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By Nour Samaha

22 November, 2012

@ Aljazeera.com

House of Hijazi family was hit and wiped out by Israeli missile, killing three members and seriously wounding the rest.

Palestinian mourners gather around the bodies of Foud Hijazi, 45, and his sons Suhaib, 2, and Mohammed, 4, killed in an Israeli strike, during their funeral at a mosque in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012.

Gaza Strip: Fouad Hejazi Family Massacre

JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP: “For a split second I thought it had struck our neighbour’s home. The next thing I know, I’m waking up in hospital,” said 19-year-old Nour Hijazi, lying in a hospital bed in Jabaliya’s Kamal Edwan Hospital with a shattered spine.

The Hijazi family, consisting of six boys and two girls, were sitting with their parents watching television on Monday evening when the Israeli missile hit their home, killing three of them, and seriously wounding the rest.

“I’m really angry and upset that my whole family were injured in this,” she said.

Nour, in her final year at school, has yet to be told that her two brothers, four-year-old Mohammad and two-year-old Suhaib, and her father Fouad, were killed in the air strike.

Suhaib’s identical twin Mosaab, sustained injuries but survived the attack. The other children; Sondoss, Osama, and Mustapha, all sustained serious injuries, and are currently undergoing treatment in various hospitals across Gaza City.

Nour’s younger brother, 17-year-old Ashraf, remembers when the missile struck the house.

“There was no warning, we just felt the entire house collapse around us,” he said from his hospital bed.

“I was stuck under the rubble. I heard the voices of our neighbours trying to pull us out,” he said. “There is no reason for them to have targeted us. We’re just normal residents.”

A statement released on Tuesday morning by the Israeli army summarising the attacks they perpetrated throughout the evening said: “The sites that were targeted have been positively identified by precise intelligence over the course of months.”

Nothing but sand and rubble

On Tuesday, there was nothing but sand and rubble left in the area where their home once stood.

Neighbours and other camp residents spent the day clearing up the debris and salvaging what few belongings were still lying around to give back to the remaining Hijazis once they come out of hospital.

As crowds of people continued to gather around the explosion site, Israeli drones could still be heard buzzing in the skies.

Every so often, the sounds of explosions in different parts of the city resonated through the streets, as children discussed among themselves whether they came from the Israeli navy ships or from the Israeli airplanes.

“Why is there a war on Gaza? It’s because the Israelis want our lands, right?” asked 14-year-old Hamza Abu Gamsar, a friend of the Hijazi boys. “Every year there is a war on Gaza.”

“These people are just civilians. Fouad worked as a security guard for a school, he had nothing to do with politics,” decried Hisham Salem, a neighbour whose front-door was blasted off its hinges because of the explosion.

Hisham and his family were in their own living room when the missile hit their neighbours. Two of his children, 11 years old and 12 years old, ran screaming to the corner of the room, almost trampling their two-month-old brother in panic.

“We never heard any bomb coming. We only heard the front door explode, and then saw a rush of flames come through the opening,” he said, pointing to the gaping entrance.

‘We will continue to resist’

They tried to get out, but were forced to retreat back to the room because the smoke was too strong. After a few minutes they forced their way through the smoke to reach outside. “We didn’t see any of the family. We just saw a pile of rubbish.”

He spent Tuesday with other neighbours piling up the Hijazis belongings in his home. “These are all we could find,” he said, about the pile of dusty clothing and ornaments.

When asked why his neighbour’s house was targeted, Hisham said, “Everyone in Gaza is a target. This is not about Hamas,” he said, adding this was not the first time the Hijazi family had been affected by Israeli attacks. In 2008, their eldest son was also killed by Israeli air strikes.

Pointing to where the Hijazi house once stood, Hisham went on to say, “You can see with your own eyes, there are no words. Just look.”

The death-toll continued to mount on Tuesday, bringing the total since it began a week ago to at least 131 killed, and several hundred more wounded. While the streets in Gaza City are now relatively empty, with most storefronts closed, residents remain resilient.

Moaqassim Al Digis, 10 years old, was a friend of the Hijazi boys. He described how they would play football together on the street next to the house, how the Hijazi children were friendly and sociable.

“Yet, we are not afraid of this war. Why not? Because we exist,” he said, standing atop the rubble of his friend’s house.

“We will be patient, but we will continue to resist. We will not give up, and we will not raise the white flag.”

From his hospital bed, Ashraf remained defiant. “God will take revenge for this, and we are asking for the resistance to keep going.”

By George Capaccio

22 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Four years ago, when Israel’s Operation Cast Lead pogrom against the people of Gaza was underway, President-elect Barack Obama was asked about it. His response: “I can’t comment on that, I am not president.” Although he had lots to say about other matters before his election, apparently the magnitude of Israel’s righteous response to Palestinian rockets was simply too much for the great orator, humanitarian, and Peace Laureate. To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps his silence was a splendid example of political savvy. After all, he neither condoned nor condemned Israel’s onslaught. Could it be that discretion really was the better part of valor? Or was it more a matter of moral cowardice that prevented Obama from sticking his neck out and openly calling for an end to Israel’s criminal aggression against a defenseless people?

In 2008, during a visit to Israel, Obama expressed his profound sympathy for Israeli citizens who live under the constant threat of terrorist attacks in towns like Siderot. Like any loving parent, he would not countenance anyone deliberately endangering the lives of his own children: “If somebody shot rockets at my house where my two daughters were sleeping at night, I’d do everything in my power to stop them.” As prominent progressive bloggers duly noted, Obama’s understandable concern did not extend to the children of parents in Gaza. Judging by his words, we can reasonably conclude that for Obama only Israeli children matter, in addition to his own, of course. As for the children of Palestinian parents, we can only speculate about what must go through his head when staffers brief him about the rising death toll.

A study of civilian casualties undertaken by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, found that “313 children were killed among the 1414 who died over a 23-day period. Of the 5300 injured (many seriously), 1606 were children. In all cases, the vast majority were noncombatants.” [http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-war-crimes-against-children-during-operation-cast-lead/13956Operation Cast Lead]

Operation Pillar of Defense, a re-play of Israel’s previous cold-blooded massacre of Palestinians, has provided Obama with another opportunity to weigh in on the side of humanity. This time, however, instead of silence, he re-discovered his glorious voice. During a news conference in Thailand, he had this to say about Israel’s deployment of overwhelming force against a captive and largely civilian population in Gaza already suffering from a five-year-old blockade: “There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders . . . We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Until the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday, the 21st of November, Israeli missiles, bombs, and artillery shells rained down hard on the citizens of Gaza, killing and wounding hundreds. Isn’t it strangely wonderful how this latest onslaught stopped the day before Thanksgiving. I suppose it just wouldn’t do for Americans to celebrate the holiday against a backdrop of unmitigated murder carried out by our number one ally with the aid of US-supplied weaponry.

Coincidently, in 2008, Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s even more brutal attack on Gaza, conveniently ended in time for the inauguration of the new US President. One wonders how politicians like Obama and Netanyahu calibrate the cost of their bloodletting. Do they and their cabinets agree beforehand on an acceptable upper limit which, when reached, will allow these world leaders, or their representatives, to take to the airwaves and declare that peace is at hand, that once again the defenders of Western civilization have triumphed over terror through the purity of their arms and the righteousness of their cause.

Last night, in Boston, I took part in a well-attended demonstration against the Israeli government’s butchering of innocents. In front of the Israeli Consulate, we briefly stopped marching. A group of us held the edges of an enormous Palestinian flag, billowing in the wind while we achanted “Hey, Israel, what do you say! How many kids did you kill today?” I remembered chanting nearly the same words near the campus of MIT in Cambridge where President Clinton, in 1998, was giving the commencement speech. At that time, our concern was Clinton’s support of the genocidal sanctions regime imposed on Iraq.

How little has changed since then, at least in respect to our government’s continuing practice of attacking relatively defenseless populations while enabling other rogue governments to carry out their own homicidal practices. And so it goes. Obama, how many kids did you kill today with your drones, your special forces, your black ops, your “all options are on the table” stance toward Iran, and your willingness to look the other way when strategically important partners commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

To tell the truth, I could not bear to join those who were chanting on the streets of Boston about the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs. I could only think of the children and their families and the grief that flows like blood from the wounded heart of Gaza.

No, chanting will never do. Something more is needed in response to this tragedy. For our Native American sisters and brothers, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning. It will be the same for me, but not because my ancestors were rounded up like cattle and driven from their land on forced migrations, or wantonly killed by soldiers and settlers.

I will mourn the senseless deaths of innocents in Israel and Palestine. I will mourn the dearth of compassion, wisdom, and courage in the hearts of our so-called leaders. I will mourn the failure on the part of so many fellow citizens to understand the role our government plays in enabling Israel’s crimes. I will mourn their apparent lack of empathy not only for the victims of Israel’s high-tech violence but for all the families in Muslim lands we have terrorized, starved, and murdered while prattling on about our “values” and our noble reverence for the sanctity of life.

And when Thanksgiving has passed, though I may still feel my heart weighed down with sorrow, I will do my best to carry on with my own small part in the struggle for a far better, saner, and more just world than the one we shoulder now.

George Capaccio is a writer and activist living in Arlington, MA. During the years of US- and UK-enforced sanctions against Iraq, he traveled there numerous times, bringing in banned items, befriending families in Baghdad, and deepening his understanding of how the sanctions were impacting civilians. His email is Georgecapaccio@verizon.net. His website is: www.georgecapaccio.com/

By Ali Abunimah

22 November 2012

@electronicintifada.net

On the night a ceasefire came into effect ending eight days of Israeli slaughter that left 162 people, the vast majority unarmed civilians, dead in Gaza, Dutch columnist and author Leon de Winter proposed adding chemicals to Gaza’s water supply to sterilize the population.

The website PowNed reported that de Winter “made his proposal for forced eugenics yesterday evening in Amsterdam at a solidarity meeting of Dutch Jews,” and that the speech by de Winter was broadcast this morning by Dutch mainstream and publicly-funded Radio 1.

PowNed said:

De Winter responded in his speech to the accusations of genocide leveled against Israel, saying that the population of Gaza had only increased over the last few years. “Maybe we should secretly add some means of birth control to Gaza’s drinking water,” De Winter proceeded to propose.

The suggestion was met with roaring laughter by the public. Among the participants that evening were the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, Hiam Devon, and the cheerful leader of the [religious ultra-conservative] SGP party, Kees van der Staaij.

De Winter blogged until 2008 on the mainstream liberal news site Elsevier. He is also an “an adjunct fellow” at the Hudson Institute, a right-wing American think-tank.

While de Winter, known for his “humor,” might have intended his suggestion as some sort of sick joke, the reported reaction suggests that the audience were only too ready to mock an already dehumanized population.

De Winter’s comment fits neatly with Israel’s racist conception of Palestinians as a “demographic threat” simply because they are not Jews.

Such genocidal comments are particularly disturbing in The Netherlands given the upsurge of Islamophobia and xenophobia in recent years, and because the country had a particularly shameful history of collaboration with the Nazis in deporting Jews to their deaths during the Second World War.

Event backed by major Dutch Jewish communal and Zionist organizations

The 21 November event where de Winter spoke, titled “We Stand with Israel” and held at Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Center, was co-sponsored by a who’s who of Jewish communal and Zionist organizations, among them CIDI, Christians for Israel, WIZO (the Women’s International Zionist Organization), Collectieve Israel Actie (Israel Action Collective) and Mifgash, an organization that aims to encourage Jews to leave their home countries and emigrate to Israel.

De Winter’s repulsive comment is reminiscent of a genocidal call by American “academic” and former Harvard University fellow Martin Kramer at a conference in Israel in 2010 for the “surplus” population of Gaza to be reduced by cutting off humanitarian aid.

Daniel Bugel-Shunra, who translated the PowNed post, noted that the reader comments below it indicated little support for de Winter’s statement.

“Quite the contrary, which is a big surprise to me, especially since this website has strong anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant tendencies,” Bugel-Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

By Khalid Amayreh

22 November 2012

@ The Palestinian Information Center

Having satiated its people’s thirst with Palestinian blood, Israel has ostensibly agreed to a truce with the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip.

The fragile understanding, however, doesn’t mean that Israel is quite content with the huge number of Palestinian civilians murdered at the hands of the Jewish Wehrmacht. Indeed, the cannibalistic Zionist instinct is intrinsically insatiable. This is what we have learned rather too well from Israel ever since the creation of the nefarious entity 64 years ago.

During the latest aggression, the “only democracy in the Middle East” murdered 33 children, 14 women, and more than 60 other innocent civilians. Moreover, as many as 1300 people, the vast majority of whom innocent civilians, including more than 400 children, were injured, many sustaining life-threatening injuries and burns.

Israeli spokespersons appearing on TV screens claim shamelessly that their Nazi-like army doesn’t deliberately target innocent civilians. But both man and God know this is an obscene Zionist lie. In the final analysis, Israeli Zionists qualify, par excellence, for the title “God’s lying people.”

Israel has always been a crime against humanity from day-1 of its existence. It conspicuously lacks the moral credentials that would qualify her to be a normal state with a semblance of a moral government, let alone a moral army. Israeli politicians and military commanders from the lowest-ranking private to the President are certified war criminals with tons of innocent blood on their hands.

Most Israelis would only elect irredeemable criminals and murderers as their political leaders. Being a mass murderer of Arabs and perpetrator of massacres is therefore the main and most important qualification for being worthy of leading Israel.

Unfortunately, these atrocities raise no eyebrows in Washington, Paris, London or even Moscow. Instead, they generate admiration for the Nazis of our time. But the pot can’t call the kettle black. The Americans are themselves too criminal and have a long history of genocidal mass murder to object to Jewish Nazism. Didn’t the Americans exterminate 10-15 million Native Americans and called the genocide manifest destiny?

Interestingly, the same thing applies to the French, the British and the Russians as well.

Another aspect of the obscene western discourse vis-à-vis the latest conflict is the mendacious claim that it was Hamas that provoked Israel to slaughter Palestinian civilians. Well, has the western media so easily forgotten that Israel herself is an exotic plant that is strange to the Middle East?

After all, it was Jewish invaders, supported by western countries that came from Eastern Europe, hijacked Palestine, terrorized and massacred its people, destroyed their homes, and expelled them to the four winds. Yet, these Zionists now have the audacity and shamelessness to accuse their victims of terror and violence.

Moral victory

We Palestinians are not conceited and don’t give in to national hubris. We know Israel is a regional superpower which also controls rather tightly the government of the United States. We also know that American and European political whores grovel at Israel’s feet, looking for a certificate of good conduct from the evil Jewish golem.

But we also realize and know deep in our hearts that Israel is a morally bankrupt state that thrives on murder and oppression. Needless to say, a state as such, which has dishonesty as its shield, oppression as its policy and murder as its modus operandi, will not live long.

Indeed, every child Israel murders and every civilian home Israeli war-planes destroy will be a curse that would accelerate and expedite Israel’s ultimate demise.

Israel, thanks to its immense firepower, may have succeeded in killing so many innocent Palestinians. Israel, like Nazi Germany, has always done that.

But the Palestinian resistance has remained largely intact and is retaining the ability to keep Israel and its settlers, who live on land that belongs to another people, in a state of existential anxiety.

The Palestinian resistance will ultimately learn the right lesson from this round of Israeli aggression. It is hoped that the resistance will be much more powerful when Israel decides to wage another round of aggression on the Palestinians.

Palestinians don’t fire rockets on Israel out of a feeling of insolence, or arrogance or even pugnacity and bellicosity. They fire the poor-man’s weapons in the hope of deterring a manifestly murderous enemy, which also happens to be their tormentor and occupier of their ancestral homeland, from slaughtering their children. And the slaughter of their children is too realistic to be propaganda. It just transcends reality.

Indeed when there are five or six killed on one side while thousands of casualties occur on the other side; we are not talking about war, but rather about a massacre. Israel may continue to dwell in her insolence and megalomania, but eventually those who have the higher moral ground will prevail. Israel is doomed to an early demise, thanks to her evilness and iniquity.

Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com

By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

November 22, 2012

@ The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The conflict that ended, for now, in a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel seemed like the latest episode in a periodic showdown. But there was a second, strategic agenda unfolding, according to American and Israeli officials: The exchange was something of a practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran, featuring improved rockets that can reach Jerusalem and new antimissile systems to counter them.

It is Iran, of course, that most preoccupies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. While disagreeing on tactics, both have made it clear that time is short, probably measured in months, to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

And one key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran’s ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran’s surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Michael B. Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States and a military historian, likened the insertion of Iranian missiles into Gaza to the Cuban missile crisis.

“In the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. was not confronting Cuba, but rather the Soviet Union,” Mr. Oren said Wednesday, as the cease-fire was declared. “In Operation Pillar of Defense,” the name the Israel Defense Forces gave the Gaza operation, “Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran.”

It is an imprecise analogy. What the Soviet Union was slipping into Cuba 50 years ago was a nuclear arsenal. In Gaza, the rockets and parts that came from Iran were conventional, and, as the Israelis learned, still have significant accuracy problems. But from one point of view, Israel was using the Gaza battle to learn the capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — the group that has the closest ties to Iran — as well as to disrupt those links.

Indeed, the first strike in the eight-day conflict between Hamas and Israel arguably took place nearly a month before the fighting began — in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as another mysterious explosion in the shadow war with Iran.

A factory said to be producing light arms blew up in spectacular fashion on Oct. 22, and within two days the Sudanese charged that it had been hit by four Israeli warplanes that easily penetrated the country’s airspace. Israelis will not talk about it. But Israeli and American officials maintain that Sudan has long been a prime transit point for smuggling Iranian Fajr rockets, the kind that Hamas launched against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over recent days.

The missile defense campaign that ensued over Israeli territory is being described as the most intense yet in real combat anywhere — and as having the potential to change warfare in the same way that novel applications of air power in the Spanish Civil War shaped combat in the skies ever since.

Of course, a conflict with Iran, if a last-ditch effort to restart negotiations fails, would look different than what has just occurred. Just weeks before the outbreak in Gaza, the United States and European and Persian Gulf Arab allies were practicing at sea, working on clearing mines that might be dropped in shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.

But in the Israeli and American contingency planning, Israel would face three tiers of threat in a conflict with Iran: the short-range missiles that have been lobbed in this campaign, medium-range rockets fielded by Hezbollah in Lebanon and long-range missiles from Iran.

The last of those three could include the Shahab-3, the missile Israeli and American intelligence believe could someday be fitted with a nuclear weapon if Iran ever succeeded in developing one and — the harder task — shrinking it to fit a warhead.

A United States Army air defense officer said that the American and Israeli militaries were “absolutely learning a lot” from this campaign that may contribute to a more effective “integration of all those tiered systems into a layered approach.”

The goal, and the challenge, is to link short-, medium- and long-range missile defense radar systems and interceptors against the different types of threats that may emerge in the next conflict.

Even so, a historic battle of missile versus missile defense has played out in the skies over Israel, with Israeli officials saying their Iron Dome system shot down 350 incoming rockets — 88 percent of all targets assigned to the missile defense interceptors. Israeli officials declined to specify the number of interceptors on hand to reload their missile-defense batteries.

Before the conflict began, Hamas was estimated to have amassed an arsenal of 10,000 to 12,000 rockets. Israeli officials say their pre-emptive strikes on Hamas rocket depots severely reduced the arsenal of missiles, both those provided by Iran and some built in Gaza on a Syrian design.

But Israeli military officials emphasize that most of the approximately 1,500 rockets fired by Hamas in this conflict were on trajectories toward unpopulated areas. The radar tracking systems of Iron Dome are intended to quickly discriminate between those that are hurtling toward a populated area and strays not worth expending a costly interceptor to knock down.

“This discrimination is a very important part of all missile defense systems,” said the United States Army expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe current military assessments. “You want to ensure that you’re going to engage a target missile that is heading toward a defended footprint, like a populated area. This clearly has been a validation of the Iron Dome system’s capability.”

The officer and other experts said that Iran also was certain to be studying the apparent inability of the rockets it supplied to Hamas to effectively strike targets in Israel, and could be expected to re-examine the design of that weapon for improvements.

Israel currently fields five Iron Dome missile defense batteries, each costing about $50 million, and wants to more than double the number of batteries. In the past two fiscal years, the United States has given about $275 million in financial assistance to the Iron Dome program. Replacement interceptors cost tens of thousands of dollars each.

Just three weeks ago, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited an Iron Dome site as a guest of his Israeli counterpart during the largest American-Israeli joint military exercise ever. For the three-week exercise, called Austere Challenge, American military personnel operated Patriot land-based missile defense batteries on temporary deployment to Israel as well as Aegis missile defense ships, which carry tracking radars and interceptors.

Despite its performance during the current crisis, though, Iron Dome has its limits.

It is specifically designed to counter only short-range rockets, those capable of reaching targets at a distance of no more than 50 miles. Israel is developing a medium-range missile defense system, called David’s Sling, which was tested in computer simulations during the recent American-Israeli exercise, and has fielded a long-range system called Arrow. “Nobody has really had to manage this kind of a battle before,” said Jeffrey White, a defense fellow for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There are lots of rockets coming in all over half the country, and there are all different kinds of rockets being fired.”

By John Scales Avery

22 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, Ahmed Jabari, leader of the military wing of Hamas, was assassinated by a targeted Israeli missile. Hours earlier, Jabas had received a draft of a permanent peace agreement with Israel. The assassination of Jabari must have been carefully planned in order for his whereabouts to have been known so accurately. The probable motive for the killing was to provoke the response that did indeed follow: the firing of Hamas rockets towards Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government responded to the rockets with a massive attack on civilian targets in Gaza, a response that also seems to have been carefully planned in advance, the timing being motivated by the nearness of elections in Israel.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is war crime. Article 33 states that “No protected person may be punished for an offense that he or she did not personally commit.” Articles 47-78 also impose substantial obligations on occupying powers, with numerous provisions for the general welfare of the inhabitants of an occupied territory.

Thus Israel violated the Geneva Conventions by its collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza in retaliation for the largely ineffective Hamas rocket attack which the Jabari assassination provoked. The larger issue, however, is the urgent need for lifting of Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza, which has created what Noam Chomsky calls the “the world’s largest open-air prison”.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, states that “What we’re seeing in Gaza now, is pretty much slow-motion genocide against the 1.5 million people who live in Gaza… If you read the 1948 Genocide Convention, it clearly says that one instance of genocide is the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people in whole or in part… And that’s exactly what has been done since the imposition of the blockade by Israel. ”

Because of its limitless military and financial backing of Israel, the United States shares the blame for allowing Israel to create an Apartheid state even more gruesome than the one that the world unanimously condemned in South Africa.

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm

By Dan Glazebrook

21 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

With over 100 now reported killed by Israeli airstrikes, and a further 700 injured, the attack on Gaza is already starting to resemble the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre. A ground invasion is feared, and Israeli politicians are again trotting out the usual Zionist crowd-pleasers about the need to “bomb Gaza back to the Middle Ages” (Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai ) and “flatten all of Gaza” (Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad). Yet the regional situation today is very different to what it was back then. In 2009, the ‘resistance axis’ of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas was strong, and Iran took concrete steps to provide military supplies to Hamas at a time when the best most other states had to offer was impotent – and generally hypocritical – ‘condemnation’. As intelligence analysts Stratfor have noted, where “ the rest of the region largely avoided direct involvement….Iran was the exception. While the Arab regimes ostracized Hamas, Iran worked to sustain the group in its fight.” The report elaborates: “In early January 2009, in the midst of Operation Cast Lead, Israel learned that Iran was allegedly planning to deliver 120 tons of arms and explosives to Gaza, including anti-tank guided missiles and Iranian-made Fajr-3 rockets with a 40-kilometer (25-mile) range and 45-kilogram (99-pound) warhead…The long-range Fajr rocket attacks targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the current conflict are a testament to Iran’s continued effort.”

Despite having distanced themselves from the ‘resistance axis’ recently, moving their headquarters out of Damascus and voicing support for the anti-government militias in Syria, Hamas continue to rely on Iranian weapons as their most effective response to Israeli aggression. Indeed, it is precisely these Iranian weapons – the Fajr-5 missiles – that are causing such unprecedented disruptions in Israel, having reached the suburbs of Tel Aviv and forcing the city’s residents into bomb shelters for the first time since 1991. Israelis are not used to their military operations having such a direct impact on their own lives, and it is this aspect of the conflict that has led to, in what is surely a first for Israel, overwhelming Israeli opposition to a ground invasion of Gaza, with less than a third supporting such a move.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians, whilst well-equipped, are in some ways more isolated than ever. Whilst on the face of it, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ should have been good news for Hamas – who are, after all, an offshoot of the Brotherhood themselves – the seeming descent of the Arab Spring into a sectarian conflict directed against the region’s Shia Muslims has actually served to disempower Hamas’ allies, and thus leave Gaza more vulnerable to precisely the attack it is now enduring. More specifically, the ongoing destruction of Syria under the onslaught of armed gangs trained and sponsored by the West and its allies, has crippled a key Palestinian ally, and thus encouraged Israel to believe it can attack with impunity. As Hezbollah leader Nasrallah (“the smartest guy in the Middle East”, according to former US deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) noted in a speech last week, “Israel is taking advantage of the turmoil in Syria in its onslaught against Gaza. Today’s aggression is happening in a different context from 2008. In 2008, the Resistance Axis was more capable of extending support to Gaza and the resistance there and this was the case before 2008 and after 2008 and we can see the results of this on the ground today. One of the supply lines to Gaza has now been cut and that is Syria. It can no longer provide logistical support, although it can still take a political stand. Israel is taking advantage of the fighting in Syria, of the reversal of priorities, of the transformation of enemies into friends and friends into enemies. It sees this as a good opportunity to restore its deterrence and to strike at missile capabilities in Gaza, which Israel is aware will be hard to replace in light of the situation in Syria.” Indeed, with the sectarian attacks taking place in Syria spilling over into Lebanon, Hezbollah itself is similarly in little position to lend the type of support to Gaza that it did in 2006, for example, by opening a second front in response to Israeli shelling of Palestinians. Stratfor again: “ Hezbollah will likely be extremely cautious in deciding whether to participate in this war. The group’s fate is linked to that of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad; should Syria fracture along sectarian lines, Lebanon is likely to descend into civil war, and Hezbollah will have to conserve its strength and resources for a battle at home against its sectarian rivals.”

If Syria does fall, therefore, we can expect to see far more Israeli massacres of the type now currently under way. Not only will Syria be knocked out of the ‘resistance axis’ altogether, and Hezbollah left without a supply line from Iran, but Iran itself will be left isolated and less able to provide the Gazans with the missiles that currently provide their only effective deterrent to a renewed Israeli occupation.

This goes some way to explaining why the Israelis have been so supportive of the Syrian rebels, with Peres and Barak both throwing their weight behind the militias. Syria’s support for Hezbollah, and the link it provides to Iran, has been a key obstacle to Israel’s ability to attack the Palestinians with impunity, and therefore to its ability to unilaterally impose a final settlement on Palestine. For now, the main obstacle to Israeli diktat remains the Fajr-5.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in British domestic and foreign policy.. He can be reached at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk

By Shamus Cooke

21 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

As Obama tours Southeast Asia to strengthen his alliances against China, Gazans are being killed and maimed by the hundreds, with the possibility of an incredibly bloody Israeli invasion. The United States still wields tremendous power internationally; its actions and inactions have direct consequences in international conflicts.

With this in mind, consider President Obama’s words on the conflict coupled with his inaction:

“Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of [Gazan] missiles…”

This is an incredible lie. It’s also an especially critical lie, since war crimes weigh heavier on those who fired the first shot.

The truth of the matter has been admitted by several mainstream media sources, including The New York Times. Israel purposely started the conflict by a planned assassination of Hamas’ top military leader, Ahmed Jaabari, who was killed while acting as the lead negotiator for Hamas, working on an Egyptian brokered peace deal with Israel.

The Israeli government knew this, and killed him because they wanted to destroy the possible peace; they wanted war. It’s important to remember that Hamas is the democratically elected government of the self-governing Gaza Strip; assassinating Jaabari is similar to a foreign nation using its military to assassinate Hillary Clinton, i.e., it’s an act of war.

When Hamas responded by firing its pathetic rockets, Israel then was given the “justification” in launching its previously planned military strikes, which commit daily war crimes, most notably by targeting non-military institutions like media, religious and educational institutions and other public buildings.

Israel uses massive bombs throughout the tightly packed civilian population of Gaza — another war crime.

Obama lies again when he says that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is the Gazans who have this right against a U.S. funded massive military machine that is bombing Gaza by land, sea, and air. Gaza has no army, navy, and its 1.5 million people essentially live in a giant walled off, caged slum.

Listing all of Israel’s war crimes in this conflict which are consistent with previous attacks on the Palestinians would take up too much space. Obama is forced to publicly approve of many of these crimes because he is guilty of the same offenses, as Glenn Greenwald points out. The war crime of “targeted assassinations” that caused this conflict is daily practiced by Obama in his drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Not only is Obama supporting Israeli war crimes publicly, he is working at the U.N. to actively prevent a U.N. Security Council peace deal, after Russia publicly accused the U.S. of filibustering U.N. action over the conflict. The U.S. delegates would only approve of a resolution that equally blamed Israel and Gaza for the conflict. Reuters explains:

“The Security Council is generally deadlocked on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which U.N. diplomats say is due to the United States’ determination to protect its close ally Israel. The council held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the Israeli strikes on Gaza but took no action.”

Israel’s move to provoke a war– and Obama’s reluctance to stop it — may seem insane, but the U.S.-Israeli alliance is planning for still bigger wars against Syria and Iran and possibly beyond as other nations get drawn into a regional war.

Israel’s attack was well timed. It felt its position was being eroded by the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, which are now stronger advocates of the Palestinians than the previous regimes were. Meanwhile, Israel has been threatening to attack Iran for over a year and may have felt the window closing on that operation.

Now, the window is opened wider. Anything is possible. A region of the world that was already on fire is now being doused in kerosene. Amidst the flames, Israel and the U.S. are striving to re-build the region in their image, with more territory and oil and fewer enemies. The war against the Palestinians is the first act in a regional war. The U.S. and Israel are planning to spread the inferno across the Middle East and beyond.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/15/israel-gaza-obama-assassinations

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-palestinians-israel-un-idUSBRE8AI19720121120

By Dave Zirin

21 November, 2012

@ Thenation.com

Let’s start with a fact. On November 16, the Israeli Air Force bombed the 10,000-seat Palestine Stadium “into ruins.”* The stadium also headquartered the center for youth sports programs throughout the Gaza Strip. This is the second time Israel has flattened the facility. The first was in 2006 and the people of Gaza have spent the last six years rebuilding the fields, stands and offices to keep the national soccer team as well as club sports alive in the region.

I’m sure the reaction to this fact will depend on what side people take in the current conflict. For the Israeli government and their supporters, they promised “collective punishment” following the Hamas rockets fired over the border and they are delivering “collective punishment.” Matan Vilnai, deputy defense minister of Israel has in the past threatened a “holocaust” and Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called for Gaza to be the new “Hiroshima.” In this context, a sports facility must seem like little more than target practice.

For those attending daily demonstrations against the carnage, this news of a stadium’s destruction must also be seen as an irrelevancy. After all according to The Wall Street Journal, ninety Palestinians, including fifty civilians, have been killed in Gaza. Two hundred and twenty-five children are among the more than 700 injured, and these numbers are climbing. Israeli ground troops are massing at the border and President Obama can only bring himself to defend Israel without criticism. There is only so much concern for a stadium people can be expected to muster.

I think however that we should all take a moment to ask the question, “Why?” Why has the Palestinian sports infrastructure, not to mention Palestinian athletes, always been a target of the Israeli military? Why has the Palestinian domestic soccer league completed only seven seasons since its founding in 1977? Why are players commonly subjected to harassment and violence, not to mention curfews, checkpoints and all sorts of legal restrictions on their movement? Why were national team players Ayman Alkurd, Shadi Sbakhe and Wajeh Moshate killed by the Israeli Defense Forces during the 2009 military campaign? Why did imprisoned national team player Mahmoud Sarsak require a hunger strike, the international solidarity campaign of Amnesty International, and a formal protest from both FIFA and the 50,000-player soccer union FIFpro to just to win his freedom after three years behind bars?

The answer is simple. Sports is more than loved in Gaza (and it is loved.) It’s an expression of humanity for those living under occupation. It’s not just soccer and it’s not just the boys. Everyone plays, with handball, volleyball and basketball joining soccer as the most popular choices. To have several thousand people gather to watch a girls sporting event is a way of life. It’s a community event designed not only to cheer those on the field, but cheer those in the stands. As one Palestinian man from Gaza said to me, “[Sports] is our time to forget where we are and remember who we are.”

Attacking the athletic infrastructure is about attacking the idea that joy, normalcy or a universally recognizable humanity could ever be a part of life for a Palestinian child. This is a critical for Israel both internationally and at home. The only way the Israeli government and its allies can continue to act with such brazen disregard for civilian life is if they convince the world that their adversaries collectively are less than human. The subway ads calling Muslims “savages”, the Islamophobic cartoons and videos that are held up as examples of free speech, are all part of a quilt that says some deaths are not to be mourned.

At home, attacking sports is about nothing less than killing hope. Israel’s total war, underwritten by the United States, is a war not only on Hamas or military installations but on the idea that life can ever be so carefree in Gaza as to involve play. The objective instead is to hear these words of a young girl outside Al Shifa Hospital on November 18 who said, “To the world and people: Why should we be killed and why shouldn’t we have a normal childhood? What did we do to face all this?”

If you play, you can dream. If you dream, you are imagining a better world. As the great Olympian Wilma Rudolph said, “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” Nothing marks the nihilism of Israel’s project quite like this fact: they don’t want the people of Gaza to dream. In the eyes of Benjamin Netanyahu, they are only worthy of nightmares.

* The Israeli Defense Forces have since claimed that rockets were being fired from the soccer field. This is unverified and they remain the only source making this claim.

By Kevin Gosztola

21 November, 2012

@ Dissenter.firedoglake.com

Early Sunday, as widely reported, Israeli warplanes launched air strikes, which hit two complexes with media offices. The strikes wounded ten journalists or media persons. One person, Khader al-Zahhar, a cameraman for Al-Quds TV, had to have his leg amputated and suffered shrapnel wounds.

The first complex attacked around 2 am was the Al-Shawa Wa Hassri Tower. According to Reporters Without Borders, fifteen reporters and photographers wearing vests with “TV Press” on them were on the building’s roof trying to cover Israel’s air strikes on Gaza.

Five missiles hit the 11th floor offices used by Al-Quds TV and injured four employees— Darwish Bulbul, Khadar Al-Zahar, Muhammad al-Akhras and Hazem al-Da’our. Hussein Al-Madhoun, a freelance photographer working for the Ma’an News Agency was wounded. The office had been serving as a headquarters for various foreign and Palestinian media organizations, including Ma’an News Agency.

Hours later, around 7 am, a building Reporters Without Borders claims was known as the “journalists’ building”—the Al-Shorouq building—was hit. The two missiles that struck the building wounded three Al-Aqsa TV employees and damaged the offices of Sky News Arabia, the German TV station ARD, Arab TV stations MBC and Abu Dhabi TV, Al-Arabiya, Reuters, Russia Today and Ma’an News Agency.

“These attacks constitute obstruction of freedom of information,” stated Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire. “We remind the Israeli authorities that, under humanitarian law, the news media enjoy the same protection as civilians and cannot be regarded as military targets.”

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) expressed their “concern” with Israel’s strike on a “media building housing FPA members Sky News, Sky News Arabia, MBC TV, Al-Arabiya, ORF and other European broadcasters.”

Predictably, Israel tried to justify hitting buildings being used by journalists by claiming it was “infrastructure of Hamas’ operational communications” were located inside the civilian building. It targeted the communication devices on the rooftop to “minimize damage.” And, it hit the second building because that building was also “part of Hamas’ operational communications.” They “deliberately located” the devices on the roof of the building, the army claimed.

Deloire did not accept this official statement, “Even though the outlets targeted are linked to Hamas, it does not legitimize the attacks…Attacks against civilian targets constitute war crimes.”

Ofir Gendelman, spokesman of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted that “No Western journalists were hurt” in the attacks on the media buildings, which suggests the lives of non-Western journalists are meaningless to Israel. They can be wounded or killed and that will be fine because it will be easy to suggest they were Hamas sympathizers or were working for the Hamas.

The Israel army warned journalists to stay away from “Hamas.” In a tweet, the Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson stated, “Advice to reporters in Gaza, just like any person in Gaza: For your own safety, stay away from Hamas positions and operatives.” But, how is one to know what does and does not constitute a Hamas position or operative?

As demonstrated in a post I wrote yesterday, Israel operates under a broad concept that a UN fact-finding mission in 2009 rejected. The concept allows Israel to transform just about any civilian or civilian target into a military target by simply alleging or suggesting a link to Hamas.

Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich preposterously claimed Hamas had been using the journalists as “human shields.”

“Hamas chose, out of all the buildings in the Gaza Strip, to choose this building – the media, civilian building – to place its electronic infrastructure and communications on the rooftop,” Leibovich stated. “The target was on the roof and only that target was hit.”

All of which is lunatic because the building is one of the taller in Gaza City and a good place for antenna communications. So, too, is her claim that the “entire building” and “entire floors stayed safe.” Windows did not only break. Journalists’ were injured and at least one suffered a life-changing wound, as his leg was amputated. But, to Israel, “If Hamas commanders in Gaza can communicate with each other, then they can attack us”—so bomb journalists.

After the attack, Sky’s Middle East Correspondent Sam Kiley, who happened to be in the second media complex when it was attacked, said “there was reason to disbelieve Israel’s reason for the attack.” He found the attack showed “no one in Gaza can feel safe” because “it is very hard for civilians to know what locations are being used by Hamas.”

Palestinian National Initiative leader Mustafa Barghouti reacted stating Israel was “trying to frighten the press. He called the strikes a war crime.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that Israeli forces had requested journalists leave the Al-Shorouq building. Effectively, this was an order to outlets like Fox News, Abu Dhabi Satellite Channel, Dubai Channel, al-Arabiya News Channel, MBC and PMP to find another location (which Israel may or may not determine later to have some link to Hamas).

PCHR added, “In the early morning, Israeli forces jammed the broadcasts of a number of local radio stations, and broadcast messages on the waves of these stations. Further to this, 4 local news websites were hacked by Israeli forces on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. ” Which begs the question, why couldn’t Israel do this with the “Hamas antenna”? Why not simply jam or interfere with communications?

The truth is Israel intended to send a message to journalists. They want the press to clear out. They want press to have only a few sources for information on Gaza attacks and any ground invasion: the appointed spokespeople of Israel.

Israel has committed violations of international human rights law like this before. On December 28, 2008, as Reporters Without Borders documented, “A bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft struck the building housing the offices of Al-Aqsa TV. The building consists of five floors, was completely destroyed. Several people were injured, but no deaths were reported in the strike. The channel continued to broadcast its programs.” This occurred during the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009.

In an interview posted on July 27, 2010, a legal expert for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Robin Geiss, generally outlined:

…Inasmuch as they are civilians, journalists are protected under international humanitarian law against direct attacks unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. Violations of this rule constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I. What is more, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian – whether in an international or in a non-international armed conflict – also amounts to a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court…

The targeting of journalists is a war crime. If the world is to be outraged at every rocket fired by Hamas or Palestinian militants, then the world should also be outraged at any attack on facilities being used by journalists in Gaza. And the world should be aware that this is all part of Israel’s PR or propaganda policy to ensure eyewitness accounts from reporters or journalists on the ground do not interfere with whatever official statements they wish to feed citizens around the globe.