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Following the end of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, violence and tensions have escalated between Israel and Gaza. Today, Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza in what the AFP calls “one of the bloodiest days of the decades-long Middle East conflict.” So far, the death toll in Gaza is at 210 and rising.
The Palestinian blogosphere, which is made of Palestinians and supporters around the world, is furious with what they perceive to be needless actions from Israel. No Justice No Peace…The Big Picture, an honorary member of the Palestinian blogosphere, spoke out:
200 dead, 750 wounded, and for what? For Qassam rockets which have killed < 10 people in 8 years. If ever there was an epitome of disproportionate use of force this attack by F-16's (paid for by US tax dollars my fellow Americans) is it.
All in the name of “self-defense”. Please. This is immoral offense, and indiscriminate killing, and, by god, if you hold elections and call it a democratic process then deal with the results in a civilized manner, but not quarantining Gaza, withholding funds, petrol, electricity, medical supplies, humanitarian ships, ad UN mandated observers from entering Gaza and then wonder why home-made rockets are being fired (with no sophisticated guidance chips or any chance of doing massive damage).
PalestineFreeVoice points out that Israel used internationally banned weaponry in the attacks and reports:
On Saturday noon in the first wave of air strikes,the Israelis targeted Gaza City government buildings. Casualties are confirmed and include the Commander of Gaza Police Force Tawfiq Jabir, the Commander of Security and Protection Services in Gaza police, Ismail Al-Ja'bari and the Governor of the Al-Wusta (central) Districts Ahmad Abu Aashur.Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman, said that the Israeli attacks have destroyed most of the Gaza Strip police headquarters and that a police graduation ceremony was being held during the Israeli assault.
Global Voices' own Bahrain author, bint battuta, shares a text message from a friend in Rafah:
Text from teacher friend in Rafah: “They struck the whole Gaza Strip at the same second. Many of the casualties are school children. My colleague told me he has seen 8 cases of death in the street. He picked his son alive. I am in my school now and the horror is everywhere in Gaza.
Palestinian bloggers are already ensuring that this most recent airstrike will spur the blogosphere into action. Ali Abunimah, writing for The Electronic Intifada, notes that demonstrations are being planned around the world:
On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel's renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.
But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?
Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it “called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.”
Global Voices will continue to offer coverage from a variety of blogospheres. Check our Gaza bombings Special coverage page often or subscribe to the Palestine RSS feed for further reports.
People,
Israel had warned Hamas, and all the world, that she will responce harshly to Hamas, attacs.
If you ask, if Hamas attacked, I can say Yes. I was at near Gaze when Gazan rockets landed nearby. I can take photos of colections of Qasuams, after landing.
Hamas did not stop. He put his miltey bases in polulated places. sometimes even, firing from inside schools.
If the Gazans love so much the Hamas, why did they let them fire on Israel for weeks now?
If Human loving people condem Israel, Why didn’t they protested Hamas firing on Israeli civilians in the last few weeks.
One writer said the price is 220 to 1, indicating the disproportanite reaction of Israel.
Sorry to say, Israel is not placing her militery base-camps near civlians. Israel, unlike the Hamas, is protecting her civlines by spending of many milions on shelters. and she build alarm systems so people can run for shelters in time.
Sorry to say, it is hamas, that do not care about his own citizens. all they want is to destory the western civilzation, and thay are willing to take many inocent life with them.
Every source was linked in this article except Ali Abunimah. Here’s the missing link: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml
Zacharia,
There are rules of war!
Stop excusing the barbaric, indiscriminate use of force by Israel. Take ownership, take responsibility. You cannot excuse death, much like the Nazis cannot excuse their atrocities, or the Sudanese and Congolese today.
Israel has no interest in peace because it does not want to share its land, and it views its neighbours as inferior subjects. Israel is an Apartheid, racist state.
In every conflict, Israel deliberately inflicts extensive damage on civilian infrastructure. Gaza is simply an addition to the long list of Israeli barbarism.
Antoun,
Nobody is for war. I am not making excuse for the loss of life. I do not understand why you keep saying that it is wrong to kill and not take responsability. You are stating the obvious, there is not need to activate your naive self-righteousness.
Hypocracy is the tool of politics. When Hamas sends rokets towards Israel, t is simply war of liberation for you. But when Isreal shows its forces, then it is bloody murder. When Muslims Janjuyeens overrun, exterminate thousands and destroy villages and rape women in Muslim Darfur, it is simply a Sudanese internal affair for you.
When Iraq invaded Koweit 1991, it is simply a war, but when American intervene, everything change and Americans are labeled invaders. When suicide bombers blow themselves with many civilians, well it is resistance movement, I guess.
Please do not come here and give lesson in morality and how people should behave and act in a state of war. I am not condoning war and loss of lives. I am simply stating that if Hamas needs to fight and fighting it will get. Your elavated sense of self-righteousness is what is blinding your from seeing what you are doing and what are the REAL reasons for this events.
You are wrong to suggest that Israel has no interest in peace, I guess Israel should not have pulled out of Gaza. Your claim that Israel does not want to share the land is ridiculeous. It is Hamas that want all Jews out of area. The case of Jeruzalem is the case in point. Israel is sharing it with all other faiths. It is the muslims who want to “liberate” Al-quods.
I think Hamas is the organization that does not want peace and overtly states over and over through its political leaders and immams friday surmons that Israel should be detroyed. And I said earlier they took it upon themselves to liberate the land. If Hamas wants war, they will get war. And the consequences are well known. So please do not give lectures about barbarism and attached it on Israel, such because it has the most modern well equiped army that can inflict damage to the infrastructure. Israel has to use its force, it had no choice. Do you want them to send rockets on civilians populations? Is that what you want Israel to do, fight but restrain the damage, do not inflict much destruction of buildings and lives. What sort of demands of war are you talking about?
You just want to have it both ways, and that simpy is not going to happen. Sorry to disapoint you.
“We are now spectators of the latest – and perhaps penultimate – chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other.
Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed. The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians. One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives.
This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less – with marginal questioning – mindlessly repeat. And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist. That the Jewish people should accept this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit to it – is one of history’s ironic jokes. There’s no laughter anywhere. We can, however, refute it, more and more vocally.
Let’s do so.”
John Berger
27 December 2008
http://shahidul.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/today-in-gaza/
Zacharia,
I seriously think you’re living in a state of delusion.
Your portrayal of Israel as a peace loving, human rights role model would be laughable if it didn’t cost so many innocent lives.
Have you ever bothered to investigate, beyond what the Israeli press office tells you, why Hamas launches rockets? Why Hamas was democratically elected? Or better yet, why Hamas even exists?
This spiral of violence and radicalism can be reduced to one simple causing factor … the occupation.
Israel may have withdrew its forces and settlements from Gaza, but it has not left it in peace or to develop freely. It has imprisoned 1.5 million people in a tiny space of land, blockading every possibility of escape. Nothing or no one goes out, and nothing or no one enters. There’s no electricity, no medicine, little food, it is hell. Children scavenge through rubbish dumps for food!
And on top of that is the occasional Israeli air strike or shelling that kills so and so militants and a few civilians.
Either you’re totally ignorant of this reality or you’re conveniently choosing to ignore it. Ever heard of cause and consequence? Don’t speak about the consequence unless you examine the cause.
That’s not to mention the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Curfews, walls, bulldozing homes, detention, torture, settler expansion. During the so-called Oslo peace-time, more Israeli settlements were built.
The Western media may have painted a rosy picture, but for the Palestinians on the ground, the hell continued.
Hell is all the Palestinians have known for 60 years.
Don’t lecture me about Sudan and Iraq, it’s abhorrent what goes on in other states. But there is substantial international pressure and peacekeepers in Darfur, and a coalition responded to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
Who is responding to Israel’s aggression and occupation of Palestine?
Dear Rezwan and Antoun,
The problem here is not two Israeli citizens killed against 50 Palestinians and about 250 military Palestinians personal killed.
The problem here is how wants to fight how?
For some reason we had very big peace movements. that elected peace goverments. but it was always the Palestinans how turned their face from peace. When we agreed for peace in 1994, in the Oslo agreements, just after that suicide bombers started to blow in our towns.
we reached for peace, and we got stabbed over and over gain.
We got out of Gaza, to let the Palestinians prosper. but the Gazans fired rockets on our civilians. We therefore have no other options, then to start to put pressure on Hamas, by closing the gates of Gaza. But Hamas did not have enough. he continued to fire on Israeli civilians.
The Gazans did not stop their elected representatives. They let them continue the fire.
Israel and Gaza are two states. one is bigger and stronger the other. the smaller one thought it can destroy the bigger one, by terrorizing the population of the bigger one. and then surprise! The bigger one responded and 250 military personal and 50 civilians were killed.
So next time the Gazans will want to destroy Israel, they will have to think just a little bit better on the consequences. maybe they will have sence one day, and the Gazans will stop to think they can destroy Israel, and let Israel leave in peace with them.
Dear Antoun,
We pray for peace for long time now. it seams that our neighbors don’t.
Antoun,
You still living in your naive blame game rationalization of current situtation. You cannot bring yourself to accept reality, instead you rely on denial and a little self-depredation instead of accepting the facts. We have heard all these anti-Israel diatribes over and over and over. Although I must admit that atrocities have been committed on all sides (effect of stupid wars) yet you seem to use these ethical claims as if they are explanations of current situation.
Nobody in his/her right mind can disclaim ethical issues associated with loss of death, starvation, expultion, rape, torture. These are UNDEBATABLE. WHy used them to explain the current situtation in Gaza. The only thing that I can make sense of is that they seem to give you and many other in the Arab world a sense of self-righteousness and ego-centric explanation of why things have turn out this way, which is quite unacceptable, giving the culture of arrogance prevailing in muslim nations. You are using the ethical issues to explain something that has nothing to do with the political and ideological situation on the ground. Wars (recurring activity in human history, if not to say normal) can be explain only with political, social, cultural, economic arguments NOT the mushy, ethical claims.
You are missing the point. You keep using a tautology, running in circles. You are avoiding, should I say the “plausible” reasons if not to say the “real” factors that brought about the calamity on Gaza. Instead, we are hearing Israel is bad, does not want peace, kill innocent children, take away people freedoms, erect walls, humiliate people, act in criminal way, resort to genocide, starve people, well I guess it is the evil incarnate thing and the list can go on and on.
If these are the reasons for the deaths and destruction in Gaza, THEN, I guess you are accepting the consequences, so let them be. I think the international community knows who can be trick by these naive assumptions. In closing, think what could have been done to avoid this situation. Of course I know the usual answer: Death to Israel, and its supporters. Well I guess, we will see these types of destruction happening again, and the cycle will be unbroken.
From what I have been watching in the news it is GAZA that has been hit hard. And it the people of GAZA that have been injured, displaced and dying because of Israel’s cruel and discriminatory action. And this is from CNN which apparently is taking Israel’s side. It is absolutely iressponsible, curelity and ourtagous to kill innocent lives of children and women and then to make an argument saying Hamas has started attacking first. So far only 2 Israel’s has been killed. Think about it with out being with neither one’s side. Almost 300 lives has been lost and hundreds has been injured and are suffering the consequnces of such unjustice. This is simply ourtagous, brutal and should come to an end.
Samaia,
Take it any way you want it, but since the end of the HUDNA (cease fire agreement), Hamas fired rockets on Israel civilians. He did not kill people, because we have here sirens and shelters. so Israel, after warning the Hamas and the world for several weeks, like any other normal country, shoot back.
The problem is that Hamas put his military bases, and rocket arsenal inside civil population. and when Israel destroyed his military bases and and rockets arsens, 250 milltery people and 50 civilans were killed (according to the UN.
The blame should be put, by any normal human being on the behavior of the Hamas, alone.
Any Human-right activist, if he has a brain, and not only a hart, should have condemn Hamas, and not Israel.