The Associated Press, as transmitted by the International Herald Tribune, reports that Israeli airstrikes have destroyed one of Gaza's most prominent schools. Please take a look at the links to see the kind of wanton and deliberate damage to Gazan aspirations Israel is engaged in.
Israel's justification is that rockets were being fired from the school. In response to that, according to the story:
"This is the most distinguished and advanced school in Gaza, if not in Gaza and the West Bank," said Iyad Saraj, chairman of the school's board of trustees. "I cannot swear there was no rocket fired, but if there was, you don't destroy a whole school ... this is the destruction of civilization."
The destruction of Palestinian civilization is what Israeli actions, now and in the past, are intended to bring about. But the Israelis can always claim they are justified, as the rockets from Hamas are serving as justification now. Since 1948, when the Israelis deliberately drove some 700,000 Palestinians from their lands and did not let them come back, justifiable Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule and occupation has always been used as the excuse for yet more oppression and violence against them. What is sad, as I pointed out in the previous post, is that even as smart a guy as Barack Obama cannot speak the truth about these matters to Americans and Israelis.
Israel keeps reporters out of Gaza despite Israeli court order. Details in today's Ha'aretz. Israel clearly intends to minimize how much we know about civilian casualties, which are mounting hourly.
Have Bush and the neocons ruined it for the Israelis? That's the question that Middle East expert Juan Cole asks today. The first sentence: The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Thanks to blogger Richard for calling this to our attention in the comments section.
Human Rights Watch: the laws of war require protecting of civilians. HRW cautions both Israelis and Palestinians, although its analysis makes clear that Israel is by far the greater offender.
Israel kills children. A CNN report quotes a Norwegian doctor volunteering at Gaza's Shifa Hospital who estimates that 20% of the 500 Gazans killed so far by the Israeli assault are children. Israeli leaders insist that they are not "targetting" civilians. Perhaps not; they simply don't care how many of them die.
Queen Rania of Jordan on the children of Gaza. A statement transmitted by UNICEF.
Opposition. About 1000 people demonstrated in San Jose against Israeli actions on Monday, filling the four corners of one of the California city's busiest intersections. Here is footage:
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3 Comments
It's a long-term project by a very small bunch of pseudo-religious nationalistic colonists to subdue a place where they confined about a million (1.5 million now) refugees from the land they took over, 60 years ago.
Take away the US's massive subsidy of arms and money, and Israel would just be another shitty little country in the Levant
Read this-
www.richardsilverstein.com/
or this
www.juancole.com/2009/01/have-bush-and-neocon s-ruined-it-...
That's exactly what happened in Tasmania. Each act of Tasmanian Aborigines' resistance was followed by calls for retaliation from the European settlers, followed by territorial expansion, followed by more Aborigine resistance, etc. etc. Where are the Tasmanian Aborigines now? Are the goals the same?
As a saying doing the rounds years ago had it, "Israel just wants peace. A piece of Palestine, a piece of Jordan, a piece of Lebanon, a piece of Syria and a piece of Egypt".
The only positive thing I see is that, finally, many Westerners (including many Jews) are speaking out.
Yeah. Israel's idiotic and disproportionate response is disgusting a lot of people, including a good many American Jews who otherwise would support Israel much more wholeheartedly. I can think of a number of historical parallels, but I won't go into them here. But it seems to me that the current Israeli government has a number of, shall we say, spiritual ancestors.
Anne G