Holocaust. Setiap kali perkataan itu disebut, masyarakat dunia kini sudah memahaminya sebagai kisah penderitaan Yahudi ketika di gempur Nazi dan mereka yang menentang perkataan itu akan dianggap buta sejarah, tidak mempunyai naluri insani serta menentang bahasa pilihan.
Menyedari hakikat itu, Perhimpunan Agung Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (UNGA) baru-baru ini memilih 27 Januari setiap tahun sebagai hari mengenang tragedi pembunuhan kejam itu. Pemilihan tarikh itu dilihat banyak pihak sebagai kejayaan badan dunia itu dalam usahanya mencegah keganasan dengan menjadikan sejarah hitam pembunuhan beribu-ribu nyawa atau mungkin berjuta-juta, sebagai teladan perlu dijadikan iktibar.
Yahudi pergunakan isu Holocaust utk dapatkan simpati dunia
Matlamat murni ketetapan ini sebenarnya bertujuan mengenang semua mangsa peperangan serta pembunuhan beramai-ramai atau pembersihan kaum. Bagaimanapun ketetapan PBB mengenai Hari Holocoust itu lebih menjurus kepada usaha memperingati kaum yahudi yang dibunuh kejam di Eropah ketika Perang Dunia Kedua dan idea memperuntukkan satu hari dalam Kalendar Masehi sebagai tarikh keramat itu sebenarnya oleh Israel dan ejen propagandanya.
Pengarah Institut Kajian Sejarah (IHR), Mark Weber, berkata hari memperingati Holocaust bukan usaha murni yang bermotifkan niat suci mengenai kegusaran terhadap kemakmuran manusiawi. “Ia adalah kempen sebelah pihak yang bertujuan mengukuhkan kepentinagn Zionis,” tulisnya. Sejak sekian lama, usaha dilakukan supaya dunia dapat menafsirkan Holocaust semata-mata sebagai satu peristiwa hitam pembunuhan lebih 6 juta Yahudi di Eropah ketika Perang Dunia Kedua dan menjelang 1970-an, semakin banyak acara mengenang peristiwa itu di anjurkan.
Golongan yang menentang tafsiran Holocaust ini pula akan dianggap sebagai anti-semitik dan anti-Yahudi serta anti-Zionis. Media serta kempen politik oleh anasir Zionis ini dianggap oleh ahli sejarah Yahudi,Alfred Lilienthal sebagai ‘Holocaust-mania’, yang menyaksikan pelbagai filem propaganda, dokumentari khas, buku, sistem pendidikan, muzium dan sebagainya dihasil atau dibina umpama cendawan tumbuh. Di kebanyakan sekolah dunia terutama di Amerika Syarikan dan Eropah serta seluruh sekolah Israel, pelajar wajib didedahkan dengan penderitaan khususnya kaum Yahudi Eropah ketika perang dunia.
Holocaust ibarat benteng utk menutup wajah bengis Zionis !
Malah beberpa negara dunia termasuk Britin, Jerman dan Itali secara rasmi sudah menganjurkan Hari Holocaust. Selain itu wujud lebih 250 muzium dan bangunan peringatan Holocaust dibina dengan kebanyakkannya di Eropah dan Amerika. Yang terbaru dan terbesar adalah Muzium Holocaust di Washington DC yang kini menarik jutaan pelancong setiap tahun.
Bagi mengukuhkan hujah ini,Weber turut memetik kenyataan pakar Holocaust Israel, Yehuda Bauer pada 1992. “Sama ada dibentangkan secara benar atau tidak, sejajar dengan fakta sejarah atau bercanggah dengan hakikat, dengan kefahaman hakiki atau sebaliknya, Holocaust sudah menjadi satu simbol teras dalam budaya kita. Setiap bulan yang berlaku, boleh dipastikan ada produksi televisyen, filem, tulisan atau karya sastera baru yang membincangkan Holocaust dan kebanjiran ini bukannya semakin kurang tetapi bertambah,” kata Bauer. Kempen Holocaust ini sebenarnya amat penting untuk kepentingan Israel yang kewujudan amat bergantung kepada sokongan besar dan berterusan daripada Amerika. Memperingati Holocaust turut membantu mewajarkan sokongan besar Amerika terhadap Israel selain menjadi alasan bagi mewajarkan segala dasar israel meskipun dasar itu terang-terangan lebih kejam dari tafsiran asal Holocaust itu sendiri.
Profesor Sejarah ModenYahudi di Universiti Yale, Paula E Hyman secara tepat membuat rumusan mengenai perkara ini. “Berhubung perkara Israel, Holocaust berguna untuk mematahkan kritik politik dan meredakan perbahasan; ia mengukuhkan jati diri Yahudi yang dianggap golongan tersepit yang hanya boleh bergantung kepada kaum mereka saja untuk melindungi mereka. Penonjolan terhadap penderitaan yang dialami Yahudi ketika era Nazi sering menggantikan perdebatan rasional dan menjadi hujah meyakinkan golongan yang ragu mengenai kesahihan dasar kerajaan Israel ketika ini,”kata Hyman.
Seorang lagi ahli Sarjan Yahudi, Tony Judt baru-baru ini menulis: “Holocaust sering dieksploitasi oleh Amerika dan Israel untuk mematah atau menghalang sebarang kritikan terhadap Israel. Malah Holocaust Yahudi Eropah mengeksploitasi tiga perkara iaitu ia memberikan keunikan kepada Yahudi Amerika dengan mengimbau kembali ‘identiti mangsa’; membolehkan Israel menjuarai penderitaan yang dialami negara lain dan mewajarkan perlakuan kejamnya dengan dakwaan bencana yang dialami Yahudi adalah unik dan tidak dapat dibandingkan; dan (bercanggah kepada dua yang sebelum ini) ia sentiasa mengutarakan kiasan pelbagai guna dan mengajar kepada pelajar di seluruh Amerika dan Eropah tanpa sebarang rujukan terhadap konteks atau punca mengenai kewajaran perlakuan kejam.
Penggunaan Holocaust moden untuk manfaat politik adalah bercanggah dengan etika serta amat jijik dan satu kegopohan politik”. Kini semua pihak mengetahui bahawa di Amerika dan Eropah Barat,Holocaust diberikan taraf suci dan digambarkan sebagai peristiwa terhormat yang menjadi peristiwa maha penting sejarah dunia. Perkara ini dibuktikan lagi apabila PendetaYahudi Amerika, Michael Goldberg merujuk budaya Holocaust sebagai satu rukun agama,zikir dan suatu yang mempunyai makam tinggi. Apa yang jelas, Holocaust yang difahami masyarakat dunia kini adalah suatu yang menggambarkan pandangan bongkak Yahudi yang kononnya dianggap sebagai kaum yang unik dan mengatasi orang lain. Dengan adanya kepercayaan itu, beberapa negara termasuk Israel, Jerman dan Sepanyol menganggap gologan yang mencabar Holocaust adalah penjenayah, menyaksikan ramai dipenjara, didenda atau terpaksa hidup dalam buangan meskipun kesalahan mereka sekadar cuba mencari cerita sebenar Holocaust Yahudi.
Holocaust di Palestin berkali ganda lebih teruk daripada mitos Holocaust ciptaan Zionis
Golongan bukan Yahudi yang turut menjadi mangsa pembunuhan beramai-ramai, penindasan atau mangsa peperangan tidak akan dianggap sama seperti mangsa Holocaust Yahudi. Nyawa bukan Yahudi tidak bernilai untuk dihargai seperti apa yang dinikmati Yahudi sedangkan jumlah korban kekejaman diktator Russia, Joseph Stalin jatuh mengatasi jumlah korban akibat dasar Adolf Hitler. Malah, mangsa kekejaman rejim Komunis Mao Zedong yang menyaksikan antara 30 juta hingga 60 juta penduduk mati, dibiarkan kebuluran dan ditindas, tidak pernah dihiraukan.
Sambutan hari mengenang Holocaust pada hakikatnya perlu turut memasukkan acara mengenangkan mangsa kekejaman tentera Jepun di Asia dan Pasifik ketika Perang Dunia Kedua; kematian berjuta-juta hamba abdi kulit hitam di Amerika,Britin dan Eropah; pembunuhan beramai-ramai di Kemboja pada 1970-an; serangan bom atom di Hiroshima dan Nagasaki; kekejaman Rwanda; Holocaust Palestin dan Holocaust Vietnam.
Mungkin juga yang terbaru, PBB perlu memasukkan Holocaust Iraq yang ramai orang awamnya mati akibat tersepit antara pertempuran askar Amerika serta sekutunya dengan pejuang Iraq. Kesimpulan untuk Holocaust adalah, semua pembunuhan dan kekejaman manusia yang dilakukan oleh pihak atau negara tertentu, perlu diberikan perhatian oleh PBB. Jika PBB tidak, masyarakat dunia akan bertambah yakin bahawa badan dunia itu hanyalah sebagai alat atau tunggangan Zionis.
*diubahsuai dari www.palestinkini.info
http://naqib88.blog.friendster.com/2005/12/
Friday, January 30, 2009
Politik wang tetap bawa maksud rasuah
PUTRAJAYA: Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) menyifatkan politik wang tetap membawa maksud rasuah walaupun Lembaga Disiplin Umno berpendapat perkara itu patut disiasat pada peringkat dalaman parti.
Justeru, Pesuruhjaya SPRM, Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan, berkata berdasarkan takrifan itu, suruhanjaya akan terus menyiasat ahli Umno atau mana-mana parti politik sekiranya wujud tanda-tanda berlaku rasuah…
Ulasan: Negara ini BOLEH sifar rasuah sekiranya kita pakat-pakat undi calon Pakatan Rakyat. Cukuplah selama ini menyokong BN/UMNO yang merosakkan negara.
SPR laksana daftar pengundi online
KUALA LUMPUR: Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya (SPR) akan mewujudkan kaedah pendaftaran pemilih secara online dalam usaha menggalakkan warganegara yang layak mengundi mendaftar sebagai pengundi.
Pengerusi SPR, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, berkata kaedah itu akan memudahkan orang ramai terutamanya golongan muda mendaftar daripada komputer masing-masing dan ia akan dijalankan secepat mungkin iaitu sebaik saja kajian mengenainya selesai…
Ulasan: Dengan kemajuan dunia pertama pun kita masih berada di dunia ketiga...
Justeru, Pesuruhjaya SPRM, Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan, berkata berdasarkan takrifan itu, suruhanjaya akan terus menyiasat ahli Umno atau mana-mana parti politik sekiranya wujud tanda-tanda berlaku rasuah…
Ulasan: Negara ini BOLEH sifar rasuah sekiranya kita pakat-pakat undi calon Pakatan Rakyat. Cukuplah selama ini menyokong BN/UMNO yang merosakkan negara.
SPR laksana daftar pengundi online
KUALA LUMPUR: Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya (SPR) akan mewujudkan kaedah pendaftaran pemilih secara online dalam usaha menggalakkan warganegara yang layak mengundi mendaftar sebagai pengundi.
Pengerusi SPR, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, berkata kaedah itu akan memudahkan orang ramai terutamanya golongan muda mendaftar daripada komputer masing-masing dan ia akan dijalankan secepat mungkin iaitu sebaik saja kajian mengenainya selesai…
Ulasan: Dengan kemajuan dunia pertama pun kita masih berada di dunia ketiga...
Rohingya bukan dari Myanmar
YANGON 29 Jan. - Pihak berkuasa Myanmar hari ini membuat penafian bahawa sekumpulan etnik pelarian Rohingya yang diusir dari Thailand sebelum ini berasal dari negara itu.
Kumpulan Hak Asasi Manusia sebelum ini melaporkan, kumpulan berkenaan itu berasal dari barat Myanmar dan sering lari kerana penganiayaan junta.
Bagaimanapun, satu laporan rasmi memberitahu AFP, etnik Rohingya adalah berasal dari Bangladesh dan tidak mempunyai sebarang pertalian sejarah dengan Myanmar.
Seorang pegawai yang enggan dikenali memberitahu media: "Tiada kumpulan etnik minoriti Rohingya yang dikenali dalam sejarah sebelum atau selepas kemerdekaan kami''.
"Kita tidak boleh menerima kenyataan yang mengatakan Rohingya adalah dari Myanmar," katanya…
Ulasan: Ini bererti bahawa Myanmar sengaja menafikan sejarahnya. Silalah bertanya PBB.
Kumpulan Hak Asasi Manusia sebelum ini melaporkan, kumpulan berkenaan itu berasal dari barat Myanmar dan sering lari kerana penganiayaan junta.
Bagaimanapun, satu laporan rasmi memberitahu AFP, etnik Rohingya adalah berasal dari Bangladesh dan tidak mempunyai sebarang pertalian sejarah dengan Myanmar.
Seorang pegawai yang enggan dikenali memberitahu media: "Tiada kumpulan etnik minoriti Rohingya yang dikenali dalam sejarah sebelum atau selepas kemerdekaan kami''.
"Kita tidak boleh menerima kenyataan yang mengatakan Rohingya adalah dari Myanmar," katanya…
Ulasan: Ini bererti bahawa Myanmar sengaja menafikan sejarahnya. Silalah bertanya PBB.
Jangan hasut rakyat benci kerajaan
SRI AMAN 29 Jan. - Golongan cerdik pandai di negeri ini perlu berhenti menghasut para penduduk supaya membenci kerajaan yang kini diterajui oleh parti Barisan Nasional (BN).
Ahli Parlimen Lubok Antu, William Nyalau Badak berkata, mereka seharusnya turun padang untuk membantu kerajaan dan bukannya membenci kerajaan.
Katanya, bantuan golongan tersebut amat diperlukan bagi menaik taraf kehidupan penduduk dan bukannya menyebabkan mereka kian ketinggalan dalam arus pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar…
Ulasan: Jangan sekali-kali membenci kerajaan yang baik iaitu kerajaan yang sangat prihatin kepada rakyat dhaif, yang tidak rasuah, tidak menyalahgunakan kuasa, tidak kaut khazanah negara melalui jalan yang tidak sah menggunakan kroni atau pun tidak.
Warga Aceh edar kanabis dihukum gantung
SHAH ALAM 30 Jan. - Seorang buruh warga Aceh dihukum gantung sampai mati oleh Mahkamah Tinggi di sini hari ini selepas didapati bersalah atas tuduhan mengedar kanabis 406.93 gram.
Hakim Datuk Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad menjatuhkan hukuman ke atas Faisal Abdul Aziz, 33, selepas didapati mengedar kanabis pada pukul 5.30 petang, 23 Januari 2006 di kawasan kelapa sawit Cyberjaya, Dengkil, Sepang dekat sini…
Ulasan: Mati syahid itulah yang lebih baik. Dari Abu Tsabit, ada yang menyebutnya Abu Sa'id, ada yang menyebutnya Abu Al-walid, Sahl bin Hunaif, dia seorang dari Badar r.anhum, bahwa Nabi s.a.w. bersabda: Barangsiapa yang memohon kesyahidan kepada Allah dengan sejujurnya, maka Allah akan menyampaikannya ke derajat kesyahidan meskipun meninggal di atas kasur/tilam (HR Muslim).
Hadis ini menyebutkan dua derajat yang sangat mulia di sisi Allah, yatu
kesyahidan (syuhada') dan kejujuran (shidq), sebagaimana disebukan di dalam
firman Allah: Dan barangsiapa yang mentaati Allah dan Rasul(Nya), mereka itu akan
bersama-sama dengan orang-orang yang dianugerahi nikmat oleh Allah, iaitu:
Nabi-nabi, para shiddiiqiin, orang-orang yang mati syahid, dan orang-orang
saleh. Dan mereka itulah teman yang sebaik-baiknya. (an-Nisa':69).
Ahli Parlimen Lubok Antu, William Nyalau Badak berkata, mereka seharusnya turun padang untuk membantu kerajaan dan bukannya membenci kerajaan.
Katanya, bantuan golongan tersebut amat diperlukan bagi menaik taraf kehidupan penduduk dan bukannya menyebabkan mereka kian ketinggalan dalam arus pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar…
Ulasan: Jangan sekali-kali membenci kerajaan yang baik iaitu kerajaan yang sangat prihatin kepada rakyat dhaif, yang tidak rasuah, tidak menyalahgunakan kuasa, tidak kaut khazanah negara melalui jalan yang tidak sah menggunakan kroni atau pun tidak.
Warga Aceh edar kanabis dihukum gantung
SHAH ALAM 30 Jan. - Seorang buruh warga Aceh dihukum gantung sampai mati oleh Mahkamah Tinggi di sini hari ini selepas didapati bersalah atas tuduhan mengedar kanabis 406.93 gram.
Hakim Datuk Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad menjatuhkan hukuman ke atas Faisal Abdul Aziz, 33, selepas didapati mengedar kanabis pada pukul 5.30 petang, 23 Januari 2006 di kawasan kelapa sawit Cyberjaya, Dengkil, Sepang dekat sini…
Ulasan: Mati syahid itulah yang lebih baik. Dari Abu Tsabit, ada yang menyebutnya Abu Sa'id, ada yang menyebutnya Abu Al-walid, Sahl bin Hunaif, dia seorang dari Badar r.anhum, bahwa Nabi s.a.w. bersabda: Barangsiapa yang memohon kesyahidan kepada Allah dengan sejujurnya, maka Allah akan menyampaikannya ke derajat kesyahidan meskipun meninggal di atas kasur/tilam (HR Muslim).
Hadis ini menyebutkan dua derajat yang sangat mulia di sisi Allah, yatu
kesyahidan (syuhada') dan kejujuran (shidq), sebagaimana disebukan di dalam
firman Allah: Dan barangsiapa yang mentaati Allah dan Rasul(Nya), mereka itu akan
bersama-sama dengan orang-orang yang dianugerahi nikmat oleh Allah, iaitu:
Nabi-nabi, para shiddiiqiin, orang-orang yang mati syahid, dan orang-orang
saleh. Dan mereka itulah teman yang sebaik-baiknya. (an-Nisa':69).
Hamas tolak syarat gencatan senjata Israel
BEIRUT 29 Jan. – Pemimpin Hamas yang hidup dalam buangan di Damsyik, Khaled Meshaal (gambar) semalam menolak syarat Israel untuk mengadakan gencatan senjata jangka panjang dengan pergerakan pejuang Palestin itu.
Khaled berkata, Hamas tidak akan menerima syarat Israel yang akan membuka pintu sempadan ke Genting Gaza hanya selepas Hamas membebaskan seorang askar Israel yang ditawan oleh pejuang Palestin di Gaza pada Jun 2006…
Ulasan: Lawan tetap lawan sampai menang atau syahid. 60 tahun telah berlalu, lawan terus kerana pintu syahid terbuka luas.
Palestin cukup masak tipu helah Yahudi
"USAH percaya janji Yahudi, mereka dilahirkan sebagai penipu" adalah kata-kata kerap kedengaran daripada kebanyakan penduduk Gaza yang tidak mempercayai cadangan gencatan senjata rejim Zionis.
Mereka yang sudah lali dengan serangan tentera Yahudi lebih 60 tahun lalu cukup masak dengan tipu muslihat `iblis' bertopeng manusia itu dan diakui pemandu teksi yang ditemui wartawan di kedai syarwarma (kebab).
Di depan bangunan mahkamah yang ranap dibedil peluru berpandu Israel itu, pemandu teksi, Waleed Yaser, 45, berkata Yahudi tidak pernah menepati janji dan tindakan menawarkan gencatan senjata membuktikan mereka tewas.
"Peperangan 22 hari antara Hamas dan Israel membuat Zionis lebih kenal erti tewas apabila menentang tentera jihad fisabilillah," katanya sambil mendakwa sejak gencatan 18 Januari lalu, lima penduduk awam Gaza terkorban.
Beliau yang kerap berulang alik ke sempadan Rafah, memberitahu kejadian mengerikan berlaku Khamis minggu lalu apabila seorang kanak-kanak lelaki berusia 10 tahun ditembak di kepala ketika menaiki sampan bersama bapanya untuk menangkap ikan di laut.
Dengan peluru masih tertanam di kepala, mangsa menemui ajal selepas koma di Hospital Al-Sifa' dan sehari kemudian, seorang wanita 35 tahun turut ditembak di kepala oleh tentera Yahudi yang berkawal di sempadan.
"Kelmarin, petani berusia 27 tahun di Kissufim ditembak membuktikan Yahudi tidak pernah akur janji.
"Mereka pakar membunuh dari jauh menggunakan penembak curi," katanya.
Seorang pemandu teksi, Zariq, 50, berkata Yahudi tidak akan berundur jika tidak tewas di tangan Hamas.
Mereka berkata, 800,000 penduduk Israel di selatan pasti ketakutan dan bergegas mencari perlindungan apabila mendengar nama Hamas dan menamatkan perbualan dengan pertanyaan - siapa menakutkan siapa?
Ulasan: Another war, another defeat for Israel. Sesungguhnya perang yang baru-baru ini telah di paksakan oleh Israel, berlaku Gaza hanyalah pembunuhan beramai-ramai oleh tentera Israel. Kenapa bersungguh-sungguh membunuh dan mencederakan ramai kanak-kanak?
Khaled berkata, Hamas tidak akan menerima syarat Israel yang akan membuka pintu sempadan ke Genting Gaza hanya selepas Hamas membebaskan seorang askar Israel yang ditawan oleh pejuang Palestin di Gaza pada Jun 2006…
Ulasan: Lawan tetap lawan sampai menang atau syahid. 60 tahun telah berlalu, lawan terus kerana pintu syahid terbuka luas.
Palestin cukup masak tipu helah Yahudi
"USAH percaya janji Yahudi, mereka dilahirkan sebagai penipu" adalah kata-kata kerap kedengaran daripada kebanyakan penduduk Gaza yang tidak mempercayai cadangan gencatan senjata rejim Zionis.
Mereka yang sudah lali dengan serangan tentera Yahudi lebih 60 tahun lalu cukup masak dengan tipu muslihat `iblis' bertopeng manusia itu dan diakui pemandu teksi yang ditemui wartawan di kedai syarwarma (kebab).
Di depan bangunan mahkamah yang ranap dibedil peluru berpandu Israel itu, pemandu teksi, Waleed Yaser, 45, berkata Yahudi tidak pernah menepati janji dan tindakan menawarkan gencatan senjata membuktikan mereka tewas.
"Peperangan 22 hari antara Hamas dan Israel membuat Zionis lebih kenal erti tewas apabila menentang tentera jihad fisabilillah," katanya sambil mendakwa sejak gencatan 18 Januari lalu, lima penduduk awam Gaza terkorban.
Beliau yang kerap berulang alik ke sempadan Rafah, memberitahu kejadian mengerikan berlaku Khamis minggu lalu apabila seorang kanak-kanak lelaki berusia 10 tahun ditembak di kepala ketika menaiki sampan bersama bapanya untuk menangkap ikan di laut.
Dengan peluru masih tertanam di kepala, mangsa menemui ajal selepas koma di Hospital Al-Sifa' dan sehari kemudian, seorang wanita 35 tahun turut ditembak di kepala oleh tentera Yahudi yang berkawal di sempadan.
"Kelmarin, petani berusia 27 tahun di Kissufim ditembak membuktikan Yahudi tidak pernah akur janji.
"Mereka pakar membunuh dari jauh menggunakan penembak curi," katanya.
Seorang pemandu teksi, Zariq, 50, berkata Yahudi tidak akan berundur jika tidak tewas di tangan Hamas.
Mereka berkata, 800,000 penduduk Israel di selatan pasti ketakutan dan bergegas mencari perlindungan apabila mendengar nama Hamas dan menamatkan perbualan dengan pertanyaan - siapa menakutkan siapa?
Ulasan: Another war, another defeat for Israel. Sesungguhnya perang yang baru-baru ini telah di paksakan oleh Israel, berlaku Gaza hanyalah pembunuhan beramai-ramai oleh tentera Israel. Kenapa bersungguh-sungguh membunuh dan mencederakan ramai kanak-kanak?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Smell Of Death
In Zeitoun, Gaza, 29 members of one family lost their lives. Why?
Palestinian farmer Rafiq Samouni, 39, sat on the rubble of his house Monday, eating a sour orange. "We don't have any homes, we don't have any food--except these," he said, gesturing at the remains of an orange tree sticking up through chunks of concrete and piles of earth churned up by Israeli tanks. "And we don't have any relations." Twenty-nine members of the extended Samouni family, who lived in neighboring homes in the Zeitoun area of Gaza, were killed on the first morning of Israeli ground operations, Jan. 4, and nearly all of their homes were blown up by Israeli demolition teams, most of them completely flattened. Another 19 Zeitoun residents from other families perished as well; the last of those 48 corpses was recovered Monday, after lying there for two weeks until Israeli army units finally withdrew on Sunday. The smell of death was everywhere.
The surviving family members tell horrific stories of what happened to them at the hands of what several said was the Givati Brigade, one of the elite Israeli Defense Forces units spearheading the Gaza operation. More than 100 residents, they say, were ordered to gather in a single house, which the next day was shelled by tanks and bombed by aircraft; most of the Samouni family victims were found there.
A few doors away, a man who was huddled inside with his two wives and many of his 20 children, was shot by soldiers, who also killed his 4-year-old son, residents claimed. And in the street outside, witnesses said, another Samouni lay wounded and plasticuffed until he bled to death hours later, with no one allowed to help him. The International Committee of the Red Cross had been notified after the Jan. 4 incidents that there were wounded in Zeitoun, and on Jan. 8 took the unusual step of complaining publicly that the IDF delayed access to them. Red Cross officials described finding children clinging to dead or wounded parents in Zeitoun, two full days after the incidents took place.
Israeli Defense Force spokesperson Avital Leibovich said she had no knowledge of these specific incidents, but would look into them. "We had no intention whatsoever of targeting Palestinian civilians, so these stories about soldiers approaching a father and child and then shooting them seem to be incorrect, to put it diplomatically," she said. "Do you think we tell people to go into a house and then kill them deliberately?"
The churned-up landscape of the Samounis' corner of Zeitoun is unrecognizable as a community any longer. The mosque lies in ruins; long sheds for battery hens are a mass of twisted aluminum, and dead chickens lie everywhere. Orchards have been upended by tanks and bulldozers. There are only two houses standing intact, isolated amid the wreckage; both were apparently used as outposts for Israeli soldiers. The graffiti they left on the walls inside said much about their state of mind. One large peace symbol had three slogans written in Hebrew in its three compartments: "Death to Arabs," "War on Arabs--Sounds Good to Me", and "The Only Good Arab is a Dead Arab." On several bedroom walls, amid remains of soldiers' rations and discarded bedding, a large numeral 5 was drawn with wings--possibly a unit designation of some sort--and nearby, also in Hebrew, "I hate Arabs." Another soldier declared, "I'm a Russian", and, in bad English, "1 is down, 999,999 to go." There are a million Palestinian refugees in Gaza. Other Hebrew inscriptions invoked the names of former Jewish settlements in Gaza, which were closed by the Israeli government in 2005. There are many new immigrants in the Givati Brigade, who are mostly Russian-speaking, as well as religious Jews, known for their strong patriotism, and unlikely to question army policies.
The survivors of Zeitoun all insisted repeatedly that they were farmers with no connection to Hamas, and that their area had never been used to fire rockets. Nonetheless, for some reason the IDF on the first morning of the invasion surrounded the Samouni neighborhood at daybreak, with tanks and ground units, and according to survivors began firing into many of the buildings randomly. At the home of Attila Samouni, he had gathered his wives and children in the safest room. This account comes from his first wife, Zahwa, and his son Faraj, 22, who were interviewed separately--he at the scene, and she at a tenement she shares with 72 other refugees in Gaza City. About 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 4, Israeli soldiers kicked in the door and demanded in Hebrew that the owner come out of the room. Attila, 45, who spoke Hebrew, identified himself and emerged with his hands raised above his head. "He said, 'I am the owner, I have children, please don't shoot me,'" Faraj said. "They shot him again and again, 20 or 30 times, I don't know how many," said Zahwa. Then the soldiers began firing into the room as the others threw themselves to the floor, and tossed what Zahwa described as a "ball of fire" into the room, which then emitted large amounts of smoke--possibly a smoke grenade. Zahwa was wounded in the back, but suffered only graze wounds, as she huddled on top of her 15-month-old son Mohanad and her 4-year-old stepson Ahmed.
The soldiers told them to come out but forced them to crawl, she said, poking their rifles with flashlights attached in the faces of the children, laughing and spitting on them. "I said, 'There are no Hamas here,'" Zahwa said. "We beg you, in the name of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, there are children here, please pity them, we love you, please." Finally the soldiers ordered them to leave the house, and she carried the wounded Ahmed in her arms--he had been hit in the head and chest by bullets; they took refuge at a cousin's house not far away, but were unable to leave or reach medical help, despite repeatedly calling Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances. "Ahmed died on the second day," she said. "When we finally got out, we found that there were no more Samounis." She had her sleeping toddler Mohanad in her arms as she spoke. "What am I to tell this child? He is asking all day for his father, Dada, Dada. How will I bring his father to him?"
Around the same time, Rafiq Samouni said, the soldiers were going from house to house, searching for weapons. "They didn't find any weapons, we swear, there were no rockets fired from here. Then they packed us all in this one house and said we'd be safe there." That was the home of Wael Samouni, 39, which is now so flattened that its concrete slab roof is pancaked on the ground. Within hours, he said, they opened fire on the house with tanks and air strikes, completely destroying it and killing many of those inside. Others apparently remained in the rubble, gravely wounded. The Red Cross was given limited access and took nine badly wounded out shortly after the incident, but many others remained. On Sunday, after the Israelis pulled their tanks back from Zeitoun, Red Crescent crews began sifting through the rubble, uncovering 47 partially decomposed bodies Sunday, and a final body today, 17-year-old Wahid Samouni. "We are all farmers," said Rafiq Samouni. "We have nothing to do with Hamas. Until this day we have no idea why they targeted us."
Later that morning on Jan. 4, as people were being herded from their houses, some of them passed Imad Iyat Samouni, 35, lying in the earthen street, his hands tied with a plastic band, bleeding from several bullet wounds. No eyewitnesses emerged who knew what had happened. One of the passersby was neighbor Zuhair Arafat, 40. "He was crying to us for help and we tried to pick him up and [the Israelis] fired at us, [saying] 'Don't touch him, leave him,'" he said. "Can you imagine how we felt, leaving him like that? It still haunts me. They were just monsters in human clothing." By the time it was all over, Samounis from 2-year-old Azar Salar to 82-year-old Hamdi Mohammed lay dead. "My brother Ahmed was four; they shot him and they knew he was a child," said Faraj. "Was he Hamas? Hamdi Mohammed, was he firing rockets? Azar Salar, was she firing rockets?"
The Israeli Defense Force spokesperson said they had abundant evidence that Hamas hid its fighters in civilian areas, near schools and hospitals, forcing Israeli troops to open fire to protect themselves and sometimes killing civilians as a result. "We tend to forget that in 2000 we had suicide bombers in Israel, on the street and in cafes and on buses and 50 percent of these bombers were Hamas," Leibovich said.
She was more forthright on the issue of anti-Arab graffiti. "This is against any code of behavior of the IDF or moral values. We'll investigate this matter and, if it's true, the soldiers will be punished."
Source: Newsweek
Comment: Is this war? No, it is a massacre.
Palestinian farmer Rafiq Samouni, 39, sat on the rubble of his house Monday, eating a sour orange. "We don't have any homes, we don't have any food--except these," he said, gesturing at the remains of an orange tree sticking up through chunks of concrete and piles of earth churned up by Israeli tanks. "And we don't have any relations." Twenty-nine members of the extended Samouni family, who lived in neighboring homes in the Zeitoun area of Gaza, were killed on the first morning of Israeli ground operations, Jan. 4, and nearly all of their homes were blown up by Israeli demolition teams, most of them completely flattened. Another 19 Zeitoun residents from other families perished as well; the last of those 48 corpses was recovered Monday, after lying there for two weeks until Israeli army units finally withdrew on Sunday. The smell of death was everywhere.
The surviving family members tell horrific stories of what happened to them at the hands of what several said was the Givati Brigade, one of the elite Israeli Defense Forces units spearheading the Gaza operation. More than 100 residents, they say, were ordered to gather in a single house, which the next day was shelled by tanks and bombed by aircraft; most of the Samouni family victims were found there.
A few doors away, a man who was huddled inside with his two wives and many of his 20 children, was shot by soldiers, who also killed his 4-year-old son, residents claimed. And in the street outside, witnesses said, another Samouni lay wounded and plasticuffed until he bled to death hours later, with no one allowed to help him. The International Committee of the Red Cross had been notified after the Jan. 4 incidents that there were wounded in Zeitoun, and on Jan. 8 took the unusual step of complaining publicly that the IDF delayed access to them. Red Cross officials described finding children clinging to dead or wounded parents in Zeitoun, two full days after the incidents took place.
Israeli Defense Force spokesperson Avital Leibovich said she had no knowledge of these specific incidents, but would look into them. "We had no intention whatsoever of targeting Palestinian civilians, so these stories about soldiers approaching a father and child and then shooting them seem to be incorrect, to put it diplomatically," she said. "Do you think we tell people to go into a house and then kill them deliberately?"
The churned-up landscape of the Samounis' corner of Zeitoun is unrecognizable as a community any longer. The mosque lies in ruins; long sheds for battery hens are a mass of twisted aluminum, and dead chickens lie everywhere. Orchards have been upended by tanks and bulldozers. There are only two houses standing intact, isolated amid the wreckage; both were apparently used as outposts for Israeli soldiers. The graffiti they left on the walls inside said much about their state of mind. One large peace symbol had three slogans written in Hebrew in its three compartments: "Death to Arabs," "War on Arabs--Sounds Good to Me", and "The Only Good Arab is a Dead Arab." On several bedroom walls, amid remains of soldiers' rations and discarded bedding, a large numeral 5 was drawn with wings--possibly a unit designation of some sort--and nearby, also in Hebrew, "I hate Arabs." Another soldier declared, "I'm a Russian", and, in bad English, "1 is down, 999,999 to go." There are a million Palestinian refugees in Gaza. Other Hebrew inscriptions invoked the names of former Jewish settlements in Gaza, which were closed by the Israeli government in 2005. There are many new immigrants in the Givati Brigade, who are mostly Russian-speaking, as well as religious Jews, known for their strong patriotism, and unlikely to question army policies.
The survivors of Zeitoun all insisted repeatedly that they were farmers with no connection to Hamas, and that their area had never been used to fire rockets. Nonetheless, for some reason the IDF on the first morning of the invasion surrounded the Samouni neighborhood at daybreak, with tanks and ground units, and according to survivors began firing into many of the buildings randomly. At the home of Attila Samouni, he had gathered his wives and children in the safest room. This account comes from his first wife, Zahwa, and his son Faraj, 22, who were interviewed separately--he at the scene, and she at a tenement she shares with 72 other refugees in Gaza City. About 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 4, Israeli soldiers kicked in the door and demanded in Hebrew that the owner come out of the room. Attila, 45, who spoke Hebrew, identified himself and emerged with his hands raised above his head. "He said, 'I am the owner, I have children, please don't shoot me,'" Faraj said. "They shot him again and again, 20 or 30 times, I don't know how many," said Zahwa. Then the soldiers began firing into the room as the others threw themselves to the floor, and tossed what Zahwa described as a "ball of fire" into the room, which then emitted large amounts of smoke--possibly a smoke grenade. Zahwa was wounded in the back, but suffered only graze wounds, as she huddled on top of her 15-month-old son Mohanad and her 4-year-old stepson Ahmed.
The soldiers told them to come out but forced them to crawl, she said, poking their rifles with flashlights attached in the faces of the children, laughing and spitting on them. "I said, 'There are no Hamas here,'" Zahwa said. "We beg you, in the name of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, there are children here, please pity them, we love you, please." Finally the soldiers ordered them to leave the house, and she carried the wounded Ahmed in her arms--he had been hit in the head and chest by bullets; they took refuge at a cousin's house not far away, but were unable to leave or reach medical help, despite repeatedly calling Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances. "Ahmed died on the second day," she said. "When we finally got out, we found that there were no more Samounis." She had her sleeping toddler Mohanad in her arms as she spoke. "What am I to tell this child? He is asking all day for his father, Dada, Dada. How will I bring his father to him?"
Around the same time, Rafiq Samouni said, the soldiers were going from house to house, searching for weapons. "They didn't find any weapons, we swear, there were no rockets fired from here. Then they packed us all in this one house and said we'd be safe there." That was the home of Wael Samouni, 39, which is now so flattened that its concrete slab roof is pancaked on the ground. Within hours, he said, they opened fire on the house with tanks and air strikes, completely destroying it and killing many of those inside. Others apparently remained in the rubble, gravely wounded. The Red Cross was given limited access and took nine badly wounded out shortly after the incident, but many others remained. On Sunday, after the Israelis pulled their tanks back from Zeitoun, Red Crescent crews began sifting through the rubble, uncovering 47 partially decomposed bodies Sunday, and a final body today, 17-year-old Wahid Samouni. "We are all farmers," said Rafiq Samouni. "We have nothing to do with Hamas. Until this day we have no idea why they targeted us."
Later that morning on Jan. 4, as people were being herded from their houses, some of them passed Imad Iyat Samouni, 35, lying in the earthen street, his hands tied with a plastic band, bleeding from several bullet wounds. No eyewitnesses emerged who knew what had happened. One of the passersby was neighbor Zuhair Arafat, 40. "He was crying to us for help and we tried to pick him up and [the Israelis] fired at us, [saying] 'Don't touch him, leave him,'" he said. "Can you imagine how we felt, leaving him like that? It still haunts me. They were just monsters in human clothing." By the time it was all over, Samounis from 2-year-old Azar Salar to 82-year-old Hamdi Mohammed lay dead. "My brother Ahmed was four; they shot him and they knew he was a child," said Faraj. "Was he Hamas? Hamdi Mohammed, was he firing rockets? Azar Salar, was she firing rockets?"
The Israeli Defense Force spokesperson said they had abundant evidence that Hamas hid its fighters in civilian areas, near schools and hospitals, forcing Israeli troops to open fire to protect themselves and sometimes killing civilians as a result. "We tend to forget that in 2000 we had suicide bombers in Israel, on the street and in cafes and on buses and 50 percent of these bombers were Hamas," Leibovich said.
She was more forthright on the issue of anti-Arab graffiti. "This is against any code of behavior of the IDF or moral values. We'll investigate this matter and, if it's true, the soldiers will be punished."
Source: Newsweek
Comment: Is this war? No, it is a massacre.
Who Financed the Gaza War?
In recent days, we have all witnessed one of the more horrendous crimes against humanity by the Israeli defense forces against the civilian population of Gaza strip. While many Muslims are expressing their outrage at the perpetrators and financiers of these crimes by boycotting American products, very few realize that the people who financed the war on Gaza may be much closer to home.
The campaign to boycott all American products is fueled by the fact that the United States of America is the primary financier of Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. An analysis of statistics shows that the feelings of Muslims towards America and American products are rightly justified. According to an Israeli news source, Israel's military budget for the year 2007 was USD 7.7 billion (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3321675,00.html). In the same year i.e. 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly announced that the United States has agreed to pay Israel a total of USD 30 billion in military aid over the next ten years (http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/07/29/afx3963706.html). This amounts to USD 3 billion military aid per year. It is to be kept in mind that this is the figure which is revealed to the public. The amount of aid which actually flows from America to Israel is feared to be much greater.
Hence even if we were to believe the official figures, it is evident that a huge portion of Israel's military budget is financed by the United States of America. But given the recent economic crisis in the United States, one cannot help but wonder that even when the Americans themselves are short of cash, how do they manage to give so much money to Israel? How do they manage to finance the Israeli killing machine?
Before we move on, let's take a look at how a cash-strapped country like the United States of America manages to generate funds to finance the Israeli killing machine. Currently, the United States constitutes the deficit unit of the global economy. Deficit unit refers to those countries whose expenditures are greater than their incomes. In other words, countries which constitute the deficit unit are those which are short of money. When a country like America is in need of money, it issues government bonds. Bonds are essentially a debt, in which the issuer is obliged to pay periodic interest payments and return the principal amount at a future date. In other words, when the American government is short of cash, it borrows money in the form of bonds from those who have surplus funds. In this way, a steady supply of money is ensured to the American government which enables it to finance its own economy as well as the Israeli killing machine.
A look at the figures of investment in the American economy by Muslim nations in shocking. According to Raymond Seitz, vice chairman of Lehman Brothers in London and a former U.S. ambassador to Britain, Saudi Arabia alone has investments amounting to between USD 500 billion and USD 700 billion in the American economy (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/enormss.htm). In late 2007 the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority poured USD 7.5 billion in a single shot into the collapsing Citibank of America (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/27/business/main3545847.shtml?source=RSSattr=Business_3545847). In July 2008, A UAE based investment firm announced to start a joint venture with American company General Electric with an initial investment of USD 8 billion(http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssComputerHardware/idUSDXB00028420080722). These are just a few examples which show the extent of investment of Muslim nations in the American economy.
An analysis of the major foreign holders of American government bonds reveals a similar tale. According to the American department of the Treasury, "Oil Exporters" are the fifth largest foreign investors in American treasury bonds. Oil exporters include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria (http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt). Twelve out of those fifteen countries are Muslim. These countries hold American government bonds amounting to USD 200 billion (ibid). Investment by these countries in American government bonds increased by 44 % in just one year from November 2007 to November 2008. If this trend continues, investment by these Muslim countries in American government bonds is likely to cross the USD 300 billion mark by the end of this year. This shows that Muslim nations are increasingly willing to purchase American government bonds, hence providing the much needed money to the American government.
The bottom line is that the Muslims have played a significant role in keeping the American economy alive and have provided the cash-strapped American government the money it needs to finance the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. Life for Israel will be very difficult without American financial support, and although America might still survive without Muslim money, it would have to think a dozen times before spending its limited cash. In such a situation, it is very likely that financial aid to Israel will be an overwhelming burden on the American economy and will most likely be discontinued.
I salute the efforts of those Muslims who are boycotting American products, but I have to say with great regret that until we have people in our Ummah who are willing to earn money at the expense of the blood of their brothers, there is not much we as individuals can do to stop the Israeli crimes. We all know the obvious enemy, it's important we know the enemy within us. May Allah grant Hidayah to all Muslims.
by Aqil Abdul Razzaq Khan
Kavkaz Center
Comment: Keep on boycotting the US & Israel products. Our money to kill others - no way.
The campaign to boycott all American products is fueled by the fact that the United States of America is the primary financier of Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. An analysis of statistics shows that the feelings of Muslims towards America and American products are rightly justified. According to an Israeli news source, Israel's military budget for the year 2007 was USD 7.7 billion (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3321675,00.html). In the same year i.e. 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly announced that the United States has agreed to pay Israel a total of USD 30 billion in military aid over the next ten years (http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/07/29/afx3963706.html). This amounts to USD 3 billion military aid per year. It is to be kept in mind that this is the figure which is revealed to the public. The amount of aid which actually flows from America to Israel is feared to be much greater.
Hence even if we were to believe the official figures, it is evident that a huge portion of Israel's military budget is financed by the United States of America. But given the recent economic crisis in the United States, one cannot help but wonder that even when the Americans themselves are short of cash, how do they manage to give so much money to Israel? How do they manage to finance the Israeli killing machine?
Before we move on, let's take a look at how a cash-strapped country like the United States of America manages to generate funds to finance the Israeli killing machine. Currently, the United States constitutes the deficit unit of the global economy. Deficit unit refers to those countries whose expenditures are greater than their incomes. In other words, countries which constitute the deficit unit are those which are short of money. When a country like America is in need of money, it issues government bonds. Bonds are essentially a debt, in which the issuer is obliged to pay periodic interest payments and return the principal amount at a future date. In other words, when the American government is short of cash, it borrows money in the form of bonds from those who have surplus funds. In this way, a steady supply of money is ensured to the American government which enables it to finance its own economy as well as the Israeli killing machine.
A look at the figures of investment in the American economy by Muslim nations in shocking. According to Raymond Seitz, vice chairman of Lehman Brothers in London and a former U.S. ambassador to Britain, Saudi Arabia alone has investments amounting to between USD 500 billion and USD 700 billion in the American economy (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/enormss.htm). In late 2007 the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority poured USD 7.5 billion in a single shot into the collapsing Citibank of America (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/27/business/main3545847.shtml?source=RSSattr=Business_3545847). In July 2008, A UAE based investment firm announced to start a joint venture with American company General Electric with an initial investment of USD 8 billion(http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssComputerHardware/idUSDXB00028420080722). These are just a few examples which show the extent of investment of Muslim nations in the American economy.
An analysis of the major foreign holders of American government bonds reveals a similar tale. According to the American department of the Treasury, "Oil Exporters" are the fifth largest foreign investors in American treasury bonds. Oil exporters include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria (http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt). Twelve out of those fifteen countries are Muslim. These countries hold American government bonds amounting to USD 200 billion (ibid). Investment by these countries in American government bonds increased by 44 % in just one year from November 2007 to November 2008. If this trend continues, investment by these Muslim countries in American government bonds is likely to cross the USD 300 billion mark by the end of this year. This shows that Muslim nations are increasingly willing to purchase American government bonds, hence providing the much needed money to the American government.
The bottom line is that the Muslims have played a significant role in keeping the American economy alive and have provided the cash-strapped American government the money it needs to finance the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. Life for Israel will be very difficult without American financial support, and although America might still survive without Muslim money, it would have to think a dozen times before spending its limited cash. In such a situation, it is very likely that financial aid to Israel will be an overwhelming burden on the American economy and will most likely be discontinued.
I salute the efforts of those Muslims who are boycotting American products, but I have to say with great regret that until we have people in our Ummah who are willing to earn money at the expense of the blood of their brothers, there is not much we as individuals can do to stop the Israeli crimes. We all know the obvious enemy, it's important we know the enemy within us. May Allah grant Hidayah to all Muslims.
by Aqil Abdul Razzaq Khan
Kavkaz Center
Comment: Keep on boycotting the US & Israel products. Our money to kill others - no way.
New Evidence of Gaza Child Deaths
Christian Fraser, BBC News, Gaza
Four-year-old Samar Abed Rabbu is a little girl with a captivating smile to melt the heart of the most hardened correspondent.
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.
Young victims
One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza's densely populated civilian areas.
But the head of neurosurgery at the El-Arish hospital, Dr Ahmed Yahia, told me that brain scans made it clear that a number of the child victims had been shot at close range.
Samar's uncle said the soldier who had shot his niece was just 15m (49ft) away. ''How could they not see they were shooting at children?'' he asked.
When we finally got into Gaza, we tried to investigate further.
Finding a house, even with an address, in a neighbourhood that has been bombed into oblivion, where all landmarks have been obliterated and even the locals cannot find their bearings, is not easy.
But we eventually met a man who knew Samar's family and took us to the family house, or what was left of it.
The four-storey building has been concertinaed to the ground.
Father's agony
Khalid Abed Rabbu wears on his face all the pain of Israel's bloody three-week campaign in Gaza. In his hand he carried the teddy bear that had belonged to his daughter, Samar's six-year-old sister.
Its head had been blown off, apparently in the same burst of gunfire that had cut his daughter in half.
He described the events of that night almost identically to his brother. There were minor discrepancies, but he too believes his daughters were shot in cold blood.
"There were soldiers leaning against the tank eating crisps," he said. "But then one of them jumped down and walked towards the house with an M16 automatic rifle."
He showed me a photo of his eldest daughter under shrouds in the mortuary.
"What has my family done to Israel," he cried. "What has Samar done to deserve all this pain?"
We have put the family's allegations to the Israelis. So far they have told us that they can not comment on specific cases.
Their spokesman said they had made every effort to limit civilian casualties but were fighting a terrorist organisation that often uses the civilian population as cover.
Troubled neighbourhood
The Israelis say is evidence that on many occasions when civilians were killed their troops had been responding to incoming fire.
There are reports of the neighbourhood where the family lived, known as Ezbat Abed Rabbu, had been used by militant fighters in the past. During an incursion in the spring of 2008 the Israelis took over Khalid's house for two days.
But Khalid insists he is not Hamas, he is not a fighter. He said he worked for the Palestinian Authority and is a member of Fatah, Hamas's political rivals.
"There were no fighters here," he added, picking up crisp bags printed with Hebrew lettering that the soldiers seemed to have left behind. "Do you think soldiers eat crisps sitting on their tanks when there is incoming fire?"
Samar's father and her uncle have not spoken to each other since she left Gaza for treatment in Egypt, yet in separate interviews they told us the three girls were outside the house, in plain view, when they were shot.
We toured the part of Jabaliya where the Abed Rabbus lived. In an area that must cover at least a square mile, there are no houses left - no mosques, no factories and no orchards. The entire neighbourhood has been devastated.
It may be true that fighters were hiding in the alleys of Jabaliya. It is possible that rockets were being fired from here towards Israel.
But for the people who lived here, this is a story of wanton destruction. The world must now decide whether the Israeli action here was justified under the rules of war.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 22 January, 2009 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7843307.stm
Comment: Norman Finkelstein says: What is happening is a slaughter, a massacre. When you have 200 to 300 kids killed, that is not a war. When you have a strong military going in against a defenseless population, that is not a war. When you shoot a fish in a barrel, we do not call it a war. As an Israeli columnist put it, it does not need too much courage to send jets and helicopter gunships to shoot inside a prison. What just happened was not a war. One-third of the casualties were children. It was not a war; it was a just a massacre.
Four-year-old Samar Abed Rabbu is a little girl with a captivating smile to melt the heart of the most hardened correspondent.
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.
Young victims
One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza's densely populated civilian areas.
But the head of neurosurgery at the El-Arish hospital, Dr Ahmed Yahia, told me that brain scans made it clear that a number of the child victims had been shot at close range.
Samar's uncle said the soldier who had shot his niece was just 15m (49ft) away. ''How could they not see they were shooting at children?'' he asked.
When we finally got into Gaza, we tried to investigate further.
Finding a house, even with an address, in a neighbourhood that has been bombed into oblivion, where all landmarks have been obliterated and even the locals cannot find their bearings, is not easy.
But we eventually met a man who knew Samar's family and took us to the family house, or what was left of it.
The four-storey building has been concertinaed to the ground.
Father's agony
Khalid Abed Rabbu wears on his face all the pain of Israel's bloody three-week campaign in Gaza. In his hand he carried the teddy bear that had belonged to his daughter, Samar's six-year-old sister.
Its head had been blown off, apparently in the same burst of gunfire that had cut his daughter in half.
He described the events of that night almost identically to his brother. There were minor discrepancies, but he too believes his daughters were shot in cold blood.
"There were soldiers leaning against the tank eating crisps," he said. "But then one of them jumped down and walked towards the house with an M16 automatic rifle."
He showed me a photo of his eldest daughter under shrouds in the mortuary.
"What has my family done to Israel," he cried. "What has Samar done to deserve all this pain?"
We have put the family's allegations to the Israelis. So far they have told us that they can not comment on specific cases.
Their spokesman said they had made every effort to limit civilian casualties but were fighting a terrorist organisation that often uses the civilian population as cover.
Troubled neighbourhood
The Israelis say is evidence that on many occasions when civilians were killed their troops had been responding to incoming fire.
There are reports of the neighbourhood where the family lived, known as Ezbat Abed Rabbu, had been used by militant fighters in the past. During an incursion in the spring of 2008 the Israelis took over Khalid's house for two days.
But Khalid insists he is not Hamas, he is not a fighter. He said he worked for the Palestinian Authority and is a member of Fatah, Hamas's political rivals.
"There were no fighters here," he added, picking up crisp bags printed with Hebrew lettering that the soldiers seemed to have left behind. "Do you think soldiers eat crisps sitting on their tanks when there is incoming fire?"
Samar's father and her uncle have not spoken to each other since she left Gaza for treatment in Egypt, yet in separate interviews they told us the three girls were outside the house, in plain view, when they were shot.
We toured the part of Jabaliya where the Abed Rabbus lived. In an area that must cover at least a square mile, there are no houses left - no mosques, no factories and no orchards. The entire neighbourhood has been devastated.
It may be true that fighters were hiding in the alleys of Jabaliya. It is possible that rockets were being fired from here towards Israel.
But for the people who lived here, this is a story of wanton destruction. The world must now decide whether the Israeli action here was justified under the rules of war.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 22 January, 2009 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7843307.stm
Comment: Norman Finkelstein says: What is happening is a slaughter, a massacre. When you have 200 to 300 kids killed, that is not a war. When you have a strong military going in against a defenseless population, that is not a war. When you shoot a fish in a barrel, we do not call it a war. As an Israeli columnist put it, it does not need too much courage to send jets and helicopter gunships to shoot inside a prison. What just happened was not a war. One-third of the casualties were children. It was not a war; it was a just a massacre.
Muslim group flees Myanmar but faces more woe
SABANG, Indonesia – The bearded farmer wept in his hospital bed as he recounted a harrowing six-month journey that brought him from the isolated country of Myanmar to this remote island in the Indian Ocean.
Nur Mohammad, a member of the Rohingya Muslim minority group, said he was forced to work for the Myanmar army, after being detained and tortured without charge. When he fled that country, he said he was exploited by Bangladeshi human traffickers, beaten by Thai officials, and then forced out to sea in an overcrowded boat that nearly sank off Indonesia's coast.
And his ordeal is not over.
The 37-year-old Muslim, who is being treated for internal bleeding and trauma, faces possible deportation by the very people who plucked him from the water.
"I would rather die here," Mohammad told The Associated Press, describing the abuse in Myanmar against the Rohingya, who for generations have been denied citizenship and reportedly face torture, religious persecution and forced labor under the ruling junta.
"If I'm sent back, I am sure authorities will kill me."
The stateless Muslim ethnic group, which is not recognized by the military regime, numbers about 800,000 in Myanmar. Their plight gained international attention after several boats carrying around 1,000 migrants were intercepted last month by the Thai navy. Human rights groups allege Thai officers detained and beat them before forcing them back to sea in vessels with no engines and little food or water.
Survivors recounted how four migrants were tossed overboard before the rest were forced at gunpoint onto a makeshift barge in the middle of the ocean, said Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Bangkok-based advocacy group Arakan Project.
Hundreds are missing and feared drowned, according to human rights groups; others have landed on remote corners of Indonesia and India, where they are being kept well away from the media, making it difficult to corroborate their stories.
Authorities in both Thailand and Myanmar have denied wrongdoing.
In the meantime, the harrowing accounts of victims like Mohammad continue to trickle in from hospital beds and jail cells.
Mohammad said by the time his boat reached Thailand's southern coast on Dec. 26 — after working for months on fishing vessels in Bangladesh — he and other fellow Rohingya had been at sea for four days and nights.
They were dehydrated and hungry, he said, but given almost no food or water when they reached land.
Authorities took the men to a hillside prison overseeing the Thai city of Ranong, he said, where they were lined up and stripped down to the waist. One by one, they were pummeled and taunted, with some officers scoffing at them for being Muslim and threatening to burn their traditional beards, he said.
"They tied me and beat me with sticks and kicked me with their boots until I was vomiting blood. They only stopped because I was about to die," said Mohammad. A doctor who treated him at an Indonesian navy base on Sabang island told the AP the wounds appeared to have been caused by a blunt object.
Soon after, he said, the migrants were crammed back into their boats and sent adrift in stormy seas.
Brad Adams of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the story of the Rohingya has been made all the more tragic by the consistent lack of compassion shown by some regional governments, which appear to have ignored the suffering of the ethnic minorities or played a direct part in it.
Thai authorities insist repeatedly that they do not forcibly evict migrants but only detain and repatriate people entering the country illegally.
On Wednesday, a Thai court convicted more than 60 migrants on the same charge, raising the prospect that they could be kicked out. The men alleged they were abused by Myanmar navy officials
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, facing growing criticism from rights groups, said last week the government would investigate claims of abuse. The Foreign Ministry also said it would convene a meeting with its neighbors to find a solution to the growing illegal migrant problem.
A spokesman for Myanmar's military government was not available for comment.
The ruling junta does not officially recognize the existence of a separate Rohingya group in the country's western areas and sometimes refers to them as "Bangladeshis."
Restrictive citizenship laws enacted in 1982 make many Muslims living in the area stateless; "'Rohingyas' do not exist in the Union of Myanmar and are not one of Myanmar's indigenous national races," the government told the U.N. Human Rights Council last year.
At the same time, it rejected as untrue "allegations of discrimination and harassment" toward Muslim refugees returned from Bangladesh — meaning the Rohingya.
In addition to the Rohingya, the military regime has brutally repressed a number of groups and millions have risked their lives fleeing the country.
The Rohingya, who are believed to descend from 7th century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784, face religious persecution because they are Muslims in a Buddhist-majority country. Human Rights Watch said in its latest annual report they faced forced relocation, land seizures, and denial of citizenship and identity papers, among other things.
The State Department agreed, saying they "experienced severe legal, economic, and social discrimination."
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have ended up in neighboring Bangladesh — some getting illegal jobs and others living in crowded, squalid refugee camps — after borrowing huge sums of money from family and friends to pay smugglers.
Others have settled in impoverished communities in Malaysia and Thailand, which depend on migrant labor; even more have braved the sea to go as far as the Middle East.
"It is a horrible humanitarian crisis unfolding, the fairly large numbers of people leaving in these boats, either drowning at sea or finding themselves in exploitative, abuse situations on arrival," said Chris Lom, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.
Like other stateless people, the Rohingya are especially vulnerable to human trafficking because they provide cheap labor and are not protected by the law, he said.
"The issue of people in poor countries trying to reach richer ones it not going to stop," he said. "It's going to become more serious and it needs to be addressed, not just regionally, but globally."
In describing his persecution in Myanmar, Mohammad said his village placed under a curfew and the Rohingya were unable to marry and often had their land confiscated.
He said he was forced to work as a laborer for the army after being detained and tortured without charge.
He decided to cross the border illegally into Bangladesh, where he worked as a fisherman until he was able to earn enough money to pay for a boat to Malaysia — around $430. He and others set off in their rickety wooden boats on Dec. 16 with a captain who seemed not to know the way.
The men were picked up and beaten by the Myanmar navy who held them for two days, he said.
When they reached Thailand, they were again taken into custody and pummeled before being cast adrift in a boat that had been stripped of its engine and emptied of fuel, Mohammad said.
"The boat was leaking badly," he said. "The water started rising inside. Finally, it was a foot deep and we started to sink. We prayed to Allah, we asked him to save us."
A fishing boat spotted them off Indonesia's westernmost coast and alerted the navy, which brought 193 men to shore on Jan. 7 as it was on the verge of sinking. All the men were from Myanmar except for 17, who said they were from Bangladesh.
Many were too weak to stand and were hospitalized.
Now the Indonesian government is threatening to send them back to where they came from…(Associated Press Writers).
Comment: Rohingya are people too...we are sharing the world.
Nur Mohammad, a member of the Rohingya Muslim minority group, said he was forced to work for the Myanmar army, after being detained and tortured without charge. When he fled that country, he said he was exploited by Bangladeshi human traffickers, beaten by Thai officials, and then forced out to sea in an overcrowded boat that nearly sank off Indonesia's coast.
And his ordeal is not over.
The 37-year-old Muslim, who is being treated for internal bleeding and trauma, faces possible deportation by the very people who plucked him from the water.
"I would rather die here," Mohammad told The Associated Press, describing the abuse in Myanmar against the Rohingya, who for generations have been denied citizenship and reportedly face torture, religious persecution and forced labor under the ruling junta.
"If I'm sent back, I am sure authorities will kill me."
The stateless Muslim ethnic group, which is not recognized by the military regime, numbers about 800,000 in Myanmar. Their plight gained international attention after several boats carrying around 1,000 migrants were intercepted last month by the Thai navy. Human rights groups allege Thai officers detained and beat them before forcing them back to sea in vessels with no engines and little food or water.
Survivors recounted how four migrants were tossed overboard before the rest were forced at gunpoint onto a makeshift barge in the middle of the ocean, said Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Bangkok-based advocacy group Arakan Project.
Hundreds are missing and feared drowned, according to human rights groups; others have landed on remote corners of Indonesia and India, where they are being kept well away from the media, making it difficult to corroborate their stories.
Authorities in both Thailand and Myanmar have denied wrongdoing.
In the meantime, the harrowing accounts of victims like Mohammad continue to trickle in from hospital beds and jail cells.
Mohammad said by the time his boat reached Thailand's southern coast on Dec. 26 — after working for months on fishing vessels in Bangladesh — he and other fellow Rohingya had been at sea for four days and nights.
They were dehydrated and hungry, he said, but given almost no food or water when they reached land.
Authorities took the men to a hillside prison overseeing the Thai city of Ranong, he said, where they were lined up and stripped down to the waist. One by one, they were pummeled and taunted, with some officers scoffing at them for being Muslim and threatening to burn their traditional beards, he said.
"They tied me and beat me with sticks and kicked me with their boots until I was vomiting blood. They only stopped because I was about to die," said Mohammad. A doctor who treated him at an Indonesian navy base on Sabang island told the AP the wounds appeared to have been caused by a blunt object.
Soon after, he said, the migrants were crammed back into their boats and sent adrift in stormy seas.
Brad Adams of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the story of the Rohingya has been made all the more tragic by the consistent lack of compassion shown by some regional governments, which appear to have ignored the suffering of the ethnic minorities or played a direct part in it.
Thai authorities insist repeatedly that they do not forcibly evict migrants but only detain and repatriate people entering the country illegally.
On Wednesday, a Thai court convicted more than 60 migrants on the same charge, raising the prospect that they could be kicked out. The men alleged they were abused by Myanmar navy officials
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, facing growing criticism from rights groups, said last week the government would investigate claims of abuse. The Foreign Ministry also said it would convene a meeting with its neighbors to find a solution to the growing illegal migrant problem.
A spokesman for Myanmar's military government was not available for comment.
The ruling junta does not officially recognize the existence of a separate Rohingya group in the country's western areas and sometimes refers to them as "Bangladeshis."
Restrictive citizenship laws enacted in 1982 make many Muslims living in the area stateless; "'Rohingyas' do not exist in the Union of Myanmar and are not one of Myanmar's indigenous national races," the government told the U.N. Human Rights Council last year.
At the same time, it rejected as untrue "allegations of discrimination and harassment" toward Muslim refugees returned from Bangladesh — meaning the Rohingya.
In addition to the Rohingya, the military regime has brutally repressed a number of groups and millions have risked their lives fleeing the country.
The Rohingya, who are believed to descend from 7th century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784, face religious persecution because they are Muslims in a Buddhist-majority country. Human Rights Watch said in its latest annual report they faced forced relocation, land seizures, and denial of citizenship and identity papers, among other things.
The State Department agreed, saying they "experienced severe legal, economic, and social discrimination."
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have ended up in neighboring Bangladesh — some getting illegal jobs and others living in crowded, squalid refugee camps — after borrowing huge sums of money from family and friends to pay smugglers.
Others have settled in impoverished communities in Malaysia and Thailand, which depend on migrant labor; even more have braved the sea to go as far as the Middle East.
"It is a horrible humanitarian crisis unfolding, the fairly large numbers of people leaving in these boats, either drowning at sea or finding themselves in exploitative, abuse situations on arrival," said Chris Lom, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.
Like other stateless people, the Rohingya are especially vulnerable to human trafficking because they provide cheap labor and are not protected by the law, he said.
"The issue of people in poor countries trying to reach richer ones it not going to stop," he said. "It's going to become more serious and it needs to be addressed, not just regionally, but globally."
In describing his persecution in Myanmar, Mohammad said his village placed under a curfew and the Rohingya were unable to marry and often had their land confiscated.
He said he was forced to work as a laborer for the army after being detained and tortured without charge.
He decided to cross the border illegally into Bangladesh, where he worked as a fisherman until he was able to earn enough money to pay for a boat to Malaysia — around $430. He and others set off in their rickety wooden boats on Dec. 16 with a captain who seemed not to know the way.
The men were picked up and beaten by the Myanmar navy who held them for two days, he said.
When they reached Thailand, they were again taken into custody and pummeled before being cast adrift in a boat that had been stripped of its engine and emptied of fuel, Mohammad said.
"The boat was leaking badly," he said. "The water started rising inside. Finally, it was a foot deep and we started to sink. We prayed to Allah, we asked him to save us."
A fishing boat spotted them off Indonesia's westernmost coast and alerted the navy, which brought 193 men to shore on Jan. 7 as it was on the verge of sinking. All the men were from Myanmar except for 17, who said they were from Bangladesh.
Many were too weak to stand and were hospitalized.
Now the Indonesian government is threatening to send them back to where they came from…(Associated Press Writers).
Comment: Rohingya are people too...we are sharing the world.
Iran calls for US to end support of Israel
TEHRAN, Iran 28/1/2009 – Iran's president called Wednesday for "profound changes" in U.S. foreign policy including an end to support for Israel and an apology to the Islamic republic for past misdeeds.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also urged Washington to withdraw its troops stationed around the world. He said Iran would be closely watching what President Barack Obama's new administration does and would welcome a real shift in its approach.
"Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering ... Zionists and letting the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny," Ahmadinejad said. "Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in (different parts of) the world."
Comment: Change also means to help the oppressed not the oppressor. We look forward for the promise: CHANGE We Can Believe In.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also urged Washington to withdraw its troops stationed around the world. He said Iran would be closely watching what President Barack Obama's new administration does and would welcome a real shift in its approach.
"Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering ... Zionists and letting the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny," Ahmadinejad said. "Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in (different parts of) the world."
Comment: Change also means to help the oppressed not the oppressor. We look forward for the promise: CHANGE We Can Believe In.
Iran tuntut Obama mohon maaf
TEHERAN 28 Jan. - Presiden Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hari ini menuntut Presiden Amerika Syarikat (AS), Barack Obama memohon maaf kerana "jenayah" yang dilakukan oleh AS terhadap Iran sejak 60 tahun lalu.
Mahmoud menuduh Washington memusuhi rakyat Iran sejak 60 tahun lalu.
"Mereka yang bercakap tentang perubahan mesti memohon maaf kepada rakyat Iran dan cuba menebus jenayah serta perbuatan jahat yang telah mereka lakukan terhadap Iran pada masa lalu," kata Presiden Iran itu dalam ucapan di wilayah Khermenshah, barat negara ini.
Beliau menggesa Washington mengundurkan askarnya dari seluruh dunia sebagai membuktikan dasar perubahan yang dijanjikan oleh Obama.
Mahmoud berkata, beliau menuntut dua jenis perubahan "besar dan asas."
"Berjumpa dengan orang, bercakap dengan mereka dengan hormat dan menghentikan dasar peluasan kuasa.
"Jika kamu bercakap mengenai perubahan, kamu perlu menamatkan kehadiran tentera AS di seluruh dunia, mengundurkan tentera kamu dan membawa mereka balik ke negara kamu," ujar beliau.
Mahmoud menegaskan penyokong perubahan mesti "berhenti menyokong puak Zionis, penjahat dan penjenayah."
Beliau menggesa AS menghentikan dasar campur tangan dalam urusan orang lain.
Ulasan: Gunakan kehebatan untuk tegakkan kebenaran dan keadilan.
Mahmoud menuduh Washington memusuhi rakyat Iran sejak 60 tahun lalu.
"Mereka yang bercakap tentang perubahan mesti memohon maaf kepada rakyat Iran dan cuba menebus jenayah serta perbuatan jahat yang telah mereka lakukan terhadap Iran pada masa lalu," kata Presiden Iran itu dalam ucapan di wilayah Khermenshah, barat negara ini.
Beliau menggesa Washington mengundurkan askarnya dari seluruh dunia sebagai membuktikan dasar perubahan yang dijanjikan oleh Obama.
Mahmoud berkata, beliau menuntut dua jenis perubahan "besar dan asas."
"Berjumpa dengan orang, bercakap dengan mereka dengan hormat dan menghentikan dasar peluasan kuasa.
"Jika kamu bercakap mengenai perubahan, kamu perlu menamatkan kehadiran tentera AS di seluruh dunia, mengundurkan tentera kamu dan membawa mereka balik ke negara kamu," ujar beliau.
Mahmoud menegaskan penyokong perubahan mesti "berhenti menyokong puak Zionis, penjahat dan penjenayah."
Beliau menggesa AS menghentikan dasar campur tangan dalam urusan orang lain.
Ulasan: Gunakan kehebatan untuk tegakkan kebenaran dan keadilan.
PBB digesa siasat Israel
NEW YORK 28 Jan. - Majlis Keselamatan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (PBB) semalam digesa supaya menyiasat pencabulan undang-undang antarabangsa yang dilakukan oleh Israel semasa serangan lebih tiga minggu ke atas Genting Gaza.
Ketua Agensi Bantuan dan Perkhidmatan PBB di wilayah Palestin (UNRWA), Karen AbuZayd memberitahu kesemua 15 anggota Majlis semalam, mereka turut memikul beban untuk membantu 1.5 juta penduduk Palestin di Gaza untuk kembali menjalani kehidupan seperti biasa.
Beliau berkata, tanggungjawab tersebut termasuk menyokong "langkah untuk menyiasat pelanggaran undang-undang antarabangsa, termasuk serangan langsung ke atas kakitangan dan kemudahan PBB, seperti ibu pejabat UNRWA sendiri serta lima sekolah kendaliannya."
Menurut AbuZayd, beliau telah menyaksikan kemusnahan yang dilakukan secara terancang terhadap sekolah, universiti, bangunan kediaman, kilang, kedai dan ladang di Gaza.
Timbalan Duta Britain ke PBB, Karen Pierce memberitahu wartawan sebelum sidang itu, London percaya beberapa dakwaan terhadap Israel dan pejuang Hamas mewajarkan siasatan lanjut, walaupun tidak semestinya oleh PBB.
"Saya berpendapat beberapa dakwaan mengenai penggunaan senjata seperti fosforus putih wajar disiasat," katanya dengan menambah, siasatan awal hendaklah dilakukan oleh Israel....
Ulasan: Seluruh dunia sewajarnya memboikot Israel kerana sikapnya yang tidak mendengar cakap PBB. Baru negara itu tahu bagaimana hidup bersendirian menjadi kera sumbang.
Ketua Agensi Bantuan dan Perkhidmatan PBB di wilayah Palestin (UNRWA), Karen AbuZayd memberitahu kesemua 15 anggota Majlis semalam, mereka turut memikul beban untuk membantu 1.5 juta penduduk Palestin di Gaza untuk kembali menjalani kehidupan seperti biasa.
Beliau berkata, tanggungjawab tersebut termasuk menyokong "langkah untuk menyiasat pelanggaran undang-undang antarabangsa, termasuk serangan langsung ke atas kakitangan dan kemudahan PBB, seperti ibu pejabat UNRWA sendiri serta lima sekolah kendaliannya."
Menurut AbuZayd, beliau telah menyaksikan kemusnahan yang dilakukan secara terancang terhadap sekolah, universiti, bangunan kediaman, kilang, kedai dan ladang di Gaza.
Timbalan Duta Britain ke PBB, Karen Pierce memberitahu wartawan sebelum sidang itu, London percaya beberapa dakwaan terhadap Israel dan pejuang Hamas mewajarkan siasatan lanjut, walaupun tidak semestinya oleh PBB.
"Saya berpendapat beberapa dakwaan mengenai penggunaan senjata seperti fosforus putih wajar disiasat," katanya dengan menambah, siasatan awal hendaklah dilakukan oleh Israel....
Ulasan: Seluruh dunia sewajarnya memboikot Israel kerana sikapnya yang tidak mendengar cakap PBB. Baru negara itu tahu bagaimana hidup bersendirian menjadi kera sumbang.
JIM Selangor anjur Karnival Keamanan
JIM Selangor anjur Karnival Keamanan
KUALA LUMPUR 28 Jan. – Orang ramai diseru membantu meringankan beban rakyat Palestin di Gaza melalui Karnival Keamanan Bersamamu Palestin yang akan dianjurkan oleh Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM) Selangor pada 31 Januari hingga 8 Februari ini.
Karnival itu akan dimulakan dengan aktiviti Kembara Palestin, iaitu acara berkonvoi sebanyak 100 buah kereta, selain kempen jualan amal dan kutipan Tabung Palestin membabitkan beberapa lokasi di sekitar Selangor pada Sabtu ini (31 Januari).
“Pihak kami juga bekerjasama dengan beberapa badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) yang bernaung di bawah Coalition Malaysian NGOs Against Prosecution of Palestinians (Complete) untuk menjayakan Malam Suara Keamanan Palestin pada 31 Januari ini di Dataran Petaling Jaya,” kata Yang Dipertua JIM Selangor, Mazmi Kamal pada sidang media di sini hari ini.
“Pemupukan semangat perjuangan membabitkan peringkat seisi keluarga dalam membela rakyat Palestin akan dilakukan melalui Kempen Edaran Sejuta Risalah, selain terdapat gerai jualan amal, kutipan derma, program anak-anak dan remaja yang akan diadakan di Pasar Tani Mega Shah Alam pada 8 Februari ini,” katanya.
Ulasan: Jom bersama-sama menyumbangkan apa yang terdaya untuk menolong saudara kita yang telah lama di buli dan di zalimi penjajah Israel.
KUALA LUMPUR 28 Jan. – Orang ramai diseru membantu meringankan beban rakyat Palestin di Gaza melalui Karnival Keamanan Bersamamu Palestin yang akan dianjurkan oleh Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM) Selangor pada 31 Januari hingga 8 Februari ini.
Karnival itu akan dimulakan dengan aktiviti Kembara Palestin, iaitu acara berkonvoi sebanyak 100 buah kereta, selain kempen jualan amal dan kutipan Tabung Palestin membabitkan beberapa lokasi di sekitar Selangor pada Sabtu ini (31 Januari).
“Pihak kami juga bekerjasama dengan beberapa badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) yang bernaung di bawah Coalition Malaysian NGOs Against Prosecution of Palestinians (Complete) untuk menjayakan Malam Suara Keamanan Palestin pada 31 Januari ini di Dataran Petaling Jaya,” kata Yang Dipertua JIM Selangor, Mazmi Kamal pada sidang media di sini hari ini.
“Pemupukan semangat perjuangan membabitkan peringkat seisi keluarga dalam membela rakyat Palestin akan dilakukan melalui Kempen Edaran Sejuta Risalah, selain terdapat gerai jualan amal, kutipan derma, program anak-anak dan remaja yang akan diadakan di Pasar Tani Mega Shah Alam pada 8 Februari ini,” katanya.
Ulasan: Jom bersama-sama menyumbangkan apa yang terdaya untuk menolong saudara kita yang telah lama di buli dan di zalimi penjajah Israel.
Tajol Rosli letak jawatan
PARIT: Datuk Seri Mohd Tajol Rosli Ghazali meletakkan jawatan sebagai Pengerusi Badan Perhubungan Umno Perak kerana rasa bertanggungjawab terhadap tindakan Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri (Adun) Bota, Datuk Nasaruddin Hashim, keluar daripada Umno dan menyertai Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR).
Sambil menyifatkan tindakan Nasaruddin sebagai tanda undi tidak percaya terhadap kepemimpinannya, bekas Menteri Besar Perak itu berkata, kejadian itu memalukan Umno Perak terutama selepas Barisan Nasional (BN) kalah di negeri ini dalam pilihan raya umum lalu…
Ulasan: Jom bersama-sama meninggalkan kebobrokan BN/UMNO dan menegakkan keadilan di negara kita.
Kementerian akan guna saluran diplomatik bawa pulang dua tahanan
PUTRAJAYA 28 Jan. - Wisma Putra akan menggunakan saluran diplomatik untuk berurusan dengan pihak berkuasa Amerika Syarikat (AS) bagi membolehkan dua rakyat Malaysia yang ditahan di Pusat Tahanan Guantanamo Bay dibawa balik ke tanah air secepat mungkin…
Ulasan: Kena lagi di negara sendiri?
Saksi sumpah laknat dibuang kerja
PUTRAJAYA: Bekas Imam Masjid Wilayah Persekutuan, Ramlang Porigi, yang dikaitkan sebagai saksi sumpah laknat seorang pemuda yang mendakwa diliwat Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, dikenakan hukuman buang kerja.
Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (Jakim), Datuk Wan Mohamad Sheikh Abd Aziz, ketika dihubungi di Brunei semalam mengesahkan tindakan itu yang diambil mengikut prosedur biasa tatatertib jabatan kerajaan…
Ulasan: Syabas kerana berani bersuara menentang kezaliman. Malaysia perlukan pemuda yang berani menentang kezaliman.
Sambil menyifatkan tindakan Nasaruddin sebagai tanda undi tidak percaya terhadap kepemimpinannya, bekas Menteri Besar Perak itu berkata, kejadian itu memalukan Umno Perak terutama selepas Barisan Nasional (BN) kalah di negeri ini dalam pilihan raya umum lalu…
Ulasan: Jom bersama-sama meninggalkan kebobrokan BN/UMNO dan menegakkan keadilan di negara kita.
Kementerian akan guna saluran diplomatik bawa pulang dua tahanan
PUTRAJAYA 28 Jan. - Wisma Putra akan menggunakan saluran diplomatik untuk berurusan dengan pihak berkuasa Amerika Syarikat (AS) bagi membolehkan dua rakyat Malaysia yang ditahan di Pusat Tahanan Guantanamo Bay dibawa balik ke tanah air secepat mungkin…
Ulasan: Kena lagi di negara sendiri?
Saksi sumpah laknat dibuang kerja
PUTRAJAYA: Bekas Imam Masjid Wilayah Persekutuan, Ramlang Porigi, yang dikaitkan sebagai saksi sumpah laknat seorang pemuda yang mendakwa diliwat Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, dikenakan hukuman buang kerja.
Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (Jakim), Datuk Wan Mohamad Sheikh Abd Aziz, ketika dihubungi di Brunei semalam mengesahkan tindakan itu yang diambil mengikut prosedur biasa tatatertib jabatan kerajaan…
Ulasan: Syabas kerana berani bersuara menentang kezaliman. Malaysia perlukan pemuda yang berani menentang kezaliman.
A Satanic, Genocidal Israel
By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine,08/01/2009
For years, I have been warning that Israel is psychologically and morally capable of carrying out a holocaust or a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Needless to say, the horrible events of the past two weeks in Gaza seem to have enforced and vindicated my convictions in this regard.
Israel, government and people, seem to possess the psychological propensity that would make her embark on such a monstrosity. Yes, there is a minority of Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews who say “No” to all the evils and crimes Israel is doing in their name.
However, let us be honest and realistic. These people are a small minority and have very little influence if any on the Israeli government and army.
Today, what many people had thought would be unthinkable or far-fetched in terms of the extent to which Israel would be willing to go in savaging the Palestinian people seems quite possible in light of the Jewish state’s Nazi-like behavior in the Gaza Strip.
Given the Israeli mindset, Israel may well be hoping the latest genocidal onslaught could have a certain desensitizing and de-mystifying effect on people’s perceptions and attitudes.
The logic is quite simple. If the world can be bullied or cajoled into silence and apathy when Gaza is ravaged and thousands of its inhabitants are slaughtered en mass in full view of humanity, the same world can likewise be manipulated in similar fashion to come to terms with a greater genocide.
On Tuesday, 6 January, one Israeli official, Eli Yeshai, called for the total extermination of Gaza . The leader of the ultra Orthodox Shas party argued that “extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah.”
Other Israeli political and religious leaders have lately spoken enthusiastically of the need for “wiping off Gaza from the face of earth” and “annihilating of every moving thing there.”
Interestingly, this is by no means a minority opinion in Israel. Indeed, one could safely argue that the “ideology of annihilation” now represents the mainstream in the Israeli society.
As we all know, Israel heavily employs mendacity, deception and disinformation to conceal, or at least blur, its criminality and barbarianism.
The Israeli hasbara machine’s main job has always been and continues to be to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a “truth” glorified by millions, especially in the west.
To effect these obscene lies and “virtual realities,” the Israeli government counts heavily on the Jewish-controlled or Jewish influenced media in the western world, especially in North America where telling the truth about Israel is the ultimate taboo.
In truth, what has been happening in Gaza is a huge massacre of genocidal proportions as many conscientious Jews have testified.
What else can be said of this wanton, deliberate and indiscriminate blanket bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods and refugee camps?
I believe terms such as “huge massacres” and “genocidal onslaught” used in reference to the Gaza nightmare cannot be dismissed by Israel and her supporters as merely overstatements or rhetorical exaggerations.
This is unless Israel views non-Jewish pain and suffering as disingenuous, probably because non-Jews or “goyem” are actually considered “human animals” by a large and growing class of fanatical rabbis, politicians and military leaders.
So far, more than 4000 Gazans have been mercilessly killed or badly mutilated or incinerated in less than two weeks of intensive indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombing targeting everyone and everything.
Mosques, homes, public buildings, shelters, schools, colleges, dormitories, factories, cultural institutions, businesses, even hospitals and drug stores as well as the entire civilian infrastructure have been bombed and reduced to rubble.
The rabid bombing from high altitudes has exterminated numerous whole families and destroyed entire neighborhoods. This is probably what Israeli leaders had in mind when they spoke earlier about a “shock and awe” campaign against Gaza .
On 6 January, Israeli tanks fired several artillery shells at a school at the Jabalya refugee camp, killing more than 40 civilians, mostly children and women, who had sought shelter at the UNRWA-run facility. Dozens others were injured, many critically.
Israeli army spokespersons, who are actually professional liars, claimed that Palestinian fighters were seen in the vicinity of the building and that some of these actually fired on Israeli troops from the school.
However, UN officials in Gaza strongly denied the Israeli account, with one UN official saying that he was “99.99%” that the Israeli army was lying.
Earlier, the Israeli air forces hit a mourning reception, killing 15 members of the same family.
The pornographic killing of civilians has no explanation other than the ostensible fact that Israel is adopting a no-holds-barred approach toward Gaza , which is still under effective Israeli occupation despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal enclave more than three years ago.
Well, if we are to accept this logic, namely that everything is fair in war, then Jews should stop complaining about what the armies of Hitler did to them during World War II.
It is just unacceptable to apply two standards of morality, one for Jews and another for non-Jews. For if what Israel is doing in Gaza is right, as Israel and her supporters maintain, then what the Nazis did in Europe several decades ago must have been right as well. And vice versa.
After all, crime doesn’t become kosher when committed by Jewish hands.
Colossal crime
The enormity of the present holocaustic assault is undoubtedly a colossal crime against humanity.
In proportion to the size of population, the murder and maiming of 4000 Gazans (the number keeps rising) is like the US having at least a million of its citizens killed or badly injured as a result of a foreign aggression.
As to the utter destruction of Gaza , it is equally shocking. Some American expatriates here in occupied Palestine have spoken of a double holocaust in Gaza , one targeting humans, and another targeting civilization.
Facing their crimes, pornographic and outrageous as they are, many Israelis, probably the majority, are simply so gleeful that they think Israel is doing the right thing and that God is standing on the side of Israel in this war and every war.
Some religious Israelis have become so euphoric, thanks to the Gaza blitz, that they think the Messiah’s coming imminent.
Other “religious” Israeli Jews, including rabbis, readily justify the wanton slaughter by quoting biblical verses justifying genocide.
One Israeli settler leader recently argued during a conversation with a visiting American peace activist that “if it was right to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can’t it be right to commit genocide now . Has God changed his mind,” the settler wondered sarcastically.
As to Israeli leaders and officials, they simply indulge in what they have always been indulging in, namely “denial” and “self-righteousness” or simply playing the role of victim.
Thus behaved Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, when he told al-Jazeera during a live interview on Monday, 5 January.
“ We don’t kill and we have not killed any children in Gaza . We are the victim of Hamas aggression,” said the pathological liar and certified war criminal rather shamelessly.
Peres’s pornographic lies don’t need any further comment. They speak for themselves.
Zionist Jews may very well think that might is right, and that morality is unneeded and unnecessary as long as they possess overwhelming material strength.
They may think that the rivers of blood the “only democracy in the Middle East ” has been shedding will strengthen Israel and terrorize its neighbors.
Well, it may in the short run. However, in the long run, Israeli criminality and evilness will make it sterile from within to the point of death.
Like evil people, evil states shall not prosper.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/
For years, I have been warning that Israel is psychologically and morally capable of carrying out a holocaust or a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Needless to say, the horrible events of the past two weeks in Gaza seem to have enforced and vindicated my convictions in this regard.
Israel, government and people, seem to possess the psychological propensity that would make her embark on such a monstrosity. Yes, there is a minority of Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews who say “No” to all the evils and crimes Israel is doing in their name.
However, let us be honest and realistic. These people are a small minority and have very little influence if any on the Israeli government and army.
Today, what many people had thought would be unthinkable or far-fetched in terms of the extent to which Israel would be willing to go in savaging the Palestinian people seems quite possible in light of the Jewish state’s Nazi-like behavior in the Gaza Strip.
Given the Israeli mindset, Israel may well be hoping the latest genocidal onslaught could have a certain desensitizing and de-mystifying effect on people’s perceptions and attitudes.
The logic is quite simple. If the world can be bullied or cajoled into silence and apathy when Gaza is ravaged and thousands of its inhabitants are slaughtered en mass in full view of humanity, the same world can likewise be manipulated in similar fashion to come to terms with a greater genocide.
On Tuesday, 6 January, one Israeli official, Eli Yeshai, called for the total extermination of Gaza . The leader of the ultra Orthodox Shas party argued that “extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah.”
Other Israeli political and religious leaders have lately spoken enthusiastically of the need for “wiping off Gaza from the face of earth” and “annihilating of every moving thing there.”
Interestingly, this is by no means a minority opinion in Israel. Indeed, one could safely argue that the “ideology of annihilation” now represents the mainstream in the Israeli society.
As we all know, Israel heavily employs mendacity, deception and disinformation to conceal, or at least blur, its criminality and barbarianism.
The Israeli hasbara machine’s main job has always been and continues to be to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a “truth” glorified by millions, especially in the west.
To effect these obscene lies and “virtual realities,” the Israeli government counts heavily on the Jewish-controlled or Jewish influenced media in the western world, especially in North America where telling the truth about Israel is the ultimate taboo.
In truth, what has been happening in Gaza is a huge massacre of genocidal proportions as many conscientious Jews have testified.
What else can be said of this wanton, deliberate and indiscriminate blanket bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods and refugee camps?
I believe terms such as “huge massacres” and “genocidal onslaught” used in reference to the Gaza nightmare cannot be dismissed by Israel and her supporters as merely overstatements or rhetorical exaggerations.
This is unless Israel views non-Jewish pain and suffering as disingenuous, probably because non-Jews or “goyem” are actually considered “human animals” by a large and growing class of fanatical rabbis, politicians and military leaders.
So far, more than 4000 Gazans have been mercilessly killed or badly mutilated or incinerated in less than two weeks of intensive indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombing targeting everyone and everything.
Mosques, homes, public buildings, shelters, schools, colleges, dormitories, factories, cultural institutions, businesses, even hospitals and drug stores as well as the entire civilian infrastructure have been bombed and reduced to rubble.
The rabid bombing from high altitudes has exterminated numerous whole families and destroyed entire neighborhoods. This is probably what Israeli leaders had in mind when they spoke earlier about a “shock and awe” campaign against Gaza .
On 6 January, Israeli tanks fired several artillery shells at a school at the Jabalya refugee camp, killing more than 40 civilians, mostly children and women, who had sought shelter at the UNRWA-run facility. Dozens others were injured, many critically.
Israeli army spokespersons, who are actually professional liars, claimed that Palestinian fighters were seen in the vicinity of the building and that some of these actually fired on Israeli troops from the school.
However, UN officials in Gaza strongly denied the Israeli account, with one UN official saying that he was “99.99%” that the Israeli army was lying.
Earlier, the Israeli air forces hit a mourning reception, killing 15 members of the same family.
The pornographic killing of civilians has no explanation other than the ostensible fact that Israel is adopting a no-holds-barred approach toward Gaza , which is still under effective Israeli occupation despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal enclave more than three years ago.
Well, if we are to accept this logic, namely that everything is fair in war, then Jews should stop complaining about what the armies of Hitler did to them during World War II.
It is just unacceptable to apply two standards of morality, one for Jews and another for non-Jews. For if what Israel is doing in Gaza is right, as Israel and her supporters maintain, then what the Nazis did in Europe several decades ago must have been right as well. And vice versa.
After all, crime doesn’t become kosher when committed by Jewish hands.
Colossal crime
The enormity of the present holocaustic assault is undoubtedly a colossal crime against humanity.
In proportion to the size of population, the murder and maiming of 4000 Gazans (the number keeps rising) is like the US having at least a million of its citizens killed or badly injured as a result of a foreign aggression.
As to the utter destruction of Gaza , it is equally shocking. Some American expatriates here in occupied Palestine have spoken of a double holocaust in Gaza , one targeting humans, and another targeting civilization.
Facing their crimes, pornographic and outrageous as they are, many Israelis, probably the majority, are simply so gleeful that they think Israel is doing the right thing and that God is standing on the side of Israel in this war and every war.
Some religious Israelis have become so euphoric, thanks to the Gaza blitz, that they think the Messiah’s coming imminent.
Other “religious” Israeli Jews, including rabbis, readily justify the wanton slaughter by quoting biblical verses justifying genocide.
One Israeli settler leader recently argued during a conversation with a visiting American peace activist that “if it was right to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can’t it be right to commit genocide now . Has God changed his mind,” the settler wondered sarcastically.
As to Israeli leaders and officials, they simply indulge in what they have always been indulging in, namely “denial” and “self-righteousness” or simply playing the role of victim.
Thus behaved Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, when he told al-Jazeera during a live interview on Monday, 5 January.
“ We don’t kill and we have not killed any children in Gaza . We are the victim of Hamas aggression,” said the pathological liar and certified war criminal rather shamelessly.
Peres’s pornographic lies don’t need any further comment. They speak for themselves.
Zionist Jews may very well think that might is right, and that morality is unneeded and unnecessary as long as they possess overwhelming material strength.
They may think that the rivers of blood the “only democracy in the Middle East ” has been shedding will strengthen Israel and terrorize its neighbors.
Well, it may in the short run. However, in the long run, Israeli criminality and evilness will make it sterile from within to the point of death.
Like evil people, evil states shall not prosper.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Is Israel Using Illegal Weapons in its Offensive on Gaza?
By Amira Hass
Haaretz, Jan. 16, 2009
The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.
All of this is being caused by the bombs Israel is dropping on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to reports and testimonies from there. Since the first day of the Israeli aerial attack, people have been giving exact descriptions of the side effects of the bombing, and claiming that Israel is using weapons and ammunition that they have not seen during the past eight years.
Furthermore, the kinds of grave injuries doctors at hospitals in the Strip have reported are providing yet another explanation for the overwhelming dread inhabitants are experiencing in any case.
It is precisely for this reason that Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW), has come to Israel. His mission: to examine whether the weapons that both sides are using are themselves legal and whether the use of them is legal.
The American-born Garlasco has not been permitted to enter Gaza - as is also the case with people from other human rights organizations and foreign journalists. Therefore, he says, since he is unable to examine actual remnants of the explosives and see the wreckage with his own eyes, he can only guess or make assumptions in some cases. But even from afar, he has no doubt: Israel is using white phosphorus bombs. That was immediately clear to him while he stood last week on a hill facing the Gaza Strip and observed the Israel Defense Forces' bombings for several hours.
Last Saturday HRW hastened to publish a call to Israel to "stop unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza." The use of white phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield, explains Garlasco, but the side effects on humans and the environment are severe and highly dangerous. The statement notes that the "potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world."
The fireworks-like explosions, the thick smoke, suffocating gas, and flames that are not extinguished by water, but rather are heightened by it - all of these are characteristic of the white phosphorus bombs the IDF is using. Garlasco believes the decision to make such extensive use of these bombs, manufactured by America's General Dynamics Corporation, stems from conclusions drawn from the Second Lebanon War, in which the IDF lost many tanks.
"The phosphorus bombs create a thick smokescreen and if Hamas has an anti-tank rocket, the smoke prevents the rocket from tracking the tank," he explains. There are two ways to use the bombs: The first is to impact them on the ground, in which case the resulting thick smokescreen covers a limited area; the second way is an airburst of a bomb, which contains 116 wafers doused in phosphorus.
The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen - it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood - anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.
And in the meantime, in the hospitals in Gaza there are people lying in beds - among them many children - whose severe injuries and burns have appalled the medical teams.
Missing the target
Another new weapon that has forced itself upon Gazans is the GPS-guided mortar - a system equipped with satellite navigation, developed in Israel in late 2006-early 2007, in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. According to local military sources, it was this kind of mortar that missed its target by 30 meters and erroneously hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school last week; according to the UN report, 30 people were killed immediately and others died later of their injuries. "It really boggles my mind," Garlasco comments. "According to the literature, it has 3 meters' error - not 30." It is a mortar that is launched in an arc toward an unseen target, he explains, with the intention of being precise and to some extent minimize civilian casualties.
Garlasco says this is the first time the weapon has been used in any military conflict: "The Palestinians say, 'Oh, they use it on us, experiment with it for the Americans.' Experimenting has a different meaning for Americans. We think animal experimenting, but it is indeed a field test."
The new mortar was developed jointly by the Israeli weapons industry and a private American company called Alliant. Israel, notes Garlasco, has learned a lot from the wars the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan and Iraq, but above all learned from its own war in Lebanon in 2006. The mortar that was not supposed to have landed on the school was developed with the knowledge that troops "are fighting an enemy that is in a densely populated area, and here is the first time they use it."
Another important lesson Israel learned from the Lebanon war is that it cannot rely entirely on the U.S. to provide weapons. During that war, when the IDF ran out of cluster bombs, Israel asked for an emergency shipment of 1,200 such munitions (each containing 644 bomblets). The United States refused, and at that point, Garlasco notes, Israel realized it could not rely solely on American help in this realm.
Therefore, Israel has, for example, developed a new type of rifle, the (Tavor) TAR-21 ("an incredible weapon," says Garlasco; he can't help being complimentary) to take the place of the U.S.-made M-16. It has also invented the Delilah guided missile, but Garlasco does not know whether it has been used in Gaza. But not to worry, he adds: Despite the cluster bombs and independent Israeli development, Israel and the United States "still have a great relationship. By and large, the weaponry that Israel is using is American."
Not all of the weapons are new and innovative. Most, in fact, are American products developed during the Cold War. The artillery and incendiary weapons in Israel's possession were designed to destroy Russian tanks "and not Palestinian homes," he notes. The weapons being produced now are developed in the knowledge that the target is militants who operate from within a civilian population. Yet, much of the killing and destruction in Gaza are the result of old-fashioned, cheaper and less-sophisticated weapons.
Only last September did the United States grant Israel's request to supply it with 1,000 bombs of a new type, the GBU-39. They arrived at the beginning of December, and inhabitants of Rafah have witnessed their use - without knowing what they were - since the first day of the aerial attacks on the tunnels there. (The Jerusalem Post was the first to identify these as GBU-39s.) Gazans were surprised when they did not hear an explosion immediately after the Israeli aircraft fired; instead, the earth shook beneath their feet.
The manufacturer of the GBU-39 is the Boeing Corporation. The small diameter and light weight of these guided bombs ensure that any fighter plane can carry a large number of them and thus increase the number of attacks in every sortie. Garlasco says that the weapon is very accurate and penetrates deep into the earth. It is also designed to minimize collateral damage, since it does not explode over a large area like other bombs do. But other types of bombs are also being used and are destroying houses along the border with Egypt.
Gazans have noticed that there are bombs that produce mushroom clouds in various shades of red. Here, Garlasco admits, "I can only speculate. It looks like Israel is maybe using a new weapon that it was not using before: DIME - the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."
He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left." Indeed, the injuries DIME causes are in general more severe than those caused by a "regular" bomb.
A paramedic at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalya refugee camp has told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that about 90 percent of the wounded he has rescued during the past few weeks were brought in with at least one limb missing. Is it the DIME that is causing the severe injuries being reported by the medical staff? Garlasco says there are "only rumors. No one has ever seen it used before, maybe it is being used now, but with Israel not letting in journalists and human rights organizations, these rumors are growing, and people say that Israeli is using terrible new weapons."
Perhaps, he says, the redness is a result of the metal in the explosives, but it will only be possible to ascertain this if experts are allowed into the Gaza Strip, or they talk to the IDF. Garlasco notes that herein lies the big difference between the Israeli army and the American army: As a worker for a human rights organization, he receives daily e-mails from the U.S. Air Force with a detailed report of the bombs it has dropped in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Israelis would never do that," he explains. "They would never talk about what weapons they use and will never allow any discussion in society of whether the weapons should be used."
Another new weapon that he believes is now in use is the Spike: "It is very new, [from] 2005-2006, a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon. It was developed by the U.S. Navy jointly with Rafael [the Israel Armament Development Authority]. Rafael is the manufacturer."
Drones, incidentally, are a totally Israeli product, he notes; Israel is the world leader in this field, and America is learning a lot from it. The warships bombing Gaza are also Israeli made. But the cannons on the ships are Italian, produced by the Oto Melera company.
From his frustrating observation point outside Gaza, and on the basis of Israel's "very bad record of using cluster bombs in Lebanon and selling them to Georgia," Garlasco says he is worried that Israel is also now using the APAM (Anti Personnel/Anti Materiel) - a new type of round, or unit of ammunition, for tanks that was developed after Lebanon, each of which contains six cluster bombs. The tank guns aim above a target that is hiding behind some kind of cover and the ammunition explodes above people's heads - like those of Iz al-Din al-Qassam cells, for example, when they are firing rockets.
The other side
Garlasco and Human Rights Watch also examine the other side, and he says, "We believe that the Grad and Qassam are illegal weapons because they are not accurate enough to be used in this situation." He adds that Hamas makes frequent use of land mines and explosive charges that are liable to injure civilians.
However, because he and his fellow experts can't go into Gaza, "We don't know what the extent of any [Palestinian] civilian casualties is because of Hamas - whether they are shooting soldiers and their bullets end up killing civilians, or whether their anti-tank missiles miss an Israeli tank and hit a house. We don't know."
In 2005, Garlasco met with a political representative of Hamas and told him that use of Grads is a contravention of the Geneva Convention. The reply he got from the Hamas man was: "'All Israelis are military.' And I explained to them that their reading of international law is wrong." It is amazing, he adds, that the Palestinians can manufacture the Qassams under the conditions in Gaza. The Grad, however, "is a real military weapon, three meters long. It has a significant warhead. The problem is that it is designed to be fired in mass, to be fired 21 rockets at a time, so that you are covering an area and you are having a shock effect. You don't only have an explosion, but also a shock and it covers a big area. Shooting one at a time is almost useless from a military perspective."
As for the Israeli claim about weapons and ammunition being hidden in public buildings such as mosques, Garlasco reiterates that only independent sources will be able to examine this claim and clarify its veracity. If the mosques blown up in the heart of densely populated residential neighborhoods indeed served as hiding places for weapons and ammunition, he would expect to see many secondary explosions, which would have caused significant collateral damage and deep craters. It is difficult to analyze the Israeli claims on the basis of photographs, he notes.
Garlasco is not prepared to accept without question the Israeli claim that Hamas hides behind civilians and makes use of civilians. "Israelis are very quick to say they are doing it, but very short on proof. By keeping the independent people out, they leave doubt in people's minds." Furthermore, he believes, Israel has a record of not telling the truth: "They said in Lebanon they did not use cluster bombs. We found 4 million. They evade answering that they use phosphorus, and we stand there every day watching. They claim to have bombed a truck full of Grad missiles, and according to witnesses who spoke with Haaretz, it turned out to be a truck with oxygen tanks. Not everything that is long is a missile. How can anyone trust the Israeli military?'"
The IDF spokesman responds: "The IDF is fighting the terror elements while meticulously observing the rules of engagement under international law. For understandable operational reasons, the IDF will not relate to a detailing of the material that is in its possession and the parameters in which it used. It should be emphasized, however, that the IDF uses only methods and material that are permitted under international law."
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/inside-israeli-terror-arsenal.html
Haaretz, Jan. 16, 2009
The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.
All of this is being caused by the bombs Israel is dropping on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to reports and testimonies from there. Since the first day of the Israeli aerial attack, people have been giving exact descriptions of the side effects of the bombing, and claiming that Israel is using weapons and ammunition that they have not seen during the past eight years.
Furthermore, the kinds of grave injuries doctors at hospitals in the Strip have reported are providing yet another explanation for the overwhelming dread inhabitants are experiencing in any case.
It is precisely for this reason that Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW), has come to Israel. His mission: to examine whether the weapons that both sides are using are themselves legal and whether the use of them is legal.
The American-born Garlasco has not been permitted to enter Gaza - as is also the case with people from other human rights organizations and foreign journalists. Therefore, he says, since he is unable to examine actual remnants of the explosives and see the wreckage with his own eyes, he can only guess or make assumptions in some cases. But even from afar, he has no doubt: Israel is using white phosphorus bombs. That was immediately clear to him while he stood last week on a hill facing the Gaza Strip and observed the Israel Defense Forces' bombings for several hours.
Last Saturday HRW hastened to publish a call to Israel to "stop unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza." The use of white phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield, explains Garlasco, but the side effects on humans and the environment are severe and highly dangerous. The statement notes that the "potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world."
The fireworks-like explosions, the thick smoke, suffocating gas, and flames that are not extinguished by water, but rather are heightened by it - all of these are characteristic of the white phosphorus bombs the IDF is using. Garlasco believes the decision to make such extensive use of these bombs, manufactured by America's General Dynamics Corporation, stems from conclusions drawn from the Second Lebanon War, in which the IDF lost many tanks.
"The phosphorus bombs create a thick smokescreen and if Hamas has an anti-tank rocket, the smoke prevents the rocket from tracking the tank," he explains. There are two ways to use the bombs: The first is to impact them on the ground, in which case the resulting thick smokescreen covers a limited area; the second way is an airburst of a bomb, which contains 116 wafers doused in phosphorus.
The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen - it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood - anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.
And in the meantime, in the hospitals in Gaza there are people lying in beds - among them many children - whose severe injuries and burns have appalled the medical teams.
Missing the target
Another new weapon that has forced itself upon Gazans is the GPS-guided mortar - a system equipped with satellite navigation, developed in Israel in late 2006-early 2007, in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. According to local military sources, it was this kind of mortar that missed its target by 30 meters and erroneously hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school last week; according to the UN report, 30 people were killed immediately and others died later of their injuries. "It really boggles my mind," Garlasco comments. "According to the literature, it has 3 meters' error - not 30." It is a mortar that is launched in an arc toward an unseen target, he explains, with the intention of being precise and to some extent minimize civilian casualties.
Garlasco says this is the first time the weapon has been used in any military conflict: "The Palestinians say, 'Oh, they use it on us, experiment with it for the Americans.' Experimenting has a different meaning for Americans. We think animal experimenting, but it is indeed a field test."
The new mortar was developed jointly by the Israeli weapons industry and a private American company called Alliant. Israel, notes Garlasco, has learned a lot from the wars the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan and Iraq, but above all learned from its own war in Lebanon in 2006. The mortar that was not supposed to have landed on the school was developed with the knowledge that troops "are fighting an enemy that is in a densely populated area, and here is the first time they use it."
Another important lesson Israel learned from the Lebanon war is that it cannot rely entirely on the U.S. to provide weapons. During that war, when the IDF ran out of cluster bombs, Israel asked for an emergency shipment of 1,200 such munitions (each containing 644 bomblets). The United States refused, and at that point, Garlasco notes, Israel realized it could not rely solely on American help in this realm.
Therefore, Israel has, for example, developed a new type of rifle, the (Tavor) TAR-21 ("an incredible weapon," says Garlasco; he can't help being complimentary) to take the place of the U.S.-made M-16. It has also invented the Delilah guided missile, but Garlasco does not know whether it has been used in Gaza. But not to worry, he adds: Despite the cluster bombs and independent Israeli development, Israel and the United States "still have a great relationship. By and large, the weaponry that Israel is using is American."
Not all of the weapons are new and innovative. Most, in fact, are American products developed during the Cold War. The artillery and incendiary weapons in Israel's possession were designed to destroy Russian tanks "and not Palestinian homes," he notes. The weapons being produced now are developed in the knowledge that the target is militants who operate from within a civilian population. Yet, much of the killing and destruction in Gaza are the result of old-fashioned, cheaper and less-sophisticated weapons.
Only last September did the United States grant Israel's request to supply it with 1,000 bombs of a new type, the GBU-39. They arrived at the beginning of December, and inhabitants of Rafah have witnessed their use - without knowing what they were - since the first day of the aerial attacks on the tunnels there. (The Jerusalem Post was the first to identify these as GBU-39s.) Gazans were surprised when they did not hear an explosion immediately after the Israeli aircraft fired; instead, the earth shook beneath their feet.
The manufacturer of the GBU-39 is the Boeing Corporation. The small diameter and light weight of these guided bombs ensure that any fighter plane can carry a large number of them and thus increase the number of attacks in every sortie. Garlasco says that the weapon is very accurate and penetrates deep into the earth. It is also designed to minimize collateral damage, since it does not explode over a large area like other bombs do. But other types of bombs are also being used and are destroying houses along the border with Egypt.
Gazans have noticed that there are bombs that produce mushroom clouds in various shades of red. Here, Garlasco admits, "I can only speculate. It looks like Israel is maybe using a new weapon that it was not using before: DIME - the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."
He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left." Indeed, the injuries DIME causes are in general more severe than those caused by a "regular" bomb.
A paramedic at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalya refugee camp has told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that about 90 percent of the wounded he has rescued during the past few weeks were brought in with at least one limb missing. Is it the DIME that is causing the severe injuries being reported by the medical staff? Garlasco says there are "only rumors. No one has ever seen it used before, maybe it is being used now, but with Israel not letting in journalists and human rights organizations, these rumors are growing, and people say that Israeli is using terrible new weapons."
Perhaps, he says, the redness is a result of the metal in the explosives, but it will only be possible to ascertain this if experts are allowed into the Gaza Strip, or they talk to the IDF. Garlasco notes that herein lies the big difference between the Israeli army and the American army: As a worker for a human rights organization, he receives daily e-mails from the U.S. Air Force with a detailed report of the bombs it has dropped in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Israelis would never do that," he explains. "They would never talk about what weapons they use and will never allow any discussion in society of whether the weapons should be used."
Another new weapon that he believes is now in use is the Spike: "It is very new, [from] 2005-2006, a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon. It was developed by the U.S. Navy jointly with Rafael [the Israel Armament Development Authority]. Rafael is the manufacturer."
Drones, incidentally, are a totally Israeli product, he notes; Israel is the world leader in this field, and America is learning a lot from it. The warships bombing Gaza are also Israeli made. But the cannons on the ships are Italian, produced by the Oto Melera company.
From his frustrating observation point outside Gaza, and on the basis of Israel's "very bad record of using cluster bombs in Lebanon and selling them to Georgia," Garlasco says he is worried that Israel is also now using the APAM (Anti Personnel/Anti Materiel) - a new type of round, or unit of ammunition, for tanks that was developed after Lebanon, each of which contains six cluster bombs. The tank guns aim above a target that is hiding behind some kind of cover and the ammunition explodes above people's heads - like those of Iz al-Din al-Qassam cells, for example, when they are firing rockets.
The other side
Garlasco and Human Rights Watch also examine the other side, and he says, "We believe that the Grad and Qassam are illegal weapons because they are not accurate enough to be used in this situation." He adds that Hamas makes frequent use of land mines and explosive charges that are liable to injure civilians.
However, because he and his fellow experts can't go into Gaza, "We don't know what the extent of any [Palestinian] civilian casualties is because of Hamas - whether they are shooting soldiers and their bullets end up killing civilians, or whether their anti-tank missiles miss an Israeli tank and hit a house. We don't know."
In 2005, Garlasco met with a political representative of Hamas and told him that use of Grads is a contravention of the Geneva Convention. The reply he got from the Hamas man was: "'All Israelis are military.' And I explained to them that their reading of international law is wrong." It is amazing, he adds, that the Palestinians can manufacture the Qassams under the conditions in Gaza. The Grad, however, "is a real military weapon, three meters long. It has a significant warhead. The problem is that it is designed to be fired in mass, to be fired 21 rockets at a time, so that you are covering an area and you are having a shock effect. You don't only have an explosion, but also a shock and it covers a big area. Shooting one at a time is almost useless from a military perspective."
As for the Israeli claim about weapons and ammunition being hidden in public buildings such as mosques, Garlasco reiterates that only independent sources will be able to examine this claim and clarify its veracity. If the mosques blown up in the heart of densely populated residential neighborhoods indeed served as hiding places for weapons and ammunition, he would expect to see many secondary explosions, which would have caused significant collateral damage and deep craters. It is difficult to analyze the Israeli claims on the basis of photographs, he notes.
Garlasco is not prepared to accept without question the Israeli claim that Hamas hides behind civilians and makes use of civilians. "Israelis are very quick to say they are doing it, but very short on proof. By keeping the independent people out, they leave doubt in people's minds." Furthermore, he believes, Israel has a record of not telling the truth: "They said in Lebanon they did not use cluster bombs. We found 4 million. They evade answering that they use phosphorus, and we stand there every day watching. They claim to have bombed a truck full of Grad missiles, and according to witnesses who spoke with Haaretz, it turned out to be a truck with oxygen tanks. Not everything that is long is a missile. How can anyone trust the Israeli military?'"
The IDF spokesman responds: "The IDF is fighting the terror elements while meticulously observing the rules of engagement under international law. For understandable operational reasons, the IDF will not relate to a detailing of the material that is in its possession and the parameters in which it used. It should be emphasized, however, that the IDF uses only methods and material that are permitted under international law."
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/inside-israeli-terror-arsenal.html
Norman Finkelstein: Israel is a Satanic State
American Jewish Professor Norman Finkelstein has heavily criticized Israel over its operation in Gaza. A son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein has been barred from Israel for 10 years and was denied tenure at DePaul University in Chicago because of his critical stance on Israeli policies.
According to Finkelstein, Israel, a state built on the ashes of the Holocaust, is now committing a holocaust against Palestinians in Gaza. In a telephone interview with "Today's Zaman," Finkelstein said Israel was a "terrorist state" created by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. Praising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish people for their courage in supporting Palestinians, Finkelstein referred to Israel as a "satanic" and "lunatic" state. Finkelstein's parents survived the Nazi camps in World War II and then immigrated to the US.
After his book “The Holocaust Industry,” in which he accused many prominent Jewish leaders of abusing the victims of the Holocaust, was published, Finkelstein was almost declared persona non grata by America’s influential Zionist circles.
What does Israel want to achieve with this operation?
Basically, Israel wants to achieve two goals: to restore what it calls its deterrence capacity -- that means to spread fear among Arab states about itself. This is a core principle of Israeli strategic doctrine. Arab states have to be afraid of Israel, afraid of its military might, and Arabs should do what Israelis want. They shall follow Israeli orders.
Israel’s military deterrence suffered a setback in May 2000, when Hezbullah succeeded to expel Israeli occupying forces from south Lebanon. Almost immediately in the aftermath of the failure, Israel planned another war with Hezbullah to re-establish its deterrence capacity. In 2006, after long preparation and using its air force, Israel suffered another ignominious defeat in Lebanon against Hezbullah.
The second goal was to defeat the Palestinian peace offensive. This has been another basic principle of Israeli doctrine: You do not negotiate with Arabs. You give them orders. The Palestinian organization Hamas was becoming too moderate; it was transmitting, giving the signal that it was ready to go along with the two-state settlement based on pre-1967 borders. The leadership of Syria and the West Bank have also been making statements like this. So Israel started to get worried that it would be obliged to negotiate a settlement which the international community has been supporting for the last 30 years.
Those who are against this settlement are the US or Israel, backed by the US. So when Hamas was becoming moderate and holding to the cease-fire it agreed in June 2008, it was showing herself to be a credible negotiating partner. Hamas was standing by its word. In the meantime, Israel has neglected another core principle of cease-fire, namely easing the blockade. So Israel had to defeat this Palestinian peace offensive. It always does this. It provokes Palestinians into reacting, and it wants to either destroy Hamas or inflicts so much damage that Hamas will have to say it will never negotiate with Israel. That is exactly what Israel wants. Israel never wants a moderate negotiating partner because if there is one, pressure on Israel will grow. Hamas is willing for a settlement; Hamas stands by its word. But Israel does not want to negotiate.
What you are basically saying is that Israel is not interested in peace at all.
Israel wants peace in its terms, and its terms are that West Bank should belong to their state.
Will the operation be successful?
First of all, we have to use proper language. There is no operation, and there is no war. What is happening is a slaughter, a massacre. When you have 200 to 300 kids killed, that is not a war. When you have a strong military going in against a defenseless population, that is not a war. When you shoot a fish in a barrel, we do not call it a war. As an Israeli columnist put it, it does not need too much courage to send jets and helicopter gunships to shoot inside a prison. What just happened was not a war. One-third of the casualties were children. It was not a war; it was a just a massacre.
In terms of the Israelis’ goals, you have to say it was successful. It inspired fear among Palestinians and Arabs generally that Israel is a lunatic state and that you have to follow its orders. No. 2, it destroys Hamas as a negotiating partner. You now hear from Hamas that it will not negotiate peace. That is what Israel wanted.
On your Web site, there is an argument that the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by the Nazis. Do you agree with that?
I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.
But do you agree with the characterization?
Look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I am not going to tell people what they should think about it. But what I say is they should look at the pictures and decide for themselves. (For the pictures go to: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2510)
Why have you been barred from entering Israel for 10 years? As the son of Holocaust survivors, you cannot enter Israel.
Let’s be clear on a certain point. I was not entering Israel; I have no interest in going to Israel. I was going to see my friends in the occupied Palestinian territories. And Israel blocked me to go and see my friends in the West Bank. Under international law, I do not think they have any right to do that. I was not posing any security threat to Israel. The day after I was denied entry to Israel, the editorial of "Haaretz" was asking, “Who is afraid of Norman Finkelstein?” They were also saying that I was not a security threat. I do not have any particular interest to go and visit that lunatic state.
There are Jewish intellectuals who now call Israel a “terrorist state.” Is that a correct description?
I am not sure how you cannot agree with that. The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism. The dictionary definition of terrorism is targeting a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The goal of this operation or rather massacre was to terrorize the civilian population and to wreck and destroy as much civilian infrastructure such that the Palestinians would submit. When you attack schools, mosques, ambulances, hospitals, UN relief organizations, what is that? If this is not terrorism, then what is terrorism?
In your famous book, The Holocaust Industry, you argue that the state of Israel, one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, cast itself as a victim state in order to garner immunity to criticism. Have we seen this during the Gaza operation?
They tried to use the Holocaust; it was funny in a very sick way. The leader of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, wrote an article, and he said it is no coincidence that this war in Gaza is occurring around Jan. 27, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day. He wants to pretend some connection. In fact there is a connection, and the connection is Israel is committing a holocaust in Gaza. But that is not the connection he had in mind. He wanted to play the Holocaust card; I think that it is not working very much anymore. It was clear that during this last massacre in Gaza, liberal Jewish public opinion turned against Israel. If you look at the petitions, demonstrations, letters, support to Israel, not only in the international community but also among the Jewish community, is diminishing. So the Holocaust card, the anti-Semitic card, is not working as efficiently as it was working once.
You will probably be called anti-Semitic as well.
I do not think this propaganda is successful anymore.
In your book Beyond Chutzpah, you argue that Israel was created after the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but the question whether it was premeditated remains to be answered. If it is premeditated, then can it be called genocide?
Well, it was premeditated, and I think the record is pretty clear. Even Israel’s former minister of foreign affairs, Shlomo Ben-Ami, in his book published several years ago called “Scars of War,” said that it was quite clear that it was a premeditated expulsion in 1948 and it was anchored in the Zionist philosophy of transfer. Ethnic cleansings are ethnic cleansings, and they are war crimes.
Why do you think US media is so one-sided and so pro-Israeli?
I think it has two components. First of all, Israel serves American interests in the region and American media always give a free pass to those states that serve American interests. That is the overall picture and not much different from other parts of the world. The horrendous governments like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, they also get free passes in the American media. This is the larger context.
And there is, of course, the secondary factor, which is the ethnic element. In many of these newspapers and the media in general, there is a large Jewish presence, and there is a sense of Jewish ethnic solidarity, which plays a role. But I think we have to qualify the secondary factor in two ways. We should not lose sight of the primary factor, which is Israel is the client state of US.
No. 2: In this past war, the liberal Jewish population mostly under the age of 40 completely defected from the war, the massacre. They have been opposed to the massacres from the first day.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been very critical of Israel on Gaza, and some American circles lambasted him in return. What do you think about his stance?
I wish he had gone further. I wish he had gone as far as Qatar, Mauritania, Bolivia and Venezuela in breaking diplomatic relations with that lunatic state. But as far as he has gone, the point on which he stands, has been terrific. And I was glad to see Hamas respected the gestures of the Turkish government and said they would be willing to have Turkish troops stationed on “our border.” That is a very high praise for the Turkish government.
Turks are showing Palestinians compassion, decency and justice. All the Turkish people should take pride in this stance, as was the case on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was the Turkish people and government who showed courage. Ninety-six percent of the Turkish people opposed the war in Iraq. The Turkish government refused to give Americans use of their land to attack Iraq. Now Turkish people and the Turkish government are redeeming themselves again by standing on what is right, what is decent and what is just. I say the highest praise for Erdogan and the Turkish people.
How do you feel about Israel’s operation in Gaza personally as the son of Holocaust survivors?
It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state. Ninety percent of the population continues to cheer, to exalt and feel proud and heroic. They send a Sherman tank to a playground and torch children. Is this heroism? Is this courage?
You were not allowed to teach at DePaul University despite a very good academic record and also had some problems in getting your Ph.D. from Princeton. Why?
Well, I had some problems. I really cannot discuss my problems in the face of what is going on in Gaza. It will be so silly, trivial and stupid. Three hundred or so children -- they were incinerated to death; phosphorus bombs were thrown indiscriminately over Gaza. Everything these people wanted to rebuild was destroyed again. This Israeli state invaded in 1978, again in 1982, again in 1993, again in 1996, again in 2006, and 2008, and it always destroys, destroys and destroys. And then these satanic narcissistic people throw their hands up in the air and ask, “Why doesn’t anybody love us? Why don’t our neighbors want us to be here?” Why would they?
Interviewed by: SELÇUK GÜLTASLI
"Today's Zaman" (Turkey) Jan. 19, 2009
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/norman-finkelstein-israel-is-satanic.html
According to Finkelstein, Israel, a state built on the ashes of the Holocaust, is now committing a holocaust against Palestinians in Gaza. In a telephone interview with "Today's Zaman," Finkelstein said Israel was a "terrorist state" created by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. Praising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish people for their courage in supporting Palestinians, Finkelstein referred to Israel as a "satanic" and "lunatic" state. Finkelstein's parents survived the Nazi camps in World War II and then immigrated to the US.
After his book “The Holocaust Industry,” in which he accused many prominent Jewish leaders of abusing the victims of the Holocaust, was published, Finkelstein was almost declared persona non grata by America’s influential Zionist circles.
What does Israel want to achieve with this operation?
Basically, Israel wants to achieve two goals: to restore what it calls its deterrence capacity -- that means to spread fear among Arab states about itself. This is a core principle of Israeli strategic doctrine. Arab states have to be afraid of Israel, afraid of its military might, and Arabs should do what Israelis want. They shall follow Israeli orders.
Israel’s military deterrence suffered a setback in May 2000, when Hezbullah succeeded to expel Israeli occupying forces from south Lebanon. Almost immediately in the aftermath of the failure, Israel planned another war with Hezbullah to re-establish its deterrence capacity. In 2006, after long preparation and using its air force, Israel suffered another ignominious defeat in Lebanon against Hezbullah.
The second goal was to defeat the Palestinian peace offensive. This has been another basic principle of Israeli doctrine: You do not negotiate with Arabs. You give them orders. The Palestinian organization Hamas was becoming too moderate; it was transmitting, giving the signal that it was ready to go along with the two-state settlement based on pre-1967 borders. The leadership of Syria and the West Bank have also been making statements like this. So Israel started to get worried that it would be obliged to negotiate a settlement which the international community has been supporting for the last 30 years.
Those who are against this settlement are the US or Israel, backed by the US. So when Hamas was becoming moderate and holding to the cease-fire it agreed in June 2008, it was showing herself to be a credible negotiating partner. Hamas was standing by its word. In the meantime, Israel has neglected another core principle of cease-fire, namely easing the blockade. So Israel had to defeat this Palestinian peace offensive. It always does this. It provokes Palestinians into reacting, and it wants to either destroy Hamas or inflicts so much damage that Hamas will have to say it will never negotiate with Israel. That is exactly what Israel wants. Israel never wants a moderate negotiating partner because if there is one, pressure on Israel will grow. Hamas is willing for a settlement; Hamas stands by its word. But Israel does not want to negotiate.
What you are basically saying is that Israel is not interested in peace at all.
Israel wants peace in its terms, and its terms are that West Bank should belong to their state.
Will the operation be successful?
First of all, we have to use proper language. There is no operation, and there is no war. What is happening is a slaughter, a massacre. When you have 200 to 300 kids killed, that is not a war. When you have a strong military going in against a defenseless population, that is not a war. When you shoot a fish in a barrel, we do not call it a war. As an Israeli columnist put it, it does not need too much courage to send jets and helicopter gunships to shoot inside a prison. What just happened was not a war. One-third of the casualties were children. It was not a war; it was a just a massacre.
In terms of the Israelis’ goals, you have to say it was successful. It inspired fear among Palestinians and Arabs generally that Israel is a lunatic state and that you have to follow its orders. No. 2, it destroys Hamas as a negotiating partner. You now hear from Hamas that it will not negotiate peace. That is what Israel wanted.
On your Web site, there is an argument that the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by the Nazis. Do you agree with that?
I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.
But do you agree with the characterization?
Look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I am not going to tell people what they should think about it. But what I say is they should look at the pictures and decide for themselves. (For the pictures go to: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2510)
Why have you been barred from entering Israel for 10 years? As the son of Holocaust survivors, you cannot enter Israel.
Let’s be clear on a certain point. I was not entering Israel; I have no interest in going to Israel. I was going to see my friends in the occupied Palestinian territories. And Israel blocked me to go and see my friends in the West Bank. Under international law, I do not think they have any right to do that. I was not posing any security threat to Israel. The day after I was denied entry to Israel, the editorial of "Haaretz" was asking, “Who is afraid of Norman Finkelstein?” They were also saying that I was not a security threat. I do not have any particular interest to go and visit that lunatic state.
There are Jewish intellectuals who now call Israel a “terrorist state.” Is that a correct description?
I am not sure how you cannot agree with that. The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism. The dictionary definition of terrorism is targeting a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The goal of this operation or rather massacre was to terrorize the civilian population and to wreck and destroy as much civilian infrastructure such that the Palestinians would submit. When you attack schools, mosques, ambulances, hospitals, UN relief organizations, what is that? If this is not terrorism, then what is terrorism?
In your famous book, The Holocaust Industry, you argue that the state of Israel, one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, cast itself as a victim state in order to garner immunity to criticism. Have we seen this during the Gaza operation?
They tried to use the Holocaust; it was funny in a very sick way. The leader of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, wrote an article, and he said it is no coincidence that this war in Gaza is occurring around Jan. 27, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day. He wants to pretend some connection. In fact there is a connection, and the connection is Israel is committing a holocaust in Gaza. But that is not the connection he had in mind. He wanted to play the Holocaust card; I think that it is not working very much anymore. It was clear that during this last massacre in Gaza, liberal Jewish public opinion turned against Israel. If you look at the petitions, demonstrations, letters, support to Israel, not only in the international community but also among the Jewish community, is diminishing. So the Holocaust card, the anti-Semitic card, is not working as efficiently as it was working once.
You will probably be called anti-Semitic as well.
I do not think this propaganda is successful anymore.
In your book Beyond Chutzpah, you argue that Israel was created after the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but the question whether it was premeditated remains to be answered. If it is premeditated, then can it be called genocide?
Well, it was premeditated, and I think the record is pretty clear. Even Israel’s former minister of foreign affairs, Shlomo Ben-Ami, in his book published several years ago called “Scars of War,” said that it was quite clear that it was a premeditated expulsion in 1948 and it was anchored in the Zionist philosophy of transfer. Ethnic cleansings are ethnic cleansings, and they are war crimes.
Why do you think US media is so one-sided and so pro-Israeli?
I think it has two components. First of all, Israel serves American interests in the region and American media always give a free pass to those states that serve American interests. That is the overall picture and not much different from other parts of the world. The horrendous governments like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, they also get free passes in the American media. This is the larger context.
And there is, of course, the secondary factor, which is the ethnic element. In many of these newspapers and the media in general, there is a large Jewish presence, and there is a sense of Jewish ethnic solidarity, which plays a role. But I think we have to qualify the secondary factor in two ways. We should not lose sight of the primary factor, which is Israel is the client state of US.
No. 2: In this past war, the liberal Jewish population mostly under the age of 40 completely defected from the war, the massacre. They have been opposed to the massacres from the first day.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been very critical of Israel on Gaza, and some American circles lambasted him in return. What do you think about his stance?
I wish he had gone further. I wish he had gone as far as Qatar, Mauritania, Bolivia and Venezuela in breaking diplomatic relations with that lunatic state. But as far as he has gone, the point on which he stands, has been terrific. And I was glad to see Hamas respected the gestures of the Turkish government and said they would be willing to have Turkish troops stationed on “our border.” That is a very high praise for the Turkish government.
Turks are showing Palestinians compassion, decency and justice. All the Turkish people should take pride in this stance, as was the case on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was the Turkish people and government who showed courage. Ninety-six percent of the Turkish people opposed the war in Iraq. The Turkish government refused to give Americans use of their land to attack Iraq. Now Turkish people and the Turkish government are redeeming themselves again by standing on what is right, what is decent and what is just. I say the highest praise for Erdogan and the Turkish people.
How do you feel about Israel’s operation in Gaza personally as the son of Holocaust survivors?
It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state. Ninety percent of the population continues to cheer, to exalt and feel proud and heroic. They send a Sherman tank to a playground and torch children. Is this heroism? Is this courage?
You were not allowed to teach at DePaul University despite a very good academic record and also had some problems in getting your Ph.D. from Princeton. Why?
Well, I had some problems. I really cannot discuss my problems in the face of what is going on in Gaza. It will be so silly, trivial and stupid. Three hundred or so children -- they were incinerated to death; phosphorus bombs were thrown indiscriminately over Gaza. Everything these people wanted to rebuild was destroyed again. This Israeli state invaded in 1978, again in 1982, again in 1993, again in 1996, again in 2006, and 2008, and it always destroys, destroys and destroys. And then these satanic narcissistic people throw their hands up in the air and ask, “Why doesn’t anybody love us? Why don’t our neighbors want us to be here?” Why would they?
Interviewed by: SELÇUK GÜLTASLI
"Today's Zaman" (Turkey) Jan. 19, 2009
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/norman-finkelstein-israel-is-satanic.html
Israel Tortures Gaza Prisoners
GAZA 28/01/2009 -- The ministry of prisoners' affairs in Gaza has charged that the Israeli occupation authority was using cruel and internationally banned interrogation methods with detainees captured in Gaza during the Israeli onslaught.
The ministry, in a press release on Wednesday, said that the Israeli occupation forces took with them more than 200 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip after their withdrawal and subjected them to torture rounds in order to extract any information on resistance elements and places from where the homemade rockets are being fired at Israeli targets.
It pointed out that the prisoners were subjected to severe beating especially in the upper parts of the body, forced to sit in uncomfortable positions, deprived of sleep and forced to sit on children chairs while both hands and feet shackled in addition to violently shaking them and exposing them to extreme cold.
The ministry underlined that some of those detainees were moved to the Negev desert prison without any clothes, covers or other basic necessities, and noted that the IOA was dealing with those detainees as "unlawful combatants", which meant they had no rights and indefinitely detained without trial or specific charge or knowing the reason for their detention.
The ministry appealed to the Red Cross to inspect those detainees and to get a list of their names at least so as to ensure their relatives they are still alive and to deny the IOA the opportunity to tamper with their destiny. It noted that the IOF soldiers had executed tens of citizens after their arrest in the Strip's border areas and in Tal Al-Hawa suburb in Gaza city without posing any danger on the soldiers.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk
The ministry, in a press release on Wednesday, said that the Israeli occupation forces took with them more than 200 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip after their withdrawal and subjected them to torture rounds in order to extract any information on resistance elements and places from where the homemade rockets are being fired at Israeli targets.
It pointed out that the prisoners were subjected to severe beating especially in the upper parts of the body, forced to sit in uncomfortable positions, deprived of sleep and forced to sit on children chairs while both hands and feet shackled in addition to violently shaking them and exposing them to extreme cold.
The ministry underlined that some of those detainees were moved to the Negev desert prison without any clothes, covers or other basic necessities, and noted that the IOA was dealing with those detainees as "unlawful combatants", which meant they had no rights and indefinitely detained without trial or specific charge or knowing the reason for their detention.
The ministry appealed to the Red Cross to inspect those detainees and to get a list of their names at least so as to ensure their relatives they are still alive and to deny the IOA the opportunity to tamper with their destiny. It noted that the IOF soldiers had executed tens of citizens after their arrest in the Strip's border areas and in Tal Al-Hawa suburb in Gaza city without posing any danger on the soldiers.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk
Israel added Tungsten to its Phosphoric Bombs used in Gaza
GAZA 28/01/2009-- Dr. Essam Hijjawi, a board member in the health committees in the West Bank, revealed Wednesday that Israel used white phosphorus consolidated with Tungsten, a chemical element that has atomic number 74, against the civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Hijjawi added that this type of chemical weapon is more hazardous than the one used by the US military in Iraq, because Israel improved it by adding Tungsten, which if inhaled dissolves in the blood and damages the arteries in the body.
Regarding the health situation in Gaza, he noted that the technical potentials in the Gaza hospitals are limited and need serious support.
In a new development, Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, stated in a communiqué received by the PIC that its fighters fired three mortar shells on a special Israeli force that tried to infiltrate into the east of Al-Maghazi area, in central Gaza Strip.
The infiltrating troops withdrew from the area after they advanced into it for a distance of 500 meters and bulldozed vast areas of agricultural lands.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk
Dr. Hijjawi added that this type of chemical weapon is more hazardous than the one used by the US military in Iraq, because Israel improved it by adding Tungsten, which if inhaled dissolves in the blood and damages the arteries in the body.
Regarding the health situation in Gaza, he noted that the technical potentials in the Gaza hospitals are limited and need serious support.
In a new development, Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, stated in a communiqué received by the PIC that its fighters fired three mortar shells on a special Israeli force that tried to infiltrate into the east of Al-Maghazi area, in central Gaza Strip.
The infiltrating troops withdrew from the area after they advanced into it for a distance of 500 meters and bulldozed vast areas of agricultural lands.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk
Swiss lawmakers: Israel destroyed man, stone, and tree in Gaza
GAZA, (PIC) 28/01/2009-- Members of a Swiss parliamentary delegation visiting the devastated Gaza Strip have expressed shock over the level of destruction the Israeli occupation government inflicted on the Strip, asserting that Israel killed everything in Gaza.
Furthermore, the delegation that comprised four Swiss lawmakers have also urged their government, being the sponsor of the Geneva convention to immediately mobilize to help the beleaguered Strip, and to identify and prosecute Israeli war generals responsible for Gaza massacre.
They also called on their government to halt all military cooperation with Israel after the war on Gaza proved it was the aggressor.
The delegation inspected part of the huge destruction in Gaza, saying that there was no safe place for civilians in Gaza to hide because the Israeli occupation army was bombing the people in the streets and inside their homes.
One of the members, MP Carlo Samaroga, affirmed that the Swiss government should arrest and prosecute any Israeli official involved in the carnage in Gaza if he stepped on Swiss soil.
"This was not a battle fighter to fighter, but rather it was a war between a regular army (the IOF troops), and civilians (The Palestinian people in Gaza). This is unacceptable crime, and the international community should punish the perpetrators", said MP Joseph Zisyadis.
They finally stressed the Palestinian people' rights to resist the occupation on their lands till they liberate them as France did when the Germans occupied it, underlining that the Israeli economic blockade on Gaza must be lifted immediately.
In the same context, Moroccan MPs visiting Gaza Strip blamed the international community for the Israeli massacre in Gaza for not doing anything to stop the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the IOF troops.
They vowed to cooperate with their Palestinian counterparts to file lawsuits against Israeli war criminals involved in the horrible carnage.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Furthermore, the delegation that comprised four Swiss lawmakers have also urged their government, being the sponsor of the Geneva convention to immediately mobilize to help the beleaguered Strip, and to identify and prosecute Israeli war generals responsible for Gaza massacre.
They also called on their government to halt all military cooperation with Israel after the war on Gaza proved it was the aggressor.
The delegation inspected part of the huge destruction in Gaza, saying that there was no safe place for civilians in Gaza to hide because the Israeli occupation army was bombing the people in the streets and inside their homes.
One of the members, MP Carlo Samaroga, affirmed that the Swiss government should arrest and prosecute any Israeli official involved in the carnage in Gaza if he stepped on Swiss soil.
"This was not a battle fighter to fighter, but rather it was a war between a regular army (the IOF troops), and civilians (The Palestinian people in Gaza). This is unacceptable crime, and the international community should punish the perpetrators", said MP Joseph Zisyadis.
They finally stressed the Palestinian people' rights to resist the occupation on their lands till they liberate them as France did when the Germans occupied it, underlining that the Israeli economic blockade on Gaza must be lifted immediately.
In the same context, Moroccan MPs visiting Gaza Strip blamed the international community for the Israeli massacre in Gaza for not doing anything to stop the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the IOF troops.
They vowed to cooperate with their Palestinian counterparts to file lawsuits against Israeli war criminals involved in the horrible carnage.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
MUI haramkan merokok
JAKARTA 27 Jan. - Majlis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) memutuskan merokok dan yoga adalah haram bagi umat Islam.
Bagi merokok, MUI memutuskan bahawa ia haram kepada wanita Islam yang mengandung dan kanak-kanak.
Selain itu, merokok di tempat awam juga dihukum sebagai haram.
Majlis itu juga memutuskan senaman yoga yang mengandungi meditasi dan ritual agama adalah haram bagi umat Islam.
"Merokok adalah haram bagi wanita yang mengandung dan kanak-kanak, merokok di tempat awam juga haram dan begitu juga bagi ahli majlis ulama," kata H.M. Amin Suma yang mempengerusikan mesyuarat itu di Padang Panjang, Sumatera Barat, kelmarin.
Beliau yang dipetik agensi berita Antara berkata, merokok bagi wanita mengandung dan kanak-kanak adalah berdosa.
Beliau juga meminta kerajaan menggubal undang-undang bagi menyokong fatwa tersebut.
Seorang penasihat MUI, Nurhayati Hakim berkata, keputusan itu dibuat sebulat suara dan ia sejajar dengan ajaran Nabi Muhammad S.A.W.
"Sekurang-kurangnya fatwa itu menetapkan had, supaya orang ramai tidak merokok sesuka hati mereka," katanya.
Namun, MUI juga mengeluarkan fatwa bahawa yoga yang berbentuk senaman untuk kepentingan kesihatan sebagai dibolehkan.
"Fatwa tersebut diperlukan agar umat Islam tidak mencampuradukkan yang hak dengan yang batil," kata Amin yang juga Ketua MUI Pusat.
Menurutnya, fatwa MUI itu adalah berlandaskan al-Quran iaitu ayat 33 surah Muhammad yang mewajibkan umat Islam mentaati Allah SWT dan Rasulullah SAW serta tidak merosak pahala amalan yang diperbuat.
Ayat yang mensyaratkan larangan mencampuradukkan yang hak dengan yang batil pula, katanya terdapat dalam surah Al-Baqarah ayat 42.
"Fatwa tersebut lebih berdasar, persoalan hukum yoga setelah munculnya berita tentang fatwa ahli Majlis Muzakarah Fatwa Kebangsaan yang bersidang pada 22-24 Oktober 2008 di Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia, yang memutuskan yoga adalah haram," katanya.
Atas fatwa tersebut, menurut beliau, menyebabkan banyak persoalan timbul dan termasuk permintaan agar MUI mengkaji, membahas dan juga memfatwakan masalah yoga.
Yoga oleh masyarakat Indonesia umumnya sebagai salah satu bentuk senaman pernafasan.
Difahamkan juga yoga wujud sejak sejak 6 abad sebelum Masihi, jauh sebelum agama Hindu lahir.
Yoga awal tidak terkait dengan agama, tetapi dalam perkembangannya banyak pendita Hindu yang mendalami yoga yang kemudian melakukan asimilasi yoga dengan ajaran agama Hindu. – Utusan Malaysia.
Ulasan:
Bagi merokok, MUI memutuskan bahawa ia haram kepada wanita Islam yang mengandung dan kanak-kanak.
Selain itu, merokok di tempat awam juga dihukum sebagai haram.
Majlis itu juga memutuskan senaman yoga yang mengandungi meditasi dan ritual agama adalah haram bagi umat Islam.
"Merokok adalah haram bagi wanita yang mengandung dan kanak-kanak, merokok di tempat awam juga haram dan begitu juga bagi ahli majlis ulama," kata H.M. Amin Suma yang mempengerusikan mesyuarat itu di Padang Panjang, Sumatera Barat, kelmarin.
Beliau yang dipetik agensi berita Antara berkata, merokok bagi wanita mengandung dan kanak-kanak adalah berdosa.
Beliau juga meminta kerajaan menggubal undang-undang bagi menyokong fatwa tersebut.
Seorang penasihat MUI, Nurhayati Hakim berkata, keputusan itu dibuat sebulat suara dan ia sejajar dengan ajaran Nabi Muhammad S.A.W.
"Sekurang-kurangnya fatwa itu menetapkan had, supaya orang ramai tidak merokok sesuka hati mereka," katanya.
Namun, MUI juga mengeluarkan fatwa bahawa yoga yang berbentuk senaman untuk kepentingan kesihatan sebagai dibolehkan.
"Fatwa tersebut diperlukan agar umat Islam tidak mencampuradukkan yang hak dengan yang batil," kata Amin yang juga Ketua MUI Pusat.
Menurutnya, fatwa MUI itu adalah berlandaskan al-Quran iaitu ayat 33 surah Muhammad yang mewajibkan umat Islam mentaati Allah SWT dan Rasulullah SAW serta tidak merosak pahala amalan yang diperbuat.
Ayat yang mensyaratkan larangan mencampuradukkan yang hak dengan yang batil pula, katanya terdapat dalam surah Al-Baqarah ayat 42.
"Fatwa tersebut lebih berdasar, persoalan hukum yoga setelah munculnya berita tentang fatwa ahli Majlis Muzakarah Fatwa Kebangsaan yang bersidang pada 22-24 Oktober 2008 di Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia, yang memutuskan yoga adalah haram," katanya.
Atas fatwa tersebut, menurut beliau, menyebabkan banyak persoalan timbul dan termasuk permintaan agar MUI mengkaji, membahas dan juga memfatwakan masalah yoga.
Yoga oleh masyarakat Indonesia umumnya sebagai salah satu bentuk senaman pernafasan.
Difahamkan juga yoga wujud sejak sejak 6 abad sebelum Masihi, jauh sebelum agama Hindu lahir.
Yoga awal tidak terkait dengan agama, tetapi dalam perkembangannya banyak pendita Hindu yang mendalami yoga yang kemudian melakukan asimilasi yoga dengan ajaran agama Hindu. – Utusan Malaysia.
Ulasan:
Halang pesalah trafik Singapura
KUALA LUMPUR 27 Jan. – Semua pemilik kenderaan asing yang melakukan kesalahan trafik di negara ini perlu dihalang daripada kembali ke negara asal masing-masing selagi saman tidak dijelaskan.
Presiden Kesatuan Pegawai Pengangkutan Jalan Semenanjung Malaysia (KPPJSM), Hamzah Masri berkata, sekiranya langkah tegas itu tidak diambil, segala tindakan agensi penguatkuasaan yang mengeluarkan saman akan sia-sia dan diperlekehkan oleh mereka.
Lebih membimbangkan, katanya, rakyat akan memandang serong kepada agensi penguatkuasaan kerana dianggap mengamalkan sikap ‘pilih bulu’ apabila berlembut dengan pesalah trafik warga asing.
“Kenapa kita bertegas dengan rakyat sendiri dan terlepas pandang kesalahan rakyat negara lain? Tahap ketegasan itu sepatutnya sama.
“Justeru, KPPJSM mencadangkan kenderaan negara asing yang kena saman, kita sekat pemiliknya di pintu keluar sehinggalah mereka menjelaskan saman terlebih dahulu,” katanya yang dihubungi Utusan Malaysia di sini hari ini…
Ulasan: Mengapakah Malaysia takut melaksanakan ini di negara kita?
Presiden Kesatuan Pegawai Pengangkutan Jalan Semenanjung Malaysia (KPPJSM), Hamzah Masri berkata, sekiranya langkah tegas itu tidak diambil, segala tindakan agensi penguatkuasaan yang mengeluarkan saman akan sia-sia dan diperlekehkan oleh mereka.
Lebih membimbangkan, katanya, rakyat akan memandang serong kepada agensi penguatkuasaan kerana dianggap mengamalkan sikap ‘pilih bulu’ apabila berlembut dengan pesalah trafik warga asing.
“Kenapa kita bertegas dengan rakyat sendiri dan terlepas pandang kesalahan rakyat negara lain? Tahap ketegasan itu sepatutnya sama.
“Justeru, KPPJSM mencadangkan kenderaan negara asing yang kena saman, kita sekat pemiliknya di pintu keluar sehinggalah mereka menjelaskan saman terlebih dahulu,” katanya yang dihubungi Utusan Malaysia di sini hari ini…
Ulasan: Mengapakah Malaysia takut melaksanakan ini di negara kita?
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
Avi Shlaim, The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration' s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.
Avi Shlaim, The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration' s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.
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