Talmudic Judaics urge Israeli army to cover up war crimes

Editor's Note: please study this brief report closely and ruminate on its implications for a true understanding of Orthodox Judaism.

While the Talmudic religion in the following article is decoyed as "far-right," frum (Talmudic-observant) Judaism is neither Left nor Right; it adopts its plumage to whichever wing of the predatory bird of political prey is in power, as support for Mrs. Clinton's bid for the U.S. Senate, which was backed by the New Square Talmudic community, demonstrates.

Therefore, it is misdirection to label these Talmudists as "far-right." The Talmud's bigotry is imbibed by Leftist and Rightist Zionists. The Talmud is the most racist and genocidal sacred text in the Western world.

The authors of the pamphlet in question (see below), exhibit the genocidal mentality of the "religious national Zionist settler" movement, which is bankrolled by Protestant fundamentalists in the U.S., together with certain neocon Catholics. These disciples of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein who advocate the "physical abuse" of Palestinians by the Israeli army (IDF) and its Kfir brigade, have also enjoyed strong support from Republicans under the regime of George W. Bush.

The pamphlet is signed, "Students of Rabbi Ginzburg." As documented in this writer's Judaism Discovered, Rabbi (Yitzhak) Ginzburg is an associate of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement, who sponsor his speaking tours at Orthodox Judaic synagogues and community centers throughout the U.S. and Canada, testimony to the cooperative links between the darkest purveyors of murderous Talmudic Zionist racism and Talmudic Hasidics.

And yet none of this bloody horror registers on the alarm bell of the pope, the clergy, the public schools and universities that indoctrinate youth with "Holocaust" studies, or most of the American public. The New York Times continues to sing the praises of Orthodox Hasidic Judaism in picture postcard puff pieces, portraying it as peace-loving and humane, while ignoring its oppressive misogyny and institutionalized racist teachings of murderous contempt for non-Judaics.

Far-rightists urge IDF draftees to cover up abuse of Palestinians

By Anshel Pfeffer | Haaretz | July 29, 2009

Far-right activists distributed fliers to fresh draftees at the Israel Defense Forces induction center in Tel Hashomer on Tuesday (July 28, 2009) urging them not to confide in their commanders and to refrain from cooperating with investigators if they physically abuse Palestinians in the territories.

The notice was intended for enlistees into the Kfir infantry brigade, most of whose operations take place in the (occupied) territories.

It cites the case of First Lieutenant Adam Malul, an officer in the Kfir brigade who is standing trial for beating a Palestinian. In addition, the pamphlet mentions the Kfir brigade commander, Colonel Itai Virov, who was censured for making statements which justified the use of violence against unarmed Palestinians in certain instances.

The brochure stated that these two incidents were cases in which "foreign considerations were involved in the system's chain of command."

The bottom of the notice is signed by "students of Rabbi Ginzburg" - a reference to Yitzhak Ginzburg, who is viewed as a leader of extremist settlers in the West Bank. Ginzburg is the author of "Baruch the Man," a book honoring Baruch Goldstein, the settler who massacred Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

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"Jewish" Committee Demands Censorship of Books and Jailing of Freethinkers

Editor's Note: The main engine of censorship in the western world and the most insidious force behind the criminal prosecution of freethinkers today, is not the Catholic Church or the right wing, it is Zionism and Judaism, ever seeking to protect its most cherished myths from scientific and historiographic scrutiny.

If this blog was authored in Germany, the American 'Jewish' Committee would attempt to have this writer jailed for producing it.

The tyranny is compounded by the extent to which Zionist journalists, editors and media executives in the United States ignore the kosher dictatorship over the mind of man. The Inquisition is alive and well in Germany and other "Jewish" Committee satraps, but you'd never know it if you relied exclusively on NPR and the establishment media for your news.

By the way, AP's description of two revisionist volumes as "far-right" is a lie in the case of at least one author. Books by Germar Rudolf, a former PhD. candidate in chemistry at the Max Planck Institute, are scientific studies without political content. But it is important to the Associated Press to stigmatize such research as "far right." (The term "far Zionist" is not one we have seen from AP).

Jewish group files complaint against German Amazon

Associated Press via Haaretz | July 24, 2009

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Berlin filed a complaint Friday (July 24) asking prosecutors to investigate Amazon.de to see if it has broken German laws against Holocaust denial by selling far-right books.

"We must not allow the laws against denying the Holocaust and hate against minorities in Germany to be eroded through the proliferation of online companies," said AJC-Berlin director Deidre Berger in a statement.

Christine Hoeger, a spokeswoman for Amazon.de, said in an e-mailed response to AP that the company would check the list of books outlined by the AJC once it receives it, to see if the books conflict with Amazon's eligibility requirements. She said, for example, Amazon does not sell books on a federal list of material considered harmful to minors, or books that courts have banned.

"Should Amazon - or any other dealer - decide which books German readers should be able to read?" she wrote in the e-mail.

"Amazon is a dealer, not a regulatory institution, and we are of the opinion that the content of media can and should not be evaluated by private businesses that have no expertise or competence in this area."

Amazon.de is the German arm of Seattle-based online retailer Amazon.com Inc.

The books cited by the AJC, such as The Auschwitz Myth by Wilhelm Staeglich and a volume by convicted Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf, were available for sale on Amazon.de Friday afternoon.

Denial of the Nazi Holocaust is a crime in Germany, punishable by a possible five years in prison.

AJC member Benjamin Schoeler, reached by telephone, said the goal of the complaint, however, is to get Amazon.de to evaluate the books they sell, and pull ones that promote Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism.

Though the books cited by the AJC are all available via second-party sellers through Amazon.de's Marketplace, Schoeler said buyers order and pay for the books through Amazon.de. "We see the firm as responsible for what they are selling," he said.

Hoeger said the company had refused to sell some books that did not fit its content criteria for their views on Nazism, but said they used the highest degree of caution and wanted to ensure that other titles that are worthy of discussion were available.

"We see it as one of our most important tasks as a bookseller to offer our customers access to the widest choice possible," she said. "Therefore our customers will also find titles in the future in which troublesome content regarding the Nazis is found - as they will find an extensive selection of titles in which the Nazis are sharply criticized and condemned."

Schoeler also conceded that even if banned on the German site, the books could be purchased elsewhere - like in the U.S. via Amazon.com - but said nothing could be done to stop that. It is legal to purchase such books in the U.S., but it is not here, he maintained.

The complaint was faxed Friday to prosecutors in Munich, where Amazon-Germany is based.

There was nobody available at the prosecutors' office to comment on the case, but such complaints usually take at least weeks to be evaluated before a decision is made whether to open an investigation.

(Emphasis supplied)

***

Judaic Front Group Secretly Promotes Neo-Nazism

Zionist Front Group Secretly Promotes Neo-Nazism

Nazism has always been a deep-cover black op of Judaism. Hitler was influenced and directed by Kabbalistic-oriented occultists (see this writer's Judaism Discovered and our introduction and bibliography in Eisenmenger's Traditions of the Jews, as well as our investigative report, "The Russian Roots of Nazism" in Revisionist History Newsletter no. 39).

Many of the neo-Nazi groups functioning today are secretly funded by government and Zionist organizations. 

Now we learn that neo-Nazism and its propaganda have been covertly disseminated and encouraged by the powerful "Canadian Human Rights Commission," (CHRC) a Zionist front group effective in silencing Canadian dissidents who are critical of Israeli war crimes, the official World War II liturgy and Canada's immigration policies.

The CHRC was recently documented secretly posing as Neo-Nazi activists and disseminating disgusting propaganda, encouraging hatred of Judaic persons and non-whites.

Only a fearless, Gospel-based, Christ-centered, anti-racist movement that "hates the sin but loves the sinner," and targets ideologies, never people, will have substantial success in exposing the Zionist Fifth column that works behind the scenes sowing disinformation, confusion and violent false flag operations around the world. Beware. Be vigilant!

Neo-Nazi hate, courtesy of the CHRC

By Ezra Levant, National Post (Canada)

July 15, 2009

Last month, a parliamentary committee invited Jennifer Lynch, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to answer questions about her agency's conduct. She refused to attend, sending in her place a deputy who could not answer key questions put to him by MP (Member of Parliament) Russ Hiebert.

Now that Parliament is safely on summer holidays, Lynch has bravely emerged from her bunker -- the CHRC office actually is a bulletproof bunker -- to accuse Hiebert of getting his facts wrong. But it's Lynch's version that's false.

In her July 11 letter to the National Post, Lynch denies that CHRC staff hacked into the Internet account of a private citizen to cover their tracks as they logged into their memberships in neo-Nazi websites. Lynch says both the Privacy Commissioner and the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) "found no evidence to support this allegation."

But that's not true. The Privacy Commissioner's staff did not investigate the hacking -- that is not within their jurisdiction. They only examined "whether the CHRC improperly collected, used, disclosed or retained personal information about the complainant," a different and irrelevant question.

And neither did the RCMP declare that there was "no evidence" to the accusation. They investigated for months. Only when the case led them to a U. S.-based Internet server did they drop their investigation rather than pursue it internationally. That's quite a different thing from exonerating the CHRC.

There was a hearing into the matter, though, at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on March 25, 2008. Alain Monfette, Bell Canada's security officer, testified that the CHRC accessed the Internet using that private citizen's Bell account. Lynch's lawyers sat in embarrassed silence -- they did not rebut Monfette's evidence nor even bother to cross-examine him.

As Nelly Hechme, the hacking victim, told reporters, "I merely wanted some answers and maybe a little justice, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm basically being told to just accept it."

Lynch is pretending that Hechme doesn't even exist. But that pales in comparison to Lynch's statement that CHRC staff did not "post hateful messages on the Internet."

In fact, CHRC employees have been active members of neo-Nazi organizations for years, and have published countless anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black comments online. CHRC employees have admitted to this under oath. On the same day Monfette testified about the hacking, CHRC investigator Dean Steacy testified there were no guidelines about what CHRC staff could do using their online Nazi memberships.

Steacy, for example, used his Nazi membership to write encouraging words to a racist group called B. C. White Pride. He praised them, told them their racist posters were "great" and promised to distribute their literature. Your tax dollars at work.

Other CHRC investigators went further. One praised Nazi leaders ( "I still say [Adrien] Arcand is our man!"); called for Canadian police to discriminate against blacks ( "exactly when will white cops understand that they should stand by THEIR race?!"); and trashed a Jewish youth group ( "if people spent the time building fellow WNs [White Nationalists] up rather than tearing them down we'd be dangerous. Unless your goal is to tear people down in which case go join Hillel or something.")

At least 12 CHRC prosecutions have been tainted by CHRC staff or witnesses using agent provocateur tactics like that. They've even written Nazi shorthand for "Heil Hitler".

Steacy testified that at least seven CHRC staff have access to Nazi membership accounts: Steacy himself, his two personal assistants, investigator Sandy Kozak, lawyer Giacomo Vigna, manager John Chamberlin, and former CHRC investigator and current serial witness and complainant Richard Warman.

By sheer numbers, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has more Nazi members than the tiny Canadian Nazi Party did when it briefly existed in the 1960s.

If real police and prosecutors behaved this way, they would be suspended and any criminal charges tainted by such misconduct would be stayed. Not so at the CHRC, which lacks an internal affairs office or written operational policies. It doesn't even have a code of ethics.

It's become so embarrassing that even the tribunal -- the kangaroo court that rubber-stamps CHRC censorship prosecutions -- has ended its silence. Four months ago, the tribunal examined some of these comments, including one denouncing Jewish politicians as "scum." "I do not see any acceptable reason for [Richard] Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard [neo-Nazi] sites," wrote the tribunal. "It is possible that his activity in this regard could have precipitated further hate messages in response ... The evidence in this case of his participating on Internet sites similar to the Northern Alliance [neo-Nazi] site is both disappointing and disturbing."

It's a scandal that the CHRC joins Nazi groups on the taxpayers' dime. But instead of recognizing the problem and fixing it, Lynch is trying to cover it up. The Prime Minister needs to intervene. It's time Stephen Harper fired everyone with a Nazi membership at the CHRC, along with the woman who is permitting their bigotry.

(Emphasis supplied) Ezra Levant blogs at ezralevant.com

***

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From 2004: Hoffman vs. Raspail on demography

CONTENTS

I. The Fatherland Betrayed by The Republic by Jean Raspail

II. Roots, Not Symptoms:

A Reply to Jean Raspail by Michael Hoffman

***

The Fatherland Betrayed by The Republic

by Jean Raspail

Le Figaro magazine (France), June 17, 2004

http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/

(Translated from the French By Peter Wakefield Sault)

I circled around this topic like a dog handler in the presence of a parcel bomb. It is difficult to approach it directly without having it explode in one's face. There is danger of civilian death. It is, however, the main line of investigation. I hesitated. Especially as in 1973, by publishing "The Camp of The Saints," I had already said it all. I do not have a great deal to add except to say that the deed is done.

Because I am convinced that the fate of France is sealed, because "My house is their house" (Mitterand), inside "Europe whose roots are as much Muslim as Christian" (Chirac), because the situation is moving irreversibly towards the final swing in 2050 which will see French stock amounting to only half the population of the country, the remainder comprising Africans, Moors and Asians of all sorts from the inexhaustible reserve of the Third World, predominantly Islamic, understood to be fundamentalist Jihadists, this dance is only the beginning.

France is not the only concern. All of Europe marches to its death. The warnings are precise - the UN report (which delighted some), incontrovertible work by Jean-Claude Chesnais and Jaques Dupachier, in particular - yet they are systematically buried and the National Institute for Demographic Studies [INED] pushes disinformation.

The almost sepulchral silence of the media, governments and community institutions on the demographic crash of the European Union is one of the more striking phenomena of our time. When there is a birth in my family or in the homes of my friends, I cannot look at this baby of our house without reflecting upon that which prepares itself for him in the negligent governments and what he must confront in his manhood...

Without taking into account that those of French stock, bludgeoned by the throbbing tom-tom of human rights, of "the welcome to the outsider", of the "sharing" dear to our bishops etc., framed by a whole repressive arsenal of laws known as "anti-racist", conditioned from early childhood with cultural and behavioral "crossbreeding", with the requirements of "plural France" and with all the by-products of old Christian charity, will no longer have any other means but to lower their children and to merge without kids into the new mould French "citizen" of 2050.

All the same let us not despair. Without doubt, there will remain what is called in ethnology some isolates, some powerful minorities, perhaps about 15 million French - and not necessarily all of the white race - who will still speak our language more or less unbroken and will insist on remaining impregnated with our culture and our history such as was transmitted to us from generation to generation. It will not be easy for them.

Facing the various "communities" which one sees being formed today on the ruins of integration (or rather on its progressive reversal: it is us whom one integrates into "the other", now, and more the opposite) and which in 2050 will be permanently and without doubt institutionally installed, it will be to some extent - I seek a suitable term - about a community of French continuity. This one will be based on its families, her birth-rate, its endogamy of survival, its schools, its parallel networks of solidarity, perhaps even its geographical areas, its portions of territory, its districts, even its places of safety and, why not, its Christian, and catholic faith with a small chance if this cement still holds.

That will not please. The clash will take place some time or another. Something like the elimination of the Kulaks by suitable legal means. And then?

Then France will no longer be peopled, all confused origins, except by hermit crabs who will live in shells left behind by the representatives of a species gone forever which was called the French species and unannounced, by one does not know which genetic metamorphosis, that which in second half of this century will have been clothed with this name. This process has already started.

There is one second hypothesis that I could not formulate otherwise than privately and which would require that I consulted my lawyer beforehand, it is that the last isolates resist until initiating a kind of reconquest undoubtedly different from the Spanish but taking as its starting point the same reasons. This will be a perilous story to write about. It is not me who will be charged with this, as I have already done my bit. Its author has probably not yet been born, but this book will see the light of day at the appointed time, I am sure...

What I cannot understand and which plunges me into an abyss of sorry perplexity, is why and how so many informed Frenchmen and so many French politicians contribute knowingly, methodically, I don't dare to say cynically, with the certain immolation of France (let us avoid the qualifier of eternal which disgusts the beautiful consciences) on the altar of an aggravated utopian humanism.

I ask myself the same question in connection with all these omnipresent associations of rights to this, rights to that, and all these leagues, these think tanks, these subsidized headquarters, these networks of manipulators insinuated into all the wheels of State (political education, judiciary, parties, trade unions, etc), these innumerable petitioners, these correctly consensual media and all these "clever" folks who day after day and with impunity inoculate their anaesthetic substance into the still healthy body of the French nation.

Even if I can, at a pinch, credit them on the one hand with sincerity, it sometimes saddens me to admit that they are my countrymen. I feel the sting of the renegade word, but there is another explanation: they confuse France with the Republic. "Republican values" have deteriorated ad infinitum, one knows it fully, but never with reference to France. However France is from the outset a country of [common] blood. On the other hand, the Republic, which is only one shape of government, is synonymous for them with ideology, ideology with a capital "I", the major ideology. It seems to me, to some extent, that they betray the first for the second.

Among the flood of references which I accumulate in thick files in support of this assessment, here is one which under the [deceptive] appearance of a good child illuminates the extent of the damage well. It is drawn from a speech by Laurent Fabius to the socialist congress of Dijon, 17th May 2003: "When the Marianne [statue of Liberty] on our town halls takes the beautiful face of a young immigrant Frenchwoman, this day France will have crossed a line while bringing alive fully the values of the Republic..."

Since we are [left] with quotations, here are two, to conclude: "No amount of atomic bombs will be able to dam up the tidal wave comprising human beings in their millions which one day will leave the southernmost and poor part of the world, to erupt the relatively open spaces of the wealthy northern hemisphere, in search of survival." (President Boumediene, March 1974.)

And this one, drawn from the 20th chapter of 'Revelations': "The thousand years is expired. Those are what departs the nations which are at the four corners of the Earth and which are equal in number to the sand of the sea. They will go forth in expedition across the surface the Earth, they will surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city."

Roots, Not Symptoms: A Reply to Jean Raspail

by Michael Hoffman

Copyright © 2004 by revisionisthistory.org

How strange--not one word from Jean Raspail about who is really at fault for the invasion of France--the French themselves! Who were (and are) too hedonistic and selfish to average three or more French children per couple. Into this vacuum quite naturally (i.e. by the iron law of biology) rush those people who have enough sense to reproduce themselves (the Muslims) and who need lebensraum. Raspail deals, as do so many others, with symptoms and scapegoating: "those politicians" and that "sepulchral media" who vex "the still healthy body of the French nation."

I assure Monsieur Raspail that the French people are desperately sick, not healthy, and that the "sepulchre" was built by the French themselves and the bones one finds there are of the aborted children who would have obstructed the multiple vacations, the second house, the third car. This sepulchre is also peopled by the spectre of millions of French children who were never conceived, for the same reasons.

Those white nations which do not have sufficient spark of life to reproduce themselves are indeed doomed, but this is no "conspiracy." These are the inevitable wages of the Masonic, "secular Republic" that is France. The same is true for Italy, where the Catholic Church has auto-destructed and Germany, Spain, Sweden...all secular, all playboys and playgirls.

One cannot merely pay lip service to Christianity, tossing a bone to a mere nostalgia. The French, or for that matter the American intellectuals, even on the Right, dare not look to see what culture and religion prevailed when Charles Martel marched to Poitiers in 732, when Isabella reconquered Granada in 1492, when Pius V was victorious at Lepanto in 1571 and Nicholas, Graf von Salm in Vienna in 1529 and John Sobieski in that same city in 1683.

The West today, ruled ideologically by the spirits of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Albert Pike, Sigmund Freud and Menachem Mendel Schneerson cannot conquer, except from the cockpit of a glorified airborne video game attached to missiles.

Who is to blame for the demise of Europe-- the healthy, fertile Muslims or the anemic, self-extinguishing denizens of the House of Usher? If lebensraum was a virtue for the Germans is it a vice for the Muslims? The most primitive pagan in the jungle knows what the "advanced" Europeans do not know, that sex without children is death!

And the current "Crusade"? It was only forty years ago that Jacqueline Kennedy wore a black veil at the funeral of her assassinated husband, and Christian women throughout Europe and America--sophisticated women of the middle and upper classes--wore head coverings in church. Now crusader Neocons are on a campaign to "free Muslim women" from standards of propriety and modesty not so different--at least in spirit-- from what prevailed universally in the West as recently as four decades ago.

France has banned girls from wearing head scarves in its public schools, lest the girls appear too modest, and this in a France where rectums and genitals are on display on every street-corner kiosk, yet there is a morbid fear of the least display of chastity.

The Muslims rightly despise us because we have lost all self-respect; because we are not the people of the West any longer, but the people of the alchemical crucible of constant, ruinous transvaluation.

The West cannot turn its back on God and retain any territory anywhere, and when I say God I am not speaking of the god of the rabbis.

Roots, not symptoms, Monsieur Raspail.

***

Israeli war criminal: General Yoav Gallant

Editor's Note: Mass murderer Yoav Gallant is not being sought as a war crime suspect anywhere in the West and he is hardly even known outside of Palestine.

Man responsible for Israel's cruelest wars only attracts praise

By Gideon Levy | Haaretz | July 16, 2009

A huge weight has been lifted off our chests: Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant will stay in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Although Gallant was not named deputy chief of staff, Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly declared that he views him as a candidate to succeed Gabi Ashkenazi as chief of staff. The military correspondents, those who only spoke glowingly of Gallant during the entire appointments commotion, put their minds at ease. And the brainwashed public, which shows no interest in learning what our soldiers did in Gaza, were also put at ease.

The fact that this feted general is directly responsible for two brutal military operations in Gaza which have no equal - Summer Rains and Cast Lead - did not even warrant a mention in the public forum. While more and more suspicions and well-founded allegations over the IDF's behavior in Gaza, especially during Operation Cast Lead (December 2008 - January, 2009), surface all over the world, here a general of this "war" - really a brutal assault on a helpless population - only attracts praise.

Suspected war crimes? Violations of High Court rulings? No mention of those at all. Gallant has always been in favor of large operations in Gaza. He kept pushing for more strikes and more destruction, as much as possible. In the summer of 2006, his wish was granted and he took command of Operation Summer Rains. The result was 394 Palestinian deaths and a thousand wounded. The lone power station in Gaza was bombed along with the university and a number of bridges. A grand success.

At the time, nobody wondered why all this killing was necessary and who benefited from all this destruction. What was the reason for bombing a power station, except for meting out collective punishment, which has long proven to not only be a criminal act, but also a foolish one? Gallant emerged from "Summer Rains" unblemished.

He had the same success following Cast Lead. A war with almost no Israeli deaths is always a success, without commissions of inquiry and with no questions asked. To hell with the horrible price exacted from the other side, including the hundreds of women and children killed and the thousands of homes destroyed. Gallant commanded the most cruel war in Israel's history. In order to understand what happened in Gaza, it is worthwhile to read the report issued Wednesday (July 15) by the (army) reservist group "Breaking the Silence." The group recorded 54 testimonials of 30 combat troops that should come to represent the dark period in history that was this war, a war over which a blacker-than-black flag flies.

From the "neighbor procedure" of using people as human shields, which is a gross violation of a High Court ruling, a public scandal in itself; to the spirit of words uttered by a commander who is quoted by a number of the soldiers as saying that was preferable to harm bystanders than to hesitate in hurting the enemy. "If you are not sure, shoot," one of the soldiers quoted him as saying. The soldier added, "The firepower was insane ... In urban warfare, everyone is an enemy. There is no difference between innocent civilians and enemies."

It is for this that Gallant is responsible. He orchestrated a war in which there were almost no instances of combat, all the while inculcating an awful attitude within the IDF, one that says it is permissible for us to do anything: to drop thousands of bombs, shells, and missiles in addition to phosphorus shells and flechettes; to kill whole families and to sow destruction on a horrific scale while considering it all a success.

"They didn't set a goal for us," one of the combat soldiers said in the report, which recounts the destruction the soldiers wreaked just for its own sake. "I don't know what the objective of the war was."

Our Southern Command chief is a hero against the weak. While he rose through the ranks at sea, where his resumé is full of top-secret missions, his stint on land is nothing to write home about. He always makes sure to be photographed wearing dark sunglasses, his personal weapon while "on duty." In the meantime, the deep baritone voices of the military correspondents on television shower praise upon him in light of his grand achievements. But the truth is that this is a joke, a sad military joke that is drenched in blood. It was one of the most advanced arsenals of weapons in the world against those who launch empty pipes; hundreds of tons of smart and stupid bombs against factories and schools; precision-guided unmanned aerial vehicles that killed children; the tiny few of our dead, many from friendly fire incidents. In summation: military heroism on the cheap.

All these factors will not hold up Gallant's promotion. They will be credited to him as sparkling successes on his way to the top. And it is only the soldier who gave the 54th testimonial in the "Breaking the Silence" report who understood what the general who is a candidate for chief of staff did not: "I didn't leave there with a feeling of heroism or great sacrifice. Just plain disgusted, bored and stupid. I did not feel I did anything significant. I convinced myself, 'Okay, I was in Gaza, I can tell my buddies.'" Like him, Galant also told his buddies, and the buddies bought it with giddiness and blind admiration.

***

War Criminals who are professors at Tel Aviv University

Asa Kasher: Academic Ethics, Censorship, and Assassination – Philosopher of pragmatics and ethics, Kasher is an Israel Prize winner (2000) and the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair In Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice at Tel Aviv University (TAU).

Kasher combines his work at TAU with instruction at the National Security College and has written the ethical codes for scores of state sectors, including the Police, the National Bank, and for Knesset Members. Notably, he is the author of the military's ethical code: The Spirit of the IDF: Values and Basic Norms (1994). Kasher has developed the rationale and justification for military doctrines including the use of anti-personnel munitions, assassinations, and torture.

From TAU he co-headed the army team which composed Israel's revisionist "Doctrine of Just War" defining "terrorism" as all armed activity 'not on behalf of any state', something 'always morally unjustified'. Kasher thereby produced Israel's "Doctrine of the Just War of Fighting Terror" where 'from the point of view of Military Ethics, a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist', and must be met with overwhelming force. This includes torture, assassination ("preventive killing"), and pre-emptive violence. Kasher is a member of the Military Censorship Committee, has served on the National Security Council, and is Head of the Inter-University Committee on Academic Ethics.

Yitzhak Ben-Israel: Weapons Design & Deployment: Former head of the Israeli air force's R&D program and the military's overall R&D Directorate (MAFAT), and is a double Israel Prize winner for security contributions.

As Chair of the Defense Industry Lobby Ben-Israel is one of the most powerful figures in Israel's arms industry – a status reflected in his additional post as Chair of the Israel-India Parliamentary Friendship League (India is Israel's largest weapons client). A TAU professor since 2002, Ben-Israel is the key figure responsible for bringing together each of the academic, industrial, political, and military components of Israel's arms industry, with TAU providing both venue and resources.

Since mid-2006, Ben-Israel has been linked with the live "testing" of so-called "DIME" (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) munitions (delivered by unmanned aerial vehicles) in Gaza; and since early 2007, Ben-Israel has been advocating a major ground and air assault on the Gaza Strip...With the commencement of the Gaza campaign, Ben-Israel threw his weight behind (Defense Minister) Barak, praising his leadership in the offensive and encouraging greater force: 'If we hit them hard enough, they might come to the conclusion that they shouldn't fire any more rockets.'

Following the ceasefire, Ben-Israel heralded the advent of a 'a milestone that would be etched in the historic memory of the Middle East for many years' –foremost amongst the gains of the conflict he perceived was the shift in the army's approach to targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure: 'the recent operation showed that even mosques [...] are no longer an obstacle in the face of Israel using its military power' he wrote, arguing that the civilian losses meant that for Palestinians 'the path of resistance has failed, big time.'

Commissioning War Crimes: TAU and the Doctrine of Disproportionality

War Crimes and TAU's INSS Dept. - In the wake of the Lebanon War, in which Israel introduced various new weapons technologies as well as doctrinal innovations, high-ranking officers and senior planners set about developing a strategy to remedy the perceived damage done to Israel's 'balance of deterrence.' The "Dahiya Doctrine", named for the Shi'ite residential quarter of Beirut reduced to rubble in the war, was first articulated regarding Lebanese civilian populations.

In late 2008, Giora Eiland, ex-chair of the National Security Council and now INSS senior research fellow, produced a strategic document at TAU's INSS in which he argued the 'impossibility of defeating Hizbullah' meant Israeli forces were henceforth to plan for a war 'between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah.'

This, Eiland argued, would 'lead to the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population,' ends he justified by arguing 'the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah's behavior more than anything else.'Acknowledging that such a doctrine 'may damage Israel's legitimacy, incur international pressure, and even prompt a clear directive from the United States to stop the destruction', Eiland concluded by advocating 'high level professional military dialogue between Israel and [...] military leaders in these countries' in order to foster 'the requisite support.'

Eiland's TAU colleague and head of the INSS's "IDF Force Structure" unit, Gabriel Siboni, expanded on the new doctrine in an October 2008 INSS Insight bulletin entitled "Disproportionate Force:

"Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War."In it, he made explicit the need for the military to target civilian over and above military targets: The army, he wrote, must 'refrain from the cat and mouse games of searching for Qassam rocket launchers [... and] not be expected to stop the rocket and missile fire against the Israeli home front through attacks on the launchers themselves.' Instead, Israel was to:

'[...] act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher.'

Siboni's paper identified Syria and Lebanon, while noting that the 'approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well'; he concluded by positing the army's 'primary goal' as now being to 'leave the enemy floundering in expensive, long term processes of reconstruction.'

This doctrine of disproportionality and civilian infrastructure targeting developed at TAU by its preeminent strategic planners and military officers is clearly in extreme violation of international law, not least Articles 52 and 54 of Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions which govern the protection of civilian infrastructure in war. The principle of distinction between civilian and military objects and populations in war is a foundational precept of International Humanitarian Law and failure to abide by this principle constitutes one of the most serious war crimes. To do so as part of an explicitly premeditated strategy is rare in its wilful contempt for international law.

Less than two months after the TAU scholars' documents were made public Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip began. At its end, three weeks later, preliminary assessments confirmed an overwhelming civilian death toll, with 895 of more than 1300 dead classified as civilian and an estimated 43% of all fatalities made up of women and children. Following their preliminary investigations, Amnesty International wrote to outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on January 16th 2009, asking her to impress upon her Israeli counterpart the need for Israel to allow investigations of war crimes. The letter, apparently written without knowledge of the doctrinal debates covered above, observed 'there is growing evidence that Israel has failed to adhere to the principles of distinction and proportionality in its military action'; Amnesty noted that '[e]vidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity is mounting daily'.

The UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine stressed the apparent premeditative character of these crimes when he described the carnage in Gaza as raising 'the spectre of systematic war crimes.' The civilian focus of Israel's offensive was indeed neither accidental nor mysterious; it was – in good part – designed and enabled by generals, scholars, scientists working out of Tel Aviv University.

The same week, Tel Aviv University announced the appointment of the army's Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law.

Sharvit-Baruch is the army's principal international law counsel and was responsible for green-lighting the decision to target civilian infrastructure and for a 'relaxing of the rules of engagement' regarding civilians on the part of the army's International Law Division. Col Pnina Sharvit-Baruch provided legal cover for war crimes during the Gaza invasion.

Col. Sharvit-Baruch and her staff manipulated standard interpretations of international law to expand the scope of army operations to include civilian targets. Haim Ganz has called Col. Sharvit-Baruch's approach to international law "devious jurisprudence that permits mass killing". According to the Israeli media, she personally approved the first wave of air strikes in Gaza that targeted a police graduation ceremony, killing at least 40 cadets. Although police forces have civilian status in international law, and are therefore protected from military reprisal, Col Sharvit-Baruch is reported to have revised her opinion of the attack's legality during the many months of planning.

In addition, she is said to have "relaxed" the rules of engagement, approved widespread house demolitions and the uprooting of farmland, and sanctioned the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus over the densely populated enclave.

She also offered legal justification for the targeting of buildings in which civilians were known to be located as long as they had been warned first to leave. Schools, mosques and a university were among the many civilian buildings shelled by the Israeli army during the 22-day operation.

Her decisions have been widely criticized by international human rights organisations as well as by international law experts in Israel. Professor Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, stated regarding the strike against the police cadets: "If you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates [the cadets] from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted [into the Israeli army] in two years."

Col Sharvit-Baruch's predecessor, Daniel Reisner, noted that her staff had stretched the accepted meanings of international law. The army's operating principle, he added, was: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it."

Orna Ben-Naftali, the dean of law at the College of Management in Rishon Letzion, said the army's conduct in Gaza had made international law "bankrupt". "A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head."

Most academic staff in Israel supported Col. Sharvit-Baruch's appointment, said Daphna Golan, a program director at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University.

Adi Ophir, Jan. 12, 2009: "...In order to save one Jewish child, one is ready to sacrifice the lives of 100,000 of theirs. The number may vary of course; 100,000 is the figure I heard this morning with exactly this formulation from a colleague, a distinguished professor of Hebrew and Yiddish literature (at Tel Aviv University). He was speaking in public, very conscious of and proud in his position...."

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The effect of Israeli war crimes in Gaza six months later

Editor's note: Here is more testimony of the ongoing Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians, war crimes by the so-called "Jewish state," which most of the rulers, intelligentsia, media, and human rights mavens of the West deny. Consequently, they are all holocaust deniers. The Zionists claim that Pope Pius XII was "silent" about the Nazi "Holocaust" and this is a major issue in the western media confronting the Catholic Church. But how much of an issue is the silence regarding the Israeli holocaust -- a holocaust which continues to this day? Are you silent about --and therefore complicit in-- Israeli mass murder of the Palestinian people?

online slideshow of Israeli war crimes in Gaza

A life in Ruins

In the immediate aftermath of Israel's bloody three-week war with Hamas in January, Peter Beaumont travelled to Gaza and met the Palestinians devasted by the death of their families and the destruction of their neighborhoods. Six months later he returns to find they are still waiting - to rebuild both their homes and their lives

by Peter Beaumont • The Observer, July 5, 2009

Shifa Salman, in the ruins of her family home, which was destroyed by the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip in January 2009. Photographs: Antonio Olmos

The force of the explosion that destroyed Shifa Salman's house in the northern Gaza district of Jabal al-Rayas folded floor into floor as easily as pastry. It pushed pillars through concrete, reconfiguring her home into a bristling dome. The tail-fin of one of the Israeli bombs responsible still sits on top of the rubble, innocuous as a child's discarded toy. These days, pigeons and sparrows nest in the cave-like space carved out by the detonation inside the ruins where mattresses and bags of flour are stored, the latter stencilled with the initials of the World Food Programme. Sleek, aggressive cockerels patrol the floor, flying at intruders.
Six months after Israel's war against Gaza, Shifa, a 20-year-old student, sleeps with her family behind the fallen house. A trodden path leads through the rubble to a row of cramped, ramshackle shelters open to the elements and roofed with hessian sacks. They are identical to the cattle pens that stand beside them.

On closer examination I can see that the frames have been constructed out of cast-off sections of wood and metal lashed together. What walls that exist are fashioned out of old pallets and branches woven into crude wicker. Or more sacking, staked into the soil to make rudimentary windbreaks.

Shifa's family are Bedouin. Until recently they farmed this land close to the barrier, in an area once used for missile launches against the Jewish communities on the far side. This was one of Gaza's limited areas of agricultural production in a densely crowded urban area, home to 1.4 million people. Because of the missiles, this neighbourhood of farms and little factories was treated to a scorched earth policy.

Inside Shifa's own tiny, dirt-floored "compound" a fire pit has been scooped out of the earth and filled with twigs. On it sits the blackened pan in which Shifa and her mother make stews of molokhiya - spinach-like greens - with chicken, garlic and onions. "This is my kitchen," says Shifa shyly, in English. A piece of broken board is propped on two drums to function as table. Here a jam jar sits, holding a pestle and a solitary sharp knife.

I first came to this house in January, in the immediate aftermath of Israel's war against Gaza, visiting the Salman family almost every day. The family were sleeping in the ruins to shelter from the rain, surrounded by the stinking bodies of their sheep, killed during the assault. Then, Shifa complained that the frightened younger children were kept awake at night by the sound of packs of dogs scavenging among the carrion outside.

A slight and pretty woman with dark brows, Shifa is walking along a road where the ruined houses of her neighbourhood stand on each side like stone-piled graves in a desert. It is 7am and she is on her way to meet the bus that will take her to university. She is wearing a black abaya, the head-to-ankle veil that is the uniform of the university, and carrying a pile of her books. Both books and the veil were donated by the college after Shifa's family lost most of what it owned. "There used to be a factory here," says Shifa, pointing at a collapsed, blue-painted metal structure. I am reminded of the last time I saw this building. A herd of cows lay slaughtered in the field outside.

"My life used to be so good when we had a home. Now it is awful." She wipes a tear away, trying to hide what she is doing. "This street used to be full of cars," Shifa explains. "It was easy to get to university. Now I have to walk for half an hour before I can get a ride. There used to be houses here, but everyone fled after the F-16s attacked. After the tanks attacked. Only a few of us have stayed."

So few, in fact, I quickly learn their names. There is the Khader family, who have built a complex cloth-walled shelter on top of the ruins of one of their houses, a structure that has expanded over the months as new rooms have been added. One day I find the men of the family crawling into a dark hole beneath the house to chip out tiles from what was once their ground floor to sell for food, disturbing a nest of pinkly squirming newborn mice.

There is the owner of the dairy parlor, Mohammed al-Fayoun, whose cattle were killed. He has set up business again beneath the bent and twisted rafters of his metal roof, where he sits daily in a plastic chair. He complains his customers are still too scared to visit him this close to the border with Israel.

While her fathers and uncles work the land, Shifa is representative of a new generation - the first from her family to go to university. She says she wants to be a geography teacher and has an exam today. "I used to have a television in my room," she says, passing the house of Nabil Nasser Hassan, once one of her neighbours, whose demolished home is now surrounded by a stockade of corrugated metal sheeting to keep out looters hunting for pipes and wire to recycle. "At the beginning, people came to give us coupons and blankets. But no one has come to see us for a long time. No one has spoken to us about rebuilding our home. I'm scared living where we live. All of the family is, especially my sister Safa when she hears the [Israeli] jets."

It is not only Shifa's daily walk at 7am through the ruins to reach the Islamic University that is a mark of her changed life. Before the destruction visited by the bombs, tanks and bulldozers, Shifa says, she would sit up after dark, reading her books in her own room, which was decorated with posters of animals. Now when the light fades, she must cease her studying. "I used to spend all night working. I'm good," she says with confidence. "But now I'm struggling. And I know if I can succeed, I can make life better for my family."

Israel's Operation Cast Lead began on 27 December 2008. By the time of its conclusion on 18 January, with the declaration by both Israel and Hamas - which governs Gaza - of their own unilateral ceasefires, more than 1,300 Palestinians had been killed, many of them civilians. They had perished under an Israeli rain of bombs, bullets, missiles and artillery fire, including white phosphorous munitions.

While Israel insisted the war was designed to bring a halt to the launching of home-made missiles out of the Gaza Strip, its targets suggested wider aims, not least the dismantling of Palestinian institutions. Police stations, ministries, schools and hospitals were hit. Orange groves and tunnel tents for growing strawberries and vegetables were uprooted. And thousands of houses were damaged.

On my return, I scour Gaza for evidence that anything has changed for the better in the months since the war ended. But houses and other buildings destroyed during the conflict remain as hollowed-out and dusty monuments to violence. In places, some owners have experimented with repairing buildings with an adobe made of mud and straw baked in the sun. But it is a very temporary solution.

In the office of Dr Ibrahim Radwan, the man appointed by the Hamas government to record the damage done in Israel's three-week war, I jot down the numbers that describe what happened. Some 3,800 homes and businesses badly damaged in one way or another - although he admits this includes some damaged in previous Israeli attacks. In addition, 80 government buildings were hit. Radwan has his own categories to describe the degrees of destruction, but after a week driving around Gaza, the damage conforms to its own types. The big metal walls of the workshops on Salahadeen Road, where the heaviest fighting took place, now leak light through hundreds of bullet perforations; other walls are splashed with the shrapnel of missiles fired from drones; blocks of flats hit by artillery fire show scorched holes. And across the north of the Gaza Strip stand the weird igloos of the bomb-flattened houses.

There are changes that I do register in the six months since the war ended. The bodies of dead animals have been removed and cleared away; the ruins have been sifted for human remains. It has expunged the odour of decay that was once tangy with the chemical flavour of explosives and spent phosphorous. The tangled remnants of an orange grove I drove past every day, tipped over and torn by military bull-dozers, has disappeared, razed for firewood.

And without concrete and steel, aluminium and glass, without tiles for roofs and cladding for stairs and bathrooms - all prevented from entering Gaza by Israel's continuing economic blockade - no rebuilding has begun. For those who suffered most, the war continues.

I run into Shifa's father by chance one day at Gaza City's flea market, in the Yarmouk district. He tells me he comes once every fortnight to look through stalls selling broken and unwanted things in the hope of finding something that might alleviate their circumstances. He shows me the contents of his white plastic shopping bag: two plastic joints for connecting water pipes. Bought in the hope that he might one day have a use for them.

It is not only the physical symptoms that persist as a reminder of what happened in Gaza. Sana al-Ar's family live in a light but sparsely furnished fifth-floor flat in a tower block in Shujaiya. There are photographs on the wall of 16-year-old Sana's younger brothers, Rakan and Ibrahim, and her father Mohammed - all killed during Israel's attack. Missing are pictures of her 18-year-old sister, Fida, and her brother's wife, Iman, who also perished. In a room decorated with gold curtains and floor cushions, Malak, the youngest surviving child, plays on the carpet, in a T-shirt printed with the slogan "Daddy's Little Tiger". But Daddy is gone.

Holocaust survivor Sana al-Ar

On 3 January, Israeli tanks attacked the area where Sana and her family lived. Their house - like Shifa's - was located close to the border, not far from a pretty, gold-domed mosque and a graveyard. Shifa Salman's family managed to flee. But Sana's family - her mother says - were blown to "pieces of meat". It is left to Sana's grandmother to recount the story, while the girl and her mother listen. She tells how a rocket hit the house, injuring Fida with shrapnel. She quickly bled to death. The father told the family to flee in their donkey cart, but a second missile exploded, fatally injuring him, too. I listen as Sana's grandmother describes how in the smoke from the explosion the weeping mother found her son Ibrahim "missing half his face". The family gathered what they could of their dead in a blanket and took them to a neighbour's house, where they were trapped, sitting with the bodies, for five days.

I had heard about Sana in January, from Dr Fadel Abu Hein at Gaza City's Community Training Center and Crisis Management. Fadel was sending teams of social workers and therapists to run workshops for the most badly affected children, even working with them as they sat on blankets in the rubble. As we talked about the types of trauma suffered by children during the conflict, he mentioned a girl who had seen most of her family die and had spent days trapped with their bodies. I had met her the following day, at the house of an uncle she was staying with. And I had tried to talk to Sana then. But sitting on a bed in a cold, bare basement room, she had been withdrawn behind a wall of grief, managing to speak barely a handful of words. Instead, it was the other relatives who had crowded the room who supplied answers to my questions. The only thing I learned was that she liked to paint, and so I had bought her pens and paper, since all of hers were lost.

Sitting in her new flat, Sana fetches the only drawing she says she has done since the killing of her brothers - in charcoal grey, against a shaded blue background, are the names of the boys. A day later, I learn from Nahid Hanrarah, the social worker who has worked most closely with Sana, that she has done other paintings, paintings of her family drenched in blood.

"Painting their names is an improvement," Nahid says. He adds that Sana is much improved, but when I ask her questions, she answers in fragmented sentences: "Things aren't too much better. Everything is still... I feel things are separate. The anger and the sadness. The one who could make us happy [Sana's father] is the one we've lost."

There are long pauses when Sana looks away. "People have tried to help me. There have been people at school ... " Sana mentions her irritation at those among her friends who insist on trying to talk to her about what happened on 3 January and in the days that followed. "I feel I can't concentrate at school like I used to," Sana explains. "I hate it because people at school keep asking how my family died. They think if I talk then it will help me. That is why I went to see Nahid. Because it makes me so upset.

I don't want to talk about it." Sana is also scared to go to the bathroom alone and, she tells me, she suffers with nightmares. I learn from talking to Nahid that Sana was suicidal when she was first referred to him. "She didn't want to live. She had no hope," he explains quietly.

It has not only been at school where Sana has been confronted by what happened. At home, too, she has had to deal with constant reminders of her loss from her mother, Laila, whose grief is even more debilitating.

"I think," Nahid suggests, "that Sana is the only one in the immediate family who really understands what happened to them, and who can help the family. Her mother can't do anything, really. So the responsibility has fallen on Sana. Sana is growing [as a person] from the knowledge of all the things that she passed through, which is helping her to overcome. But it is a process that is far from complete. They were a family of nine, now only four are left."

There are moments when you see an echo of how this family must once have been. Before the Israeli soldiers came. Before the war. Malak crawls on to her mother's knee with her doll and squeals loudly: "Bite her! Bite her!" Suddenly I realise that Sana is smiling at her mother. It is the first time in five visits to this family that I have seen her smile. And when she does, another girl is briefly visible.

And Sana is smiling again when I next see her. We are talking about ordinary things other than the horror that befell her; about the films she likes to watch - Bollywood and action films, X-Men - about her new computer, and the internet connection she is waiting for with excitement: "Before, we didn't have a computer. I've had it two weeks." Then the pain is in the room again. "The first thing I'm going to do is put pictures on it of my father and my sister and my brothers."

She seems sad, but not unreachable. I ask Sana if she will be going to the beach in the holidays, but it is her mother who answers: "We used to go to the sea, all of us together. We don't go any more ... " There are ghosts in the room that Laila cannot ignore. And because Laila cannot ignore them, Sana is also bound to observe them, and to mirror her mother's grief.

Laila says she has nothing left, and I remind her of Sana and Malak. She looks up at the pictures above her. "Rakan was the most beautiful," she sobs, as Sana begins to cry, quietly. "He was only four and a half. He was a very naughty boy. People kept saying to his father: 'This boy will be someone.'" When his sister went to carry him, I did not recognise him. He had come to pieces."

In Dr Fadel's office, decorated with pictures of dead Palestinian fighters, he tries to assess what has changed and what has not. Some people have begun to rebuild their lives, while others living in tents, or displaced, or living - like Shifa's family - among the ruins remain largely in the circumstances they were in when the war ended. "The biggest obstacle that we are facing is among those people whose problems have not ended - who live in a continuing war atmosphere. Nothing is happening about the destroyed homes, because we live in a continuing state of economic siege. So there are people still living in tents, or in the rubble."

Visiting his office one day I am confronted with evidence of how those dealing with damage from the conflict can progress. Hanging on one wall are pictures drawn by trauma-affected children, before-and-after images whose real subject is the effects of exposure to violence, and how it can be mediated. The "before" pictures show soldiers with guns, tanks and jets, images of destruction and death. The "after" pictures show the ordinary stuff of childhood: flying kites and images of family and friends and flowers, produced after lengthy work with the centre's social workers.

I mistakenly believe that they come from the recent conflict. I am informed that they pre-date the war - describing the experience of Israeli military incursions and air strikes. When I ask to see drawings produced after the January war I am led to another series of sketches that depict - so far - only fighting. And examining them, I am reminded of another picture I had seen a few days before in Khan Younis, in Gaza's south, in a child's bedroom.

I had first encountered Rewa'a Omer, aged 30, in the Nasser Hospital, standing between the beds of her two children, her daughter Ola and her son Yahya. It was a few days after the ceasefire and Rewa'a was clutching a bloody piece of clothing. An hour or so before, 10-year-old Ola, and Yahya, nine, had been standing close to their school gates with a group of other primary school children, waiting for a lift to take them home. As they stood chatting, an Israeli drone had fired a missile at a passing Hamas fighter on a motorbike three metres from the children. The blast had driven shrapnel into the legs of the children and a sliver into Yahya's eye.

Until I see the poster in Ola's bedroom, I think she has recovered better than her brother. It depicts a baby's smiling face. But someone has drawn trickles of blood coming from the nose and mouth, and added small scarlet cuts. Rewa'a tells me it was Ola who had disfigured it. I notice, too, that she has shaded around the baby's eyes so that the skin appears yellow. I think of how her brother's face was in his hospital bed, bruised under the bandages and stained with something like iodine.

Rewa'a's family are what passes for middle class in Gaza. Her husband was a police captain in the Palestinian National Authority before Hamas's assumption of full executive power in 2007, at the end of the most violent period of the so-called "internal fighting" between Fatah and Hamas. He does not work now but still receives his salary. Well-educated, Rewa'a speaks excellent English.

The family asks me for a copy of the photograph I took on the day the children were injured, and Rewa'a shows me an image saved on her phone, given to her by a neighbour, that shows her son being carried from the scene in someone's arms, his head limp and bloody. "It was on the television. And I was not there to protect them."

There are still some marks on her daughter's legs, like dark bruises. "My son was injured worse," she says. "He is still shy about wearing shorts because of the scarring. There was shrapnel in his eye that we did not know about. He had to go to Egypt to be operated on. They have recovered physically," Rewa'a adds, "but emotionally my daughter is more damaged than my son. That first time that she saw her brother bleeding has stuck with her. I think it will always be inside. She talks about what happened and her grades at school have suffered. It was a month and a half before she was ready to go back to school."

Rewa'a says that Ola is still frightened to go to the bus stop, and "the children are always fighting now. I worry all the time about them, waiting for them to come home from school."

Ola wants to tell the story of what happened to her. "The car was late. There was a sound and I woke up and everything was black. Things were broken and bleeding. Then people came to rescue my brother. Someone took my hand. I said: 'My brother! My brother!'" I ask Ola what she would like most. She does not have to think about it: "I would like to live somewhere safe."

Yahya wants to talk about Egypt, where he went to have the shrapnel taken from his eye.

"I went to the zoo and saw the pyramids!"

"I feel that there is nowhere safe in Gaza any more," adds Rewa'a. "I used to think before that ... you know, we are ordinary people. This [the violence] had nothing to do with me."

When I visit Rewa'a again we climb up on to the flat roof of their building. Fading home-made kites are propped in tangles of string against the balustrade. Rewa'a seems oppressed by the thought of what has happened. "I wish that they could have a normal childhood. I didn't grow up in Gaza, I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I came back to Gaza when I was 16. I had a beautiful childhood. I want the same for them. Not this.

"Every time the summer holidays come round I wish there was something that they could do. Hobbies that could help them grow. But there is nothing here like that." I remind her of something that Yahya told me when I asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied that he wanted to be a fighter. "Yahya says that. But it is just an idea in his head."

As we are leaving I ask Rewa'a if she has any hope that things might change in Gaza. She seems sad. "Nothing ever changes. There is no rebuilding. Everything becomes worse.

Nothing here ever changes for the better."

Child survivors of the Israeli Holocaust in Gaza

The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict by Peter Beaumont will be published in the U.S. on Sept. 1, 2009.

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