GAZA: THE CORRUPTION, BETRAYAL AND TREACHERY OF EGYPT AND ARAB MEDIA

 ‘Hamas deliberately created the crisis in Gaza.  The war on Gaza is just a “joke”.  Hamas is playing the role of the victim so that Egypt opens the Rafah border crossing and they can then smuggle weapons in and out.  Close the crossing!  Don’t let them in!." (Egyptian TV Broadcaster Amany al-Hayat)

"Why don’t Israeli air forces bomb Hamas’s terror sites? Israel knows them very well. Why do they only bomb civilians?”

“Hamas is a Jihadist terrorist movement that does not differ much from ISIS. It attacks Israel and hides for the world to watch Israel strike at civilians” (Amany al Hayat)

‘Hamas continues to trade in the blood of the innocent people in Gaza and it has rejected calls for a cease-fire.’ (Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Arab Times, Kuwait.)

‘it is up to the Palestinians to get rid of their illusions and sincerely try to contemplate the benefits brought forth by Egypt’s initiative.’ (Kuwait’s Arab Times, Editor-in-Chief Ahmad Al-Jarallah criticised Hamas’s rejection of a ceasefire)

 ‘Hamas is playing … a PR game at the expense of the people who are living in Gaza. Where are the journalists [that need to] tell Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad to stop? Do you find it normal that terrorists hide under civilian houses and by [doing] that hurt the same people that they are trying to protect? Do you think that this is something that is normal, that these terrorists are actually making the Palestinian people lose their lives?’ (Lucy Aharish, i24news, Arab mainstream news anchor)

‘Hamas is more isolated than ever. The organization is revolting against the legitimate Palestinian leadership, while it is perceived globally as a criminal organization raining rockets down onto Israel.’ (Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan.)

 ‘Such idiotic decision-making [by Hamas] … forces the Gaza Strip and its people, as well as the entire Arab Nation in its entirety, to pay a very steep price in fragmentation, in humiliation, in martyrs and, unfortunately, in blood – shed in vein, with no prospects for victory.’ (Khaled Salah, Al-Nahar TV)

 ‘Why [was] Hamas successful in spreading a sophisticated network of tunnels and fail to build simple bomb shelters …? Is Hamas willing to sacrifice Palestinians to get more Arab and foreign financial aid … Hamas leaders are jet setters.’ (Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, arabnews.com)

 ‘The vast majority of the countries participating in [the Arab League] summit consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. These countries pray – all those foreign ministers are praying – that Israel will manage to get rid of Hamas once and for all.’ (Arab journalist, Abd Al-Bari Atwan.)

‘Hamas’s isolation, its diplomatic impotence, its disconnection from the [Palestinian] Authority and rebellion against anyone who is a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people makes it appear as a criminal in the eyes of the rest of the world.’(Saudi newspaper Al Watan)

‘We are not prepared to sacrifice even a single hair from the eyebrow of an Egyptian soldier or civilian, for the sake of Hamas … They goad people into fighting, terrorism, and violence, under the pretext of “Jihad,” while they themselves sit in luxury.’ (Maher Shahin, Al-Tahrir TV)

‘Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!’ (Azza Sami,  deputy editor Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.)

" I love my country and I hate Hamas. I thank not only Netanyahu but any person who wipes Hamas out of existence. There is a (anti) Hamas campaign against all those who speak about their [Hamas’] stupidity and idiocy. I’m proud to be one of those. I pray for the death of all Hamas members, and everyone who loves Hamas” (Azza Sami)

"Hamas ‘don’t understand that peace, too, is something you must struggle for with all your might … Therefore it is necessary to persist with efforts to impose peace. No other option exists. True resistance is resistance to illusions and false hopes, and no longer leaning on the past in building the future." (Abdallah Hamid Al-Din,  Saudi writer in London's Al-Hayat )

Israel's Channel Two praised an Egyptian TV host who called on the Egyptian Army to explicitly help the Israeli army to eliminate Hamas for supporting ousted President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, calling Hamas, calling it an "internal occupier, not less dangerous than a foreign occupier".

A group of Egyptian journalists and writers gloated over targeting Hamas and condemned its reaction to the Israeli aggression by firing missiles at Israeli cities, claiming it was "an attempt to embarrass Egypt and President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi".

 “Israeli air force bombarded 12 terrorist sites in Gaza,” deeming targeted civilian neighbourhood as “terror sites.” (Egypt’s cable channel CBC, owned by Mohammed al-Amin described the Israeli targets in Gaza as terrorist targets.)  

"The last thing Egypt needs now is to drag its armed forces into military operations outside its borders. Hamas would be delusional to believe that Egypt would play the same role played by President Morsi during the aggression in 2012; because the great relationship between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood no longer exists, and Hamas does not deserve the Egyptian support. We should not leave the Palestinian people in Gaza victims of the Israeli aggression and prey to the aggressive policies of Hamas towards its neighbours." (Imad Eddin Adeed Adib, Al-Watan)

"Sorry Gazans, I cannot support you until you rid yourselves of Hamas." Adel Nehaman, Egyptian El-Watan)

“Gazans are not men. If they were men they would revolt against Hamas. Hamas and Hamas’ men go to hell. Gazans must rebel against Hamas today. If they don’t, then they deserve to be bombed. If Gazans revolt against Hamas, Israel will stop bombing them and the Egyptian army would support them militarily to eliminate this terror movement. Hamas provoked the Israelis by abducting the three Israeli civilians. Israel merely retaliated.”  (Star presenter of the Al-Faraeen TV channel, Tawfik Okasha)

"I'm telling the Israeli army, the Israeli people and the Israeli leaders: You are men," (Tawfiq Okasha praising Israel's assault on Gaza)

“The Egyptian people know exactly who they are facing, and understand that there is no alternative to employing the Egyptian army to strike terror cells in Gaza and destroy Hamas in a military operation." (Hayat al-Dardiri, TV presenter Egypt Today)

“Al-Qassam Brigades are to be blamed for the Palestinian deaths.” (Ousama Mounir,Egyptian TV presenter)

 “Egypt should treat Palestinians at the terminal (Rafah border post) and not allow them in." (Former MP Mohammed Abu Hamed)

“The standard of living for a Gazan citizen is much higher than that of an Egyptian citizen. The poor in Egypt are more in need than the poor in the Gaza Strip. Let Qatar spend as much as it wants on the Gaza Strip. We should not send anything that Egyptians are in need of.” (Al-Bashayer newspaper on the dispatch 500 tons of food and medical aid to Gaza)

“No Arab country has done for the Palestinians as Egypt has. Hamas should apologize for the 1000 tunnels that were used to smuggle the resources of Egypt. They all have their own planes and accounts in Swiss banks." (Mustafa Shardi, journalist.)

“The Israeli occupation is better than the rule of Hamas in Gaza.” (Egyptian journalist Gamal Fahmy)

Hamas and al-Qassam Brigades “are not our brothers, neither Muslims, they are the enemy...strike every place in Gaza, it is the right of our children.” On Palestinians who want to cross into Egypt for medical reasons , “we don’t want anyone of them, those who are dying, let them die there.”  (TV presenter Ahmad Moussa)

WHAT THE ISRAELI ARMY FEAR MOST

The IDF know that Hamas forces, the Qassam Brigades and allied fighters are in the borders and in the tunnels. The IDF and even their most elite forces fear fighting in close combat and they loath going into the tunnels. They rather engage in long distant battles where they have superior and devastating firepower. But it is almost useless against determined Palestinian forces and every time they try to go in they suffer morale damaging casualties. 

Instead, they unleash indiscriminate shelling sea, air and land – ships, jet bombers, artillery and tanks onto Palestinian civilians, schools, hospitals, mosque and thousands of homes, resulting in thousands of deaths and maiming, mayhem and limitless destruction. They even kill and murder whole families. If they cannot get to the fighters, they intend to severely inflict hurt and savage their families, friends and the people of Gaza until the Palestinian resistance capitulates, insisting on a demilitarized zone free from Hamas fighters but still besieged at Israel’s mercy. But Gaza will not go down without a fight.

Do not let them.

FREE HANA SHALABI

 

Israeli authorities should immediately release a Palestinian detainee or charge her with a recognizable criminal offence and promptly try her, Amnesty International said amid fears that the woman could die in detention after 37 days on hunger strike.

Hana Shalabi, 30, from the village of Burqin in the northern West Bank, held under administrative detention has never been charged with a criminal offence.

She was transferred to Meir Hospital in the central Israeli town of Kfar Saba on Tuesday night, but remains under Israeli custody and constant armed guard.

“When her lawyers and independent physicians met her, Hana Shalabi reported to them that Israel Prison Service officers handled her violently while transferring her to hospital or the military court, and have consistently pressured her to end her hunger strike,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s interim deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

(Amnesty International)

President Carter said the same thing about Israel and Apartheid

Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the German Social Democratic Party and a possible candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany, described on Wednesday Israel as an “Apartheid-Regime” on his Facebook site.

 “I was just in Hebron. That is a lawless territory there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification,” wrote Gabriel.   (Jerusalem Post)

 

YOUR TIME IS GONNA COME

"It will not go on for ever, it will not go on for ever. Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown." Member of the UK's House of Lords, Baroness Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat peer, was filmed making the remarks during a student panel last week.

She also went on to say, "One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70 billion [$112 billion] a year to Israel to support what I call America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough."  (The Guardian UK)

Khader Adnan: My honour is more precious than food

Khader Adnan's two-month hunger strike has made him a hero among Palestinians outraged by Israel's policy of arbitrary detention. 

His hunger strike has focused growing attention on the malicious practice of Israeli administrative detention, in which Palestinians can be held without trial and on the basis of secret intelligence dossiers which are not shown to the defendant or his lawyers. He was from Jenin and was arrested on 17 December.

A Red Cross delegation had gone to his home to warn her wife that her husband's heart could fail "at any minute".

Khader Adnan says, "I reject administrative detention and I will continue the hunger strike until I am released". Mrs Adnan said that he is determined to continue his fast.

His resolve has been hardened, she said, not only by his summary arrest and its circumstances but by his treatment during interrogation. Her husband had been held for seven-hour periods – on a short chair with his hands tied behind its back, causing him intense discomfort, and that parts of his beard had been torn out by Israeli interrogators. He had also been subject to psychological pressure, including his Israeli interrogators saying cruel things against his wife.

Mrs Adnan said that her husband had repeatedly declared that "my honour is more precious than food".

He had done quite enough to transmit his message to the world protesting about the use of administrative detention without trial or charge.

According to his sister, Mr Adnan was a model father who "loves life", she added: "I am not sure that he wants just to deliver a message. He also wants to end the administrative detention. We have so much faith in Allah to get him out of this situation. We believe that God will not let him down."

Khader Adnan told one of his lawyers: "I do not want to go to oblivion or death. But I am a man who defends his freedom. If I die it will be my fate."

(adapted from The Independent UK)

Shame and Woe to the UN for producing an Immoral, Dubious and Unscrupulous Report

As expected of the UN, it appoints severely biased panellists, in turn vindicates and exonerates the bigger issue of criminality on the high seas and tries to justify the inhumane and barbaric blockade of 1.5 million people of deprived and stricken Gaza. This two man panel Palmer and Uribe (oh! so few choices amongst honourable men, none a Goldstone among them) themselves should be indicted for supporting crime against humanity as well as the UN secretary general for the idiosyncrasy or malicious expediency to appoint them.

   

The 105 page report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla Incident is a non event, based on fallacies, a whitewash, a shame on the UN and if it is left standing is an indictment of the apathy of all of its pliant members, Arab, Muslim and democratic countries alike and are all to be held accountable.

Everyone knows that Palmer, the head of this panel, is very close to Israel, while Uribe was a prime buyer of Israeli-made weapons during his time in office as Colombian president and was awarded the “Light unto the Nations” prize by the American Jewish Committee and the “Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism” from B’nai Brith.  Uribe undertakes his role of impartial investigator weighed down by his Zionist partiality and connections.

The appointments despite such a great conflict of interest, is of course a sign of either ineptitude or bad intentions on the part of the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon.

The panel exerted great efforts to justify Israel’s brutal Gaza blockade, which the UN Human Rights Council and the International Red Crescent Committee found illegal and illegitimate. The two men panel shamelessly declared the Israel’s Gaza blockade to be legitimate, thereby contradicting its own propositions. In this legally and morally problematic report, the Palmer panel devoted its energy and efforts to justifying the naval blockade Israel is illegally imposing on another country, instead of reporting the act of banditry and massacre Israel had committed in international waters 72 miles off its coast.

The passengers were unarmed. But still the Israeli soldiers chose to shoot them “multiple times, including in the back or at close range”. This act of aggression resulting in the loss of innocent lives on the Mavi Marmara had not, according to the report, been “adequately accounted for” by Israel.

It is not a report intended to investigate the Israeli army’s piracy and the Mavi Marmara bloodbath, but a piece of immoral, unscrupulous and extremely biased material for propagandizing the legitimacy of the Gaza blockade. For this reason, as accurately noted by Turkish President Abdullah Gül, this report is legally void and invalid for Turkey. Turkey’s UN envoy rejected the report’s claim that the blockade was justified, pointing out that freedom of navigation on the high seas was part of international law, and a blockade required a broader convergence of views.

In the final analysis, this report prepared by a panel set up by the UN, an international organization which was originally established to support international peace and stability and protect the validity of international legal norms, fails to improve bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel or reinforce regional peace and stability, but has triggered a serious process of crisis and tension. Turkey has made its clearest stand and action on the principle of justice and humanity. Will Egypt which also recently suffered deaths inside its own borders from the hands of the Israeli killing machine follow suit to uphold it dignity?