BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gazan women face rise in abuse

Amongst the rubble of the Zeitoun area of northern Gaza, a group of women have gathered. They are sitting in the dust where one of their houses once stood, headscarves on the heads, their barefoot children clambering all over them.

This is no ordinary mothers' meeting. It has been organised by the Gaza Mental Health programme, which aims to help women here following Israel's military assault, as they try to bring up their families under Israel's continuing blockade.

The women talk openly about the misery they face - homelessness, the death of loved ones, whose photos they love to hand round, their children's trauma after the horrors they've seen.

But much harder for them discuss, the mental health workers say, is the abuse increasing numbers of Gaza women suffer at home.

Complete report at: BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gazan women face rise in abuse:

Israel drops Gaza war crimes probe

The Israeli military has closed an investigation into claims that Israeli troops shot unarmed Palestinian women and children during its 22-day war on Gaza.

Military investigators said on Monday that Israeli soldiers were passing on "hearsay" when they described the alleged incidents, published by Israeli media earlier this month.

Avichai Mendelblit, Israel's military judge, said investigations "found crucial components of [the soldiers' descriptions] were based on hearsay and were not supported by specific personal knowledge".

He said it was unfortunate that the soldiers, who discussed their Gaza experiences in a closed-door session on February 13, had been careless about accuracy.

Complete report at: Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel drops Gaza war crimes probe

I did not wonder a second as I read this. How else could the army with highest morale in the world? They closed investigations on other massacres (here an example about the massacre of second massacre of Qana), so nothing new really.
When is the International community going to make Israel accountable for their deeds if their own investigations show no guilt? International Law is made only against the weak

Closed Zone

More about the film at: http://www.closedzone.com/

A cartoon about being enclosed in Gaza by all these borders and fences. It has been produced by the human rights Organisation GISHA that is concerned about human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Clashes erupt in Israeli-Arab town

The protest in Umm el-Fahm, one of Israel's largest Arab towns, erupted on Tuesday after Jewish hardliners tried to march through the town."

Complete article at:Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Clashes erupt in Israeli-Arab town: "Israeli police have used stun grenades and tear gas to disperse a protest by Arab residents of a northern Israeli town.

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Jets 'bombed convoy in Sudan'

A Sudanese minister has told Al Jazeera that the US launched two air raids in the country earlier this year.

Mabrouk Mubarak Salim, the state minister for highways, said on Thursday that Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans were killed in the attacks in January and February

coplete article:Al Jazeera English - Africa - Jets 'bombed convoy in Sudan'

Well, you think I posted that because of Sudan. No, I did so because of Israel and the USA and them feeling free to bombard anybody they don't comfortable with and this without anybody mentioning international law, sovereignty, etc. They are above the law. They sign treaties with each other and then feel free to do whatever they find necessary. I wonder what would have happened if Sudanese war planes bombarded a convoy in Israel. Can you imagine which reactions of condemning would have been declared, UNO resolutions ratified, retaliations occurred?

Israel accused of 'reckless' use of white phosphorus

Israel "deliberately and recklessly" fired white phosphorus shells in densely populated areas of Gaza in an "indiscriminate" way that killed and wounded civilians and is "evidence of war crimes", Human Rights Watch said yesterday
A detailed report from the agency says the Israeli military knew white phosphorus's lethal capacity to cause intense burns, and that the firing of it in airburst artillery shells revealed a "pattern or policy of conduct rather than incidental or accidental usage."

Read complete article: Israel accused of 'reckless' use of white phosphorus - Middle East, World - The Independent

Israel 'violated medical ethics'

The Israeli human rights group said 16 Palestinian medics were killed in the Gaza offensive [AFP]

An Israeli human rights group has accused Israel's military of violating medical ethics codes during its 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) said Israel attacked 34 medical care facilities and prevented Palestinian medical teams from reaching the wounded during the offensive in December and January

Read complete article at: Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel 'violated medical ethics': "

Israel accused of 'new Gaza crime'

Israel accused of 'new Gaza crime'
Thousands of homes in Gaza were destroyed or damaged during the Israeli offensive [EPA]

A senior UN official has suggested that Israel should be held accountable for a 'new crime against humanity' during its January assault on the Gaza strip.

Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said Israel had confined Palestinian civilians to the combat zone in Gaza, a unique move which should be outlawed."

"Such a war policy should be treated as a distinct and new crime against humanity, and should be formally recognised as such, and explicitly prohibited," Falk said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.

Palestinian civilians were prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip during the three-week bombardment by the Israeli authorities.

Falk also called for an investigation into Israel's attack on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed and homes destroyed.

Israel said it carried out the assault to stop Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Report condemned

Falk's comments formed part of a much longer report from nine UN investigators including specialists on the right to health, food, adequate housing and education, as well as on summary executions and violence against women.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN secretary-general's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, accused Israeli forces of using a child as a human shield in one incident.

Soldiers forced an 11-year-old boy to walk in front of them for several hours as they moved through the town of Tal al-Hawa on January 15, even after they had been shot at, her report said.

Aharon Leshno Yar, Israel's ambassador to the UN rights council, condemned the report, saying it "wilfully ignores and downplays the terrorist and other threats we face", and the alleged use by Palestinian fighters of human shields.

The US accused Falk of being biased.

"We've found the rapporteur's views to be anything but fair. We find them to be biased. We've made that very clear," Robert Wood, a US state department spokesman, told a media briefing on Monday.

'War crime'

Falk called for the probe to assess if the Israeli forces could differentiate between civilian and military targets in Gaza.

"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful, and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said in the report.

"On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he added, saying that attacks occurred in densely populated areas.

Falk, who has been critical of Israel in the past, was expelled from Israel during an attempt to visit Gaza in December, after he said Israel's policies on the territory amounted to a crime against humanity.

Source:Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel accused of 'new Gaza crime'

UN accuses troops of using boy, 11, as human shield - Middle East, World - The Independent

UN accuses troops of using boy, 11, as human shield - Middle East, World - The Independent: "An 11-year-old boy was used as a human shield by Israeli troops during their 22-day offensive in Gaza – including when they came under fire – according to a report by UN human rights experts published yesterday."

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel 'violated medical ethics'

An Israeli human rights group has accused Israel's military of violating medical ethics codes during its 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) said Israel attacked 34 medical care facilities and prevented Palestinian medical teams from reaching the wounded during the offensive in December and January."

Read complete article at:Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel 'violated medical ethics': "Israel 'violated medical ethics'

Let's wait and see what the UN human rights report on the Gaza war will say. It should be published today

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel stops Jerusalem celebrations

Israeli police have prevented Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem from holding events to mark the city's designation as 'capital of Arab culture' for 2009."

'No virgins, no terror attacks' - Haaretz - Israel News

By Uri Blau

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.

The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.

"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."

Does the design go to the commanders for approval?

The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average."

What do you think of the slogan that was printed?

"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."

Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."

G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."

When are these shirts worn?

G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about."

Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman."

What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?

"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."

Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing?

"Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."

These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids?

'We came, we saw'

"As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the sniper."

Have you encountered a situation like that?

"Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes. There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a prohibited area and could have posed a threat."

What did you do?

"I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot).

You don't regret that, I imagine.

"No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot."

A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center.

A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"

Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the commanders before printing," he explained.

What is the soldier holding in his hand?

Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings, because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing."

According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't think people would like it."

Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol of the Paratroops Corps.

Where does the fist come from?

"It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho."

Was the shirt printed?

"Yes. It was a company shirt. We printed about 100 like that."

This past January, the "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it says, "Only God forgives."

One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt."

What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"?

The soldier: "It's just a saying."

No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture?

"I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as though we hate Arabs."

After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan. S., a soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh.

"They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained.

What's the problem with this shirt?

S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint ..."

How did people who saw it respond?

"We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies, because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base."

The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops, Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity.

Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army.

"The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said. "Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays any course with 15 participants prints up shirts."

From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained. "There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said, 'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts."

Race to be unique

Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example, had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was unique to it.

"These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable," Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in every direction."

Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to heaven, because we've already been through hell.'"

Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl, and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I said it wasn't appropriate."

The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort."

Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general clauses in judicial martial law.

Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.

"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him."

Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression?

Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond that, I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views, as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude and violent manner toward women and Arabs."

Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s.

Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'"

Do you think this a good way to vent anger?

Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow."

Source: 'No virgins, no terror attacks' - Haaretz - Israel News

IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement - Haaretz - Israel News

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.
The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.
The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.
The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.
"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."
According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.
"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.
Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.
The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."
The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."
More soldiers' testimonies will be published in Haaretz over the coming days

Source: IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement - Haaretz - Israel News

About priorities: 1 detainy against 1.5 millions

If one would listen not with much attention to the radio and would hear that the head of Isareli Intelligence arrived in Cairo today to negotiate the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Shalit one would not think much about it.
The Associated Press: Israeli spy chief makes fresh bid to free soldier
But wait? I thought that there were negotiations on opening crossings to Gaza and lifting the siege. No, don't dream of it. The world forgot about the people of Gaza. They are only 1.5 millions without much food and destroyed infrastructure and homes. It is OK, just forget about them. There is no need to give them any media coverage. They are an old story. But this soldier is also an old story why do they still talk about him as if Israel's survival or even peace in the Middle east depends on him? Yes, he is very important but not the around 1000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. these are only mentioned when one is talking about a swap with an important detained Israeli individual.
Isn't that a crime to let the people of Gaza hunger for another month while Israelis are caring only about this soldier and Palestinian parties are busy with national reconciliation? Hey people, wake up there 1.5 millions detained there and the neither International law nor anybody else is doing anything for them. No, this is not the whole truth. I was relieved today to hear that

"A group of leading judges and investigators called on Monday for a "prompt, independent and impartial" investigation into allegations of war crimes committed during Israel's conflict in Gaza earlier this year"

(Read the complete article at Reuter's). I hope these people can make the UN move to do something in the War Crime tribunal and not simply running after Sudan's president. I do not what this person did and how many crimes his regime committed. I know that he is being now persecuted because of diregarding one UN council resolution (or perhaps a few of them) that dealt with stopping the civil war and war crimes in Darfur / Sudan. What about Israel that broke a whole bunch of Security Council resolutions and diregarded a whole load of other ones, without counting resolutions that never became ones because of American vetoes? Nobody wants to bring Israeli politicians to justice for 60 years occupation and repeated aggressions on all neighbours?! Probably not

ei: Ensuring maximum casualties in Gaza

On the use of dart or flechette bombs in order to ensure maximum casualties in Gaza
Read more at: ei: Ensuring maximum casualties in Gaza

Tristan Anderson Critically Injured in Demonstration Against Israeli Wall : Indybay

On March 13th, 2009, Tristan Anderson, from Oakland, California was critically wounded in the village of Ni'lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a high-powered tear-gas canister. Tristan is a dedicated activist and reporter who has long been committed to social and environmental justice in the U.S. and abroad in places such as Oaxaca, Iraq, and Palestine. Tristan has posted his reports to Indybay since 2001.

As a result of his injuries, Tristan Anderson, 38 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and had been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a serious injury to his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.

"Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500 meters," reports Teah Lunqvist (Sweden) with the International Solidarity Movement. "I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed."

Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni'lin's land. Another resident from Ni'lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition. Several other demonstrators against the wall have been killed or rendered brain dead as a result of IDF use of rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition in the villages of Ni'ilin and Bil'in.

Source:Tristan Anderson Critically Injured in Demonstration Against Israeli Wall : Indybay

I ask myself if such criminal soldiers would ever be brought to justice? Would it bring Israel more trouble because he is US American? Palestinian lives are worthless, this we know already, but an American wounded? I bet the following is going to happen as always: The Israeli occupation army shall start an investigation about this incidence find out it was an accident, nobody shall be punished and the file shall be closed.

KERBLOG

Please have a look at Mazen Kerbaj's excellent, expressive and powerful comics. They make one laugh and cry about happened and is happening in Gaza

Gaza family sues Israel over deaths

More than 1,300 people were killed during the Israeli offensive in Gaza two months ago [Reuters]

A Palestinian family is suing Ehud Olmert, Israel's outgoing prime minister, and other government officials over the deaths of their relatives during the recent assault on Gaza.

The al-Samouni family, which saw 29 of its members killed in the conflict, filed the case in Jerusalem on Tuesday, seeking $200m in damages for 'criminal negligence'.

Read complete article at Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Gaza family sues Israel over deaths

Aid convoy enters Gaza Strip

A British convoy carrying medical relief for the impoverished residents of the Gaza Strip has crossed into the territory from Egypt.

Gazans cheered and waved Palestinian flags as the convoy finally entered the territory through the Rafah border crossing on Monday, after being stranded on the Egyptian side of the border for two days."

Read complete article at: Al Jazeera English - Middle East

Please notice that Gaza is still inder siesge and that entering goods through the drossings from Egypt is still impossible. Entering humanitarian aid is an endeavour hard enough as you can read in the article. So, we have basically 1.5 million people that are still surviving through humanitarian aids that are being let in in great hardship.
As for this convoy I wonder who stoned the convoy. No normal Arab citizen would do it and the proof can be seen in the way the convoy has been greeted in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya befoe passing through Egypt (see itenerary in Viva Palestina's website). I assume that these are "collaborators" of the Egyptian regime that is closing the crossings shamelessly

Israel annexing East Jerusalem

The Guardian says:

"A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem."

The complete article cane be read here: Israel annexing East Jerusalem, says EU | World news | The Guardian
As an answer on this article and this report Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a speach in Northern Israel that

"No peace without dividing Jerusalem". He further added that significant part of Jerusalem must be turned over to Palestinians, be used as their future capital and that concessions are inevitable.

More about this at YNET Olmert: No peace without dividing Jerusalem - Israel News, Ynetnews
I wonder how long Israel is thinking about "painful" concessions (as if we are not talking about occupied territory)? Till they annex the whole of Jerusalem? Or better, now the new cabinet has to make its own experience to figure out the same thing after 5 years while houses have been demolished, people have been evacuated and more facts have been created in the mean time. Let us see when the EU takes tehreport mentioned by The Guardian seriously.

artists to end the occupation

Musicians, artists, and writers working hand in hand to raise public awareness of the human rights crisis in occupied Palestine.
Layoffs exceeding 400,000 [1] since November 2008 and yet the money we've paid our government to serve us is being given away:
<"the United States supports increased levels of Foreign Military Financing (FMF)grants assistance to Israel in future years . . . Total assistance over the course of this understanding would equal $30 billion."[2]
"Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II.. . Israel has developed an advanced industrial economy which, according to the World Bank, places it among the top 50 richest nations in terms of per capita income . . . With Israel becoming more economically self-sufficient . . ."[3]
Israel possesses near unrivaled science and weapons development programs, yet our schools are being closed. Our friends and families are losing their businesses, their jobs, their homes. Not only that our hard earned wages are being turned into tools of apartheid and oppression.
When do we say, "Enough is enough?"
The answer is, “Now"

Visit: artists to end the occupation

Science Museum accused over links to Israel - Science, News - The Independent

Science Museum accused over links to Israel

Protesters claim it is promoting universities that aided recent military assault on Gaza

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent

Tuesday, 3 March 2009

The Science Museum, one of Britain's most prestigious public institutions, was embroiled in a row last night after being accused of promoting Israeli universities whose research was used in the country's military campaign in Gaza.
More than 400 academics, a Nobel laureate and the former chair of the Science Select Committee called on the museum to cancel workshops due to be held this week that promote Israeli scientific achievements to schoolchildren.
The critics plan to picket the event and accused the museum of promoting scientists and universities who are "complicit in the Israeli occupation and in the policies and weaponry recently deployed to such disastrous effect in Gaza".

Source: Science Museum accused over links to Israel - Science, News - The Independent

We Will Not Go Down, How a Song Stood Up to Israel

This article shows how holding together and having the right passionate momentum and means help us achieve many things and win against the ruthless Zionist propaganda machine. The resources and people are there. We only need to hold together
Source: Mosaics: Blog on current and Middle East affairs

by Rime Allaf

On the twelfth night of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, as I settled down to my distressing nightly ritual of news watching, frantic writing and weeping, I received an email which would turn someone’s life around, giving some people a small ray of light when they needed to know they were not alone, and sending a message across the globe like no mass campaign could have hoped to achieve.
It was 10 pm in London; six hours later, a small team had taken the first of many steps which would take our collective grief, anger and frustration to a new platform in the fight against Israel; a song of hope for the Palestinians in Gaza debuted on YouTube, and we were going to make sure that it resonated around the world. In a matter of days, ‘We will not go down’ was chanted in demonstrations around the world, its lyrics were printed on signs, and hundreds of thousands of people watched the clip and downloaded the song. There had never been such a rallying cry for the Palestinian cause, and it all began on a mild January night, half a world away in a studio by a California beach.
It started with a song Michael Heart saw little of the massacre in Gaza, ignored by US media. Through the internet, especially through links emailed daily by his sister, he got increasingly touched by the magnitude of the catastrophe. On day 10 of the attack, he picked up his guitar and started strumming while looking at the horrible casualties; before he knew it, he was writing a song about it and had finished in a couple of hours.
The next day, not yet knowing what he would do with it, he recorded it in his studio, playing all the instruments, singing the vocals and producing it himself, as usual. By the following morning, he gathered some photos and created a clip, carefully mixed to match images and lyrics. It was mostly an emotional outlet, but realising it could spread awareness about the cause, he emailed it to immediate family in London, Vienna and Damascus, asking for feedback.
London responded first. In tears, I called my brother (known professionally by his artistic name, Michael Heart, but remaining Annas to family and friends) practically shouting: "this must go online now, Annas!"
Technicalities of activism
Michael Heart’s support team (MH/T amongst ourselves) came together as naturally as the song; we acted as a management task force, bringing needed respective expertises our family happened to have. My husband Samawal, the best computer scientist we could want, converted it into a simpler YouTube format, fixing glitches which threw photos out of sync with the soundtrack. He also posted another file online circumventing YouTube blockage in some places.
As dawn came, we launched on YouTube and on Michael Heart's website.
I posted it on my blog as The Gaza Anthem, quoting the chorus which thousands would later chant around the world. Over the next days, I spread it virally in several languages, posting it on specific blogs, websites, media and social networking forums like Facebook and Twitter.
In Vienna, MH/T was handling another important objective: donations to the Palestinian people in Gaza. Through his professional contacts in UN agencies around the world (also spreading the campaign through hundreds of friends), my brother Salim investigated possibilities for selling the song and donating proceeds. After we realized legal and technical issues were overly complicated, Michael decided to give it for free while asking everyone to make a donation to UNRWA (especially as PayPal didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Syria, Lebanon or the Palestinian territories from where many wanted it).
MH/T hit the ground running, working in shifts to control logistics, and even to monitor comments on YouTube as they swelled into the thousands. This was not going to be a platform for pro-Israelis to spew their gleeful propaganda and play the victim, nor were extremist positions on any religion tolerated.
Portrait of the artist as a messenger
We all knew it would be a success and worked tirelessly for it; still, we were astounded by responses to ‘We will not go down’.
Within hours, viewings on YouTube were shooting up and feedback was pouring in. Daily messages to Michael Heart quickly rose to hundreds, and he struggled to read as many as possible and to respond when needed, a task which took over his life for the next two weeks.
Human suffering had been the trigger that inspired the song, not politics, and he said all he needed to say in the song. For him, it was not about resistance in a political sense, but resistance in a human sense, and thousands of people understood this and thanked him precisely for having given Palestinians a face and a voice in a universal message, and a universal language.
Many people were amazed that an American had done what Arabs hadn’t (not noticing his bio mentioned his Syrian heritage), praising his courage in the face of the Israeli machine. Palestinians and Arabs the world over related similar sentiments of sadness, anger and despair, many telling personal stories of loved ones in Gaza. Some messages eventually came from Gaza itself, triggering a storm of emotions in us as we read about people dashing to the internet when electricity briefly came, to connect with the world and wonder if they were noticed; their words about the song overwhelmed us in their intensity and in their gratitude.
Countless people confessed to having cried while hearing the song, and to crying while writing the email; we cried too, wishing we could reach out to every one of them. Of the thousands of messages received, many will forever stick in our minds, like that of the Gazan father whose five-year-old daughter would sing ‘We will not go down’ whenever she heard Israeli planes approaching, or of the Palestinian professor whose beautiful young son was killed by an Israeli missile as he sat helpless in the US, writing to Michael Heart to say thank you. We broke down every time, and determinedly continued to work.
Israeli response and Arab ‘moderates’’ abstention
Israel supporters were clearly taken aback by the phenomenal success of the song. Most Israeli media and blogs adopted a lame self- righteous position, wishing Michael Heart had spoken of the “rockets raining on Israel”. Some were more vicious, like the blogger
promising “they would go down in the day” if the night didn’t suit.
Some, in typical Israeli fashion, derided what they couldn’t achieve (“the song is bad anyway”) or boasted they would do better (“Madonna will sing our song”).
Self-styled hi-tech Israelis were no match for our Syrian-born techie, who like Apple’s Steve Jobs, we like to remind them, had a Syrian father. Mere days after the song went global, an exuberant Israeli emailed Michael Heart informing him he hacked his website, taking it down. “Nobody messes with Sam” were the only words in the email I sent in response. Indeed, it was immediately back up, backed up and moved to ultra-powerful servers capable of handling the deluge of mp3 downloads.
Israeli annoyance at this success was a pleasure to see, but the abstention of so-called moderate Arabs blaming the Israeli onslaught on “provocation” was less palatable for me, especially as images from Gaza continued to haunt our nights. My initial flurry of posts had begun with fellow Syrian bloggers and sites; some neither acknowledged nor posted the song, perhaps considering, as Israelis had done, it was “one-sided” and that not going down seemed too aggressive. Such attitudes are anathema to an activist like myself, when the entire world had been moved to action by Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
‘We will not go down’ still going up
In four days, YouTube’s counter hit 100,000. In one week, it hit a quarter of a million. At two weeks, over 700,000 had viewed the original song, and well over a million saw different clips with the song (of which over 100 were posted). 250,000 people had downloaded the mp3, and over 10,000 had responded via emails or comments. Many people wrote to confirm they had donated to UNRWA.
It was, and still is, played on radio stations and television channels in several countries, and chanted in protests and rallies all over the globe (like here in London's Trafalgar Square). Messages informed us of ringtones for mobile phones and of school children painting pictures of the artist. To his shock, Michael Heart was being called a hero and a brave heart fighting the Zionist propaganda machine.
Most significantly, ‘We will not go down’ reached people in Gaza and conveyed to some of them the world’s support of the Palestinian cause, and the determination to take action.
The way forward
We had a great “product” to spread the word about Palestinian suffering; without the beautiful and relevant song, there would have been nothing. But without the expert viral campaign, technological support and numerous tricks of the trade, the song would have remained unknown to most.
We succeeded because it was good, because we knew what to do, and because we did it in time. We succeeded in pushing a rallying cry to the forefront of the media battle, where Arab rhetoric was unnoticed (at best) or counterproductive. We succeeded where Israeli narrative failed, beating the enemy at their own game.
YouTube flagged the video when it hit 1 million, but it still refuses to go down. May it continue to spread the world over, becoming an eternal song of hope for the Palestinians, and a chant for the determination of their supporters.
It started with a song, but it will not end with it: we're still working on it, but see you soon on www.wewillnotgodown.com.

Rime Allaf is an international consultant and an associate fellow at London’s Chatham House.
www.rimeallaf.com/mosaics/index.php.

Blair says Gaza crossings must be opened to assist rebuilding - Middle East, World - The Independent

Former Prime Minister makes first visit to territory since becoming envoy

By Donald Macintyre in Beit Lahiya
Monday, 2 March 2009

Tony Blair has called for Gaza's crossings to be opened for basic building and other commercial goods, adding to international pressure on Israel likely to be exerted at today's Egypt-hosted post-war reconstruction summit.

On his long-awaited first visit to the Palestinian territory as Middle East envoy from the international quartet – the UN, US, EU and Russia – Mr Blair said that the 20-month blockade inflicted on the territory's 1.5 million inhabitants "does not work".

Read complete document at: Middle East, World - The Independent

I am curious to know what Mr. Blair meant with his underlined expression. Besides, the crossings should be opened not only because of reconstruction. They should be opened to ensure a normal daily life for the population, imports, exports, possibility to travel etc., you know what every human being should have! As for the reconstruction it is is surely necessary but I am very sceptical about it as it is only a matter of time (weeks, month) till Israel shall destroy everything again. When shall real peace come?