The Myth of Israeli Retaliation
Dan Freeman-Maloy
…Under these circumstances, it is worth recalling some very basic information about Gaza and the timeline of the conflict surrounding it. Consider the description provided by the late Canadian Lt.-Gen. E.L.M. Burns, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization from 1954-1956…: “The Strip is about forty kilometres long, and averages eight and a quarter kilometres in width; thus it contains about 330 square kilometres [360 is currently the accepted figure]. There are about 310,000 Arab residents in the Strip, 210,000 of them refugees from the southern parts of Palestine now occupied by Israel. Thus there are about 1500 persons to the square kilometre of arable soil — about 3900 to the square mile … “One does not see people starving or dying of disease in the streets; nevertheless the Gaza Strip resembles a vast concentration camp, shut off by the sea, the border between Palestine and the Sinai near Rafah, which the Egyptians will not permit them to cross, and the Armistice Demarcation Line which they cross in peril of being shot by Israelis or imprisoned by the Egyptians. They can look east and see wide fields, once Arab land, cultivated extensively by a few Israelis, with a chain of kibbutzim guarding the heights or the areas beyond. It is not surprising that they look with hatred on those who have dispossessed them.”. Five years after this was published, in 1967, Israel invaded Gaza and subjected it to direct military rule. Decades later, Hamas emerged, and deca! des late r still, fired some rockets at such cities as Ashkelon — an Israeli city which just incidentally had supplanted the Palestinian community of Majdal, the last of whose inhabitants were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1950, its former residents mostly driven into Gaza…

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The Holocaust
Dahlia Wasfi
…Qassam rockets fired from Gaza as retaliation for Israeli F-16 airstrikes are the equivalent of the Molotov cocktails used by the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Like the small arms of the Polish Jews, they are no match for the sophisticated weaponry of the invading army. This is why the death toll is so high for the people on the ground in Gaza, and minimal for Israelis. The mainstream media is depicting this as an “all-out war,” as it depicts the illegal occupation of Iraq. But in both cases, you have a starving, essentially unarmed people being assaulted with F-15s/F-16s, cruise missiles, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, tanks, and artillery. This is not war; this is mass murder; this is genocide. And it is American military, financial, and political support that makes this bloodletting possible…

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Israel and the U.S.: Partners in Permanent Aggression
Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
‘There is only one other nation whose appetite for violence is comparable to the United States: Israel.’Just before the U.S. elections, Senator Joe Biden shot off his mouth about the certainty that Barack Obama would be ‘tested’ early in his presidency. ‘… Not that Barack Obama’s loyalties to Israel have ever been suspect. As a candidate, Obama went further than any U.S. president in recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem – a position that guarantees there can be no lasting peace in the region. Despite the deep ties that bind American and Israeli war criminals, the junior partner, Israel, seems to constantly need reassurance that the senior gangster, Washington, is a willing accomplice in the next bloodbath. Thus, the timing of the massacre in Gaza, ensuring that Obama – by deferring to Bush – enters office with blood on the soles of his shoes. He has passed the Israeli test…

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VIDEO: US military aid underpins Gaza offensive
AlJazeeraEnglish
Israel receives billions of dollars in military aid from the US each year, much of it spent on American weaponry which US law says must only be used in self-defence. But experts say there is little chance of cuts in aid to Israel despite its military operation in Gaza…

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Gaza health system in state of collapse
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…

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Dead Palestinian children have names too
Hussam Ayloush
…Every time an Israeli child is harmed, the whole world mourns, and rightly so. The whole world is informed of that child’s name, his or her parents’ agony, and the tragic circumstances that caused this death. However, when a Palestinian child is harmed, no one in the world seems to care. No one is told of his or her name. No one is informed about the pain of the parents, siblings, and grand parents who loved him or her. The zionist propaganda machine has succeeded in dehumanizing Palestinians. Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists, murderers, radicals, or sub-humans. That way, it becomes much easier not to care about such a people, no matter how many of them are turned into refugees, how many of their homes are demolished, how much of their land is confiscated, how many of them are imprisoned, and how many of them are killed or wounded…

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Targeting Islamic University
Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?
NEVE GORDON and JEFF HALPER
Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault…

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A Letter to the US Media
We Will Return
Dear Editor, Imagine if more than 63 thousand Americans were massacred in a couple of hour’s campaign of F-16 bombing. This number represents (the percentage) the number of Palestinians killed by Israel when it launched its massive air strikes in Gaza on Saturday. A friend of mine in Gaza tells me that hundreds are still buried under the rubble and the toll of deaths could easily reach thousands .Already there’s more than 1700 injured with many in serious conditions. Imagine if all this carnage is being paid for by your tax money.
Israel is carrying out an all out massacre in the Gaza Strip and the Arab American Community is outraged because neither the US Media is covering and reporting the facts nor the Bush Administration and Congress have the back bone to order Israel ,which gets almost 11 Billion Dollars a year from the US, to stop carrying these war crimes…

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Despite poor weather, airstrikes continue; 395 killed, 2,000 injured
Ma’an news
Gaza’s Hospitals are the source of the latest dead as yesterday’s wounded head to overcrowded morgues and medical supplies dwindle. Medical sources put the number of dead at 395. Among those who succumbed to their wounds on Wednesday were: *Mahmoud Abu Nahl, who died in an Egyptian hospital *Ismail Hamdan, a 10-year-old boy who was hit with a missile Tuesday along with his two sisters *Paramedics Eyhab Al-Madhoun and Mahmoud Abu Hasira who were hit while rescuing civilians…

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Gaza: It’s Terrorism, it’s Slaughter. Crime can be reported
WRITTEN BY Pino Cabras, Megachip- Translated by Diego Traversa and Revised by Mary Rizzo for www.tlaxcala.es
In the days of the atrocious massacre in Gaza, horror inevitably focuses on the images and the voices of the victims. They are tiny fragments that don’t help complete the picture of the tragedy yet. It’s hard to understand and reflect while such a disaster is underway. Yet, we are required to, in order to reconstruct the facts and the context. After years of occupation, on September 11th 2005 the Israeli army lowered its flag in Gaza, not before having completed the swift evacuation of the Jewish settlements from the Strip, which was proving to be too a high cost to afford. Military convoys left. It was Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement: there was no political recognition that would regard the Palestinians as peers. The Israelis were saying good-bye, nonetheless, they weren’t actually leaving. The sea and the sky remained totally under Israeli control. And what a control was it!…

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WHO: The wounded in Gaza die out of lack of medical supplies
Palestinian Information Center
The World Health Organization has warned that shortage in medical equipment might increase the number of deaths among the wounded in Gaza Strip. WHO in a statement on Monday called for an immediate end to hostilities in the Gaza Strip and urged Israel to ensure immediate provision of fuel and critical life-saving/trauma care supplies. The statement said that hundreds of wounded people, including women, children and elderly, lie in hospitals that already lack basic supplies. Over the past two days, violence and military activities in Gaza have killed around 330 people and left 900 injured, according to latest reports…

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Israel Targets Gaza Mosques
Ola Attallah, IOL Correspondent
Mosques across the Gaza Strip have become the latest target of the Israeli military juggernaut, unleashed against the impoverished coastal enclave since Saturday. “As if it was not enough for them to kill our people and children, the Israelis are also destroying the houses of Allah,” Abu Khalid, a Gaza resident, told IslamOnline.net…

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PIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
Yvonne Ridley, FreeGazaOrg
NOT content with committing war crimes and human rights atrocities in full view of the world, Israel has now confirmed itself as a rogue state by launching into international piracy. Dawn had not yet broken over the Mediterranean waters in which the SS Dignity was sailing when an Israeli naval gunboat appeared from the inky black and rammed the aid-bearing ship. The act of aggression on a peace mission was launched in international waters 90 miles off Gaza, without any warning to the captain of the Dignity or the crew…

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Five Little Girls on a Sofa
Gaza’s One-Sided Images
BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
You wouldn’t know from the western media that Israel’s foreign minister (and would-be prime minister), Tzipi Livni, made a disastrous appearance on al-Jazeera television last week, just as you wouldn’t have seen dreadful pictures of dead children and their screaming distraught mothers in Gaza unless you watch al-J TV, which is almost impossible in the US. Here in France we can receive al-Jazeera, and the images are truly horrific. But Ms Livni doesn’t want us to see them. Nor do most western governments. She declared that “when you show one-sided images from Gaza you’re not helping peace…

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How Hypocrisy on ‘Terrorism’ Kills
Robert Parry
Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile’s Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner…

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Video: Ni’lin holds funeral for Arafat al Khawaja
International Solidarity Movement
Funeral for the 22 year old resident of Ni’lin village killed by Israeli army while protesting against Israeli massacres in Gaza. After the Israeli attacks against Gaza strip, Ni’lin village has been continuously protesting in solidarity with the people in Gaza. During the demonstration on the 28th December, Israeli soldiers used live ammunition against the protesters, hitting three people from the village. 22 year old Arafat Khawaja, was killed after having been shot in the back. The two others were Mohammed Khawaja, 19, who was declared brain damaged yesterday afternoon after taking a bullet in the forehead and Mohamed Srour who was shot in the leg…

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Airstrikes resume; Israel drops one ton seismic bombs on Rafah tunnel region
Ma’an news
Israeli airstrikes resumed Wednesday before noon as warplanes dropped one ton seismic bombs on the Rafah tunnel region. The bombs, which have not yet been used in the Gaza operation, left holes in the earth more than 30 meters deep…
Rain and overcast skies halted Israeli airstrikes on Gaza Wednesday morning but the military did not stop its barrage of attacks against the area. Warships and artillery vehicles surrounding the Strip launched volleys of shells at the homes of Palestinians in the north and central regions. Israeli warships targeted the Gaza port for the second time at 7:00am Wednesday, bombarding the area with shells…

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Don’t fall for Israeli propaganda
Linda S. Heard, Online Journal
…But like its Washington master (or is it the other way around?) Israel is not constrained by international law or the Geneva Conventions that also require an occupying nation to provide for the well-being of people under its occupation and to respect their dignity. As the willful killing continues, Israel merrily ignores pleas from France, Russia, the UN, the EU and Britain to end the violence. Why should it do otherwise when it has proved time and time again that it is a law unto itself and immune from international punishment? Unsurprisingly, the only message from the US to Israel is “try to avoid civilian casualties,” which is nothing more than lip service to international humanitarian sensitivities. In effect, the Bush administration has blessed this, by many accounts, long planned operation, cynically timed to begin during a political vacuum in Washington and close to upcoming elections when candidates need to prove they’re tough to win votes…

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Hiyam Noir, 7th Report: First List-Release Of Palestinian Victims In “Cast Lead Massacre”.
By Hiyam Noir in Gaza – Axis of Logic
On Wednesday the Palestinian Health Ministry released a list of 187 Palestinians killed during the first two days of the Israelis Cast Lead Massacre across Gaza Strip. The director of the Health Ministry’s Public Relations department in Gaza,Dr Omar Nasr, reveal that the death toll through out Wednesday after noon,have exceeded 390 including 31 children,the health ministry are collecting all the names of the slain and the many wounded…

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Israeli shelling badly damages human rights offices
Press release, Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
At about 1:50am Tuesday, 30 December 2008, Israeli F-16 fighter jets shelled a Palestinian police site in Gaza, which is 70 meters away from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme’s (GCMHP) main building in Sheikh Ejleen on Gaza Beach. The shelling was part of the vicious military attacks that the Israeli army launched on Gaza starting 27 December 2008. This harsh shelling caused massive destruction in the GCMHP’s main building, where walls and four ceilings cracked completely and partially. Extreme damage done to the furniture, equipment, electrical and electronic devices as well as the files and documents that were in the four-floor building, which contains offices, training halls, the main library and financial and administrative departments…

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My Brilliant Career
Rampage in Gaza for a Bump in the Polls
Mike Whitney
Barak Obama has passed his first test with flying colors. He’s made himself disappear so Israel can continue its killing spree in Gaza. The last time a president shrunk this small was when Ariel Sharon took his wrecking-ball through Jenin during the second intifada. Bush slipped down a mouse hole so Israel’s “Man of Peace” could finish his dirty work unopposed. Now Obama has taken refuge in that same dark hideaway. What a relief it must be for his critics at AIPAC and the far-right think tanks to know that the next Commander in Chief will be every bit as compliant as the last. That’s “continuity they can believe in”. Obama has remained serenely detached while American-made F-16's have dumped more than one hundred tons of lethal ordnance on the captive population of Gaza…

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