Since last week, with the publication of IOF soldiers’ accounts of wide-spread and systemic brutalities committed in Gaza, the Israeli government and military authorities have done their best to contain the leak, an counter it with ‘an inquiry’ and with claims that those events were localised and isolated. The lie machine is working full time, like it did during the carnage itself. An onslaught of Israeli academics and artists, always ready to make Kosher every atrocity, is about to hit the west… This means that our action on BDS is all the more urgent and crucial. Expose the lies wherever you meet them! Support those courageous Israelis who are prepared to tell the truth and attack this muerderous regime! Support Gaza and Palestine!
Below you can read about a provocation by the Fascist right in Umm al Fahm, allowed to proceed by the police and the High Court, despite the clear evidence that it will lead to violence. It did!
28 people were wounded on Tuesday during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting a march by far-rightists near the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm. The far-rightists began the march at 10:00 A.M. and ended it about 45 minutes later. The clashes, however, continued for some two hours after the march had been concluded. Deputy police commissioner Shahar Ayalon and fourteen other policemen were wounded by stone-throwing demonstrators; twelve Umm al-Fahm residents were hurt in scuffles with police, according to Magen David Adom emergency services.
Since last week, when the first major crack in the edifice of Israeli lies have shown, the deluge of information about the brutalities in Gaza, this time coming from IOF soldiers themselves, has not stopped, but intensified; it is no longer possible for Israelis to continue denying that which the rest of the world has realised a long time ago – that the Gaza war, like that in Lebanon in 2006, has been a conglomeration of war crimes, brutality, extreme cruelty, and the terrifying banality of evil; that Israel as a society is doomed; that Zionism as a racist and colonial project belong in the dustbin of history; that this latest episode of bestiality is but a reminder of what Israel has become – a racialised, undemocratic, apartheid state, being increasingly nazified by its continued occupation of various Arab lands, by its increasing militarism, and by its undying complicity and commitment to the project of subjugating the Middle East, so eagerly undertaken by the old empire, Britain, and the new but bedraggled empire of the USA. Israel’s role as the guard dog of western imperialism in the region has transformed it into an inhuman, fascistic military colony, refusing to admit and face its historical and current vices. Blow I have collected the various revelation by IOF soldiers, and the continued Israeli denial of Palestinian realities and identity. There is not even the slightest sign of recognition of the grave nature of the crisis facing Zionism within the political and cultural elites of Israel, who continue to uncritically and unfailingly back the atrocities, as do the rest of the western nations, playing on behalf of Israel; a sepially disgusting example of this servility is the case of Canada’s denying entry to George Galloway, a well known British MP, leader of the Respect party, and a long term opponenet of UK involvement in the criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Israeli atrocities in Gaza:
Further testimonies emerged this weekend of army units adopting lax rules of engagement during Operation Cast Lead. The reports followed Thursday’s publication in Haaretz of soldiers’ accounts of ethical violations in the Gaza offensive. On Saturday, Channel 10 showed a documentary that included a security briefing by a company commander on the eve of the Gaza invasion.
“We’re going to war,” he told his soldiers. “We’re not doing routine security work or anything like that. I want aggressiveness – if there’s someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we’ll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we’ll take it down.”
“There will be no hesitation,” the commander continued. “If it’s us or them, it’ll be them. If someone approaches us unarmed, shoot in the air. If he keeps going, that man is dead. Nobody will deliberate – let the mistakes be over their lives, not ours.”
A number of officers told Haaretz this weekend that the testimonies did not surprise them, as “anyone with eyes in his head knows that these things happened during the fighting in Gaza.”
The soldiers who testified about misconduct “placed a very unpleasant mirror before us,” said one officer.
“The chief of staff is deflecting discussion now,” said another. “It’s much easier to find the rotten apples, but there are many much more basic and deeper questions. It’s not just an ethical issue, it’s also a question of professionalism. The soldiers’ accounts show there are professional difficulties in fighting in such complex territory – that we’re just not doing it all that well.”
Below is an article in the Jerusalem Post which you may have missed. It is of great interest – to read the whole article the JP demands money. I would rather burn my money than give it to the JP:
Embrace commandment of war, Hesder students told. Precedent-setting ceremony hails young national-religious men soon to be in uniform * ‘We long for peace, but until then we cannot lay down our sword,’ says TA chief rabbi
“King David taught the people of [Judah Maccabee] how to use the bow and arrow… Jacob our patriarch blessed his son Judah and told him to fight Israel’s enemies, to attack them and not fight defensively… The descendants of the tribe of Judah will do the same,” [Yisrael Meir Lau] said.
Rabbi Haim Druckman, who heads Bnei Akiva, said that “fighting our enemies is a commandment. To serve in the IDF is a commandment. We must remember that we could not carry out this commandment for 2,000 years. How happy we must be that we live in this great and special time, a time in which we have returned to our land, seen the founding of our state, the ingathering of exiles.”
Citing the Torah, [Dov Lior] noted that “200,000 Israelites and 10,000 Judahites fought Amalek. Why are the Judahites counted separately from the others? Because the Israelite army pitied Amalek. Today this is called being humanitarian.”
A study conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has cast doubt over Israel’s survival beyond the next 20 years.
The CIA report predicts “an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable peace in the region.”
The study, which has been made available only to a certain number of individuals, further forecasts the return of all Palestinian refugees to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israeli – who would move to the US in the next fifteen years.
“There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than 300,000 living in the area of just California,” International lawyer Franklin Lamb said in an interview with Press TV on Friday, adding that those who do not have American or western passport, have already applied for them. “So I think the handwriting at least among the public in Israel is on the wall…[which] suggests history will reject the colonial enterprise sooner or later,” Lamb stressed. He said CIA, in its report, alludes to the unexpectedly quick fall of the apartheid government in South Africa and recalls the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, suggesting the end to the dream of an ‘Israeli land’ would happen ‘way sooner’ than later. The study further predicts the return of over one and a half million Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe, and denotes a decline in Israeli births whereas a rise in the Palestinian population. Lamb said given the Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and the Gaza strip in particular, the American public — which has been voicing its protest against Tel Aviv’s measures in the last 25 years — may ‘not take it anymore’. Some members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have been informed of the report.
By Amira Hass
GAZA – During the past 10 days, the Defense Ministry’s claims and insurance division received a registered letter including an official document describing the damages suffered during Operation Cast Lead by Sabbah Abu Halima. Also in the envelope were 12 similar notices, detailing the damage sustained by members of her family (seven of whom were killed and six wounded). According to the short letter accompanying the forms, they were sent as per “the Civil Damages Regulations (State Responsibility) 2003.” “Please fax us confirmation of receipt,” added (in Hebrew) the signatory: Iyad al-Alami, attorney, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza. The center has to date sent about 500 such registered letters with forms enclosed to the claims and insurance unit in the last month, detailing the damage done during the Israel Defense Forces offensive from December 27, 2008 until January 10, 2009. Another 300 letters are expected to be sent in the coming weeks, referring to the period of January 11-18.
The letters are just the first step in a process being undertaken by the PCHR and various Palestinian, Israeli and foreign organizations, lawyers and civil rights advocates. Their aim: to put an end to what they see as the impunity Israel enjoys after it attacks the Palestinians.
The law demands that a detailed notification of damages be sent to the Defense Ministry within 60 days of the reported event. Accordingly, since January 18, nearly all the staff of the PCHR have been involved in the process of preparing the notifications. Twenty-five field workers collected testimonies and took photographs in all the areas that were affected. People who wanted to have reports submitted went to the center’s offices, where each of the staff’s 10 young lawyers heard 10-20 complainants a day, took detailed affidavits and received power-of-attorney. The affidavits were then entered into a computer and a full report of the event was compiled (involving cross-checking of testimonies, field visits, drawing of maps, etc.). Later, an abstract was prepared and the “notification forms” were filled out with the aid of senior lawyers.
Abdullah advocates attack on foreign navies if they halt arms smuggling
One of the UK’s most influential Islamic leaders, who has helped counter extremism in the country’s mosques, is accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tries to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.
Dr Daud Abdullah, deputy director-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is facing calls for his resignation, after it emerged that he is one of 90 Muslim leaders from around the world who have signed a public declaration in support of Hamas and military action.
Abdullah, who led the MCB’s boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, was a member of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, the body endorsed by the government that trains imams and was set up to curtail the activities of extremist clerics. In January, he briefed the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and communities secretary Hazel Blears on the situation in Gaza and its likely impact on social cohesion in the UK.
An Israeli air raid targeted Islamic Jihad members in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday [AFP ]
At least three Palestinians have been killed after Israel conducted an air raid on the Gaza Strip. Medical workers said two people were killed at the scene of the attack on Thursday near the Israel-Gaza border and a third died later in hospital. An Israeli army spokesman said the raid targeted a group of fighters who had fired an anti-tank missile at troops across the border. Shortly after the attack, three rockets fired from the territory landed in southern Israel, the military said. There were no reports of casualties.
The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility and vowed to continue its attacks against Israel. “Our rockets and our resistance will not stop,” Abu Ahmed, an official of the armed Palestinian group, said.
Protesters in New York were set on Thursday evening to demonstrate against an upcoming performance by the Israeli Bat Sheva dance company with a dance of their own.
The dance protest, titled Freedom Dabke vs. Batsheva Dance Company (after the traditional Eastern Mediterranean folk dance), will also feature anti-Apartheid songs, and a performance by the hip-hop artist Invincible. It was to be staged as part of a bid by pro-Palestinian groups to rally support for a boycott of the Israeli dance troupe’s show at Brooklyn’s Howard Gilman Opera House. Far-left organizations this week plan to mark the “Israeli Apartheid Week” in 42 cities worldwide, and some groups have called for the protest against the performance, despite artistic director Ohad Naharin’s identification with Israel’s left and criticism of Israeli policy regarding Palestinians. Protest organizers explained that Bat Sheva is highly regarded in Israel and receives state funding, serving as an ambassador of goodwill for Israel abroad, and some dancers even serve in reserve military duty. “New York residents should know the money they pay for tickets will go indirectly to support war crimes and to whitewash Israel’s image,” one organizer said.
Palestinian militants on Thursday evening fired a Grad rocket that struck a synagogue in the southern town of Netivot, causing light damage to the building. The Israel Air Force retaliated shortly after the attack, striking four smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said.
No one was wounded in the rocket attack on Netivot. Earlier Thursday, an Israel Air Force strike on the Gaza Strip killed three members of the militant Islamic Jihad, according to medical sources. In a statement issued after the strike on the tunnels, the Israel Defense Forces said: “As the sole authority in the Gaza Strip, Hamas bears full responsibility for all terror originating within its area of control. The IDF will continue to respond to any attempts to destabilize Israel’s South.”
Palestinian militants also launched a barrage of Qassam rockets and mortar rounds into Israel on Thursday.
WASHINGTON – A new initiative by members of the United States Congress seeks to condition the transfer of the $900 million for the Palestinians on an end to rocket fire on Israel from Gaza, and the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the $900 million during a conference in Egypt this week to raise money for Gaza reconstruction, in the wake of Israel’s three-week offensive aimed at halting rocket fire on its southern communities. Shalit has been held captive in Gaza since June 2006, when he was snatched from his army base in a cross-border raid from Gaza.The proposal followed a meeting on Capitol Hill between Noam Badin, the director of the communications center in Qassam-battered Sderot and several members of Congress and their advisors. After the meeting, Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada drafted a petition to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which demanded that the financial aid be delayed for as long as the rocket fire continues and Shalit remains in captivity.
Hamas on Thursday praised a bulldozer attack in Jerusalem earlier in the day, calling it the “natural response” to Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem and to Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip.
“The operation in Jerusalem was a natural response to aggression against our people. The Zionist enemy should realize that they alone bear the responsibility for displacing our people in Jerusalem and for the killings in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas official. Riyad al-Malki, information minister for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Western-backed government, described the attack as a “traffic accident”, and called for an investigation into why the driver had been shot.
Jerusalem’s new mayor said Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was ill-informed when she criticized the demolition of Arab houses in this hotly disputed city, insisting the practice was about law and order, not politics. In a visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, Clinton called Israel’s demolition of the illegally built Palestinian homes unhelpful and in violation of a U.S.-backed peace plan. Nir Barkat countered that Jerusalem was a victim of a double standard and a campaign of Palestinian disinformation.
