Massive Israeli Slaughter In Gaza

[chlamor]

Israel launches attack on Gaza, kills 230
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 09:55:33 GMT
Israeli warplanes have carried out a massive airstrike on Hamas security compounds inside the Gaza Strip, killing at least 230 and wounding hundreds others.

At least 230 people have been killed and 800 other Palestinians have been wounded in the Israeli blitz, a Press TV correspondent reported from the Gaza Strip.

Video footages showed the bodies of dead people including men, women and children on Gaza streets.

Hamas radio reported that Gaza police chief Tawfiq Jabber was among the dead.

Israel F16 bombers and apache helicopters carried out at least 30 simultaneous raids on at least 30 separate targets in Gaza City.

Israeli tanks are said to be moving closer to the impoverished region which has been under a strict Israeli-imposed blockade.

Israeli authorities have announced that they would continue the attacks.

"This is only just the beginning of an operation launched after a security cabinet decision. It could take time. We have not fixed a timeline and we will act according to the situation on the ground," Israeli Military spokesman Avi Benayahu told army radio on Saturday.

The strikes have caused widespread panic and confusion among the Gaza residents who have refused to withdraw their support form the Hamas resistance movement.

Hamas does not recognize Israel as a legitimate state.

A Hamas spokesman said Israel will pay a heavy price for the attacks.

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum told our correspondent that Tel Aviv carried out the strikes after receiving green light from its allies and certain regional countries.

Barhoum described the raids as 'collective punishment' of Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas in West Bank said in a statement that he "condemns this aggression" , according to an aide, Nabil Abu Rdeneh.

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=7 ... =351020202

More Than 200 Killed As

Israel Drops 100 Tons Of Bombs In Gaza City

The BBC Reports December 27, 2008
Massive Israeli air raids on Gaza

Israeli F-16 bombers have pounded targets across the Gaza Strip, killing more than 200 people, according to local medical workers.

Most of those killed were policemen in the Hamas militant movement, which controls Gaza, but women and children also died, the Gaza officials said. About 700 other people were wounded.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e21546.htm


Eyewitness: Chaos in Gaza

By BBC
A Palestinian girl cries at the site of an Israeli air strike in Rafah

The BBC's Rushdi Aboualouf in the Gaza Strip described the chaos as Israeli warplanes fired missiles at Hamas targets, killing at least 155 Palestinians.

December 27, 2008 -- BBC

Israeli planes are still flying over Gaza and they have just targeted another Hamas [security] compound in the middle of the Gaza Strip, in a place called Khan Younis.

We can see from our office here in Gaza, in the middle of Gaza City, ambulances are still evacuating the injured from buildings and school kids are trying to find secure places.

People who were going to their work were turned back and went home, and most of the residents in Gaza have been ordered by the Ministry of Health to stay indoors.

The mosques in Gaza are calling the people here to go to the hospitals and to donate blood. There is no room in the hospitals as far as we've heard from Hamas sources to treat the people.

No safe places

It's a very bad situation... There were Israeli aeroplanes everywhere, hitting everywhere. You could see smoke from north to south, from west to east. The people are really in a panic. The main object for the people now is to find a secure place to secure their family.

It's hard to find a secure place in Gaza. Gaza has no shelters, it has no safe places. The Hamas security compounds are in the middle of the city - it's not the kind of place where you see compounds outside the cities.

I have witnessed one of the compounds - which is 20m away from my house - I was standing on the balcony and I have seen the Israeli airplanes hitting the place.

Some of my balcony was damaged and my kid was injured and it's a very, very serious situation here in Gaza, the people can't do anything except stay indoors.

[chlamor]

Israel Launches 'Massive Attack' on Gaza

Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly at 8:44 AM on December 27, 2008.

The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a bloody attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Hamas that its recent attacks in the Gaza Strip hand to end. "I am telling them now, it may be the last minute, I'm telling them stop it," Olmert said. "We are stronger." Though no Israelis were killed, on Wednesday alone, Hamas fired more than 60 rockets and mortars, hitting houses and factories.

Olmert followed through on his warnings this morning.

The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire from the area, hitting mostly security headquarters, training compounds and weapons storage facilities, the Israeli military and witnesses said.

Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of emergency services at the Gaza Ministry of Health, said at least 140 Palestinians were killed in the raid.

Most were members of the security forces of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, but a few civilians were also among the dead, including children. Scores more Palestinians were wounded.

There had been a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas, which expired on Dec. 19. Hamas renewed its rocket fire, and Israel retaliated today.

This may continue for a while -- the Israeli military warned this morning that this operation "will be continued, expanded and intensified as much as will be required."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak added at a press conference, "There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting."

This morning's military response came by way of the air, and whether a ground offensive is next remains unclear.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/1156 ... 7_on_gaza/

[chlamor]

The Attacks on Gaza: Orwell in Israel

Posted by Ian Welsh, Firedoglake at 2:17 PM on December 27, 2008.

"The government ordered the strikes on Hamas only after it saw no other way to stop rocket attacks on its southern towns ... "


This beauty from Tzipi Livni is completely Orwellian:

The government ordered the strikes on Hamas only after it saw no other way to stop rocket attacks on its southern towns, she said.

I can imagine no scenario under which bombing Hamas will stop rocket attacks. In particular, these attacks were aimed at the security forces, killing the police chief and the security chief and 140 Hamas Security forces.

Now, who do you think enforced the truce? Who is it that Hamas uses to make sure rockets only get launched when Hamas wants them to? That would be... the police and the security forces.

Bombing Hamas is not going to stop the attacks, if anything it will increase them. But Israel has degraded Hamas's ability to control the various folks who launch the missiles (many of whom are not Hamas).

It is also notable that Hamas's actual military forces, as opposed to security forces, were not targeted.

This attack occurred for domestic political reasons, not to stop the missile attacks, unless the Israeli political class is completely delusional.

That is, I think, possible. After all, these are the folks who thought they could destroy Hezbollah with an air war and that the route to peace is to continue to build more and more settlements. Either they don't want peace, or they are criminally incompetent, or they are driven entirely by craven personal political motives.

Whichever of these it is, it's clear that the attacks weren't launched to stop the missiles.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/1156 ... in_israel/

[chlamor]

[chlamor]

Sunday Dec. 28, 2008 08:14 EST
Marty Peretz and the American political consensus on Israel

Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it." Still, any minimally decent human being -- even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza -- would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

But not The New Republic's Marty Peretz. Here is his uniquely despicable view of the events of the last couple of days:

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

"Do not fuck with the Jews." And what of the several hundred Palestinian dead -- including numerous children -- and many hundreds more seriously wounded?

Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Objections to the Israeli attack are just "whining." Those are the words of a psychopath. And what to do now?

Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. . . .

The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."

This super-tough-guy warrior -- whose prime accomplishment in life was marrying an heiress and then using her family's money to buy himself The New Republic -- beats his chest and threatens that even a single Palestinian act in response to this bombing campaign will provoke still more massive retaliation in the form of collective punishment (which, not that anyone cares, happens to be a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, as are Hamas' far less harmful rocket attacks on Israeli civilians).

It may be true that, as Eric Alterman put it in his seminal article on Marty Pertez (quoting Ezra Klein), "Peretz is rarely held to account, largely because there's an odd, tacit understanding that he's a cartoonish character and everyone knows it." But how unusual are Peretz's views, revolting as they are, in the American political mainstream? He certainly expresses anti-Arab hatred and bigotry more bluntly than most, but this reflexive support for anything and everything Israel does is anything but unique in our political debates.

Here, as but one illustrative example, is Caroline Kennedy -- who, in order to win her Senate seat, is self-consciously trying to turn herself into a Barack Obama clone -- responding recently to a question about Israel from Politico:

QUESTION 8: Do you think Israel should negotiate with Hamas? Do you agree with Israel's Gaza Strip embargo? Would you support an Israeli airstrike on Iran if they felt Tehran's nuclear program represented a threat to their survival?

ANSWER: "Caroline Kennedy strongly supports a safe and secure Israel. She believe Israel's security decisions should be left to Israel."

What could be more absurd than that? Apparently, not only should we continue to feed Israel billions of dollars a year of American taxpayer money and massive amounts of weapons -- thereby ensuring that the world, quite accurately, perceives their actions as American actions -- but we should then take the position that they are free to do anything they want with it, no matter how extreme or destructive to our interests, and our only view on all of it should be that we blindly support whatever they do. Or, as Clinton aide Ann Lewis put it during the primaries, in response to Obama's observation that he needn't have a "Likud view in order to be pro-Israel":

The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.

Yesterday, the Bush administration applied this mindset, naturally, by expressing unequivocal support for Israel and heaped all blame on Hamas. And, needless to say, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed the administration's view:

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi issued a statement concerning the Israeli operation in Gaza in which she wrote that "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally."

According to Pelosi, "Peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot result from daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Hamas and its supporters must understand that Gaza cannot and will not be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel."

Not a word of condemnation of the Israeli blockade -- which has caused extreme suffering and deprivation in Gaza -- or of the massively disproportionate response or the ongoing and ever-expanding Israeli occupation. It is all one-sided support for whatever Israel does from our political class, and one-sided condemnation of Israel's enemies (who are, ipso facto, American enemies) -- all of it, as usual, sharply divergent from the consensus in much of the rest of the world.

It would be nice if U.S. citizens weren't connected to and responsible for every Israeli military action, so that we really could and should take the attitude that what the Israeli Government does -- or what is done to it -- is not our responsibility. That's how it should be.

Instead, since we fund a huge bulk of it and supply the weapons used for much of it and use our veto power at the U.N. to enable all of it, we are connected to it -- intimately -- and bear responsibility for all of Israel's various wars, including the current overwhelming assault on Gaza, as much as Israelis themselves. Blind support for whatever they do -- the consensus view in American political life in both parties -- is therefore a total abdication of our responsibility.



It remains to be seen if Barack Obama intends to deviate even a small amount from what has been decades of excessively loyal U.S. support for Israel -- which, over the last eight years, transformed into truly blind and absolute support for anything they do. It's impossible to know for sure until Obama is inaugurated, but the bipartisan, purely "pro-Israel" statements issued by his allies -- such as Caroline Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi -- don't bode well, nor do the statements which Obama himself made during the campaign, as compiled yesterday by Salon's Mark Schone:

The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if -- I don't even care if I was a politician -- if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Can't the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit: "if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades -- or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit -- I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing"? But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute.

The suffocating bipartisan orthodoxies in the U.S. regarding Israel thus make virtually impossible what the new Jewish-American group, J Street -- in condemning the attack (even while calling it "justifiable") because it "will deepen the cycle of violence in the region" -- urges: "immediate, strong diplomatic intervention by the United States, the Quartet and allies in the region to negotiate a resumption of the ceasefire." Most of our political elites know enough to avoid the ugly language of Marty Peretz, but the ultimate policy positions aren't much different.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

[chlamor]

In Pictures- Israel Air Strikes In Gaza:
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Israel-la ... ans_israel

[chlamor]

Israeli strikes continue on Gaza, 279 now dead and more than 900 injured
Ma'an news

December 28, 2008

Gaza – Ma’an – Israeli airstrikes continued on Gaza throughout Saturday night and into Sunday afternoon. The death toll of the attacks rose to 279, with 900 injured 180 seriously so.

Israel began attacks on Gaza at 11:30 Saturday, ostensibly to root out Palestinian military groups launching rockets at Israeli targets. Two massive waves of strikes kicked off the operation, known as Operation Cast Lead, and strikes have continued throughout the night and early morning.

The death toll rises with each strike, and as more bodies are pulled out of Saturday’s rubble. A timeline of the latest is:

12:00 Israeli air forces launched a fresh raid against the governmental compound known as "As-Saraya" killing one child and injuring several others.

11:45 Israeli bombs targeted the government municipal council offices in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip; several injured Gazans were taken to hospital.

11:00 Israel bombs the temporary headquarters of the Rafah governorate injuring several people; the original building was destroyed in Saturday’s attacks.


10:30 Israeli jets targeted a jeep in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City killing one child. A second strike took place on the Jabalia area, no casualties were reported.

10:00 Three were killed after Israeli forces bombarded a police station in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of Gaza City, and three homes were destroyed in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood west of the city.

8:00 The last Israeli raid targeted two de facto government police headquarters in the evacuated Israeli settlement Kfar Darum and Al-Matahin (the mills).

7:30 Al-Qarara greenhouses were obliterated in a strike on the southern Strip, killing a civilian, identified as Nabil Abu Tu'eima.


7:15 Bombs hit the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of Gaza City and another on a military base called "Sa'd Sayil" in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Dozens were injured.

6:45 Israeli bombs landed on Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood where a police center was destroyed and several injured.

6:30 The attack was preceded by a strike on a medical storehouse in the Al-Junayna neighborhood and a fuel storehouse with diesel and benzene in the Tal As-Sultan area, both in Rafah in the southern Strip. The strikes destroyed the buildings and much needed civilian supplies, and killed three who have not yet been identified.

1:01 am After midnight on Saturday Israeli fighter jets bombarded the security room in front of the Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as well as a mosque in the compound killing two and injuring seven. The blast shattered most of the windows of the emergency ward. The hospital’s morgues were declared full on Saturday and bodies line the hallways waiting to be claimed by family.

12:01am Three Palestinian activists with Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades were killed when an Israeli strike hit the Al-Mansura area east of Gaza City around midnight.

11:50 Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and several targets in the north.

11:30 Three from Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit the Al-Mansura neighborhood east of Gaza City.

10:15 Two airstrikes killed three and injured four when they hit the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City and on Jabalia in the north.

Director of Ambulance and Emergency Services in the de facto Palestinian Ministry of Health Muawiya Hassanein explained that despite media reports to the contrary, a large number of the casualties are civilians including women and children.

Saturday’s attacks

Two massive waves of airstrikes dropped 100 bombs on Gaza at 11:30 and a second at approximately 2pm. Smaller strikes hit northern Gaza at 5:30 and 8pm.

Israeli strikes targeted de facto government buildings; one Hamas source told Ma’an "every de facto security building was targeted." Confirmed casualties include Commander of the de facto Government Police Tawfiq Jabir, Governor of the Al-Wusta (central) Districts Ahmad Abu Aashur and Commander of Security and Protection Services in the de facto government police Ismail Al-Ja'bari.

Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman, said that the attacks destroyed most of the police headquarters in the Gaza Strip and that a police graduation ceremony was being held during the assault.

Saturday afternoon Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared the 20 square kilometers of Gaza a "special military zone." The classification is one degree below a declaration of total war against an enemy state.

Palestinian response

In Gaza military wings launched homemade projectiles and shells at Israeli targets, killing one man in the western Negev on Saturday afternoon. The launches continued throughout the evening, though no other Israeli damages or casualties were reported.

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem demonstrations broke out against the Israeli violence, and clashes erupted in the streets of Jerusalem neighborhoods and in Hebron, where Israeli troops are present.

***Updated 12:33 Bethlehem time

www.uruknet.info?p=50003

www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34293

[chlamor]

more news from gaza
bint battuta in bahrain

48-ga-r3997574765.jpg

A Palestinian boy is carried to al-Shifa hospital following an Israel air strike in Gaza December 28, 2008


December 28, 2008

Text messages from same friend in Rafah:

5 am: "They have resumed again. The sounds of F16 is everywhere now. I don’t know where are they striking. I asked my wife to wake up. We are all sleeping in one bed. Death is everywhere in gaza strip. Many horror stories and rumors are all around. [My two young children] cried a lot when i left the home to go to the funeral of my friend and classmate. He didn’t belong to any faction. He studied in Germany as he was the best student in my school. His leg and hand [were] what remained."

11 am: "The F16 is still roaming from time to time. They targeted medicine store in Al Jonena neighbourhood, near the store was there was a fuel store. You know all the people are storing huge quantities especially the drivers. We run everything on kerosene because there is no gas, yesterday i bought two big gallons about 40 ltrs. Four buildings were badly damaged and a stream of fire was flowing in the area. My friend in that area told me about injuries [not deaths] till now but the number is high. We have no electricity since then and they destroyed Al Aqsa satellite channel COMPLETELY."

"It was huge fuel store plus two tanks of fuel in the street. Lots of the buildings were burnt completely. Also a huge medicine store for traders from tunnels."


www.uruknet.info?p=50002

www.battutabahrain.blogspot.com/2008/12 ... -gaza.html

[chlamor]

Inside Gaza: 'The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside'
Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza city

December 28, 2008

I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father's house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.

Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighbourhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception. All I could do was step outside, where I found crowds of frantic people, lines of rising smoke and the smell of charred buildings and bodies that lay around targeted sites nearby. Somebody said the bombs had been launched in parallel raids over the entire Gaza Strip. What was the target here? Perhaps a police station about 200 metres away. Other bombs annihilated blocks less than a kilometre away, where one of the main police training centres stood. When the strikes began, a graduation ceremony for more than 100 recruits in a civil law enforcement programme was under way. These were the young men trained to organise traffic, instil civil safety and maintain law and order. Many of them were killed, it is said, in addition to the Gaza Strip's police chief.

News came by word of mouth. There had been more than 150 deaths and more than 200 people were injured or missing under rubble after the first two hours of bombing. Israel had said it would continue the offensive and deepen it if necessary. Likewise, it was said that Hamas had launched more rockets at southern Israeli towns, causing one death and four injuries. Gaza had never seen anything like the numbers of dead bodies lying on its streets. Hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.

Bombs targeting a Hamas security force building badly damaged an adjacent school, and several children were injured. We heard of many other targets around the Gaza Strip. It reminds me of the "shock and awe" campaign the Allies launched over Baghdad in 2003. But shock and awe did not bring stability or peace.

These bombs were launched by Israel, as we had known they would be. The world watched the situation simmer then boil over, but did nothing. There are some who believe that hell is divided into different classes. The ordinary people of Gaza have long been caught in the tormenting underworld. Now, if the world does not heed what has happened here, our situation will worsen. We will be trapped in the first class of hell.


www.uruknet.info?p=50009

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle ... morgues-we
re-already-full-the-dead-were-piled-on-top-of-each-other-outside-
1213839.html

[Kid of the Black Hole]

This is great work Chlamor. Get this shit on record now while it is hot.

PS you might consider cross-posting to SocIndy too, to get things cooking over there

Here's your goddamn system you want so badly to "reform" assholes..I guess Gaza gets to re-form from fucking ashes

[chlamor]

International Witnesses speak out from Gaza

For Immediate Release
Date : December 27, 2008

For More Information, please visit http://www.FreeGaza.org, or see contact details below.

(Besieged Gaza, Palestine - 27th December 2008) - Human Rights Defenders from Lebanon, the UK, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia are present in Gaza and are witnessing and documenting the current Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Due to Israel's policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement's boats. FREE GAZA boats have broken Israel's siege of Gaza five times in the past four months.

"At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars - anything that can move is bringing injured to the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the blood banks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp."

- Eva Bartlett (Canada) International Solidarity Movement

"Israeli missles tore through a children's playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza"

- Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movement

"The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital."

- Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza

"The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5 year old girl ran sobbing into my arms."

- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement

"This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now calls of revenge are everywhere."

- Dr. Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre

"As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I live in Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the bodies. As we arrived one more was found."

- Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement

"The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight year little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and the Israel's message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion outside!"

- Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement

-----

Human Rights Defenders in Gaza (available for interviews):

Dr. Eyad Sarraj (Arabic and English) +972 599400424

Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Co-Coordinator in Gaza (Polish, Arabic, and

English) - +972 59 8700497

Dr. Haider Eid (English and Arabic) + 972 59 9441766

Sharon Lock (English) +972 59 8826513

Vittorio Arrigoni (Italian) +972 59 8378945

Fida Qishta (English and Arabic) +972 599681669

Jenny Linnel (English) +972 59 87653777

Natalie Abu Shakra (Arabic and English) 0598336 328

For more information on the Free Gaza Movement (FREE GAZA) or the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) contact in the West Bank:

Adam Taylor (ISM) - 972 59 8503948

Lubna Masarwa (FREE GAZA) - 972 50 5633044


www.uruknet.info?p=49952

[chlamor]

[chlamor]

Video: Gaza Airstrikes: Did Israel target School Children?
setfree68

December 27, 2008

Two News reports that seem to report that School Children leaving School and making their way home were caught up in the Israeli Airstrikes!

Once again it seems that the "Advanced Targetting" of the F16's targetted civilians, with such advanced weaponry can this be an accident or is it deliberate!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WO3dR076DLA

[chlamor]

Ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza; 225 killed over 700 wounded, Israel prepares for further attacks
Saed Bannoura - IMEM

December 27, 2008

As instructed by its political leadership, the Israeli army continued its military offensive against the Gaza Strip and shelled further targets raising the number of deaths among the residents to 225, and at least 700 residents were wounded, dozens seriously.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera News Satellite news Agency said that the simultaneous and ongoing Israeli strikes also targeted a mosque, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees, and dozens of civilian homes and facilities.

At least 40 security centers were simultaneously hit; some centers were repeatedly hit which increased the number of casualties as the residents and medics rushed to evacuate the wounded and the casualties before the Israeli force struck the same targets again

AL Shifa hospital in Gaza, the main hospital in central Gaza, is overloaded with killed and wounded residents.

Dr. Hasan Khalaf, head of the hospital, said that the hospital had to use some ordinary rooms as primitive intensive care units due to the large number of injuries.

Dr. Khalaf added that dozens of families were hit, members of the same family killed and wounded after the army shelled their homes.

Dozens of children were also wounded as the shelling was carried out as school children were heading back home from school.

In the west Bank thousands of residents marched in the streets calling for unity and demanding Arab countries to interfere and calling for ending talks with Israel.

President Mahmoud Abbas contacted several Arab leaders asking them to intervene immediately and stop the Israeli assaults.

Also in the West Bank, the army violently attacked hundreds of protesters in villages and towns in east Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron and several other Palestinian areas.

Arab leaders and Arab residents of Israel also took off to the streets protesting against the ongoing Israeli offensives in the Gaza Strip.

Arab member of Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, participated in a protest in Nazareth and called for indicting the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, for war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Mohammad Nazzal, one of Hamas political leaders in Damascus, said that Hamas and all resistance factions are ready to defend the residents of the Gaza Strip, and added that the Israeli crimes in Gaza require a massive response from the resistance in retaliation to the "massacres in Gaza".

Nazzal demanded Arab countries not only to slam the Israeli offensive, but to act on the ground by cutting their relations with Israel, by breaking the Israeli siege and opening the Rafah Border terminal.

He also demanded the Arab countries and leaders to practice pressure on the international community to stop the Israeli offensive.

In Ramallah, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr, Hanan Ashrawi, said that Europe and the United States are supporting Israel as Europe is upgrading its relations with Israel which is encouraging it to carry further attacks against the Palestinians while the US is sending more financial and military support to Israel.

Ashrawi added that Arab leaders must be decisive in their response to the Israeli offensive and must act to stop these attacks. In Bethlehem, Dr. Victor Batarsa, mayor of the city, said that the municipality decided to cancel all Christmas celebrations and to remove Christmas tree from the manger square in addition to removing Christmas lights and decorations.

Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Jordan along with Jordanian nationals took off to the street protesting against the Israeli attacks in Gaza and called on Jordan to cut its diplomatic ties with Israel.

Massive protests were also reported in Egypt as the protesters calls for a response to the Israeli offensive and crimes against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Protests were also reported in refugee camps in Lebanon calling for unity among the Palestinian factions and demanding Arab unity in order to counter the Israeli crimes.

They also called on all resistance factions to step-up their retaliation against the Israeli offensive and to strike back in the occupied territories and in Israel.

www.imemc.org/article/58173

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* * * NOT SATIRE * * *
U.S. blames Hamas for ceasefire break with Israel
Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters

December 27, 2008

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The United States blamed Hamas for breaking a ceasefire and provoking Israeli air strikes on Saturday that killed more than 200 people in Gaza, which is controlled by the Palestinian group.

Washington did not call for an end to the Israeli attacks but urged it to avoid civilian casualties and placed the onus for ending the violence squarely on Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization.

"What we've got to see is Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel, that's what precipitated this," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, calling the Islamic group "thugs."

The United States has worked to isolate Hamas since it won a Palestinian parliamentary election in January 2006.

Israeli officials said the assault on the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas may last some time.

Saudi King Abdullah spoke about the situation with President George W. Bush, who is at his Texas ranch, said Johndroe, who offered no details of the conversation.

The air strikes followed a decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet to widen reprisals for Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

The United States had been aware of that authorization to pursue Hamas and U.S. officials had been in contact with Israeli officials, Johndroe said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed concern about the escalating violence and called for immediate restoration of the ceasefire. "We strongly condemn the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and hold Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence there," she said in a statement.

In an apparent warning to minimize the risk to civilians, Rice said, "the United States calls on all concerned to protect innocent lives and to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza."

BLOODIEST DAY

The number of people killed in Gaza was the highest one-day death toll in 60 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Militants in the Gaza Strip, who have launched dozens of rocket attacks against Israel since a truce expired just over a week ago, fired more salvos that killed one Israeli man.

The United States is Israel's strongest ally and the Bush administration has taken the position that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Bush had hoped to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before leaving office and in November 2007 hosted a conference at Annapolis, Maryland, to relaunch talks aimed at reaching agreement on a Palestinian state by the end of this year.

But the Annapolis process stalled and all sides acknowledged that there was no chance for a peace deal before the Republican president leaves the White House on January 20 when Democrat Barack Obama will be inaugurated as president.

Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii, did not comment on the Israeli air strikes. His national security spokesman, Brooke Anderson, said the president-elect was "closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time."

Obama visited Israel and the occupied West Bank in July. In an apparent jab at Bush's last-minute efforts to secure peace, Obama pledged at the time not to "wait a few years into my term or my second term if I'm elected" to press for a deal.

Lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace has eluded efforts by many U.S. presidents and the new Obama administration will have to grapple with calming tensions in the region as well as dealing with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a crumbling global economy.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington; editing by Chris Wilson)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPolitic ... 27?sp=true

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"Stop the Massacre in Gaza – Boycott Israel Now!"
StopTheWall

Occupied Ramallah, Palestine - 27 December 2008: Today, the Israeli occupation army committed a new massacre in Gaza, causing the death and injury of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including a yet unknown number of school children who were headed home from school when the first Israeli military strikes started. This latest bloodbath, although far more ruthless than all its predecessors, is not Israel 's first. It culminates months of an Israeli siege of Gaza that should be widely condemned and prosecuted as an act of genocide against the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied coastal strip.

Israel seems intent to mark the end of its 60th year of existence the same way it has established itself – perpetrating massacres against the Palestinian people. In 1948, the majority of the indigenous Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their homes and land, partly through massacres like Deir Yassin; today, the Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are refugees, do not even have the choice to seek refuge elsewhere. Incarcerated behind ghetto walls and brought to the brink of starvation by the siege, they are easy targets for Israel's indiscriminate bombing.

Prof. Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law expert at Princeton University, described Israel 's siege of Gaza last year, when it was still not comparable in its severity to the current situation, as follows:

"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy."

The most brutal episode of this "collective tragedy" is what we have seen today.

Israel's war crimes and other grave violations of international law in Gaza as well as in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem , could not have been perpetrated without the direct or indirect complicity of world governments, particularly the United States, the European Union, Egypt, and other Arab regimes.

While the US government has consistently sponsored, bankrolled and protected from international censure Israel's apartheid and colonial policies against the indigenous people of Palestine, the EU was able in the past to advocate a semblance of respect for international law and universal human rights. That distinction effectively ended on December 9th, when the EU Council decided unanimously to reward Israel's criminal disregard of international law by upgrading the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Israel clearly understood from this decision that the EU condones its actions against the Palestinians under its occupation. Palestinian civil society also got the message: the EU governments have become no less complicit in Israel's war crimes than their US counterpart.

The large majority of world governments, particularly in the global south, share part of the blame, as well. By continuing business as usual with Israel, in trade agreements, arms deals, academic and cultural ties, diplomatic openings, they have provided the necessary background for the complicity of world powers and, consequentially, for Israel's impunity. Furthermore, their inaction within the United Nations is inexcusable.

Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, President of the UN General Assembly prescribed in a recent address before the Assembly the only moral way forward for the world's nations in dealing with Israel:

"More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations. Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations."

Now, more than ever, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, BNC, calls upon international civil society not just to protest and condemn in diverse forms Israel's massacre in Gaza, but also to join and intensify the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ( BDS) campaign against Israel to end its impunity and to hold it accountable for its persistent violation of international law and Palestinian rights. Without sustained, effective pressure by people of conscience the world over, Israel will continue with its gradual, rolling acts of genocide against the Palestinians, burying any prospects for a just peace under the blood and rubble of Gaza, Nablus and Jerusalem.

* The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) includes: Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine; General Union of Palestinian Workers; Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions; Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations' Network (PNGO); Federation of Independent Trade Unions; Union of Palestinian Charitable Organizations; Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition; Occupied Palestine and Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI); General Union of Palestinian Women; Palestinian Farmers Union (PFU); Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign ( STW); Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI); National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba; Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCDPRJ); Coalition for Jerusalem; and Palestinian Economic Monitor.

www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/235

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The rains of death in Gaza
Laila El-Haddad

December 27, 2008


We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there- so its become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe-and whether the severity warrants an "international outcry" or whether the animals can continue to fester in their cages for a while longer.

We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly. We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile- we reach him. He has just returned from Shifa hospital- we hold our breaths.

"We are OK. We went to donate blood and to see if they needed any help" says my father, a retired surgeon.

"I was out in the souk when the strikes began- I saw the missiles falling and prayed; the earth shook; the smoke rose; the ambulances screamed" he said, the sirens audible in the background. he was on talateeni street at the time of the attacks, just a few streets down from one of the attack sites.

My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities at the time of the initial wave of attacks, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centers that was leveled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before they transferred them to Shifa hospital.

There, she said, medical supplies were in short supply: face masks, surgical gloves, gowns...

My parents live in the the city center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. Over 50 "targets"by 60 warplanes, read the headlines in Haaretz. And over 220 killed- in broad daylight; in the after-school rush.

Like a movie tagline. Or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore: 50 targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, 1 day.

All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box.

"There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up." Gaza's air is saturated with the smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs-in a cage, no less, would create an outcry.

The rains of death continue to fall in Gaza. And silently, we watch. and silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death onto Gaza? Egypt; the United States; Israel...

And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable- but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.

But it is the prisoners' burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the "humanitarian situation": as long as they do not starve, everything is ok. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.

The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only 8; or 10; and dream of the days of 4.

For more analysis, details, and calls to action, see Ali Abu Nimah's article here:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/ ... -gaza.html

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It is an outrage that the Israelis chose to attack using F-16 at the precise time children would be returning from school. And that was no coincidence.

Just as the Israelis knew the exact location of every security compound they know just as well what the school schedule is. These strikes were designed to exact as much harm as possible and as far as I am concerned there is no place in the Hellfire bad enough for those who planned the "operation."

The strangulation of Gaza as collective punishment has gone on too long. The strangulation, in my opinion has become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Israelis. They want excuses to finish the job that started in 1948 - tighten the noose, and as the victim kicks, use the kicking as justification to inflict more punishment all the while exclaiming to the world that they (the Israelis) are somehow being "terrorized" by the kassams, but having F-16s delivering death into neighborhoods during these "operations" is not terror at all but a "response."

Yes, it certainly is a response; a predictable outcome when you back someone into a corner and shut off their food, their water, their medicine and their hope.

If you live in the US, make your feelings known to your congressman and senator. Join the boycott. Act in solidarity.

John

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'An earthquake on top of your head'
Dr Eyad Al Serraj, a practising psychologist in Gaza City, describes his family's terror as the Israeli attack began
The Guardian



A wounded girl is carried to hospital after Israel's attack on Gaza Photograph: Majed Hamdan/AP



Saturday 27 December 2008 15.26 GMT

The bombing went on for about 10 minutes. It was like an earthquake on top of your head. The windows were shaking and squeaking. My 10-year-old was terrified, he was jumping from one place to another trying to hide. I held him tight to my chest and tried to give him some security and reassure him. My 12-year-old was panicking and began laughing hysterically, it's not normal. I held her hand and calmed her and told her she would be safe. My wife was panicking. She was running around the apartment looking for somewhere to hide.

We live on the ground floor so we headed to the basement.

Not very far from our home is the headquarters of the police and there was a massive bomb. The chief of police was killed. Two streets away there was another bomb and more people were killed. The office of the president is about one kilometre from our house and it was also bombed.

We went downstairs to the basement and tried to hide ourselves from the shelling. The child of one of our relatives, who lives in our building, finally came home from school. We hadn't been able to find her. All the phone connections were jammed. She came home and she was in a very serious state of shock. She was pale and trembling and she was describing dead bodies in the streets. On her way home she passed Hamas people in uniform and they were dead.

I had been very apprehensive when I woke up this morning. I had some bread, some cheese and a glass of tea. Like all the people in Gaza I felt that something was going on and something very serious. When Israel allowed the delivery of food and fuel [when it ended the blockade of Gaza yesterday] I said to myself and my friends that Israel is really planning a massive strike. They don't want to be blamed for starving the people.

I was sitting in the living room with my family trying to figure out what to do today for lunch, it's our main meal. What to cook and how to cook, whether we have enough to eat. There was no rice so I wanted to have lentil soup and my wife said "No, there's no lentils in the market." I said "What else can we do?" She said "I bought some cans of food." We were discussing this when suddenly the whole thing erupted. Suddenly there was a big explosion.

Right now I feel very anxious about what's going to happen. I'm worried about how many more people are going to die.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/27/ga ... eyewitness

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Hiyam Noir reports from Gaza: Israel Used Internationally Banned Weaponry in Massive Airstrikes Across Gaza Strip

December 27, 2008

Hiyam Noir reports from the war zone in Gaza. We thank her and her colleague, photographer Fady Adwan, for risking their lives to report the truth from Gaza.


December 27 2008

GAZA - On Saturday noon in the first wave of air strikes, the Israelis targeted Gaza City government buildings. Casualties are confirmed and include the Commander of Gaza Police Force Tawfiq Jabir, the Commander of Security and Protection Services in Gaza police, Ismail Al-Ja'bari and the Governor of the Al-Wusta (central) Districts Ahmad Abu Aashur. Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman, said that the Israeli attacks have destroyed most of the Gaza Strip police headquarters and that a police graduation ceremony was being held during the Israeli assault.

Following the first wave of Israeli air strikes, that killed at least 156 and injured over 200 Palestinians (Ed. note: updated numbers since Hiyam wrote this, reported in some western media: at least 200 dead and 300 injured - end note), Palestinian medical sources said in a press statement during Saturday afternoon that at least 80 of the wounded has arrived to hospital in "bits and parts" and the Head of the Gaza Emergency and ambulance department in the Ministry of Health, Mu’awieyah Hasaneen confirm that medical crews and rescue workers are still pulling dozens of people from underneath rubble. Hasaneen have pledged to all Arab governments, to send medications and operating supplies to Gaza, saying most of the injured were too badly injured to be moved outside the Gaza Strip. Hospital corridors are filled with bodies and gourneys, and in the local morgues there is no space to for all the bodies.

Leaders and citizens of Arab countries condemned Israeli air strike on Saturday. A few minutes after the first 30 Israeli air strikes at noon on Saturday, an Egyptian official said that the Israeli missile attacks was "an unprecedented massacre." Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president condemned the attacks, demanded that the ceasefire between the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the Israeli army to be renewed. "Egypt will forge ahead with its contacts to create a favorable atmosphere in renewing the truce and attaining inter-Palestinian reconciliation in a bid to end the suffering of the Palestinian people", a statement from the Mubarak's office said.

Fouad Seniora, the Lebanese prime minister called the Israeli operations "tragic and criminal". A statement from the Seniora's office "strongly denounces and rejects the criminal operation in the Gaza Strip." The Lebanese prime minister called on the Arab League and other heads of state to immediately convene in an emergency session to adopt a "united Arab stand to face the Israeli aggression." Seniora also called upon United Nations security council to adopt "deterring and necessary measures against Israel for its continuous violations of Palestinian and Arab human rights".

The Gaza operation plan was architectured on Wednesday. Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert ordered the air strikes on Gaza, Saturday morning, the assaults on Gaza Strip are intended to last throughout Saturday and perhaps into Sunday. The two Zionist leaders asserted that Israel has prepared for an operation that could take several weeks. Preparations have also been taken to contain any expected response in the West Bank. Ehud Barak and his chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, are supervising the air strikes, which they say - will "continue until the Israel has achieved its goals". Israeli sources asserted that the operation does not aim to topple Hamas, but "we will stop homemade projectiles," the statement said, warning for " tougher images" in the Gaza Strip in the coming days.

A member of the executive committee in the PLO Taysir Khaled, accused Israel of using weapons in Gaza that are banned internationally and condemned the Israeli attack. He called for immediate intervention to stop the Israelis military actions, which he said have been in performance for months. In Jenin Al-Aqsa Brigades ( Fatah) said in a statement that their fighters are in a state of high alert and "would not be handcuffed," and would retaliate "in the right place at the right time."

The Al-Quds Brigades ( Islamic Jihad) asserted that they are in high alert and that the Israelis will pay a severe toll for their heavy handed attacks. The Islamic Jihad leader, Khaled Al-Batsh, said that the Israeli attack is a declaration to "open war" against the Palestinian people, intended "to repress the Palestinian resistance." Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum asked the Palestinian people to "remain patient in the light of Israeli crimes " - he called for a massive response to the Israelis air strikes that have killed at least 200 Gaza residents, and wounded over 200. Barhoum stated that there will be a renewal of Palestinian operations within Israel.


Hiyam Noir is a talented and passionate human rights advocate & activist, environmentalist, author and poet. She is Axis of Logic's correspondent in Gaza whose work is published in our section, "Letters from Palestine".

Hiyam is a courageous author, activist and editor of Palestine Free Voice and Poetry4Palestine. Her reports from Gaza have been published in many journals world-wide. Her first collection of poetry with the title "Poetry4Palestine - cause of justice", was published in a small first edition year 2005. Hiyam Noir initiated the project "Gaza Youth Fund" in year 2005, together with Palestinian-American and local Palestinian friends, students at a university in Gaza City. "Gaza Youth Fund" delivered food packages and water filters to needy families and small funds to student tuition's. In year 2003, she launched the project "100 Children Building Heritage", together with local Gazans. Unfortunately, this great project is stalled for now, as they have not received enough funding required to continue the project. Please go to Palestine Free Voice and contribute to this most important project!


www.uruknet.info?p=49961

www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_29174.shtml