Franklin Lamb Beirut

"There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances. The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable." - Professor Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

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Flemming Trondsen

Dr. Mads Gilbert (left) during one of the many operations at
the Shifa hospital in Gaza, Palestine. Photo: ScanPix.

The Israelis won’t permit the convoy to leave Gaza.

The Norwegian doctors Erik Fosse and Mads Gilbert had planned on leaving Gaza today, and just before 1 o’clock (pm) Norwac’s co-ordinator, John Eivind Jensen, informed that everything was going as planned.

The doctors had intended to take part in a convoy that were to take 10–15 patients out of Gaza City, but this convoy now has been prevented from leaving the area.

-The Israelis won’t let the convoy pass, Dr. Gilbert says to Aftenposten.no.

The convoy consists of 10-15 ambulances, and several of the wounded need to be transported elsewhere for treatment.

-Now we’ve had to take the people most seriously wounded out of the ambulances and back into the intensive care unit again, Gilbert says despairingly.

He thinks the reason for stopping the convoy could be that the Israelis now are bombing the area where it would have to pass through on its way to Egypt.

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Saree Makdisi

Israel has killed and wounded almost four thousand men, women and children so far in its assault on Gaza; it has entombed whole families together in the ruins of their homes. As I write these words, news is breaking that Israeli bombs have killed at least 40 civilians huddling in a UN school which they mistakenly thought would be safer than the homes from which Israel’s relentless barrage—and its deliberately terrorizing “warning” leaflets and prerecorded phone calls—had already driven them. (I still have one of the leaflets the Israelis dropped on besieged Beirut in 1982 and the language is exactly the same—“flee, flee for your lives!”). Mosques, schools, houses, apartment buildings, have all been brought down on the heads of those inside.

All this death and destruction comes supposedly in retaliation for rocket attacks that had not inflicted a single fatality inside Israel in over a year. What happened to “an eye for an eye?”

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Gilad Atzmon

"You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.” ~Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” ~Deuteronomy 7:1-2,

"…do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you…” ~Deuteronomy 20:16

There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwager has found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.

As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted momentarily in Palestine by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF is using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to ‘destroy’ the Palestinians while showing ‘no mercy’ whatsoever.

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Jalal Alavi

The 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution is nearing. The revolution of 1979 was not only an act against the US domination of Iranian politics, which began with the US-British coup of 1953 against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, but also an act that was supposed to place Iran amongst the countries that made the transition to electoral democracy [1] as part of what the late Samuel Huntington and others have called the “third wave” of democratization.

Thirty years later, it seems fair to say that neither of the above objectives has been achieved to the satisfaction of the majority population in Iran, of course, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which, as of the time of the revolution, may be said to be actor-based in nature: those who promised a more sovereign Iran and a more open society decided to establish a manifestly anti-Western theocracy instead, which eventually engendered not only a more interventionist Iran policy on the part of the United States and other Western powers, but also a clerical regime that turned out to be more reactionary than the secular autocracy it replaced.

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Khalid Amayreh

For years, I have been warning that Israel is psychologically and morally capable of carrying out a holocaust or a genocide against the Palestinian people.

Needless to say, the horrible events of the past two weeks in Gaza seem to have enforced and vindicated my convictions in this regard.

Israel, government and people, seem to possess the psychological propensity that would make her embark on such a monstrosity. Yes, there is a minority of Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews who say “No” to all the evils and crimes Israel is doing in their name.

However, let us be honest and realistic. These people are a small minority and have very little influence if any on the Israeli government and army.

Today, what many people had thought would be unthinkable or far-fetched in terms of the extent to which Israel would be willing to go in savaging the Palestinian people seems quite possible in light of the Jewish state’s Nazi-like behavior in the Gaza Strip.

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David Icke

The Thought Censors Don't Like It? Tough.

So, yet again, the people of the virtual-concentration camp, known officially as 'Gaza', are being bombarded from the sky by the bully-boys of Tel Aviv.

State-of-the art Israeli jets, paid for by the United States, bomb civilian targets in this tragic, poverty-stricken wasteland which acts as a holding camp for the human beings the Israeli government would rather be dead. Waiting in the wings are Israeli tanks preparing for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, again paid for by the United States.

The world watches as a nation of people, the Palestinians, are systematically crushed and destroyed by the tyrants who call the shots in Israel on behalf of that country's real power structure the House of Rothschild. And, taxpayers of America (and elsewhere), you are paying for this calculated slaughter.

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Joseph Palermo

President George W. Bush will be finally leaving Washington after what seemed an eternity. He will be leaving behind a country that is poorer, weaker, more polluted, more indebted, more divided and more unequal. He soiled the U.S. Constitution and breached the wall between Church and State.

The whole society is less scientifically literate and more ignorant now. There’s more lead in children’s toys, more people without health care, the trade imbalances and budget deficits are setting records, and the national debt is larger than ever. Unemployment hasn’t been this high in decades. Millions of Americans have lost their homes, their jobs, and their children’s futures.

Women have fewer reproductive rights than they did eight years ago and the federal courts are stacked against them. Bush’s appointees to the Supreme Court don’t even believe female corporate executives deserve pay equity.

“Clear Skies,” “Healthy Forests,” and “No Child Left Behind” were all Orwellian terms revealing Bush’s contempt for the American people (or at least the American people who don’t own a giant corporation). Under Bush, Americans have become a more blatantly propagandized people. He set up a Propaganda Ministry filled with “message force multipliers,” “video news releases,” phony “journalists,” and payouts to favored media mouthpieces. Now Bush’s handlers have embarked on their most audacious propaganda effort to date: The “Legacy Project.”

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Najwa Sheikh Ahmed, Nusierat Camp, Gaza Strip

The sky is still blue as I remember, I haven’t seen it since three days, I almost forgot how beautiful it looks in a sunny day in winter, I wish I cold walk on the beach and enjoy some peace.

I moved with my husband, my kids to his family house since three days, we left our beach apartment where the view is very nice to find a secure place, where the kids can not hear the loud sound of the explosions and wake up frightened and crying. I can not give them any assurances that tomorrow will be better for them, and that they will be save. They stopped asking us when this going to have an end, and when they can be back to their normal life as children.

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islamboutique.fr

These young Israelis in the photo are watching as the Israeli army carrries out its deadly bombardment of Gaza. They look like they're enjoying it and having fun. They're watching it, using binoculars; they're laughing, and are chatting about what they're seeing...No, it's not the New Year Eve's fireworks...It's a festive moment though -they're enjoying the extermination of the Palestinian people! [Freely translated from islamboutique.fr]

(It reminds one of "the dancing Israelis" on 9/11, with their high fives and their evil gloating and schadenfreude.)

You want to know what the young people in the photo are so happy & gleeful about? After CANA, you should know precisely what make some Israelis tic. In case you want to make sure you do, just click on the links below and find out...

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