July 28, 2009 Electronic Intifada
500 balloons launched from Ramallah in honor of child prisoners
Ramallah – Ma’an – Balloons representing the nearly 350 minors being kept in Israeli prisons were released during a demonstration in Ramallah on Tuesday
Each carried the name of a current or former child prisoner detained by Israeli forces.
The 500 green, red, black and white balloons were released from the Al-Manara circle in the center of Ramallah in a protest organized by the families of prisoners.
Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of the detained minors held pictures of their loved ones. One mother, Um Muhammad, said she had not seen her son for more than two years because Israeli security refused her permission to travel and visit the detention facility.
Another mother, Umm Ibrahim, said she had been able to visit her son, but found the experience horrifying, “We are insulted and humiliated by Israeli soldiers and inspectors during visits to prison, and sometimes they deny us access arbitrarily,” she said.
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Concerned about other related Palestine-Israel issues?
Try James M. Wall on Gaza recently:
Consider the dates of the assault’s start and abrupt ending. The first Israeli air attack on Gaza came on December 27, 2008...George Bush would be president until ...January 20, 2009.
...The assault troops were out of Gaza by midnight, January 18. 2009. The Palestinian death toll had reached more than 1300. The injured totaled more than 5100.
...Before (he)...entered the White House Obama knew what was happening in Gaza. His transition team remained in touch with the Bush White House. The London Guardian provided a daily death and injury report...(Bloggers noticed yet...)Few U.S. papers bothered to even notice.
President-elect Obama insisted he had no control over what was happening in Gaza...“we have only one president at a time”(Obama).
Now, six months later, President Obama has everything to do with the aftermath of Gaza...
Helene Cobban points to a Ma’an story on bodies still trapped in the Gaza rubble...."The United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) officially began implementing its rubble removal operation on 9 July...but Israel’s and Egypt’s refusal to allow reconstruction materials into the area has forced many residents to dig..."
See also Blogger Richard Silverstein's items on this topic in his Tikun Olam blog:
"...U.S. both plants the idea that it may be willing to consider sanctions if all else fails; and immediately denies the import of the statement in order to make it appear it was a mistake. But the seed has been planted...
The U.S. administration has issued a stiff warning to Israel not to build in the area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. Any change in the status quo in E-1 would be “extremely damaging,” even “corrosive,” the message said."
...And what about EVEN) Israeli scholar Avi Shlaim, a loyal Zionist, IDF veteran, and sensitive soul?...Shlaim wrote January 7, for the Guardian.
"The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a MONUMENTAL INJUSTICES to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”...
...What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism...And the result has been ONE OF THE MOST PROLONGED AND BRUTAL MILITARY OCCUPATIONS OF MODERN TIMES.
Shalim’s family immigrated to Israel from Iraq in 1950...and is now a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. He has written two highly-regarded books, The Iron Wall and Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace. Another book, Israel and Palestine, will be published in September.
For more on Shlaim’s story as an Israeli scholar shattered by the Gaza attack, read Robert Fisk’s most recent London Independent column.
...Shlaim is not alone...UN official Richard Falk, for example, suggests that war crime charges could be involved. Israeli soldiers, reflecting back on their part in the Gaza assault, have described the “excesses” of the army’s conduct.
Even the U.S. mainstream ’s CNN has suggested that the original excuse Israel gave for launching the attack on Gaza collapses upon closer inspection.
To paraphrase Lyndon Johnson in his comment on the late Walter Cronkite and the war in Vietnam, “If CNN rejects our cover story, then Israel has lost Middle America.”
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