Mawasi Lynch Victim: Israeli Soldier Abused Me Before Settlers
GAZA, July 5, 2005
“I went near the house to see what was happening, but a soldier attacked me and led me to the corner. He beat me with his rifle butt and made way for the settlers’ children to stone me and beat me up. Then I saw a settler approaching me and bashing my head with a stone,” Al Majaydeh reminisced.
He added that he fell unconscious once he was hit in his head, while settlers continued lynching him to death, but only a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth saved him from their clutches.
Al-Majaydeh: Soldier beat me first
The clashes between the settlers, Palestinians and soldiers erupted last Wednesday after anti-disengagement activists spray-painted the words “Mohammad is a pig” on a building they had taken over in the Muwassi – a Palestinian enclave within the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
Haiti: The Gaza Strip of the Caribbean
by Shirley Pate
Throughout their occupation of Haiti, UN forces have maintained that the primary objective is to bring peace to Haiti so that elections can be held in the fall. The problem is that a lot of lousy things are done in the name of “peace.” Not unlike the lousy things that are done in the name of “democracy.” The same tactics used by the IDF to kill, maim, and wreck the lives of Palestinians were employed by UN forces against Haitians in Cite Soleil on July 6: aerial attacks with gunfire aimed into densely populated residential areas, use of massive numbers of troops, destruction of homes by firebombs and grenades, indiscriminant tank fire into alley ways and homes and not so indiscriminant assassination of residents as they were shot in the back trying to flee the horror.
When the UN forces first arrived in Haiti, their activities consisted largely of securing the perimeter of poor neighborhoods for the Haitian National Police while conducted raids that, more often than not, ended in summary executions of residents. But, it was not long before UN forces began joint operations with the HNP and then graduated to doing raids on their own. This is all to say that the UN’s deadly assaults on poor and largely Aristide-supporting neighborhoods are not new. Yet, the UN raid on July 6, was in another category altogether. The arrogance, massive nature and sheer audacity of the operation signaled that, for UN forces, killing Haitians had become sport. Khan Younis is one of the most god-forsaken refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. In the late afternoon when the children are out to play, the Israeli soldiers taunt them, through a loud speaker, with disgusting sexual innuendo about their mothers. The children, incensed, climb the highest hill, perch themselves atop like sitting ducks at the carnival, and engage in their own mini intifada of rocks. The Israelis, having lured the children to the designated target area, play a game of maiming them by calling out the body part they are aiming at before they shoot – sort of like calling out your shot in billiards. Sometimes, a head shot is called for and the kids are executed on the spot.