Rory McCarthy reports from Gaza City on the individual stories of some victims and the physical and psychological toll on an estimated 350,000 youngsters
Amira Qirm lay on a hospital bed today with her right leg in plaster, and held together by a line of steel pins dug deep into her skin. For several days after her operation Amira, 15, was unable to speak, and even now talks only in a low whisper.
In her past are bitter memories: watching her father die in the street outside their home, then hearing another shell land and kill her brother Ala’a, 14, and her sister Ismat, 16, and then the three days that she spent alone, injured and semi-conscious, trying to stay alive in a neighbour’s abandoned house before she could be rescued last Sunday. Ahead of her, she has a long recovery. First there is an imminent flight to France for the best possible medical treatment, many more operations and then months of rehabilitation and psychiatric care.
Only now, after most of the dead have been buried, is the first properly researched reckoning of the toll emerging. What already stands out is the striking cost borne by the children of Gaza, who make up more than half of the 1.5 million people living in this overcrowded strip of land.
Broadcasters are wrong to boycott the Gaza appeal
“No politics. No boundaries. Send us money now. We’ll rush your aid to the people of Vietnam,” the Disasters Emergency Committee appealed in 1967, courtesy of a broadcast carried by the BBC, presented by Peter Snow. It did not judge the rights and wrongs of the conflict, or promise that aid would only reach those to the north or south of the border that then divided the country. It simply made the point that desperate people needed help. What was true of Vietnam then is true of Gaza today, which makes it all the more unfortunate that for the first time in 43 years a DEC appeal has been launched without the support of Britain’s major broadcasters. The BBC’s lame excuse yesterday – that it wants to “avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story” – could of course have applied to Vietnam 30 years ago, or any number of appeals since then. Broadcasters supported the DEC’s call for public help in Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the first Gulf war and in Lebanon in 1982. What has changed now? The committee, which brings together 13 UK charities including the British Red Cross and Oxfam, decided to act this week because in Gaza its three criteria have been met: aid is needed, aid can be delivered and the public want to help. The DEC, which says it “regrets” the broadcasters’ refusal, is pressing ahead regardless. Anyone who wants to donate to its appeal should call 0370 60 60 900 or visit www.dec.org.uk.
This is crucial! The BBC is refusing to give the Disasters Emergency Committee airtime for a national appeal for Gaza (as reported in today’s Guardian; article appended). This is inhumane, and a betrayal of both the people of Gaza, and the charities which are trying to help them in their terrible plight. Do not let them get away with this! Israeli and Zionist pressure now, is as brutal as the killing itself was. Protest! That is the only way that the BBC will change its decision. Send this to anyone you know, and ask them to follow it up, please!
You may do so also by phone, which has the added effect of influencing the officer you speak to! To do so, phone: 03700 100 222 (from within the UK) to make your complaint. I also suggest that you say that you will rather go to jail than pay the
annual broadcasting levy to the BBC. That always is getting listened to…
My own letter to them is below:
The refusal of the BBC to allow the DEC airtime for a national appeal for the people of Gaza, after the most horrific carnage visited upon them by the brutal Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) is a measure of how servile the BBC has become to Israeli interests, and how frightened it is of criticisms by the very people who have done the killing and caused the deprivations. How
low can we sink, because of the pressure affected by the war criminals and their UK agencies of apology and obfuscation? The BBC has taken sides with the killers! I would rather go to jail that pay the license fee – despite being a life-long staunch supporter of Public service broadcasting! As a media producer myself, as a Jew, and also as an Israeli, I feel you have
betrayed the wounded, starving and homeless. Shame on you, Auntie Cowardice! I have built a system of protesting against your unjustified and unprecedented decision into my Gaza blog and many are now using it to contact you in the same manner, being totally disgusted by your behaviour.
Prof. H Breseheeth
The UN’s humanitarian chief has told the BBC the situation in Gaza after a three-week Israeli offensive against Hamas was worse than he anticipated. Sir John Holmes, who visited Gaza on Thursday, said he was shocked by “the systematic nature of the destruction”. He said that the territory’s economic activity had been set back by years. The International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) president Jakob Kellenberger said conditions in Gazan hospitals were the worst he had seen. UN workers have been given access to Gaza. On Friday, Israel lifted a ban on international aid agencies entering the Palestinian territory.
The ban had been in place since early November when tensions mounted between Israel and Hamas. Staff from a number of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were allowed to cross into Gaza on Friday morning. Michael Bailey from Oxfam said: “We are extremely relieved to be able to join our local colleagues inside Gaza and to be able to provide them with some support and relief from the relentless work they have been doing.”
Four-year-old Samar Abed Rabbu is a little girl with a captivating smile to melt the heart of the most hardened correspondent.
Samer’s two sisters did not survive the attack
When we first came across her in the hospital in the Egyptian town of El-Arish, just over the border from Gaza, she was playing with an inflated surgical glove beneath the covers. The doctors had puffed air into the glove, trying to distract her from the further pain they had to inflict inserting a drip. Samar had been shot in the back at close range. The bullet damaged her spine, and she is unlikely to walk again. At her bedside, her uncle Hassan told us the family had been ordered out of their home by Israeli soldiers who were shelling the neighbourhood. A tank had parked in front of the house, where around 30 people were taking shelter. The women and children – mother, grandmother and three little girls – came out waving a white flag and then, he said, an Israeli soldier came out of the tank and opened fire on the terrified procession. Samar’s two sisters, aged seven and two, were shot dead. The grandmother was hit in the arm and in the side, but has survived.
May they burn in the special hell for child murderers!
Only party stalwarts turned out for a victory rally
Standing on a newly formed hillside of rubble in the destroyed Jabaliya refugee camp, five young men all claim to be resistance fighters. “All of Gaza are mujahideen,” they said. But when asked which of them had actually fired a gun in the three week-long battle with Israel, none gave a convincing answer. And as armed Hamas policemen return to Gaza’s street-corners and traffic-lights, many in Gaza are wondering where they were when it came to fighting the Israeli Army. Hamas still has enough power and influence here that few will criticise the Islamist movement openly. But when Hamas called for a rally to celebrate what it has been calling a historic victory over the Israelis, the citizens of Gaza voted with their feet – they stayed at home. In the past Hamas could easily call tens of thousands into the streets, but this time only party stalwarts could look around the devastation and believe this could be victory. “I think the resistance is strong,” said Beithar Ajar, 26, who described himself as a Hamas legal adviser. “I think the Israeli army is very weak. Very weak.”
Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened in Gaza
After seven hectic days in the Middle East, the UN chief is heading back to New York. Ban Ki-moon’s aim when he left was to press for a ceasefire in Gaza, and call for humanitarian aid to be delivered to those in need. He returns with two ceasefires, and no Egyptian-negotiated truce agreement between Israel and Hamas. Mr Ban sped around the Middle East with remarkable speed and determination. Those of us following him climbing in and put of helicopters were struck by his energy and focus. Mr Ban counted 14 cities he had visited in a week, meeting the region’s leaders. Yet how much impact did he have on Israel’s decision to announce a ceasefire, swiftly followed by Hamas?
Israel insists its use of white phosphorus shells during its three-week campaign in Gaza was not illegal.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ygal Palmor said an internal investigation so far had found no evidence to support claims it was illegally fired near civilians. White phosphorus is legal for making smokescreens in open battleground. But rights groups and journalists say it was used in crowded civilian areas. The weapon sticks to human skin and will burn through to the bone.
It can cause death or leave survivors with painful wounds which are slow to heal. Its ingestion or inhalation can also be fatal. Army investigation
The UN said its headquarters were hit by three white phosphorus shells during the offensive, causing a fire destroying much of its aid supplies. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and foreign journalists who have gone into Gaza since the operation ended say they have found evidence of its use in crowded residential areas. The Israeli army said on Wednesday it would investigate the allegations. But Mr Palmor told the BBC that the probe had so far found no evidence to support the claims.
Even I am speechless against such evil. May they all face the War Criminal Court before I leave this earth!
By Donald Macintyre in Atatra, northern Gaza Strip
Whether from delayed shock or not, Mahmoud abu Kalima was almost dispassionate as he pointed to the hole in the roof made by the artillery shelling which killed his father and burned to death his baby sister and three of his younger brothers. He had been next door and had come running when he heard the first explosion. “I started to go upstairs shouting ‘mama, mama’,”.he said. “But she was already coming down. She was burning. All her clothes were on fire. I put my jacket on her. She told me: ‘go and get your father, he is hurt.”
The sight that greeted Mahmoud, 20, is one which will presumably haunt him for the rest of his life. The rest of his family had been eating lunch in one of the rooms but when they first heard shooting had moved – fatally – into the hallway for safety. The corpse of his 45 year old tenant farmer father Sadallah, directly hit from a shell – one of three all the family say arrived in quick succession – was, Mahmoud said, “stuck together” with the bodies his three still smouldering sons, Abed, 14, Zaid,10 and Hamza,8 seemingly having hugged them to him in his last seconds. His 15 month old sister Shahed was lying separately after, in the words of her severely burned mother Sabah, also 45, she “melted away” as the missiles struck while she was being breast-fed.
If the investigation which the Israeli military announced this week into the use of white phosphorous is serious, it will have to examine the events at the Abu Kalima house here in this semi-rural suburb of of Beit Lahiya, among many other locations. It’s unlikely to dwell for long on the fact that the war saw the first use of artillery in Gaza since late 2006. The military ended it after 18 members of one family were killed by shelling on a civilian house in Beit Hanoun in November 2006.
“I do not know of any army that operates at the high standards that the IDF operates,” Barak said. “There is no place for an automatic backlash following every operation.” Barak wrote in the bill that the IDF behaved according to its high moral values during Cast Lead, in spite of the fact that Hamas gunmen fired on IDF troops from areas heavily populated with civilians, in clear violation of international law. “As an army which is unsurpassed in its moral traditions, the IDF has done all that it can in order to adhere to international law, in order to avoid harming civilians who are not involved in fighting,” Barak said, adding that such moral principles “have not always been enough to prevent tragedies from happening.”
“Nonetheless, Hamas cynically uses its civilians in a manner that places responsibility for the results upon their shoulders,” Barak added. On Thursday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed Justice Minister Daniel Friedman to head a team that will examine methods to avoid war crimes charges for those involved in IDF operations in Gaza. The decision comes as a result of civilian casualties that happened as a result of Operation Cast Lead.
This is good news – even Israel realises that its leaders will end up in the international Court of Human Rights!
President Barack Obama’s administration will have to “drastically revise” American policies relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Washington seeks to maintain its leadership role in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. said on Friday. In an article on the Financial Times website, Prince Turki al-Faisal said former President George W. Bush had left a “sickening legacy” in the Middle East. “If the U.S. wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its ‘special relationship’ with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine,” Turki said. Obama on Friday asked Saudi King Abdullah for support in halting weapons smuggling into Gaza and underscored the importance of U.S.-Saudi ties in a phone call to the Arab ruler, the White House said. Obama spoke to several other foreign leaders on Friday, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the White House said in a statement.
There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes. “I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,” he told a Geneva news conference. Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting. “To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.
An Israel Defense Forces soldier is suspected of seriously wounding a Palestinian man at the West Bank checkpoint of Hawara, after he allegedly struck him in the head with the butt of his rifle. The IDF has pledged to open an investigation, adding that they suspect the soldier felt threatened. The incident occurred on Tuesday at the checkpoint outside Nablus, after the victim, Mahmoud Awad’s brother was involved in a scuffle with other Palestinian youths at the checkpoint. Mahmoud reportedly saw his brother then being taken for questioning, and requested to speak to him. A witness said at this point a soldier approached Mahmoud, and without saying a word, struck him in the head with his rifle, at which point he lost consciousness.
A large number of Palestinians listed in serious condition in Gaza hospitals are in danger of dying from their wounds, a group of 12 Arab-Israeli doctors said Friday. The doctors were sent by the organization “Doctors for Human Rights”, and are to return to Israel on Sunday. Dr. Agbariah, the manager of a hospital in the Arab-Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm, said Friday that “each hospital is full of wounded. There are wounded in serious condition and the treatment they are given is very basic because of the lack of medical supplies.” Dr. Agbariah added that the hospitals are not set up “to receive so many patients at the same time,” adding that the high concentration will lead to deaths. The doctor added that the situation is worsened by the lack of reliable electricity and the high level of poverty in the strip, with trash and the carcasses of dead animals strewn about in many areas, posing a contamination risk
Israel’s invasion of Gaza has strengthened the hand of extremists and only a credible independent investigation into alleged wrongdoing can quiet growing Palestinian anger, a United Nations aid official said on Friday. John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, called for new U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to talk to ordinary people in Gaza as part of a “new track” in diplomacy. U.S. President Barack Obama named Mitchell, a former U.S. Senator who helped settle the conflict in Northern Ireland, on Thursday to try to jump-start Arab-Israeli peace talks. “My first request to the U.S. administration is talk to the ordinary people in Gaza. Come to Gaza and talk to the ordinary people – the mothers, fathers, leaders of civil society, the people who are not involved in politics,” Ging, speaking from Gaza, told reporters in Geneva. “They are still quite shell-shocked but there is more and more anger growing.” It is urgent to establish accountability for death and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure through a credible mechanism which would “channel this emotion to confidence in the rule of law”, Ging said.
The weapons and ammunition that killed the brothers Kassab and Ibrahim Shurab, aged 28 and 17, were legal. But apart from the weapons and ammunition, was there anything legal about killing them? On Friday, January 16, the two were driving with their father Mohammed, 64, in a red Land Rover from the family’s farm near the Green Line to their home in Khan Yunis. The father drove, Kassab sat in the passenger seat and Ibrahim sat in the back. The temporary cease-fire, allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, was held between 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. that day. They came to one Israel Defense Forces inspection point in the area and were allowed to continue. At about 1 P.M. they reached the Abu Zaidan supermarket in the Al-Foukhari neighborhood. An adjacent building had been converted into an IDF outpost. Soldiers moved in, turning the tenants into prisoners in their own homes. Suddenly intensive fire opened on the Land Rover from the army outpost, about 30 to 50 meters away, according to the father’s estimate. Kassab was hit in the chest, came out of the sport utility vehicle (SUV), collapsed and died. Ibrahim jumped out and was hit in the leg by the fire, which did not stop. He tried to call for help on his mobile phone but a soldier shouted at him not to call and swore at him in Arabic, the father told Tom, a member of Physicians for Human Rights, hours later. The father’s hand was injured in the fire. He managed to drag his living son to a nearby wall and telephoned home, the Red Crescent, journalists and even his son in the United States. He saw a tank, saw Israeli soldiers coming and going, he told Tom.
Seven children from Toura al-Gharbeiah village (near the West Bank city of Jenin) were arrested on Tuesday by the Israeli authorities; they are currently detained in Salim detention and interrogation center, in the northern West Bank. Two of the children are only 12 years old; two are 13; another two are aged 15; and the seventh is 17. A Defense for Children International (DCI)-Palestine lawyer yesterday visited the children. According to information collected by the lawyer, between midnight and 4:00am on Tuesday 20 January, the Israeli intelligence, police and army entered Toura al-Gharbeiah village and arrested the seven children from their respective homes. The children were then assembled in a public building in the village, and interrogated there. They were alleged to have thrown stones at the Wall and were intimidated into confessing. The eldest, Murad (17), was accused of possessing weapons, but he denied the allegation. Murad told the DCI-Palestine lawyer what happened on Tuesday morning.
As you can well imagine, this odd organisation, at one point the largest armaments producer in the Middle East, is not waiting to be asked, but is telling us outright….r ead and send to your union! Time to break relations with this bunch!
Violated Ceasefire with Attacks, Blockade
Robert Pastor is a senior adviser to the Carter Center and a professor at American University who met with exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor says Meshaal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire if Israel would lift the siege on Gaza. He says he passed along the statement to the Israeli military, but he never heard back. Two weeks later, Israel launched its three-week assault that left more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, at least a third children, dead.
The BBC said the decision had been made with other broadcasters
The BBC has defended a decision not to air a TV fund-raising appeal for Gaza, saying it wanted to avoid compromising public confidence in its impartiality. It said a decision was taken with other broadcasters not to show the Disasters Emergency Committee crisis appeal on any network in the UK. A corporation statement added there were also doubts about “the delivery of aid in a volatile situation”. DEC said there was “clear evidence” the British public wanted to help. In a statement, the BBC said: “The BBC decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story. “However, the BBC will, of course, continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza.” A spokesman for ITV told the Times website: “The DEC did ask broadcasters if they could support the appeal. “We assessed the DEC’s request carefully against agreed criteria and were unable to reach the consensus which is necessary for an appeal.”
Shame them into submission! Complain! See details above in an earlier item.
GENEVA, Jan 22 (Reuters) – There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, U.N. investigator Richard Falk said on Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes. “I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,” he told a Geneva news conference. Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting. “To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.
The BBC’s Christian Fraser went in search of the father of an injured child he saw in an Egyptian hospital during hostilities and tracked him down in Northern Gaza. Four year old Samar Abed Rabbo was wounded by Israeli troops, according to her family. The Israeli army says it is investigating the claim. a moving and disturbing video clip.
Moshe Machover: Gaza – What’s going on?: Video clip of his talk at the KCL occupation
The Lambeth Branch of UNISON, the second largest trade union in the UK, has voted to condemn the recent slaughter of Palestinians and the ongoing occupation by Israel at a meeting of its Branch Committee this morning.
At its monthly meeting of representatives, the Branch called for, “an immediate end to the slaughter of defenceless people and the [ongoing] siege of Gaza.” The Branch concluded that, “Israel is an…apartheid state,” and has advocated academic, economic and cultural boycotts of Israel in an effort to delegitimise the Occupation of Palestine, and build international and domestic pressure against the state. For over 6 decades Israel has carried out policies of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.1.5 million people live in Gaza, which is now effectively open air prison. For years Israel has blocked the transport of food, medicine and vital supplies forcing the people of Gaza to live in inhumane conditions and the vast majority of people are unemployed. Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed and 5,500 injured as a result Israeli’s latest military offensive. The United Nations states that some 50,800 people are now homeless and 400,000 are without running water. Staff in Gaza report that many more people could die as medical equipment runs out.
Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’
Doctor Decries Israeli Attacks: YouTube from Jan 5th, 2009
The following Motion was adopted at the meeting of Full Council on 19 January 2009: Gaza/Israel Conflict
1) This Council is extremely concerned and saddened, as are many Oxford residents, at the tragic loss of life in Gaza and Israel because of military action. We deplore the violence on both sides but believe that that the Israeli military response had been and continues to be disproportionate.
2) We condemn the loss of civilian life and the destruction of homes, mosques, schools and infrastructure, including United Nations facilities, by Israel in Gaza. These attacks will not bring peace and act as a recruiting ground for extremist groups.
3) This Council welcomes the UK Government’s call for a ceasefire and asks the Leader to write to the Prime Minister urging him to act urgently to ensure:
An immediate end to Israel’s military assault on Gaza
An immediate end to the blockade and siege of Gaza
Action to end Israel’s violations of international law
Support to address the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
Israel should compensate the victims for the loss of the life and property resulting from this unprincipled aggression
4) This Council wishes to see:
An immediate ceasefire
The withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza
Greater international pressure through the UN on Israel and the Palestinians to reach a political agreement
An end to the isolation, impoverishment and virtual imprisonment of the people of Gaza
5) To this end we recognize the importance of:
Boycotting Israeli products and companies
Increased support for the friendship links between Oxford and both Neve Shalom/Wahat el Salam (Oasis of Peace) and Ramalla
An immediate arms boycott of Israel by Britain and other countries
6) We welcome:
The practical support by Oxfam, Medical Aid to Palestine and others to assist the people of Gaza
The efforts of both Oxford MPs to persuade the Government to do everything possible to press for an immediate ceasefire, to challenge the blockade and help to bring peace to the people of Palestine and Israel.
At last, boycott motions start flowing in! The South Africam moment of the conflict is upon us!
An appeal by Ariella Azulay
To any and all who – in South Africa – would have joined the blacks in their struggle
Had we been whites in South Africa,
we would be outraged by the massive killing of black citizens,
the brutal devastation of their habitat.
Many Jewish citizens would probably have denounced the regime
and called to overthrow it,
some would have joined the blacks to create a united front against the ruling power. Read the full text on the link above
Greens condemn BBC over Gaza appeal
23 JANUARY 2009
The Green Party has criticised the BBC for refusing to transmit a charity appeal which would have brought much-needed humanitarian aid to thousands of people in Gaza.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella-organisation representing 13 of the world’s most respected charities, wanted to broadcast the appeal under an agreement with the BBC dating back to 1963. Traditionally the BBC, and other broadcasters, allow free air-time immediately after national news bulletins for such appeals.The BBC’s refusal to show the programme, claiming it could not be certain the aid would reach its target, has allowed other broadcasters such as ITV and Sky to also deny transmission. Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP said the BBC’s decision was disgraceful and called for an inquiry. “It is not for the BBC to tell these professional aid agencies how to do their jobs,” she said. “Everyone knows the situation in Gaza is dangerous and that the cease-fire is extremely fragile. But aid lorries are getting through. “The people of Gaza are desperate for medical supplies, and food, and the DEC works with United Nations’ organisations to ensure that this sort of aid reaches the right place. These DEC appeals are worth millions of pounds to the charities and it is absolutely disgraceful that the BBC should refuse to broadcast the appeal.” Some journalists have questioned the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli bombardment in Gaza, suggesting many news images of civilian casualties had been censored as unsuitable for transmission. Dr Lucas suggested the BBC had laid itself open to allegations of bias. The Green Party is planning to join a protest outside the BBC tomorrow.
“If you want to know what’s been going on in Gaza you watch Al Jazeera rather than the BBC,” said Dr Lucas. “There is clear prima facie evidence suggesting that in some cases war crimes have been committed, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the BBC. I will be writing to the BBC Trust, and to Ofcom, asking for an inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of this conflict.”
The “Open Letter to Israeli Soldiers” was published in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz on Friday, January 23, 2009.
If you wish to view the ad, as published, please click here: www.ajjp.org/campaigns/OpenLetterPublished.pdf http://www.ajjp.org/campaigns/files/OpenLetterPublished.pdf
If you wish to view the current list of signatories, please click here:www.ajjp.org/campaigns/ViewOpenLetter.php http://www.ajjp.org/campaigns/ViewOpenLetter.php
While we were unable to afford a full-page ad, we are very pleased that we were able to publish a half-page version.
Israeli Occupation Forces using boy as human shield
