Press Release

The Ethnic Cleansing of Hebron

Date: 6.December.2008

For the third day running, Israel's colonizing settlers have been rampaging through the town of El Khalil (Hebron), killing people, setting fire to houses and property, smashing windows and cars. They are being aided and protected by brutal Israeli soldiers who participate in this orgy of rampaging reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa.

The settlers, driven by racist, Zionist ideology and blind hatred, have been indoctrinated and mobilized by ultra-Zionist and fundamentalist religious leaders to depopulate this Palestinian city and ethnically-cleanse it in broad day light amidst an international conspiracy of silence, apathy of Europe, and collusion of the Bush administration.

This brutality exercised by fundamentalist settlers falls on deaf ears and tight-lipped mouths. The UN Security Council, once again, has failed the Palestinian people. What is happening in Hebron should not be tolerated in any possible way. Exactly like what the current president of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, said: "What is being done to the Palestinian people seems to me to be a version of the hideous policy of apartheid." He went on to call on the world to adopt a BDS campaign against Israel.

This is the same regime that has been imposing a hermetic, suffocating blockade on Gaza, dehumanizing its people as the world watches and stands idly by.

We, therefore, call upon all freedom loving people to condemn Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing in Hebron, and genocide in Gaza.

The One Democratic State Group

Odsg.org/co

onedemocraticstategroup@gmail.com

Here's what Avi Issacharoff wrote in Haaretz www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1043795.html

Please go and watch the video on Haaretz I could not embed it here.

ANALYSIS / Hebron settler riots were out and out pogroms

By Avi Issacharoff

Tags: Hebron, settlers, Israel News

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there. The cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men hurled at the Abu Sa'afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most e Advertisement ffective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army. Ten minutes prior, while the security forces were preoccupied with dispersing the rioters near the House of Contention, black smoke billowed from the wadi separating Kiryat Arba and Hebron. For some reason, none of the senior officers of the police or the army were particularly disturbed by what was transpiring at the foot of Kiryat Arba. Anyone standing hundreds of meters away could notice the dozens of rioters climbing atop the roof of the Abu Sa'afan family home, hurling stones. Only moments later did it become apparent that there were people inside the home. I quickly descend to the wadi and accost three soldiers. "What do you want from me? The three of us are responsible for the entire sector here," one said, his hand gesturing towards the entire wadi. "Use your radio to request help," I said. He replies that he is not equipped with a radio. A group of journalists approach the house. A dilemma. What to do? There are no security forces in the vicinity and now the Jewish troublemakers decided to put the journalists in their crosshairs. We call for the security guards from Kiryat Arba to intervene and put a halt to the lynch. But they surround the home to prevent the arrival of "Palestinian aid." The home is destroyed and the fear is palpable on the faces of the children. One of the women, Jihad, is sprawled on the floor, half-unconscious. The son, who is gripping a large stick, prepares for the moment he will be forced to face the rioters. Tahana, one of the daughters, refuses to calm down. "Look at what they did to the house, look." Tess, the photographer, bursts into tears as the events unfold around her. The tears do not stem from fear. It is shame, shame at the sight of these occurrences, the deeds of youths who call themselves Jews. Shame that we share the same religion. At 5:05 P.M., a little over an hour after the incident commenced, a unit belonging to the Yassam special police forces arrives to disperse the crowd of masked men. The family members refuse to calm down. Leaving the home, one can hear a settler yell at a police officer: "Nazis, shame on you." Indeed. Shame on you.

Gideon Levy is one Israeli journalist with integrity. Over the years he has exposed the discriminatory practices of the Israeli authorities. Below is an article which appeared in Haaretz on Dec.12, 2008. The question is what would have been the reaction if this appeared in the mainstream media in the US--I am not sure about Europe? All hell would break loose and accusations of anti-semitism will start flying diminishing an trivializing Jew hatred which led to the biggest crime in recent human history. What about the helpless people who have lost their homes and land to settlers? Don't they deserve to live a decent life? Don't they deserve to have a home and live in peace? The silence is defeaning.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

No you don't have to take the side of a particular party but you do have to take the side of justice.

Yes indeed, Apartheid is alive and well.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1047895.html
Last update - 13:45 18/12/2008
Twilight Zone / Non-Jews need not apply
By Gideon Levy

The Israeli national flag flies high, defiant and arrogant over the
Palestinian home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. This
flag has never looked as repulsive as it does in the heart of this
Palestinian neighborhood, above the home of a Palestinian family that
suddenly lost everything. The head of the house, Mohammed al-Kurd, died 11
days after the eviction. Now his widow lives in a tent. The house is reached
via a narrow alley: Here Moshe and Avital Shoham and Emanuel and Yiska Dagan
live happily. They are the settlers who managed to expel the Palestinian
tenants and take over another outpost, in the heart of East Jerusalem. House
after house, the transfer here is especially quiet: The media barely report
on these houses of contention.

Israeli greed knows no bounds: It sends its tentacles into the homes of
refugees who already experienced, in 1948, the taste of expulsion and
evacuation and being left with nothing. Now they are refugees for a second
time. Another 27 families here can expect a similar fate, and all under the
aegis of the Israeli court system, the lighthouse of justice and the beacon
of law, which approves, whitewashes and purifies deceptive and distorted
ways of evicting these children of refugees from their homes for the second
time. The family keeps, as an eternal souvenir, the keys to the house in
Talbieh that was stolen from them and the banana warehouse in Musrara that
was taken from them. Now they have another key that opens nothing: the key
to the home in Sheikh Jarrah, which they received decades ago from the
Jordanian government and the United Nations as compensation for their lost
home.

The right of return: The original owners of those houses, the Sephardic
Community Committee, has this right forever. There is no judge in Jerusalem
who can explain this double standard, this racist right of return for Jews
only. Why is the Sephardic Community Committee allowed, and the committee of
Palestinians not? What are the tycoons and the politicians who stand behind
this hostile takeover thinking to themselves? What is going through the
minds of the judges who permitted it? And what about the policemen who
violently evicted a sickly man in a wheelchair in the middle of the night,
without even letting him remove the contents of his house? And what are the
Jews now living in these stolen houses feeling?

White smoke rises from several corners of the empty lot a few steps from the
American Colony Hotel. The lot was cleaned this week before Christmas. These
are the twig bonfires on which they are baking pita with za'atar, heating
coffee and preparing tea for the many guests who have come to visit the new
refugee encampment. On Sunday several delegations of Israeli Arabs from the
Galilee came to express identification with Fawziya and the 27 families who
will probably soon join her in this tent. Israel does not like this
encampment, the municipality has already tried to evacuate it. Photographs
of refugee tents in the heart of the unified capital are not good for
Israeli public relations. Such pictures, which have already been splashed
across several international newspapers in recent weeks - of course not in
the Israeli press, which turns a blind eye - remind their readers of similar
tent camps, those of 1948.

The Arabic poster at the edge of the lot leaves no room for compromise:
"Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is Arab, Muslim and Christian." The refreshment tables
are full of the best Palestinian cuisine from the Galilee: labaneh, majadera
of rice, lentils and onions, baked goods and more, including olive oil from
the recent harvest. Guests mill around. Prof. Jamal Amro, former head of the
architecture department at Birzeit University, attracts a crowd. The last
time we met was in 1999, inside the American Colony. Amro told me then about
his torture by Shin Bet security service interrogators, when "Captain Dvir"
came to his home in the middle of the night and told him: "Say goodbye to
your wife and children."

Amro underwent a terrifying, 25-day interrogation, including 15 consecutive
days without sleep and a sack reeking of urine over his head. The Shin Bet
tried to recruit him as a collaborator, and as usual all means were fair:
"Suck, dog, suck," one of the interrogators told him, "many men are now
doing the same thing to your wife." Captain "Martin" placed his foot on
Amro's neck and told this professor and architect: "You're like a dog on the
floor."

Amro, an impressive, refined man whose son died of cancer just a few days
ago, compares Shin Bet scars on his arms with another visitor, a refugee
from Lifta who was also tortured.

Print worker Nasser Ghawi, a native of Sheikh Jarrah, relates the story in
literary Hebrew: He is 46 and was born in the house now scheduled for
eviction. I was born in the house, he emphasizes, not in the hospital.

"The claim of the other side is that they came here 120 years ago, although
our houses were built 52 years ago." Ghawi's family fled to Jerusalem from
Sarafand (Tzrifin). In 1956 the Jordanian government and the UN Relief and
Works Agency built these 28 homes of refuge in Sheikh Jarrah for the
families of the new refugees, in exchange for waiving their refugee cards.
Nobody can compare with Ghawi when it comes to telling their story in
English, especially the events since 1972, five years after the capture of
East Jerusalem, when the Israeli court declared them "protected tenants" in
the houses that according to the court belong to the Sephardic Community
Committee.

Because these families refused to pay rent to the Sephardic Community
Committee and to the Committee of the Knesset of Israel - both religious
bodies - which transferred the property to the Nahalat Shimon settler
association, they were doomed to eviction. Just as with the more famous
"House of Contention" in Hebron, there are suspicions of forged documents
and biased judgments, Jewish tycoons and MKs who encourage disagreement, a
nearby religious site (the grave of the Jewish saint Shimon Hatzadik, which
Palestinians say is in fact the grave of a member of the Hijazi family) and
nationalist motives - to "create a barrier" between Sheikh Jarrah and the
northern Palestinian neighborhoods. But above all, the inequality in the
discussion of the right of return conducted in the Israeli justice system
cries out from afar.

Whatever the case, Ghawi's family was forced to leave its home in 2002 by
court order. In 2006 they won the right to return to it, after drawn-out and
expensive legal deliberations. Now they are once again facing eviction.
Ghawi's father, Abd al-Fatah, 87, could be sent to prison, like the father
of the neighboring Hanun family, who has already spent three months in jail
for contempt of court.

The weather is deceptive, one moment sunny, the next moment the skies darken
above the row of tents and a cold wind whips against your face. On November
9, the Kurds were evacuated from their home of 52 years, since it was built.
Fawziya will never forget that night. "I wish nobody had seen it and nobody
had ever experienced it, what I went through that night."

She is 56, a mother of five and grandmother of 16. She was born in the Old
City, to which her family fled in 1948 from Talbieh, in West Jerusalem. In
1970 she married Mohammed, a refugee from Jaffa, and moved to his home in
Sheikh Jarrah.

Their troubles also began in 1972. Since then she has seen everything. She
says MK Benny Elon came to her house a few years ago, offering an enormous
sum for the house. A pistol was placed in the yard in an effort to frame
her. Dirty diapers were thrown at her doorway. The sewage pipe was blocked
by her uninvited neighbors. She was forced to pay their electricity bills
when they tapped into her meter. The settlers frequently held noisy parties
in what had been her childrens' home. Fawziya says that since their eviction
in 2001 there were new settlers every few months - Jewish immigrants from
Ethiopia, Yemen, America, in her backyard.

The eviction: "Everything I had experienced until then was nothing compared
to that night," Fawziya related. "They knew I had a sick and paralyzed
husband." At 3:30 A.M. they heard knocking. She was holding a bedpan for her
husband. Several dozen local police and Border Police officers burst in.
"What are you doing?" she shouted, and then two police officers grabbed her
arms from behind and dragged her outside. She says her husband slipped and
fell off the bed. They took her by force into the street, far from the
house, and dragged her husband to the neighbor's house.

Everything was left behind, all their belongings. Her husband in pajamas,
she in a nightgown, that's all they had. "I asked a policewoman for water
and she shouted: 'Shut up!' They were so violent, that's why I'll never
forgive them. My husband was crying and they were laughing."

The next night they were already in the white tent. "Had you been in my
husband's place, all his life in this house and suddenly in the street, what
would you have said? What would you have felt? If you lost a cell phone -
how angry you would be, and he lost his home. All his money and his entire
life and suddenly he is thrown out into the street."

Mohammed stayed in the tent, but on the 11th day his strength ran out. He
was rushed to the French Hospital in East Jerusalem, after refusing to be
taken to an Israeli hospital.

"If they don't show any mercy to me in my home, they won't show any mercy in
the hospital," he told his wife. A few hours before he died, Mohammed asked
Fawziya: "If I'm discharged from the hospital, where will I go?" Fawziya
says God took mercy on her husband and took him away. She says she would
like to meet Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, to look them in the eye and ask:
"Why did you do this to us? Only because we're Palestinians."

"Close your eyes," she tells me quietly. "What do you see? Darkness. That's
what I see." Since the eviction she has not dared to approach her house.

To all I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a new peaceful and prosperous year. Thank you for all the visits, comments, and most importantly for your kindness and friendship.

A tous, Joyeux Noel et une nouvelle annee paisible et pleine d'amour. Merci beaucoup de vos visites, commentaire et surtout de votre gentilesse et amitie.

Simultaneous Israeli missile strikes kill more than 155 Palestinians

27.12.2008

30 Israeli missiles killed more than 155 Palestinians, including children, this morning in a simultaneous attack on over 30 different locations in the Gaza Strip, most of them in Gaza City. The attack, which continues to target police cars at this time, came just as school children finished school and began to walk home. Morgues have no more space to keep the dead men, women and children while hospitals are battling to cope with the more than 200 others who were injured. At the time of writing this statement, a second wave of air strikes has been raining down on the Gaza Strip.

The One Democratic State Group, with many other civil society organizations and solidarity groups, have been warning of a slow genocide that has been conducted against the Palestinian people of Gaza under the nose of an indifferent international community.

The One Democratic State Group condemns in the strongest possible terms these heinous crimes and calls upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.

We also call on all Arab non-governmental organizations and political parties to boycott American embassies and compel their governments to sever their diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel. We, again and again, ask: What more do the Arab and Muslim peoples need to see to translate their words of support into action? What more do they need to see to convince them to act than the dozens of dead corpses of children in Gaza?


This outrageous and brutal massacre is a war crime that must be condemned unequivocally by all without exception. Israel must be isolated from the community of nations because of this barbaric act and it must be forced to account for these actions in The Hague.

Palestinians will not allow these crimes to stop their march to an independent, democratic Palestine for all of its citizens. We will continue to demand the return of our homeland to honour all those who have died today. Israel will not be able to kill us all.

The One Democratic State Group

Union of Health Work Committees- Gaza

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December, 27^th 2008

Massacre In Gaza

Black Saturday

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for

good men to do nothing" Edmund Burke

You are probably aware that the Israeli Cabinet has approved in the last few days to launch a military operation against Gaza by all forces of the Israeli demolishing forces (IDF). The assault was launched at around 11:30 am and carried out in two separate waves of attacks, over 100 bombs were dropped on dozens of targets. Some 80 warplanes and helicopters took part in the assault destroying several civil police compound and civilian homes. Television footage showed dead bodies scattered on a road and wounded and dead being carried away by distraught rescuers. There was widespread damage to buildings. Till now, (17: pm) more than 205 people were killed and at least 750 were wounded, 125 people out of them with critical injuries, in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip on the black Saturday, according to Ministry of health and human rights organizations.

The military operation makes the Palestinian blood fall like rain. As a consequence, the civilian population in the cities of Rafah, Khan-Younis, middle camps, Gaza City, Beit-Hanoun and Beit-Lahiya and in the refugee camp of Jabalia is suffering from the most horrible onslaught of Israeli military power.

According to statistics received Al-Awda hospital (UHWC), in Jabalia and beit-lahia, in just 3 hours 18 people were killed . Another 85 people were injured and 16 remain in a critical condition. The number of deaths and injured and the extent of the damage are increasing by the minute.

The Infrastructure is being destroyed leaving many areas without power and water. Military forces curtail all movement preventing medical and health workers from reaching the injured, as well as, the chronic and routine cases needing medical services. Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia is very close to the military operation area and medical teams and health workers attempting to evacuate the injured risk are being killed themselves. Medical supplies in the hospital are largely exhausted due to the strict siege imposed since 50 days and already food supplies for in-patients and staff are dwindling.

The Northern Governorate of Gaza has been hit the hardest and the people there are facing a real health crisis. The men and women of UHWC are working around the clock and at risk to themselves to deal with this humanitarian disaster. All indications are that this latest assault on Palestinian civil society is a repeat of the grave and massive violations of Palestinian human rights by Israel, and, there is no sign of the military easing their offensive.

The entire world is witnessing these scandalous and outrageous acts, and yet no concrete step has been taken!!! Unless the international community puts pressure on Israel to stop the mass killing of civilians and the willful destruction of property and infrastructure, the people of Gaza will again be forced to suffer the humiliating and crippling dictates of Israel's military rule. It could also lead to the re-occupation of the entire Gaza Strip.

UHWC asks you, to issue a strong Last Appeal Statement condemning Israel’s human rights violations against the Palestinian people and to demand a cessation of this military offensive. Israel's persistent unilateral attempts to change by force the situation of some 1.5 million Palestinians blatantly contravene international humanitarian law and all human rights conventions. Furthermore, they are morally reprehensible. There are no political considerations which can justify the silence of the international community any longer.

ENDS

Dr. Yousef Mousa

Executive Director

Tel: 08-282427

Fax: 08-2869220

E-mail: info@gaza-health.org

Web Site: www.gaza-health.org

Gaza massacres must spur us to action

By Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
27 December 2008

http://electronicin tifada.net/ v2/article10055. shtml

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air
force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al
Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense
official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of
Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes
and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of
locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at
least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of
these locations were police stations located, like police
stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas.
The US government was one of the first to offer its
support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police
officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more
than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training.
An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and
injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead
children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time
thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on
their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their
supporters around the world; their violence is righteous
violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and
therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and
NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for
freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being
faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is
that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian
rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the
six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no
Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rockets
attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in
Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In
recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly
and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary
medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated
and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5
million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and
children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians
died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin,
cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from
reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce.
It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce,
Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel
starves them, kills them and continues to violently
colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and
medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is
also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there
is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for
schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations
agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic
Intifada in November: "there was five months of a
ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people
of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration
of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our
supplies were also restricted during the period of the
ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very
vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of
closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks
-- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in
Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and
bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the
West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft,
settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one
single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in
Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even
assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on
Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single
Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's
relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for
instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50
years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November,
so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.

Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did
last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of
children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once
again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that
this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage
being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably,
it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The
images that stick are of Israel's foreign minister Tzipi
Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling
with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the
pictures of Livni and Egypt's foreign minister smiling and
slapping their palms together.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last
wednesday the Israeli "cabinet authorized the prime
minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister
to determine the timing and the method" of Israel's
attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni
tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell
her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza's streets
red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of
the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by
keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a
year.

On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people
feel at Israel's renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense
of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to
channel it into a political response that can change the
course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.

But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them.
Already I have received notices of demonstrations and
solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the
world. That is important. But what will happen after the
demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we
continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?

Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real
solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political
action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group
reaffirmed this today as it "called upon all civil society
organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately
in any possible way to put pressure on their governments
to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute
sanctions against it."

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for
Palestine (http://www.bdsmovem ent.net/) provides the
framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw
emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do
not wake up to "another Gaza" ever again.

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).

Gaza, December 28, 2008

Best way to secure Israel is Justice to Palestine


Israel's air force launched a major bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip
today, killing over two hundred people and injuring many more.
Typically, Israel justifies this horrific scale of killing as
retaliation against the rocket launching from Gaza. The spate of
Israeli bombing continued throughout the day and into the night. I was
interrupted several times while trying to finish this note, by the
devastating sound of bombing.
In the core of the vicious cycle of violence that has engulfed the
region for decades and lead to the many wars of the Middle East and
beyond, lies the tragedy of the Palestinian uprooting in 1948, the
justice denied to their plight and the living under the oppressive
Israeli occupation for over forty years.
Instead of acknowledging the real issues of justice, mutual security
and peace, the region was drowned into mutual hatred, revenge killing
and insecurity.
Israeli policies and strategies rested always on the supremacy of its
brutal force. Palestinians, in defiance of the Israeli scheme, were
drawn into the resistance and some used homemade missiles and suicide
missions.
Brute force and carnage in Gaza on the scale of today is a dangerous
omen. Israel must restrain its military might and face up to the
consequences of dragging the region into such a serious and intensified
path of violence.
Palestinians must stop all forms of violence and unite in the pursuit
of peace and justice. We, in the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian
Peace-International, FFIPP-I, call for an immediate halt of the Israeli
military attack on Gaza and ending the siege on the deprived strip.
The United States of America is the only power that could play a
positive role in ending the unending tragedy in the Holy Land. We hope
that the new administration of President Obama will make the necessary
change; a fresh approach as an honest broker of peace.

Eyad El-Sarraj

Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj is the founder and director of the Gaza Community
Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) and the president of
FFIPP-International

TAKE ACTION TO

DECRY THE ATTACKS ON GAZA

27 December 2008

The world majority stands with the Palestinian people in this devastating time that Israeli Defense Secretary Ehud Barak calls "just the beginning." Israeli attacks on Gaza in the past 24 hours have killed over 200 people and injured hundreds more. We decry the multiple forms of collective punishment currently being inflicted that reflect Israel's 60-plus year history of ethnic cleansing: lack of access to electricity and potable water, blockades of food and medicine, and these brutal attacks.

We are outraged but not surprised by this escalation. Israel's unilaterally designed and implemented disengagement from Gaza has maintained control of the borders, air and water space, and completely isolated Gaza practically and politically. This has been accomplished with unconditional support from the United States and its allies and with the complicity of the broader international community and Gaza's neighbors. It has also set the stage for these horrendous events.

The media frames this violence as a conflict between warring peoples with equal power. This framing is possible because the media fails to recognize Israel as an apartheid State or as a colonial occupying force with one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world.

The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group has called for "all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it." IJAN stands in solidarity with the people of Gaza and supports this call.

WE ASK YOU TO JOIN US AND TAKE ACTION!

1. Join or organize emergency protests and direct actions in partnership with Palestine solidarity and social justice organizations in your area. Please send announcements of actions you are joining or organizing (with date, time and location) to ijan@ijsn.net so they can be announced on our web site. Also send reports of actions you participate in so this information can be shared with people around the world.

2. Donate money through the Middle East Children's Alliance to pay for desperately needed medical supplies and their delivery. The current conditions in Gaza medical facilities are dire. The Middle East Children's Alliance is working with health organizations in Gaza to procure the most-needed medicines and send them direct to Gaza with the help of the Free Gaza Movement.

3. Flood Israeli embassies and consulates with letters and calls decrying the attacks. Find contact info for Israeli embassies around the world.

4. Contact government officials and call on them to act by denouncing the attacks and demanding an immediate cease-fire.

5. Shift the framing of Israel's actions in the media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor.

6. Sign the petition in support of UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann who has spoken out to condemn Israeli "Apartheid" and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

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© International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

from http://www.democracynow.org/

Israeli Attacks Kill Over 310 in Gaza in One of Israel's Bloodiest Attacks on Palestinians Since 1948

Amidst worldwide protests, Israel is continuing its bombing campaign against Gaza for the third consecutive day and preparing to launch a possible ground invasion. Following months of a crippling blockade, this has been described as one of Israel’s bloodiest attacks on Palestinians since 1948. Latest reports indicate that 310 people have been killed and 1,400 injured in the aerial strikes across the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning. The latest targets of the air strikes include the Hamas Interior Ministry building and the Islamic University. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced today that Israel is in an “all-out war with Hamas and its proxies” in Gaza. Fears of a ground invasion are growing after Israel declared a military buffer zone around Gaza, closing off the strip and its 1.5 million residents to journalists and civilians.

We speak to Dr. Moussa El-Haddad and Fida Qishta in Gaza, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti in Ramallah, Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv and Ali Abunimah in the US. [includes rush transcript–partial]

Listen to the program (link below)

http://cdn4.libsyn.com/democracynow/dn2008-1229-1.mp3?nvb=20081229182805&nva=20081230183805&t=0d45f00742692130b6786

H.E. Mr. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann is President of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

On Gaza airstrikes

UN Headquarters , New York, 27 December 2008

The behavior by Israel in bombarding Gaza is simply the commission of wanton aggression by a very powerful state against a territory that illegally occupies.

Time has come to take firm action if the United Nations does not want to be rightly accused of complicity by omission.

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment - the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians - the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response - the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law - regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move expeditiously not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Source: http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/index.shtml

What needs to happen now is for the United Nations General Assembly, where the traditional complacent and complicit supporters of Israel have no veto power, to meet in session and impose sanctions on Israel or maybe even better rescind its membership in the UN. Will this happen? I don't know. Maybe if we ordinary people write to the UN General Assembly President H.E. Mr. Miguel d'Escota Brockmann and express the desire for this to happen then maybe it will. Does anyone know how to contact him? I tried the contact button (bottom of the page) here and sent a message but don't know if he will get it http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/

Physicians for Human Rights launched an appeal for urgently needed medical supplies and/or donations to help secure the needed supplies. Please help in any way you can.

Thank you.

Robert Fisk is a Journalist writing for The Independent in the UK. Throughout the civil war and later the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he lived in Beirut. I read two of his books Pity the Nation, and The Great War for Civilization. I highly recommend both of them for anyone who wants or is interested in the Middle East and the recent history of the region. He is an eloquent and extremely candid writer and journalist. I wish there were many more like him in the mainstream media especially in the US where journalists and editors of major media outlet--no one exempted here--toe the line and have become subserviant to the dictates of the powerful pro Israel lobby AIPAC and the ADL.