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TechnoratiUN: Gaza on Brink of Humanitarian Disaster
AMMAN - Gaza faces a humanitarian "catastrophe" if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main U.N. aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.
![[Palestinians queue with their cooking gas bottles at a station in the central Gaza Strip refugee camp of al-Nusseirat on August 2008. Israel said it will maintain its closure of the Gaza Strip despite international concern over a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the aid-dependent Palestinian territory.
(AFP/File/Mahmud Hams)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/gaza1121.jpg "gaza1121.jpg")
Karen AbuZayd,
commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA), said the human toll of this month's sealing of Gaza's goods
crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian
uprising eight years ago.
"It's been closed for so much longer than ever before... and we have nothing in our warehouses... It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster," said AbuZayd, whose agency is the largest aid body providing services to Palestinian refugees.
Israel closed the crossings after Palestinian militants responded with daily rocket salvoes to an Israeli army incursion on Nov. 4 into the Hamas-run territory, where a five-month-old, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had largely been holding.
At present, UNRWA provides rations for 820,000 people classed as refugees and the United Nations' World Food Programme aids a further 200,000 people, AbuZayd told Reuters in Amman.
"They often bring us to the brink but they never have let us really be frightened about whether we are going to have food tomorrow or not," AbuZayd said.
Israel had restricted goods into Gaza despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory.
"This time throughout this whole truce since June none of us have been able to bring in anything extra that would create a reserve so we had nothing to call upon," she said.
She said people were sweeping warehouses because there is now nothing in them.
Israel also held up deliveries of European Union-funded fuel for the power plant, which generates about a third of the electricity consumed by Gazans. The rest comes from Israel, which was continuing supply, and Egypt.
UNRWA's food basket, which comprised nearly 60 percent of daily needs, including milk powder and sugar, had run out, AbuZayd said. Most of the flour in mills would be consumed by end of the month.
Ailments associated with insufficient food were surfacing among the impoverished coastal strip's 1.5 million population, including growing malnutrition.
"There is a chronic anaemia problem. There are signs that's increasing. What we are beginning to notice is what we call stunting of children ... which means they are not eating well enough to be bigger than their parents," AbuZayd added.
The humanitarian plight of Gazans was by far the worst among the more than 4.6 million Palestinian refugees across the region.
"They are not just under occupation, they are under siege," AbuZayd said.
Editing by Giles Elgood
62 Comments so far
Show AllI see the unthinking ideologues are out in force. Propaganda rules supreme! Why blame Israel? Can't supplies be brought in through Egypt?
Oh, wait, the Egyptians sealed their crossing. Why do the Egyptians hate the Palestinians? Or do they just want them as a weapon against Israel? Why isn't anyone complaining about that?
Why won't the rest of the Islamic world help the Palestinians? Isn't charity an Islamic virtue?
And why won't the majority of the Palestinians in Gaza band together to stop the rocket attacks? That would remove Israel's excuse for this behavior.
Your argument seems to largely stem out of information - as you're asking a lot of questions but do not provide answers. These are my answers...
Actually, Egypt's government acts the way it does out of support for Israel. Egyptians see their government as corrupt and it is not disputed that their government acts in ways that do not represent their people, and which do not benefit their people.
The rest of the Islamic world largely doesn't assist Israel for the same reasons. Libya was the first Islamic country to try to bring a shipment of supplies into Gaza - just yesterday, and they were returened by the Israelis. They proved that they don't want to confront Israel because they didn't challenge this refusal. By the way, Iran has always supported Palestine to a certain extent.
Can you sensibly ask a people who face a very realistic chance of having their territory wiped entirely off of the map to "band together" and stop resisisting?Idyllically, I agree and would call for some sort of peaceful protest - however, that is impossible in the face of critical and imminent danger (not only politically, but in the way of malnutrition/famine, illnesses due to lack of medicine/power, etc...)
Why won't the majority American people band together to stop the attacks on the Iraqi people? That would remove the Iraqis excuse for their behavior.
You make no sense at all. Can I have some of whatever it is you're smoking?
Israeli NSC: Stop PA elections at any cost
Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:43:28 GMT
The Palestinian Authority elections should be prevented at any cost, even if it means a confrontation with the US, an official Israeli report suggests.
A defense establishment paper which will be presented to Israel's cabinet next month as part of the National Security Council's annual situation assessment, fears that the new elections in the Palestinian Authority might lead to Hamas victory, thus it must be averted.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=76317§ionid=351020202
A GENOCIDE THAT THE WORLD DOES NOT RECOGNIZE
Now that a black face with a Muslim name has been elected to be the president of the US don't think that there would be any change for 5 million Palestinians in occupied territories. Media does not even mention the occupied territories anymore!
Palestinians are lepers of the world they have been scattered around the world,their land occupied and it seems the world is content to suffocate people in Gaza and massacre them by starvation. The same world that defends the right of a Fetus to live and recognize it as a "Human being" with the right to live; does not recognize the right of a grown-up live Palestinian men and his family to exist.
It is shameful that the world looks the other way and Obama, the Candidate of Liberal America who promised change would be given more of the same to Palestinians.
Obama should have been the Candidate of the right and not the so-called left.He Voted for FISA, He forced 15 Black Congressmen to vote for *)) billions taxpayers subsidy for the Rich bankers! He resigned his Senate seat so he would not help the dying Auto industries.He pushed Lieberman to be reappointed as Chairman of Senate "Homeland Security", that means no change! He brought a 4 star General, a closed friend of McCain to be His National Security adviser, this is not change this is more of the same. He has Rahman Emanuel the son of an Ex Jewish terrorist as his head of transition Committee. Now by bringing Hillary Clinton abroad, and Joe Biden it seems the whole new government is in defense of Israel.
Therefore, there is nothing new except pain and suffering for the Palestinian refugees. That is not change that is more of the same!
It is time for Americans to wake up to the fact that we are morally responsible for the pain and suffering of Palestinians and looking the other way, while this Genocide has been taking place, is the travesty of justice!
And hasn't Obama hired war criminal-liar Colin Powell to be on his administration? I'm sure he'd like Ziocon Condi Rice to be too, but she's stated she wants to return to teaching.
The Gazans aren't "On the brink" of a humanitarian disaster, they are right in the middle of one. Who does these headlines, anyway?
In 1936 my Jewish grandfather decided to take his family out of Germany where he was a 4th generation doctor conversant in Latin and Greek. He could have gone to The Levant but chose Brooklyn instead and I am sure that all his progeny thank him for that.
Israel is a collective psychosis as was Germany after WWI. The Palestinians are a people victimized not only by Israel but also by the geopolitical machinations of such as the House of Saud and others in the region who rule by tyranny and are supported by Capitalist oppression. Two generations of displaced Palestinians have now grown up in "camps," their property stolen by people who claim a Biblical right to steal it, a Fiction supported by the likes of Fishwife Palin, their ignorance beyond ken.
Ask, it is in the U.S. interest to support Israel in the existing predicament because? Once again, Eisenhower was ahead of his time and understood this threat. Suez. History is not a lottery.
-30-
My heart goes out to your family and HOORAY to you! Thank you.
Bring America Back !!!!
***Why don't we then send the President-Elect and his Secretary-elect Clinton
over to AIPAC, to find out what AIPAC wants them to do about GAZA !!
DUH, well, GAZA, gee whiz, whats wrong in GAZA ??
Oh, I forgot, they're much too busy getting ready to dance with Joe Lieberman,
Robert Gates, and Benjamin Netanahu at the Inaugural Balls. AIPAC can handle
GAZA---they always do !!!!
Those poor Palestinians.
I think the day oil doesn't tip the scales of international politics will
be the day Israel will be falling out of favor. I don't believe that
religion is behind any of this. So, I pray (!) for the day that world
will go Green and leave Middle East alone...
-R
We get oil from Israel?
All Palestine needs to do is lay down arms and pursue peace. Simple. Easy. Peace, then work on justice. No Peace, no Justice!
The solution will never be easy, friend.
People that are living under constant oppression will not stop resisting what is happening to them out of fear of annihalation. Think about the native peoples across the world, they were eliminated - and not mourned until decades after, when it was too late to make a change.
No justice, no peace.
You say that the Palestinian people are of no consequence? You have the same mentality as the Nazis. Think!
Good advice. You should take it. Where did he say anything that would indicate that he thought that "the Palestinian people are of no consequence"?
Israel is a thorn in the side of world peace
thats outa the Lion's Mouth
The Lion Of Judah warned us...
The U.S. and the U.K. are complicit in Israel's genocide of Palestinians. And why is the UN "pleading" with Israel to provide access for UN food trucks while Israel ignores it? If any other country had done this, we would have bombed them. Israel doesn't have to worry though, the American administration, old and new, supports their war crimes.
Altogether now, bow down and kiss the feet of your master Israel.
Might want to look up genocide, you clearly don't know what it means. As for the UN when have they ever done anything productive? Ever?
THIS poster knows very well what genocide means, as it was practiced against 20 million of my fellow Native Americans here in the Americas.
And this is its legal definition:
"Excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide of 1948
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide. "
Here in the Americas, the following recent acts were genocide: Pinochet's attempts to kill and killing of pòlitical opponents; Ditto for the Argentinian dictators murders and disappearances of SUSPECTED political opponents; the murder of students here in Mexico on October 2, 1968 and the murder and disappearances of political opponents or suspected political opponents here in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
That's just a small sample.
The genocide being committed against Palestinians continues to go unpunished because the Gringo governments have given Israel a blank check and have supported the Israelis when they have given the finger to every UN Resolutin passed against them since, coincidentally, 1948!
It's time for Gringos to start educating themselves about their responsibilities in these matters.
Beginning with the genocide committed against MY people.
Based on the legal definition you posted, and the examples you gave "Here in the Americas", you have no idea what genocide means.
Hint: "pòlitical opponents" do not constitute "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Unless, perhaps, you regard your political position as your religion.
Excellent post Moon! It is my firm belief that the incessant focus in America on the JEWISH Holocaust (to the silence of others) has a two-fold agenda:
1. It diverts the attention of Americans away from their own VERY ugly early history, and thus keeps them dumb and away from asking troubling questions about it.
2. It also diverts attention from the CONTINUING holocaust being perpetrated on a daily basis by the American military and CIA and their proxies today.
American kids have no trouble citing that obtuse number of 6 million dead in "The Holocaust". How many of those same kids will cite the 20 million of your people or the 97,000 Iraqis (according to iraqbodycount.org), or the millions in Central America from the 1950s on, or the millions in Vietnam and Cambodia? And if they DO happen to even acknowledge any of that stuff, it is probably while waving their f@#*ing little flags in servile pride.
What was that King George said? "Mission accomplished."
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship." - Noam Chomsky
I've got to ask----Is it genocide only when it's over?
I'd always thought that the Israelis were the good guys. That is up until I learned about Sabra and Shatila. Since that time events have led me to believe that the Israeli government does not deserve to exist in its present form and I wonder how we Americans can allow our government to send billions of our tax dollars to support its oppression of the Palestinian people. What the Israeli government has been perpetrating on the Palestinian people is nothing but a crime against humanity and I don't think we Americans should allow our government to be complicit in its crimes. Our congress must end aid to the Israeli government.
Bring America Back !!!! Sabra and Shatila is how Ariel Sharon earned his
nickname..."The Butcher of Beirut"
****AND, just one year ago Our King George the "W" just could not bring himself
to ask little sister Israel to stop cluster-bombing civilians in and around
Beirut. No matter that 25,000 Americans are living & working in the line of
fire, as well as 100,000 other foreign nationals, and 3 million innocent children,
women and men citizens of Lebanon !! Nine UN nations voted to censure and sanction
the Israelis, but since the USA has a veto vote, and exercised it, the missiles
and bombs just kept on falling.
Blogger mckemper, it is recommended you read book "They Dare To Speak Out" by
former congressman Paul Findley. Just in case you really think our Congress
will ever stop giving our Taxpayer dollars to Zionist Israel.
Ah yes! Another excellent book! Kudos.
Israel may not realize it as yet! But, I see more and more people who are turning against them. The anger is coming out in most of us due to their behavior. You can't behave like a animal and expect civilized people to overlook it. No longer are they the abused people they once were. They have one huge image problem that isn't going to get any better and is going to get decidedly worse the tougher they get on the Palestinians. I used to be for Israel. Until they started behaving in the manner they were treated during the second world war. As far as I can see, it's genocide. They are deliberately trying to eradicate the Palestinian people. First the Jews took the Palestinians land. They really thought the Palestinians weren't going to fight back????? They have brought all their misery on themselves. I can honestly see why Arab's hate them. They are deserving of their hatred.
LOL. You see people turning against them?! Look at the figures for the balance of trade. Every major country in the world trades with Israel and not one of them has reduced investment in Isreal for more than 10 years. You want to hate, but our governments don't hate, they trade. Israel is here to stay folks. Palestine, not so much. :-)
Collective punishment of a population of over 1.5 million people, a majority of whom are children, stretches the conception of "war-crime" (and recall as the apologists for Israel would have you understand, there is, of course, no "war" and therefore no "war-crime"). The systematic and racist work of the IDF and others in Gaza has deliberately established the largest concentration camp in history with an utter disregard for the welfare of its inhabitants, young or old.
It was in 1944 that jurist Raphael Lemkin defined "Genocide" as: "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" .....Genocide "does not necessarily mean the..destruction of a nation.It is intended to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of (groups) with intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them. Genocidal plans involve the disintegration of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and human lives".
On this definition, what is being practiced in Gaza is a policy of genocide.
With the evidence of Obama-bin-Messiah's choice of appointments, the USA is unlikely to alter its support for Israel. Nor is wider public and political attention likely to be drawn to the fundamental racism and the irony of Israeli policies towards Gaza in the context of mid-20th Century history.
For shame.
Obama stands with Israel.
Biden is a self-described Zionist.
I stand with Israel and am proud to have voted for Obama.
Were all of you Nader supporters?
Or are you just a bunch of antisemitic hypocrites?
Joe, posting under this new name or under the old one, you are equally offensive.
I am not antisemitic, as I support the Palestinians 100%.
Oh not again......the old "antisemitic" card. Whenever Israel is criticized for the blatant wrong it does, the tired "antisemitic" accusation is used. It's gotten sooo old.
Yawn
Those who throw around the knee-jerk "antisemitic" response seem to forget that the Palestinians are semitic too. Maybe those who would brand as "antisemitic" we who criticize Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people, its appropriation of Palestinian land, their orchards and fields, their very homes, their humanity, have now appropriated the language for their private use also. What could be more inhuman?
"seem to forget that the Palestinians are semitic too".
Thank you for making that point, one which is sooooo often glossed over by Israel's supporters in this whole discussion.
It's anti-semitic to think that laying siege to 1.5 million people is wrong?
"I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein
There is a press blackout on this issue in the United States. If it weren't for Common Dreams and Democracy Now, this situation could easily pass us by. (Google the News and you will see virtually no coverage by mainstream US media. If any mention, the lead is usually Hamas rockets.)
The coverage in certain Israeli newspapers like Haaretz is much better than anything in the US.
I have been contacting news sources in this listing by FAIR.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111
Joe
Plaudits, Joe. Stay tuned.
/cm
Harvey
--- The USA is 95% Israel's puppet and that is EXACTLY why the USA has its "War" in Iraq with over 1,000,000 Iraqi dead,the country destroyed ,4,000,000 displaced Iraqis ,Depleted Uranium & Cluster bombs all over the place.
7 Million Jews in a total USA population of 300 Million Americans ???? 2.5% ??? And yet the next U.S. Congress is slated to have 13 Jewish senators and 31 Jewish members of the House of Representatives ?????
Minnesota with a Jewish population of 1% will chose between 2 Jews for their Senator !!!!
$10 Billion per year to Israel from US Taxpayers !!!!
Why are American Israeli Fisters so vastly over represented in American Politics and Media ??????.
Anyway as you must know the Famous Jewish neocons were able to get the USA to bring a holocaust to Iraq.
-----The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical.----
----Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It's the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.------
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pag...sID=0& listSrc=Y
Unfortunately here and elsewhere any question that American and Israeli interests may not be the same are immediately jumped upon by our Jewish friends as being Anti Semetic and they are able to silence American Patriotism !!!!
http://nowarforisrael.com/
http://www.eretzisraelforever.ne...er.net/ home.asp
http://www.informationclearingho...o/ archive18.htm
For 60 years Jews have violently and continually stolen more and more land from the Arabs with Worldwide Jewish support or silence !!!
This has not been in the interest of the USA or the World but the American Jewish influence has been able to "force" the USA to overcome any resistance to AIPAC wishes !!!!!
Israel and the World will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people.
The overall objective of the Jews is the formation of Eretz Israel -- to contain parts of Iraq & Lebanon & Saudi Arabia & Egypt and all of Palestine !!!!!
All this is supported and funded by American Taxpayers because the American people are "not aware" !!!!!
All religions, ideologies and political systems should not deny an opposition the right to exist.
The totalitarian Zionist Israel of today is the only ideology that systematically wants to make the
very existence of an opposition a criminal offense!
That right is denied those who are opposed to the Jewish domination and they are called "Terrorists" .
http://antiisgood.wordpress.com/...eteen-eighties/
"How Ironic, the victims of the Holocaust do on to others, as was done on to them, sort of like the child who was abused by his parents grows up to do the same. "
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ind...ext=va& aid=7837
Jews are without shame. It's because they see themselves as God's Children.
But there is no such thing as God so their claim to be favored by Him, Her or It is without foundation.
How come these anachronistic religious fanatics are allowed to throw their weight around without condemnation? How come they can break all the rules of decency and fairness and get away with it?
Let's face it, if Iran removed Israel from the world map, the world would be a much better, more peaceful place.
www.dangerouscreation.com
It is so sick. Just a few generations ago, Hitler put so many Jews to a quick death, and here the Jews are, being Nazis themselves, but punishing innocent people by slowly starving the life out of them.
Humanity continues to astound me with its meanness.
Shame on you Israel. Either you have forgotten your God or your God is as sick as you are.
Israel lost my sympathy years ago. They should be kicked out of the UN because they don't follow any of its rules, just as Hussein didn't, but no one is looking to invade Israel.
If any country is a nuclear threat in the Middle East, it is Israel. Something is wrong with this picture.
Why not go all the way and de-countrify Israel?
BTW: That was suggested by the current president of Iran--and distorted to read "wipe them off the face of the earth"....
Thank you for bringing up that second point! Despite the incessant propaganda of the Israeli and American media, Ahmadinejad did NOT say he wanted Israel to be "wiped off the face of the earth." No such idiom exists in the Persian language. According to Professor Juan Cole from the University of Michigan, the Iranian President said he wished the Zionist regime occupying Jerusalem [at that time, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, I believe] would vanish from the pages of time. In other words, he was advocating change in the Israeli government.
But try telling that to most Americans. The intention of the misinterpretation accomplished exactly what it was meant to accomplish - millions of Americans rallying behind Israel and hating its enemies.
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is too a dictatorship." - Noam Chomsky
Maybe if the Palestinians all converted to Judaism....
"Treat others as you would be.."
Actually, according to Shlomo Zands, ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew) the Palestinians of today include the descendants of some of the earlier inhabitants of Canaan, including some Jews, who remained behind when others moved away, over a couple of hundred years, for social and political reasons. They all converted to Islam..
There was no Diaspora as such, no King David, no Solomon..
Many of the present vocal Zionists are descended from the Khazars from Eastern Europe, who themselves converted to Judaism in the, oh, 11th - 12th Centuries.
They have as good a claim as I would if I did Ulpan tomorrow..
This book is a bomb waiting to drop into the Zionists lap..
Just wait for the English translation!!!
"Many of the present vocal Zionists are descended from the Khazars from Eastern Europe, who themselves converted to Judaism in the, oh, 11th - 12th Centuries."
This is the whole thesis of the book "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler. He wrote it in 1976 and got a LOT of crap for it. Excellent book. I highly recommend it. It should also be noted that the Khazars were a Turkic tribe from the Caucasus region, and I believe they were descended from the Tartars and the Mongols.
Maguire to UN: Revoke Israel membership
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:15:21 GMT
Mairead Maguire, in the center, says Israel's membership at the United Nations should be revoked.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate says the United Nations should suspend or revoke Israel's membership for defying resolutions over years.
Some 65 UN resolutions condemning Israeli actions against Palestinians have been defied by Tel Aviv.
Mairead Maguire, a 64-year-old Irish, who won the 1976 peace prize, said at a Thursday news conference that its reluctance to take heed of UN resolutions should be followed with some sort of punishment, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, thanks to Washington's membership in the Security Council, at least 40 anti-Israeli UNSC resolutions have been vetoed by since 1972.
Since 2004, Washington has vetoed three resolutions which called on Tel Aviv to halt its operations in the Gaza Strip.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=76146§ionid=351020202
I think the U.S. should also have it's membership revoked.
"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
-Mohandas K. Gandhi
Collective punishment is still a war crime, just like it was when the Nazi's used it in WW2.
To seal an area with virtually the identical size and population of Philadelphia, because a handful of residents are firing rockets, is a crime against humanity. The city of Philadelphia has a land area of 135 sq. miles and a population of 1,449,634 (2007). The Gaza Strip has an area of 139 sq. miles and a population of 1,482,405 (2007). Now imagine that what is going on in Gaza is going on in Philadelphia, namely, a tiny percentage of the population is launching rockets at surrounding urban areas. How would the US deal with this? By sealing the city and collectively punishing every single citizen of Philadelphia? Not likely.
Actually, there's no way we'd seal the city and cut off all basic services. There's no way we'd be starving children and their parents because of a handful of "bad" guys being bad. But, Israel is a different beast, and they are blind to the irony of what they are doing...namely, using the same Nazi tactics that were used against them as a group during WW2. In a sense, it makes them worse than their former tormentors...not in scale, but in intent to deny basic human rights to an entire population, most of whom had nothing to do with the "crimes" they've been accused of, by the very fact of the collective punishment they are all suffering. This is all just horrendously hypocritical.
There is no moral equivalency here at all. I think we can cut to the chase when we realize that the Israeli Supreme Court has determined that torture is legal (under certain circumstances they determined...but the bottom line is this, if any form of torture is claimed to be legal, all forms of torture are legal). A country that uses collective punishment and torture, and claims, against virtually every international convention, that these things are legal, because they say so...is morally bankrupt.
Enough said?
The U.S. supports this disgusting behavior. How can the Israeli (Jewish) community do this to other human beings? They expect the U.S and others to continue on policies reverberating from WWII and they have the gaul to act this way - since the 1970s!!
What the hell is wrong with these people? A concentration camp is a concentration camp....
All bow to AIPAC.
If you live in a country like I do that does not give a damn about the Hell that Israelies condemn Palestinians to, then the only things you can do is BOYCOTT Israel and all Israeli products and speak out against their barbarism.
Stop purchasing all goods sold with a bar code that starts with 729, let your neighbors know too.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
You can also buy fair trade products from Palestine. Zatoun olive oil from Palestine is available in the US from the Friends Service Committee and in Canada from many outlets. Visit http://www.zatoun.com/ for information and to download an informative and entertaining audio documentary about the initiative. Visit also the web site of the Palestine Fair Trade Association at http://www.palestinefairtrade.org/.
By buying and distributing fair trade goods, we can show solidarity, help to educate others, help Palestinian farmers and workers in related industries, and help to strengthen the Palestinian economy.
Educating ourselves, talking about the situation to others, buying and distributing the fair trade products, and writing letters to elected representatives and media outlets, are actions that we as ordinary people can undertake that may help to improve the situation in Palestine.
"I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein
A bar code that starts with 729 only means that the UPC code was issued in Israel but not where the product was made. Read the lable for that. Can we also Boycott supporting nations like the US/UK?
The genocidal state of Israel MUST be de-countrified.
Just this obscenity--making Gaza into Auschwitz--is reason enough.
More accurately, Gaza has been turned into the Warsaw Ghetto.
But any and all who participate in Warsaw Ghetto-like heroic uprisings - or it's lame equivalent in the firing of those those ineffective (but colorfully painted) little rockets, will be declared "terrorists", and of sabotaging the "peace process"
---USAn---
I differ.
There was food in the Warsaw Ghetto, and folks could come and go.
This is cleearly a giant concentration camp.
Yes I agree-especially about the constant use of the nazi camps to justify everything, but there is something strange about how the arabs can endure so much without anything breaking on their end. This Gaza headline has been used a few times, by the UN, by Common Dreams.
The way the Egypt border was breached and then resealed with Hamas help.
There is more to this story than meets the eye.
The State of Israel reminds me of this thug who had over 200 criminal charges laid against him. These included brutal rapes , assaults and the like.
He was continualy turned loose into the public on suspended sentences because his defense attorneys cited his childhood where he was abused by a parent as a mitigating factor.
Israel has been given a free licence to commit crimes for the past 5 decades because of the holocaust. They will never let the peoples of the world forget it and they will use it to justify any sort of behaviour on their part.
pk
So when does Israel's behavior cross the line and become genocide? Never?
I can understand the U.S.'s reticence: it's owned lock, stock and barrel by Israel. But what about the other 6.3 billion people on the planet? What's their excuse for tolerating this behavior?
Hopefully, history will not be kind to all those who watched while this atrocious behavior continues unchallenged.
Dave
http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/