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In articles acknowledging the one year anniversary of the assault on Gaza, blunt and unsparing language about what really happened is often avoided. Despite sympathy for and support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against dispossession and oppression, the description of what took place in January 2009 is sometimes buffered by a misguided sense of political correctness. Yes, it’s terrible. Yes, it is unjust. But we don’t want to be inflammatory or risk offending the sensitivities of those who through their own willful ignorance cling to the notion that Israel is a victim state, fighting for its very survival. The argument is that we should reach out to them and attempt to educate them and win them over.

I’ll be more forthright in this commentary.

The sociopathic Zionist administration of Israel, as part of its continuing brutal colonization of Palestine, set out to deliberately devastate the already nearly-incapacitated infrastructure which supports the existence of one and a half million human refugees. The people of Gaza, second-, third-, and fourth-generation dispossessed Palestinians, are living in forced exile from land their families inhabited and cultivated for generations. Half of them are children under the age of fifteen. Their culture and their economy has been systematically ravaged by Israel for decades and since 2006 a criminal siege supported by the United States, as well as much of the international community, has deprived them of all but the most minimal resources for subsistence. This oppressed and brutalized population was then bombed, bulldozed and terrorized mercilessly for twenty-three days.

Below is a small sampling of facts concerning what the fourth largest military in the world did to a captive and defenseless population. The source materials used to substantiate these statistics are available on request. If the reality presented here goes beyond the stretch of your imagination, you can verify the data yourself. Though you’d better hurry. Much of this information appears to be disappearing down Google’s memory hole, just as is the fate of the people of Gaza. A source referencing the percentage of agricultural land destroyed in the onslaught which was used for a shorter version of this article just a few weeks ago is no longer archived in Google’s cache. Surprise, surprise.

You will also find that exact figures vary somewhat depending on the source. But whether it was 21,000 structures or 22,000 structures destroyed, whether 280 schools were destroyed or badly damaged verses 230, the overwhelming truth of the physical devastation which took place in Gaza and the fact that this destruction was deliberate and premeditated is irrefutable. Even the Goldstone Report, itself a document with severe pro-Zionist overtones issued by a declared Zionist and a supporter of Israel, states unequivocally, “…[the] deliberate actions of the Israeli forces and the declared policies of the Government of Israel … cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law.”

We’ve heard time and again that more than 1400 Palestinians were killed, over 80% of them civilians, including 342 children. It has become a familiar talking point in discussions of last year’s assault, so much so that it may have lost its impact on our consciousness. But what we often aren’t reminded of is the horrific level of carefully-planned destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza orchestrated by Israel during Operation Cast Lead.

Financed and armed by the United States, the Israeli military destroyed fifteen percent of the structures in Gaza, approximately 22,000 buildings, including 5300 housing units destroyed or subject to major damage. Another 52,000 homes received some form of structural damage. Over 200 factories and 700 stores and businesses were destroyed or badly damaged. Of the residences, factories and businesses completely destroyed, 1300 of the homes and approximately 25% of the commercial property was deliberately and painstakingly bulldozed or exploded by Israeli ground forces. Eight hospitals and 26 primary health care clinics were damaged or destroyed. More than 280 schools were damaged or destroyed.

Water and sewage treatment facilities as well as electricity infrastructure were deliberately targeted leaving vast segments of the population with little or no power or clean water for the duration of the assault and for weeks and months to follow. Massive amounts of agricultural lands were systematically bombed or bulldozed. Some estimates suggest that as much as 80% of the arable land in Gaza has been ruined or declared off-limits to the people of Gaza over the last decade. Two million litres of wastewater at Gaza City’s sewage treatment plant, bombed during the assault, leaked into surrounding agricultural land making it unusable.

An Israeli television station boasted that Israeli war planes alone, without accounting for tank, ground troop and warship ammunition, dropped approximately one thousand tons of bombs on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

The effort involved months, if not years, of carefully-considered target selection, giving lie to any claim that the devastation was incidental. It requires a stunning level of denial and self-delusion to pretend the destruction which was achieved in Gaza had anything to do with Israel’s “security” or the targeting of Hamas militants. This was savage and barbaric collective punishment unleashed on a civilian population, nothing more. Any suggestion to the contrary must be sharply and immediately ridiculed as absurd.

This was arguably the first aerial bombing campaign ever conducted on a defenseless civilian population held captive within a fenced enclosure and not allowed to escape the assault. It is a measure of the cynical mindset of the Israeli military that leaflets were sometimes dropped in neighborhoods about to be bombed suggesting the residents flee. We are about to destroy your home; you had better get out. Flee to where? Gazans are not allowed to leave their open-air prison, not even when under attack. This tactic on the part of Israel also gives lie to the claim that homes and buildings were targeted because there were Hamas militants “hiding” inside. Why then warn them to leave before destroying the structures?

Given this litany of horror and the coldly premeditated nature of its execution, we need to ask what kind of society condones this level of savagery on the part of their government? What precedent is there for such monstrous disregard for even the most basic tenets of human decency? We need look no further than the behavior of our very own United States, of course. In Iraq, the toll of our psychotic militarism is well over a million human beings (not counting the years of punishing economic sanctions) and a large part of the infrastructure of an entire nation of more than 26 million people has been obliterated. Let’s not even begin to tally up the deaths resulting from U.S. imperialism around the globe in the last sixty years alone. It would put the Jews to shame–mere pikers in the annals of human slaughter.

And what of Gaza today, one year later? Israel’s continued illegal siege, enabled by the U.S., Egypt (a U.S. client state) and the international community has prevented any substantial amount of building materials from entering Gaza. Essentially, no reconstruction has been possible. The people of Gaza live amongst the rubble left to them by Israeli hatred and aggression. They are attempting to rebuild their society using mud bricks and materials salvaged from the wreckage.

The next time someone attempts to argue, “Israel has a right to defend itself,” or uses what I call the abusive spouse defense, ”Look what you made me do,” tell them, “No.” Tell them there is no and can never be any acceptable justification for the deliberate devastation of entire societies, no matter what political, ideological or “security” issues, real or imagined, may be at stake.

It is unconscionable. It is wrong. Plainly put, there is no sane argument in favor of such behavior. Those who believe there is must be contradicted and opposed at every available opportunity.

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Boycott Campaign – Forbidden Truth

The Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. Palestinians have asked the United Nations to help stop a Simon Wiesenthal Center project, the Center for Human Dignity — Museum of Tolerance.

It was the latest challenge to the Center for Human Dignity — Museum of Tolerance being built here by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. The project has been plagued by stinging criticism and other problems since 2004, when the sponsors began digging up a 50-year-old parking lot built over part of the cemetery. ~jewified~

At a news conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Palestinian campaigners, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit organization in New York, presented their arguments for preserving the burial site, known as the Mamilla Cemetery, or in Arabic, Ma’man Allah. News conferences were also held in Geneva and Los Angeles.

In Jerusalem, Jamal Nusseibeh, son of the prominent Palestinian philosophy professor Sari Nusseibeh, said at least one of his ancestors was buried in the cemetery, which lies in what is now the predominantly Jewish western part of the city.

The cemetery, he said, is “part of the very rich fabric of Jerusalem.” The thought that anyone would want to wipe it out, he said, was “very hard to understand.”

Sixty Palestinians who say they are descendants of those buried in the cemetery have signed the petition, including Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, and Abdul Qader Husseini, son of the late Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian leader in Jerusalem.

The petitioners have asked the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, the director general of Unesco and other United Nations officials to act urgently to stop the desecration of ancient graves and to declare the cemetery a protected heritage site.

Much of the cemetery has already been swallowed by development in recent decades. Israel built the parking lot over some of it in the 1960s. A school, a road and a large park now cover other parts.

Construction in Jerusalem is always accompanied by historical excavation. In the case of the museum, after ground was broken in 2004, excavators found evidence of layers of graves dating from the 11th century. A total of 250 skeletons were exhumed, and 200 more graves were exposed. The excavators estimated that the site held some 2,000 graves in all.

Responding to the latest protests, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement: “The Museum of Tolerance project is not being built on the Mamilla Cemetery. It is being built on Jerusalem’s former municipal car park, where every day for nearly half a century, thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews parked their cars without any protest whatsoever from the Muslim community.”

Rabbi Hier added that Israel’s Antiquities Authority had determined that there were no longer any bones or remains on the site, where infrastructure work was under way. The remains found there have been interred in a nearby Muslim cemetery, he said.

[There are no bones to prove a Holocaust either but that doesn't stop you jews from "glorifying" your pseudo genocide]~jewified~

In 2008, after three years of deliberations and noting that no objections had been filed when the parking lot was originally built, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the museum project could go ahead. The case against it was brought by a Muslim group backed by Sheik Raed Salah, the leader of the fiery northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
Supporters of the museum said then that the fight was a political ploy by Muslim extremists trying to gain a foothold in the center of West Jerusalem. The Palestinian campaigners have argued that it is about respect for the living and the dignity and sanctity of the dead.

Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority governor of Jerusalem, said he could not understand how an American institution accepted the idea of building a museum “on the bodies of others.”

The museum, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Web site, is intended to confront issues like “global anti-Semitism, extremism, hate, human dignity and responsibility, and promoting unity and respect among Jews and people of all faiths.” ~fu~

When the parking lot was built, for example, Israel said it got authorization from a Muslim cleric who said that a Muslim cemetery lost its sanctity if it was not in use for 37 years. The last burials in Mamilla were probably in the 1930s.

But in a letter to Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist and critic of the museum project, Ahmad Natour, the president of the Shariah High Court of Appeals, Israel’s religious court for Muslim issues, stated that the sanctity of Muslim cemeteries was “eternal” and “cannot be changed until Judgment Day.” He added that the cleric in question, at the time he “authorized” the parking lot, was enmeshed in charges of criminal fraud, and that he was convicted.

The architect Frank Gehry, who drew the original designs for the museum, recently withdrew from the project after the Simon Wiesenthal Center said it needed to redesign the museum to reflect new economic realities. After a colleague was quoted as saying the project was “politically sensitive,” Mr. Gehry said publicly that his withdrawal was not for political reasons but because his staff and resources were committed to other projects

GAZA, (PIC)– The Palestinian Power Authority (PPA) said on Thursday that the sole power station in the Gaza Strip is going to grind to a halt Friday evening because of lack of fuel.

Last week, Israeli authorities have prevented 19 patients from crossing over to Ramallah in the West Bank, which is Palestinian territory, for cornea implants that could save their sight.

Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Gaza on the harmful effects of a blockade that has no end in sight.

Head of Hamas political bureau Khaled Meshaal

On the anniversary of the end of Israel’s war on Gaza, Head of Hamas political bureau Khaled Meshaal says Palestinians will never back down from resisting the Israeli occupation.

On Friday, Meshaal highlighted national unity, solidarity among the Muslim community and faith in God as key to what brought about victory for Gazans.

Speaking to a large crowd of supporters in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Meshaal saluted the over 1,400 Palestinians who lost their lives during the three-week long Israeli onslaught and the tens of thousands of others who were wounded and displaced.

Meshaal acknowledged the Israeli upper hand in military prowess, but assured that Tel Aviv would never be able to defeat the Palestinian nation and its resistance, vowing to fight a fierce battle and defeat Israel, in the event of another war against the Gaza Strip.

Meshaal ruled out dependence on anyone other than the Palestinian nation, saying collaboration with Israel is a "humiliating" act doomed to failure.

The political chief of Hamas highlighted the need for reconstruction of Gaza and lifting the crippling Israeli-imposed siege on the impoverished population of the coastal sliver. He called on the upcoming Arab League summit, scheduled for March in Libya, to put the issue high on the agenda.

The senior Hamas member vowed that the Islamic Palestinian movement would never back down from resistance against the Israeli occupation.

He said Hamas would never abandon the rights of the Palestinian people and would not back down from its principles in the face of the enemy’s efforts to isolate the movement.

"We will not change until we have achieved the rights of our refugees outside Palestine and liberation of occupied territories… and we will never recognize the Zionist entity," he stressed.

Meshaal accused Israel of disrupting prisoner exchange talks and assured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit would not be released until Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons are released.

He further warned against Israeli excavations near Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied Jerusalem Al-Quds, saying the sanctuary — the third-holiest site for the Muslim world — could collapse any minute and catch the Muslim world by surprise.

The Palestinian leader called for solidarity among Palestinians to liberate the West Bank from the Israeli occupation and warned Western-backed diplomatic channels would only benefit Israel and its allies in the United States and US President Barack Obama’s administration.

He recalled recent expressions of frustration by Obama and his special envoy to the Middle East with the stalled peace process in the region, asking, "How could a frustrated person bring us liberation and victory?"

WASHINGTON - "With respect to the Middle East, I think that you know we’re absolutely committed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s round two or round 20," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday in reference to the stalled peace process.

During a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Clinton said, "We believe that this is a situation that deserves constant, persistent attention; that the absence of such attention perhaps created some of the difficulties that we are now encountering.

"But ultimately, as the president also said in his interview, this has to be between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The United States, the UK, the EU, the Arab League, everyone can work together to try to create the conditions for a resolution of the outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but at the end of the day, they must make that decision," the top US diplomat said.

"So we are going to continue to do everything we can to create an environment in which that is possible. We have urged both the Israelis and the Palestinians to get back to the negotiating table and to start hashing out the very difficult but, we believe, solvable problems that stand in the way of security for the state of Israel and a state for the Palestinians."

Earlier Thursday, US President Barack Obama said his administration overestimated its ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to resume meaningful peace talks.

He said both parties have been unwilling to make the bold gestures needed to move the process forward. If the US had anticipated that earlier, the American leader said, he might not have raised his expectations so high.

Everyone affected

Clinton also discussed the Iranian issue, telling reporters "this is not happening in a vacuum, this whole effort that we’re engaged in regarding influencing and restraining the Iranians’ nuclear program.

"The prospects of the instability that would potentially ensue from Iran pursuing and achieving a nuclear breakout capacity or even a nuclear weapons program would be so intensely destabilizing, there is not a country in the world that is in the neighborhood, the region, relying on the oil market, that would not be directly affected," she said.

Meanwhile, officials in Jerusalem said Israel would continue to support the American peace initiative in order to boost its status within the international community. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told special US envoy George Mitchell during their meeting Thursday night that he does not believe indirect talks with the Palestinians under US mediation were necessary.

Ahead of the meeting with Mitchell, Netanyahu said, "For us it is easiest to impose more and more conditions on the Palestinians, such as not discussing the refugees or the status of Jerusalem. But we are not doing this, and we expect the Palestinians not to impose any additional conditions either."

Clinton: Peace up to Israel, Palestinians – Israel News, Ynetnews

Five were soldiers and two were Palestinian.

More people die from suicide.

If some Canadian (who had his home demolished by the US government) shot a homemade rocket into the US territory. Would that mean the US should invade Canada and bomb civilian cities and kill thousands of people?

Israeli Occupation Forces entered the northern West Bank village of Madama last night, damaging 5 houses and terrifying residents. The military has upped their presence in Madama in recent weeks, with the harassment of female students on their way to school becoming commonplace, and the creation of a new roadblock separating hundreds of farmers from their land.

Thanx

Interesting debate/fight taking place in Izraeli TV. There is actually an Izraeli TV I am shocked.

They guy (izraeli arab )calls Barak a child killer and lot more.
Plz watch till end -after leaving the studio he SCREAMS )

Meir Panim – The Cries of Hungry Israeli Children Just Got LOUDER…Shocking Poverty Report!

However the picture they are using is of a picture of a Palestinian Kid taken during the Zionist PIGs attack of Gaza massacre (scroll towards the bottom of the site).

Gaza (4): A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words Did You Know

Close up of the Palestinian kid

http://rainbowwarrior2005.files.word…hild-crys5.jpg

again
http://rainbowwarrior2005.files.word…ilds-cry-1.jpg

again
http://rainbowwarrior2005.files.word…eral-jan-4.jpg

"It is incredible, really. When an Israeli dies as a result of a suicide bombing or Qassam rocket, everyone knows. The victims become real people, with stories and families. Their innocence is exaggerated in the press to the point where the reader might feel they were a family member rather than a stranger. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are treated as numbers, statistics, and worst of all, as responsible for their own misery. If it weren’t for the suicide bombings, the separation wall would never have been built. If it weren’t for the rockets from Gaza, Israel would not have had to invade and if it weren’t for the Palestinians’ penchant for "losing opportunities" they would have had peace… What seems to be missing in all of these equations is the fact that the Palestinians – regardless of their miscalculations and internal fighting – are still occupied and oppressed."

In the course of the last four days, eight Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli military forces. Eight people. In comparison to last year’s death toll of over 1,400 during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, this seems like a miniscule number. But each death is its own event, at least it should be. Sadly, however, when the death is a Palestinian one, the event barely bleeps across the radar.

This is nothing new to the Palestinians. For years, the death of one Israeli makes way more of a splash than hundreds of Palestinians. By the looks of it, there are no indications that this disturbing trend is changing significantly. The question is why and the answer, it seems, is hauntingly clear.

The most immediate and visible force behind such bias is Israel. Perhaps Israel is the only country in the world that has maintained a 42-year old occupation and committed numerous and ongoing illegal measures against the occupied people and are still able to scream ‘murder.’ So, when Israel plays its "terrorism" card, almost all other considerations are eclipsed. It makes no difference that Palestinians have every right to resist the occupation and that in most instances, those killed by the Israeli army fall far short of any definition of a terrorist. The fact that Israel – the beloved ally and "only democratic state" in the Middle East – feels threatened by what it calls terrorists, this is enough for the entire world to swallow the fallacy whole.

The most glaring example of this lopsided philosophy is what happened in Gaza last year. The number of Israelis who died during Cast Lead – civilians and combatants alike –barely takes up the fingers of both hands. Palestinians, on the other hand, were killed in scores, whole families annihilated in a blink of an eye and hundreds of children and babies put to rest in tiny burial shrouds. Still, if it weren’t for people of consciences around the world – supporters not necessarily of the Palestinian cause but of the human right to a dignified and free life – no one would have batted an eyelid. Israel marketed its justification of terrorism from Gaza territory in the form of rockets not much larger than a New Year’s Eve firecracker and won the majority of the world over. If it were not for Justice Richard Goldstone and the glaring report he published on the operation in Gaza, which basically accused Israel (and armed Palestinian groups) of war crimes, Operation Cast Lead would have been swept under the carpet of western complicity, right next to all of Israel’s other crimes.

In comes factor two. While Goldstone called Israel out on many of its breaches of international and humanitarian law, it is highly unlikely that these charges will ever be translated into Israel standing trial before an international criminal court of justice. Why? Because if the United States is not openly biased towards Israel, it is working seriously behind the scenes so that Israel can never be truly accountable for the atrocities it commits.

When the Goldstone Report came out last September, the Palestinians’ initial reaction was to immediately jump on the bandwagon. Rarely do the Palestinians get such an opportunity as this. At last, here was a credible, reliable and experienced judge, a Jew and self-proclaimed Zionist at that, who saw with his own two eyes the devastating destruction Israel wreaked on the Gaza Strip during its 22-day invasion. So, when the Human Rights Council said it was to vote on the report in October, the Palestinians were all for it. That is, until the night before the vote when the Palestinian leadership surprisingly decided to delay discussion of the report until its March session, ostensibly to "rally more support" for it.

According to a new report published in the Palestinian press on the investigation commission that looked into the delay, President Mahmoud Abbas was pressured into delaying the vote by none other than the United States. Of course, the backlash from the people over the delay was too much for Abbas to handle and he later reneged on the decision and took the report to the UNHRC weeks later but only after the damage to his image was done. The point is, the United States leaves no stone unturned when it comes to protecting Israel, even from someone as venerable as Justice Goldstone issues an equally venerable report on Israel’s abhorrent acts in Gaza.

It is incredible, really. When an Israeli dies as a result of a suicide bombing or Qassam rocket, everyone knows. The victims become real people, with stories and families. Their innocence is exaggerated in the press to the point where the reader might feel they were a family member rather than a stranger. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are treated as numbers, statistics, and worst of all, as responsible for their own misery. If it weren’t for the suicide bombings, the separation wall would never have been built. If it weren’t for the rockets from Gaza, Israel would not have had to invade and if it weren’t for the Palestinians’ penchant for "losing opportunities" they would have had peace.

What seems to be missing in all of these equations is the fact that the Palestinians – regardless of their miscalculations and internal fighting – are still occupied and oppressed. Have they made mistakes in the past and continue to make them today? Yes, they do, including firing largely innocuous rockets into Israel for which the military reprisal is grossly disproportionate. Does this make them terrorists and hence Israel’s brutal pounding of their homes and territories, justified? Absolutely not.