[Reader-list] Dozens Feared Dead As Israel Shells UN School in Beit Hanoun, #Gaza

Fri Jul 25 04:06:49 CDT 2014

Dozens Feared Dead As Israel Shells UN School in Beit Hanoun, #Gaza

*By Ma'an News Agency*

24 July, 2014
*Maannews.net* <http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=715952>

*GAZA CITY (Ma'an)* -- Israeli forces have shelled a UN school in Beit
Hanoun, with at least 17 dead and 200 injured as many more are feared
killed among the hundreds who had taken shelter there with Israeli
coordination.

The shelling of the school, which is affiliated with the UN's Palestine
refugee agency UNRWA, is the fourth time in two days that Israeli forces
have bombed schools serving as shelters for the displaced in the besieged
Gaza Strip.

A local radio station quoted an eyewitness as saying that immediately
before the shelling, a man who introduced himself as a Red Cross official
had asked displaced people taking shelter at the school to gather in the
yard because they would be evacuated to another shelter.

An UNRWA official intervened when he saw people gathering and argued that
there had been no coordination with UNRWA, telling them to go back to their
rooms. During the argument, Israeli artillery shells started to hit the
school.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted in response to the attack that the
"Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally
given to the Israeli army."

He added: "Over the course of the day, UNRWA tried 2 coordinate with the
Israeli Army a window for civilians 2 leave & it was never granted."

Spokesman for the Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qidra said that ambulances
have started to evacuated victims to three hospitals in the northern Gaza
Strip in addition to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

He confirmed that so far 13 deaths have been counted, but more were
expected.

An Israeli military spokeswoman did not immediately comment on the attack.

An eyewitness said that displaced people were sitting in the front yard
when Israeli artillery shells started to hit them. Another eyewitness said
they saw five shells hitting the school.

Earlier in the day, Gunness said on Twitter that three teachers for the UN
agency had been killed, marking the first deaths among UNRWA workers.

"The 1st UNRWA fatalities in #Gaza; 3 teachers. 2 women, 1 man killed along
with family members by incoming fire. 2 women while in residences," Gunness
tweeted.

"Losing a colleague is hard to bear. Losing a colleague in these
circumstances is unbearable."

During Israel's 2008-9 offensive on Gaza, Israeli tanks shelled an area
outside an UNRWA school in Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 42 people, all
but one of them civilians.

*'Stop bombing civilians'*

The attacks brought Thursday's total number of deaths to at least 80, as
dozens of Palestinians have been killed as Israel continued its bombardment
from land, air, and sea.

More than 760 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its
attack on the Gaza Strip 17 days ago, the majority since the ground began
last week.

Gaza-based rights groups have said that the vast majority of those killed
are civilians, including nearly 200 children.

International medical organization Doctors without Borders called on Israel
to "stop bombing civilians trapped in the sealed-off Gaza Strip, and to
respect the safety of medical workers and health facilities" on Monday, as
it said that the majority of those arriving in emergency rooms where its
doctors were working were women and children.

"While official claims that the objective of the ground offensive is to
destroy tunnels into Israel, what we see on the ground is that bombing is
indiscriminate and that those who die are civilians," said Nicolas Palarus
a field coordinator for the group in Gaza.

The group also said that Israel had directly targeted an ambulance with an
air strike, despite the fact that they had been guaranteed movement.

Earlier on Thursday, four bodies were pulled from the rubble of buildings
in Khuzaa, where dozens were killed in heavy Israeli shelling over night.

The bodies were later identified as Rasmi Abu Reida, Muhammad Abu Yousif ,
Ahmad Qudeih and Rami Qudeih.

Israeli airstrikes also killed seven Palestinians in western Kkhan Younis.
Gaza Ministry of Health spokesman Al-Qidra said that an airstrike killed
Ahmad Abdul-Karim, Ahmad Hasan and Muhammad Ismail Khader there.

He added that Ahmad al-Mashhadi and Ahmad Khadir were killed in another
raid on Khan Younis.

Earlier, he announced that bodies of Anas Akram Skafi, 18, and his twin
brother Saad were removed from rubble in Shujaiyya, the site of the killing
of nearly 70 Palestinians in one day over the weekend.

Emergency teams on Thursday also managed to remove the body of a dead
woman, identified as Alal Khalil Abu Ayda, and three injured people from
the rubble of a home belonging to the al-Bardini family which Israeli
missiles demolished earlier in the city of al-Zahraa in the central Gaza
Strip.

Al-Qidra said earlier that five Palestinian men were killed by two separate
Israeli airstrikes on a motorcycle and a tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaw) in Abasan
al-Kabira east of Khan Younis.

Medical sources identified four of the victims as Nabil Shihdah Qudeih,
Nadir Suleiman Qudeih, Bakir Fathi Qudeih, and Ismail Hasan Abu Rjeila.

Two children were injured in Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike hit home
of al-Ghusein family.

Earlier, a man was injured as a result of an Israeli airstrike on home of
Saadi Daloul in Salah al-Din Street in the central Gaza Strip.

 Medical Workers Killed, Injured As Israel Targets Gaza Health
Infrastructure

*By Rania Khalek*

24 July, 2014
*Electronicintifada.net*
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/medical-workers-killed-injured-israel-targets-gaza-health-infrastructure>

*At al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Mads Gilbert treats a young child after an
Israeli airstrike, 20 July.( Mohammed Asad
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/mohammed-asad>/ APA images
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/apa-images>)*

“The Israelis are using a wide variety of sophisticated modern weapons
against a basically naked civilian population,” said renowned Norwegian
doctor Mads Gilbert in a phone interview with The Electronic Intifada on
Tuesday, 22 July.

“This is state terrorism at a very sophisticated and very high level,” he
added.

Speaking over the phone from al-Shifa hospital where he is helping to treat
the wounded, Gilbert described the horrors he has witnessed in Gaza in
recent days as the bodies of mostly Palestinian women and children are
brought to the hopsital torn to shreds by an Israeli arsenal deliberately
aimed at civilians.

*War on children*

With the Gaza death toll quickly approaching 700, the United Nations says
some 80 percent are civilians, among them at least 168 children. Over the
last few days alone, Israeli forces have on average killed at least one
child in Gaza per hour. Children also make up one-third of the more than
4,000 wounded, many with debilitating injuries that Gaza hospitals are
ill-equipped to properly treat due to dire shortages caused by the Israel’s
illegal siege.

“One of these kids would have a whole cross-professional team in an
American hospital or Norwegian hospital,” said Gilbert.

Israel, it seems, is waging a war on children.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza are internally displaced,
access to clean drinking water is increasingly scarce and electricity is
practically non-existent, explained Gilbert. Gaza is a man-made
humanitarian catastrophe.

*Bombing hospitals, killing paramedics*

Israel has bombed at least 25 health care facilities, killing and injuring
several medical workers, said Gilbert, whose repeated appeals for the UN to
step in and protect Palestinian hospitals from Israeli attacks that clearly
violate international law have been resulted in meaningful action on the
ground.

“[Medical facilities] are being targeted and they’re being bombed and the
patients and the staff are getting killed,” said Gilbert.

“What would have happened if Palestinian fighters had bombed an Israeli
hospital and killed five patients?” Gilbert commented. “The world would
have turned upside down. What is this second-hand, or even third-hand or
fourth-hand citizenship in the world for the Palestinians?”

Yesterday the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published an open
letter co-authored by Gilbert and signed by several doctors and scientists
strongly denouncing Israel’s crimes against Gaza’s health sector.

“Israel is saying that they are bombing Gaza to get rid of tunnels and
terrorists,” said Gilbert. “I see no tunnels and terrorists in Shifa
hospital. I see only ordinary people like you and me.”

The following full transcript of the interview with Dr. Gilbert has been
edited for clarity.

*Rania Khalek: *Some crazy things happened on what’s yesterday for you all.
There was a UN school that was shelled, several mosques have been hit. So
I’m wondering how things are going at the hospital amid all the chaos.

*Mads Gilbert:* It’s demanding, but the Palestinians are keeping their high
spirit. The hospital is working and it’s receiving patients, the caseloads
are coming, the injured have been taken care of, the killed are taken to
the morgue.

The relatives are crowding into the hospital and what is new since last
time we talked is of course the huge Shujaiya massacre in which we don’t
know yet how many were killed but it was a large number of Palestinians
killed during this night of immense bombardment of Shujaiya, which is a
city of around 60,000 people. And that night we received 400 patients from
midnight until the next morning. We received among them I think it was 47
killed. So of course that was a very dramatic night.

And in the early morning hours, as the sun rose up, the refugees or those
who had been trapped in this bombardment, came wandering to Shifa, many
with bare feet and very pale and shocked and devastated and they had lost
their homes and many had lost their family members. And they sought refuge
in the garden of Shifa and suddenly Shifa had not only the patients and
their families, but they had a large group of refugees,
internally-displaced persons actually in the middle of its garden.

So the garden was crowded with hundreds of homeless Palestinians who had
been through a hellish night. I talked to some of them and it was
heartbreaking to hear their stories of how they had been trapped in their
houses, extremely careful of the bombardment of course, desperately calling
to get some help to get evacuated. I talked to several families who had
injured family members who could not be evacuated by the ambulances and
actually bled to death before they could be evacuated.

So that was a very dramatic night and morning and we worked continuously.
The whole fabulous, incredibly hardworking staff at Shifa did I would say
an outstanding job to try and accommodate all of these. People are
exhausted but they’re standing tall and they show up for their shifts
despite the fact that they get no salaries.

The framing of Gaza is often forgotten.

There is almost no water, ninety percent of the water is undrinkable. The
water supply to the residential areas if very very limited. There is almost
no electricity. Gaza is running on generators and battery charged lights.
When you’re sitting there working on some report or your on the Internet,
suddenly it’s time for the electricity to disappear and there will be eight
hours of blackout.

*RK: *I was going to ask about the bombing of the hospital yesterday. It
wasn’t the first hospital that was bombed, but it was the intensive care
unit that was targeted?

*MG:* It was.

*RK:* Are you at all concerned at Shifa?

*MG: *Of course. But bear in mind that twenty-five different medical
institutions have been attacked by the Israeli occupation forces and nine
medical staff have been killed or injured.

Three have been killed — one doctor, one pharmacist and one administrative
worker — and six have been injured. And as I said, twenty-five medical
facilities, among them thirteen primary health care centers, eight
ambulances. We have the bombing of the [Mobarat] hospital, killing three
handicapped patients.

And then came of course the horrible bombing of al-Aqsa hospital, which is
totally in contravention to all international laws. And they claimed, as
they always claim, that it was used as a hide out for some anti-tank
positions for the Palestinian fighters.

I don’t know if you saw us on Huffington [Post] Live tonight. There was a
debate about Gaza. I was participating on Skype from Gaza and the [World
Health Organization] boss in Gaza. He was challenged by the anchor in the
US, that the Israelis said that the reason they had to shell the hospital
was that the Palestinians had an anti-tank position close to the hospital.

He then replied that they had immediately sent down an investigative group
consisting of several [United Nations] experts and OCHA [UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] people and they could find absolutely
no trace of any weapon. The hospitals in Gaza have never ever been proven
to conceal or hide or harbor any militant needs, be it fighters or weapons.
This is just another of the many lies which the Israeli propaganda machine
is spewing out. Israel is puking it out around the clock.

So al-Aqsa hospital [was] attacked, absolutely horrible, and it caused me
and the Ministry of Health to send out a press release yesterday calling
for the international community to consider the attacks on health
facilities as war crimes under international law and called upon the
international community and the United Nations to take immediate actions to
prevent further attacks on medical facilities, ambulances and patients.

I myself have repeatedly appealed and urged the UN to place [inaudible] a
UN flight at all hospitals in Gaza and to escort ambulances and to have
international observers at all health facilities in Gaza. This has not been
followed up, they’re sort of coming and going every now and then. I don’t
think it is a lack of willingness from the local UN staff, but I think this
is at a higher level.

You could ask UN headquarters in New York, why are you not protecting the
Palestinian civilian hospitals and the ambulances? They’re being targeted
and they’re being bombed and the patients and the staff are getting killed.
Turn around, do it the other way, put up the mirror. What would have
happened if Palestinian fighters had bombed an Israeli hospital and killed
five patients? The world would have turned upside down.

What is this second-hand or even third-hand or fourth-hand citizenship in
the world for the Palestinians?

*RK: *Let me ask you about the injuries you’re seeing. Is it the same
injuries as before? Last time we talked you mentioned most of the injuries
were shrapnel wounds. Is it the same or are the injuries you’re seeing now
more from bombing homes? What’s happening now?

*MG: *The Israelis are using a wide variety of sophisticated modern weapons
against a basically naked civilian population. They have no shelters, which
is largely uncommunicated I think in the picture of Gaza. Whereas we see
all these reports about individual shelters and home shelters and big cover
shelters in Israel, and that’s fine. But Israel has never allowed
Palestinians to build shelters and they don’t have early warning systems
like sirens and they don’t have a civil defense that is really capable of
defending the civilians.

So they are easy prey for this large arsenal of very powerful and carefully
engineered weapons used by the Israeli armed forces.

So what we see are a variety of injuries caused by a man-made hand. The
large artillery shells are causing devastating amputations. The explosions
cause burns and blast injuries, meaning that the power wave of the
explosion hits the body and can rupture internal organs so they start to
bleed.

We just had a patient now, a young man, who had shrapnel openings. I could
fit my fist into the shrapnel opening into his abdomen. He had maybe a
hundred, small and large, the largest being large enough to accommodate my
hand. One of them went down to his thigh and had ripped off the muscles
attached to his leg.

We had a very young shebab [boy] also with a shrapnel that had penetrated
his brain, which was very professionally extracted by the neurosurgical
team here at Shifa. They are extremely good staff and doctors. They are
doing surgery at a high level.

We had a young man who had a shrapnel, he was sitting in his home yesterday
in central Gaza at the family’s apartment. It was shelling close to his
apartment and the shrapnel traveled through the window and through his neck
and caused an open fracture of the mandible [of the jaw] and also ripped
open his carotid artery. So that was life-threatening bleeding. He was
treated. We just went [on a] night round to look at him. He had a repair of
his carotid artery and he had a reconstruction of the shattered jaw with
metal plates and very small screws, like tiny nails to put into and
reconstruct it. And he had an opening of the air pipe to breathe directly
through the hole on the neck instead of directly through the mouth.

He of course was looking like a football and had a very severe edema, but
he will survive. He was clenching the fist when we asked him, both eyes
totally closed by the edema and unable to speak because of the large jaw
injury, but he communicated with us and was taken good care of in the ICU.

I saw a little girl tonight, what was her name? Shumaiya, 4 years old, lost
her mother and two of her siblings in an attack on Shujaiya, penetrating
shrapnels to the abdomen, laparotomies, meaning opening the abdomen twice
already. She will have another operation tomorrow.

And next to her laid Madeleine, 14. Two of her uncles were killed. She had
severe burns on those arms and open fractures. I could go on forever.

That’s why I wrote in the open letter. I said, Mr. Obama, if you have a
heart, come to see us. Spend one night in Shifa, I will dress you up as a
cleaner and I’m sure it’s going to change your whole perception of what
this is all about. You are so alienated to these empty words of “I regret
so much that civilian casualties, blah blah,” that you don’t even have any
empathy that can in any sense influence your political decisions. Instead
you provide new tens of millions of dollars to this merciless Israeli war
machine. Come on. Come visit us. Come and explain to the mothers and
fathers, come and explain to Shumaiya why her mother had to be killed and
her two siblings had to be killed.

Israel is saying that they are bombing Gaza to get rid of tunnels and
terrorists. I see no tunnels and terrorists in Shifa hospital. I see only
ordinary people like you and me and our children.

*RK: *Yesterday there were several families that were wiped out in their
homes. Is that what you’re seeing at Shifa as well, entire families?

*MG: *Yes, of course we see that. We had three dead come in today. We had
the Baker family yesterday that was shelled next to the hospital. I believe
three were killed or died on admission. That was very close, just a block
away from Shifa and the whole building was shaking when the F-16 rockets
hit. And that was the same family who lost the four shebab, the four boys
playing football on the beach.

*RK: *Their home was bombed yesterday?

*MG: *Yeah, their whole family residential block was bombed and we had
forty injuries coming into the hospital immediately because it was so
close. I believe three were killed, the rest were more or less injuries. We
did four or five major surgeries. There were shrapnels and bleedings and
screams and the whole clan came to the hospital and it was really a moment
of chaos and horrible scenes. Within an hour or two we had sorted and
patched up and selected those to have surgery and did operations on them
and they filled up the ICUs, and so passes the day.

*RK: *Lastly, I want to ask you, is there anything in the past two days
since I spoke to you last that has really struck you as something that you
feel people need to know about, other than everything you’ve already said?

*MG:* The UN count is now 100,000 internal refugees in Gaza — 100,000
people who have either lost their homes or been threatened by Israeli
attack forces to leave their homes and they have more or less nowhere to
go. The family homes are so crowded now.

This is state terrorism at a very sophisticated and very high level.

If you go on Al Jazeera English, there is a piece by Richard Falk today.
You know him?

*RK: *Yes I do.

*MG: *He has a very, very powerful piece today where he uses the same term
I’ve been using, mainly state terrorism. He’s talking about the unspeakable
acts of violence.

I’m at a loss for words to explain to your leaders [why] it is that these
Palestinian people are constantly being exposed to merciless killings from
this huge power which has another huge power behind it that seems to have a
circle of empathy which is just outside their own. The government of Israel
is not having any human core in the sense that they include the rest of
humankind in their ideal system.

It seems that the Palestinians have been excluded as worthy of the same
value systems as they [Israelis] apply to themselves.

This is of course the core problem, two core problems. Number one, Israeli
apartheid which we see in the numbers I gave you last time. And number two,
Israeli impunity. Impunity and apartheid are two key words to understand
the current situation.

To conclude, let me give you the latest update. As of tonight, 622 killed
since 6 July, and 160 of these 622 killed are children.

There are 3,099 injured. Of these 1,213 are children. Now imagine 1,200
injured children, just to care for them, just to comfort them, just to
follow up with feeding, with cleaning, with rehabilitation, with pain
relief. It takes a whole team. One of these kids would have a whole
cross-professional team in an American hospital or Norwegian hospital.
Here, they have their family around them, that’s their most important
asset. But 1,200 injured children, it’s an enormous task for any health
care system. And 698 women injured. We’re up to 1,800-1,900 injured
children and women.

In the ICU, there are 104 injured, and for the last 24 hours we had 64
killed and 489 injured — for the last 24 hours.

During that night of the massacre in Shujaiya, the 20th of July, we had 141
killed and 452 injured; 47 of these killed came to Shifa. We had
horrendously heartbreaking scenes when the families were reunited with
their dead ones. And still nobody knows how many dead are lying in the
rubble of the bombed houses in Shujaiya.

Last night they bombed a high-rise building, I think it’s 12 stories high.
When they shot the first rocket, the front wall fell off in a way. In one
of the apartments, the fifth or sixth floor, there was a family of two
adults and five children screaming to be released. And then came the second
rocket and they were all killed. We got them in charred. Five children and
two adults. Terrorist, hmm? Tunnels? Hamas?

These are people. These are people. They are covered by international law.
They are covered by the UN declaration for human rights. But Israel is
exempted, has this phenomenous impunity that makes it seem like both you
and I are paralyzed in the domain of Israeli control.

*RK: *Every time I talk to you it’s just heartbreaking and awful. I really
hope the next conversation we have isn’t so dark.

*MG:* Can I just give you the light side? The light side is the resilience
of the Palestinians. This is not a suffering people. This is not a begging
people. They stand up. They stand tall.

My love and my immense admiration for the staff and the volunteers in
Shifa. And not to forget the paramedics — the sacrifice, the risk in every
mission they do out in this dark city of death and destruction from the
Israeli attack forces. My deepest admiration.

Shifa hospital stands tall. People are tended to. The surgeons, the
operating room scrub nurses, they work day and night. Nobody dies because
nobody tried to rescue them. If they die it’s because the injury was too
devastating for a body to sustain or if they came to us too late.

*RK: *Thank you for all that you do and I hope this is over soon.

*Rania Khalek* is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and
marginalized. For more of her work check out her website *Dispatches from
the Underclass * <http://raniakhalek.com/>and follow her on Twitter
* @RaniaKhalek* <https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek>

 Video: Palestinian Woman Risks Life To Rescue Injured Youth In Gaza

*By Ali Abunimah*

24 July, 2014
*Electronicintifada.net*
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-palestinian-woman-risks-life-rescue-injured-youth-gaza>

Dramatic photographs and footage capture the moment a Palestinian woman ran
into a firing zone to rescue a youth injured during relentless Israeli
gunfire and shelling.

Meanwhile, another video has emerged showing Israeli soldiers and religious
mystics dancing as they adorn artillery shells with blessings.

On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Council voted by 29-17 to “launch an
independent inquiry into purported violations of international humanitarian
and human rights laws” during Israel’s attack on Gaza. Many European Union
states abstained in the vote and the United States was the sole country to
vote against an inquiry.

*Rescue*

The above video of the rescue incident was posted on YouTube on 20 July,
the day dozens of people were killed in heavy Israeli bombardment of the
eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya.

Writer Refaat Alareer, who comes from Shujaiya, was able to identify the
exact location of the incident in the video above and the photographs below.

“The video took place in the main street of Shujaiya, near the eastern edge
of the border” with Israel, Alareer told The Electronic Intifada. “The area
is highly populated and a little bit far from the borders.”

“I am amazed how the Israelis managed to hit them while this far into
Shujaiya,” he said of the images and video showing shelling of the area.

Four photos that have been circulating online were posted on *Sami
Kishawi’s blog Sixteen Minutes to Palestine.*
<http://smpalestine.com/2014/07/23/running-into-death-gaza-woman-risks-her-life-to-save-another/>

They were apparently taken moments before the video was shot and show the
woman running into a firing zone to rescue the youth.

Kishawi said that although he has conducted searches he’s unable to find
the original photographer:

It is unclear if the woman is the youth’s mother. In the video, she is
deeply distraught as she cries in Arabic “ibni raah” – which translates as
“my son is gone!”

It is a phrase that could mean something dreadful already happened to her
son, or that something dreadful very nearly happened.

In the video, the youth is first seen sitting on the ground covered in
blood as the woman runs to fetch help. She brings another man who carries
the injured youth to a taxi as she follows.

The taxi takes them to an ambulance. As the youth is placed on a stretcher
and put into the ambulance, it is clear that his left leg has been severely
injured.

The ambulance crew tries to reassure the youth, telling him, “don’t be
scared” and “you are fine” as they tend to him and head for al-Shifa
hospital.

*Twenty-two shells in four minutes*

Another video, *which Sami Kishawi also blogged*
<http://smpalestine.com/2014/07/23/footage-four-minutes-of-israel-intensely-shelling-civilians-in-shujaiyya/>,
shows approximately four minutes of intense shelling in Shujaiya during
which 22 shells land – a rate of about one every ten seconds.

People scream in terror as they try to flee but they have no safe place to
go. The footage shows ambulance crews attempting to operate in an area
under heavy fire, searching for victims.

*Dancing for death*

Israeli soldiers and members of the Breslauer Hassidic sect dance and bless
artillery shells

This video was *posted on the Facebook page of Tzinur Layla*
<https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152590408229662&permPage=1>, a
program of Israel’s Channel 10 that sources material from social media.

It shows members of the Breslauer Hassidim, a mystical Jewish sect, dancing
and singing “Le’hiyot be simcha tamid” (“Always be joyful”) with Israeli
soldiers manning an artillery battery.

The Breslauer Hassidim, a sect that typically attracts young men, affix
stickers to artillery shells that may be about to be fired into the Gaza
Strip.

The stickers carry the phrase “na nach nachma nachman me’uman,” the
mystical utterance that refers to the name of their spiritual founder, the
eighteenth century Rabbi Nachman of Breslov.

The group explains that uttering the phrase “eases all the troubles and
sweetens all the harsh judgements, all the sins and all the falls and all
of the heresy of the world” and transforms everything “to good.”

They also say that the incantation “is enough to destroy the Other Side
(the Evil Inclination).” This is a reference to taming their sexual libido,
Israel expert Dena Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

The video is reminiscent of a notorious image taken during Israel’s 2006
war on Lebanon showing Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells.

*Israel’s indiscriminate weapons*

>From the video it is possible to identify the shells as M107 155 mm
howitzer (heavy artillery) shells.

According to “Indiscriminate Fire,” a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch,
Israel fired 14,617 artillery shells into Gaza from September 2005 through
May 2007, killing at least 59 people, half of them women and children, and
wounding 270.

The most common shell Israel used was the M107 high-explosive artillery
shell, according to Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch states:

M107 shells are extremely deadly weapons. The expected lethal radius for a
155 mm high explosive projectile is reportedly between 50 and 150 meters
and the expected casualty radius is between 100 and 300 meters. IDF
[Israeli army] officials have said that the error radius for a 155 mm shell
is usually 25 meters. Therefore, if shells are lobbed as close as 100
meters to populated areas, as allowed under an IDF policy … or even closer,
as sometimes happened, it greatly increases the likelihood of civilian
casualties.

When the shells explode they can spread about 2,000 fragments in all
directions. Sometimes they fail to explode and “become potentially
explosive duds,” according to the group.

“Israel Military Industries, a state-owned arms producer and exporter,
produces the M107 shell, although Israel has also imported 155mm shells
from the United States,” Human Rights Watch says.

In the United States, M107 shells are manufactured by American Ordnance LLC.

*Bloodbath continues*

As of Wednesday, at least 695 people had been killed and more than 4,000
injured in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

At least 518 of the dead are civilians and 170 are children, according to
the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). More
than 140,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents are displaced and seeking
shelter, OCHA said, and a three-kilometer strip covering 44 percent of
Gaza’s territory has now been declared by Israel as a “no-go zone.”

There are reports of heavy casualties in the village of Khuzaa, east of
Khan Younis, due to heavy Israeli artillery shelling.

“According to preliminary information, at least twenty persons were
killed,” OCHA said on Wednesday afternoon. “An evacuation of casualties has
not yet taken place as ambulances await guarantees of safe access to the
area.”

*Rescue*

The above video of the rescue incident was posted on YouTube on 20 July,
the day dozens of people were killed in heavy Israeli bombardment of the
eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya.

Writer Refaat Alareer, who comes from Shujaiya, was able to identify the
exact location of the incident in the video above and the photographs below.

“The video took place in the main street of Shujaiya, near the eastern edge
of the border” with Israel, Alareer told The Electronic Intifada. “The area
is highly populated and a little bit far from the borders.”

“I am amazed how the Israelis managed to hit them while this far into
Shujaiya,” he said of the images and video showing shelling of the area.

Four photos that have been circulating online were posted on *Sami
Kishawi’s blog Sixteen Minutes to Palestine.*
<http://smpalestine.com/2014/07/23/running-into-death-gaza-woman-risks-her-life-to-save-another/>

They were apparently taken moments before the video was shot and show the
woman running into a firing zone to rescue the youth.

Kishawi said that although he has conducted searches he’s unable to find
the original photographer:

It is unclear if the woman is the youth’s mother. In the video, she is
deeply distraught as she cries in Arabic “ibni raah” – which translates as
“my son is gone!”

It is a phrase that could mean something dreadful already happened to her
son, or that something dreadful very nearly happened.

In the video, the youth is first seen sitting on the ground covered in
blood as the woman runs to fetch help. She brings another man who carries
the injured youth to a taxi as she follows.

The taxi takes them to an ambulance. As the youth is placed on a stretcher
and put into the ambulance, it is clear that his left leg has been severely
injured.

The ambulance crew tries to reassure the youth, telling him, “don’t be
scared” and “you are fine” as they tend to him and head for al-Shifa
hospital.

*Twenty-two shells in four minutes*

Another video, *which Sami Kishawi also blogged*
<http://smpalestine.com/2014/07/23/footage-four-minutes-of-israel-intensely-shelling-civilians-in-shujaiyya/>,
shows approximately four minutes of intense shelling in Shujaiya during
which 22 shells land – a rate of about one every ten seconds.

Al-Shujayeh: Palestine’s Saigon

*By Haidar Eid*

24 July, 2014
*Al-Akhbar*
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/al-shujayeh-palestine%E2%80%99s-saigon>

*A displaced man from the Shejaiya neighborhood in the Gaza Strip sleeps at
the UN school where he and others have taken refuge after fleeing heavy
fighting in their area on July 21, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Marco Longari)*

The bitter reality of the Palestinians in Gaza is that they are alone,
beleaguered, under siege, and are undesirables even for some of those who
are supposed to be their brethren. Fifteen days of barbaric massacres have
claimed the lives of more than 600 Palestinians – more than 90 percent of
whom are civilians, 159 are children, and dozens are women and senior
citizens, while the rest were either young men sitting in or outside their
homes, doctors who were on duty, university students doing household
chores, or nurses tending to the wounded. Entire families have been
slaughtered in broad daylight, with reports that 20 families have perished
completely, in conjunction with the systematic destruction of hundreds of
Palestinian homes.

And yet, the “State of Palestine” is still considering whether or not to
sign up to join the International Criminal Court.

For 15 days, Palestinians have been left alone against the onslaught of the
world’s fourth strongest army, an army that possesses 450 nuclear warheads,
thousands of soldiers bolstered by Merkava battle tanks, and hundreds of
F-16 jets, Apache attack helicopters, and gunboats.

During those days, the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza reached unimaginable
levels. As hospitals were struggling to cope with the injuries, some Arab
regimes did nothing more than issue timid statements, denouncing and
condemning.

In reality, Arab regimes have let down the Palestinians since 1948, and to
this day, official Arab attitudes are a combination of cowardice and
hypocrisy. The time has come to deconstruct this Arab position and its
failure to bring an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza for more than seven
years now, not to mention the overall subpar official Arab efforts in
solidarity with the Palestinians who are at the receiving end of a brutal
Israeli military offensive.

Worse still, some Arabs have begun to blame the Palestinians for the
situation they are now in, instead of demanding Israel to halt its unjust
aggression. The recent Egyptian media campaign hostile to the Palestinians
is but proof of this dramatic deterioration in Arab attitudes.

We in Gaza are now wondering how the timid expressions of support coming
out of the streets and capitals of the Arab nations can be turned into
concrete action in the absence of democracy. We wonder whether the Arabs
living under the rule of authoritarian regimes can change them in
nonviolent ways. We exhaust ourselves trying to figure out the possible
means available to achieve democratic political change, because with the
massacre continuing in Gaza and the apartheid regime in Palestine growing
in strength, we have not seen any practical translation for the solidarity
shown by some Arab peoples with Palestine.

Desmond Tutu, the South African social rights activist and retired Anglican
bishop, once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have
chosen the side of the oppressor.” The international community, the United
Nations, the European Union, and Arab leaders have remained largely silent
about the atrocities committed by racist Israel. Therefore, they are on
Israel’s side, since dozens of corpses belonging to women and children have
failed to convince them of the need to act. This is what Palestinians
realize today, whether in the streets of Gaza or the West Bank, or in the
refugee camps of the Diaspora.

The Palestinians have realized that they have only one tenable option. This
option does not wait for the UN Security Council, Arab summits, or the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation to convene. The option is popular
power, the only force capable of tackling the huge asymmetry of power in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The two choices for the Palestinians in Gaza therefore are: dying
dishonorably while thanking their killers, if not asking them to tighten
the blockade, a slow death rather than a quick death; or fighting for their
dignity, for themselves and the coming generations. It is clear that the
option that they have chosen is to fight for dignity, in a departure from
years of self-deception that portrayed slavery to the occupier as a fait
accompli.

It is noted in this context that the ceasefire initiatives that have been
proposed – even though the violence is essentially a brutal assault by a
racist oppressor against an oppressed party that has decided to resist – do
not take into account the two stated Israeli objectives behind the attack
on the Palestinians:

Eliminating the largest possible number of Palestinians by targeting homes,
and killing women and children (a war crime that must not go unpunished).

Maintaining stability in the open-air concentration camp we know as Gaza,
for as long as possible, by eliminating any possibility of resistance or
source of inconvenience to the Israeli occupation.

Instead, the initiatives that have been put forward equate the legitimate
resistance against the illegal occupation to a regime of systematic
oppression. It is as if what has become required of the Palestinians is to
conduct themselves as “house Palestinians,” like the house slaves who were
grateful to their white masters and who were satisfied to eat the leftovers
from their tables. It is as if it has become required of Palestinians to
accept their slow death and show no form of rebellion, and to accept that
if they die, then it is of their own fault.

But Palestine, of which Gaza is part, will not oblige.

Accordingly, any agreement that does not lead to the immediate lifting of
the blockade and the reopening of the Rafah crossing 24/7, and all the
other crossings in a manner that allows the introduction of fuel, medicine,
and all other needs, in conjunction with a ceasefire without any delays -
to end what is in reality occupation and apartheid - will not be acceptable
to the people of Gaza. Indeed, the conflict cannot be seen in isolation
from the root cause for what is happening in Gaza: the multifaceted
settler-colonial enterprise, the occupation, the apartheid, and the ethnic
cleansing.

The biggest source of concern for the Israeli “masters” and their US
allies, and their Arab lackeys, would be for us to raise the ceiling of our
demands by calling for an end to the blockade and the contexts that had led
to it; that is, without separating the conflict from our demand for the
right of return, since two-thirds of the people of Gaza are refugees who
have this right under international law.

Al-Shujayeh here is a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. Gaza
(Palestine) yearns for a leadership that rises up to the level of this
historic moment, a leadership that would take the following measures
without any further delay:

A full stop to security coordination with Israel.

Signing up to join the International Criminal Court, and suing Israeli
political and military leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Reviewing all agreements signed with Israel, particularly the Oslo Accords
and related agreements.

Sending all members of the Executive Committee and the national
reconciliation government to Gaza to remain there and show solidarity with
the people they represent in their steadfastness and resistance.

Supporting the brave Resistance and deeming it an essential part that
represents the Palestinian people and its three components [Palestinians in
the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and within the 1948 territories].

Declaring a clear position on any initiative that does not take into
account the need for the immediate end of the siege, the reopening of all
crossings, and the restoration of the full freedom of movement.

Any talk about improving the conditions of oppression (and even this is
seen as too much for us) in light of the great sacrifices is a betrayal of
Palestinian martyrs. Let’s start discussing radical solutions away from the
“interim program” and the Bantustan-like state, and adopt a clear slogan:
end the occupation, end the apartheid, and end settler-colonialism. This
way, the families and lives that have been lost in Gaza would not go in
vain.

Otherwise, we shall turn it into Palestine’s own Saigon.

*Haidar Eid *is a political analyst and a member of the Steering Committee
of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Israeli soldiers and members of the Breslauer Hassidic sect dance and bless
artillery shells

This video was *posted on the Facebook page of Tzinur Layla*
<https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152590408229662&permPage=1>, a
program of Israel’s Channel 10 that sources material from social media.

It shows members of the Breslauer Hassidim, a mystical Jewish sect, dancing
and singing “Le’hiyot be simcha tamid” (“Always be joyful”) with Israeli
soldiers manning an artillery battery.

The Breslauer Hassidim, a sect that typically attracts young men, affix
stickers to artillery shells that may be about to be fired into the Gaza
Strip.

The stickers carry the phrase “na nach nachma nachman me’uman,” the
mystical utterance that refers to the name of their spiritual founder, the
eighteenth century Rabbi Nachman of Breslov.

The group explains that uttering the phrase “eases all the troubles and
sweetens all the harsh judgements, all the sins and all the falls and all
of the heresy of the world” and transforms everything “to good.”

They also say that the incantation “is enough to destroy the Other Side
(the Evil Inclination).” This is a reference to taming their sexual libido,
Israel expert Dena Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

The video is reminiscent of a notorious image taken during Israel’s 2006
war on Lebanon showing Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells.

*Israel’s indiscriminate weapons*

>From the video it is possible to identify the shells as M107 155 mm
howitzer (heavy artillery) shells.

According to “Indiscriminate Fire,” a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch,
Israel fired 14,617 artillery shells into Gaza from September 2005 through
May 2007, killing at least 59 people, half of them women and children, and
wounding 270.

The most common shell Israel used was the M107 high-explosive artillery
shell, according to Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch states:

M107 shells are extremely deadly weapons. The expected lethal radius for a
155 mm high explosive projectile is reportedly between 50 and 150 meters
and the expected casualty radius is between 100 and 300 meters. IDF
[Israeli army] officials have said that the error radius for a 155 mm shell
is usually 25 meters. Therefore, if shells are lobbed as close as 100
meters to populated areas, as allowed under an IDF policy … or even closer,
as sometimes happened, it greatly increases the likelihood of civilian
casualties.

When the shells explode they can spread about 2,000 fragments in all
directions. Sometimes they fail to explode and “become potentially
explosive duds,” according to the group.

“Israel Military Industries, a state-owned arms producer and exporter,
produces the M107 shell, although Israel has also imported 155mm shells
from the United States,” Human Rights Watch says.

In the United States, M107 shells are manufactured by American Ordnance LLC.

*Bloodbath continues*

As of Wednesday, at least 695 people had been killed and more than 4,000
injured in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

At least 518 of the dead are civilians and 170 are children, according to
the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). More
than 140,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents are displaced and seeking
shelter, OCHA said, and a three-kilometer strip covering 44 percent of
Gaza’s territory has now been declared by Israel as a “no-go zone.”

There are reports of heavy casualties in the village of Khuzaa, east of
Khan Younis, due to heavy Israeli artillery shelling.

“According to preliminary information, at least twenty persons were
killed,” OCHA said on Wednesday afternoon. “An evacuation of casualties has
not yet taken place as ambulances await guarantees of safe access to the
area.”

*Ali Abunimah* Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of *The
Battle for Justice in Palestine*
<http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Battle-for-Justice-in-Palestine> ,
now out from Haymarket Books.Q/A on Palestine

*By Justin Podur*

24 July 2014
*teleSUR English* <http://www.telesurtv.net/>

Q: Didn't Hamas start this fighting by provoking Israel?

A: According to this interpretation of events: 1. Palestinians killed
Israeli teens -> 2. Israel responded -> 3. Hamas began rocket fire -> 4.
Israel attacked Gaza.

A longer cycle. The first problem with this sequence is that if you go a
little further back, you find further provocations and attacks by Israel,
further responses by Palestinians, and so on, going back decades. For
example, on May 15, 2014, Israeli soldiers murdered two Palestinian teens
in Beitunia, for no apparent reason (see:
http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beitunia-killings
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beitunia-killings>). Even if you see
the conflict as a ‘cycle of violence', the primary responsibility lies with
the more powerful party, since it is the more powerful party that will
determine the course of both war and peace in any ‘cycle'. Israel is by far
the more powerful party. The question of ‘who started it' is really a
question about who is responsible. Israel can stop this massacre at any
moment.

Ilan Pappe wrote recently that “The only chance for a successful struggle
against Zionism in Palestine is the one based on a human and civil rights
agenda that does not differentiate between one violation and the other and
yet identifies clearly the victim and the victimizers.”

Revenge does not apply to innocents. But the second problem is more
important. It is immoral to see the killings of the Israeli teens as a
‘response' to, or ‘revenge' for, the killings of the Palestinian teens in
May. It is also immoral to see the torture and burning alive of a
Palestinian teenager by Israeli settlers as a ‘response' to the killings of
the teens. The only acceptable moral response to crimes like murder is to
bring the individuals responsible to justice. Justice, according to the
law, does not allow revenge against other people.

An offshore prize? There may be yet another reason for these constant
assaults on Gaza: offshore gas deposits that Israel wants to access, but
without having to deal with a Palestinian government that could negotiate
some benefit for it. Nafeez Ahmad wrote about this in the Guardian on July
9/14 (
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis>).
He quotes Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya'alon, who in 2007, as Israeli
army chief of staff, said:

“A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition,
involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will
sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas
installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall
military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can
take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”

Substitute the word “Palestinians” for “the radical Islamic movement”, and
you have a more honest statement of what these attacks may be about:
“drilling without consent”.

The unity government. The real target of Israel's current attack is more
likely the unity government agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which was
recognized even by the US. Ilan Pappe (
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562>)
wrote:

“The present genocidal wave has, like all the previous ones, also a more
immediate background. It has been born out of an attempt to foil the
Palestinian decision to form a unity government that even the United States
could not object to.

“The collapse of US Secretary of State John Kerry's desperate “peace”
initiative legitimized the Palestinian appeal to international
organizations to stop the occupation. At the same time, Palestinians gained
wide international blessing for the cautious attempt represented by the
unity government to strategize once again a coordinated policy among the
various Palestinian groups and agendas.”

Q: Wait, what is the unity government?

A: Beginning last July (2013), there was another “peace process” that was
initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, involving Netanyahu on the
Israeli side and Mahmoud Abbas, from Fatah, whose electoral mandate expired
in 2009 (a point I'll return to). The deadline set for an agreement was
April 2014. Over the course of this “peace process”, Israel continued to
build settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory Israel is
militarily occupying.

When the April 2014 deadline arrived, Abbas had no agreement from Israel to
show, only new settlements and new preconditions for talks. At that point,
Abbas agreed to join Hamas in a unity government and prepare for new
elections, which would be the first since 2005/6, when Abbas won the
presidential election (2005) and Hamas won the legislative elections (2006).

Even though Israel had offered Abbas nothing, when the unity government
proposal arose, Netanyahu said that Abbas could have peace with Israel or
with Hamas, but not both – but he had already shown that Israel had no
interest in peace, regardless of what Abbas did.

It is worth noting just how favorable the unity government agreement was,
to both Abbas and, potentially, to Israel, as Nathan Thrall of the
International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in the July 17/14 NYT: Hamas
transferred formal authority to Ramallah, giving up official control of
Gaza. But “Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation
agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and residents from obtaining the two
most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000
civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to
administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border
closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans' passage to the
outside world.” Qatar offered to pay the salaries. The UN offered to
deliver the salaries. But the US allowed Israel to block both efforts.

Q: But why did Hamas reject the ceasefire offers?

A: A frequently used negotiating tactic is to make demands that the other
side cannot meet. Israel's ceasefire terms are to temporarily cease the
shelling, bombing, and killing until the next time they decide to resume
it, while Gaza's borders remain closed, its water, electricity, and its
people's freedom of movement remain completely under Israeli control.
Hamas's conditions have been published in English on the Electronic
Intifada and elsewhere (
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel>).
Sometimes they are presented as 10 conditions, sometimes as 5 conditions,
but they boil down to one: the siege of Gaza must end. The siege has driven
the Palestinian economy into tunnels – tunnels that Israel is now invading
Gaza to destroy. The siege is killing the society, and each round of
Israeli attack further destroys the infrastructure that enables people to
survive, infrastructure that cannot be rebuilt – because of the siege.
Returning to Nathan Thrall in the NYT: “For many Gazans, and not just Hamas
supporters, it's worth risking more bombardment and now the ground
incursion, for a chance to change that unacceptable status quo. A
cease-fire that fails to resolve the salary crisis and open Gaza's border
with Egypt will not last. It is unsustainable for Gaza to remain cut off
from the world and administered by employees working without pay.”

Q: Civilian deaths have been kept to a minimum by Israeli doctrine, haven't
they?

A: Israel's doctrine is to inflict punishment on the population in order to
get them to turn on their leaders. In Rania Khalek's words (
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-deliberately-targeting-civilians-gaza
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-deliberately-targeting-civilians-gaza>
)

“The Dahiya doctrine (which refers to the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut
that Israel purposely decimated in its 2006 assault on Lebanon) is Israel's
preferred method of warfare. Under this doctrine, the Israeli army deploys
overwhelmingly disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure to
restore Israel's deterrence and turn the local population against its
enemy, i.e. Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“In the lead up to Operation Cast Lead, senior Israeli army General Gadi
Eisenkot disclosed Israel's plans to expand the Dahiya doctrine, telling an
Israeli newspaper, “We will wield disproportionate power against every
village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and
destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases.” He added,
“This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

“Two months later Israel pulverized the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,400
people, including almost 400 children, some of whom were deliberately
murdered while raising white flags.”

Q: Even if 80% of deaths have been civilians, 20% have been militants,
right?

A: Israel defines militants in an expansive way. Civilian police are
defined as militants. Rania Khalek again:

“Using precision guided missiles, the Israeli army claims it is only
bombing people and infrastructure “affiliated with Hamas terrorism” — and
the international community is buying it.

“What is not being discussed, however, is who and what constitutes a Hamas
affiliate.

“Hamas is more than just a militant organization, it is the political party
that was democratically elected in 2006 to govern the Gaza Strip and West
Bank. Hamas's control means that almost everyone and everything in Gaza can
be considered a Hamas affiliate. This unchallenged loose definition has
enabled Israel's war architects to widen the definition of legitimate
targets to include civilians and civilian infrastructure, including
mosques, schools, hospitals, banks, electricity lines and residential
homes, all of which have been targeted.

“Aside from a weak condemnation issued by UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Navi Pillay, the international community has largely accepted
Israel's methodology, completely abandoning defenseless Palestinian
civilians as they're being maimed and slaughtered by one of the world's
most powerful armies.”

Q: Such civilian deaths as have occurred have occurred because militants
hide among civilians, right?

A: There is nowhere for anyone to hide in Gaza. Gaza is one of the most
densely populated 360 sq km strips of land on earth. Israel defines
everyone in Gaza as a militant. Israel and Egypt have ensured that no one
can leave Gaza. Israel is now shelling and bombing Gaza. Civilians have no
place to hide from Israeli bombs and shells. There is nowhere civilians can
go to prevent Israel from defining them as militants, and there is nowhere
anyone can go in Gaza to be safe from bombs – Israel bombs houses,
apartments, UNRWA compounds, hospitals – the story of ‘militants hiding
among civilians' is simply an Israeli excuse for bombing and killing
civilians freely.

Q: Surely you cannot expect Israel to stand by while the rockets continue
to terrorize them?

A: As a moral and legal question, occupying powers do not have a right to
defend themselves, except by leaving. As a practical question, is Israel
behaving in a way that will stop rocket attacks? Brian Dominick has
answered this question, in response to a blog post by Juan Cole (
http://radicalreboot.tumblr.com/post/91670379821/israels-real-motives-in-operation-gazaunderattack
<http://radicalreboot.tumblr.com/post/91670379821/israels-real-motives-in-operation-gazaunderattack>
):

“…there are obvious ways to thwart rocket attacks that put Palestinian
noncombatants at no or far less risk, all of which Israel ignores in favor
of a widespread campaign of death dealing. These alternatives have the
downside, from the Israeli hardline viewpoint, of failing to terrorize and
traumatize Palestinians. These ways include but are likely not limited to:

“Opening Gaza borders to (inspected) trade so the commercial viability of
the Gaza tunnel system is undermined and factions must make their own
tunnels just for smuggling weapons. This reduction would likely be
dramatic, and it would also bring Israel into compliance with international
law that bans the collective punishment of civilians. It would also mean an
end to Israel's murdering of commercial smugglers.

“Help the Hamas government suppress rocket fire from factions not beholden
to or remotely respectful of ceasefires between Hamas and Israel—the ones
doing most of the rocket attacks between periodic uber-crises. (I don't
personally love the idea of Israel choosing factions, but this would be an
indication of Israel actually wanting rocket attacks to end.)

“Israel could actually pursue peace and a solution to the overall crisis
that actually respects Palestinian demands. That is, stop giving their
enemies reasons to actively fight them, and watch support for the remaining
fighters all but evaporate. I can't guarantee this would work, but it has
never been tried.

“Stop targeting Hamas's civilian, non-operational leadership for
assassination, which draws profound resentment from the Palestinian people
and consistently, as Juan Cole notes, strengthens Hamas's hand in both Gaza
and the West Bank.

“The… way we know rocket suppression is nowhere on Israeli hawks' agenda is
that each such operation in the past six or more years has resulted in a
tremendous spike in the number of rockets fired, often resulting in more
rockets than would be launched during relative calm for months at a time.
This is a predictable result of air strikes and incursions, which won't
after all restrict the rocket fire nearly as effectively as ceasefires
historically have.”

Q: The civil wars in Iraq and Syria, the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
as well as the conflicts in Sudan and Congo and Nigeria have claimed many
more lives than this conflict. Isn't it hypocrisy for people in the world
be so upset over a few hundred dead Palestinians in the face of these much
larger death tolls?

A: This question is a major logical failure. If a murder of a complete
innocent cannot be a moral response to another murder, as above, then a big
mass murder in an unrelated conflict cannot excuse a smaller mass murder
here. The deaths caused by the Syrian regime in the Syrian civil war, or by
the rebels there, or by ISIS in Iraq, or the Iraqi government, cannot be
used as an excuse for Israel's killings in Palestine. In Ilan Pappe's words
(
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562>
):

“I will concede that all over the Middle East there are now horrific cases
where dehumanization has reaped unimaginable horrors as it does in Gaza
today. But there is one crucial difference between these cases and the
Israeli brutality: the former are condemned as barbarous and inhuman
worldwide, while those committed by Israel are still publicly licensed and
approved by the president of the United States, the leaders of the EU and
Israel's other friends in the world…

“Those who commit atrocities in the Arab world against oppressed minorities
and helpless communities, as well as the Israelis who commit these crimes
against the Palestinian people, should all be judged by the same moral and
ethical standards. They are all war criminals, though in the case of
Palestine they have been at work longer than anyone else.

“It does not really matter what the religious identity is of the people who
commit the atrocities or in the name of which religion they purport to
speak. Whether they call themselves jihadists, Judaists or Zionists, they
should be treated in the same way.

“A world that would stop employing double standards in its dealings with
Israel is a world that could be far more effective in its response to war
crimes elsewhere in the world.”

Q: Palestine was never a country. The Arabs attacked Israel in 1967…

A: The problem with this question is that it misunderstands the parties to
the conflict. The questioner has slipped from “Israel and the Palestinians”
to “Israel and the Arabs”. “The Arabs” are not a party to this conflict –
Arab-speaking countries of the Gulf, North Africa, and the rest of the
Middle East are not under Israel's occupation, nor are they refugees from
Israel's founding in 1948. The Palestinians are. The Palestinians are the
victims of the current Israeli operations, not “the Arabs”.

The most succinct summary of how the situation has developed, and the
relative power of the parties to this conflict, can be viewed in the
Disappearing Palestine map:

http://www.juancole.com/images-ext/2010/03/map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood.jpg
<http://www.countercurrents.org/newtemplate_map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood.jpg>

Juan Cole, who recently posted about the map, describes some of the
background and the accuracy of the map here:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood.html

For other questions about the background of Israel/Palestine, please see
Stephen Shalom's Q/A on the background of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
http://www.peacenowar.net/Palestine/News/Q&A.htm

Q: Who is winning?

A: Writing in the NYT on July 18/14, Jodi Rudoren, like many others, makes
much of the difference between this Israeli attack on besieged Gaza and
previous attacks, like 2009 and 2012. In 2009, Rudoren writes, “Israel
quickly bisected the tiny coastal enclave and blockaded Gaza City, where
they engaged in gun battles with Hamas fighters. On Friday, the troops
operated mainly in farmland within about a mile of Gaza's northern,
southern and eastern edges, and quickly announced they had uncovered more
than 20 tunnel exit points. Setting the bar relatively low helps hold back
public expectations, provide the military with achievable goals, and build
international legitimacy.” In this analysis, Hamas is isolated and weaker
because in previous rounds, Hamas could count on more support from Syria's
government (right now in the middle of a civil war) and a friendly
government in Egypt (which was never that friendly, but which has now,
under Sisi, returned to the traditional pattern of working for Israel and
isolating the Palestinians since the 2013 coup). Israel, and consequently,
the Western media, are focused on “the tunnels” – into which much of
Palestinian life has been driven because of the siege – as the enemy.
Israel claims that Hamas's fighters are a threat because of these tunnels.

While these differences do exist, the main elements are exactly the same.
Israel is unlikely to send soldiers into tunnels to fight in close quarters
with Palestinians. There are too many risks for that, and very little cost
to Israel to continuing its high-tech, indiscriminate killing from a
distance. This has been referred to by an analyst (Roni Bart) as “a kind of
rolling-fire induced smokescreen”, a “new policy” as of 2009 which “caused
a large number of casualties among the civilian Palestinian population”,
because “most of the fighting took place in built up and populated areas”.
(Roni Bart, “Warfare-Morality-Public Relations: Proposals for Improvement”,
Strategic Assessment, June 2009 Vol. 12, No. 1)

Israel's ability to keep this up depends on several factors. One is the
regional factor, which is now providing few restraints (civil war in Iraq
and Syria, a pro-Israel regime in Egypt). Another factor is how difficult
it is for Western leaders to sell the war to Western civil society. In this
attack, a gap may have opened up between the Israeli public and the Western
public at large, as the picnics, outrageous comments, trophy photos and the
like that are being shared in social media and collected in Western media
show – see for example (
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html>).
At some point, the atrocities will reach a level that will trigger Western
leaders to get Israel to stop.

Q: Is there anything to do?

A: Israel is a part of the West. Its economy and politics are fully
integrated with the West. It simply cannot do this without support from the
US, Canada, and Europe. If you go to demonstrations against Israel's
attacks, whether this one or the next ones, join the BDS Movement (
bdsmovement.net), write letters to politicians or to media outlets, you
will be up against an organized an organized, extensive, pro-Israel effort.
You will have to do your homework and realize there are people preparing
professional talking points about every historical fact and argument you
come across. It may be years before anything improves, and things may get
still worse. But Israel depends on international support, including from
the public, more than most – that is why they devote so much energy and
effort to politicians and the media in the West. This is a conflict where
activists can make a difference.

*Justin Podur *is a writer and activist based in Toronto.

Q/A on Palestine

*By Justin Podur*

24 July 2014
*teleSUR English* <http://www.telesurtv.net/>

Q: Didn't Hamas start this fighting by provoking Israel?

A: According to this interpretation of events: 1. Palestinians killed
Israeli teens -> 2. Israel responded -> 3. Hamas began rocket fire -> 4.
Israel attacked Gaza.

A longer cycle. The first problem with this sequence is that if you go a
little further back, you find further provocations and attacks by Israel,
further responses by Palestinians, and so on, going back decades. For
example, on May 15, 2014, Israeli soldiers murdered two Palestinian teens
in Beitunia, for no apparent reason (see:
http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beitunia-killings
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beitunia-killings>). Even if you see
the conflict as a ‘cycle of violence', the primary responsibility lies with
the more powerful party, since it is the more powerful party that will
determine the course of both war and peace in any ‘cycle'. Israel is by far
the more powerful party. The question of ‘who started it' is really a
question about who is responsible. Israel can stop this massacre at any
moment.

Ilan Pappe wrote recently that “The only chance for a successful struggle
against Zionism in Palestine is the one based on a human and civil rights
agenda that does not differentiate between one violation and the other and
yet identifies clearly the victim and the victimizers.”

Revenge does not apply to innocents. But the second problem is more
important. It is immoral to see the killings of the Israeli teens as a
‘response' to, or ‘revenge' for, the killings of the Palestinian teens in
May. It is also immoral to see the torture and burning alive of a
Palestinian teenager by Israeli settlers as a ‘response' to the killings of
the teens. The only acceptable moral response to crimes like murder is to
bring the individuals responsible to justice. Justice, according to the
law, does not allow revenge against other people.

An offshore prize? There may be yet another reason for these constant
assaults on Gaza: offshore gas deposits that Israel wants to access, but
without having to deal with a Palestinian government that could negotiate
some benefit for it. Nafeez Ahmad wrote about this in the Guardian on July
9/14 (
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis>).
He quotes Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya'alon, who in 2007, as Israeli
army chief of staff, said:

“A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition,
involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will
sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas
installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall
military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can
take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”

Substitute the word “Palestinians” for “the radical Islamic movement”, and
you have a more honest statement of what these attacks may be about:
“drilling without consent”.

The unity government. The real target of Israel's current attack is more
likely the unity government agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which was
recognized even by the US. Ilan Pappe (
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562>)
wrote:

“The present genocidal wave has, like all the previous ones, also a more
immediate background. It has been born out of an attempt to foil the
Palestinian decision to form a unity government that even the United States
could not object to.

“The collapse of US Secretary of State John Kerry's desperate “peace”
initiative legitimized the Palestinian appeal to international
organizations to stop the occupation. At the same time, Palestinians gained
wide international blessing for the cautious attempt represented by the
unity government to strategize once again a coordinated policy among the
various Palestinian groups and agendas.”

Q: Wait, what is the unity government?

A: Beginning last July (2013), there was another “peace process” that was
initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, involving Netanyahu on the
Israeli side and Mahmoud Abbas, from Fatah, whose electoral mandate expired
in 2009 (a point I'll return to). The deadline set for an agreement was
April 2014. Over the course of this “peace process”, Israel continued to
build settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory Israel is
militarily occupying.

When the April 2014 deadline arrived, Abbas had no agreement from Israel to
show, only new settlements and new preconditions for talks. At that point,
Abbas agreed to join Hamas in a unity government and prepare for new
elections, which would be the first since 2005/6, when Abbas won the
presidential election (2005) and Hamas won the legislative elections (2006).

Even though Israel had offered Abbas nothing, when the unity government
proposal arose, Netanyahu said that Abbas could have peace with Israel or
with Hamas, but not both – but he had already shown that Israel had no
interest in peace, regardless of what Abbas did.

It is worth noting just how favorable the unity government agreement was,
to both Abbas and, potentially, to Israel, as Nathan Thrall of the
International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in the July 17/14 NYT: Hamas
transferred formal authority to Ramallah, giving up official control of
Gaza. But “Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation
agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and residents from obtaining the two
most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000
civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to
administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border
closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans' passage to the
outside world.” Qatar offered to pay the salaries. The UN offered to
deliver the salaries. But the US allowed Israel to block both efforts.

Q: But why did Hamas reject the ceasefire offers?

A: A frequently used negotiating tactic is to make demands that the other
side cannot meet. Israel's ceasefire terms are to temporarily cease the
shelling, bombing, and killing until the next time they decide to resume
it, while Gaza's borders remain closed, its water, electricity, and its
people's freedom of movement remain completely under Israeli control.
Hamas's conditions have been published in English on the Electronic
Intifada and elsewhere (
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel>).
Sometimes they are presented as 10 conditions, sometimes as 5 conditions,
but they boil down to one: the siege of Gaza must end. The siege has driven
the Palestinian economy into tunnels – tunnels that Israel is now invading
Gaza to destroy. The siege is killing the society, and each round of
Israeli attack further destroys the infrastructure that enables people to
survive, infrastructure that cannot be rebuilt – because of the siege.
Returning to Nathan Thrall in the NYT: “For many Gazans, and not just Hamas
supporters, it's worth risking more bombardment and now the ground
incursion, for a chance to change that unacceptable status quo. A
cease-fire that fails to resolve the salary crisis and open Gaza's border
with Egypt will not last. It is unsustainable for Gaza to remain cut off
from the world and administered by employees working without pay.”

Q: Civilian deaths have been kept to a minimum by Israeli doctrine, haven't
they?

A: Israel's doctrine is to inflict punishment on the population in order to
get them to turn on their leaders. In Rania Khalek's words (
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-deliberately-targeting-civilians-gaza
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-deliberately-targeting-civilians-gaza>
)

“The Dahiya doctrine (which refers to the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut
that Israel purposely decimated in its 2006 assault on Lebanon) is Israel's
preferred method of warfare. Under this doctrine, the Israeli army deploys
overwhelmingly disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure to
restore Israel's deterrence and turn the local population against its
enemy, i.e. Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“In the lead up to Operation Cast Lead, senior Israeli army General Gadi
Eisenkot disclosed Israel's plans to expand the Dahiya doctrine, telling an
Israeli newspaper, “We will wield disproportionate power against every
village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and
destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases.” He added,
“This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

“Two months later Israel pulverized the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,400
people, including almost 400 children, some of whom were deliberately
murdered while raising white flags.”

Q: Even if 80% of deaths have been civilians, 20% have been militants,
right?

A: Israel defines militants in an expansive way. Civilian police are
defined as militants. Rania Khalek again:

“Using precision guided missiles, the Israeli army claims it is only
bombing people and infrastructure “affiliated with Hamas terrorism” — and
the international community is buying it.

“What is not being discussed, however, is who and what constitutes a Hamas
affiliate.

“Hamas is more than just a militant organization, it is the political party
that was democratically elected in 2006 to govern the Gaza Strip and West
Bank. Hamas's control means that almost everyone and everything in Gaza can
be considered a Hamas affiliate. This unchallenged loose definition has
enabled Israel's war architects to widen the definition of legitimate
targets to include civilians and civilian infrastructure, including
mosques, schools, hospitals, banks, electricity lines and residential
homes, all of which have been targeted.

“Aside from a weak condemnation issued by UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Navi Pillay, the international community has largely accepted
Israel's methodology, completely abandoning defenseless Palestinian
civilians as they're being maimed and slaughtered by one of the world's
most powerful armies.”