Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008

“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.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

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If Gaza falls . . .
Sara Roy, The London Review of Books, 1 January 2009

Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.

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27 Dec 08 AlJazeeraEnglish

Gaza Airstrikes ‘Leave 205 Dead’

Israeli Attacks in Gaza: SKY Gallery

Israel launches strikes in Gaza: RussiaToday

Palestine Solidarity Project writes:

For the past three hours the Israeli Military has been conducting a massive attack on the Gaza Strip.  Beginning without warning, an unprecedented series of attacks on police stations throughout the entire strip have left at least 140 dead and more than 200 wounded, according to emergency health officials.

This attack comes after more than a year of strangulating sanctions on the Strip, which has left hospitals without basic materials or medicines to treat the mass-casualties.

THESE ARE ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS.  Over 50 of the dead were reportedly killed when the Gaza security headquarters in Gaza City was hit with a missile.  Images coming out of Gaza City and other areas show dozens of men in police uniforms, dead or horribly injured, lying in the street as other civilians rush to bring the wounded to local hospitals.

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