Israel marks the new year with another war crime

Via the Palestine Telegraph

Breaking News: Israeli F16s attack Northern, Western, Southern and Middle Gaza Now

Friday, 08 January 2010 00:31 Added by PT Editor Sameh A. Habeeb

Gaza, January 8, 2010 (Pal Telegraph)- A massive explosion took place few moments ago western Gaza City, in Tal Al Hawa neighborhood. Eyewitness reported that Israeli F16s launched an aerial attack midnight. The attack was followed by a series of air raids.

Palestine Telegraph reported that a number of air raids took place northern Gaza Strip while no new reported about the attacks yet. The attacks also targeted the southern and middle areas of Gaza Strip.

Medical sources reported no casualties till this moment while ambulances hurried to the targeted area.
A number of F16 can be heard at the moment and a case of panic and fear spread amongst the civilians who were in a sleep.

The attacks came amid a very densely populated area where around 150 thousands Palestinians live.
Israeli army launched a number of attacks last week killing a number of Palestinians.

Via Ayman Quaider and Sameh Habeeb

Palestine, Beer and Oktoberfest Under Occupation TRAILER

This is even more apt, if you remember that bread evolved from beer (not the other way round). So, before people "broke bread", they were brewing beer (and breaking wind instead of heads).

A wonderful vision of the future in Palestine - one single secular state, with christians, jews, muslims and druze, all living under the one big beer tent.



Remember: World Peace - brought to you during Wiezn by beer-lovers everywhere under the Bayerische Reinheitsgebot of 1516.

Protest Julia Gillard speaking at Aus-Israel Chamber of Commerce, June 11

Protest Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard
at Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce organised luncheon

Boycotts and sanctions, not trade and exchanges, with Israeli apartheid!
Break ties with Israel!

Thursday, June 11, 11.30am
Westin Sydney, Grand Ballroom, 1 Martin Place, Sydney
Called by Gaza Defence Committee
www.gazadefencecommittee.org

The Gaza Defence Committee condemns in the strongest possible terms the planned visit of a "high level" delegation to Israel organized by the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange and led by the deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as reported in the May 26 Sydney Morning Herald.

At a time when Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people have never been more blatant, we believe that it is nothing less than grotesque for the Rudd Government to be "part of an effort to strengthen political, business and cultural ties" with Israel.

Such a move, following Federal Parliament's celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary last year, the government's failure to condemn Israel's recent massacres in Gaza, and its decision to boycott the United Nation's World Racism Conference (Durban II), only emboldens Israel to continue its ongoing campaign of dispossessing and caging the Palestinian people.

GDC calls on the Rudd Government to instead cut its ties with Israel in conformity to the Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions against Israel (2005).

Join us on June 11 to send a message to Gillard: Boycotts and sanctions, not trade and cultural exchanges, with apartheid Israel

Hamas on Hamas

A very interesting interview with a Hamas leader on their aspirations, goals and tactics, that puts to bed a lot of the (essentially) pro-Israel propaganda.
For more such articles, check out this from TimesOnline, this from Monthly Review, this from Green Left, this from Links and this new book by Paul McGeogh.

******************************

A struggle to realise Palestinian hopes
by Atul Aneja
The Hindu, 29/1/2008

Interview withDr. Musa Abu Marzuk, Deputy Chairman of the Hamas political bureau who is second-in-command in the group’s leadership-in-exile.

— Photo: AFP

Hamas is ready to accept an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital, says Dr. Musa Abu Marzuk.

Musa Abu Marzuk, a key Hamas figure, has been ceaselessly at work since the Israeli attacks on Gaza began on December 27. The 58-year-old second-in-command in the Palestinian group has emerged as its public face over Arab satellite television channels such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. In this interview he says Hamas is ready to accept an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital, without formally recognising the state of Israel. He clarifies that once this state emerges “we [would] then arrive at a stage when a status of calm between this state and Israel is established.” Asked how Hamas would visualise the return of Palestinian refugees after a Palestinian state was established on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, the Deputy Chairman of the Hamas political bureau says: “Any kind of solution after that will be between the people. Now if the people return to Israel and they have full rights, human rights and political rights, then it’s their choice of the kind of future they want. Our struggle is that Palestinian hopes are realised and full justice is accomplished.” Dr. Marzuk, who has a doctorate from the United States, spoke to The Hindu at an undisclosed location in the Syrian capital Damascus. Excerpts:

The first phase of resistance in Gaza appears to have been accomplished after the recent war. How does your resistance advance from the level that has already been achieved?

During this stage, the Israeli aggression hit Gaza from everywhere: the sea, air and land. Gaza Strip, as you know, is a very small area. It’s 365 sq km, and it’s one of the most crowded areas in the world. It has 1.5 million people living there. Most of the people in Gaza are refugees. They have come from their cities, towns, villages and farms in [historical] Palestine. Nearly 75 per cent, or one million, people are refugees who live in this area.

Now after Hamas won the elections in 2006, we tried to change the ideology, policy and goal of the movement. From the beginning our goal has been to return our people to Palestine. We have emphasised that Palestinians have a right to live in their country and not in refugee camps. Our goal has been to establish our state and to struggle against occupation.

Are you saying your final objective is a single Palestinian state? Are you inclined to accept a two-state solution?

Look, after we won the elections we accepted the [formation of the Palestinian] state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of the balance of power in region. And we suggested that after that a status of calm would be established between this new state and Israel, without recognising Israel. This was our aim after we won the elections. In the past, we didn’t see this as a Palestinian objective.

So your objective is to establish an independent Palestinian state including West Bank and Gaza on territory occupied by Israel during the 1967 war? However, that is not your ultimate goal?

We have priorities. Our priority now is to get the [Israeli] siege lifted and let the Palestinian people carry out reconstruction of their buildings and homes which were destroyed by the Israeli aggression in Gaza. This is the first priority now. Our second priority is to re-establish our national unity.

Under which plan? There is a Yemeni proposal and the Egyptians have been involved as mediators to achieve Palestinian unity.

It doesn’t matter whether there is a Yemeni plan or an Egyptian plan. We have to achieve our objectives — the tools are not very important. The important thing is to rebuild our unity. Our third priority is to work together to establish a Palestinian state with Gaza Strip and West Bank and with Jerusalem as the capital.

When you say Jerusalem as the capital, are you referring to East Jerusalem alone?

You see they [Israelis] should withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip up to the borders of 1967. That means East Jerusalem would be the capital of the Palestinian state. After this is done, we then arrive at a stage when a status of calm between this state and Israel is established. We refuse as a movement, whether we are inside the government or outside, to recognise Israel as an independent state, because all our rights would not have been restored.

These rights relate to the rights of refugees to return to their homeland?

We have refugees in Lebanon and Syria who must return to their homes, to their relatives, who are still waiting for them. Those people will not just accept a state in West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Where should they return? To West Bank or Gaza or their ancestral villages and towns which are in present-day Israel?

If they return to West Bank or Gaza Strip, that is not a return to their country, to their villages or their homes. They would become refugees again, inside their country but in a different area. There are already more than 1.5 million refugees in West Bank and Gaza Strip. I am talking about historical Palestine, not West Bank and Gaza Strip.

So, you wish to establish an independent state along the 1967 borders without recognising Israel. But full normalisation will come only after the last phase has been accomplished — when the refugees return to their ancestral homeland?

Any kind of solution after that will be between the people. Now if the people return to Israel and they have full rights, human rights and political rights, then it is their choice of the kind of future they want. Our struggle is [to ensure] that Palestinian hopes are realised and full justice is accomplished.

There have been accusations that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which wants to throw all Jewish people into the sea?

This is not true. You know, in history, Jews have suffered many massacres. This happened in Germany, Poland in the Second World War, and in Spain. These are the three main massacres that the Jewish people have suffered. After these massacres the Jews immigrated to Islamic countries, especially Turkey, Palestine, Morocco, in fact in many places in the Islamic world.

Now, we do not have any problem with any other religion. If you look at the Islamic countries, we are part of a mixed region. I can’t be a Muslim unless I believe in Jesus. I can’t be a Muslim unless I believe in Moses. I have to believe in their prophets also. My religion rejects any kind discrimination. So to say that we will throw the Jewish people in the sea, this is just propaganda.

On the contrary, it is also necessary to recognise the massacre of the Palestinian people. In the last massacre [in Gaza] 1,500 people have been killed, including 400 children and more than 200 women.

What are the principles that unify the Palestinian resistance? You have a Leftist group like the Popular Front for the People of Palestine (PFLP) as your ally and you have support from a country like Venezuela. Do you find any contradiction between Leftist or Marxist principles and Islamic principles, or do you see them coming together in some way?

Our responsibility as Muslims is to be with people suffering injustice. These are human values that we share with others on ideological terms. We have to stand with suffering people, people suffering from hunger or people under occupation.

There have been attempts to link Hamas with terrorism and Al Qaeda. Do you reject Al Qaeda?

We are completely different. We are under occupation. Of course, we reject Al Qaeda.

Is your resistance in Gaza during the recent conflict part of a wider struggle in the region which includes Hizbollah in Lebanon, with support from countries such as Syria and Iran?

Our success is a victory for all Palestinians and not one for the people of Gaza alone. Of course, with Israel’s defeat we have defeated many others in the region who want Israel to reoccupy Gaza Strip for different reasons. It is therefore going to help all countries and people who stand with Hamas and support Hamas in different ways. At this stage our support goes beyond Hizbollah, Syria and Iran. If you return to the war, most of the people in the Muslim world and the rest of the world stood by Hamas. They have been raising Hamas flags and burning Israeli flags. That means we have the support of millions of people throughout the world.

What is the significance of the Doha conference where Hamas and its allies were invited?

At Doha, Qatar’s Emir invited [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas to this conference. But he could not take this step because of pressure from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After that Hamas was chosen to attend this conference because, being a conference about Palestinians it would have lost significance had Palestinians not participated. It was a good conference because it supported the Palestinian struggle. It is very clear that certain countries are now behind the Palestinian struggle and the Palestinian cause. That was the main message that emerged from the Doha conference.

Does Turkey have a specific role in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Day by day our international support is expanding. When we won the elections we were backed by Russia, Turkey and many others. Now, European representatives who come to meet the Syrian President or the Foreign Minister seek us out.

Did U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon meet you?

No, but I met his political representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip one day before the Secretary-General’s visit.

How do you perceive Egypt’s role in the conflict?

We have differences with Egyptian policy. We want the Egyptians to open the Rafah gate, because we have no access to the rest of the world.

There have been proposals about a larger American military presence in Egypt to curb smuggling of weapons through tunnels into Gaza.

It’s Egypt’s responsibility to do whatever it wants to do on its territory. Nothing has been smuggled from Gaza to Egypt or Israel. There may be some people involved in smuggling items from Israel to Gaza or from Egypt to Gaza. But that is the responsibility of those countries, not ours.

Will you accept international monitors inside Gaza?

No, we do not accept international monitors either within Gaza or between the stretch from the Egyptian border to the Gaza border.

Will you accept the presence of European monitors and representatives of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Rafah border crossing?

We have no objection to the presence of European monitors or from representatives of Mr. Abbas at the gates.

South African dockworkers announce ban on Israeli ship; Palestinians salute decision

FREE PALESTINE! ISOLATE APARTHEID ISRAEL!

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) launch Week of Action for Palestine supported by the Young Communist League and other progressive organisations

February 3, 2009 -- In a historic development for South Africa, South African dock workers have announced their determination not to offload a ship from Israel that is scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday, February 8, 2009. This follows the decision by COSATU to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel.

The pledge by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) members in Durban reflects the commitment by South African workers to refuse to support oppression and exploitation across the globe.

Last year, Durban dock workers had refused to offload a shipment of arms that had arrived from China and was destined for Zimbabwe to prop up the Mugabe regime and to intensify the repression against the Zimbabwean people. Now, says SATAWU’s General Secretary Randall Howard, the union’s members are committing themselves to not handling Israeli goods.

SATAWU’s action on Sunday will be part of a proud history of worker resistance against apartheid. In 1963, just four years after the Anti-Apartheid Movement was formed, Danish dock workers refused to offload a ship with South African goods. When the ship docked in Sweden, Swedish workers followed suit. Dock workers in Liverpool and, later, in the San Francisco Bay Area also refused to offload South African goods. South Africans, and the South African working class in particular, will remain forever grateful to those workers who determinedly opposed apartheid and decided that they would support the anti-apartheid struggle with their actions.

Last week, Western Australian members of the Maritime Union of Australia resolved to support the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and have called for a boycott of all Israeli vessels and all vessels bearing goods arriving from or going to Israel.

This is the legacy and the tradition that South African dock workers have inherited, and it is a legacy they are determined to honour, by ensuring that South African ports of entry will not be used as transit points for goods bound for or emanating from certain dictatorial and oppressive states such as Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Israel.

COSATU, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Young Communist League and a range of other organisations salute the principled position taken by these workers. We also take this opportunity to salute the millions of workers all over the world who have openly condemned and taken decisive steps to isolate apartheid Israel, a step that should send shockwaves to its arrogant patrons in the United States who foot the bill for Israel’s killing machine. We call on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do all that is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israel until Palestine is free.

We also welcome statements by various South African Jews of conscience who have dissociated themselves from the genocide in Gaza. We call on all South Africans to ensure that none of our family members are allowed to join the Israeli Occupation Forces’ killing machine.

In celebration of the actions of SATAWU members with regard to the ship from Israel, and in pursuance of the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and our call on the South African government to sever diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, this coalition of organisations has declared a week of action beginning on Friday, February 6, 2009. The actions will be organised under the theme: FREE PALESTINE! ISOLATE APARTHEID ISRAEL! Activities that have already been confirmed for this week will include:

• Friday, February 6: A protest outside the offices of the South African Zionist Federation and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 2 Elray Street, Raedene, off Louis Botha Avenue. Both these organisations unquestioningly supported the recent Israeli attacks against Gaza, and supported the massacre of civilians and the attacks on schools, mosques, ambulances and UN refugee centres. Protesters will be addressed by, among others, SATAWU General Secretary Randall Howard, and ex-minister Ronnie Kasrils. Protest starts at 14:00.
• Friday, February 6: A picket outside parliament in Cape Town. COSATU members and solidarity activists will be joined by a number of members of parliament. Picket starts at 09:30.
• Friday, February 6: A mass rally in Actonville, Benoni, at the Buzme Adab Hall. The rally will be addressed by, among others, COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, PSC spokesperson Salim Vally, South African Council of Churches General Secretary Eddie Makue, and ex-minister Ronnie Kasrils. Rally starts at 19:30.
• Sunday, February 8: A protest at the Durban Harbour mouth, off Victoria Embankment [Margaret Mncadi Avenue]. Protesters will be addressed by, among others, COSATU President Sdumo Dlamini. Protest starts at 10:00.
• Sunday, February 8: A mass rally in Cape Town at Vygieskraal Rugby Stadium. The rally will be addressed by, among others, COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, and Allan Boesak. Rally starts at 14:30.

Patrick Craven (COSATU national spokesperson) 0828217456
Bongani Masuku (COSATU international officer) 0794996419
Naeem Jeenah (PSC) 0845742674
Melissa Hole (PSC) 0739060017
Salim Vally (PSC) 082 802 5936

The video the BBC doesn't want the British people to see

That emergency appeal for humanitarian aid for Gaza that BBC refuses to broadcast? Watch it for yourself:

Popout

The video was made when the death toll was "just" "a few hundred," and it is completely apolitical (the word "Israel" doesn't even appear in the script), the power of its images alone is self-evident, making it rather clear why the BBC doesn't want it seen. Reality, in this case, has an anti-Israel bias.

Of course, this hasn't stopped the BBC from retreating in the face of Israeli pressure, for fear of this so-called bias, despite public protests. Veteran Labour socialist Tony Benn took them strongly to task on the matter:

Why Israel won't survive

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 19 January 2009

From a hill just outside the Gaza Strip, Israelis watch the air assaults on Gaza and dance in celebration of the attacks, 8 January 2009. (Newscom)

The merciless Israeli bombardment of Gaza has stopped -- for now -- but the death toll keeps rising as more bodies are pulled from carpet- bombed neighborhoods.

What Israel perpetrated in Gaza, starting at 11:30am on 27 December 2008, will remain forever engraved in history and memory. Tel al-Hawa, Hayy al-Zeitoun, Khuzaa and other sites of Israeli massacres will join a long mournful list that includes Deir Yasin, Qibya, Kufr Qasim, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, and Jenin.

Once again, Israel demonstrated that it possesses the power and the lack of moral restraint necessary to commit atrocities against a population of destitute refugees it has caged and starved.

The dehumanization and demonization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations -- in short everything that sustains civilized and orderly life -- and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.

Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist state, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.

Israel's "war" was not about rockets -- they served the same role in its narrative as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction did as the pretext for the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Israel's real goals were to restore its "deterrence" fatally damaged after its 2006 defeat in Lebanon (translation: its ability to massacre and terrorize entire populations into submission) and to destroy any Palestinian resistance to total Israeli-Jewish control over historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

With Hamas and other resistance factions removed or fatally weakened, Israel hoped the way would be clear to sign a "peace" deal with chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on Israel's behalf until they could be forced out once and for all.

The US-backed "moderate" dictatorships and absolute monarchies led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the Israeli plan hoping to demonstrate to their own people that resistance -- whether against Israel or their own bankrupt regimes -- was futile.

To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed. On the contrary, it galvanized and unified Palestinians like never before. All factions united and fought heroically for 23 days. According to well-informed and credible sources Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance. So instead Israel did what it does best: it massacred civilians in the hope that the population would turn against those fighting the occupier.

Israel not only unified the resistance factions in Gaza; its brutality rallied all Palestinians and Arabs.

It is often claimed that Arab regimes whip up anti-Israel anger to distract their populations from their own failings. Actually, Israel, the US and subservient Arab regimes tried everything -- especially demonizing Iran and inciting sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims -- to distract their populations from Palestine.

All this failed as millions of people across the region marched in support of Palestinian resistance, and the Arab regimes who hoped to benefit from the slaughter in Gaza have been exposed as partners in the Israeli atrocities. In popular esteem, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions earned their place alongside Hizballah as effective bulwarks against Israeli and Western colonialism.

If there was ever a moment when the peoples of the region would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst, that has passed forever.

But anyone surveying the catastrophe in Gaza -- the mass destruction, the death toll of more than 100 Palestinians for every Israeli, the thousands of sadistic injuries -- would surely conclude that Palestinians could never overcome Israel and resistance is a delusion at best.

True, in terms of ability to murder and destroy, Israel is unmatched. But Israel's problem is not, as its propaganda insists, "terrorism" to be defeated by sufficient application of high explosives. Its problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it. Israel simply cannot bomb its way to legitimacy.

Israel was founded as a "Jewish state" through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish majority Arab population. It has been maintained in existence only through Western support and constant use of violence to prevent the surviving indigenous population from exercising political rights within the country, or returning from forced exile.

Despite this, today, 50 percent of the people living under Israeli rule in historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip) are Palestinians, not Jews. And their numbers are growing rapidly. Like Nationalists in Northern Ireland or non-whites in South Africa, Palestinians will never recognize the "right" of a settler-colonial society to maintain an ethnocractic state at their expense through violence, repression and racism.

For years, the goal of the so-called peace process was to normalize Israel as a "Jewish state" and gain Palestinians' blessing for their own dispossession and subjugation. When this failed, Israel tried "disengagement" in Gaza -- essentially a ruse to convince the rest of the world that the 1.5 million Palestinians caged in there should no longer be counted as part of the population. They were in Israel's definition a "hostile entity."

In his notorious May 2004 interview with The Jerusalem Post, Arnon Soffer, an architect of the 2005 disengagement explained that the approach "doesn't guarantee 'peace,' it guarantees a Jewish- Zionist state with an overwhelming majority of Jews." Soffer predicted that in the future "when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful."

He was unambiguous about what Israel would have to do to maintain this status quo: "If we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day." Soffer hoped that eventually, Palestinians would give up and leave Gaza altogether.

Through their resistance, steadfastness and sacrifice, Palestinians in Gaza have defeated this policy and reasserted that they are an inseparable part of Palestine, its people, its history and its future.

Israel is not the first settler-colonial entity to find itself in this position. When F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid president, came to office in 1989, his generals calculated that solely with the overwhelming military force at their disposal, they could keep the regime in power for at least a decade. The casualties, however, would have run into hundreds of thousands, and South Africa would face ever greater isolation. Confronted with this reality, de Klerk took the decision to begin an orderly dismantling of apartheid.

What choice will Israel make? In the absence of any political and moral legitimacy the only arguments it has left are bullets and bombs. Left to its own devices Israel will certainly keep trying -- as it has for sixty years -- to massacre Palestinians into submission. Israel's achievement has been to make South Africa's apartheid leaders look wise, restrained and humane by comparison.

But what prevented South Africa's white supremacist government from escalating their own violence to Israeli levels of cruelty and audacity was not that they had greater scruples than the Zionist regime. It was recognition that they alone could not stand against a global anti-apartheid movement that was in solidarity with the internal resistance.

Israel's "military deterrent" has now been repeatedly discredited as a means to force Palestinians and other Arabs to accept Zionist supremacy as inevitable and permanent. Now, the other pillar of Israeli power -- Western support and complicity -- is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over.

Israel began its massacres with full support from its Western "friends." Then something amazing happened. Despite the official statements of support, despite the media censorship, despite the slick Israeli hasbara (propaganda) campaign, there was a massive, unprecedented public mobilization in Europe and even in North America expressing outrage and disgust.

Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and intimidate as it has for so long. Even the Nazi Holocaust, long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel's critics, is becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are now routinely heard. Jewish and Palestinian academics likened Israel's actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto. A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as a "giant concentration camp." UK Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of Commons, "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow, [Poland]. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed." Kaufman continued, "my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza." He denounced the Israeli military spokesperson's justifications as the words "of a Nazi."

It wasn't only such statements, but the enormous demonstrations, the nonviolent direct actions, and the unprecedented expressions of support for boycott, divestment and sanctions from major trade unions in Italy, Canada and New Zealand. An all-party group of city councillors in Birmingham, Europe's second largest municipal government, urged the UK government to follow suit. Salma Yaqoub of the RESPECT Party explained that "One of the factors that helped bring an end to the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa was international pressure for economic, sporting and cultural boycotts. It is time that Israel started to feel similar pressure from world opinion."

Israel, its true nature as failed, brutal colonial project laid bare in Gaza, is extremely vulnerable to such a campaign. Little noticed amidst the carnage in Gaza, Israel took another momentous step towards formal apartheid when the Knesset elections committee voted to ban Arab parties from participating in upcoming elections. Zionism, an ideology of racial supremacy, extremism and hate, is a dying project, in retreat and failing to find new recruits. With enough pressure, and relatively quickly, Israelis too would likely produce their own de Klerk ready to negotiate a way out. Every new massacre makes it harder, but a de-zionized, decolonized, reintegrated Palestine affording equal rights to all who live in it, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and return for refugees is not a utopian dream.

It is within reach, in our lifetimes. But it is far from inevitable. We can be sure that Western and Arab governments will continue to support Israeli apartheid and Palestinian collaboration under the guise of the "peace process" unless decisively challenged. Israeli massacres will continue and escalate until the nightmare of an Israeli- style "peace" -- apartheid and further ethnic cleansing -- is fulfilled.

The mobilizations of the past three weeks showed that a different world is possible and within our grasp if we support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Although they will never get to see it, that world would be a fitting memorial for all of Israel's victims.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).


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Gaza protests must continue until criminal Israeli siege ends

Socialist Alliance Statement

19 January 2009

For 22 days the Israel armed forces bombed, shelled and strafed the suburbs, villages and camps of Gaza before unilaterally declaring a cease-fire on January 18.

The death toll has already exceeded 1300, including more than 400 children—an entirely predictable result of the precision bombings of buildings where people had fled for their safety and of the use of such horror weapons as white phosphorous.

Israel’s military occupation of Gaza is the intensification of its a year-and-a-half of near total siege, itself an act of war directed at all the people of Gaza. Even before the Israel assault the siege was causing a dreadful humanitarian disaster.

But this cease-fire is not an end to Israel’s war. It is not a genuine ceasefire while the siege continues and while Israeli troops are still in Gaza.

The war and the slaughter will not end because the people of Gaza will continue to fight on in whatever ways they can. The latest massacre is not a stand-alone event, but a continuation of the ongoing Israeli oppression of Palestinian people, which started over 60 years ago. Two thirds (one million) of the Gaza population are refugees from the 1948 ethnic cleansing (“Al Nakba”), still living in refugee camps and waiting for a just solution”.

They know that Hamas is their legitimate, freely elected representative. Indeed this “terrorist organisation” happens to be one of the very few elected government in the Middle East. Palestinians in Gaza are being punished by Israel for voting for Hamas and for exercising their right to self-defence against the Israeli seige.

The will of the Palestinian people to resist can only have been strengthened by the massive outpouring of global solidarity over the past three weeks. People from around the world, including tens of thousands inside Israel itself, have taken to the streets in protests that have grown bigger as the war has continued. Because of this vast and unprecedented solidarity response, the Zionist state is already paying a very large political price for its military advances.

The Socialist Alliance believes that the solidarity campaign with Gaza must look for all possible ways to isolate Israel. A campaign to boycott companies with economic ties to Israel is already underway, with Israeli anti-war activists calling for the placing of sanctions on the country.

The Socialist Alliance repeats its call on the Rudd government to break ties with Israel over its war crimes, following the example of the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments. It must also recognise Hamas as the legitimate government of Gaza, and remove it from the Attorney-General’s list of terrorist organisations.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions should a follow its New Zealand counterpart, at the very least demanding that the federal government revoke the credentials of the Israeli ambassador, cut contacts with Israeli military and intelligence officials, ban goods manufactured in the Occupied Territories, ensure that the government does not make use of Israeli products or services in its procurement provisions, and end working holiday schemes for young Israelis.

Moreover, the burgeoning movement for justice for Palestinians needs to grow in its diversity and unity. All who want to see Israel’s military occupation ended and its criminal siege lifted must be able to stand together with equal right of participation in the movement.

This particularly applies to Australia’s Muslim communities, the victims since the Howard years of the worst campaigns of vilification and scapegoating.

In this way all supporters of freedom for Palestine will help build a movement powerful enough to make ongoing support for Israel too high a political price for the Rudd government to pay. In turn, the Israeli regime, increasingly deprived of the backing of its powerful friends in the US, UK and Australia, will have to retreat.

The strength of the movement against Israeli aggression against Gaza lies in its unity and determination to keep protesting until the Israeli military withdraws and the siege is lifted. The Socialist Alliance calls on its members and supporters to redouble efforts to strengthen solidarity with the suffering but unbowed Palestinian people.

Comment and further information

Sydney: Tim Dobson 0413 928 894 Melbourne: Ema Corro 0406 402 401 Brisbane: Paul Benedek 0410 629 088 Adelaide: Ruth Ratcliffe 0403 679 742 Hobart: Rose Matthews 0407 550 805 Perth: Sam Wainwright 0412 751 508 Canberra: Karl Miller 0403 964 247 Geelong: Tim Gooden 0438 088 112 Newcastle: Niko Leka 0406 296 141 Wollongong: Chris Williams 0425 329 963 Cairns: Jonathan Strauss 0431 683 088

For Arabic language media: Soubhi Iskander 02 9769 1991 or 0425 289 885

Peace requires justice — freedom for Palestine

GLW Editorial, 17 January 2009

The January 15 bombing with white phosphorous of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that housed hundreds of refugees and humanitarian aid was not an isolated incident.

Israel bombed civilian areas for 22 days continually until unilaterally declaring a cease-fire on January 18 that includes Israeli military occupation of Gaza, the continuation of the siege that is causing a humanitarian disaster and promising to begin the slaughter anew if Palestinians continue resisting the Israeli military — as Hamas has said it will.

This is not an end to Israel’s war.

The death toll by January 18 had exceeded 1200, including more than 400 children. There are many reports of precision bombings of buildings that the Israeli military is aware house people who have fled for their safety. The Israeli military has also reportedly shot at fleeing civilians.

The military offensive comes on the back of a year-and-a-half of near total siege, itself an act of war directed at all the people of Gaza.

Israel can deny this all it likes, but its actions scream louder: it has been deliberately targeting civilians and its war is not simply against the governmental authorities in Gaza (the establishment media only ever refer to these legitimate bodies as “Hamas”, as if you could only refer to the Bush administration as “Republicans”), but against the entire population.

The homemade rockets fired from Gaza are merely an excuse: Israel’s aim is ethnic cleansing.

Founded in 1948 on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory it now claims, Israel is seeking to destroy the Palestinian people as a people with a claim to nationhood.

The existence of territory recognised as Palestinian is a permanent reminder of the legitimate claims of the dispossessed Palestinian people — and a reminder of the fundamental injustice of a state that exists by and for only one section of the population. Like in South Africa, this is a system of apartheid, colour-coded license plates and all.

It is perfectly clear that Israel has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state to exist alongside it. It has buried the “two-state solution” under the rubble in Gaza.

Ultimately, the solution to the oppression of Palestinians must involve the creation of genuine equality — a state for everyone in the area regardless of their religion or race.

Inside the borders of Israel, Palestinians who remain are referred to as “Israeli Arabs”; the Israeli state cannot even bring itself to refer to them by their proper name.

And now, the state that claims to be the “only democracy” in the region has banned “Israeli Arab” parties from standing in its elections.

The response of the world’s people has been inspiring: a global intifada in support of the people of Gaza is occurring. People from every corner of the globe, including tens of thousands inside Israel, have taken to the streets in demonstrations that have grown bigger as the war has continued.

Even inside the US, Israel’s strongest backer, opposition is strong. A December 31 Rasmussen poll revealed that opposition to Israel’s war among Democrat voters was 24 points greater than support.

On January 20, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the new US president. If the new president is serious about “change”, he should immediately cease military and political support for Israel.

Such an act would force Israel to stop its genocidal path and force a solution to the central question of Palestinian self-determination.

The international solidarity campaign is looking for ways to isolate Israel. A campaign to boycott companies with economic ties to Israel is underway. A letter from Israeli anti-war activists has raised the demand of placing sanctions on Israel.

The demand on governments to break ties with Israel over its war crimes is crucial. The decision to do just that by the anti-imperialist governments headed by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia sets a powerful example.

In Australia, we must demand our government does the same and immediately expel Israel’s ambassador.

More than anything, the movement for justice for Palestinians needs unity.

With or without Israel’s unilateral cease-fire, this is a crucial moment and everyone who wants to see Israel’s military occupation ended and the criminal siege lifted — whatever else we may or may not agree on — must stand together. The people of the world are horrified by Israel’s crimes and our strength is our numbers.

If the global solidarity movement continues growing and giving expression to popular outrage, we will have a movement powerful enough to make support for Israel too high a political price for governments to pay. This is an essential component of the struggle to win freedom for Palestine.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #779 21 January 2009.

Jewish and Israeli opposition to Israel's Gaza slaughter

Via Links:


Israel's young conscientious objectors (shministim) tell why they refuse to serve in an army that occupies ``another people'', the Palestinians. From http://www.December18th.org.


Young Israeli `refusenik' soldiers and reservists protest the Gaza assault, January 8, 2009, Tel Aviv. From Social TV (http://www.tv.social.org.il/)

Click HERE for earlier statements by Israeli opponents of Israel's inhuman assault on Gaza.

Solidarity with refusers

By Adam Keller

Gush Shalom -- January 8, 2009 -- Courage to Refuse has resumed its activity after several years and asked everybody to join them in picketing the Ministry of Defence. Courage to Refuse was founded in 2002, by reservists such as paratrooper officer David Zonshein, sickened and disgusted by the things they had seen (and took part in) during the army's efforts to put down the second Intifada. At that time they had a considerable impact, and their call upon reservists to refuse serving the occupation worried the military authorities. But like other groups they were effectively derailed by Sharon's Gaza trick, which placed on the Israeli public a unilateral and woefully incomplete "Disengagement".

The beginning of the "Cast Lead" war in Gaza -– and specifically, the calling up of an increasing number of reservists, being massed at the Gaza Strip borders in preparation to be thrown in -- aroused Courage to Refuse back into action. Some of the activists themselves got call-up orders, and they got urgent calls from many others who were called up and were far from eager to comply. At least three reservists are known to have informed their officers of their outright refusal to go into Gaza, and many others have resorted to various means of "grey refusal" to avoid it.

For their part, the Courage to Refuse organisers drew up a new manifesto on which they are busily collecting the signatures of reservists, both those who were involved before and those were not (see below).
A call was issued for a demonstration outside the Ministry of Defence on January 8: "Once again we feel the need to call upon reservists and conscripts to refuse taking part in the brutal killing perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza. The terrible bombing of the UNRWA school in Jabalya Refugee Camp, in which Israeli forces killed more than forty Palestinian civilians in a single moment, increased our determination to act -– coming after hundreds of civilians killed earlier, including many women and children. A killing perpetrated under the pretext of security, under the Blue and White Flag, and in the name of every citizen of Israel. A killing which must not be allowed to continue!"

Members of other groups, such as ourselves of Gush Shalom, were welcomed to join in, but with a caution: "Without in any way detracting from the importance of earlier demonstrations against the war, in order to make an effective appeal to reservists we should use a bit different language than of the slogans used in these. To restrain our anger, however justified, and moderate our narrative. Not to call the Minister of Defence `A murderer' nor term the IDF `a terrorist organisation' (even when at times speaking in this way seems right) but focus on the pure moral call upon soldiers to preserve the 'purity' of their arms and refuse to take part in this madness."

We "radicals" who joined the January 8 action respected the organisers' wishes. The slogans prepared by Courage to Refuse included "Revenge is not security", "Refuse to take part in the in the campaign of bloodshed", "No to the killing of civilians –- in Gaza and Sderot", "Barak creates terror in Gaza", "Refuse to fight in Gaza" (this Hebrew slogan can also be translated as "Refuse to fight against Gaza"), "Refuse to destroy Gaza and Sderot", "The destruction of Gaza produces terror", "Courage to talk -- not to kill". Some of placards had the national Star of David inscribed beside the slogan –- which is far from the rule in other anti-war protests. Even so, the call upon soldiders to refuse orders made it very radical confrontation with the present warlike atmosphere prevailing in the Israeli media and political system.

What next? So far, the military authorities refrained from imprisoning any of the refusing reservists, knowing from the earlier confrontations that any imprisoned refuser would become a focus of solidarity actions from which the movement could grow and snowball. However, the Courage to Refuse organisers now contemplate a sharper action -– i.e., going southwards to the Gaza Strip border, where the army concentrated the already mobilised thousands of reservists who might any day be sent into Gaza, with the government bent on escalating the war in defiance of the Security Council cease-fire resolution. The military authorities might find it impossible to ignore and tacitly tolerate the presence of agitators busily "subverting the troops".

The Gaza Refusal Manifesto

We, soldiers and officers of the IDF
To whom the security and future are dear
Who understand that the attack in Gaza intensifies the conflict, will bring additional long years of missiles upon growing circles of the Israeli population, and brings terrible disasters upon the peoples in Israel and Palestine alike.
We understand that revenge is not security and that the IDF operation in Gaza perpetuates the conflict, and certainly does not help its solution.
In light of the above, we hereby declare that we will not take part in the campaign of destruction in Gaza.

Contact:
Noam Livneh +972-522-754528
David Zunshein +972-545-656760
Arik Diamant +972-522-754528
diamant.arik@gmail.com

* * *

See also `Why I refuse to fight in Gaza' (January 12, 2009) by Yitzchak Ben Mocha.

Gaza: Israel's last great blunder?

Israel's Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal, for Sure; But Also Stupid

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN in Counterpunch

In contrast to the grim forecasts of many fine contributors to this site over the past days, your CounterPunch editors have been inclined to take the view that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, appalling though the carnage has been, is not only a crime but a blunder, like the attack on Lebanon in 2006, which demonstrated Israel’s military weakness, and the corruption of its armed forces after long years of bravely tormenting unarmed Palestinian peasants at check points, sawing down their olive groves and crushing their homes with bulldozers and high explosive.

The left has a tendency to demonize its enemies in terms of proficiency in administering their dastardly onslaughts. Through this optic, the claims of the arms manufacturers are always taken at face value, whether about the effectiveness of bunker busters, or devices to detect Hamas’ Qassams. In our latest newsletter we print a long interview with Hamas’ leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshal, conducted by CounterPuncher Alya Rea, myself and others, including former US Senator James Abourezk. Meshal made a case for Israel’s decline in military effectiveness:

Meshal: Since 1948, if we want to draw a curve of Israel’s progress, do you think that this curve is still heading up, or maybe is at a plateau, or is heading down? I believe that the curve is now in descent. And today, the military might of Israel is not capable of concluding matters to Israel’s satisfaction. Since 1948, you may notice that Israel has defeated 7 armies. In ’56 they defeated Egypt. In ’67 they defeated 3 countries: Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. In ’73, the war was somewhat equal in both sides between Egypt and Israel, if not for Nixon’s airlift to Israel’s forces at that time, the map of the world would be different. In ’82 Israel defeated the PLO in Beirut.

Khaled Meshal. Photo by Alexander Cockburn. Copyright 2009.

But since ’82, 26 years ago, Israelis has not won any war. They did not defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza. These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then today Israel, with all its military capabilities – conventional and unconventional – are not enough to guarantee Israel’s security. Today, with all these capabilities, they can’t stop a simple rocket from being launched from Gaza.

Hence the big question is, can military might ensure security? Hence, we may say that when Israel refuse the Arab and the Palestinian offer, a state of Palestine on the border of 1967, Israel is losing a big opportunity. Some years down the road, a new Palestinian generation, new Arab generations, may not accept those conditions, because the balance of power may not be in Israel’s favor.

Hamas, as I remarked last week, has been greatly strengthened by the current attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless collaborator with Israel; Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world condemnation of Israel’s barbarous conduct. For months Israel besieged Gaza, starving its civilian inhabitants of essential supplies with no effective international reproach. It’s hard to take dramatic photographs of an empty medicine bottle, but easy to film a bombed out girl’s dorm or a Palestinian mother weeping over the bodies of her five dead daughters, featured on the front page of the Washington Post two weeks ago. Efforts to keep reporters out of Gaza have not been entirely successful, and both UN and Red Cross workers on the ground have sent outraged reports denouncing Israel’s barbarities. They have also been fierce State Department memos from USAID workers.

As we go into the weekend, an admittedly toothless resolution in the UN calling for a ceasefire was not vetoed by the US. The UK Guardian ran a story on Friday suggesting that my view expressed last week, that there were two ways to read Obama’s initial silence about the onslaughts – which he was finally forced to break after Israel killed nearly 50 women and children trying to shelter in the UN School. The Guardian story began:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracizing Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

One has to caution that there could be more than one reason for such a leak from the transition team – including an alert to the Israel lobby to start piling on the pressure to head off any such contacts. With men like Emanuel and “special assistant on the Middle East” Dan Kurtzer at Obama’s elbow, I imagine the Israeli embassy won’t have much difficulty in monitoring Obama’s plans, though his National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, apparently once filed a report to Condoleezza Rice with criticisms of Israel’s conduct so harsh that the whole report was hastily deep-sixed.

Still not dead enough in Gaza

It would appear that even dead Palestinians aren't dead enough for Israel's purposes, if they happen to live in Gaza. Having killed over 1000 people in the past 3 weeks (including over 300 children), the Israeli Occupation (and Chid-murdering) Forces have decided to kill those terrorist babies one more time, for good measure. Or were there weapons hidden in the coffins? I forget.

Either way, as limbs and rotting guts from recently buried victims of Israel's war-crimes [or not. The International Criminal Court is doubly and triply washing its hands of jurisdiction in Gaza, on the back of endless petitions that Israel be tried for what most of the world can see plain as day. Of course, this didn't stop them in Sudan] were flung through the windows of neighbouring houses, Israel got along with their next stage of "fighting terror" - testing experimental weapons by burning refugees with white phosphorous that burns flesh down to the bone.

Because, you know, if they run away they must be guilty of something, right? Like being Palestinian? Or working for the United Nations?

Looks like Tzipi Livni's election campaign's coming along nicely, then. Especially now that those pesky Arab party's won't get to take part and interfere with the "only democracy in the Middle East". Mind you, Livni's idea of what constitutes democracy clearly leave a little to be desired:

"I am willing to give up a part of the country over which I believe we have rights so that Israel will remain a Jewish and democratic state in which citizens have equal rights, whatever their religion."

Mind you, when you have Israeli academics whose solution to the Gaza issue is like that below, Livni seems positiviely moderate...

Apparently, Arnon Sofer, a Jewish Israeli intellectual, "teaches" at Haifa University that:

"When 2.5 million [Palestinians] live in a closed-off Gaza, those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day. If we don't kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the [Jewish] boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings." (Jerusalem Post weekend supplement Up Front, May 21, 2004. quoted here)

But who cares, anyway? Israel certainly doesn't. They can't even be arsed keeping their story straight:




And just in case you thought Israel's upporters might be well-meaning but merely misguided, Max Blumenthal went along to the pro-Israel rallies in New York, attended by a number of major Democratic politicians, and some of the statements made there will send shivers down your spine [eat your heart out Paul Sheehan]:





Just don't forget the protests. End the massacre in Gaza! NOW!

Tariq Ali on Israel's massacres in Gaza

Tariq Ali addresses the Stop Gaza Massacres meeting in London, January 8, 2009. Organised by Stop the War Coalition (http://www.stopwar.org.uk).

Guernica, Gaza and the disappearance of shock

Posted by "Jeff" in Overland on Friday, January 9th, 2009

As everyone knows, in the wake of the bombing of a small Basque town by German and Italian planes during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso produced the painting Guernica. This astonishing three-dimensional rendition of his canvas allows us to see anew a perhaps overly familiar image: the screaming mouths, the outstretched hands, the horror and anguish of people and animals.

Here’s Wikipedia’s description of the context in which Guernica was attacked:

Prior to the Condor Legion raid, the town had not been directly involved in the fighting, although Republican forces were in the area; 23 battalions of Basque army troops were at the front east of Guernica. The town also housed two Basque army battalions, although it had no static air defenses, and it is thought that no air cover could be expected due to recent losses of the Republican Air Force.

Guernica had a nominal population of around five thousand and the town is thought to have housed numerous refugees who were fleeing into Republican controlled territory. The raid also took place on a Monday, ordinarily a market day in Guernica. Generally speaking a market day would have attracted people from the surrounding areas to Guernica to conduct business.

There is still historical debate over whether a market was being held that particular Monday however. On the one hand, the Basque government had, prior to the bombing, ordered a general halt to markets to prevent blockage of roads and restrict large meetings. While the issuance of a directive forbidding markets is indisputable, it is commonly argued that the directive had not been received by all areas, including Guernica, at the time of the raid, and therefore a market was held.

The bombing was supposed to hit roads and a bridge, a clear strategic target intended to cut off the withdrawal of Republican forces. In fact, as Wikipedia explains:

The attacks destroyed the majority of Guernica. Three quarters of the city’s buildings were reported completely destroyed, and most others sustained damage. Among infrastructure spared were the arms factories Unceta and Company and Talleres de Guernica along with the Assembly House Casa de Juntas and the Oak. Richthofen [the officer in charge of the attack] recorded that the bridge was not destroyed or even hit during the raid and the mission was considered a failure as a result, although the rubble and chaos that the raid created severely restricted the movement of Republican forces.

Afterwards, Republicans claimed that 1600 people had been killed. The Nationalists alleged that Republicans had themselves destroyed the town, burning it as they retreated. More recent historians estimate a death toll in the hundreds.

Whatever the actual figure, reports of the attacks on Guernica caused outrage around the world, helping to convince many people of the true nature of the junta and its allies. The Nationalists might claim to be attacking only military targets while attempting to keep civilian casualties to a minimum but the piles of Basque corpses spoke for themselves. The display of Picasso’s painting at the 1937 World Fair reflected an emerging consensus about the barbarity of the fascists.

Which, of course, brings us to Gaza. The Israelis are not fascists but, other than that, the analogy is spookily accurate. Think of the school that the Israelis recently destroyed, killing at least 42 civilians who had taken refuge there, despite the fact that it was clearly marked as a UN facility and the IDF had been provided with its GPS co-ordinates. Like the junta after Guernica, the IDF tried to blame the victims, alleging that Hamas had been hiding inside and firing mortars. Not surprisingly, that’s all turned out to be untrue. As Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace group, says:

The desperate refugees who lost everything had hoped that hiding in a school belonging to the UN would give them at least some kind of refuge and save their children. They did not know that even there a single shell would cut off dozens of lives in a single second. They did not know that facing them is an Israeli government running amok; charging headlong into the depth of the bloody mud of Gaza.

Those who sent soldiers to conduct intensive warfare in the world’s most thickly inhabited area knew well in advance that the undoubted result would be a bloodbath, the killing of civilians, children and adults, whole families buried under the ruins of their homes. The government dooms a whole generation of young Israelis to become, quite literally, war criminals except for those who are themselves killed by the artillery shells which are supposed to protect them.

Have a look at the photos below and then go back to the Picasso Youtube clip.

Where, though, is the outrage? In some respects, that’s the scariest aspect of the whole Gaza crisis: the way that atrocities that would have utterly scandalised the generation of the thirties have now become entirely routine.

Since the attack on the school, the Israelis have now attacked other representatives of the UN:

The United Nations has said it is halting its aid programme in the Gaza Strip after one of its drivers was killed by Israeli troops during a three-hour ceasefire. A spokesperson explained that the UN would not resume delivering food aid and medical supplies until it received fresh assurances Israel would stop targeting its civilian contractors.

The Wikipedia entry on the bombing of Guernica also contains the following passage:

A tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war.

The Flame, January 2009 - Green Left Weekly's Arabic-language supplement

January 8, 2009 -- With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading socialist newspaper -- is publishing a regular Arabic language supplement. The Flame covers news from the Arabic-speaking world as well as news and issues from within Australia. The editor-in-chief is Soubhi Iskander, a comrade who has endured years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the repressive government in Sudan.

Iskander and his team are working to involve progressive activists from other Arabic-speaking communities in the Flame project. Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is also proud to bring the Flame to readers outside Australia. Below is the edition of the Flame published on January 8, 2009.

Its contents include:

Page 1:
Iraqi Communist Party statement on Gaza
Syria CP statement on Gaza

`To kill a nation' - Egypt CP

SAHRA statement on Gaza

Page 2:
Stand up for people of Gaza (new translation)

Lebanese CP statement on Gaza

Jewish filmmaker condemns Gaza attack

New year message from National conveners

Page 3:
The timing of Israeli invasion

Street fights in Gaza

The Socialist Alliance position on Palestine

Page 4:
Trade Union petition

Israel between Lebanon and Gaza

Arab rulers want Hamas leaders killed

How to join Socialist Alliance

The Flame, January 2009 -- Green Left Weekly's Arabic-language supplement

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