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Gaza Death Zone: Israelis and Egyptians Are Killing Palestinian Youth Who Challenge the Siege of Gaza
The Palestinians in the Death Zone called Gaza are being slaughtered again as Israel and now Egypt kill and wound more innocent civilians who challenge their illegal siege, blockade and quarantine.
In the past four days, one young Palestinian man has been killed and two young women and a young man have been wounded by Israeli snipers as they protested the Israeli bulldozing of 300 meters of Palestinian land into an Israeli "buffer zone." Four young Palestinian tunnel workers have been killed by suffocation and 6 injured as Egypt sprayed a crowd disbursal gas into a tunnel.
Death in the Tunnels from Egyptian Gas and from Israeli Bombs
According to an Associated Press report yesterday, on April 28, four young Palestinian men who work as tunnel diggers were killed by suffocation by some type of crowd control gas sprayed into one tunnel by Egyptian authorities. Six other tunnel workers were seriously injured by the gas.
Other Palestinian tunnel workers have been killed in tunnels that collapse from Israeli aerial bombings and from contact with electrical wires that run the length of the tunnels that power an underground lighting system.
According to the Mezan Center, a Gaza Human Rights organization, five Palestinian men have died in tunnel collapses in 2010. In 2009-2010, Israeli aerial strafing killed 10 Palestinians in the tunnels. A total of 141 have died in the tunnels and 353 have been injured, including 4 children.
Gaza's official border crossings have been closed by Israel and Egypt since 2007 when Hamas, considered a "terrorist organization" by Israel and the United States, seized control of Gaza following a Parliamentary election in 2006 in which Hamas won sufficient seats to control the Parliament.
The tunnels underneath the border with Egypt are the lifeline that provide a means of getting food and materials into Gaza since the Israeli blockade prohibits all but 44 items to come into Gaza. The Israelis maintain that the tunnels are used to bring weapons into Gaza that are used against Israeli forces.
Egypt has cracked down on movement of materials through the tunnels in recent months. Egyptian authorities have blown up numerous tunnel entrances and set up checkpoints in the area around Rafah, Egypt and confiscated materials destined for the tunnels. With the assistance of the United States, since December, 2009, Egypt has been building an underground steel wall to block the tunnels. About four miles of the underground wall is complete with another four miles to go to completely cut off the tunnels.
Once the underground steel wall is complete, the suffocation of the people of Gaza will begin in earnest, unless international citizen pressure forces Israel, Egypt, the United States and European Union countries to stop the collective punishment of the people of Gaza through this illegal blockade.
Death and Injury of Palestinians and Internationals by Israeli Shooting During Protests of the Taking of 20% of Arable Gaza Land for an Israeli "Buffer Zone"
On Wednesday, April 28, 2010, Ahmed Salem Deeb was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper during protests against the Israeli military bulldozing of Palestinian farming lands in a 300 meter zone in Gaza that Israel calls a "buffer zone," and a no-go zone for Palestinians.
Up to 20 per cent of Gaza's arable land is inaccessible to Palestinian farmers because it is now in the new "no-go" area. The Israeli "shoot to kill" policy is implemented in this zone in Palestinian territory. Palestinians have been shot by Israeli snipers as far as 2 kilometers away from the border.
According to Max Ajl, a reporter who was at the protest, Ahmed died from a severed femoral artery from a hollow-tip bullet that had ruptured the middle of his thigh, shredding it. The doctor at al Shifa hospital in Gaza City said Ahmed died of shock and blood loss.
Four days before Ahmed's death, on Friday, April 24, 2010 at a peaceful, non-violent demonstration at El Maghazi, Deir Al Balah, Gaza, against the Israeli "buffer zone," three people were shot by Israeli military snipers.
Nidal Al Naji (18) was shot
in his right thigh. Hind Al Akra (22) was shot in the
stomach and had to undergo emergency surgery. Bianca Zammit (28), a
member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was shot in her
left thigh as she was filming the protest.
During the events of April 24, approximately 20 Palestinians had gone to the "buffer zone." Several carried Palestinian flags as a part of continuing demonstrations against the illegal action by Israel to create a 300 meter buffer zone in Palestinian land and declare it off limits to Palestinians.
Those who enter into the border area go there to gather rubble and steel for rebuilding homes, schools and clinics. 6,400 homes were destroyed or severely damaged and 53,000 other homes sustained lesser damage in the 22 day Israeli attack in 2009 on Gaza that killed 1440, wounded 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless. The Israeli siege on Gaza has prevented construction materials from entering Gaza making the damaged construction materials found along the border area vital to the modest rebuilding efforts.
Prior to the April 24 incident, in late March, a Palestinian teenager was killed and 12 people were wounded, including children, as Israeli troops opened fire east of Khan Younis at "Land Day" demonstrators near the Gaza border.
2 Israeli soldiers and 4 Palestinians killed in Gunfight in March, 2010
On March 26, 2010, two Israeli soldiers were killed inside Gaza during an exchange of fire with Palestinians who the Israeli military said were planting explosives along the security barrier on the Israel-Gaza border. Two Palestinians were killed in that incident and two others later the same day. It was the first time an Israeli soldier had been killed in Gaza since January 27, 2009, the end of the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza.
Also on March 26, 2009, Israeli ground forces backed by tanks and helicopter gunships fired at Palestinians in a sparsely populated border area near the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said the action was a "routine defensive operation meant to protect southern Israel from militants who attack it with rockets and explosives." Gaza medical authorities reported that eight civilians were injured in the fighting, including three hurt in an aerial attack.
In 8 years, from September 2000-December 2008, 4860 Palestinians Killed by Israelis; 972 Israelis Killed by Palestinians
According to the Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem, in the eight years from September 29, 2000 to December 27, 2008, 4791 Palestinians were killed in the Occupied Territories by Israeli Security forces (3,000 in Gaza, 1791 in the West Bank) and 69 Palestinians were killed in Israel by Israeli Security Forces.
During the same period, 245 Israeli security force personnel were killed by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (97 in Gaza and 148 in the West Bank) and 90 Israeli security forces were killed by Palestinians in Israel. 237 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians (39 in Gaza and 198 in the West Bank). During the same period, 490 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians in Israel.
In 22 day attack by Israelis on Gaza in December, 2008 and January, 2009, 1417 Palestinians and 13 Israelis Were Killed
During the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza from December 27, 2008 until January 18, 2009, between 1,166 and 1,417 Palestinians (first figure is from the IDF and the second from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights) were killed. PCHR reports that this figure includes 960 civilians, including 288 children and 121 women and 239 police officers.
13 Israelis were killed during the 22 day period, 10 soldiers and 3 civilians. 5 of 10 Israeli soldiers were killed by friendly fire from other Israeli soldiers.
Deaths and Injuries of International Solidarity Movement volunteers
Bianca Zammit, who was wounded on April 24, 2010, arrived in Gaza in May, 2009, as one of 65 delegates from 10 countries who travelled to Gaza in a trip organized by CODEPINK: Women for Peace. Bianca, from Malta, wanted to go to Gaza to work with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of women and men from around the world who attempt to protect, by their international presence, Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories as they work in their agricultural fields, as they tend their sheep and goats and as they protect their homes from demolition by Israeli military bulldozers.
Bianca was shot as she was filming Palestinians as they walked in to the newly razed Palestinian land. Through her camera, Bianca was documenting what is happening in Gaza, documentation which the Israeli military apparently considered a threat to their security.
Several international solidarity workers have been injured and killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. On April 23, 2010, an Israeli activist protesting in solidarity with Palestinians in B'ilin, West Bank, suffered a broken skull and a brain hemorrhage after Israeli soldiers shot him directly with a tear gas projectile that hit his forehead at B'ilin.
On March 13, 2009, American ISM volunteer Tristan Anderson was critically wounded by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli soldiers near Nil'in. On September 6, 2007, ISM volunteer Akram Ibrahim abu Sba was killed by members of Islamic Jihad in Jenin.
On April 11, 2003, American ISM volunteer Brian Avery was shot in the face and permanently disfigured by machine gunfire from an IDF armored personnel carrier while he was escorting Palestinian medical personnel in the street. On April 11, 2003, British ISM volunteer Thomas Hurndall was left clinically brain dead after he was shot in the head by an IDF soldier. Hurndall died in January, 2004.
On March 16, 2003, American ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie was killed as an IDF bulldozer ran over her as she attempted to block the destruction of a home in Rafah, Gaza.
Caoimhe Butterly, an Irish ISM volunteer was shot by an IDF soldier in Jenin shortly before UNRWA relief works project manager, British citizen Iain Hook was killed by Israeli military gunfire.
On April 2, 2002, Australian ISM volunteer Kate Edwards received severe internal injuries from Israeli shooting during a protest in Beit Jala. On November 22, 2002.
People of Conscience Demand an End to the Killing and to the Siege of Gaza
People of conscience around the world demand that Israel, Egypt, the United States and European Union countries stop their illegal siege of Gaza and their collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza.
People of conscience demand that the Israeli military stop taking Palestinian land to create their own buffer zone and stop shooting at Palestinians who are telling Israel to end the illegal seizure of Palestinian land.
People of conscience demand that soldiers who shoot unarmed civilians be held accountable for these crimes.
People of conscience call on President Barack Obama to withhold funding (over $3 Billion each year) from Israel until these unlawful and illegal actions of the Israeli military forces and the Israeli government end.
- Posted in
29 Comments so far
Show AllTo preempt apologists' comments on CD of the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing Palestinians, I'll post the following so I don't need to respond to their comments.
Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:
1 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
2 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
3 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier
4 – Quantify attacks by Palestinians and quantify Israeli dead and wounded while, not quantifying Israeli attacks on Palestinians nor mention Palestinian dead and wounded.
5 – Justify all Israeli attacks as justifiable retaliations while calling all Palestinian attacks unprovoked although the West Bank is illegally occupied and Gaza is illegally blockaded (act of war) and regularly subject to invasions and air-raids..
6 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
7 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
8 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
9 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
10 – Defend the occupation and ethnic cleansing without mentioning the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
11 – Make so many illegitimate arguments or use so many inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
12 – Rewrite history with your comments.
13 – Switch between tactics 1-12 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
14 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic.
15 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.
Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like the above to try and win public opinion.
District 9.
Now, cut that out! If you keep on discouraging Letto and all our other pet apologists, we soon won't have anyone left to play with and laugh at around here. :^)
:)
Thank you, Progressive 101, for posting this. Some are even paid to blog for Israel: http://tinyurl.com/no8fm9
Palestinians can win the Internet war because truth is on their side.
"..I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." Rev.2:9
Thank you.
Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stood by
genocide
live
Quite right. There were people who tried to smuggle food into the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. If the Germans caught them they would be executed. The Germans rounded up persons of the Jewish faith from all over Poland and interned them in the Ghetto, much like Israel now does with Palestinians being areested in the West bank and interned in Gaza for not having their papers in order.
During the war a number of Polish Civilians smuggled Jewish children out of the Ghetto and take them to safe houses. If caught they were executed. Look for people who try and rescue Palestinian children to suffer the same fate.
Do you suppose we may someday see a memorial commemorating Israel's atrocities like the one erected to the children of Lidice slaughtered by the Nazis?
http://www.jmwolf.com/images/708_Children_s_Memorial.JPG
Both my Senators and my Congressman have voted their unconditional support for these continuing Atrocities. I shall never vote for any of these Genocidal Monsters again. Never!
*Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
This is how it happens and the world goes 'round. Today's victim is tomorrow's killer. Maybe we deserve to die out as a species. Or maybe there is a reason everybody is always out to get the Jews. Their victim status has worked well. Never mind all the people that were killed in Europe. Jews, Gypsies, Catholic priests, German sympathizers, Russians, mygod, Russians by the score. Gays? What about anybody who went against the current opppressor, du jour? There are more groups of victims than can be counted on two hands. We won't even go into Irish, pagan and witch burnings. With Stalin, there was no person, no problem. He solved almost every problem with a bullet to the head. Just for owning too much land in the wrong spot. Often, not Jewish.
I am sick of those damned murderous I$raeli$ and their Bbillion$ in American taxpayer dollar$ funding their inexcusable, yes, inexcusable behavior.
Ok, here goes, my last post on this subject.
In my life, I have never seen anybody out to get Jews. I have heard lots of fears from Jews based on some knowledge of what humans are capable of, but I have never seen a Jew abused during my lifetime.
that's because a lot of the time the pro-Israeli lobby whips up "anti-Semitism is on the rise" hysterics every time Israel violates international law, common decency, or plain old common human morality. This is not to say that anti-Semitism doesn't exist.
Am re-reading Finklestein's "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History" and would recommend it to anyone (esp. Peter Knopfler above) interested in an objective, honest history of Israel's distortions of the historical record.
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
It seems this "pro- Israeli" lobby that stirs up the fears is doing the Jewish people no favors. I have known many professionals, business owners, upstanding members of our world community This fear of the Other and the intense psychological ramifications for all Israeli citizens.. I view the population as (mostly) a cult. The propaganda is thick. The truth is that, we are all members of a world community. Commmitting atrocities on a regular basis is going to get people's attention! I mean is it one of those, "Never mind what your eyes see, listen to what I say!?" It seems are we to ignore the genocide of the Palestinian people? WTF.
Thanks CommonDreams for your ongoing effort to highlight the injustice and the crimes against humanity perpetuated by the Israelis and their enablers against the people of Palestine.
It seems the death toll was more when Bush was president against the Palestinians, and the Gaza massacre occured just before he left office. Egypt better not turn their back to Israel because they may be next on the list after Iran. The Jews have a desire to vent all the anger and hurt they felt from the Nazis, so they picked the Palestinians, that started about 60 years ago,--- and we send them money and weapons to do so. The Jews have the US under their control, and apparently Egypt also.
"It seems the death toll was more when Bush was president against the Palestinians, and the Gaza massacre occured just before he left office."
My guess is Israel timed the invasion to take advantage of the Bush lame duck period after Obama was elected (not to say Bush wasn't lame duck more than that), and at the same time figuring that Obama wouldn't say much since even though he had already been elected, he hadn't yet assumed his post. Unfortunately, Israel was correct. Bush ignored the invasion and Obama, when asked, wouldn't critize or make much comment as he said he had not yet taken office.
The Jews have a desire to vent all the anger and hurt they felt from the Nazis,
---------------------------------
The problem with that idea, Maddy, is that *NONE* of the Zionist leadership ever suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Only one of them (Begin, iirc) ever lived in Nazi-captured territory and that was only for a few months. Moreover, the Zionist leadership tried very hard, as extensively documented by Lenni Brenner, to get in bed with the Nazis, even offering to fight on their side.
The idea that the Zionist viciousness has *anything* to do with the Shoah, the Nazis, or the viciousness inflicted *on* Jews (usually on Khasidim by Catholics/Orthodox in Slavic countries) might be the most important and far-reaching triumph of the Big Lie theory to date.
One thing to keep in mind as one tries to break free of the layers of deceit on this issue is that creation of Israel not long after World War II was basically a coincidence that had little to do with the war, Holocaust, or the Nazis in any meaningful way except for public perception in Europe and North America. The expulsion of Palestinians had all along been an integral part of the Zionist project as founder of the movement in the 19'th century Theodor Herzl freely admitted. This was generations before the 2nd half of WWII when the Nazis went apeshit after their invasion of Soviet Union turned into a quagmire and put into operation the crime against humanity that later became known as the Holocaust. Perry Anderson offers a good survey of the supremacist Zionist ideology and shows how groundwork for ethnic cleansing of Palestine was complete before WWII even began:
http://www.newleftreview.org/A2330
All the great powers of the world, with the exception of Soviet Union, had already more or less consented to creation of a Jewish colony that would supplant Palestinian society by the end of World War I more than 90 years ago. Hardly anyone had imagined a political force like the Nazis and their obsessive antisemitism in that age of established ruling elites whether inside monarchies or liberal democracies. In 1948 the Soviet Union also joined this consensus of victorious powers of WWII under the totalitarian rule of 7 digit mass murderer Joseph Stalin who obviously recognized Israel for cynical reasons of power politics and not out of any sympathy for the suffering of European Jews. Again, these are facts that most people will find disorienting but unless one can grapple with the real history of the Zionist enterprise, any attempt at understanding this conflict--and its eventual resolution--will remain an exercise in futility.
btw, here's an old Letter to Editor of the New York Times by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other Jewish luminaries in which they protest the US visit of above mentioned Menachem Begin, who later became Israel's Prime Minister, describing him as a "fascist" for acts such as ordering the massacre of every inhabitant of a Palestinian village "family by family":
http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/NYTimes1948.pdf
That letter was a powerful indictment of what Truman et al. had just done to the innocent Palestinian people. [sarcasm] I can't imagine why more people don't know about it. [/sarcasm]
"People of conscience call on President Barack Obama to withhold funding (over $3 Billion each year) from Israel until these unlawful and illegal actions of the Israeli military forces and the Israeli government end."
This effort will be a very good start at reining in the apartheid regime.
Thank you, where is save Israel from unnecessary rockets, most the above comments are put down Israel, and yet no one stands up for what is right. If a people continue to bombing and expect no punishment?, if they kidnap soldiers sneaking across borders and no punishment?. Attack Israel every 6 years for 60 years, no punishment?. Death to Israel, Hamas" We love death", OK Have it your WAY, Death to those who love death, Egyptian Schools"kill a Jew go to heaven" and they get billions from the US of A. Where are the complaints? Collective punishment for collective decisions, Americans had to put up with Bush 8 years the world hates America collectively. So palestinians-Jordinans, They asked for it , They got! Collective justifiable punishment... Good Work IsraeL, hang tough. Israel is the underdog, 7 million jews- 1.3 billion Arabs! Thank You.
There are consequences to a brutal, racist and illegal occupation that demeans and destroys the lives of innocent people. Who are you to judge what is necessary for someone living in the apartheid conditions created by the Israeli land-grab policies? Basic human dignity demands a response.
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
The trick is end support for Jewish racism and ethnic cleansing right here in the U.S.
Communities quickly galvanize - and righteously so - against white supremacy and Holocaust denial. We need to do the same against Jewish supremacists and Nakba denial.
I would like to see the U.S. reincarnate the old Marshall Plan from WW II. Just as Berlin was blocked off, and the people there were starving, we could do the same thing here.
What would happen if the U.S. did this? Would it be Blackhawk Down all over again, but from Israel? That would be one way to stop paying the 3 billion a year. We should use that money as humanitarian aid it to the PEOPLE of Palestine where it is much needed.
I always thought that Moses was a sociopath anyway; he murdered half of the tribe for disobeying him, and I guess, in the history of this land, not much has changed. Please remember that while Hitler was killing Jews in Poland, Ben-Gurion opted for building a country over saving those lives. Nation building has its price, and it's always taken out in the blood of "The OTHER." This makes religion, any religion, kind of useless, doesn't it.
Don't these comments go up after we push the "post comment" button, or are they vetted B4 they appear..
I suppose the site is on the look-out for "dreams" that are NOT as common as is the common consensus.. If the comments eventually appear, I am O.K. with filtering out the morons, name-callers and haters, but I generally avoid sites that censor the comments BEFORE they post... Just too many chances someone will find one's comment undesirable when someone has the temerity to call a crime a crime or forced "liberation' .... murder....
wow good choice to avoid the censored sites like C.D. Even the mildest get xxxed... Donate?? In your dreams...