World needs to see the victims and carnage in Gaza

By RICHARD FALK, Houston Chronicle, 29 December 2008

We are witnessing one of Israel’s most brutal attacks on Gaza in memory. On Saturday, Israeli warplanes screamed across the sea in seemingly endless waves, setting fire to buildings and wreaking devastation in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. By the end of the first day, more than 200 people had been killed and 700 wounded, many of them civilians. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Frantic parents searched for their children after they fled school when a bomb struck the building next door. Morgues overflowed with bodies, many of them still bleeding.

On Monday morning, Israeli planes bombed a mosque. The house next to the mosque collapsed and inside, five sisters aged 2 to 10 years old were killed.

Two weeks prior to this carnage, I arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel in my capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories. I planned to visit Gaza, meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and tour the West Bank. Israeli officials had been given an advance itinerary for my trip.

I was, however, taken from the passport line by Israeli authorities. I was driven a mile from the airport, placed in a filthy detention facility, which smelled of urine, for 20 hours and deported.

Was my expulsion from Israel part of a calculated move designed to remove as many Western observers as possible from the carnage that was to come? Was it a result of my past condemnations of the Israeli siege of Gaza?

Either way, it is an example of Israel’s systematic attempts to hide what is happening in Gaza from outside view and to intimidate those of us who condemn Israeli crimes.

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More information: “Israeli Gunboats Came out of the Darkness and Rammed us Three Times“

Date : 12-30-2008

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus – despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

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KAILUA, HI - DECEMBER 29: (AFP OUT) U.S. President-elect Barack Obama warms up on the driving range to play golf with friends December 29, 2008 in Kailua, Hawaii. Obama and his family have been in his native Hawaii since December 20 for the Christmas holiday. (Photo by Joaquin Siopack-Pool/Getty Images)

Where are the outraged “progressives” – shopping for the inaugural balls?

PNN – 29 December 2008

Israeli forces took the lives of at least 30 children in Gaza since air attacks began on Saturday. A statement issued by the Global Movement for the Defense of Children says its initial reports indicate that another 150 children are injured.

The first children hit en masse were during struck during the beginning of the attacks when they were leaving school. Dozens of school children were raced to area hospitals in Gaza City on Saturday. Among the children killed are the sisters in Jabaliya yesterday and the eight year old boy today in Khan Younis.

Five Palestinian sisters killed in Israeli raid on Jabalia

Gaza – Ma’an – No sooner had a Gazan mother run away with her baby boy and two other baby girls seeking shelter did an Israeli airstrike kill her five daughters before she could return and transfer them, as well.

The girls were identified by Palestinian medical sources as Ayah, Eiman, Ikram, Tahrir and Samar Ba’lousha. They were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit their family home near the Imad Aqil Mosque in Jabalia, which was subsequently destroyed.

How does Mr. Obama sleep at night? As Gazans are massacred with US weaponry for the third day, Obama, his wife and daughters are in Hawaii enjoying the surf, preparing for an indecently lavish inaugural ceremony that would not be occurring had the change poseur not methodically lied his way into office.

Obama has no public comment on the relentless atrocities committed by his Israeli partners in crime but no doubt he’s in constant contact with the monsters, reassuring them his populist capital is at their service no matter how many men, women and children are slaughtered.

Some say it is the barbarians’ intent to put Obama on notice who’s in charge despite Israeli commandeering of US-Israeli relations since the last US president to challenge its terms, John Kennedy, was assassinated.

This is occurring to shake any remnant of holiday spirit loose from Americans enjoying it and to remind them the upcoming inauguration will change nothing. Obama doesn’t need a reminder. What he needs is a soul and a conscience.