PCHR-Gaza

Jamal al-Bassyuni (far right) and local activists from Beit Hanoun
celebrate Palestinian Land Day Photo: ©Malian

In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.

As farmer Jamal al-Bassyuni plucked a stalk of ripening wheat, a posse of young men danced in his field. The dancers were flanked by a lively crowd, many of them women wearing the traditional Palestinian embroidered thob dress. Despite the nearby rubble of destroyed houses, and tracts of land laid to waste by bulldozers and tanks, the mood was defiantly sunny. Local farmers and their supporters were celebrating Palestinian Land Day. Land Day was launched in 1976, as a commemoration of the deaths of six Palestinian citizens of northern Israel killed by the Israeli military as they demonstrated against expropriation of their land. It has become an important symbolic day of action across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, highlighting the plight faced by farmers like Jamal Bassyuni and his family, who live in Izbat Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.

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Emily Spence

While on a recent business trip, I heard the jet's stewardess announce, "And we thank any American troops onboard for their hard work to keep America free. We, especially, thank them for doing this in dangerous, far away places. We appreciate their honor and service on behalf of the great American way. They are true heroes doing whatever it takes to keep our freedom truly free at home."

In response, I felt like calling out, "Excuse me, but how is destroying a country like Iraq keeping us free? How is warring to secure the ME oil fields for companies like Exxon-Mobile keeping us free? How is slaughtering countless civilians in dangerous, far away places (as you call them) keeping us free? Were Iraq and Afghanistan dangerous to be as a tourist before our country's initial aggressive assaults? Perhaps our invasions fomented increased dangers from terrorists both abroad AND here. So, please stop spreading dangerous propaganda. It does us all a disservice!"

Instead I kept quiet because in the land of the free, free speech is curtailed. As a result, I'd have wound up arrested by airport security forces for "creating a disturbance" were I to contradict the flight attendant.

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National Lawyers Guild

[URUKNET] Israel violated international law by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, misusing weapons, deliberately denying medical care to the wounded and attacking medical personnel, the National Lawyers Guild Delegation to Gaza said today upon releasing a 37 page report containing new evidence on the facts surrounding Israel’s 22 day military offensive in Gaza. The full report can be viewed at www.nlg.org. Photos are also available upon request.

"Our findings join a growing chorus of voices—which include Israeli soldiers themselves—asserting that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive," said Radhika Sainath, one of the attorneys who initiated the seven-day fact-finding delegation to Gaza. "On a number of occasions, Israeli soldiers shot and killed young children as well as unarmed civilians holding white flags—both violations of the laws of war."

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Gaither Stewart

Precariousness looms like a black cloud over the continent of Europe. The fragility of human life and of the life style generations of westerners are accustomed to today rages like a modern plague. Precariousness is a contagious disease. It leaps from worker to worker, from class to class. No wonder that life in our times has never seemed more temporary. Permanence belongs to another age.

(Rome) A popular Italian evergreen from the 1970s depicts a contemporary conundrum for many Europeans: “Chi non lavora, non fa l’amore” go the lyrics. The woman tells her man, “If you don’t work, there will be no love-making in this house. If you strike and don’t bring home pay, I will strike too. No love-making here!” The worker goes back to his job and strikers beat him up and call him a scab. No sex if he strikes, beatings if he works. He is truly the superfluous and precarious man. His only hope is that the capitalist boss relents and grants the pay increases the union demands and lets love into his house again. But that, he must realize, is highly unlikely.

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Yousef Al-Helou

Includes a Salem-News.com video produced by Tim King, on the Israeli attack on Gaza.

During Israel's 3-week long offensive on Gaza launched on December 27th, the Israeli army used internationally banned weapons according to foreign military and medical experts.

American made white phosphorus shells were used in populated areas across the Gaza strip, home to about 1.5 million people.

Nafez Abu Shaban, head of burns department at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical center, has treated dozens of patients who suffered sever burns, he is keeping a piece of phosphorus covered under sand in jar to prevent it from exposing to oxygen.

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Khalid Amayreh

Khalid Amayreh From Occupied Palestine

[URUKNET] I have been under fire of late from two diametrically opposite quarters. First, the fanatical, self-worshipping Zionists who think that non-Jewish suffering should never ever be compared with Jewish suffering.

Needless to say, this psychotic attitude stems from deep-seated convictions that a Jew is a special creature whose life is worth more than the rest of humanity. Haven’t we noticed, for example, how Israel has made "Gilad Shalit", the Israeli soldier imprisoned by Hamas, a household name all over the world, while next to nothing is mentioned about the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps?

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Eric Walberg

[URUKNET] Recall the self-satisfied EU celebrations of recent years — the inauguration of the euro and the famous blue Euro passport, the accession of all the Eastern European and ex-Soviet statelets, the gloating as the euro steadily revalued. Fortress Europe was strong and united at last. The 21st century belonged to the new Old World.

But then a few cracks began to appear in the shiny facade. The Poles, especially, carped about just about everything — the thought of giving up their precious zloty (boy, are they sorry now), the EU farming rules, the lack of Euro-support for US wars, and the Euro-cowardice in facing down the Russian bear. They and the Czechs revealed Fortress Europe for what it was by welcoming US missile bases, provoking the Russians into threatening to make Europe once again the world’s nuclear battlefield. Kosovo managed to divide even the big boys, with Spain refusing to recognize this latest US-German plaything, and ratcheting up the tensions between Serbs, Croats — even the Slovenes. The Balkan cauldron is as hot as ever.

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Margaret Kimberley

Illustration by Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News

“Every norm of civilized behavior and international law was violated.”

Despite the best efforts of the American corporate media, the Israeli lobby, and compromised politicians, the true nature of Israel’s barbarity towards the Palestinian people is not easily hidden. The massacres of Gaza’s civilian population that were recently carried out by the Israeli Defense Force created a turning point in worldwide public opinion. Only the Israeli and American governments try to deny that war crimes were committed.

The IDF barred the world’s media from witnessing the killings of more than 1,400 people. Every norm of civilized behavior and international law was violated, including the Geneva Conventions prohibition of acts of revenge against civilian populations. Israel kept the borders of Gaza sealed, and would not even allow the population to flee and save their lives. The IDF takes the term “shooting fish in a barrel” very seriously.

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Xymphora

I've been thinking more about the peculiar relationship of the Jewish power structure that controls America and the various hangers-on like Cheney and Rumsfeld. What's the connection?

I think it is just power. Political types are always looking for the most powerful star to which to hitch their wagons. They have far better instincts that the average person when its comes to sniffing out power structures, and thus were able to see the rise of the New American Establishment before it was obvious to everybody (except those who still choose not to see). People who aren't Zionists who ride with the Jews do so because their perception is that riding with the most powerful group is the best way to increase personal power. In the short run, they are right. There is also a peculiar element of circularity to this thinking: the New American Establishment is powerful because other powerful people think it is powerful.

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Gaither Stewart

A little bit of Leninism for breakfast gives you the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard.

(My adaptation of a Paul Bowles’ Arab adage)

And then this, straight out of the horse’s mouth:

“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.” (Vladimir Lenin)

(Rome) Leftists like to cite Lenin. To quote Marx is to delve into the theory of Socialism/Communism. But Lenin is another cup of tea. You get into Lenin and you’re already in revolution. When you read Lenin’s The State and Revolution, which contains the core of Leninist thought, you are no longer in the world of socio-economic theory. This powerful text offers insights into Leninist policies and elaborated Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, above all the class conflict, but also the crushing of the bourgeois state and the establishment and role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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