'All the time we hear the Israeli war machine'
Martin Fletcher article-interview Najwa Sheikh Ahmed Times in London
Najwa Sheikh Ahmed, 36, lives in the Gaza Strip with her husband Taher, and their four young children - Mustafa, 8, Ahmed, 7, Salma 2 and Mohammed, five months. Here she talks about her family's daily battle for survival in Nusierat Camp:
Day 19 of the Israeli war against Gaza, and it seems like life has stopped. We can't go to work.
Our children can't go to school. It's not safe to go to the markets. Nothing is normal any more. All the time we hear the Israel war machine. There are always F16s and Apache helicopters in the sky... Each night we go to sleep not knowing if we will see tomorrow.
PermalinkBush & Israel -The Slow Destruction of Palestine
Mike Cowie
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
--Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ In The Wind”
What’s going on in Gaza right now is so incredibly tragic and unjust, not to mention unbelievably brutal and barbaric.
But I’m not here to discuss how it is we came to this horrific situation. No, that has been written about much more eloquently by others, people such as Avi Shlaim, an Oxford professor of international relations and an Israeli himself. I’d strongly recommend that everyone read his recent piece, “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.” It’s a definite must-read for anyone wanting to really understand this conflict and the whole long, sordid tale of Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people.
Israel is a multi-dimensional occupier: John Feffer
Interview by: Kourosh Ziabari
John Feffer is a renowned American journalist, anti-war advocate and currently serving as the co-director of "Foreign Policy in Focus" journal at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He is the author of book "Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11" which he calls the first book-length critique of this fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy to consolidate and extend U.S. global control.
In most of his articles, John Feffer examines the current affairs and Middle East issues from an innovative viewpoint and beyond the prevalent stereotypes of mainstream media.
In an exclusive interview with Tehran Times, Feffer condemned the Israeli incursion into Gaza strip harshly and called for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories.
What follows is the excerpt of lengthy interview with the American author and journalist in which we've tried to preserve the most pivotal and essential parts and eliminate the rest due to the space shortage.
Testimony 2 – Gaza Ambulance Drivers Risk Life and Limb to Evacuate Civilians to Safety
PCHR
Palestinian paramedics are risking their lives to rescue the dead, maimed
and injured across Gaza
“We are working twenty four hours a day – we only sleep when there is no Israeli shelling. The rest of the time it is our duty to stay at our work – I have not been to my home for days now, and I can't believe the situation we are facing. Ninety percent of the injured victims we try to rescue have already lost legs or arms, or both.”
Khalid Yusef Abu Sa’ada lives in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, and works as an ambulance driver at the Al Awda hospital in neighbouring Jabaliya town, risking his life to evacuate dead, maimed and injured victims of attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
“I was driving my ambulance in Beit Lahia a few days ago, when the Israelis shelled us” he says. “They fired one shell at us, and two minutes later they fired another. I was with two paramedics – The Israeli shells killed one of them, Arafa Abdul Dayem, and the other man, Ala Sarhan, was badly injured. He can’t work because now he is in hospital, paralysed.” This was not the first time Khalid Sa’ada and his colleagues had been attacked by the IOF whilst trying to rescue injured civilians. “A few days ago we were trying to rescue a boy who had been injured in Beit Lahia, when the Israelis bombed us” he says. “The bomb struck just as we were evacuating the patient into our ambulance – the force of the explosion ripped the boy’s head off.”
The Twelve Editorial Rules for Middle East Reporting
Zanjabila
1) In the Middle East it is always the Arabs who attack first and always Israel that is defending themselves. This defense is called a reprisal.
2) The Arabs, Palestinian or Lebanese have no right to kill civilians. That is called “terrorism.”
3) Israel has the right to kill civilians. That is called “legitimate defense.”
4) When Israel kills civilians en masse, the western powers claim that it is more measured. This is called “reaction of the international community.”
5) The Palestinians and the Lebanese have no right to capture soldiers of Israel inside military installations with sentries and combat posts. This is called, “Kidnapping of defenseless people.”
6) Israel has the right to kidnap anytime and anywhere as many Lebanese and Palestinians as they want. Currently there are more than 10 thousand, 300 of whom are children and a thousand are women. No proof of guilt is needed. Israel has the right to keep kidnapped prisoners indefinitely, even if they are authorities democratically elected by the Palestinians. This is called [taking] “terrorist prisoners.”
White Phosphorus and its use in Gaza
The Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem
Press TV Images of WP use in Gaza
White Phosphorus (P4) is a waxy fat soluble colorless or slightly yellow solid with a garlic smell that is not naturally occurring but is produced in the laboratory. It is highly reactive with oxygen (ignites spontaneously upon drying and exposure to air) producing compounds like P4O6 (phosphorus pentoxide) and P4O10 which upon contact with water becomes oxophosphoric acids (aslternatively direct reaction with water can lead to phosphoric acid HPO4 through some intermediate compounds)
500 Citizens of Sderot Contradict the Israeli Government
Janine Roberts
The removed Israeli government graph: 'Monthly distribution of rockets hits.'
Much has been made of Hamas' reported failure to honour last year's truce. But, an extraordinary correspondence between Jewish residents of the much-rocketed town of Sderot, nearby kibbutz, and the Palestinians living within sight in the Gaza strip paints a very different picture of that truce from that repeatedly given by the Israeli government.
Barrack Obama was taken to Sderot last year to show him the effects of rocketing. He remarked on how Israeli towns looked like American from the air and offered his full support to the town’s citizens, promising to invite its representatives to the White House soon after taking office. At the time in mid-July Sderot was safe to visit. There had been no casualties from rockets since the ceasefire started 4 weeks earlier.
Map of "Greater Israel" Published by Radical Settler Movement
Martini Lahoud
“The process of national revival of the Jewish people is irreversible and has its internal logic. We shall have no peace as long as the whole territory of the Country of Israel will not return under Jewish control. This might sound too hard, but such is the logic of history. The war on the Holy Land has been already fought for four thousand years and the end cannot be seen. A stable peace will come only then, when Israel will return to itself all its historical lands, and will thus control both the Suez and the Ormudz channel. The state will find at last its geostrategic completeness. We must remember that Iraqi oil fields too are located on the Jewish land. This may seem utopia to many now - but an even greater utopia seemed a hundred years ago the revival of the Jewish state...If you want it, this will not not be a fairy tale" --Rabbi Avrom Shmulevic of the Bead Artzein ("For the Homeland") Movement.
XML Feeds