Gaza Children Found With Mothers' Corpses By ALAN COWELL
New York Times
PARIS - The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered "shocking" scenes - including small children next to their mothers' corpses - when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza battered by Israeli shelling. It accused Israel of failing to meet obligations to care for the wounded in areas of combat.
In response, the Israeli military did not comment directly on the allegation. In a statement, it accused Hamas, its foe in Gaza, of deliberately using "Palestinian civilians as human shields" and said the Israeli Army "works in close cooperation with international aid organizations during the fighting so that civilians can be provided with assistance."
The Israeli military "in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians," the statement said, promising that "any serious allegation" would "need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation."
In an unusually blunt criticism, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross said it had been seeking access to shell-damaged areas in Zeitoun in the east of Gaza City since Saturday but the Israeli authorities granted permission only on Wednesday - the first day that Israel allowed a three-hour lull in the attacks on Gaza on humanitarian grounds.
The statement said a team of four Palestine Red Crescent ambulances accompanied by Red Cross representatives made its way to Zeitoun Wednesday where it "found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all, there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses."
In another house, the statement said, the rescue team "found 15 other survivors of this attack including several wounded. In yet another house, they found an additional three corpses. Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do. There were several other positions of the Israeli Defense Forces nearby as well as two tanks."
Because of berms built by Israeli forces, the ambulances could not enter the area so "the children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances on a donkey cart," the statement said.
The statement quoted Pierre Wettach, an International Red Cross representative for Israel and the Palestinian areas, as calling the incident "shocking."
"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded," he was quoted as saying.
The statement said the international Red Cross "believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable."
I am posting two articles below that I believe provide a context to
the current Israeli assault on Gaza. The casualties have
overwhelmingly been civilians despite the claims of the Israeli
occupation forces that they are targeting Hamas. The article by
former President Jimmy Carter appeared in the Washington Post. The
article by Mousa Abu Marzook appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
An Unnecessary War By JIMMY CARTER
The Washington Post
I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of
Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.
After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.
Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a
fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.
We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.
Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top
Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.
After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.
Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would
stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel's withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).
We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel's unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that
encloses Gaza.
On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.
After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.
The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and
comprehensive peace.
The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.
Hamas speaks A Hamas official
insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under
Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance. By
MOUSA ABU MARZOOK
The Los Angeles Times
From Damascus - While Americans may believe that the current violence in Gaza began Dec. 27, in fact Palestinians have been dying from bombardments for many weeks. On Nov. 4, when the Israeli-Palestinian truce was still in effect but global attention was turned to the U.S. elections, Israel launched a "preemptive" airstrike on Gaza, alleging intelligence about an imminent operation to capture Israeli soldiers; more assaults took place throughout the month.
The truce thus shattered, any incentive by Palestinian leaders to enforce the moratorium on rocket fire was gone. Any extension of the agreement or improvement of its implementation at that point would have required Israel to engage Hamas, to agree to additional trust-building measures and negotiation with our movement -- a political impossibility for Israel, with its own elections only weeks away.
Not that the truce had been easy on Palestinians. In the six-month period preceding this week's bombardment, one Israeli was killed, while dozens of Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli military and police actions, and numerous others died for want of medical care.
The war on Gaza should not be mistaken for an Israeli triumph. Rather, Israel's failure to make the truce work, and its inevitable resort to bloodshed, demonstrate again that it cannot permit a future built on Palestinian political self-determination. The truce failed because Israel will not open Gaza's borders, because Israel would rather be a jailer than a neighbor, and because its intransigent leadership forestalls Palestinian destiny and will not make peace with history.
This week's war is not an attack on the Izzidin al-Qassam units -- our movement's military wing -- but is simply aggression targeting the people, infrastructure and economic life of Gaza, designed to sow terror and loose anarchy; it aims to establish new "facts on the ground" -- that is, heaps of rubble with bodies trapped beneath -- in advance of the coming American administration.
Israel claims loudly that it had no other choice this week but to rain death on refugees in camps, killing dozens of women and children, while Defense Minister Ehud Barak (the once and would-be prime minister) -- his eye fixed on February elections -- employs mass murder as his party's latest vote-getting appeal, an electoral strategy fit to shame the most hardened Chicago political operative.
But, of course, options remained available. Israel might have relented months ago, for the sake of the truce, in its criminal determination to starve Gaza, cutting off much of its fuel and choking all commerce to a trickle, blocking relief organizations from delivering food and medicine, and consigning Gaza's citizens to famine rations. Only the most cynical observer would call this grinding attrition "good faith" adherence to the truce. Blockades, after all, are explicitly acts of war.
Palestinians everywhere mark the closing of the Bush era with relief; nevertheless, skepticism runs high that any justice for our people might come from a new president who remained ominously silent in the presence of the latest Israeli onslaught, and who has aligned himself
so thoroughly with Israel's interests, so long in advance of taking power. Barack Obama's helicopter ride two years ago above the Holy Land was not unusual in the annals of American parliamentarians junketed on "fact finding" trips by Israel's lobbyists; yet his fond remarks on what he saw -- "houses and streets like ones you might find" in any American suburb -- were notable for their silence as to any troubling sights. Did he miss the security roads and checkpoints
that riddle the West Bank, or the construction of the wall, or the illegal settlements? Perhaps his helicopter flew too high.
But now, amid Israel's latest attack on our people, as the death toll rises in the hundreds, with thousands wounded -- all victims of American taxpayers' largesse -- Palestinians wonder how Obama will react to the escalating crisis. They demand of the next White House a new paradigm of respect and accountability, because when Palestinians see an F-16 with the Star of David painted on its tail, they see America.
Palestinians are understandably guarded about the coming administration, noting its appointments with trepidation. The soon-to-be secretary of State is unforgettable for urging years ago U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital, while the administration's chief of staff bears the stain of his father's service in the banned terrorist Irgun paramilitary, a Zionist group
responsible for numerous atrocities.
Renewed calls today for our movement to "recognize the right of Israel to exist," in the face of murderous onslaught, ring as hollow as Israel's continuing claims to be acting in "self-defense" as her jets bomb civilians. Without debating here the Zionist state's fictive, existential "right," which of the many Israels, precisely, would the West have us recognize? Is it the Israel that militarily
occupies land belonging to three of its neighbors, ignoring international law and scores of U.N. resolutions over decades? Is it the Israel that illegally settles its citizens on other people's land, seizes water sources and uproots olive trees? Is it the Israel that in 60 years has never acknowledged the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their farms and villages as the foundational act of its statehood and denies refugees their right to return?
Through bitter experience, when we hear demands for "recognition" of Israel as a precondition to dialogue, what we hear is a call for acquiescence in its crimes against us, validating the injustices that have been wrought in its name.
Our spirit to fight on is the legacy of collective suffering: With tens of thousands dead or wounded by decades of the "peace process," you cannot find a family in Palestine -- Muslim or Christian, Hamas, Fatah, PFLP or Islamic Jihad -- without a son or daughter killed, injured, jailed or tortured, or which does not count itself or its kin among the millions of refugees living in U.N. camps.
Hamas is not a handful of leaders. Israel may kill all of the current leadership in this round of violence, including me, and its organic, social infrastructure will not go away. We are, simply put, a homegrown national liberation resistance movement, with millions of people who support our struggle for freedom and justice.
President-elect Obama spoke courageously in his campaign for a policy of open dialogue, absent preconditions, with those deemed inimical to U.S. interests, and we were listening. One former U.S. president -- a true peacemaker -- has dared to visit with us and hear our side of this struggle, while offering us no shortage of criticism. It has been a refreshing exchange. Now is the time for the next U.S. president to do the same.
No American leader has ever visited a Palestinian refugee camp anywhere, much less in Gaza -- a startling fact, considering the central role America has played in our people's narrative. None has dared to look our refugees in their faces and experience their suffering directly.
In observance of the storied tradition of Arab hospitality to guests, and anticipating that day when an American president fulfills his promise of change, we extend the invitation now, and we will put the kettle on.
Mousa Abu Marzook is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the
Islamic Resistance Movement.
What You Don't Know About Gaza By RASHID KHALIDI
NEARLY everything you've been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza's air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel's blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment - with the tacit support of the United States - of a civilian population for exercising its demoocratic rights.
THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction20in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.
WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
This war on the people of Gaza isn't really about rockets. Nor is it about "restoring Israel's deterrence," as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.
"Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming "Sowing Cris is: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."
Roseanne Barr blasts
Israel as 'Nazi state'
Accuses Jews bombing Gaza of learning from their German 'mentors'
WorldNetDaily
Emmy-award winning comedienne Roseanne Barr, herself of Jewish ancestry, has nonetheless blasted Israel for its recent attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, calling Israel a "Nazi state" bent on torturing "the Jewish soul."
"The destruction of the Jews in Israel has been assured with this inhuman attack on civilians in Gaza," Barr writes on her blog. "Exactly as its Nazi mentors did to the Jews of Warsaw, Israel now bombs innocent civilians who have been imprisoned in concentration camps in Gaza!" She continues, "The Zionists look German! The Palestinians look like the Jews of Poland! The Jewish people have destroyed themselves in Gaza."
Her venom over the attacks, however, has not been reserved only for the Israeli state, but stings American Christians, too. Her blog posts a picture of a bloodied and bandaged boy reportedly wounded in the recent days' airstrikes with the caption, "This is what the pro-life, right wing, neo con, evangelical, Zionist, Bible-banging Americans really mean when they say: 'America is a Christian nation,' or when they say: 'Israel must defend itself,' or when they say: 'The Bible is the Word of God.'"
Raised in a family of both Jewish and Mormon faiths, Barr now claims on her website, "I am a Kabbalist, as was Jesus Christ."
Barr has long blamed "Zionists" for tension and violence in the Middle East.
Two years ago, Barr explained, "The Arabs do not invade other countries. The Israelis do. I am sick of Israel and I am sick of Zionists. They are propped up by evangelical Christians who cannot wait for the Arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname Jesus can come back."
In blog posts from the last week, Barr maintained her pattern of blaming Israeli nationalism for not only the Middle East's troubles, but America's as well. Starting with Rahm Emmanuel, whom Barr labels a "brutal person who supports the liquidation of the Gaza Ghetto," Barr declares, "Remove Israel's influence from American government! Their occupation of and brutality against their neighbors is the real reason we were attacked on 9-11!"
Her blog further urges Americans to boycott cosmetics company L'Oreal for "financing the Nazi attack on the people of Gaza"; demands the U.N. divide Jerusalem into Jewish, Muslim, and Christian parts ruled by tribunal from all three religions; and pleads with Israeli soldiers to disobey orders and "refuse to be Nazis."
Israel: Boycott, Divest,
Sanction By NAOMI KLEIN
The Nation
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions--BDS for short--was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves... This international backing must stop."
Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
1. Punitive measures
will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.
The world has tried what used to be called
"constructive engagement." It has failed utterly.
Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating
its criminality: expanding settlements, launching
an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing
collective punishment on Gaza through the
brutal blockade. Despite this escalation,
Israel has not faced punitive measures--quite
the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in
annual aid that the US sends to Israel is
only the beginning.
Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non-Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.
2. Israel is not
South Africa. Of course it isn't. The
relevance of the South African model is that
it proves that BDS tactics can be effective
when weaker measures (protests, petitions,
back-room lobbying) have failed. And there
are indeed deeply distressing echoes: the
color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed
homes and forced displacement, the settler-only
roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African
politician, said that the architecture of
segregation that he saw in the West Bank and
Gaza in 2007 was "infinitely worse than apartheid."
3. Why single out
Israel when the United States, Britain and
other Western countries do the same things
in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is
not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the
BDS strategy should be tried against Israel
is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent,
it could actually work.
4. Boycotts sever
communication; we need more dialogue, not
less. This one I'll answer with a personal
story. For eight years, my books have been
published in Israel by a commercial house
called Babel. But when I published The
Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect
the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists,
I contacted a small publisher called Andalus.
Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved
in the anti-occupation movement and the only
Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating
Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract
that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's
work, and none to me. In other words, I am
boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.
Coming up with this plan required dozens of
phone calls, e-mails and instant messages,
stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris
to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this:
as soon as you start implementing a boycott
strategy, dialogue increases dramatically.
And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires
endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid
struggle well recall. The argument that supporting
boycotts will cut us off from one another
is particularly specious given the array of
cheap information technologies at our fingertips.
We are drowning in ways to rant at one another
across national boundaries. No boycott can
stop us.
Just about now, many a proud Zionist
is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't
I know that many of those very high-tech toys
come from Israeli research parks, world leaders
in infotech? True enough, but not all of them.
Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard
Ramsey, the managing director of a British
telecom company, sent an e-mail to the Israeli
tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli
government action in the last few days we
will no longer be in a position to consider
doing business with yourself or any other
Israeli company."
When contacted by The
Nation, Ramsey said his decision wasn't
political. "We can't afford to lose any of
our clients, so it was purely commercially
defensive." It was this kind of cold business
calculation that led many companies to pull
out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's
precisely the kind of calculation that is
our most realistic hope of bringing justice,
so long denied, to Palestine.
Naomi Klein is
an award-winning journalist and syndicated
columnist and the author of the international
and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
