Gaza: March 2012

Monday, March 26, 2012

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)

Sunday, March 18, 2012

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)

Friday, March 2, 2012

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)

What is happening in Gaza?

Israel is seeking total Arab obeisance and Palestinian submission by launching massive aggression and indiscriminate attacks. It basically means to restore the fear of Israel among the Arab states in the region. It purposefully intends to inflict massive casualties immediately. In terms of Palestinian subjugation is that for Israel a moderate Palestinian is a Palestinian who is willing to do whatever Israel wants: is a Palestinian who is willing to follow Israeli orders.

(Norman Finkelstein)

The Siege and Strangulation of Gaza

When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israeli officials declared their intention to punish the Palestinians by putting them on a "diet". The diet was intensified in 2007, following the seizure of power in Gaza by Hamas. Imports and exports were suspended and the supply of food, medicine, electricity and fuel has been alternately reduced to a trickle or cut off altogether.

The result, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency, is that Gaza has become "the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and — some would say — encouragement of the international community".

(The Age, Op Ed)

Shameful Arab leadership complicity and inaction

Even the simplest of all actions such as recalling Arab Ambassadors from Israel, or a temporary halt of supplying oil and gas to Israel, or a temporary ban of flights between Arab capitols and Israel, or the denial of entry visas to Israeli tourists, or….or….; not one of these actions was contemplated much less implemented by Arab regimes that have diplomatic relations with Israel such as Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, or trade relations with Gulf nations such as Qatar. The Arab League Boycott was eliminated at the behest of Saudi Arabia (precondition to joining the World Trade Organization) and Gulf nations. Nine other non-Arab Muslim nations have relations with Israel.

But by this shameful inaction the Arab League did succeed in postponing if not cancelling altogether the alleged "Arab Summit" of the treacherous traitors to Islam and the Arab masses. Even if they met not one single Arab expects anything out of these recurrent summits that have become a laughing stock in the Arab world and abroad.

israeli weapons

"I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons," Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who had recently returned from Gaza told reporters in Oslo.

"This is a new generation of very powerful small explosives that detonates with extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres

"We have not seen the casualties affected directly by the bomb, because they are normally torn to pieces and do not survive, but we have seen a number of very brutal amputations."

The dreadful weapons are known as dense inert metal explosives (DIME), "an experimental kind of explosive" but only one of several new weapons that Israel has been using in Gaza, the world's most densely populated regions.

Israel could not possibly have found a better place to experiment with DIME or the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas than Gaza.

(Information Clearing House)

Gaza