Tag: Gaza

Guardian: Words and deeds in the Middle East

Joshua Rowe | The Guardian

The leaders of the western world are wringing their hands in despair at the sight of the horrors inflicted on Gaza (Gaza crisis, 16 January). The UN general secretary, the French president and others are holding intensive discussions with some of the leaders of the Middle East in an attempt to put an end to the carnage in Gaza. Word, words, words.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinian civilians get killed, thousands are bleeding to death, tens of thousands are uprooted and wandering in vain in search of some shelter to protect them. The Israeli army bombs hospitals and UNRWA relief centres, and, defying international convention, it uses white phosphorus bombs against civilians. “What else can we do?” these leaders keep asking. Well, here is what you can do: move from words to deeds. Only immediate, decisive and strict sanctions against the state of Israel and its limitless aggression will make it realise that there’s a limit.

We, as Israeli citizens, raise our voices to call on EU leaders: use sanctions against Israel’s brutal policies and join the active protests of Bolivia and Venezuela. We appeal to the citizens of Europe: please attend to the Palestinian Human Rights Organisation’s call, supported by more than 540 Israeli citizens : boycott Israeli goods and Israeli institutions; follow resolutions such as those made by the cities of Athens, Birmingham and Cambridge (US). This is the only road left. Help us all, please!

Signatories (only partial list appeared in the Guardian)

Gish Amit, Adv. Abeer Baker,Iris Bar, Yoram Bar Haim, Prof. Daphna Carmeli (Haifa University), Prof. Yoram Carmeli (Haifa University), Keren Dotan, Ronit Dovrat, Dr. Judith Druks (City University, London), Rona Even, Dr. Ovadia Ezra (Tel Aviv University), Prof. Rachel Giora (Tel Aviv University), Neta Golan, Tamar GoldschmidtAdar Grayevsky, Dalia Hager, Haim Hanegbi, Rosamine Hayeem, Ala Hlehel, Aya Kaniuk, Lana Khaskia, Prof. Vered Kraus (Haifa University), Yael Lerer, Dr. Aim Deuel Luski (Tel Aviv University), Eilat Maoz, Moshe Machover, Prof. Charles Manekin (University of Maryland), Dr. Ruchama Marton, Dr. Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University), Rela Mazali, Prof. Yitzhak Y. Melamed (John Hopkins University), Dorothy Naor, Dr. David Nir, Annie Ohayon, Noam Paiola, Michal Peer, Sigal Perelman, Amit Perelson, Jonathan Pollak, Prof. Yehuda Shenhav (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Kobi Snitz (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology), Ruth Tenne, Adv. Lea Tsemel, Michael Varshavsky, Oded Wolkstein, Sergio Yahni

Israel bombs University Teachers Association in Gaza – Boycott Now!

Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural & Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

January 18, 2009

Occupied Palestine – PACBI learned today from its Steering Committee member, Dr. Haidar Eid, that the headquarters of the University Teachers Association-Palestine, in Gaza, was bombed by the Israeli occupation forces during their indiscriminate, willful destruction campaign in the Tal el-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on Friday.

This latest wanton attack on an academic organization is far from being an exception. It is only the latest episode in what Oxford University academic Karma Nabulsi has termed “scholasticide,”[1] or Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of Palestinian education centers. In its current war on Gaza alone, Israel has bombed the ministry of education, the Islamic University of Gaza, and tens of schools, including at least 4 UNRWA schools, after having largely destroyed the infrastructure of teaching throughout the year and a half of its illegal and criminal siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip.

The UTA headquarters is a detached two-story building that is clearly marked with the Association’s name. The bombed structure, which now stands without a roof, has sustained heavy structural damage and may be in danger of collapsing any time.

It is worth noting that the UTA, together with other Gaza-based civil society organizations, called on January 15 [2] for a wide campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel in response to its well documented, premeditated war crimes in Gaza. The Israeli bombing of UTA’s headquarters occurred on the exact following day, January 16.

In line with the statements issued by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC, [3] and the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, PFUUPE, [4] PACBI condemns in the strongest possible terms Israel’s long record of war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza, during the siege as well as in this war of aggression. Israel’s wanton assaults have caused thousands of fatalities and injuries and threatened tens of thousands more, particularly children, with chronic diseases, stunted growth, severe malnutrition and heightened risk of mortality.

PACBI strongly believes that Israel’s targeting of civilian homes, schools, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, social and economic institutions, government buildings, law and order organs, UN humanitarian facilities and shelters, as well as higher education institutions should not go unpunished. Israel’s sense of unassailable impunity is a guaranteed recipe for repetition of its crimes and nourishing its genocidal tendencies, as noted by UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Prof. Richard Falk.

Specifically, and as a minimal response to these Israeli atrocities and grave violations of international law and the most basic human rights, PACBI calls on academics, academic unions, intellectuals, cultural workers and institutions the world over to intensify the boycott of all Israeli academic and cultural institutions due to their complicity in the Israeli occupation and other forms of oppression against the Palestinian people. Putting an end to Israel’s impunity and holding it accountable is the moral responsibility of every conscientious human being today.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/10/gaza-schools
[2] http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=877_0_1_0_M.
[3] http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/235
[4] http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=856_0_1_0_C

Evidence of white phosphorus use on Gazan civilians

The Guardian published videos recorded by ISM volunteers in Gaza as proof of Israeli use of white phosphorus in civilian areas.

Richard Norton-Taylor | The Guardian

Dr. Ahmed Almi of al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis examines patients wounded by white phosphorous.

Video showing injuries consistent with the use of white phosphorus shells has been filmed inside hospitals treating Palestinian wounded in Gaza City.

Contact with the shell remnants causes severe burns, sometimes burning the skin to the bone, consistent with descriptions by Ahmed Almi, an Egyptian doctor at the al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

Almi said the entire body of one victim was burned within an hour. It was the first time he had seen the effects of what he called a “chemical weapon”.

The Israeli military has denied using white phosphorus during the assault on Gaza, but aid agencies say they have no doubt it has been used.

“It is an absolute certainty,” said Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. He had seen Israeli artillery fire white phosphorus shells at Gaza City, Garlasco said.

The shells burst in the air, billowing white smoke before dropping the phosphorus shell.

Garlasco said each shell contains more than 100 incendiary rounds, which ignite and pump out smoke for about 10 minutes.

Severe respiratory problems can result in anyone exposed to the smoke and burning chemical particles that rain down over an area the size of a football pitch.

According to the International Solidarity Movement, many patients at the hospital near Khan Younis were suffering from serious breathing difficulties after inhaling smoke.

Human Rights Watch compares the use of white phosphorus shells over Gaza to the impact of cluster munitions, which scatter “bomblets” over a wide area. Children may kick and play with a lump of phosphorus, stirring up the embers and producing more fire and smoke.

The use of white phosphorus as a weapon – as opposed to its use as an obscurant and infrared blocking smoke screen – is banned by the UN’s third convention on conventional weapons, which covers the use of incendiary devices. Though Israel is not a signatory to the convention, its military manuals reflect the convention’s restrictions on using white phosphorus.

Israel initially claimed that it was not using white phosphorus. It later explained that shells being loaded for a howitzer, identified from photographs as phosphorus rounds, were empty “quiet” shells used for target marking. However, images of exploding shells and showering burning fragments are now acknowledged by independent observers as having been phosphorus.

At the centre of the controversy is the way white phosphorus air burst shells have been used in heavily built-up urban areas, with an overwhelmingly civilian population.

The M825A1 rounds, which are the kind identified as being fired by Israeli forces, are made primarily for use as a smokescreen in a way that limits their effect as an incendiary weapon, experts say.

Neil Gibson, a technical adviser to Jane’s Missiles and Rockets magazine, said the shells did not produce high-velocity burning fragments like conventional white phosphorus weapons once did.

Instead, he said, they produced a “series of large slower burning wedges which fall from the sky”. The wedges would then ignite spontaneously in the air and fall to the ground, burning for five or 10 minutes, he said.

Richard Norton-Taylor | The Guardian

Gazan residents speak of their traumatic experiences: the Israeli forces use of white phosphorous, the bulldozing of homes with residents still inside and the shooting of civilians by Israeli snipers.

Jan 18: At the Samouni house

Sharon Lock | ISM Volunteer

The planes are still buzzing overhead, but there have been no explosions near me today. However this supposed ceasefire from Israeli’s side since 2am does not seem to have extended to Beit Hanoun, where there was shelling this morning and F16s were attacking.

You can see 4 video clips I took during the attacks on the Al Quds hospital and local people, including my medic mates rescuing Jasmeen after she’d seen her sister and dad shot.

This morning the Al Quds Red Crescent headed out to Zaytoun, to the area we had a few approved evacuations and far more refused ones. Local people had begun excavating the rubble of the Sammouni house. You remember we heard some of their story before. I helped correct the English of some of the testimonies from the survivors that the Red Crescent was collecting. One of the more vivid images was one of the trapped and injured children describing the only food being tomatoes covered in the blood of his family, and having to sleep on their corpses amidst the rubble for 3 days. My nurse friend R at the hospital said treating one of the children that they got out to Al Quds was the first time she couldn’t help but cry. He was begging her for food and water which she had to deny him until his injuries were assessed.

Anyway, today we arrived in the devastated Zaytoun area, where medics, friends and family began to remove the bodies of the Samounis from a hole in the roof of their flattened home. During the hour we were there, they brought up a body every ten minutes, 7 total, and I believe locals brought up at least two more after the Red Cross told us to take those we had to Al Shifa and withdraw, as a further army incursion threatened. A relative was clutching a list of 25 names of the dead.

Meanwhile, THANK YOU Brighton and friends for the direct action on EDO weapons manufacturers – see a series of short clips on Youtube and Wikio.

ITT/EDO MBM arms factory in Moulescombe, Brighton which supplies Israel has been wrecked by activists campaigning against war. Swords into waste skips at least. Prior to entering the factory, the activists made a video (attached) in which they explained their reasons for the action. One commented: “Israel are committing a gross crime now in Gaza. Israel have killed hundreds of children…

Waiting

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Today was the first day that medics and journalists were able to reach areas occupied by the invading Israeli troops. Palestinians by this

Graffiti
Graffiti
point, by weeks ago, were desperate for any semblance of a normal life, though normality here is far from normality anywhere else. They were desperate to return to their homes, survey the damage and if possible repair it, find displaced family members, or their corpses, as well as neighbours, friends.

Not everyone returned home to stay; many could be seen returning to where their homes were, or had stood, to retrieve anything worthwhile. Donkey carts and taxis were piled with blankets, clothes, cooking pots, cupboards, pieces of furniture, people…

I went straight to Ezbat Abed Rabbo, the area east of Jabaliya which had been cut off since day 1 of the ground invasion, over 2 weeks ago. The Red Crescent had been receiving calls to evacuate the injured and dead since day 1, and were prevented, at gunpoint, by gunfire, from reaching those needing evacuation. We heard the cries of those who managed to escape, their stories of being locked in homes at gunpoint, losing family members to point-blank assassinations or house-bombings.

And although the area was crammed with troubled, panicked, residents, many of them injured, without water, without food, with homes occupied by Israeli soldiers, I worried particularly about one man: the father of my friends.

We had no idea if he was alive, though we knew he’d stayed in the area. My panic was great, daily, I felt like I had said goodbye to a grandfather.

I bee-lined for his house, though had a hard time doing it since the streets and the land were turned upside-down, torn apart, filled with carcasses of houses and animals.

He was there, miraculously, noble in his traditional gown, long beard, hat. But he looked shattered.

“He cried for us,” his son told me. “He didn’t know if we were alive or dead.” So the confusion and desperation was both ways. Utterly cut off from one another, we were but mirror examples of families and loved ones all over the Gaza Strip. And we were luckier, because we are all alive. Except his wife, my friend’s mother, who was killed on the very first day of attacks. But now everything is relative and we cling desperately to the positive, for its all there is to cling to.

I have so much to tell, so many photos that don’t do justice to the suffering, heart-break, trauma, psychological damage, and despondency of people here. So many smells ingrained in my memory, that when sniffed will bring images of dead children, burned houses, chemical fires.

Slamming doors will forever remind of the missiles slamming the earth, the life below.

And just visiting the few areas I saw today, so many people, so desperate to tell their stories, tell of their anguish. For some the anguish is immense: pulverized homes, killed family members, corpses unretrieved, sanctimony and all that is sacred defiled. For others, the suffering is in the tragedy of shattered dreams, of every personal item destroyed or lost. It all matters, and they were all desperate to tell me. And I to listen. But quickly their words became a blur, a swirl of agony. My basic Arabic began to fail me as I wrote their ailments, their losses.

I will go back, to take careful inventory of the destruction, physical and emotional. Many of those who returned to where their homes were have to return to overcrowded schools with memories of slaughters even within school premises.

While the bombs may have stopped, for now, the terror remains. F-16s still flew low, terrifyingly low, today, so loud, so unpredictable. No one here has any reason to believe any words Israeli leaders proclaim. Only reason to believe in the worst. But out of necessity, we must hope for the best.