PNN

December 31, 2008 ImagePolly Basak for PNN - At the southern Strip’s European Hospital poised between Rafah and Khan Younis, senior oncologist Dr. Zaki Zakzouk says that 30 seriously injured people are suffering from head and neck wounds. After a year and a half of siege before the aerial bombings began, 100 critical medicines were already depleted, along with medical supplies. "The situation is becoming more critical by the moment," the Gaza Ministry of Health told PNN. "They are in urgent need of complex neurosurgical procedures," Dr. Zakzouk stated yesterday. The head and neck injuries need a pulmonary intensive care unit, but due to the severe shortage of beds in the department, only half are connected to ventilating machines, and others are ventilated manually. There remains on Wednesday a particularly acute shortage of type O minus blood. A lack of refrigeration rooms and of ambulances is preventing the transfer of blood from Gaza City's Al Shifa Hospital to the southern Strip's hospitals. The World Health Organization on Tuesday called for an immediate halt to the killing of hundreds of Palestinians. "Civilians are paying the price for the prolonged blockade. The shortages of essential and life-saving medicines need to be abated without delay," said the WHO in a statement. "We urge Israel to ensure that medical supplies are channelled to those hit by the military action." At present, hospitals in Gaza are overflowing with dying and injured people and they do not have the facilities or equipment to cope with this catastrophe. The closure of crossings severely limits the chance of desperately needed humanitarian aid going into Gaza. More....................

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.                  More...........................

Monday, 29 December 2008

A Palestinian woman walks past a destroyed Hamas police compound after an Israeli air strike

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.                                                             More..............................

Palestinian Information Center

December 29, 2008 GAZA, (PIC)-- Death toll resulting from the Israeli occupation holocaust in the Gaza Strip, at dawn Tuesday, has reached 360, and the number of wounded rose to more than 1700, Palestinian sources confirmed. Israeli occupation warplanes, at dawn Tuesday, have launched airstrikes against the government buildings killing ten people and wounding tens others. Israeli occupation warplanes intensified their bombardment of the west of Gaza City targeting sports and government facilities. A huge number of bombs were dropped on the targets in three minutes. Eyewitnesses said that an F16 fired about 20 rockets on the ministries complex in the western part of Gaza City, al-Shams sports club, naval police headquarters and the headquarters of the defunct preventive security. They added that all these rockets were fired within five minutes, that there were many injuries amongst the residents, and that ambulances were hampered by the continuation of the air raids. Earlier Israeli occupation warplanes and gunboats concentrated their air strikes and missile attacks on buildings and targets west of Gaza city, including building of the Palestinian civil defense, inflicting huge damage in the area. The continued Israeli raids have also buried five young sisters under the rubbles of their devastated home after it was bombed along with a mosque next to it. Bodies of the perished sisters were mutilated as a result of the attack. Although the Israeli occupation government alleged it wasn’t targeting civilians in the assault on Gaza, international agencies, including the UNRWA among others accused it of committing horrible carnage against the children and civilians in Gaza. Dr. Basim Naim, the PA health minister, confirmed earlier that Gaza hospitals have ran out of medicine, in addition to spare parts and electricity to keep medical equipments in Gaza functioning. He also blamed the siege on the Strip for suspending half of the Palestinian ambulances working through out the densely populated Strip where more than 1.5 million Palestinians were lacked up.

PNN

Three Palestinian children from the Balosha family, of five who were all killed in the same Israeli missile strike, are seen in the morgue before their burial at Kamal Edwan hopsital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008. December 29, 2008 Gaza / PNN – Not only are children in the Gaza Strip losing their parents, missing food, medicines and school, they are being killed. Israeli forces took the lives of at least 30 children in Gaza since air attacks began on Saturday. A statement issued by the Global Movement for the Defense of Children says its initial reports indicate that another 150 children are injured. The first children hit en masse were during struck during the beginning of the attacks when they were leaving school. Dozens of school children were raced to area hospitals in Gaza City on Saturday. Among the children killed are the sisters in Jabaliya yesterday and the eight year old boy today in Khan Younis. The British university movement to boycott Israel wrote in their petition, "'Children,' says an Israeli spokeswoman, 'are legitimate targets because if they inhabit a house allegedly being used to manufacture home-made rockets to fire into Israel, they are 'terrorists' themselves.'" The international children’s agency Global Defense for Children called today on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency session. The UNSC has yet to take effective action to force Israel to stop its aggression or apply previous UN resolutions, which include an end to occupation. Defense for Children asked that the European Union and its member states seek to for the application of the rules of international humanitarian law. The Israeli administration has a poor record internationally when it comes to Palestinian children with at least 300 in its prisons. The EU is under heavy pressure by humanitarian organizations to impose sanctions on Israel and to cease all diplomatic relations. At the same time the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to respect and enforce the convention as stated in Article I. Those who violate it are subject to criminal charges of crimes against humanity. The Global Defense for Children noted today that the individual criminal responsibility does not become obsolete and that at some point all will be prosecuted.

umkahlil

A Palestinian boy watches the funeral of three children in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008 (Ibraheem Abu Mustapha, Reuters) A Palestinian man carries the body of his 4-year-old daughter Dena Balosha during the funeral for her and her four sisters in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008 (Mohammed Salem, Reuters). December 29, 2008 How hard it is to look at the TV. I'm a school teacher, but when I watched CNN's "Putting Gaza in Context" yesterday I hurled expletives that wouldn't be tolerated in a bar. While the fresh-faced engaging young man put Gaza "in context" for us, he failed to mention that 44.7% of Gaza's population is fourteen years of age or under (thanks, Annie, for that fact from the CIA factbook). Instead he told us that Israel was engaged in a war with Hamas militants. Yeah, tell that to the father who carried his dead seven year old son in a cardboard box. And tell us why this monstous faux country bombed a defenseless refugee population at high noon, when school was getting out. (And for comprehensive coverage of Israel's latest in a long line of massacres against the Palestinian people check out Annie's blog). He did tell us that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, leaving the ignorant viewer to wonder just why the Palestinians there are so unhappy with Israel, the plucky nation of immigrants, self-described as the "light unto the nations." Well, at least no one buys that bull any more. He also didn't put in context that most of the residents were ethnically cleansed from their villages, which were bombed to oblivion in 1948 by the immigrants from Poland, Russian, and the US, nor did he mention that the people in Sderot live in ethnically cleansed and courtesy of Israel defaced Najd. We hear a lot about Hamas this, Hamas that, Hamas hospital, Hamas University, Hamas school, Hamas day care, Hamas house, Hamas mosque, Hamas civil defense building, Hamas neighborhood, ad nauseum.           More....................

The War Against Palestine

By GEORGE SALZMAN and MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

The war against the Palestinians arises from the merging of the Zionist view of Jewish exceptionalism with the view in the United States of American exceptionalism, which have focused their common root ambitions for domination and possession as a hostility to Islam, and this is the leading crusade in the "clash of civilizations," proclaimed by just-deceased Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington, which is the war against the world's poor and dark-skinned people, the war of conquest carried out to enforce a rule of worldwide apartheid by a culturally Euro-American, racially white, highly industrialized capitalist elite.

The Zionist view of Jewish exceptionalism is critically examined, and demolished, in the book Overcoming Zionism, by Joel Kovel. This mind-set boils down to 'any victimization of Jews we Zionists can remember, historically, justifies all our aggression, persecution and even genocide of Palestinians; we are, and will always be, the exceptional victims of world history and so are forever blameless; to disagree is to be one with our historical persecutors.' The Jewish religion is quite incidental to the actual intent of the exceptionalism; Zionism is a criminal conspiracy drawing participants through a Jewishness filter, in the same way the Mafia exploits Sicilian heritage to filter its recruitment and promotion.

More....................

Fikr Shaltoot

An injured Palestinian prisoner shouts for help as he is trapped in the rubble of the central security headquarters and prison, known as the Saraya, after it was hit in an Israeli missile strike in in Gaza City, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008. December 29, 2008 Fikr Shaltoot is a programme coordinator for Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British non-governmental organisation that provides medical supplies in Gaza< Being a health worker, I had to check the needs of Shifa hospital and the other hospitals in Gaza. The situation in Shifa is really bad. There were corpses in corridors covered with blankets. The mortuary couldn't cope with the number of bodies. Two bodies were left on stretchers, one wrapped in a blanket. They leave them until families can recognise them. There were mothers, fathers looking for children, looking for relatives. Everyone was confused and seeking support. Mothers were crying, people were asking about relatives, the medical team was confused. Some people were just lying there, some were screaming, some were very, very angry. There were a lot of injured arriving, ambulances coming in and out. The injured were coming by private cars and they were being left wherever. You could see blood here and there. There is talk [the Israeli air strikes] were targeting the police and security forces but in Shifa hospital, I saw many, many civilians, some dead, some injured, some were children, some were women, some were elderly people. There are people without their legs in very severe pain. The doctors and nurses were trying to give them painkillers and to keep them alive. Patients are lying there knowing they've lost their legs. Some were asking God if they could die. They were in a terrible psychological state. The doctors and nurses were trying to do their best. They discharged all the patients from the chronic diseases ward and from the oncology ward to make way for the injured. They were using whatever they could. There's no gauze so they are using cotton, which sticks to the wounds. They can't sterilise clothes for the operating theatre. They're using wrong sized syringes. They're working 24 hours. They're referring cases from one hospital to the next. One hospital was running out of anaesthesia. They're also drawing blood and there's no alcohol. This is a disaster.

By Hiyam Noir in Gaza - Palestine Free Voice, Via Axis of Logic

December 29, 2008

Editor's Note: Hiyam Noir sends her 4th report in 36 hours to us from Gaza. GAZA - the narrow strip of land where 1.5 million of our brothers, sisters and children have been herded like cattle, starved for food and every other basic need for 2 months and now bombed with missiles for 36 hours without mercy by maniacs, armed with F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopter gunships. She reports with resolve and courage that the Israelis continued their missile attacks through the night and into Monday morning. No words can adequately describe nor minds comprehend the Zionist insanity nor the utter loss, grief and carnage these demented killers have already caused. Instead of condemning these acts as crimes against humanity, the Zionist-controlled corporate media in the west continues to call this Mass Murderer ... a victim.

- Les Blough, Editor

Photo Fady Adwan December 29 2008 Exclusive PalestineFreeVoice Image

Monday Morning, December 29 2008
Hiyam Noir, Palestine Free Voice

GAZA - The Zionists continue to pound Gaza Strip with bombs and missiles, killing and and injuring people. More than 300 are [confirmed] dead, over 1,200 are injured, more than 600 are reported to be seriously injured, including children. After midnight on Monday, five missiles were fired from F16 warplanes at the women's dormitory, situated by the Islamic University in Tal Al-Hawa, in the southern parts of Gaza City. Missile air strikes have also damaged Gaza seaport.

On Monday morning, Israeli warplanes also launched missile attacks on the Al-Muntada head quarters. One hour later the Mosque Abu Bakur in the Biet Lahia project, was hit in another heavy bombardment, the ground under the homes in the area was shaking. At least seven people have been killed in the nearby Jabalyia refuge camp, another five people, including children of the Al Baloush family were also killed. The Zionists are still shelling the northern parts of Jabalyia.

As earlier reported, Hamas security buildings are completely destroyed. In the first early massive wave of air strikes on Saturday, 150 bombs pounded Gaza Strip. Among 42 official buildings, Hamas security buildings are destroyed, some were leveled to the ground. The Zionists also pounded with heavy bombardment the Arafat Police Academy, where a police graduation ceremony was held during the assault. Also this building has now fallen down,in this targeted attack, over 70 Hamas policemen where killed, and there are still bodies to be found under the rubble.

The house is filled with 25 children, 15 adult family members, and neighbors. The small children are innocent playing around, can not yet really grasp the grime reality outside the home. The older children are silent,try to keep their fear and distress inside. The windows of the neighbors house are broken, they forgot to open them before the missile shelled their neighborhood some hour ago.

All windows must be kept open because of the high pressure and heat from the bombardment. It is a very cold winter season this year in northern Gaza Strip. The temperature inside is almost below zero,small generators are shared between friendly neighbors. There is no electricity but 3 hours/each day of /24 hours. Buying food is too risky, not possible, there is no flour or sugar to be found. Long lines of hungry people are waiting outside the small bakeries nearby, to buy bread.

Two young members of Hamas in company with a women tried to find car service to take them to their homes in Jabalyia refuge camp. But there is no transportation to be found, only the Ambulance service and the Fire-trucks are driving on the roads. You will risk your life if you dare to go outside, or walk around in the open. An elderly man and his son, a friend of mine, and...a member of Fatah, was driving in the northern parts of Gaza.

Risking his own life, my friends father stopped the car and asked the two men and the women, if he could drive them home. It was a warm kind feeling among the people in the car, everyone agreed to that what is important now, is cooperation and unity..that "we are all Palestinians regardless of political affiliation, and we need and must fight together, or lose our long battle. We are all being killed by the same very disturbed minds, our homes destroyed by the same bloody hands, we are all parts in the same struggle, fighting the same enemy, the Zionist Israel". © Copyright reserved 2003 - 2008 PalestineFreeVoics

Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank

December 29, 2008 In order to grasp the latest devastating murderous Israeli expedition in Gaza one must deeply comprehend the Israeli identity and its inherent hatred towards anyone who fails to be Jewish and a hatred against Arabs in particular. This hatred is imbued in the Israeli curriculum, it is preached by political leaders and implied by their acts, it is conveyed by cultural figures, even within the so-called 'Israeli Left’. I grew up in Israel in the 1970’s people of my generation are nowadays the leaders of the Israeli army, politics, economy, academia and the arts. We were trained to believe that 'a good Arab is a dead one’. A few weeks before I joined the IDF in the early 1980’s, General Rafael Eitan, the Chief of Staff at the time announced that the "Arabs were stoned cockroaches in a bottle". He got away with it, he also got away with the murder of many thousands of Lebanese civilians in the 1st Lebanon war. In a word, Israelis manage to get away with murder. Luckily enough, and for reasons that are still far beyond my comprehension, at a certain stage I woke up out of that Hebraic lethal dream. At one point I left the Jewish state, I evaded the Jewish hate mongering, I had become an opponent of the Jewish state and any other form of Jewish politics. However, I am utterly convinced that it is my primary duty to inform every being that is willing to listen about that which are we up against. As much as Zionism was there to transform Jews, and by "giving them a State of their own" make them like any other people, it failed miserably. The Israeli barbarism as we have seen this week and too many times before is far beyond bestiality. It is killing for the sake of killing. And it is indiscriminate. Not many people in the west are aware of the devastating fact that killing Arabs and Palestinians in particular is a very effective Israeli political recipe. The Israelis are indeed confused people. As much as they insist upon seeing themselves as a 'Shalom seeking’[1][1] nation, they also love to be led by politicians with an astonishing record of unlawful murderous activity. Whether it was Sharon, Rabin, Begin, Shamir or Ben Gurion, Israelis love their 'democratically elected leaders’ to be belligerent hawks with their hands dripping with blood and backed by a solid record of crimes against humanity.                                              More.........................

Khaled Amayreh

29 December, 2008


Zionist Hasbara operatives have been claiming that the current Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza is a "war against Hamas" and that it was only necessitated by the firing of Palestinian rockets on Israel.

This is a big lie. Read the following:

"Hamas had repeatedly said it was willing and ready to stop "all" firing of projectiles from Gaza if only Israel would lift the deadly blockade. And Israel repeatedly said "No."

Israel has been saying ad nauseam that it ended its occupation of Gaza. Well, why does Israel then retain its control of Gaza skies, Gaza shores, Gaza sea, Gaza border crossings (even with Egypt). Why does Israel retain its control of Gaza life? Why?

Hence, the issue of firing "rockets" on Israel (they are homemade projectiles that make more noise than damage), should be viewed largely as a red herring.

Effectively, Israel has been giving Palestinians in Gaza either of two choices, to die of starvation as a result of the blockade or be exterminated by the Israeli war machine.

Indeed, these so-called "rockets" are nothing more than a desperate outcry for justice, for lifting the deadly blockade. Gaza has simply been reduced to a modern-day Auschwitz. The only difference is that Jews are now playing the role of the SS.

Hamas did meticulously observe a six-month ceasefire, despite the persistence of the Nazi-like blockade which very much resembled the Ghetto Warsaw siege in 1942-43. However, Israel on 13 November, Israel carried out a foray into Gaza, killing 6 people.

More to the point, Israel killed 49 Palestinians during the ceasefire. Not a single Israeli was killed.

Besides, hundreds of Palestinians have perished because Israel would not allow them to access medical care or medicine. I saw many Palestinians die an agonizing death because the "light upon the nations" wouldn't allow them to reach hospital a few blocks away. In short, we are talking about a Judeo-Nazi state. I am saying this because when Jews think, behave and act like Nazis, they become Nazis. We must call the spade a spade, especially when it happens to be in the hands of our gravediggers.

Therefore, it is a big lie to call this war a war against Hamas. This is a Nazi-like war of extermination against the people of Palestine.

If the war were against Hamas, as the war criminals of Tel Aviv keep claiming, Israel wouldn't have targeted market places, drug stores, college buildings, private homes, mosques, cultural institutions, roads, businesses, etc.
Only a state with a Hitlerian mindset would target an entire society and then claim that it is fighting Hamas! It is simply a big lie.

So, Israel is simply carrying out a real genocide...and an indiscriminate one for that matter.

Today, even a Jewish rabbi of imminence used the term "genocide" to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza."

See also Amira Hass’s article in the Ha’aretz newspaper "Israel’s war is not against Hamas, it’s against all the Palestinians."

AlJazeeraEnglish

Gaza Update: Day 3

Sameh A. Habeeb

The bodies of five Palestinian siblings at a hospital morgue following an Israeli air strike in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. December 29, 2008 Dear Editors, Colleagues and Friends, I'm writing to you late due to limited access to the Internet again. I would not be able to update you hourly through the Internet but every 24 hours. Thus, for media reports, breaking news and accounts you could reach me on my Mobile or landline below. You could send me an e-mails and I would do my best to answer you. Note: Humanitarian situation still suffocating and no longer people are getting bread nor gas nor power. Go to Blog for a new small story: http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/ Mob: 00972599306096 Tel: 0097282802825 E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com E-mail: Sam_hab@gmail.com Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb Gaza Update: Day 3 - Victims toll of Israeli military operation reached 350 while wounded up to 1500 persona. -Medical sources: Victims of the third day are 40 between civilians and militants. -Five Female children from Ba'losha family killed in Bait Lahia City north of Gaza. -Three Children from Al Absi family killed in Rafah refugee Camp as their house collapsed due to the heavy rockets launched by Israeli F16s. -Scale of bombings up to 60 raids for the 3rd day. -Israel allows few vans of food supplies into Gaza and Egypt as well. -Israel announce the borders with Egypt as "Closed Military Operation" -Israeli army moves from targeting governmental offices into civic ones. It has targeted some of Hamas leaders' houses. A senior leader affiliated to Islamic Jehad Movement killed in east of Khanyonis City. -Israli navy bombed Gaza seaport, destroyed many fishing boats. -Israeli navy shelled houses in Rafah City while F16s raided on Rafah City Council. -More threats by phones to Palestinian civilians in Gaza specifically Khan Yonis. -Israel destroyed Al Sideeq Mosque in Jabalia Camp. -Israei Helicopters opened heavy gunfire on Al zaytoun area. -Yoval Diskin, Israeli army leader says, "the worse is coming" -Severe shortages and medical supplies in Gaza hospitals and Al Shifa' hospital transformed Burnt and birth units into urgent surgeries. It has also announced inability of receiving more cases. -Palestinian factions launched many rockets into Israel killing Arab citizen working in Ashkilon City. Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A. Photojournalist & Peace Activist Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker Gaza Strip, Palestine Mob: 00972599306096 Tel: 0097282802825 E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com E-mail: Sam_hab@gmail.com Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb