More than 1300 Palestinians dead, over 425 children,

100 women, and more than 5,300 wounded

(Numbers taken from the Hebrew press today, those numbers are already inaccurate, as more and more bodies are found under the rubble))

What would this mean in Britain with its population of 60 million, in comparative terms?

It would mean more than 52,000 dead, 17,000 of them children, and 212,000 wounded.

See the evidence of the illegal weapons used on

Palestinian children, man and women!

his murderous attack, in which 42 refugees died, was one which the IOF has denied, then claimed it was an attack on Hamas forces in the School, and later claimed that the forces were beside this school, a lie according to all eyewitnesses and UNRWA personnel. IOF has never admitted that it uses White Phosphorous routinely in Gaza, but here is the incontrovertible evidence, in a series of disturbing pictures in real time. Anone who still believes the IOF claims is not likely to be reading this website – sich people dpo not need evidence – they have beliefs instead. Major Avital Leibowitz, the Blond Brunhilda of the prppaganda campaign, has said time and again that no white phosphorous was used. Well, here it is, in terrifying detail:

Photo Report: Attack with White Phosphorous bombs on UNRWA School

Gaza homeless toll ‘hits 50,000’: BBC

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been left destitute by Israel’s three-week offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, the UN estimates. The United Nations says that some 50,800 people are now homeless and 400,000 are without running water. Correspondents in Gaza City say entire neighbourhoods have been flattened and bodies are still being recovered. Israel says it will allow 143 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid into Gaza plus 60,000 litres of fuel.

Israeli leaders face Gaza aftermath: BBC

Israel launched its operation in Gaza six weeks before elections were due. There are now just three weeks to go. The Israeli public domain is largely awash with pictures of smiling troops returning and editorials asking “Why did we stop?”, as the dust begins to settle after what one analyst described as a “text book case” of a popular Israeli war. But political opinion polls are rising to the surface too. And despite the widespread public backing for the Israeli operation, it is not all good news for the three members of the security “kitchen cabinet” who were in the driving seat. Outgoing caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may have somewhat burnished his legacy, blackened by the corruption claims that forced him to resign, and his heavily criticised handling of the 2006 Lebanon war.

Read it to find out what they are really worried about – not the Hamas ineffectual rockets, but their own electoral standing in the pre-election polls!

Obama, take away the pain in my stomach: Video letter to President Obamah by Macsomwatch women! Must see!

Noam Chomsky On Gaza: Text and audio talk at MIT

DOSSANI: The Israeli government and many Israeli and U.S. officials claim that the current assault on Gaza is to put an end to the flow of Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. But many observers claim that if that were really the case, Israel would have made much more of an effort to renew the ceasefire agreement that expired in December, which had all but stopped the rocket fire. In your opinion, what are the real motivations behind the current Israeli action?
CHOMSKY: There’s a theme that goes way back to the origins of Zionism. And it’s a very rational theme: “Let’s delay negotiations and diplomacy as long as possible, and meanwhile we’ll ‘build facts on the ground.'” So Israel will create the basis for what some eventual agreement will ratify, but the more they create, the more they construct, the better the agreement will be for their purposes. Those purposes are essentially to take over everything of value in the former Palestine and to undermine what’s left of the indigenous population.
I think one of the reasons for popular support for this in the United States is that it resonates very well with American history. How did the United States get established? The themes are similar.
There are many examples of this theme being played out throughout Israel’s history, and the current situation is another case. They have a very clear program. Rational hawks like Ariel Sharon realized that it’s crazy to keep 8,000 settlers using one-third of the land and much of the scarce supplies in Gaza, protected by a large part of the Israeli army while the rest of the society around them is just rotting. So it’s best to take them out and send them to the West Bank. That’s the place that they really care about and want.

So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn’t it time for a war crimes tribunal?: ICH

By Robert Fisk:

anuary 19, 2009 “The Independent” — — – It’s a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement – reached without a single Arab being involved – would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel’s primary war aim – to stop the missiles – had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza.

Media cool on Gaza ceasefire: BBC

Newspapers around the world give a pessimistic response to the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Commentators express various opinions on who was to blame for the conflict, with some arguing Hamas has emerged the stronger for it. Others consider the effect of international diplomacy on achieving the ceasefire and urge Arab states in particular to unite against Israel.

Read and see how the usual blaming of the victims is proceeding apace; All political victims are always to blame, if you ask the racist: Jews under Nzai occupation, the Vietnamese under the USA attack, the Algerian under the French, or the Indians and Black slaves in America. They all are unable to behave themselves, and one can only expect them to harm themselves, through the benign and godly agency of the Israelis, French Americans, or Nazis, depending on the context. The cases are very different, but one common fact remains: the aggressor always blames the victims.

Absolutely Not! Not in Their Name, Not in Ours: Alternative Information Centre

Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Olmert–don’t you dare show your faces at any memorial ceremony for the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, Lublin, Vilna or Kishinev. And you too, leaders of Peace Now, for whom peace means a pacification of the Palestinian resistance by any means, including the destruction of a people. Whenever I will be there, I shall personally do my best to expel each of you from these events, for your very presence would be an immense sacrilege.

Not in Their Names
You have no right to speak in the name of the martyrs of our people. You are not Anne Frank of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp but Hans Frank, the German general who acted to starve and destroy the Jews of Poland.
You are not representing any continuity with the Warsaw Ghetto, because today the Warsaw Ghetto is right in front of you, targeted by your own tanks and artillery, and its name is Gaza. Gaza that you have decided to eliminate from the map, as General Frank intended to eliminate the Ghetto. But, unlike the Ghettos of Poland and Belorussia, in which the Jews were left almost alone, Gaza will not be eliminated because millions of men and women from the four corners of our world are building a powerful human shield carrying two words: Never Again!

‘Tungsten bombs’ leave Israel’s victims with mystery wounds: The Independent

As it declares a unilateral ceasefire, Jerusalem faces a UN call for a war crimes investigation

Israel was facing demands for war crimes investigations as it declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza last night after a 22-day assault in which more than 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children, were killed and 13 Israelis died.
Two children were killed yesterday when Israeli tanks shelled a UN school in which families were sheltering, leading a UN spokesman, Chris Gunness, to say: “There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed.” The call was dismissed by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, who said: “These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence.” But among numerous allegations of disproportionate use of force, questions are also multiplying about the use of unconventional weapons by Israel, including a new type of bomb that causes injuries that doctors have not seen before, and which they find impossible to treat.

British Jews attacked for pro-Gaza solidarity: The Independent

British Jews have been attacked for expressing support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Police confirmed yesterday that they have provided protection to a number of people believed to be victims of UK-based Zionist extremists angered by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has prompted a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, with more than 150 incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation for the protection of Jews. But the past two weeks have also seen aggression within the Jewish community towards those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza.
Rabbi Elchenon Beck, 39, was among six rabbis expressing support for Gaza’s Palestinians who were set upon by a gang of what they allege were Zionists while walking back from opposing rallies outside the Israeli Embassy on 6 January. “They were shouting and pushed someone to the floor, so we called the police,” Rabbi Beck said. “All the time they are trying to intimidate us, but we get used to it.”
Rabbi Aharon Cohen, a Palestinian sympathiser and member of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, had his letter box destroyed by a powerful firework after attending the peace march in Manchester this month.
Mark Gardner, of the CST, said it had not kept records of attacks within the Jewish community, but condemned those using the situation in Israel to justify violence in Britain.
“There’s passionate political debate,” he said, “but what’s vitally important is that it does not spill over so that we become participants in a war by proxy.”

The Second Death of Judaism: Alternative Information Centre

The millions of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis had shared characteristics, a fact which allows us to speak about European Jewry. This is not a sense of belonging to a mythical people or religion, as a majority of them cut off from religion, but components of a shared culture. When we say culture, the intention is not to recipes or fairy tales characterized by that known Jewish humor, or language, as not everyone spoke Yiddish. We are speaking about something deeper, common in different ways, to the textile workers of Lodz, the diamond polishers of Antwerp, the yeshiva students of Vilna, the vegetable sellers in Odessa, and even some families of bankers. These people were not better than others, but they did not arrogantly employ political sovereignty, and their life conditions restricted them to matters of finance and study. What is certain is that they had disdain for power, for which they occasionally suffered. Many of them stood in solidarity with the oppressed, and occasionally took part in resistance and freedom movements of the first half of the 20th century. On this backdrop the Jewish Workers’ Movement grew, from the Polish—the pioneer of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in the Tsarist empire, and to the unions of milliners and fur makers in Paris, on the flags of whom were slogans in Yiddish, and through numerous activists in the underground against the German occupation MOI (anti-Nazi underground in France that was composed of communist migrants).
This background further provided the world key figures in European Judaism such as Franz Kafka, Hanna Arendt and Albert Einstein. Following the war, many survivors and their children took part in supporting the freedom struggles throughout the globe, such as the black movement in the United States, the ANC in South Africa and the war of independence of the Algerians.

Victorious, but vilified: Israel has ‘destroyed its image and its soul’: The Independent

fter three weeks of carnage in Gaza, there were tentative signs of a ceasefire last night. But the bitter legacy of the past 22 days for Israel is that, while it declares victory on the battlefield, the country’s reputation has rarely sunk so low.
Yesterday the United Nations called for a war crimes investigation after two children, aged five and seven, were killed when, it claimed, an Israeli tank shell hit a school sheltering some of the more than 40,000 internally displaced refugees.
“These two little boys are as innocent, indisputably, as they are dead,” said John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza. In Jerusalem, Chris Gunness, the organisation’s spokesman, added: “There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed.”
Mr Gunness used unusually strong language. But the call came at the culmination not only of a rising civilian death toll but also a series of attacks on UN installations and, in some cases, the people who were under the UN’s care at the time. The most lethal of these was an earlier shelling in which 43 internally displaced Gazans, sheltering in the Fakhura UNRWA school in Jabalya, were killed on 6 January.

Bodies unearthed from rubble as Israel violates ceasefire: Press release, Al Mezan

srael has announced to unilaterally cease fire in the Gaza Strip while leaving its troops in positions they had seized during the so-called Operation Cast Lead. Al Mezan Center’s staff visited some of the areas the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) left last night and this morning. It found out that a disaster had struck these areas, which had not been accessible for weeks. The findings provide evidence about the likelihood that the IOF had perpetrated war crimes in these areas. In particular, dozens of civilians’ corpses have been found in a bad condition under the rubble of destroyed houses. Moreover, the scene of destruction of neighborhoods suggests that wide-scaled home demolitions were systematically conducted by the IOF.
Al Mezan Center’s field workers reported that entire urban blocks have disappeared in the areas of Ezbet Abed-Rabu, al-Salatin, al-Atatra, al-Israa in North Gaza District, and al-Kashif and al-Rayis Hills and the eastern suburbs of Gaza City. As of 2pm, medical teams had found 62 corpses of people under the rubble of houses, or rubble moved by Israeli bulldozers. Among them were eight children and 10 women. It is not known yet whether those were buried under the rubble alive or dead.

Gaza voices: Hamas and the truce: BBC

Three Palestinians across the Gaza Strip discuss the ceasefire and the role of Hamas in the war and its aftermath.

AHMED, in Nuseirat refugee camp
There is no mutual accord between Hamas and Israel in this ceasefire – each side has its own truce and conditions. So people think the violence might start again, once Barack Obama has been inaugurated as US president. Everything has stopped now, apart from the drones circling 200m above our heads, round and round. It’s a constant buzzing noise, very wearing.

Wide rifts on show at Arab summit: BBC

Arab divisions over the Gaza crisis have re-emerged at a summit in Kuwait.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Hamas had invited the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip by refusing to extend a truce that expired in December. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Arab leaders should adopt a resolution declaring Israel a terrorist entity, and support Palestinian resistance. Reports say the Saudi king hosted a lunch for five other leaders on the summit sidelines to try to heal rifts.

Report: Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

An excellent website with frequently updated information on the situation in Gaza.

Lieberman to Haaretz: Hamas missiles will reach Tel Aviv within a year: Ha’aretz

While the war in Gaza was still raging, it was already clear to Avigdor Lieberman that it was going to turn out well. He didn’t like the slow pace, the caution or the ambiguous objectives. But it was the evening that Ehud Olmert was hosting six European heads of state in his residence that really made Lieberman lose it. The more ceremonies there are, the worse our situation is, he said, adding that the only political result of Operation Cast Lead was a ceremony.

Here you can read how the argument is made not just for the next invasion, but also for the preparation of the background and arguements for ethnic cleansing.

Why Israel won’t survive :Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

The merciless Israeli bombardment of Gaza has stopped — for now — but the death toll keeps rising as more bodies are pulled from carpet- bombed neighborhoods.
What Israel perpetrated in Gaza, starting at 11:30am on 27 December 2008, will remain forever engraved in history and memory. Tel al-Hawa, Hayy al-Zeitoun, Khuzaa and other sites of Israeli massacres will join a long mournful list that includes Deir Yasin, Qibya, Kufr Qasim, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, and Jenin.
Once again, Israel demonstrated that it possesses the power and the lack of moral restraint necessary to commit atrocities against a population of destitute refugees it has caged and starved.
The dehumanization and demonization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations — in short everything that sustains civilized and orderly life — and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.
Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist state, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.

Another excellent analysis from Ali Abunimah, seeing through the immediate into the prospective, likely future.

Sacrificing Gaza to revive Israel’s Labor party: Smadar Lavie, The Electronic Intifada

On 27 December 2008, Israel initiated yet another heinous carnage of the Palestinian people because of its democratically elected Hamas government. It did so with the silent encouragement of the US, the European Union and their Arab subcontractors, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. I have spent the past few weeks talking on Skype with friends in Ashdod, an Israeli town about 30 kilometers north of the Gaza Strip. Several times, they have had to seek safety from the rockets by fleeing to Jerusalem. The background noise to our conversations has been the sophisticated newspeak oozing from the Israeli TV.
How cynical are Israeli politicians that they have chosen to sacrifice the lives of innocent Gazan families to seek political advantage in the elections that will happen on 10 February. Not only has the Israeli regime sent its military machine to commit genocide in Gaza, it has also endangered the lives of its own citizens and soldiers. This, without even once trying to negotiate in good faith with the elected government of the Palestinian people.

Boycott calls renewed after Israel bombs University Teachers Assn. : Press release, PACBI, 18 January 2009

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott learned today from its Steering Committee member Dr. Haidar Eid that the headquarters of the University Teachers Association-Palestine, in Gaza, was bombed by the Israeli occupation forces during their indiscriminate, willful destruction campaign in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on Friday.
This latest wanton attack on an academic organization is far from being an exception. It is only the latest episode in what Oxford University academic Karma Nabulsi has termed “scholasticide,” or Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of Palestinian education centers. In its current war on Gaza alone, Israel has bombed the ministry of education, the Islamic University of Gaza, and tens of schools, including at least four UNRWA [the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees] schools, after having largely destroyed the infrastructure of teaching throughout the year and a half of its illegal and criminal siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s artists under fire : Maymanah Farhat, The Electronic Intifada

“I am working under the voices of fire, Israeli warplanes … I still breathe, take some pictures everyday”

– Shareef Sarhan, Palestinian artist, 12 January 2009
Israel’s vicious attack on Gaza has already claimed more than 1,200 lives and has injured thousands while destroying the infrastructure of the tiny coastal territory, including the handful of nonprofit venues that make cultural life possible. Even before the invasion, the combination of 41 years of Israeli occupation, frequent military incursions and attacks, infighting among Palestinian factions, and a dwindling economy created a difficult, if not impossible, environment to sustain an art scene. Yet, with the determination that has defined Palestinian art for decades, artists in Gaza have continued to create and organize, including establishing artistic associations and collectives and organizing frequent exhibitions both at home and abroad. A look at some of Gaza’s seminal artists reveals an artistic tradition that has survived years of conflict while contributing greatly to Arab culture.

Saudi king: Arab peace offer won’t last forever: Ha’aretz

Saudi Arabian King Abdullah warned on Monday that a 2002 Arab initiative offering peace with Israel would not remain on the table forever. Israel must understand that the choice between war and peace would not always stay open, Abdullah told delegates in Kuwait City at a summit focused on boosting economic growth and development in the Arab world.

The Saudis have not yet learnt that hard words do not work on Israelis; neither do soft words. Actually, let us admit it – words do NOT work on Israelis!

Israel fears wave of war crimes lawsuits over Gaza offensive: Ha’aretz

Israel is preparing for a wave of lawsuits by pro-Palestinian organizations overseas against Israelis involved in the Gaza fighting, claiming they were responsible for war crimes due to the harsh results stemming from the IDF’s actions against Palestinian civilians and their property.
Senior Israeli ministers have expressed serious fears during the past few days about the possibility that Israel will be pressed to agree to an international investigation of the losses among non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead; or alternately, that Israelis will be faced with personal suits, such as happened to Israeli officers who were accused of war crimes in Britain for their actions during the second intifada.

And so they should! The lawsuites will come.

Obama’s choice: Truman or Marshall: Ha’aretz

Akiva Eldar: Obama mustn’t let Israel kill and bleed all the way to an apartheid state

In March 1948, then-U.S. secretary of state George Marshall informed president Harry Truman that he personally would not vote for Truman due to the president’s support for the establishment of the State of Israel. Marshall argued that this contradicted American interests and accused Truman of supporting Israel out of electoral considerations – namely, Jewish money and votes. Marshall was being a bit unfair: The Holocaust of European Jewry also affected Truman’s support for the establishment of a Jewish state. At that time, the prospect of a black man entering the White House seemed like science fiction.
Today, Barack Obama has received the votes, and the money, of about 80 percent of American Jews, even though his rival, John McCain, was more outspokenly sympathetic to the Jewish state. Israelis were the only people in the world who hoped the Republican candidate would win. The new president can thus permit himself to reexamine the “special relationship” with Israel, especially with regard to its shared values with the United States and its contribution to American interests.

Dear Akiva – Isn’t it a bit too late to notice this now? Where have you been in last few decades? Israelis are obviously frightened that Obamah will be somewhat less supportive of their Apartheid state. I hope they are right, but doubt it.

Report: EU to lift sanctions on Hamas if Palestinian unity gov’t formed: Ha’aretz

If a Palestinian unity government is established, Europe would be willing to recognize the Palestinian leadership, and would consequently lift the sanctions it imposed on Hamas, sources in the entourage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy told France 2 television on Monday. The European Union has classified Hamas as a terror organization, and has refused to negotiate with the group since it was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority in 2006.

Arab states say Israel used ammo in Gaza that contained depleted uranium: Ha’aretz

Arab nations accused Israel on Monday of blasting Gaza with ammunition containing depleted uranium, and urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate reports that traces of it had been found in victims of the shelling.

Well what’s the fuss? You have to test those weapons sometimes, don’t you? Normally they do this in Lebanon, of course.

Social networking Web site links Israeli, Gaza journalists during wartime: Ha’aretz

The Gaza Strip may have been closed to coverage by Israeli and foreign media representatives but the connections between them and their colleagues in the Gaza Strip have not been severed. In recent weeks, the social networking site Frames of Reality – whose members are mainly photographers from both sides – turned into a central and important means of communication.
With the use of the site, the photographers have been exchanging pictures that they shot over the past three weeks, each photographer in his or her close surroundings, and discussing professional matters against the background of the military campaign.

Livni: If Hamas renews rocket fire, it’ll get slapped down again: Ha’aretz

Foreign Minister and Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni threatened on Monday that if Hamas renews cross-border rocket fire, Israel will launch another offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group in Gaza.
“If Hamas fires a Qassam [rocket] at Israel, it will get slapped down again, as it got it now and they know this,” said Livni.
The foreign minister’s comments came a day after Hamas and Israel separately declared cease-fires in Gaza, ending the Israel Defense Forces’ 22-day campaign against the group in the coastal territory.

You can tell that the preparation for the election is in full swing, and the candidates are vying with each other playing the Toughest Guy In Town. As a Blond Brunhilda, she is the toughest.

Amnesty accuses Israel of war crimes over use of white phosphorus in Gaza: Ha’aretz

Human rights group Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes on Monday, saying its use of white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of Gaza was indiscriminate and illegal.
White phosphorus is a high-incendiary substance that burns very brightly and for long periods. It is frequently used to produce smoke screens, but can also be used as a weapon, producing extreme burns if it makes contact with skin.

Thank you, Amnesty!

ANALYSIS / Israel preparing for Iran bid to rearm Hamas in Gaza: Ha’aretz

A long column of Israel Defense Forces infantrymen on Sunday morning made its way back to Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The soldiers marched about 10 kilometers, along the same route that they had taken in the opposite direction during the warfare over the past two weeks. A number of the officers remembered a similar march that took place in August 2006, from southwest Lebanon back to Israel.
The paratroopers held Israeli flags this time too. But the difference in mood was inconceivable: Feelings not of bitterness or of missed opportunities, but of satisfaction. From the IDF’s point of view, as is stressed by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and also by the battle-tested army privates, it fulfilled its mission. Should the government have ordered the IDF to conquer the entire Strip, it would have fulfilled this mission too.

The preparation for the attack on Iran seem to be in full swing, with arguments prepared, with the same alacrity and accuracy of the ‘weapons of mass-destruction” fictions in 2003. Something to look forward to… and please don’t tell me the Israelis are not mad enough…

David Grossman / Israel’s success in Gaza only proves it is strong, not right: Ha’aretz

Like the pairs of foxes in the biblical story of Samson, tied together by their tails, a flaming torch between them, so Israel and the Palestinians – despite the imbalance of power – drag each other along. Even when we try hard to wrest ourselves free, we burn those who are tethered to us – our double, our misfortune – as well as ourselves.
And so, amidst the wave of nationalist hyperbole now sweeping the nation, it would not hurt to recall that in the final analysis, this last operation in Gaza is just another stop along a trail blazing with fire, violence and hatred.
As satisfied as Israelis are that the technical weaknesses of the Second Lebanon War were corrected, we should be paying heed to another voice – the one that says the Israel Defense Forces’ successes in the confrontation with Hamas do not prove that it was right to embark on such a massive campaign, and are certainly no justification for Israel’s mode of operation in the course of the fighting. These military successes merely confirm that Israel is stronger than Hamas, and that under certain conditions it can be tough and cruel in its own way.

This is a special one for those liberals who are trying their best to retain their hazy hallucinations about Israel as a liberal democracy. If this is the best this mealy-mouthed liberal can do, we have nothing to wait for from this corner.

UN official: Israel violated truce term: Spidered News

A top UN official has accused Israel of failing to honor its commitment to open Gaza border crossings before the bloody Gaza offensive. Maxwell Gaylard, the UN’s chief humanitarian coordinator in Israel said Tel Aviv did not fulfill its commitments to open its border with Gaza during several months of truce from June 19 last year. “The food was in Israel but we couldn’t get it in. This is before. The blockade was very tight,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“The Israelis would not let us facilitate a regular and sufficient flow of supplies into the Strip,” he added.

News you will not read on BBC!

Scale of Gaza destruction emerges: BBC

The full scale of devastation in Gaza following Israel’s three-week offensive is becoming clear, after both Israel and Hamas declared ceasefires. UN official John Ging said half a million people had been without water since the conflict began, and huge numbers of people were without power. Four thousand homes are ruined and tens of thousands of people are homeless.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said he expected border crossings to open for aid later on Monday.
“We are going to see a massive volume of aid entering the Gaza Strip,” he told the BBC.

Another War, Another Defeat : The American Conservative

Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.

Please read this very persuasive essay, in what is probably not USA’s most left-wing magazine.

Stop Arming Israel : Campaign against arms trade

The crisis in Gaza has again highlighted the UK’s complicity in arming Israel, both directly and through components in US-supplied weaponry. More information on the UK’s arms supplies is available here and a petition calling for an arms embargo is available on the No10 website.

Excellent information about the arms trade and Israel.

Boycott Israeli Goods until Israel abides by international law and respects human rights: PSC

The BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS (BIG) CAMPAIGN, led by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, is being relaunched from September, with letters to supermarket HQ and local branches, and pickets and demonstrations to engage shoppers around the country. As with the campaign against Apartheid in South Africa we want everyone to commit themselves to boycotting Israeli goods, until Israel complies with international law, with everything this would mean for Palestine.
To succeed, this must be a mass movement. 60 years and inaction from the international community and our government have produced deepening injustice for the Palestinians. So ordinary people must act, and do what we can do. More than 180 Palestinian civil society organisations and unions have called for this support.

Israel Bombs University Teachers Association in Gaza–Boycott Now! PACBI

Occupied Palestine – PACBI learned today from its Steering Committee member, Dr. Haidar Eid, that the headquarters of the University Teachers Association-Palestine, in Gaza, was bombed by the Israeli occupation forces during their indiscriminate, willful destruction campaign in the Tal el-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on Friday.
This latest wanton attack on an academic organization is far from being an exception. It is only the latest episode in what Oxford University academic Karma Nabulsi has termed “scholasticide,”[1] or Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of Palestinian education centers. In its current war on Gaza alone, Israel has bombed the ministry of education, the Islamic University of Gaza, and tens of schools, including at least 4 UNRWA schools, after having largely destroyed the infrastructure of teaching throughout the year and a half of its illegal and criminal siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Well, why not bomb University teachers? Having bombed all the rest, now is their turn. Hopefully our members in the Union of Colleges and Universities (UCU) are also reading those reports?

HEALTH SITUATION IN THE GAZA STRIP: WHO REPORT: Jan 18, 2009

CASUALTIES and AFFECTED
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) on 18 January at 16:00, at least 1300 people have been killed since 27 December, including 410 children and 104 women. Approximately 5300 Palestinians have been injured, including at least 1855 children and 795 women1. WHO has not been able to independently verify these details.
OCHA estimates up to 100 000 people may have been displaced. UNRWA has established at least 50 emergency shelters for 49 693 displaced people. The exact number of people who have fled their homes in Gaza remains unclear.

“Resistance Should be our Strategic Choice” : Alternative Information Centre

An Analysis of the Palestinian Political Situation in the Wake of the Gaza Attack

The following is an interview with Nassar Ibrahim, Policy Director of the Alternative Information Center. The interview was
What is going on in the West Bank in relation to the Israeli attack on Gaza? Why is the reaction not so strong?
The reaction in the West Bank is strongly affected by the internal Palestinian split: the power in the West Bank is presently held by Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. Soon after the 2006 election in which Hamas won, the antagonism between the former Fatah-led PA and the new Hamas government became manifest. This opposition can be read as the difference between two strategic choices: the one represented by the Fatah leadership and supported by many Arab regimes loyal to the USA power, which sees the peace negotiations and the involvement of international institutions as the only way to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The other strategy is the resistance movement, currently led by Hamas with the participation of the leftist groups (PFLP, DFLP), the Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades, the Islamic Jihad and so on. When Israel attacked Gaza 20 days ago, the political position of the PA in the West Bank was clear: “we are not part of the attack.” Therefore, they are using all their power to keep the West Bank as calm as possible, employing the Palestinian policemen in order to prevent any clashes between the Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli soldiers. As a result of this policy, the reactions in the West Bank are not effective enough.
As Livni herself announced several times, the attack on Gaza, which is a massacre, a genocide, is not being done in order to topple Hamas or to stop the firing of the rockets: they are attacking Gaza to destroy any group or any Palestinian movement that sees resistance as the main way to face the Israeli occupation. Only by getting rid of the Palestinian resistance movement will Israel will be able to impose its conditions on the table. The Fatah leadership in the West Bank should take concrete actions against the occupation and should not provide any political cover for the Israeli aggression on Gaza. On the contrary, the PA is acting as a mediator, like Egypt and the other Arab regimes, instead of putting pressure on Israel while the resistance fights to prevent Israel from achieving a real success. Keeping the West Bank calm is of great help to Israel, the same for the Arab regimes that do not take strong positions against the attack. This gives Israel more time to turn the situation in Gaza.to its favor, first militarily and then politically.