's "closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time," according to Brooke Anderson, his chief national security spokesperson.

In a July 2008 interview, The New York Times asked Obama if Israel should negotiate with Hamas in Gaza. He replied that "I don't think any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens....I expect Israelis to do (all they can to stop them)....In terms of negotiating with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, (and) has consistently used terror as a weapon. Hamas is a terrorist organization....it's hard for Israel to negotiate with a country like that."

Hamas was democratically elected. It's the legitimate Palestinian government. It's falsely called a terrorist organization, and it has every right to resist an illegal occupation under international law. It observed a unilateral ceasefire for months and extended peace overtures numerous times in the past. Israel spurned them by dividing Gaza and the West Bank, co-opting Mamoud Abbas, inciting Fatah against Hamas, isolating Gaza, and pursuing a policy of aggression, killings, targeted assassinations, mass incarcerations, and torture with full support from Washington, the West, and (from his comments above) the incoming Obama administration.

The UN Refugee Works Relief Agency's (UNWRA) operations head for Palestinian refugees, John Ging, expressed outraged on what's happening. Earlier he said: Gazans got nothing from the months of ceasefire. There was no "restoration of a dignified existence. We had our supplies restricted (during the period) to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position" with very little food left until it ran out.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) campaigns for Palestinian justice in areas of civil, human and political rights according to international law. Along with the Palestine Return Centre (PRC), the Palestinian Forum of Britain (PFB), the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), Stop the War, Friends of al Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and Respect, Islamic Human Rights Commission it organized emergency protests opposite Israel's London Embassy on December 28 and 29 to demand an end of the Gaza siege and ongoing aggression. The urgency was highlighted by saying: Israel's Cynicism (Is) Supported by the West's Complicity" as it called for public solidarity to end it.

For her part, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni ordered the Ministry to "take emergency measures (to) open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign," according to Haaretz. In other words, Israel will spin its wanton aggression into justifiable self-defense and get dominant media help to sell it.

On December 27, The New York Times took the lead. It reported that "Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group's rocket fire....Israeli military officials (called the attack) an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. Thousands of Israelis hurried into bomb shelters amid the hail of rockets," making it seem like Israel resembled London during the blitz when, in fact, Hamas attacks are mere pin pricks and only respond to first-strike Israeli attacks.

The Times and dominant media are silent on this. They continue spreading spurious lies about Hamas being "officially committed to Israel's destruction, and when it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and then 'forcibly' took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it, or end its violence against Israelis."

All of the above is untrue. The Times continues to report falsely. Hamas wants peace, has repeatedly been conciliatory, and its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said earlier that armed struggle would end "if the Zionists ended (their) occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians."

Israel rejects all overtures. More recently, Hamas offered peace and Israeli recognition in return for a Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders - its Occupied Territories that it's entitled to under international law.

As early as 1988, the PLO under Yasser Arafat accepted a two-state solution with Palestinians willing to settle for only 22% of their pre-1948 homeland - a generous offer that, if accepted, would have had two sovereign states living peacefully alongside each other as neighbors.

Israel rejects this out of hand. It chooses dominance over peace, violence over reconciliation, and imperial conquest above the rule of law. It's colonizing the West Bank, ethnically cleansing the population, and continues to terrorize Gaza. "The newspaper of record" is selective about "fit news to print," so uncomfortable truths are suppressed. It reported that one Israeli was killed Saturday and another four wounded, one seriously, but didn't explain that previous rocket attacks caused no deaths or injuries.

After many months of siege compounded by ongoing attacks, Gaza is gravely affected, but so is the West Bank. Under the Fatah government, no rockets are launched, yet Israel maintains a violent occupation, continues to seize Palestinian land, expand its illegal settlements, and lets its residents terrorize Palestinians with impunity, even in cases of wanton killings and destruction of property.

Early Reports on the Ground and from Israel

On Saturday, Haaretz reported that 60 warplanes hit 50 targets simultaneously, then 20 more "struck 50 Palestinian rocket launchers in an effort to minimize Hamas' retaliatory strikes." The attack hit civilians with the IDF stating that those near targeted sites were "liable to get hurt." Some were children leaving school when the strikes were launched.

Haaretz writer Amos Harel called them "the harshest IDF assault on Gaza since the territory was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967." Palestinian sources described a massive attack, like "shock and awe," destroying about 40 targets in three to five minutes. The IDF spent months picking sites, and dozens more may "come under attack in the coming days. Little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians. From Israel's standpoint, Hamas" brought this on itself. In Pentagon-speak, civilians are "collateral damage," but pictures of the slaughter show otherwise - stark evidence of crimes of war and against humanity that no authority will punish.

Also at issue is whether IDF ground forces will follow the air attacks, and if so, it won't be the first time. The right-wing Jerusalem Post quoted president Shimon Peres saying: "Israel will take all steps demanded of it to stop the rocket fire (but) we will not go into Gaza. There are other ways - we didn't leave Gaza in order to go back."

The Ma'an News Agency reported (through Monday AM) at least 310 killed and over 1000 wounded with medical sources saying arrivals at Gaza City hospitals are in "pieces." In addition, the Head of Emergency and ambulance department, Muawiya Hassanain, confirmed that medical crews continued pulling dozens from under rubble.

Things are desperate as he asked all Arab states for aid in the form of medications and operating supplies for those too badly injured to be moved. Hospital corridors are filled with bodies and gurneys, and local morgues are out of space.

Israeli defense minister and former prime minister, Ehud Barak, declared Gaza's 20 square kilometers a "special military zone" - a classification just short of a declaration of war. It already is for its people, and here's how Al-Azhar University professor Said Abdelwahed described conditions late Saturday:

"It is horrible outside! Minutes ago I heard the hissing of a Palestinian Qassam rocket, then another one accompanied by an explosion. It seems that the second one was hit by an Israeli aircraft that may have been targeting the Palestinian group. The news now is saying that an Israeli Apache helicopter has targeted a recreation ground with fish ponds."

"Al-Shifa hospital said that there are more than 195 dead and over 570 injured there. Every minute the number of casualties goes up. These are the figures in Gaza, but there are still no official statements from other towns and villages and refugee camps. Near our apartment, my youngest son was waiting for his school bus when the preventive security department was hit 50 meters from where he was standing. Two men and two young girls died immediately."

"It is utterly dark now. I am operating a small generator to contact the world via internet. Tonight everyone in Gaza is scared. It's totally dark (there's no power); children cry from fear; (at least) 206 people are dead. They (and the injured) line the floor at Al-Shifa hospital, but (it's) poorly equipped. (Its) administration called on people to donate blood. The teachers' syndicate declared a three days strike in protest...."

"Just in, Israeli aircraft (Saturday night) hit places east of Gaza City where a number of people were killed and injured. Casualties are rising. People remain under rubble. One mother lost two young daughters and a son as they were heading to school."

"Tonight is cold mainly for those whose windows (were) shattered by explosions." With Gaza under siege, "there is no glass available" to replace them. "In the apartment building where I live, 7 apartments witness freezing cold nights. They use blankets to cover in the place of the broken windows. Hundreds of homes" are in the same condition. Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh "gave a televised speech....to raise morale and to reconfirm that Hamas will not surrender. The death toll reached 210" and number of seriously injured is now up to 200. Another air raid" is now in progress north of Gaza City.

UNRWA Expresses "Horror"

The UN Relief and Works Agency commissioner Karen AbuZayd was outraged over Israel's attack, the mass killings and destruction, and expressed her "deep sadness at the terrible loss in human life." She reminded Israel that it's a signatory to "international conventions that protect non-combatants in times of conflict (and added that) these conventions are worthless if they are not upheld." A statement said that UNRWA will "exert all efforts to respond as quickly as possible to relieve suffering and pain (and added that today's attacks follow) weeks of a tight blockade that prevented UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies from assisting the population (that's) unable to (meet) their basic needs, and now" they're under attack.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Expresses Outrage in Calling for An Immediate End of the Attacks.

It blamed the suffering in Israel and Gaza "squarely with successive Israeli governments" in citing 41 years of "increasingly oppressive Israeli Occupation without a hint that a sovereign and viable Palestinian state will ever emerge."

Why so? Because Israel and Washington won't tolerate one beyond the fiction of isolated, surrounded, impoverished, and impotent bantustan outposts that IDF forces can enter at will and wreak havoc on a helpless population.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad Response

After the air strikes, Hamas ordered its Al-Qassam Brigades to respond "by any means necessary." Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called for a "massive response" and for renewal of others inside Israel. Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batsh called Israel's attack "open war." He also condemned the world community and Arab states for their "silence on such massacres" and vowed that Israel "would never make the resistance factions surrender."

West Bank Protests

Demonstrations erupted across the West Bank, including in Bethlehem, Ramallah city center, the Ad-Duheisha refugee camp, Hebron, Tulkarem, and East Jerusalem. Violent clashes broke out between Palestinian youths and IDF forces in Shufat refugee camp on the northern outskirts of East Jerusalem. Also in Qalandia, Ar-Ram and Al-Isawiya. Dozens of injuries and arrests were reported. Black flags were hung around the city and a commercial strike was declared.

Tulkarem governor Talal Duweikat and Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member Hasan Khriesah joined hundreds of others in the streets. The city declared a day of mourning in response.

In Hebron, hundreds of university students protested for an end to violence. They chanted anti-occupation slogans and called for Fatah and Hamas to unify for a common purpose. The group marched to the Bab Az-Zawiyah neighborhood where confrontations erupted with IDF forces, and they, in turn fired suffocating amounts of tear gas.

In Ramallah, Fatah organized a rally for hundreds and called for a general strike to close all city shops for the day. Demonstrators and international community institutions raised banners with slogans saying "one blood, one nation, Gaza and we are with you." Ministry of Prisoners Affairs, Ziyad Abu Ein, called on all Palestinians to unite in dark days. PLC member Mustafa Barghouthi called Israeli violence "their harshest crimes against Palestinians" and condemned world and Arab leaders for their silence.

In Bethlehem, protests erupted in the Ad-Duheisha refugee camp (south of the city) and a larger crowd assembled in the city.

A December 27 Palestinian press release read:

"A demonstration to condemn the massacres being committed in Gaza."

"Palestinian Civil Society organizations in the Bethlehem area, people of various political affiliations, Christians, and Muslims, and all people of conscience in the Bethlehem area are gathering at 5PM (Saturday) in front of the Church of Nativity and Omar's mosque in Bethlehem."

Through Sunday afternoon, around 300 people were massacred by bombing besieged Gaza. Over 1000 were reported injured as well. The victims include men, women, and children, and the numbers keeps rising. "Join us today as we call for ending the massacres, ending the siege on Gaza, for reconciliation between all Palestinians, and for freedom."

Signed:

Khalid AlAzza
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour

The Union of Health Work Committees - Gaza - Late Saturday Press Release - from Executive Director Yousef Momeusa

After two waves of Israeli air attacks, "television footage showed dead bodies scattered on a road and wounded and dead being carried away by distraught rescuers. There was widespread damage to buildings." The number of dead exceed 200 and is rising. At "least 750 were wounded, 125 with critical injuries." Updated numbers are much higher and continue climbing.

"The military operation makes the Palestinian blood fall like rain. As a consequence, the civilian population in the cities of Rafah, Khan-Younis, middle camps, Gaza City, Beit-Hanoun and Beit-Lahiya and in the refugee camp of Jabalia are suffering from the most horrible onslaught of Israeli military power....The number of dead and injured are increasing by the minute."

"The infrastructure is being destroyed leaving many areas without power and water. Medical supplies in the hospital are largely exhausted (and) food supplies are dwindling." A real health crisis looms. UHWC is working "around the clock at the risk to themselves to deal with the crisis....The entire world is witnessing these scandalous and outrageous acts, and yet no concrete steps have been taken!!"

"UHWC asks you to issue a strong Last Appeal Statement condemning Israel's human rights violations against the Palestinian people and to demand a cessation of this military offensive....There are no political considerations which can justify the silence of the international community any longer."

Signed,

Dr. Yousef Momeusa
Executive Director

Professor Said Abdelwahed of Al-Azhar University, Gaza
on the End of the Six-Month Ceasefire

Prior to Israel's December 27 attack, he feared the worst and said it "means escalation; bombardment, air raids. It means military activities on the border. The last six months brought big pressures on our social life, on resources, all due to the Israeli siege." With it were high prices on goods able to enter from Egypt through tunnels that for the most part Israel allows given the dire situation on the ground.

"I can't see any progress being made towards a united Palestinian government. I think both sides" lose out as a result, "but Israel takes (full) advantage....The students (at my university) are deprived of many things. They are disappointed young people with no hope or future in front of them, so they are in bad shape."

Abdelwahed mentions a Gaza City health worker "expect(ing) the situation to deteriorate (further): more incursions and more military operations in border areas. While the world is busy with Christmas, Israel can take action. (Already) we have 16 hours of power cuts a day. Hospitals have to run generators for hours at a stretch, which they weren't designed for. So they break down - and because of the closure we have no spare parts....I cannot see the internal situation improving soon. We're short of everything. Eighty per cent of people in Gaza (rely) on food assistance. It's a big problem." It's now much bigger.

At 11PM on Saturday, Abdelwahed reported new air raids were in progress concentrating on the "eastern parts of the city of Gaza. One woman lost 10 of her family. Only she and a daughter remain alive. The daughter couldn't speak to the media because she didn't (understand) what happened. Panic is everywhere in the city and we anticipate (worse still) to come. Demonstrations erupted in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon." The death toll keeps climbing. "An Israeli caller just rang us up. My youngest son answered. The caller threatened that if I have any weapons they will hit my place!!!"

There have been "five air raids in 10 minutes. Targets are societies and groups of social works in thickly populated areas. One mosque was hit as well. I am without electricity for 30 hours so far. I am still operating a small generator to contact the world via internet."

Abdelwahed sent this email on Sunday. "My family and I are okay but stressed....the building adjacent to (ours) was hit by a small rocket from a helicopter. (The) situation is horrible and people are really panicked."

"Last night, F16s targeted Al-Aqsa satellite channel and leveled it to the ground." Surrounding buildings are impossible to live in. "One small mosque across the street from Al-Shifa Hospital was (demolished)." Homes were badly damaged as well, one "belong(ing) to a friend of mine; he told me that what he witnessed was hard to describe in words....Also his sister was severely injured."

A medical doctor friend "told me that the death toll climbed to about 500 (though the media reports around 300) and more than 1000 injured." Israelis are targeting Rafah tunnels. "Hundreds of Palestinians stormed the Egyptian border with a bulldozer and on foot but failed to (get across) as the Egyptians shot live at them."

A "new air raid on different targets (reported) minutes ago. Many died and injured. My window glass (is) shattered. (The) Customs house and passport department have been demolished minutes ago. Aircraft are still in the sky operating."

"F16s (just) destroyed the largest security building in Gaza....Four missiles leveled the building to the ground; also police stations were hit and totally destroyed today. (We're hearing that many areas) were targeted by Israeli warplanes. Large numbers of civilians, including children died and were injured in today's attacks. At Rafah border, one Palestinian was shot dead (by the Egyptians). The situation on the border is terribly bad. An Israeli ground attack seems possible."

Ma'an News Agency Updated Timeline Late Saturday Through Mid-Day Sunday, December 28 and 29

-- 10:15PM - 2 more air strikes; at least 3 killed and 4 injured in Zaitoun neighborhood, Gaza City, and Jabalia in the north;

-- 11:30PM - Israeli air strikes hit the Al-Mansura neighborhood east of Gaza City; 3 Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades deaths are reported;

-- 11:50PM - air strikes hit Khan Younis in southern Gaza and several northern areas;

-- 1:01AM Sunday - Israeli jets strike the security room in front of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; a close by mosque is hit killing at least 2 and injuring 7;

-- 6:30AM - a medical storehouse in the Al-Junayna neighborhood and a fuel storage facility with diesel and benzene in the Tal As-Sultan area are hit - both near Rafah in the south; buildings and vital civilian supplies were destroyed; at least 3 deaths were reported;

-- 6:45AM - Gaza City's Shuja'iyya neighborhood is bombed; several were injured and a police center destroyed;

-- 8:00AM - Hamas police headquarters was attacked in the evacuated Israeli kfar Darum and Al-Matahin settlements;

-- 10AM - a police station in the Shuja'iyya Gaza City neighborhood was bombed; also three homes in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood west of the city were destroyed;

-- 10:30AM - a jeep in Gaza City's Zaitoun neighborhood was attacked killing one child; a second strike targeted the Jabalia area; no casualties were reported so far;

-- 11:00AM - the temporary headquarters of the Rafah governorate was bombed injuring several people; the original building was destroyed on Saturday;

-- 11:45AM - the government municipal council offices were bombed in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza; several injuries were reported;

-- Noon - the As-Saraya government compound was attacked, killing one child and injuring several others;

-- Monday, December 28 - Israel's assaults continue with no letup; Haaretz reported that the Islamic University and another government compound in Gaza City were destroyed; other targets hit included a guest palace and at least some residential homes; "at first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets," punctuated by new explosions; Ehud Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said military action would continue until Israel "no longer (fears) terror (from) rocket barrages."

Throughout the attacks, images and reports on the ground are horrific and disturbing. All around is death and destruction. Amputated bodies fill Al-Shifa Hospital hallways. In one corner, a dead seven-year old boy is in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover him.

One man is dazed after watching his son killed during the police graduation ceremony. Another father stood next to his son as he was decapitated. He's still screaming. In a hospital waiting room, a mother is silent after her son was pronounced dead.

Carnage is everywhere, inside and on the streets - body parts, blood, strewn clothing and other items. Twelve-year old Ayaman is screaming as his father tries not to let him see the bodies of his brother and uncle torn to pieces under sheets.

Yaha Muheisen stops searching for his son's body and Nawal Al-Lad'a can't find her two sons bodies in the hospital so she searches through rubble.

Gaza medical personnel confirm that the majority of the dead are civilians, including men, women and children. Most were torn to shreds. Bodies continue to be pulled from rubble. Some Palestinians say images resemble the 1982 (Beirut) Sabra and Shitila massacres of about 3000 men, women, children and infants during a 62-hour (proxy) Phalange militia force rampage while the IDF stood by and let it happen.

Ariel Sharon was defense minister at the time. After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1981, he authorized the operation, and in his autobiography confirmed that he negotiated it with Lebanon's president-elect Bashir Gemayel. Afterward, journalist Robert Fisk called it "one of the most shocking war crimes of the 20th century." Another in Gaza remains ongoing.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote that "The neighborhood bully strikes again....Once again, Israel's violent responses....exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom. What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime....Once again the commentators sat in television studios and hailed the combat jets" that killed the innocent. "Once again, they urged (not) letting up....Once again, they described" disturbing images as a "difficult scene....When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him."

Journalist Amira Hass called Gaza "Little Baghdad, bombs everywhere, smoke, fire, people not knowing where to hide, fear everywhere, rage and hatred." She wrote painfully of carnage and death, of the living searching for loved ones, of no electricity, no gas, no flour, no bread for the past week, just despair and destruction as Israeli attacks continue.

Harold Pinter on Israel

On December 24 at age 78, Harold Pinter lost his long battle with cancer. He was the most influential playwright of his generation, the 2005 Nobel laureate for literature, a voice of political protest, and a passionate campaigner against human rights abuses. The Nobel academy citation called him an author "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed room." For some, he was a "permanent public nuisance, a questioner of accepted truths, both in life and art."

Too ill with cancer, he recorded his award ceremony speech on videotape, voiced strong opposition to the Iraq war, Britain's role in it, and called the invasion a "bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law." Would he say less about Israel's current assault?

Pinter was Jewish, a critic of Israel's illegal occupation, and its brutality inflicted on Gazans. He was one of 105 prominent Jewish signers of an April 2008 "We're not celebrating Israel's Anniversary" petition. Its last paragraph read:

"We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on (Gaza) civilians and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations." Pinter called George Bush a "mass murderer." He felt no different about merciless Israeli leaders.

A Possible Ground Invasion?

On Sunday, Haaretz reported that the IDF "will call 6500 reservists to duty, as part of the largest Israeli offensive on (Gaza) since it" seized the Territory in 1967. Defense officials said that the call-up is part of military preparations for a possible escalation of fighting. Meanwhile, IDF infantry and armored troops (including tanks) man Gaza's border for a possible ground invasion, and Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak warned that "The operation will be deeper and expanded as much as necessary."

"The Bloodiest Day in the History of Occupation"

That's from a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights PCHR) December 27 press release that "condemn(ed) in the strongest terms the war waged by" the IDF on Gaza. As it's done many times before, PCHR calls on the international community and High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War to intervene immediately, to stop the killings, and to end the unprecedented devastation and deteriorated humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group called for "all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately (to pressure their governments) to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it." It's press release headlined: "Stop the Massacre in Gaza - Boycott Israel Now!"

The "Stench of Death Hangs Over Gaza," wrote Ola Attallah, IslamOnline correspondent from Gaza City. Can we sense it, smell it, feel it, anguish over it, and decide once and for all this won't stand! If not now, when? If not us, who? If wanton butchery isn't incentive enough, what is?

--MORE--"

Democracy Now Devotes Whole Hour to Gaza

I've had my gripes with the Democracy Now program because of it's controlled-opposition nature and indifference to 9/11 truth (we are all in this together, folks); however, they rearranged their program yesterday morning and I delayed blogging to watch it.

Here is the transcript that goes with it, and thank you:

"Israeli Attacks Kill Over 310 in Gaza in One of Israel’s Bloodiest Attacks on Palestinians Since 1948

Amidst worldwide protests, Israel is continuing its bombing campaign against Gaza for the third consecutive day and preparing to launch a possible ground invasion. Following months of a crippling blockade, this has been described as one of Israel’s bloodiest attacks on Palestinians since 1948. Latest reports indicate that 310 people have been killed and 1,400 injured in the aerial strikes across the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning. The latest targets of the air strikes include the Hamas Interior Ministry building and the Islamic University. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced today that Israel is in an “all-out war with Hamas and its proxies” in Gaza. Fears of a ground invasion are growing after Israel declared a military buffer zone around Gaza, closing off the strip and its 1.5 million residents to journalists and civilians.

We speak to Dr. Moussa El-Haddad and Fida Qishta in Gaza, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti in Ramallah, Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv and Ali Abunimah in the US. [includes rush transcript]

Guests:

Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, retired physician in Gaza City. His daughter Laila El-Haddad is a journalist who writes the popular blog ‘Raising Yousef’

Fida Qishta, Freelance journalist and Gaza Strip Coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, independent Palestinian lawmaker and democracy activist

Gideon Levy, journalist with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz

Ali Abunimah, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. His latest piece is called ‘We Have No Words Left’ published today in London’s Guardian newspaper.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Amidst worldwide protests, Israel is continuing its bombing campaign against Gaza for the third consecutive day and preparing to launch a possible ground invasion. After months of a crippling blockade, this has been described as one of Israel’s bloodiest attacks on Palestinians since 1948.

Latest reports indicate that a total of 310 people have been killed and 1,400 injured in the aerial strikes across the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning. The latest targets of the air strikes include the Hamas Interior Ministry building and the Islamic University. Five people in a single family were killed in a strike Sunday night on Jabaliya. This is a surviving family member, Iman Baloushi.

IMAN BALOUSHI: [translated] Seven of us were sleeping when, all of a sudden, the walls came tumbling in on us. They were screaming. I told them all to call for martyrdom, because we were going to die tonight.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced today that Israel is in a, quote, “all-out war with Hamas and its proxies” in Gaza. Fears of a ground invasion are growing after Israel declared a military buffer zone around Gaza, closing off the Strip and its 1.5 million residents to journalists and civilians. The Israeli cabinet authorized a calling up of 6,500 reserve soldiers Sunday. Israeli prime minister spokesperson Mark Regev said the military campaign would continue until there was "quiet in the south,” referring to the rockets launched from Gaza into southern Israel.

MARK REGEV: Our initial strikes against the Hamas military machine have been successful, but we have no doubt that the Hamas military machine in Gaza remains both formidable and lethal. This campaign will continue, and we have to prepare for different contingencies. Obviously, the final goal remains achieving peace and quiet in the south.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera is now reporting 318 Palestinians have been killed. Two Israelis have been killed by rockets from Gaza since Saturday. Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Meshaal, vowed that rocket attacks would continue and suicide missions against Israel would resume in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera Saturday. The exiled leader in Damascus called on Palestinians to unite and rise up in a Third Intifada.

KHALED MESHAAL: [translated] This is a historical moment. We worked shoulder to shoulder during the First Intifada and the Second Intifada. Despite the political differences between us, today what is needed is for us to work together in the upcoming intifada and our coming resistance, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, however, blamed Hamas Sunday for triggering the Israeli assault.

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS: [translated] I want to say very clearly that, yes, we talked to Hamas and the leaders of Hamas in Gaza, and we spoke to them clearly and honestly, directly and indirectly, and through many parties, Arab and non-Arab. So we were in touch with them. Now it’s not important what problems existed between us. We called them and told them, “Please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop,” so that we could have avoided what happened. And I wished it had been avoided.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by a number of people right now for our discussion. In Jacksonville, Florida, we’re joined by Ali Abunimah. He is founder of Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. His latest piece, “We Have No Words Left,” was published in London’s Guardian newspaper.

We’re also joined from Gaza by—well, from Gaza City by Dr. Moussa El-Haddad. He’s a retired physician. His daughter Laila El-Haddad is a journalist who writes the popular blog “Raising Yusuf.

Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Can you describe where you are and what the situation is like right now?

DR. MOUSSA EL-HADDAD: Well, I am in the middle of Gaza City, in the heart of Gaza City, and the situation is indescribable. If this is not a holocaust, I don’t know what holocaust is. According to the news, they say almost 318 people are dead. The majority of those are civilians. At least 300 of them are civilians. And they say about 1,500 are injured, but a lot of them are seriously injured. The hospitals lack a lot of the necessary staff, instruments, even gauze and medicines, and everything is lacking. Physicians and nursing staff are working around the clock. People cannot find a place in the hospitals for treatment, injuries. And I am sure there will be a lot more of the dead under the rubbles of those buildings that were attacked and demolished.

Every now and then, we hear a rocket attack or two. So, there are warplanes in the sky flying all over the time. As I speak to you now, I can hear them up in the sky, the pilotless jets and the warplanes, F-16s and God knows what. The warships in the sea are also attacking from the sea. And attacking who? Hamas? They are not attacking Hamas; they are attacking the people, the civilians. The civilians—I mean, I’m looking at the street right now, the main street of Gaza, Omar al-Mukhtar, and hardly you can see anyone walking there, because every single person is afraid.

As you mentioned, last night, a family, five people, a woman and her four children, were killed when they were in their house. Three and—I don’t know, three or four mosques were demolished. These are praying areas. These are mosques. So I don’t know—nobody is safe. No place is safe. All the buildings that were attacked, they are not military buildings. Even in the initial day, on Saturday, the first 150 people, they were civil servants. They were not striking attackers. They were civil servants, civilians. I don’t know. I—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, I’d like to ask you also about the—there have been reports that the Israelis were trying to block television signals. What’s the situation with the electricity, the ability of the people to at least get some information and communicate with each other?

DR. MOUSSA EL-HADDAD: Well, as I speak to you know, I have no electricity in my house. I have a generator that I can open or let work for like two or three hours every now and then to let the internet work and watch TV. We have electricity like three or four hours a day. We have no cooking gas. I mean, I’m talking about the people. Maybe I have a little left in my house. But people don’t have electricity about 75 percent of the time, no cooking gas, no gas for the cars. So fuel is also lacking. And the only source of, like, food and fuel lately was through Egypt, through those tunnels, and these were attacked last night. At least forty tunnels were demolished last night.

I don’t know. This is—can you tell me if any of this is against Hamas? There’s nothing against Hamas. This is a clear-cut genocide and holocaust against civilians, civilians who are helpless. They don’t have warplanes. They don’t have warships. They don’t—even the rockets that they talk about are homemade. And I just—I cannot—and I really lost the words, because the situation is so bad. And we are in the twenty-first century. We are not in tenth or fifteenth century. Everybody in the world can see and hear. But who acts? Who is doing anything? Now, they say the killer and the killed are the same. They are putting Israel, with all its military power, [inaudible] level like Hamas and people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, we’re also joined by Fida Qishta, who is a freelance journalist living in Rafah and the Gaza Strip Coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Fida Qishta. Describe what is happening in Rafah.

FIDA QISHTA: Well, at this moment, everything is calm, but yesterday was a massive attack to Rafah’s border. They attacked the border area with more than eleven rockets by the F-16, and it was the only source for the Gazans to stay survivors, by the food and the medicines, anything that they could bring through the tunnels. But now, the only way for the Gazans to stay survive is destroyed.

And yesterday morning, they attacked a pharmacy in Rafah near my house. It’s just fifty meters away from my house. And they [inaudible] other normal buildings in Rafah, too, which just include families and civilians. I don’t know what is the reason for doing that. As Dr. Moussa said, they’re attacking civilians. And it’s true that the Israelis say that they attack—their attack is really, really massive, and it’s really unbelievable that we can see in our eyes what’s happening. It’s too much. The hospitals—and even in Rafah, the biggest hospital, Abu Yusuf Al-Najjar, cannot afford to have more than twenty injured. And they moved the injured to Gaza City. And most of the people stay at home. Everything is closed. It’s like a war. Nobody goes out.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Fida Qishta, I’d like to ask you about the role of Egypt. There have been reports that the Egyptians along the border have prevented Palestinians from trying to escape the violence. Could you talk about that or what you have—the reports you have heard there?

FIDA QISHTA: Well, when we heard the attack to the border, me and some friends from the ISM went there to observe in our eyes what’s going on. And when we went there, we saw the Palestinians. Palestinians didn’t try to escape. The Palestinians tried to show their anger to the Egyptian soldiers, why they didn’t open just part of these borders or the crossings to let the injured go out of Gaza to have treatment in Egypt. This is what the Palestinians tried to do. They didn’t try to escape to Egypt. This is a false information. People went to the border with Egypt after the attacks by the F-16s happened, and they tried to show their anger for the Egyptian soldiers to let them—just let the injured go to Egypt for treatment. They didn’t try to escape.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, then come back to this conversation. We’ll also be joined by Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv. He’s with Ha’aretz. And Mustafa Barghouti, he’s in Ramallah. Ali Abunimah is also with us from Florida. He’s the founder of Electronic Intifada. Then we’ll hear an excerpt of the Nobel Prize acceptance speech of Harold Pinter, who died last week. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. Our guests on the phone, Fida Qishta, freelance journalist in Rafah; Dr. Moussa El-Haddad. He’s a retired physician, speaking to us from Gaza City. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking with guests in Rafah, in Gaza City. Now we go to Tel Aviv with the Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy. He’s on the phone with us. His latest piece is called “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!. As you listen to Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, Fida Qishta, speaking to us from Rafah, your thoughts in Tel Aviv and the response of the Israeli population to what’s happening right now?

GIDEON LEVY: First of all, I feel horrible as an Israeli when I hear all those reports, when I watch all those horrible pictures. But unlike me, I am afraid that most of the Israelis are quite indifferent. They think that there was a legitimate reason. The attacks on the southern part of Israel was a legitimate reason. Israel has the right to do everything. Unlike them, I think that Israel crossed any line of humanity or morality or even legality. And I think what Israel is doing right now there is horrible and has no justification.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Do you think that there may be some decision by the Israeli government to act now, just as the Bush administration is leaving office and Barack Obama will be sworn in on January 20th, that there’s a feeling maybe that the US government at this point will not react in any negative way to this kind of action?

GIDEON LEVY: Look, you can find all kind of justifications about the timing. There are also elections coming, elections in Israel, soon. But I must remind you that Israel went through a very similar war two years ago, a little bit more than two years ago, two-and-a-half years ago, when there were no elections and President Bush was still in power and there was no elections in the United States and not here. So, I mean, the second Lebanese war. I wouldn’t count—I mean, the situation is much more complex than this. There are [inaudible] calculations, but I don’t think that’s the main thing. The main thing is that Israel is reacting, overreacting with overpower to a situation which has to have a solution, but not this kind of solution.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you think, Gideon Levy, that this relates to the February 10th elections? Explain who is running and how this plays into this, the bombing of Gaza.

GIDEON LEVY: You mean in the domestic Israeli politics?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, with Tzipi Livny, with Ehud Barak, with Benjamin Netanyahu.

GIDEON LEVY: There was a poll published yesterday in Israel which showed that, within two days, Labor had gained 50 percent more in the poll, namely because Ehud Barak, he’s the man who is mostly identified with this operation. He’s the Minister of Defense, as you know. So he might gain—his party might gain out of it, but I wouldn’t go so far and think that he did it only for the elections. It was in the back of his mind. If he gains so Netanyahu loses, and maybe Kadima remains in the same place or gains also a little bit, but it’s too early to judge, because we don’t know how will it end. You know, all those operations [inaudible] in a very successful way, but then you don’t know how will they end.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined in Ramallah by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, independent Palestinian lawmaker, democracy activist. Your response from the West Bank right now, which isn’t under siege, to say the least, in the same way as Gaza, Dr. Barghouti?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: We are not under siege, but we are under Israeli attack, as well. The Israeli army attacked civilian nonviolent demonstrators yesterday in Nil’in and killed one person and injured three very seriously. Another young boy was killed in another village in [inaudible]. Three people have been killed already in the West Bank, and the number is rising.

But let me say that what Israel is doing in Gaza is not an act of self-defense, as it is claiming. It’s not an attack on Hamas. It is an attack on the whole Palestinian population. What we see is a war crime, a bloodbath, unprecedented since 1967. What we have had so far is 318 people killed, including thirty children, and at least 1,400 people injured, including 150 children and forty women. I was shocked deeply today over the fact that yesterday the Israeli planes destroyed a house in Jabaliya camp and killed five girls, five sisters from one family, and injured their mother seriously and critically. This is a bloodbath that should stop immediately.

Israel is claiming that it is attacking Hamas, but in fact it is attacking all the Palestinians. It is attacking the whole infrastructure. They have destroyed a university. They have destroyed five mosques. They have attacked the hospital. They are shooting and destroying everywhere. And it seems imminent that there will be even a land invasion which could destroy and kill and take away thousands of lives. This is very dangerous. And Israel would not have gone so far if it wasn’t for the compliance and the silence of the international community.

One very important point here, I must clarify that it was not the Palestinians or Hamas that broke the ceasefire; Israel was the one that broke the ceasefire since two months. They started operations and attacks here and there, trying to provoke a reaction, ’til there was a reaction, and then they claim that it was the Palestinians who broke the ceasefire.

Also, I want to clarify that Gaza Strip is the highest densely populated area in the world, with almost 4,150 people in each square kilometer. When you start bombing the place with bombs that are one to two tons heavy, then you’re determined to kill people and kill civilians and innocent people. I’ve just heard Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister of Israel, saying that Palestinians should go away from Hamas and Gaza. Where should they go away? In which place? Where? Which place they can go to, when Israel is putting Gaza for two years under total blockade, by sea, by air, by land. Israel has been claiming that it has withdrawn from Gaza. Israel never ended its occupation of Gaza. It maintains the occupying of the airspace, the sea around Gaza and the land around Gaza. And it was preventing people from getting medical aid and equipment and fuel and electricity. I was just talking to our people in Gaza and asked them, “What is your situation?” They told me they don’t have bread. Even bread is unavailable in Gaza. And now Israel is bombarding it in this horrible and unacceptable way.

I think the world community must see the reality. This is an unprecedented bloodbath that the Israeli generals are using—and politicians are using for their political campaigning in their elections. For one more time, they’re using Palestinian blood for their election campaigns. I’m so sorry that even some left parties in Israel are supporting such an aggression. They all claim that this is about missiles. But let me ask a very simple question: How many Israelis were killed during the last six months by missiles? Almost none. The only two Israelis that were killed so far were killed after this operation.

Will this bring peace? It will not bring peace. Will this bring security? On the contrary, it is bringing back the intifada of the West Bank. It is creating terrible feelings all over the occupied and Palestinian territories, and this must be stopped. And if it wasn’t for the compliance of this terrible American administration, Bush administration, who seems to insist to have a very dark reputation before he leaves his office, if it wasn’t for that support and compliance, Israel would not have dared to go so far in punishing innocent victims and in creating this terrible disaster in Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, what about the issue of the complicity or the silence of other Arab governments and also of the Palestinian Authority now also criticizing Hamas?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, I think the Palestinian Authority is finding itself in a very difficult position. One of the main reasons of this operation is to weaken Abbas so badly that I don’t think he will be able to speak on behalf of Palestinians anymore. Even Abbas is now under terrible pressure to stop all negotiations with Israel, to stop all forms of security coordination with Israel, because, at the end of the day, he was elected by the Palestinians and not the right-wing extremists in Israel. And I think he has just called for a general meeting with all parties, including Hamas, and they have. This is something that never happened during the last year and a half. And I believe that the intention now among Palestinians is to find a way of regaining their unity in front of this grave, inhuman and unacceptable bloodbath.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in Ali Abunimah, who is in Jacksonville, Florida, though usually based in Chicago, founder of the Electronic Intifada. Your comments on the situation, on Mahmoud Abbas, for example, saying that it was Hamas that brought this on?

ALI ABUNIMAH: I want to say, Amy, first of all, that we have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration. We have to recognize the complicity not just of the so-called international community, but also of the Arab regimes, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt. Tzipi Livni, when she issued her threats against Gaza, was in Cairo in the biggest Arab capital, and Aboul Gheit stood next to her silently.

Mahmoud Abbas is not a bystander, the so-called president of the Palestinian Authority. For two years since the elections, which Hamas won, he and his coterie have been collaborating with Israel and the United States, first to overthrow the election result and then to besiege Gaza. We have talked before of the Palestinian Contras, funded and armed by the United States, which sought to overthrow Hamas in June 2007 and had the tables turned on them. And now this. The complicity of Mahmoud Abbas is very clear and must be clearly stated. He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise, to call together the Palestinian people for anything. He has gone over to the other side. He has joined the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and I choose my words very carefully.

And let me say this, as well, Amy, that Israel is trying to produce and promote the fiction that it is engaged in a war with a so-called enemy entity. What Israel is doing is massacring a captive population. You heard—you said in the headlines how Nancy Pelosi, our so-called progressive, liberal, antiwar Speaker of the House, gave her full support to these crimes. Obama has done the same through a spokesman. And that will not change. The United Nations issued a weak statement aimed at covering the backsides, let me say, of those who issued it, not aimed at changing the situation.

What are Palestinians calling for today? Yesterday, the Palestinian National Committee for the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions reissued and reaffirmed its call on all international civil society in the United States, in North America, in Europe, everywhere, to redouble the efforts for boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the anti-apartheid movement. This is necessary. This is moral. This is the nonviolent resistance we can all participate in. And it is more urgent than ever. Let’s not look back at these crimes like we look at the Warsaw Ghetto and like we look at Guernica and we look at the other atrocities of the twentieth century and say, “We had the chance to act, but we chose silence and complicity.” The time to stop this is now.

And we also have to be clear that those who are accountable—Ehud Barak, his orders over the past few months to withhold insulin, chemotherapy drugs, dialysis supplies, all forms of medicine from the people of Gaza, were just as lethal and just as murderous as the orders to send in the bombers and warplanes to attack mosques, to attack universities. The Islamic University in Gaza is not a military site. It is a university with 18,000 students, 60 percent of them women. Last night, Israeli warplanes attacked a female dormitory in the Islamic University. This is what Israel is attacking. They attacked the fishing port. No food gets into Gaza. People can barely fish enough to sustain them, and Israel has attacked the fishing boats that sustains them. These are historic crimes, and we cannot be silent about them.

And we have to continue this nonsense that there’s fault on both sides. We have a captive occupied population. 80 percent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees. 750,000 of them are children. Where else in the world can these crimes be committed while the world looks on, while our elected politicians in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, sit there applauding, when you see the shameful statement of Howard Berman, the Democrat chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, giving his full support to Israel? People have to stand up to this. We cannot sit on our hands anymore and say change is coming. Change is not coming unless we create it.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. Then we’re going to come back to this discussion. We are going to put off the playing of the speech of Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize winner, to tomorrow. He died last week. We’ll play an extended excerpt of that speech tomorrow. We’re talking about what’s happening in Gaza right now, joined by guests from Ramallah, from Gaza City, from Rafah, from Tel Aviv and from the United States. We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We have on the line with us Dr. Mustafa Barghouti in Ramallah. We’re joined by Dr. Moussa El-Haddad. He is a retired physician in Gaza City. We’re joined by Fida Qishta. She is joining us from Rafah. And Ali Abunimah is on the line with us from Jacksonville, Florida, in studio.

Ali Abunimah, I wanted to ask you about the statements at this point of Barack Obama, or the lack of them. Of course, he’s on holiday right now in Hawaii, but David Axelrod was on the networks. Again, they are continuing to say that there is only one president at a time, and that president is President Bush now. Condoleezza Rice is briefing Barack Obama. But he did say that not only would it be counterproductive for the President-elect to weigh in too deeply, but he said that Obama’s commitment to the "special relationship” between the United States and Israel, in a way that suggested general sympathy for the Jewish state’s actions. I’m reading from the Huffington Post. Your response?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Isn’t it convenient that we only have one president at a time, when it suits Barack Obama to stay silent on something that is enflaming the whole world? Apparently, we don’t have one president at a time when it comes to the economy or Iraq or Afghanistan or other issues. But on this, Barack Obama is content to remain silent and, in fact, to give, through the statements of David Axelrod, his more or less open support for what Israel is doing, which fits with the policies that he has enunciated consistently of supporting Israel’s attacks on Gaza, supporting the blockade of Gaza, supporting the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.

And this is why Israel feels so comfortable carrying out these sorts of atrocities, which cross every red line of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, of the Nuremberg Principles, of all of the laws of war that were developed in the twentieth century. Israel feels totally comfortable crossing them, because it knows that it will have full support from any US administration, no matter what political shade it is.

And this is why it’s crucially important that people don’t sit by waiting ’til January 20th. January 20th, the calendar flipping is not going to change anything. What’s going to change things is boycott, divestment and sanctions, people rising up and demanding an end to impunity, demanding, for example, that Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni be brought to account before an international war crimes court for the orders that they have given for these massacres of the civilian population of Gaza. That’s what’s going to bring change, and that’s what people must call and organize for.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to bring in Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, again. The issue of what is the potential for reaction in the West Bank and in the Arab street, as opposed to the complicity of many of the Arab governments at this point—your sense of, if this continues much further, what will be the reaction?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, let me explain one very specific point. Israel is very proud, with the complicity of some Arab regimes and some of the people in the Palestinian Authority, about what’s going on. But I want to remind you that what is happening in Gaza and in the West Bank is nothing but also a slaughter of democracy. We have, as Palestinians—we, the civil society in Palestine, we, the Palestinian democratic forces, jointly with many others—managed to have the best democratic experience ever in the Arab world. Everybody knows that, and President Carter reported it when we had the last elections. And I think this complicity of some certain Arab sides are specifically because they don’t want this democracy to happen. They don’t want this democracy to survive. And if Israel is very proud to be in alliance with dictatorships, then that reveals how democratic Israel itself is.

Israel has been claiming that it’s the only democracy and so on, but why is it slaughtering Palestinian democracy? They did that in 1976, when we had elections for the first time for our municipalities, and within one year, because they didn’t like the elected people, they either bombarded them or deported them or arrested them. And now, after 2006 elections, they are putting forty-five members of our parliament in jail. One of the leaders, one of the members of parliament, is not Hamas. His name is Ahmed Saadat. He’s from the left, from the secular democratic left. He was just sentenced to thirty years in jail, just because he is the secretary-general of a Palestinian organization. It’s amazing how the world is silent about this slaughter of democracy. And if Israel is happy with being in alliance with some dictator, then it is the one that is losing.

The main question here, that I want to come back to some myths that Israel is spreading. They keep stressing that they are attacking Hamas. This is not on Hamas; this is on the whole Palestinian population. They claim that they ended occupation in Gaza. This is not true. They never ended occupation in Gaza. They continue to occupy Gaza. Now they’re changing the form of occupation again, and they’re threatening to complete the invasion again and destroying people’s lives. Third, they claim that it was the Palestinians who broke the ceasefire. This is false. This is incorrect. Israel broke the ceasefire. And now the party that is refusing to have ceasefire is Barak, the Defense Minister of Israel, and he’s the one who is refusing to allow ceasefire to happen again.

At the same time, I must say that Israel is not only attacking the Gaza Strip. Practically, Israel in the West Bank has created a system that can only be described as an apartheid system, a much worse apartheid than the one that prevailed in South Africa at one point of time. Why do we have all these problems? For one very simple fact: the violence is a symptom of the disease. The disease has been there all the time, for forty-one years, and it is the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories. And because the Israeli government does not want to stop this occupation, that’s why we keep running from one conflict into another. Please.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Gideon Levy back into the conversation from Tel Aviv from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Gideon, you write, “Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction.” What about—can you elaborate on this?

GIDEON LEVY: Yes, I think that Israel had this legitimacy to protect its citizens in the southern part of Israel, and it had the legitimacy to do something, as the Israelis all expect the government to do, but this doing something does not mean this brutal and violent operation. The diplomatic efforts were just in the beginning, and I believe we could have got to a new truce without this bloodshed.

And even about the military reaction, you know, there are all kinds of stages. Immediately to send dozens of jets to bomb a total helpless civilian society with hundreds of bombs—just today, they were burying five sisters. I mean, this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this. And this has nothing to do with self-defense or with retaliation even. It went out of proportion, exactly like two-and-a-half years ago in Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Moussa El-Haddad in Gaza City, the responsibility of Hamas here and the response of the people of Gaza? Right now, a quote of Tzipi Livni, who just recently said, “Unfortunately, in this kind of attack, there are some civilian casualties, but Israel took all the necessary actions to warn the civilians before the attacks to leave the places they know that Hamas stays.”

DR. MOUSSA EL-HADDAD: Well, it’s not some civilians. All those who are dead now, most of them are civilians. And a question that keeps coming up, people are saying Israel has the right to protect itself from the Hamas rockets. What about the West Bank? Does Hamas—does West Bank has rockets that they throw on Israel? Of course, none. And look at what’s happening in the West Bank, in Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah and everywhere. People are being killed almost every day. And I just cannot explain to you the situation right now.

Hamas, as an organization, was, as Dr. Barghouti just mentioned, this government was democratically elected in front of the eyes of the whole world, and this is the only democratic election that happened in the Middle East, really democratic. And people—why just the world didn’t give this government a chance to prove itself? It was not going to throw rockets or just—when they had this truce and the ceasefire, who broke it? It was Israel. We had a siege for one-and-a-half months, nothing allowed in, no medicines, no food, no nothing. And still, Hamas and other organizations did not throw any rockets. Israel kept on coming, and they killed twenty-three people in three weeks. Of course, this provoked Hamas, and they just did not renew this issue of ceasefire, because it was useless.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask also Fida Qishta back into the conversation—this continuing occupation and encirclement and the problems that you face in Gaza, how do persevere, you and other residents there, day to day, manage to get through?

FIDA QISHTA: Well, for Palestinians, in general, they face a lot from the Israeli occupation. And if you don’t find a house in the whole Gaza Strip that isn’t damaged by losing a son or a father or a daughter or a mother—we used to face lots of problems with the Israelis. And me, myself, I’m one of the people and a person who lost their house in 2004. We managed to continue our lives. We managed to build a new house, and now we survived. But the problem of the other people who can’t build new houses or even afford food for their families.

Palestinians try to be strong. But under these attacks that the Israelis now—actually, the war that Israelis started with Palestinians in Gaza, it’s really unbelievable and not acceptable. It’s genocide. And all the world should stop and say to Israel, “Stop it. That’s enough. The Gazan people chose this government, and you should accept it.” And for us, as Gazans, we try to continue our lives, no matter what happens. We keep the hope, and we keep the struggle for the future and for our families. We don’t think, for example, if the Israelis destroy a house or kill a son or a daughter, that means our life is ended. We try to survive and continue our life. We try to do our best with it, but Israel is trying every single day, every single minute, to destroy the Palestinians’ hope. And I don’t know what these normal Palestinians did for them, what these civilians did for them. So we try to manage and continue our life. This is what we try to do. No matter what, we try to continue our lives.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Ali Abunimah. The next step now? Israel is preparing for a ground invasion, calling up 6,500 troops. Do you hold Hamas responsible for any of this? What do you think Hamas should be doing now?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, what could—I mean, this thing about if they hadn’t fired rockets, this was the Israeli propaganda that Mahmoud Abbas was repeating in Cairo. And as Dr. El-Haddad said, has one single rocket ever been fired from the West Bank? No. And as Dr. Barghouti was saying, the West Bank is under constant attack. People are being killed. Amy, you had on your show the settler pogroms that were happening in front of the eyes of the world in the West Bank, the settlement construction that goes on. There has not been a single rocket fired from the West Bank. Abbas has capitulated to the Israelis. His so-called security forces, trained by the United States and armed by the United States, have been fighting the resistance in the West Bank. Did that spare one single Palestinian in the West Bank from Israeli violence or colonization? No, it did not.

This notion that Israel has a right to defend itself—against who? Against 1.5 million people who are refugees, who are starving, who are caged in the world’s largest prison or concentration camp. Don’t Palestinians also have a right to defend themselves? What should Palestinians do? I turn the question of those who keep pointing the finger at the Palestinians. Resistance is not acceptable, and so—

--MORE--"

The Politics of Gaza

"The Politics of the Gaza Massacre; Forget Hamas – it's all about the home front

by Justin Raimondo
December 29, 2008

"If you're looking for the cause of the most recent Israeli aggression against the Palestinians – over 300 killed so far, and many more wounded – forget Hamas. The real casus belli is politics, in Israel and America.

On the Israeli front, elections loom large. The current Israeli government is enormously unpopular, and – with polls showing a massive swing to the right – this latest "incursion" is its last attempt to shore up their sagging power base. The rightist surge in Israel has been building for a long time, with the settler movement gaining momentum and the Likud Party likely the chief beneficiary – in which case there will be no chance of a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian question, no matter how evenhanded President Barack Obama turns out to be.

Speaking of Obama, the real focal point of the Israeli assault isn't Gaza – it's Washington, D.C. The whole point of this exercise in futility – which will not create a single iota of security for Israel, will not topple Hamas, and will not prove any more successful than the second Lebanese war – is to set the terms by which the Israelis will deal with the incoming U.S. president. Before he even gets a chance to appoint his Middle East team, his special envoys and advisers, the Israelis will have sabotaged the peace effort they can clearly see coming – and put the Americans on notice that whatever "change" is in the air will have to be to Israel's advantage. In short, the Gaza massacre is a preemptive strike against the prospect of American intervention on the Palestinians' behalf, or, at least, a more evenhanded policy framework.

I won't bother answering the "talking points" of Israel's powerful lobby in the U.S. – the Palestinians are terrorists, they deserved what they got, those missile barrages fired in recent weeks (in which not a single Israeli was killed) were ample provocation, etc. The whole world knows that none of these have anything to do with the latest Israeli military action.

The entire operation is, instead, part and parcel of a long-standing concerted campaign by the Israeli government to further marginalize and drive out the remnants of the Palestinian people who still cling tenaciously to what's left of their land. It is a policy of military and economic warfare, aimed at making life impossible for the Palestinian helots.

As the new Sparta of the Middle East runs roughshod over the laws of morality and basic human decency, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. is going into overdrive in an effort to prettify one of the ugliest incidents in a decade of unmitigated cruelty and brutality. All the familiar "progressive" voices – with certain sterling exceptions – are suddenly stilled: we hear nothing from our Democratic politicians, those fabled agents of "change," except expressions of support for Israel's war crimes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares that Israel has "the right to defend itself," without deigning to inform us as to whether the Palestinians have the same right. Given her record as AIPAC's most reliable congressional ally, who can always be counted on to echo the Israel-first party line, one assumes not. Powerful foreign affairs committee chair Howard Berman concurs, as does our about-to-be-sworn-in chief executive.

Appearing on Face the Nation, Obama's chief adviser, David Axelrod, averred that "we have only one president at a time" – a consideration that hasn't stopped the world's most famous community organizer from publicly organizing the biggest raid on the U.S. Treasury in American history. In any case, as the Huffington Post put it, Axelrod "did reaffirm Obama's commitment to the 'special relationship between the United States and Israel' in a way that suggested general sympathy for the Jewish state's actions."

For all those hysterical ultra-Zionists in both Israel and the U.S. who thought Obama's election would be disastrous to the Zionist project, and their own efforts to expand it beyond its historic borders, let this be an object lesson in the danger of jumping to unwarranted conclusions. If they'd listened before they jumped – or paid attention to what they read on Antiwar.com – they would have realized how utterly misplaced their paranoia would turn out to be. Obama has been in the Israel Lobby's back pocket from the beginning, as his speech to AIPAC – a masterstroke of groveling – made all too clear.

Like all U.S. presidents since Bush the Elder, this one is committed to maintaining and elaborating on our Israel-centric Middle East policy, of which the Iraq war was only the most dramatic chapter. Obama may have opposed that particular war, but he will do nothing to reverse its consequences, the most dramatic of which appears to be the unleashing of the Israeli military machine on the region. First it was Lebanon, followed by the buzzing of Syrian airspace and the bombing of an alleged "nuclear facility" that turned out to be an ordinary weapons dump. Now we have the end of "disengagement" in Gaza and the opening up of a new front in Israel's relentless war of expansion.

It is a war that has been financed by U.S. tax dollars and fought with American weapons, with the active collaboration and support of our government. We have paid for the radical expansion of the Israeli "settlements" by armed bands of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Israel's version of the Taliban. Indeed, Israeli opinion is moving rapidly in the radicals' direction, and the victory of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right Likud Party in the upcoming election is virtually assured – with even more extreme elements waiting in the wings for their moment.

As the leaders of a settler colony implanted in the midst of Arab lands, the founders of the Israeli state were faced with a conundrum from the very start. No matter how enlightened and progressive the early settlers considered themselves, they could not escape their status as unwanted interlopers, the advance guard of what was essentially a foreign invasion. Living in their utopian kibbutzes and thinking they were constructing an egalitarian paradise, what they were really building was a rigidly hierarchical society, a caste system with the settlers and their descendants at the top, arranged in tiers according to their origins in the "diaspora," with the Palestinians at the very bottom – a displaced underclass forcibly segregated and routinely subjected to Israeli state violence.

Like a caged lion, grievously wounded, which nevertheless manages to roar and occasionally strike out – however ineffectually – at its tormentors, the Palestinian people are unbowed.

The Israelis – and the U.S. – rail against Hamas as a gang of terrorists, yet most of the governments of the region started out as "terrorist" gangs. Two were called the Irgun and the Haganah, the revolutionary movements that carried out attacks on civilians, including the British as well as the Arabs, in their battle to establish the state of Israel. Hamas will do no more, and no less, in their bid to establish a Palestinian state.

If nothing else, this fresh paroxysm of Israeli aggression ought to debunk, once and for all, the neocon talking point that democracies never go to war with each other. Yet here we have a country that styles itself an island of Western-style liberalism in a sea of Oriental despotism going to war with the only other democratically elected government in the immediate vicinity. Whatever the military outcome of the present conflict – in all likelihood a stalemate – this is a big political victory for Hamas, which ordinary Palestinians see actively defending them against the rampaging Israelis. The moderates on the West Bank are undercut, once again, and that has always been the Israeli strategy.

Their first target was the decidedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization, which they did everything to destroy and undercut – even to the point of providing legal status and covert funding to Hamas. These followers of radical Islamist preachers began as a religious association, formally registered with the Israeli authorities. Hamas was encouraged as a potentially more compliant competitor with the PLO. Another case of blowback, with a vengeance.

Having given birth to the monster of Hamas, the mutant offspring of occupation and dispossession, the Israelis will be forgiven if they refuse to acknowledge the family resemblance. Yet it is unmistakable. Both Israel and Hamas-stan are the spawn of religious and ethnic exclusivism and messianism, their leaders fanatics armed with state power. There are differences, of course, a major one being that one side is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year and supported unconditionally by Washington, while the Palestinians – shot at by their fellow Arabs as they try to cross the border into Egypt – stand pretty much alone.

This latest bloody chapter in the tragic history of the region is being written because all the main protagonists benefit: the Israelis, Hamas, and radicals of all stripes, especially those groups aligned with al-Qaeda. As in the case of the Iraq war, bin Laden's narrative of an Israeli-Crusader invasion intent on stamping out Islam is seemingly verified as blood flows freely in the streets of Gaza.

The Israeli rampage is not in our interests, and the longer it continues the more it threatens the already tenuous position of U.S. troops in Iraq, endangering them by inflaming the local populace, which is vehemently pro-Palestinian. The Israeli blitz is sending shockwaves through the region that could upset several apple-carts of U.S. construction, including the regime in Egypt, the pro-U.S. Jordanian monarchy, and especially our rambunctious Iraqi protectorate, where anti-U.S. sentiment is not so quietly building.

Quite naturally, the Israelis care not a fig for any of this. That's what's so "special" about the much-vaunted "special relationship" between Israel and the U.S., in which Uncle Sam plays the part of the henpecked husband who always gives in to the demands of his battle-ax of a wife, no matter how extravagant or unreasonable.

If American interests in the region are to be served, then this unhealthy relationship has to change. Yet it won't change until and unless the political power of the Israel Lobby is broken on the home front. If it takes the prospect of World War III to bring us to that point, it will be far too high a price to pay – yet one that seems increasingly unavoidable.

--MORE--"