For some time now, Israel has forced the UN to stop providing urgently needed supplies...Updated Video & latest update from the BBC for Sunday Here Warning: graphic filming...
Also go to "Weekend Edition" of Sunday morning's NPR dot org for a report from the Palestinian Doctor who has to deal with over 250 emergencies...and Israel military just blew up an oil tank right next door which the victims had to hear...he asks: "How can any hospital in the world deal with this many emergencies and patients at one time?"
Israel, like the US governement/military/CIA with some of their darkest situation & places, will NOT ALLOW foreign JOURNALISTS IN at this point & this probably goes for aid, food, care-givers as well as this has been the case for way too long now with the blocking of the UN & others...from delivering food except for very short, virtually worthless occasions...of course, the bakeries, stores, centers, the few which are still open, are not able to help those without & although not safe, the families are trying to keep their families inside...of course, Israel gave no warning when they opened fire & so many school children will forever remember the horrors which awaited them before they could even reach or be reached by their parents!
How will this help the future generation of terrorists & how will the Palestinians- Hamas supporting or not -- see Israeli military & government & the US military/government/nation as less than terrorists?
From Saturday just below...For videos on BREAKING news regarding the most violent attack on Gaza by Israel in recent times:
From Saturday, first responses from a few here
--look for others on npr.org/bbc/and especially look up arabic newspapers for perhaps a truer picture of how the Palestinian people will react...
Israel Launches Attacks: 200 dead in Gaza and growing...
Israel has apparently threatened that were the 6 months truce broken they would "open the gates of hell" ... is this the beginning? (Keep in mind that the more or less "pro-palestinian" news regards Israel as having "opened the gates of hell" years ago & not to have themselves kept the truce, not to mention the barring of foods and survival items from Palestinians...READ CHRIS HEDGES for a prelude to this breaking news)
Israel launches air strikes on Gaza, 155 (& growing) dead
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 42 mins ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing at least 155 and wounding more than 310 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in recent memory.
Hamas said all of its security installations were hit and responded with several medium-range Grad rockets at Israel, reaching deeper than in the past. One Israeli was killed and at least four people were wounded.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said "the operation will last as long as necessary," but it was not clear if it would be coupled with a ground offensive. Asked if Hamas political leaders might be targeted next, military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said, "Any Hamas target is a target."
The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months. Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children.
In Gaza City's main security compound, bodies of more than a dozen uniformed security officers lay on the ground. One survivor raised his index finger in a show of Muslim faith, uttering a prayer. The Gaza police chief was among those killed. One man, his face bloodied, sat dazed on the ground as a fire raged nearby.
It wasn't immediately clear how many civilian casualties there were.
Said Masri sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building.
"My son is gone, my son is gone," wailed Masri, 57. The shopkeeper said he sent his 9-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," Masri moaned.
Defiant Hamas leaders threatened revenge, including suicide attacks. Hamas "will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood," vowed spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Israel told its civilians near Gaza to take cover as militants began retaliating with rockets, and in the West Bank, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for restraint. Egypt summoned the Israeli ambassador to express condemnation and opened its border with Gaza to allow ambulances to drive out some of the wounded.
Protests erupted in the Abbas-ruled West Bank and across the Arab world.
Several hundred angry Jordanians poured protested outside a U.N. complex in the capital Amman. "Hamas, go ahead. You are the cannon, we are the bullets," they cried, some waving the signature green Hamas banners.
In Beirut, dozens of youths hit the streets and set fire to tires. In Syria's al-Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus, dozens of Palestinians protested the attack as well, vowing to continue fighting Israel.
Israeli leaders approved military action against Gaza earlier in the week.
Past limited ground incursions and air strikes have not halted rocket barrages from Gaza.
But with 200 mortars and rockets raining down on Israel since the truce expired a week ago, and 3,000 since the beginning of the year, according to the military's count, pressure had been mounting in Israel for the military to crush the gunmen.
Earlier this month, Israeli security officials told the government that militants possess rockets with ranges capable of reaching farther from Gaza than ever before, including the cities of Beersheba and Ashdod.
Many Israeli activists Courageously Risk Much to protest Israeli Provocation...Gaza militants fired several rockets Saturday, including one that struck a new target, the town of Kiryat Gat. A missile hit on the town of Netivot killed an Israeli man and wounded four people, rescue services said. In Ashkelon, TV cameras showed people huddle against a wall as a rocket alert sounded.
Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said that the coming period "won't be easy and won't be short for the communities in the south (of Israel).
Israel declared a state of emergency in Israeli communities within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) range of Gaza, putting the area on a war footing.
The first round of air strikes came just before noon, and several more waves followed.
Hospitals crowded with people, civilians rushing in wounded people in cars, vans and ambulances. "We are treating people on the floor, in the corridors. We have no more space. We don't know who is here and what the priority is to treat," said a doctor at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's main treatment center. He hung up the phone before identifying himself.
Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a Gaza Health Ministry official, said at least 145 people were killed and more than 300 wounded.
Frantic civilians drove wounded people to hospitals in their cars.
In the West Bank, Hamas' rival, Abbas, said in a statement that he "condemns this aggression" and called for restraint, according to an aide, Nabil Abu Rdeneh. Abbas, who has ruled only the West Bank since the Islamic Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007, was in contact with Arab leaders, and his West Bank Cabinet convened an emergency session.
Israel has targeted Gaza in the past, but the number of simultaneous attacks was unprecedented.
Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, but the withdrawal did not lead to better relations with Palestinians in the territory as Israeli officials had hoped.
Instead, the evacuation was followed by a sharp rise in militant attacks on Israeli border communities that on several occasions provoked harsh Israeli military reprisals.
The last, in late February and early March, spurred both sides to agree to a truce that was to have lasted six months but began unraveling in early November. In recent days, Israeli leaders had been voicing strong threats to launch a major offensive.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Please read COMMENTS & Add your own...stay in touch for updates...
4 comments:
Be sure to read Electronic Intifada for much more on this happening and for calm more-or-less academic perspectives, check out Bitter Lemons...Let me know by email with careful heading if you'd like more references for behind the scenes news on Palestine/Israel
Surprisingly, often lead articles and comments on Ha'aretz, Israel are quite fair...
Over and over again, most polls show at least half if not much more of the Israeli citizens to be against the provocative actions of the Israeli military...
Many Israelis vigil and rally regularly against these kind of actions, at the risk of their own lives.
There are a number of active Jewish/Israeli peace and justice groups in both the USA and Israel...they need to be remembered for their courageous human rights actions and activities at this time along with the unfathomable agony of the Palestinians who live in a situation which Chris Hedges says is WORSE THAN APARTHEID, South Africa once was...
ei: No bread in Gaza No bread in Gaza (recent back story of NOTE)
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 25 December 2008
The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, has been forced to stop food aid delivery to 750,000 refugees in the occupied Gaza Strip. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)
The Gaza Strip, home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians, will soon be without its most basic commodity: bread. While families around the world celebrate Christmas, gathering around tables of abundance, Gaza parents like me will not even be able provide bread for their children unless Israel opens the commercial crossings to Gaza from the outside world.
Yesterday, after I finished my lecture at one of Gaza's universities, my wife asked me to bring some bread from Gaza City. All bakeries in our area have stopped operating because of the lack of flour and cooking gas due to Israel's 18-month siege of the territory.
I drove throughout Gaza City to try to find some bread for my four children, instead finding a miserable scene. On the drive back to my home in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, I saw dozens of people lining up in rows to get bread from al-Yazji Bakery. I quickly realized that it would take one or two hours until it would be my turn in line, by which time I might not find bread at all. So I continued my drive back to Maghazi, without bread.
"Father, we want to eat, we don't have bread," my eldest daughter complained. I paused and then thought to ask my son Munir to bring some felafel sandwiches -- our answer to fast food -- so we can quickly fill our empty stomachs. Fortunately, after a while Munir returned carrying sandwiches bought at an inflated price.
While we were eating, my wife asked me to drive early to Gaza City the next day so we might buy some bread. Imagine that today in Gaza, acquiring a simple package of bread requires getting up at daybreak, purchasing a gallon of expensive gas because it is smuggled in from Egypt, and that it will take two or three hours to complete the task! Of course, my family's story is not special. It is the story of all families in Gaza who are trying to survive a deliberate humanitarian crisis created by Israel.
According to Abdel Naser al-Ajrami, head of the bakers association in Gaza, more than 27 bakeries out of a total of 47 in Gaza City have been shut down completely due to a lack of cooking gas and wheat, as Israel has sealed the commercial border crossings for almost two months now. Al-Ajrami explained yesterday that sufficient quantities will be distributed to bakeries in the next three days, adding that there have been relentless efforts by officials of the ruling Hamas government to ensure that the necessary amounts cooking gas and wheat are supplied throughout Gaza.
On 18 December, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) halted food distribution to 750,000 refugees in Gaza, including my family, because their stocks of wheat flour have run out. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel is only allowing 16 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza per day. In contrast, 475 trucks per day entered the Strip in May 2007 when the militia loyal to Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip amidst factional fighting with forces loyal to the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
As the new year approaches, it is unclear what is in store for Gaza as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups ended earlier this week. In response to the closure and the extrajudicial killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces, resistance groups in Gaza have renewed the firing of crude rockets into southern Israel. As Israel gears up for an election, the fate of families like mine becomes a matter of political rhetoric, each candidate trying to outdo the other in its promises to do harm to our lives. Gaza remains the world's largest open-air prison. However, unlike other prisons, the inmates are allowed to go hungry. Meanwhile, the Israeli warden goes unpunished by the United States and the European Union for its cruelty.
Rami Almeghari is contributor to The Electronic Intifada, IMEMC.org and Free Speech Radio News. Rami is also a former senior English translator at and editor-in-chief of the international press center of the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Service and a part-time lecturer on media and political translation at the Islamic University of Gaza. He can be contacted at rami_almeghari A T hotmail D O T com.
From a Rabbi for peace...
Today the starkest choice of values and visions of the future was laid before the Jewish people throughout the world.
On the one hand, Jews throughout the world were reading in synagogue the Prophetic vision of Zechariah, no stranger to exile and humiliation, writing from the midst of the Babylonian Captivity 2500 years ago and looking forward to the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and the relighting of its Menorah --- both of which had been destroyed by Babylonian militarism.
This rebuilding and relighting, Zechariah proclaimed, must be achieved not by mobilizing might and power against Babylonia but by drawing on the Infinite Spirit, God's power. A vision reinforced by the Rabbis who chose the passage to be read on the holy day that might easily fall into a celebration of the military might and power of the Maccabees.
On the other hand --- on the very same day!! -- at least 225 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs in one more attempt to quell by might and power the use of violence (on a much smaller scale) by Hamas, in what Hamas sees as itself a retaliation against the Israeli blockade and semi-starvation of the people of Gaza.
There is plenty to bewail and plenty to examine in the details of this crossroads-moment in the history between our two Families of Abraham. Tonight (Saturday night) I cannot gather the strength to do this -- having just, after a pleasant Shabbat of synagogue and family dreidling, discovered this crushing news. We will look more deeeply together into these choices, in the next several days.
But what I can do now is simply ask us all to face the choices, to experience the deadly vertigo of choice between these choices.
A hard but necessary moment to send you the blessings of shalom, salaam, peace. --- Arthur
Two texts:
"Not by Might, and not by Power --- but by My Breathing Spirit, says YHWH Infinite." -- Zechariah 4: 6.
OR -- New York Times, December 27, 2008:
"GAZA - Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group's rocket fire, killing more than 225 - the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
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"The center of Gaza City was a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing, and women shrieking as dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement and in the lobby of Shifa Hospital so that family members could identify them. The dead included civilians, including several construction workers and at least two children in school uniforms.
"Dozens of rockets struck southern Israel after the airstrikes in Gaza, sending residents underground. One man was killed in the town of Netivot, the first death from rocket fire since it intensified a week ago, and four were wounded.
"Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said."
Bush Winks at Israel's Slaughter in Gaza,
Obama and Clinton Are Silent
By Matthew Rothschild
President-elect Barack Obama and Secretary of State-to-be Hillary Clinton were shamefully silent in the first hours after the attack. Bush's reaction, and the non-reaction by Obama and Clinton, underscores the point that Hanan Ashrawi made on Saturday. "Israel has gotten used to not being held accountable and to being a country that is above the law," said the Palestinian legislator and human rights activist. She called the bombings a "massacre."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21547.htm
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Gaza Massacres Must Spur Us To Action
By Ali Abunimah
"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21545.htm
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Gaza Massacre
Israel's Cynicism Supported by the West's Complicity
By Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)
Today the Israeli army launched its long awaited strikes against the Gazan people, an unarmed, captive civilian population. The West, including the British government, has supported the last two years' of blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza for the crime of exercising their democratic rights in a manner not to Israel's liking.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21544.htm
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