What I find disturbing is that even with a dramatic decrease in rockets fired into Israel, the Palestinians are still being kept on a diet. Food, fuel, and supplies are STILL only trickling through. Hamas seems to be committed to the two month old cease fire, but the Hamas commitment seems to be unappreciated by Israel. Rather than cutting a little slack, when a missle IS fired, the crossings are completly closed for a day or two. The Palieseinians have gained almost nothing from the cease fire. I fear the Gaza strip will eventually explode. I also believe Hamas and the Palistinians genuinely want peace with Israel. The Hamas today is not the Hamas of the past. Frustration.

There is a "possibility" that Israel has been committing well-documented war crimes since 1948.

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa's Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian:

I've been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.

In an OPED published by The Boston Globe on October 26, 2007, Tutu wrote:

From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.

...What do I see and hear in the Holy Land?

Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.

I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.

I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too.

Some people are enraged by comparisons between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover, for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change.

Indeed, because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbor a vast, unreasoning hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories...I am compelled to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope.

"HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine

Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

There is the Dead Certainty Israel is committing war crimes this moment; imprisoning 1.5 million people in Gaza, a concentration camp, starving them qualifies.

Israel's EXISTENCE is a War Crime: This defined as an illegal war upon and subsequent occupation of another country, if I am wrong, where is Palestine? Where is Palestine if not stolen by gun, by fiat, by tank. Where is Palestine?

Occupied. At a cost of billions of US dollars, trillions maybe if DOD thefts are factored in, and infinite HUMAN MISERY AND SUFFERING.

What a wretched moral wasteland, a Warsaw '39, a Wall of hatred, a Gaza Strip.

What An Israel.

No Shit Sherlock...Israel has been perpetrating an ongoing war crime for 40 years

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

Obama is more than thrilled to throw the Palestinians under the bus

And his Democratic Party sheep supporters will explain to you with a straight face why we must support the Holocaust against the Palestinians because the Republicans are evil and we must stop them.

The stuff of used car salesmen from hell, Democrats

"WeAreWideAwake.org September 16th, 2008 9:16 pm

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ..."

Excellent post, as always, Eileen.

I wished to read the whole article, so did a Web search for it using a little of the text you quoted, and all references I found said Dec. 2006, but it seems that it should be 2002. One copy that I checked had the 2006 date and had the original article linked, but it's 2002. Oddly, everyone seems to be referring to this as Dec. 2006, so maybe the same text that you quoted is from a 2006 Guardian article and the same text appears in both.

"Apartheid in the Holy Land", by Desmond Tutu, Apr 2002

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/29/comment

There was also a copy at CD.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0429-04.htm

Where I got the original link from is the following article (url says Dec. 22, but the article is dated the 20th, 2006; only not at the Guardian).

http://chetriese.wordpress.com/2006/12/22/apartheid-in-the-holy-land

Funny. And, this was only to add a post with a link to the full article you quoted from, since I wanted the link for myself and may as well also provide it here. Again, and for other readers, this is a very short article, so quick to read.

I greatly appreciate this work Des. Tutu has provided; however, I wonder why he says that Israel's strike has a "possibility" of being a war crime, instead it being a [certainty]. [Everything] Israel does in Palestine is either a war crime, or else another extreme crime against human rights; and it's so evil that it reminds me of the nightmarish things I've read about the Babylonian Talmud at some Web sites. The Wikipedia page on the 'Talmud' doesn't refer to those parts at all, only describing what would be publicly renderable, but a number of other websites cover the topic and say that it was supposed to remain permanently secret.

If I hadn't posted this as late as it'll be submitted, then Eileen Flemming may possibly have been able to tell us if the claim about the BT is true or not; however, if it is true, then I wonder how outsiders got ahold of this horror information. Perhaps there was a leak; or maybe a visitor with some real conscience came across some, if not all, of the secret text.

It's not something that we find reflected by true Jews, like the Torah Jews, as well as other Jews who are against evil and are very sane and humane. However, and whether the secret BT really exists, or not, the conduct of the Israeli leadership, as well as that of the Israeli military (and "Jewish" settlers in Palestine), lends a lot of credibility to the claim that the non-public version of the BT definitely exists. The match between that claim and reality is very strong. And the claim says that the secret "doctrine" includes, f.e.: if one Jew is killed is killed by a goyim (a "disparaging term for non-Jews"), then this justifies Jews massacring 1,000 (or more) of the goyim group the killer belongs to; and, all of us goyim are lucky if such Jews treat us as equal to cows.

I don't know of Israel massacring cows, but Israeli leadership sure does seem to adhere to 1 Jew's life being worth no less than 1,000 lives of us goyim (I didn't know Jews had such fat rear-ends, or that many legs, eyes, ...). It fits (for description) with Israel's conduct.

And I don't believe that it's a question of the leadership really caring about the Jews of or in Israel, for they far more seem to only be strategically useful to the elites attaining their psychopathic goals of some insanely dreamt empire in the Middle East. After all, such insane leaders do NOT truly care about anyone, only caring for their insane "dreams"; but being unable, alone, to achieve these goals, they want to continue increasing Israel's population of people claiming to be Jewish.

The present Israeli govt, including since its establishment, makes Hitler far from unique; and the same applies with the U.S. govt making Hitler seem like a nearly boring story, given we've heard of it enough, or more, by now, while the U.S. and Israel are in the present and just as evil. The U.S. has been and is being used to aim far more broadly than Hitler did, though; but I'm not sure that that makes the U.S. govt and its ruling elites actually more evil than Hitler and his regime were.

And the Israeli govt being as evil and hungry (for building regional empire) as it is makes it a strategically useful instrument for the Western ruling elites. It's a very "handy" ally located in the region of a strategically important "treasure" ... that, if conquered, will provide economic domination; brought to us all by, of and for the Western ruling elites. They don't want a just and peaceful Israel, and apparently, if not evidently or certainly, have been making sure of this by blocking the UNSC's many resolutions drafted to try to get Israel to cease its relentless reign of hellish kind. If Israel was to become peaceful and just, then it'd be another situation requiring the overthrow or assassination of yet another state's leadership. Maintaining the strategic usefulness of Israel has clearly enough been an important priority of the Western ruling elites and many profiteers.

After all, the closing paragraphs of this article by Rory McCarthy at The Guardian, the part about "Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva", again reflects the extreme evil of the Israeli leadership; its extremely lying nature, etcetera. This wouldn't be tolerated if it wasn't for the U.S. constantly being used to block the many UNSC resolutions. That's apparently, but not really, done because of Israeli influence on the U.S. govt; it's due to the Western elites needing a strategically evil Israel for Middle Eastern superpower and psychopath.

The Israeli strike the Guardian article is about was a war crime; not possibly, but definitely. And who keeps throwing firecrackers into Israel; is it really honest, patriotic, ... Palestinian resistance members, or could it be another "Operation Gladio" sort of situation; or, what about a mix, sometimes one, sometimes the other?

Do you want to see what "israel" does in Palestine?

then, please watch these presentations and share them with the world:

I want to tell the world

http://tinyurl.com/4688dq

I want to tell the world- with music

http://tinyurl.com/5yljul

Life under occupation

http://tinyurl.com/5236c5

Destruction and ethnic cleansing

http://tinyurl.com/4mc9uk

Injuries and death

http://tinyurl.com/45vmfk

Hope never fades away

http://tinyurl.com/3pnx95

salam,