Israelis slaughter four young Palestinian boys playing on Gaza Beach

Mohammed Baker (aged 9), Ahed Baker (aged 10), Zakaria Baker (aged 10), and Mohammed Baker (aged 11), all from the same extended family. The victims were scrawny fishermen’s kids, running around on the beach, playing in the waves.

Four Young Boys Killed Playing on Gaza Beach

By Anne Barnard And Tyler Hicks 

New York Times | July 16, 2014

GAZA CITY — Four young Palestinian boys were killed Wednesday when two explosions hit a jetty and beach where they were playing at the fishing port of Gaza City, an area that had been considered relatively safe from the intense Israeli bombing campaign of the past nine days.

The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged that it had struck the area. “Based on preliminary results, the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives,” the I.D.F. said in a statement. “The reported civilian casualties from this strike are a tragic outcome.”

The four boys were cousins in an extended family of fishermen who kept their boats at the port.

The Israeli military has been hitting Gaza with bombs and missiles for more than a week, aiming to stop Hamas, the group that controls the territory, and other militants from firing rockets and other munitions into Israel. The first explosion left a small shack burning on the jetty. Several boys could be seen fleeing along the beach. About 30 seconds later came the second blast, and when the dust cleared, three figures lay motionless on the sand. One had most of a leg blown off, his body charred; a few yards away lay a smaller one with curly hair. The two explosions were about 30 seconds apart.

Men came running and scooped up three bodies. A fourth was found in the charred ruins of the shack on the jetty. A grown man, wounded, called for help from inside an outdoor beach cafe, and he too was carried away.

Israel’s military says it has taken extensive precautions to avoid killing civilians. But it has acknowledged, according to Israel Radio, that about half the people in Gaza killed so far were “not involved in terrorism.” Human Rights Watch issued a statement on Wednesday decrying the civilian casualties and demanding that Israel “end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives.”

A running count kept by United Nations officials shows that of the more than 200 Palestinians who have been killed so far, about 75 percent have been civilians, including more than three dozen children. One Israeli has been killed.

Hamas and other militant groups have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel since simmering hostilities erupted into military confrontation on July 8. Most of the Gaza rockets have fallen in open ground in Israel or were destroyed by Israel’s Iron Dome interception system. For its part, Israel has struck houses, offices and farmland in the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, missiles fired from Apache helicopters and shelling from naval gunboats.

The mother of one of the four boys murdered by the Israeli military

An Israeli military spokesman, Motti Almoz, told Israel’s Channel 10 that Israeli forces had fired at “a target near the sea” on Wednesday and that the details were still under review. Alon Ben-David, a senior military affairs journalist with extensive Israeli military sources, said information he had seen indicated that the military had identified the beach shack as belonging to Hamas and fired at it.

Mr. Ben-David speculated that the second blast had been aimed at the children running away, who might have been mistaken for militants. But he added that given the military’s technologically advanced surveillance equipment, “it is a little hard for me to understand this, because the images show that the figures are children.”

The boys were part of the Bakr family, according to relatives who gathered outside the family’s apartment building, wailing and crying. One woman cursed both Israel and Hamas, and another quietly noted that Hamas had killed 10 members of the family in factional infighting.

...Like many Gaza children from large families, the cousins were inseparable and traveled in a pack, playing nearly every day on the beach in normal times, relatives said. But they had been cooped up during nine days of bombardment, said Nasreen al-Bakr, an aunt of Ahed, whose father had beaten him the day before for defying parents’ orders to stay off the beach.

Israeli gunboats patrol just offshore and have periodically fired shells landward. Still, the area near the port has generally been safe, with a row of hotels that are packed with foreign journalists. Some of the journalists gave first aid to another wounded child on the terrace of the Deira Hotel, where the bodies were initially brought.

“What was the fault of these children?” a woman wailed at the family home. “Are they terrorists?”

Ramzi, 8, Mohammad’s brother, said he had tried to tag along when the boys went to catch crabs and check on the family’s boats. But Mohammad apparently considered that the risk of going to the beach, while acceptable for himself, was too much for his little brother.

“He made me go back to the house,” Ramzi said softly. “He was always worried for me.” (End quote from The New York Times)

Relatives of the four Palestinian boys killed by Israelis while playing on the beach in Gaza

"To the best of my understanding, it is not possible to ensure summer vacation, a normal summer for our (Israeli) kids without a ground operation in Gaza.” 

--Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli foreign minister

Whether gallows humor, condescending sarcasm, or moral depravity, Lieberman's statement summarizes Israeli callousness and cynicism: wipe out a people; exterminate.

The idea of forcing a mass evacuation from their homes on threat of death is revisiting the mindset of Naziism.

As a Jew I ask, what has happened to my people, my religion, its ethical teachings, its history of engagement in progressive causes, whether civil rights, labor unionism, antiwar, the nuts-and-bolts of American democracy in action which, absent Jewish participation, is no longer the same, and for the American Jewish community has become a transmogrification of original, indeed primal, humaneness into mass population removal, wholesale bombing of defenseless populations, and now, a center for the disabled?

Lieberman, Netanyahu, etc., what summer vacations do you think Palestinian children look forward to, what "normal summer" when they, their mothers, their fathers are facing death, destruction, loss of home, inadequate medical supplies, blockade?

Except in America, Israel will be known in the world as a Society of Butchers, steeped so deeply in militarism as no longer even able to envision, much less act on, moral choice.

Mass evacuation, so their homes can be destroyed, equals ethnic cleansing.

— Norman Pollack
East Lansing, Michigan

***

When Israeli denial of Palestinian existence becomes genocidal

The early Zionists denied the existence of Palestinians in 1882 when they arrived; it is even more shocking to find out that they deny their existence — beyond sporadic ghettoized communities — in 2013.

By Ilan Pappe

University of Exeter | Electronic Intifada

In a regal interview he gave in April to the Israeli press, on the eve of the state’s  "Independence Day,” Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel, said the following:

“I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people” (Maariv, 14 April 2013).

This fabricated narrative, voiced by Israel’s number one citizen and spokesman, highlights how much the historical narrative is part of the present reality. This presidential impunity sums up the reality on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine. The disturbing fact of life, 65 years on, is not that the figurative head of the so-called Jewish state, and for that matter almost everyone in the newly-elected Israeli government and parliament, subscribe to such views. The worrying and challenging reality is the global immunity given to such impunity.

Peres’ denial of the native Palestinians and his reselling in 2013 of the landless people mythology exposes the cognitive dissonance in which he dwells: he denies the existence of approximately twelve million Palestinian people living in and near to the land to which they belong. History shows that the human consequences are horrific and catastrophic when powerful people, heading powerful outfits such as a modern state, deny the existence of a people who are very much present and have been present for centuries.

This denial was there at the beginning of Zionism and led to the ethnic cleansing in 1948. And it is there today, which may lead to similar disasters in the future — unless stopped immediately.

Cognitive dissonance

The perpetrators of the 1948 ethnic cleansing were the Zionist settlers who came to Palestine before the Second World War, like Polish-born Shimon Peres. They denied the existence of the native people they encountered, who had lived there for hundreds of years, if not more. The Zionists did not possess the power at the time to settle the cognitive dissonance they experienced: their conviction that the land was people-less despite the presence of so many native Palestinians living there.

They almost solved the dissonance when they expelled as many Palestinians as they could in 1948 — and were left with only a minority of Palestinians within "the Jewish state."

But the Zionist greed for territory and ideological conviction that much more of Palestine had to be annexed in order to have a viable Jewish state, led to constant conspiring, and eventually military operations to enlarge the state.

With the creation of “Greater Israel” following the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the dissonance returned. The solution however could not easily be resolved this time by the force of ethnic cleansing. The number of Palestinians in the territories was larger, their assertiveness and liberation movement were forcefully present on the ground, and even the most cynical and traditionally pro-Israeli actors on the international scene recognized their existence.

The dissonance was resolved in a different way. The land without people was any part of the "greater Israel” ("eretz Israel”) which the state was determined to Judaize in the pre-1967 boundaries, or annex from the territories occupied in 1967. The land with people is in the Gaza Strip and some enclaves in the West Bank as well as inside Israel. The myth of the land without people is destined to expand incrementally in the future, causing the number of people to shrink as a direct consequence of this encroachment.

This incremental ethnic cleansing is hard to notice unless one contextualizes it as a historical process. The noble attempt by the more conscientious individuals and groups in the West and inside Israel to focus on the here and now — when it comes to Israeli policies — is doomed to be weakened by the contemporary contextualization, not the historical one.

Comparing Palestine to other places was always a problem. But with the murderous wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, it becomes an even more serious challenge. The latest Israeli closure, political arrest, or murder of a Palestinian youth are horrific crimes, but in the realm of contemporary contextualization, they pale in comparison to nearby or far-away killing fields and areas of colossal atrocities.

Criminal narrative

The comparison is very different when it is viewed historically however, and it is in this context that we should realize the criminality of Peres’ narrative which is as horrific as the occupation — and potentially far worse. For the president of Israel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, there were never Palestinians before he initiated in 1993 the Oslo process — and when he did, they were only the ones living — in a small part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In his discourse, the Israeli president already eliminated most of the Palestinians. If you did not exist when Peres came to Palestine, you definitely do not exist while he is the president in 2013. This elimination is the point where ethnic cleansing becomes genocidal. When you are eliminated from the history books and the discourse of the top Israeli leaders and Nobel laureates, there is always the potential for your physical elimination. Invisible people are much easier to kill.

It happened before. The early Zionists, including the current president, talked about the transfer of the Palestinians long before they actually extruded many of them in 1948. The Israeli vision of a de-Arabized Palestine appeared in every Zionist diary, journal and inner conversation since the beginning of the 20th century. If one talks about nothingness in a place where there is plenty, it can be a case of willful ignorance. But if one talks about nothingness as an undeniable reality, it is only a matter of power and opportunity before the vision becomes reality.

Denial continues
Peres’ interview on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba is chilling not because it condones any violent act against the Palestinians, but because the Palestinians have entirely disappeared from his self-congratulatory admiration for the Zionist achievement in Palestine.

It is bewildering to learn that the early Zionists denied the existence of Palestinians in 1882 when they arrived; it is even more shocking to find out that they deny their existence — beyond sporadic ghettoized communities — in 2013.

In the past, this denial preceded the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians — a crime that only partially succeeded, but for which the perpetrators were never brought to justice. This is probably why the denial continues. But this time, it is not the existence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians which is at stake, but that of almost six million who live inside historic Palestine and another five and half million living outside Palestine.

One would think only a madman could ignore millions and millions of people, many of them under his military or apartheid rule, while he actively and ruthlessly disallows the return of the rest to their homeland. But when the madman receives the best weapons from the US, Nobel Peace Prizes from Oslo and preferential treatment from the European Union, one wonders how seriously we should take the Western references to the leaders of Iran and North Korea as dangerous and lunatic?

Lunacy is associated these days, it seems, with possession of nuclear arms in Korean and Iranian hands. Well, even on that score, Israel, the local madman in the Middle East passes the test. Who knows, maybe in 2014 it would not be the Israeli cognitive dissonance that would be solved, but the Western one: how to reconcile a universal position of human and civil rights with the favored position Israel in general and Shimon Peres in particular receives in the West?

Ilan Pappe is professor of history at the University of Exeter in Britain, and the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 

***

Remembering Israeli holocaust against Palestinians

Human rights activists gather at the Deir Yassin Massacre Memorial on the shore of Seneca Lake in upstate New York

Led by Prof. Dan McGowan, eighteen people gather in New York to bear witness to the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians, as symbolized by the Deir Yassin massacre.

________________________

Israeli Woman Seriously Injured as "Holocaust Siren" Sounds (Thursday, April 19th, 2012)

At 10:00am Thursday morning, a two-minute siren was heard nationwide marking the beginning of "Holocaust" Remembrance Day events. As the siren sounded, a 64-year-old woman on King Shaul Street in Beersheva was struck by a vehicle as she stood at attention during the siren. She was struck by a passing vehicle and seriously injured as she was thrown and pinned between two cars, apparently sustaining a serious head injury. She was transported to the trauma unit of Soroka Hospital in the city. Elsewhere, another woman sustained moderate injuries as she too was struck during the siren on Route 44. She was transported to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.

________________________

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***

The Gaza Massacre by “Israel” (video)

The Gaza Massacre from Sana Kassem on Vimeo.

The agents of Israeli messianism are preaching the overthrow of the Syrian and Iranian governments due to their tyrannies and in Iran’s case, alleged weapons of mass destruction (where have we heard that before?).

The Israeli agents in the media can run this scam because the mass media always “forget” Israeli atrocities, war crimes and massacres.

We don’t forget.

The Israelis used white phosphorus on schools and hospitals in Gaza from December, 2008 to January, 2009. They killed 1400 people, mostly civilians.

Why would one holocaust be worth more than another?

There has been a holocaust against the Palestinians.

It is our duty to remember and not let it happen again.

***

Amnesty International: Israeli war crimes in Gaza Dec. 08-Jan. 09

Amnesty International Confirms Israeli War Crimes

On 27 December, as 2008 drew to a close, Israeli jets launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians live, crowded into one of the most densely populated areas of the planet. In the following three weeks, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children, and some 5,000 were wounded. 

Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians.

Israel said it launched the attacks in order to stop Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups firing rockets at towns and villages in southern Israel. In 2008, seven Israeli civilians were killed by these mostly homemade, indiscriminate rockets or in other attacks by Palestinians from Gaza; three Israeli civilians were killed during the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.



The sudden conflict followed an 18-month period in which the Israeli army had subjected the inhabitants of Gaza to an unremitting blockade, preventing virtually all movement of people and goods in and out of the territory and stoking a growing humanitarian catastrophe. The blockade throttled almost all economic life and led growing numbers of Palestinians to become dependent on international food aid; even terminally ill patients were prevented from leaving to obtain medical care that could not be provided by Gaza’s resource- and medicine-starved hospitals.

(Emphasis supplied)

For Further Research

Amnesty International: Israelis Killed Hundreds of Children in Lebanon

Amnesty International Documents Israeli War Crimes in Lebanon in 2006

Israelis Massacre Children in Qana

Let us not forget the business-as-usual element. The Israelis have slaughtered thousands of innocent Arab civilians in Lebanon and the occupied territories but nothing substantive is done to prevent future massacres and war crimes. We in the West continue our leisure and recreational activities while fellow humans in Palestine are in desperate circumstances. The Palestinians are carted off to concentration camps (the Israelis did this through proxy forces in Lebanon at the El Khiam concentration camp which was eventually liberated by Hizbollah). Palestinians are killed; they are starving for food and medicine, and we're going about pursuing our lovely, lavish lifestyles. If these were "Jews" who were dying, starving, denied medicine and medical care, the most demanding moral question of the Age would become, "What did you do while the 'Jews' suffered and died in 2009?!" The Palestinian gentiles, who are less than human, as Orthodox Judaism has always taught, do not merit any such pressing, haunting concerns. The burning question of the Age is sixty-five years old and still being forced down our throats, "What did ____ [fill in the blank: the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII, President Franklin Roosevelt, the Red Cross etc.] FAIL TO DO during The Holocaust?" 

***

Despite war crimes, the West always supports "Israel"

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy provides insight into the kind of inevitable, blank-check support Israeli war criminals receive from the "Holocaust" humanism hawkers in Europe and the United States. The "Holocaust" or "Shoah" is the means by which Israeli war crimes are absolved, thereby guaranteeing more atrocities against Palestinian civilians and more occupation and destruction of their infrastructure. The Talmudic moral superiority of Israelis places them beyond the normal penalties and punishments to which Nazi, Serb and Darfur war criminals are subjected. 

As the religion of Orthodox Judaism secretly teaches, Judaics are a special class, possessed of special immunities based on their alleged sacred ethnicity. The recent pontificating against Bishop Richard Williamson - the moral high ground, the posturing, the pompous denunciations in the name of highest human values - can be seen for what it really is: the gaseous discharge of slavish supporters of Ku Klux Judaism, i.e. the unwritten doctrine that upholds the Israeli "right" to kill Palestinians with impunity based on Judaic racial prestige and past victimization of Judaics. The "Holocaust" is a subsidiary of Ku Klux Judaism.

It's more than merely insane, it's downright criminal, even as Max Hastings in the New York Review of Books, and others like him, continue to wring their hands over the "collective guilt" of the ghostly World War II-era Germans. Meanwhile, the guilt, "collective" or otherwise of the Israelis of our time, who are killing people now, is never addressed by war crimes prosecution, papal anathema or international boycott and divestment. The "Holocaust" and its slogan of "Never Again" is not used to halt the ongoing Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians, but rather, the "Holocaust" cult functions as an accessory of that mass murder.

Conformists cannot comprehend how some of us dare to opt out of Holocaustianity, charging us with moral turpitude and inhuman indifference for rejecting its claims to progressive humanism and exalted ethics. We cannot accept it because we know it to be the mask by which Israeli terrorists shed innocent blood and then emerge from the carnage to take their place on the stage of the "Holocaust" memorial, lecturing the German people and Bishop Williamson on "Never Again."

--Michael Hoffman

Has Anyone asked why the Swedes hate us?

By Gideon Levy | Haaretz | March 13, 2009

Was it a coincidence? The day after Israel's Davis Cup tennis match in Sweden, played in a practically empty arena this week, a brief item appeared on the Haaretz Web site: Historians have discovered that Sweden, former tennis superpower, aided the Nazi war machine by extending credit to German industrial plants.

Coincidence or not, neutral in 1941 or not, 68 years later, public opinion in Sweden is definitely not neutral: Thousands demonstrated there against Israel, which was forced to wield its racket like a leper, with no audience in attendance. Did anyone in Israel even ask why it was considered a pariah in Sweden? No one dared question whether the war in the Gaza Strip was worth the price we're paying now, from Ankara to Malmo. It's enough to recall that the Swedes were always against us. The fact that there were times when they were awash in love for Israel was erased from our consciousness.

The world is always against us, period. But the world is not against us - to the contrary: The truth is that there is no other nation toward which the world is so forgiving, even today. Yes, today. Granted, world public opinion is very critical, sometimes in a way that's unique to Israel, but most governments (except Venezuela and Turkey, but including Egypt and Sweden) are far from being in sync with the public opinion in their countries. The official world continues to be sympathetic to Israel, regardless of its actions. The rise of Hamas, the increase in hatred for Islam in the West, the American hegemony - all this helps in strengthening the support, and we know how to make the very most of it.

What's the difference between national tennis player Andy Ram and national tennis player Thomas Johansson? Johansson and his angry fans saw real pictures from Gaza; Ram and his complacent fans never did. Had Ram seen them, maybe he, too, would demonstrate. But he, like most Israelis, was spared this discomfort, thanks to the gung-ho Israeli press. Can we and Ram really criticize those who were horrified by the pictures from the war? Can we reproach those who dare to protest against the people responsible for those scenes? Are we demanding that the world remain silent once again?

The demonstrators in Stockholm waved banners against violence and racism. It may be okay to ask why they waved them only against us, as there are some other racist and violent places in the world, but it is not okay to question the right to do so in general. Was there really no violence in Gaza, and is there no racism in Israel? If we were Swedes, wouldn't we protest against the pointless killing and destruction wrought by Israel?

But we needn't get too worked up over the fury of public opinion in Sweden; its right-wing government is much less agitated, like all the other European governments. One need only recall the surreal scene at the height of the brutal assault on Gaza, when the heads of the European Union came to Israel and dined with the prime minister in a show of unilateral support for the side wreaking the killing and destruction. They didn't give a thought to visiting Gaza, and uttered nary a word of criticism against Israel. That is official Europe.

Now, as a new government is about to be formed, there is concern that Israel will pay a price in the international arena for its composition. Not to worry: Everything will be just dandy. The world will accept Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's No. 1 statesman, Avigdor Lieberman as its No. 1 diplomat and Moshe Ya'alon as its No. 1 soldier. Lieberman's belligerent statements and the Israel Defense Forces' violent actions in the territories under former chief of staff Ya'alon will not present any obstacles. The world will accept them, too.

Furthermore, the growing concern that the new U.S. administration may be about to change the rules of the game vis-a-vis Israel could also prove to be unfounded: Barack Obama's new America has already pledged to clean up after Israel, as usual. The $900 million the administration has pledged to contribute to rebuild Gaza - without a word of criticism about who caused the destruction there, as if it were a natural disaster and not the work of an unrestrained army, particularly in light of America's current economic state - is a bad sign for anyone hoping for change. Israel wrecked Gaza with U.S. weapons, and America and Europe step in to fix things, not for the first time or for the last.

As the saying goes around here, what was is what will be: Israel will continue to destroy, and America will continue to mop up after it, without a word. A bad sign? Yes, for anyone who thinks that change will only come from the outside or, in other words, only from America.

Note how the upcoming Durban II conference on racism is also being thwarted, because of the fear that it will harshly criticize Israel. Does anyone know of any other country that can win such sweeping international backing? But we always complain: The whole world is against us. It's good for shoring up national unity and for squeezing out more and more support in the world.

The bleak prophecies about a change in America's attitude toward Israel are as old as the country itself. Whenever there's a change of administration in the U.S., anxiety spikes. But from president to president, our strength only grows: When George W. Bush was elected, we were told to be wary of the Texan, a friend of the Arabs and of oil. And what did we get? Never was there a president more "sympathetic to Israel," who gave it such a blank check for all its settlements, targeted assassinations and occupation activities. Obama is scary, too: He's already talking with Iran and with the Taliban. Most likely, fears surrounding this will also prove to be overblown, once he gets around to dealing with Israel.

International interest in Israel is completely disproportionate. Last week, every taxi driver in Bursa, Turkey could recite by heart the names of Lieberman, Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu - and also Avi Mizrahi, the major general who had criticized their country. Every little flutter of coalition action in Israel immediately makes headlines; the world does not focus as much attention on the internal politics of any other country. Only Israel. Whether it's good or bad for the Jews, it's hard to put one's finger on the roots of this phenomenon.

For decades now, the world has been buying the Zionist narrative almost in full. The occupation and settlements have been going on for more than 40 years with no serious impediment. Except for some international grumblings and resolutions no one has any serious intention of implementing, Israel continues to belong to the camp of the "good guys"; the Arabs are the "bad guys." The new atmosphere in the West against Islam is reinforcing this trend and Israel is benefiting yet again. Criticism of the media in the West from Israel's supporters is also quite excessive.

A Swedish journalist was recently laid off from her newspaper because she sided with the Palestinian position in the conflict. It's hard to imagine her editors acting the same way if it were a Jewish reporter who had written in support of Israel.

When I was interviewed once by a reporter from the France 1 channel, a commercial channel, at the doorway of a house in Gaza - where the army had killed the only daughter of a paralyzed mother - and I said that it was these sorts of moments that made me feel ashamed to be an Israeli, my words were not broadcast. The reporter phoned me the next day and told me his editors had decided not to include the quote, for fear of viewer response. When I once published an article in the German paper Die Welt, which is part of the publishing group of Axel Springer, where all writers had to sign a pledge that they would never cast doubt on the State of Israel's right to exist, the editor told me: "If this critical article about the occupation had been written by a German journalist, we would not have published it."

Despite mounting criticism of Israel, Europe is still very cautious. With Europe's Holocaust guilt, its anxiety in the face of Islam and its readiness to blindly follow the United States anywhere, Israel still enjoys preferential status in the world. Very preferential.

But perhaps this will not always be the case. Perhaps the worse our actions become, the harsher the criticism will be. Meanwhile, two pointless wars in two years were not enough to achieve this. Maybe the time will indeed come when the world will get fed up with this aggression and violence of ours, which endanger world peace, and will say at long last: No more occupation, no more wars perpetrated by Israel for which the world has to pay. Perhaps when Israel's dream team of Netanyahu-Lieberman-Ya'alon faces the American dream team of Obama-Clinton, conservatives versus liberals, warmongers versus seekers of negotiation - something will happen then.

In the meantime, let us remember: Israel beat Sweden 3-2 in tennis and justice prevailed once again.

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War crime advocate named law professor in Tel Aviv

Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel 

by Jonathan Cook

The Israeli government has moved quickly to quash protests over the appointment of the army's senior adviser on international law to a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. Col Pnina Sharvit-Baruch is thought to have provided legal cover for war crimes during the recent Gaza offensive. Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch's role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad. 

A Spanish judge began investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza under the country's "universal jurisdiction" laws this month, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is considering a Palestinian group's petition to indict Israeli commanders. Meanwhile, the furore — by highlighting the close ties between the army and Israeli universities — is adding weight to a growing campaign in Europe and the US to impose an academic boycott on Israel, say activists. 

Tel Aviv University's decision to hire Col Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law prompted protests from staff after the local media published details of the military planning for the Gaza offensive. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the operation, the majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured. 

According to critics quoted by the Haaretz newspaper, Col Sharvit-Baruch and her staff manipulated standard interpretations of international law to expand the scope of army operations to include civilian targets. 

Leading the protest is Haim Ganz, a law professor who has called the colonel's approach to international law "devious jurisprudence that permits mass killing". In a letter to the university, Prof Ganz said he was lodging "a moral protest against a state of affairs where somebody who authorized these actions is teaching the law of war". 

Last week Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, threatened to cut government funding for the law faculty should Col Sharvit-Baruch's appointment not proceed. The university's president, Zvi Galil, phoned the cabinet secretary to reassure the government, saying Prof Ganz's opinions were not shared by most staff. Other academics have rallied in support of Col Sharvit-Baruch, accusing her critics of waging a McCarthyite campaign against her. 

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. The professor Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called her interpretation of the rules of war "flexible". Regarding the strike against the police cadets, he said: "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." 

But despite the protest at Tel Aviv University, 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. "I think even Prof Ganz has been frightened into silence by the backlash." The episode, she said, highlighted the intimate relations between the army and universities in Israel, as well as the dependence of the universities on army funding. She noted that there were many special programs designed to favour army and security personnel by putting them on a fast track to degrees. 

"Most of the professors in the country's Middle East departments — the 'experts on Arabs' who shape the perceptions of the next generation — are recruited from the army or the security services," she added. 

Omar Barghouti, a co-ordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said Col Sharvit-Baruch's employment was a further indication of the "organic ties" between Israeli institutions and the army. "This just adds one more soldier to an already very long list of war criminals roaming around freely in Israeli universities, teaching hate, racism and warmongering, with impunity," he said. 

He noted that calls for an academic boycott were growing in the wake of the Gaza offensive. Al-Quds University, with campuses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, severed its contacts with Israeli universities last week. It had been the last Palestinian university to maintain such ties. At the same time, a group of US professors announced that they were campaigning for an academic boycott of Israel — the first time such a call has been heard in the US. Mr Barghouti said an "unprecedented" groundswell of popular opinion was behind new campaigns in countries such as Australia, Spain, Sweden, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Jonathan 

Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net 

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Arrest Olmert, Livni, and Barak for war crimes

Israeli human rights activists: Arrest Olmert, Livni, and Barak for war crimes

By Ofri Ilani
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057351.html

Anonymous self-described Israeli human rights activists have set up an Internet site detailing alleged war crimes committed by senior government officials and Israel Defense Forces officers. No known human rights organization is behind the site, whose founders refuse to give their names.

The site, www.wanted.org.il, includes "arrest orders," complete with pictures and personal details, for Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and his two predecessors, Dan Halutz and Moshe Ya'alon, former air force commander Eliezer Shkedy and others. It also explains how to inform the International Criminal Court in The Hague of when the "suspects" are outside Israel, and hence vulnerable to arrest.

The "arrest order" for Barak, for instance, states: "On December 27, 2008, the suspect ordered an aerial assault on all of Gaza's population centers. The assault included hundreds of sorties by fighter jets that dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on residential areas of Gaza, which led to the deaths of 1,200 people - men, women and children. Some 5,300 people were wounded and hundreds of thousands became refugees. On December 10, 2008, a formal complaint was filed against Ehud Barak to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland ... on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity because of the siege of Gaza."

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Photos of the Israeli holocaust in the Gaza ghetto

Jan. 15, 2009: an Israeli terror-bombing of a United Nations agency in Gaza City destroyed a warehouse full of hundreds of tons of food and medicine and came a week after  40 children were killed when Israeli terrorists bombed a United Nations school.

"Israeli officials, including Mr. Olmert, on Thursday justified the attack on the refugee agency headquarters, saying that Hamas militants had fired at Israeli forces from within the compound. United Nations officials vehemently denied the allegations. Mr. Ging, as he often has during the war, denounced Israel in extended televised interviews, and he questioned why Israeli liaison officers had never mentioned Hamas activity in the area, even though he said they were in constant contact...Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said that in a meeting with its representatives on Thursday, Israeli Army officials 'privately admitted' that the source of the militants' fire was several hundred yards away from the compound. 'With every false allegation, the credibility of those accusing us is incrementally diminished," Mr. Gunness said." Source: NY Times

Israeli terror bomb explodes in Gaza

Young Palestinians view the rubble of their neighborhood in the aftermath of a bombing by Israeli terrorists

Another view of a Palestinian neighborhood destroyed by the Master Race

World Court Claims It Has No Jurisdiction Over Gaza War Crimes

Prosecutor Insists Nothing Can Be Done With Calls for Investigation

by Jason Ditz | January 14, 2009

The International Criminal Court (ICC) declared today that it has no jurisdiction over the actions of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, meaning that the growing number of calls by humanitarian organizations to investigate Israeli activities in the Gaza Strip cannot lead to any action by the Hague-based court.

Israel has been accused of a myriad of activities which the court would classify as war crimes, but as Israel signed but never ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute and the Gaza Strip is not considered a “nation” by the court, the actions of Israeli citizens, or indeed anyone else not a national of a signatory nation, would ostensibly not fall under their jurisdiction.

Yet last year, the ICC did claim jurisdiction over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and filed genocide charges against him even though Sudan, like Israel, was a signatory of the Rome Statute that never ratified it. Bashir argued, more or less successfully so far, against the court having jurisdiction over him, but the fact that he was charged and the court won’t even consider investigating Israel’s actions is bound to lead to accusations of a double standard.

Though Israel has in the past expressed “deep sympathy” for the goals of the court, it objected to the contents of some of the laws, in particular defining “the transfer of parts of the civilian population of an occupying power into occupied territory” as a war crime.

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Gaza gas chamber

...Palestinians interviewed in Gaza on Monday cited another reason for their flight: Israel soldiers, they said, are firing rounds of a noxious substance that burns skin and makes it hard to breathe.

A resident of southwest Gaza City on Monday showed a reporter a piece of metal casing with the identifying number M825A1, which Marc Garlasco, a military analyst with Human Rights Watch, identified as white phosphorus, typically used for signaling, smoke screens and destroying enemy equipment.

In recent years, experts and rights advocates have argued over whether its use to intentionally harm people violates international conventions.

Major (Jacob) Dallal (an Israeli military spokesman) would not say whether Israel was using white phosphorus, but said, “The munitions we use are consistent with international law.”

Still, white phosphorus can cause injury, and a growing number of Gazans report being hurt by it, including in Beit Lahiya, Khan Yunis, and in eastern and southwestern Gaza City. When exposed to air, it ignites, experts say, and if packed into an artillery shell, it can rain down flaming chemicals that cling to anything they touch.

Luay Suboh, 10, from Beit Lahiya, lost his eyesight and some skin on his face Saturday when, his mother said, a fiery substance clung to him as he darted home from a shelter where his family was staying to pick up clothes.

The substance smelled like burned trash, said Ms. Jaawanah, the mother who fled her home in Zeitoun, who had experienced it too...

Source: New York Times, Jan. 13, 2009

***

Targeting the "terrorist infrastructure"

Israel’s extremely well-co-ordinated propaganda effort continues to enjoy an extraordinary level of success in dominating the mainstream media agenda, and is even branching out into new media. Meanwhile, the underlying facts of this conflict remain available - to those who know where, in the labyrinthine back-streets of the Internet, to look - and provide a chilling corrective to the official narrative.

From Heathlander:

We’re hearing a lot about Israel’s supposed assault on “Hamas targets,” or what Israel – together with the more vulgar of its apologists - likes to term “terrorist infrastructure”. Let’s have a quick - and by no means exhaustive - look at what that phrase in fact refers to.

The Guardian (5 January):

“…half of Gaza’s ambulances have already been destroyed…”

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (5 January):

“Israeli army firing on first response units in Gaza; Ambulances unable to reach injured persons nor evacuate them from the scene of attacks to Gaza hospitals. Several ambulances have sustained direct artillery or helicopter fire, medical personnel have been killed, others critically injured. There is no possibility for the rapid evacuation of patients; those whose lives could have been saved are left to bleed to death.”

Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (5 January):

“The PRCS [Palestine Red Crescent Society] reported to PHR-Israel that they have no way of dispatching ambulances without prior coordination since ambulances that set out for evacuation duties at AlAtatra were fired at by apache helicopters. They appealed to PHR-Israel after attempts to coordinate passage via the ICRC have failed since yesterday. AlAwda hospital in Beit Lahiya also asked for our assistance since they must send out ambulances to AlAtatra and Tel Zaatar but cannot dispatch ambulances without being shot at. The hospital is urgently requesting coordination to enable evacuation…

According to our information, between 2 hours and 8-10 hours pass between a request by the ICRC for coordination until the Israeli authorities actually coordinate passage. In some cases teams waited for 24 hours for coordination”. [my emph.]

World Health Organization (5 January):

“- Two shells hit 15 metres from Al Awda hospital’s emergency room. A nurse sustained severe head injuries.

- Three mobile clinics were destroyed 5 January. All vehicles are now unusable.

- One paramedic was killed and two injured en route to evacuating a patient and their ambulance destroyed by munitions. This raises total of medical staff killed since 27 December t0 six and ambulances hit t0 three.

- All Gaza hospitals continue working on back-up generators for the third consecutive day. International Humanitarian Law requires all medical personnel and facilities be protected at all times, even during armed conflict. Attacks on them are grave violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights laws…

Hospitals warn that the generators are close to collapse and they have four more days of fuel, even with services limited t0 the mere essentials. At the Shifa hospital alone, collapse would have immediate consequences for 70 intensive care unit patients including 30 in the neonatal care. Twelve operating rooms would als0 be immediately affected, in addition t0 shutting down the oxygen extractors, refrigerators for blood units and machines for emergency laboratory services. Also, all hospitals would be without heating and lighting.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (4 January):

“IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] also continued to target ambulance teams who attempt to collect the injured. At approximately 10:20am today, an Israeli plane fired a missile at an ambulance in the west of Beit Lahia, destroying it and injuring the three of its crew. Two of them sustained critical wounds.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“[Today, Israeli forces] targeted medical facilities and ambulances. A Civil Defense team was hit as it tried to fight a fire following the bombardment of a clinic…In yet another attack on an ambulance crew, an Israeli aircraft fired a guided missile at an ambulance in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City. The three crewmen were killed as a result.”

Ma’an news (5 January):

“Israeli forces fired in the immediate vicinity of three hospitals in the Gaza Strip on Monday, witnesses and medical personnel told Ma’an. The Al-Wafa Hospital eastern Gaza Strip received warning that they would be shelled, but the hosptial administration and staff refused to evacuate on account of the number of injured people being treated there. Some of the wounded have been injured so severely that they cannot be safely transferred.

At Ash-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes bombed the offices of the Health Committees, about 400 meters from Ash-Shifa hospital. Last week warplanes bombed the Ash-Shifa Mosque, which is part of the medical compound. Israeli forces also shelled the parking lot of Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya in northern Gaza.

Spanish human rights worker at the hospital Alberto Arce reported, “Two consecutive shells just landed in the busy car park 15 meters from the entrance to the emergency room of the Al Awda hospital. The entrance of the emrgency rooml was damaged. At the time of the shelling Ambulances were bringing in the wounded that keep pouring in. Medical teams and facilities are being targeted. Nowhere is safe.” … The international aid agency Oxfam has also reported that personnel working for its affiliates in Gaza have been killed, their ambulances coming under attack.”

Xinhua (4 January):

“Mo’aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that three more Palestinian paramedics were killed by Israeli airstrike on Sunday evening. Hassanein said the three were rescuing the injured inside a house, which was damaged in southern Gaza City, where another airstrike took place, killing the paramedics. Also on Sunday, another Palestinian paramedic was killed while Israeli warplane targeted an ambulance in west Gaza City.”

CBS news (5 January):

“[Norwegian doctor] Mads Gilbert came to Gaza last week to help out, he says, in a hospital [i.e. Al-Shifa hospital] that’s short of everything but misery. “They have no spare parts, they have no monitors. They have not enough blood pressure machines, they don’t have enough trolleys. They lack everything. And on top of this you have this huge disaster…

“More people will die who could have been saved,” he said. “We have to be even harder to select who we can treat and we have to put aside people who could otherwise die. That is the gruesome fact of the situation and we are not talking about the 17th century, we are talking about 2009.”

Amnesty International (29 December):

“The health sector in Gaza lacks equipment, medicine and expertise at the best of times and has been further depleted due to the prolonged Israeli blockade. It is now completely overwhelmed and unable to cope with the large number of casualties”.

IRIN news (31 December):

“One hundred and fifty patients were brought in at once,” said Khaled Abu-Najar, a staff nurse in Al-Shifa’s emergency room. “We lack beds, sterile gloves, sheets, scissors and gauze to treat patients.”

International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (6 January):

“Since its premises were destroyed by Israeli bombs on 30 December the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) – a member of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) – has been unable to provide care to an ever increasing number of traumatised civilians. Another IRCT member centre in Gaza, the Jesoor Organization, is also unable to operate due to the security situation…

From the headquarters of the IRCT in Copenhagen, Denmark, Secretary-General Brita Sydhoff says: “I am absolutely appalled by Israel’s targeting of densely populated urban areas. Attacks on civilian areas by both sides are deplorable, but Israel’s attacks are grossly disproportionate and are disrupting vital health services.”

“I am extremely alarmed that our two member centres in Gaza, the GCMHP and the Jesoor Organization, are unable to operate during a time when their services are desperately needed” she adds and concludes:

“Israel’s reckless attacks and blockade are endangering the lives and health of the entire population of Gaza in blatant breach of international law and fundamental human rights. I urge the government of Israel to cease its offensive and immediately take all necessary measures to ensure the access of Gaza’s civilian population to vital health services and other fundamental humanitarian needs.”

Gisha (4 January):

“Hospitals, including Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital, are struggling to function under 24-hour per day power outages…According to Shifa Hospital, fuel reserves for back-up generators will run out by the end of the week. The generators are insufficient to heat the wards or properly operate oxygen machines. The hospital has had no electricity for the past 48 hours.”

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The health system is overwhelmed, having already been weakened by the 18- month blockade.”

Oxfam (4 January):

“A paramedic working for an Oxfam funded organisation was killed when an Israeli shell struck a civilian ambulance in Gaza today according to international agency Oxfam. The tragedy illustrates the deadly dangers faced by Palestinian civilians and aid worker said the agency.

Another paramedic lost his foot and a driver was injured in the same incident, which occurred when an ambulance belonging to Oxfam’s partner organisation, Union of Health Work Committees, was hit while trying to evacuate an injured person in the Beit Lahiya area, Oxfam said.”

Reuters (5 January):

“Bombs on Monday hit a hospital morgue where a family were mourning a paramedic killed in an airstrike on Sunday. Three people were killed and 17 wounded, medical workers said. “We were sitting in the mourning tent when suddenly they bombed us, we ran to rush the casualties to hospitals but they bombed again,” Abdel-Dayem told Reuters.”

The Mirror (2 January):

“A children’s hospital was also damaged in yesterday’s blitz and a mosque and secondary school destroyed.”

John Ging, head of UNRWA (6 January):

“John Ging, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said he was “shocked” by “the brutality of the injuries” he had seen during a visit to the Shifa hospital in Gaza. He said: “There are very real shortages of medicine. This hospital has not had electricity for four days. If the generators go down, those in intensive care will die. This is a horrific tragedy here, and it is getting worse by the moment.”

Mosques

The Guardian (4 January):

“The shells could not have fallen at a worse time. Yesterday’s afternoon prayers in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya were unusually busy because worshippers had abandoned their evening prayers in the belief that if the Israelis planned to strike, they would do so at night. But as the townspeople left the mosque at dusk, the explosions began, killing at least 12 people, six of whom were children.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (31 December):

“7 mosques have been destroyed”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“…In addition, IOF bombarded al-Khulafa’a al-Rashedin Mosque, al-Salam Mosque…”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (30 December):

“[Israeli forces] have increasingly bombarded civilian facilities, mosques and houses, without paying attention to the lives and safety of Palestinian civilians. Israel claims that such civilian facilities, mosques and houses were related to Hamas, but investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that IOF have used excessive lethal force and that the majority of the facilities that have been targeted are public and private property located in densely populated areas, making Palestinian civilians pay a heavy price from their lives and property.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (29 December):

“[O]n Sunday, 28 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded ‘Emad ‘Aqel Mosque in Block 4 in the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp. The mosque and a neighboring house belonging to Anwar Khalil Ba’lousha were destroyed. The house was destroyed over the family, killing 5 of Ba’lousha’s female children: Jawaher, 4; Dunia, 8; Samar, 12; Ikram, 14; and Tahreer, 17. Ba’lousha, his wife and another three of their children were also wounded. Additionally, 17 civilians in neighboring houses, including 5 children, were wounded.”

Schools

Associated Press (4 January):

“An Israeli airstrike flattened one of Gaza’s best private educational institutions, the American International School, which had been attacked a year ago by Islamic militants. The Israeli Army said the campus on a northern Gaza hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean Sea had been used as a launching base for rockets and was a legitimate target. Most of the school’s buildings, which offered American-style curriculum in English for kindergarten through 12th grade, were destroyed by the strikes, which also killed the night watchman.”

UN OCHA (3 January):

“The American School north of Gaza was directly hit and almost completely destroyed, with one school guard killed. In addition, at least three to five schools were damaged by Israeli shelling of nearby targets.”

Ma’an news (6 January):

“Three Palestinians were killed overnight in an Israeli attack on a United Nations school that was housing people displaced by the violence in Gaza, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday. In a statement circulated on Tuesday, UNRWA said that Israeli forces attacked the Asma Elementary School in Gaza City, which is currently sheltering 400 people who fled their homes in the town of Beit Lahiy. The school was clearly marked as a United Nations installation. The three men, 24-year-old Hussein Mahmoud Abed Al Malek Al Sultan, 19-year-old Abed Samir Ali Al Sultan, and 25-year-old Rawhi Jamal Ramadan Al Sultan, were killed at 11:30 last night. The three men, all from the same family, were killed as they left the school toilet at eleven thirty last night when the school compound took a direct hit.

The director of the UN general commissioner’s office in Gaza Adnan Abu Hasanah said that another UN facility, the Ash-Shouka School in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was also bombarded. At this time there were no details available about the civilians who had taken shelter in the school… Well before the current fighting, UNRWA said it had given to the Israeli authorities the GPS co-ordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including Asma Elementary School.”

Associated Press (6 January):

“Palestinian medical officials say at least three people are dead in an Israeli airstrike near a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip. It is the second deadly Israeli airstrike to hit a UN school in the past few hours. Palestinian health official Said Joudeh says three people were killed and four wounded in the airstrike in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya. He says the school was turned into a shelter for people displaced by an Israeli offensive against the Hamas militant group.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“At approximately, 5:10pm [on 4 January] … the IOF shelled the courtyard of UNRWA’s Mustafa Hafez School in Khan Younis.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (30 Dec):

“…IOF have bombarded the campus of Islamic University, two schools…”

Associated Press (29 December):

“One strike destroyed a five-story building in the women’s wing at Islamic University, one of the most prominent Hamas symbols in Gaza.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“IOF have continued to target civilian facilities, mosques, schools and houses, with disregard to the lives of the Palestinian civilians.”

California Scholars for Academic Freedom (4 January):

“…[A]s educators in California institutions of higher learning, we are especially appalled at the destruction of educational institutions and student casualties.

On 27 December, Human Rights Watch reported that an Israeli air-to-ground missile struck a group of students leaving the Gaza Training College, adjacent to the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in downtown Gaza City, killing eight students and wounding 19 others. Two days later, on 29 December 2008, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, destroying the science laboratory block and destroying or damaging other blocks of buildings, including the library. Although Israel has claimed that the science laboratory facilities were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons,” this claim has been denied by officials of the Islamic University, and according to the New York Times of 1 January 2009 Israel has not produced any evidence for its claim.”

Government buildings and civil policemen

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The estimate on the total number of Hamas leaders’ houses targeted so far is 45.”

Palestinian Center for Human Rights (31 December):

“25 buildings of public buildings have been destroyed, including those of ministries, governorates, municipalities, the Palestinian Legislative Council, and 3 educational institutions… IOF warplanes have destroyed most buildings of the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip, including those of ministries and security services…

The public institutions that have been bombarded are: the compound of ministries, the building of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the building of the cabinet in Gaza City; the buildings of the agricultural control department and the Municipality of Bani Suhaila in Khan Yunis; the buildings of Rafah Municipality and Governorate.”

B’Tselem (31 December):

“Another example [“of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army”] is yesterday’s bombing of the government offices. These offices included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction and Housing…

[A]s the entity effectively governing the Gaza Strip, it [i.e. Hamas] is also responsible for maintaining daily life. As such, it supervises the activity of all civilian frameworks in Gaza – among them the welfare, health, housing, and legal systems. Hamas must also ensure public order and safety by means of a police force. Therefore, even if Hamas is a “hostile entity” whose principle objective is to undermine the existence of the State of Israel, this does not lead to the conclusion that every act it carries out is intended to harm Israel and that every government ministry is a legitimate target… An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.”

The Guardian (6 January):

“The head of the Shin Bet internal security service, Yuval Diskin, told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas was finding it increasingly difficult to govern with its leadership in hiding from Israeli rockets and much of its infrastructure blown to pieces.

He was backed by the chief of the general staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, who said “not much” remained of the Hamas government, and by the head of military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin. “Hamas has absorbed a very hard blow …Its ability to govern has been harmed, its leaders have completely abandoned the population and are only worrying about themselves,” Yadlin told the cabinet.” [my emph.]

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“[On 2 January] IOF warplanes bombarded a police station at Bani Suhila intersection in the east of Khan Yunis. A passing Palestinian civilian was wounded and a secondary school in the area was damaged.”

UN (29 December):

“[On 27 December] an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) missile targeted a group of policemen standing in the street near the building of the Gaza governorate, immediately across the street from the UNRWA Gaza Training Center, which is located within the compound housing the main UNRWA office in the Gaza Strip.

Eight UNRWA Gaza Training Center students between the ages of 18 and 20, who were standing nearby waiting for the UN buses to bring them home, were killed and 19 injured from the blast. Eight of the injured remain in hospital in critical conditions today. One of these critically injured students is unconscious with intracranial shrapnel and requires immediate transfer to an Israeli hospital for advanced central nervous system surgery.”

UN OCHA (28 December):

“Air-strike targets included civil police stations, military training bases and government buildings and installations. In one incident, at least 40 people were killed when an IAF plane fired an air-to-ground missile at the police headquarters in Gaza City during preparations for a graduation ceremony for regular civilian and traffic police. Other civilian casualties occurred among those living in residences within the vicinity of targeted buildings.”

UN OCHA (2 January):

“There has been significant destruction in the Gaza Strip, over 600 targets hit, including roads, infrastructure, the Islamic university, government buildings, mosques and civil police stations”

UN OCHA (31 December):

“Air-strikes targeted a variety of public buildings, including mosques, civil police stations, universities and sports centres in addition to government buildings and military training bases.”

Associated Press (28 December):

“In all, more than 290 people — most of them Hamas [civil] policemen, but also 20 children — were killed in some 300 Israeli air attacks over two days.” [my emph.]

Human Rights Watch (30 December):

“Israel should not target individuals and institutions in Gaza solely because they are part of the Hamas-run political authority, including ordinary police…

Human Rights Watch noted that many of Israel’s airstrikes, especially during the first day, targeted police stations as well as security and militia installations controlled by Hamas. According to the Jerusalem Post, an attack on the police academy in Gaza City on December 27 killed at least 40, including dozens of cadets at their graduation ceremony as well as the chief of police, making it the single deadliest air attack of the campaign to date. Another attack, on a traffic police station in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, killed a by-stander, 12-year-old Camilia Ra`fat al-Burdini.

Under the laws of war, police and police stations are presumptively civilian unless the police are Hamas fighters or taking a direct part in the hostilities, or police stations are being used for military purposes.”

B’Tselem (31 December):

“…the military bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed, according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order… [This is just one example] of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army… An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.”

Media

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (4 January):

“Israeli aircrafts also launched a series of air raids at civilian targets in Gaza City; including a print-house, the Al-Risala Newspaper’s office and the Al-Karama Charity, which cares for the orphans whose parents have been killed by the IOF.”

Associated Press (28 December):

“Palestinian sources reported early Sunday morning that IAF aircraft had targeted the Al Aqsa TV station used by Hamas.”

General civilian infrastructure

Oxfam (28 December):

“The bombing has caused severe damage to the civilian infrastructure in Gaza with many areas being left without water or electricity.”

John Ging, head of UNRWA (4 January):

“We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population … The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They’re trapped, they’re traumatised, they’re terrorised by this situation … The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them…

“The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed … Blowing up the Parliament building. That’s the Parliament of Palestine. That’s not a Hamas building. The President’s compound is for the President of Palestine.” (via Ben White)

UN OCHA (2 January):

“There has been extensive damage caused to thousands of houses all over the Gaza Strip.”

Ma’an news (6 January):

“More than 26 residential buildings and schools were targeted by Israeli fire on Tuesday, causing more casualties amongst women and children, witnesses in Gaza said.

Sources at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said five dead bodies arrived at the medical center in a civilian car after their homes were shelled. The sources asserted that several homes were bombarded in eastern Gaza City, and that ambulances could not access the area to evacuate victims because Israeli forces are shooting at ambulances.

Separately, A 15-year-old boy was killed when an Israeli drone fired a missile at him while he was walking in the street in the center of Gaza City. An eyewitness called Ra’fat Al-Khudari said the boy was walking a bike when the drone targeted him killing him immediately.

A home was also shelled near Al-Quds Open University in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, and another at Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Reports say there were casualties.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“At approximately 13:40 [on Friday 2 January] … IOF warplanes bombarded a civil defense station at the beach. The station was destroyed, but no casualties were reported…

At approximately 16:20 also on Friday IOF warplanes started to bombard the remainders of Gaza International Airport in the east of Rafah. The bombardment continued sporadically until 00:45 on Saturday, 3 January 2009.”

Reuters (4 January):

“At least 42 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed on Sunday as Israeli shells slammed into houses and Gaza’s main shopping district, medical sources said.”

The Times (5 January):

“Nobody knows what kind of shell it was that hit Gaza City’s main vegetable market yesterday morning: the explosives were falling so thick and fast that it could have come from an Israeli naval vessel, an F16 fighter-bomber, an Apache helicopter gunship, an unmanned drone, an artillery cannon or a tank.

The results, however, were unmistakable. With Gaza’s ambulance service stretched far beyond its normal capacity, the first mangled bodies arrived in private cars as locals scrambled to save the lives of the shoppers caught up in the carnage. The first to be carried in was a boy, his face masked in blood from a head wound, as medics hurried him into the overcrowded emergency rooms. The next car delivered a girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, her entrails blown out through a hole in her back by shrapnel.”

Ma’an news (6 January):

“Israeli artillery shelling killed four people and wounded 16 others in a market in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip late on Monday, witnesses told Al-Jazeera. The killings bring the total number of Palestinians killed on Monday to 46. Israeli tanks reportedly fired three shells into the market.”

The Guardian (4 January):

“Among the targets so far have been the Gaza Interior Ministry, police stations, television stations, prisons and a five-storey building in the women’s wing of the Islamic University. Humanitarian organisations have criticised the Israelis for bombing a number of schools and a hospital.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“Since the beginning of the ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, Israel has claimed that it does not target civilian facilities. However, PCHR’s investigations refute these allegations, and prove that IOF, by explicit orders from their political and military leaders, have used excessive lethal force and that the majority of targets have been civilian and public facilities and private property that are located in the middle of overpopulated residential neighborhoods, endangering the lives and possessions of the civilian population. Moreover, PCHR’s investigations affirm that all the casualties that have been caused during the last hours of IOF successive and intensive raids have been civilians.”

Children

AFP (6 January):

“More than a quarter of the hundreds of dead from the Gaza conflict are children and aid groups say the survivors will suffer physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated, impoverished corners of the Earth and children make up 56 percent of the 1.5 million population. Even before the Israeli offensive on the Hamas territory started on December 27, malnourishment and the winter cold had taken a heavy toll. Aid workers believe just about every Gaza child has been traumatised by the incessant bombardment…

At least 159 children are among the more than 580 Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead, according to the latest toll from Gaza emergency services. Whole families have been killed in their shelled homes or in cars trying to get away from the fighting, according to medics…

“Before this began, there were already 50,000 malnourished children in Gaza. There is no way of knowing how many there are now, but we are very concerned the number is going to rise,” said [Save the Children's Benedict] Dempsey.” 

AFP (5 January):

“Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza medical emergency services, told AFP the number of Palestinians killed since the Israeli operation was launched on December 27 was now 512, including 87 children.”

Save the Children (2 January):

“At least 13,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes in Gaza as the bombardment continues into its seventh day, Save the Children said today. More than half of those displaced people are children.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“Seventy-seven people have been killed in IOF’s attacks between 1pm yesterday and 2:30pm today. This includes 21 children and nine women.”

Sydney Morning Herald (6 January):

“On Monday [5 January], 20 children between the age of two and 15 were killed, he [i.e. Dr Moaiya Hassanein of the Gaza Health Ministry] said.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“The Number of Palestinians Killed Rises to 372, Mostly Civilians, Including 75 Children and 16 Women … IOF have continued their offensive on the Gaza Strip for the 8th consecutive day, causing more deaths and casualties among Palestinian civilians, especially children.”

UN OCHA [.pdf] (31 December):

“At least 32 children were killed in the first 48 hours of airstrikes”.

Chris Hedges (16 December):

“A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live…

The statistics gathered on children - half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17 - are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.”

UNICEF (6 January):

“Ten days of aerial bombing on Gaza has caused extensive devastation throughout the territory and is threatening the health and welfare of many children. Most of Gaza is without electricity, and the situation is turning into a massive humanitarian crisis… The hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed by casualties and are running low on medicines. More than half the population of Gaza is made up of children.”

Dominic Nutt of Save the Children (6 January):

“They don’t have any water most of the day, there is no electricity, they are freezing cold, the windows have to be left open to stop them smashing when the bombs fall. “Children are at risk from hypothermia, they are malnourished, there is not enough food, the situation is getting desperate.”

Reuters (5 January):

“The situation has reached a critical level for children who are exposed to and experiencing violence, fear and uncertainty,” Save the Children emergency team leader Annie Foster said. Some families fear to leave their houses while others are being forced to flee them. The winter cold was also a danger to children as electricity cuts have mean many homes lack heating. “Families must leave windows open at night so that they will not be broken by percussive shocks or flying debris from the ongoing bombardment. This means that children, the majority of them poor and malnourished, are essentially spending the night exposed to the elements”, Foster said.”

UNICEF (5 January):

“The humanitarian crisis caused by the current violence in Gaza is hitting children and women the most. Children form over half of Gaza’s population of nearly 1.5 million and are bearing the brunt of the conflict. Being the most vulnerable part of the population, children are the first to be psychologically distressed, the most in need of medical support and the most exposed to injuries among civilians in times of conflict…

As of 3 January 2009, 70 Palestinian children were killed and at least 650 injured, out of a tally of 550 deaths and 2800 injuries, according to data provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health…

The children in Gaza are currently deprived not only of the basic human rights any human being should enjoy but are also denied the fundamental rights specific to children, to which the signatories of the Convention of the Right of the Child are duty bound. These include the right of children to be protected from all forms of physical or mental violence and injury, and the right to education, development and access to healthcare services… The intensity of the current violence renders impossible any action to relieve their plight.”

International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (6 January):

“Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza is causing widespread mental trauma, especially among children. In parallel, delivery of desperately needed emergency mental health services has ceased…Children are particularly vulnerable to the traumatising effect of the bombs and shells raining down on densely populated civilian areas…

“When yet another building is hit”, he added, “children of 4-5 years of age ask questions like ‘how many dead?’ and ‘are they going to shell our house?’”

“The situation is horrific right now, but it does not stop when the bombings are over.” He [i.e. a psychiatrist from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme] concluded: “I cannot even begin to imagine the scale of trauma that is building up as this goes on; it will take enormous effort to deal with the mental trauma of our children afterwards.”

Norwegian volunteer doctor at Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Erik Fosse (5 January):

“The injured patients are mainly civilians, a lot of children with dreadful injuries. The injured patients are mainly civilians, a lot of children with dreadful injuries,” Dr. Erik Fosse told CNN on Monday, estimating that 20 percent of the more than 500 people dead were children…

Fosse said that he estimated that about 30 percent of the casualties at Shifa Hospital on Sunday were children, both among the dead and wounded…“We were operating in the corridors, patients were lying everywhere, and people were dying before they got treatment,” he said.”

Civilian population

Palestinian Center for Human Rights (27 December):

“The air strikes started at 11:25 local time, almost at the same time throughout the Gaza Strip. This timing indicates that an Israeli decision was taken to cause maximum casualties in the climax of daily activities. It also explains the high number of victims killed or wounded in a few minutes on the bloodiest day during the 41 years of Israeli occupation. The timing of air strikes coincided with the end of the morning period and the beginning of the afternoon period at schools, many of which are located near police stations that were attacked. PCHR learnt that a number of children were killed or wounded while on their way to or back from schools, and hundreds of school children and civilians were treated from shocks. PCHR learnt also that dozens of the victims are unarmed civilians who were near the places that were attacked, the majority of which are located in civilian-populated areas.” 

Ha’aretz (27 December):

“This was a massive attack much along the lines of what the Americans termed “shock and awe” during their invasion of Iraq in March 2003 … little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians.” [my emph.]

World Health Organisation (5 January):

“As of 5 January, the Palestinian MoH had reported 548 deaths since 27 December, of which at least 120 were children and 44 women (30% of all deaths). At least 2550 Palestinians have been injured, of which 1134 are children and women. The MoH reported that since Israel began its ground operation on 3 January, 109 persons have been killed.”

International Committee of the Red Cross (6 January):

“I cannot sufficiently underline the level of concern and anxiety that is felt at the ICRC in relation to the crisis in Gaza,” said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC director of operations.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a full blown and major crisis in humanitarian terms. The situation for the people in Gaza is extreme and traumatic as a result of 10 days of uninterrupted fighting.” Kraehenbuehl said ICRC staff in Gaza described the past night as “the most frightening to date” in the territory where there is no power or water and finding food is a daily struggle.” 

New York Times (January 5):

“The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas. No rescuers came. Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives’ house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run. Eleven members of the extended Samouni family were killed and 26 wounded, according to witnesses and hospital officials, with five children age 4 and under among the dead.”

New York Times (January 4):

“In recent days, most of those arriving at Shifa [hospital] appeared to be civilians. On Sunday, there was no trace here of the dozens of Hamas fighters that the Israeli military said its ground forces had hit in the past few hours in exchanges of fire … at Shifa, most of the men who were wounded or killed seemed to have been hit along with relatives near their homes or on the road. Two young cousins and a 5-year-old boy from another family were killed by shrapnel as they played on the flat roofs of their apartment buildings.”

Scotsman (3 January):

“CIVILIANS make up about a quarter of the 400-plus people who have died in Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, UN officials said yesterday as the Israel-Hamas war entered its second week. “Our best estimate is that 25 per cent (of the fatalities] were civilians, of whom a not insignificant number were women and children”.

Ha’aretz (5 January):

“At least 517 Palestinians have been killed at least a quarter of them civilians, a UN agency said. Forty-two, mostly civilians were killed on Sunday, a medical source said.”

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Maxwell Gaylard (5 January):

“Large numbers of people including many children are hungry, they are cold, they are without ready access to medical facilities, they are without access to electricity and running water, above all they are terrified. That by any measure is a humanitarian crisis…

There is an overall atmosphere of fear. More than half of the population are children. The spectre of internal displacement is emerging with growing numbers seeking shelter and already there are several thousand civilians in UNRWA’s seven shelters…

Electricity and communications are down over much of the Strip both on account of lack of fuel and damage to critical infrastructure. Over a million people are currently without power, and over a quarter million without running water, some for up to six days”.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes (5 January):

“The UN has said that there is an “a worsening and an increasingly alarming” humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, told reporters on Monday that officials believed as many as 25 per cent of the 548 people killed in the fighting were civilians and that Gaza’s health system, overwhelmed by the more than 2,500 injured, was “increasingly precarious”.

“This is, in our view, a humanitarian crisis,” Holmes said. “It’s very hard for me to see any other way you could describe it, given the conditions in which the population are living.” Holmes added that “cluster munitions are being used”, and that it was “a fair presumption” that most of the civilians killed were women and children.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (31 December):

“Thousands of civilians, mainly those who reside in areas close to the Palestinian- Egyptian border, have fled from their houses in the wake of several raids launched by IOF on the southern Gaza Strip. A state of compulsory mass displacement of civilians has prevailed in the area…

According to what PCHR field workers have been able to document the IOF offensive has resulted in the following deaths and casualties: 334 Palestinians, including 121 civilians, have been killed throughout the Gaza Strip … The number of civilian deaths does not include at least 165 civil police officers who were killed on the first day of the IOF offensive, when they were not engaged in any hostilities.” [see B’Tselem and HRW reports linked above: civil policemen are not legitimate military targets]

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“…the number of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the IOF offensive on the Gaza Strip has mounted to 375, mostly unarmed civilians, including 51 children and 14 women.”

CBS news (5 January):

“[Al-Shifa hospital’s] general manager, Hassan Khalaf, insists the majority of patients by far are civilians…“The latest figure is, the total killed people is 543 at the moment, and well, about 30 percent of them are woman and children,” he said. “As regards injured there are 2,600 and 42 percent of them are women and children.”

Refugees’ International (6 January):

“The current conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is having a devastating impact on civilians. An immediate ceasefire is essential.”

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (5 January):

“The heavy casualties suffered by innocent civilians, including many children, are heartbreaking … As a humanitarian agency which must deal with the repercussions of violence and persecution worldwide, UNHCR expresses its profound shock and sadness at the suffering and loss of life we are now seeing. I join Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in calling for an immediate cessation of all violence.”

UN human rights experts (2 January):

“The use of disproportionate force by Israel and the lack of regard for the life of civilians on both sides cannot be justified by the actions of the other party. They constitute clear violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law. We are particularly concerned at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.” [my emph.]

Norwegian volunteer doctor at the Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Mads Gilbert (5 January):

“…the large majority of the injured, the victims, are women, men and children civilians. Among the killed, 25% of the killed are children and women, and among the children, today it was, this morning it was 801 children either killed or injured”.

Gisha (4 January):

“- 7 of 12 power lines damaged - 75% of Gaza’s electricity cut off.

- Gaza City, including Shifa Hospital, entirely without electricity.

- Over half a million residents cut off from water supply.

- Sewage spilling into streets, risk of more flooding.

- No fuel permitted into Gaza since start of military operation.

Gaza’s water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse following bombardments that have destroyed electricity lines and months of preventing fuel supplies needed to produce electricity, utility officials in Gaza warned today. 75% of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off, just as hospitals, water wells, and other humanitarian institutions most need electricity to treat casualties of the fighting and provide basic necessities to civilians.”

International Committee of the Red Cross (5 January):

“The situation in regard to the water supply is alarming. Because of the disruption of four power lines that normally bring electricity from Israel to Gaza City, 10 of the 45 wells in the city are no longer functioning. Two wells have been damaged by air strikes and the remaining wells are set to shut down in the coming two to three days, when their support generators will run out of fuel.

“If the power supply is not restored immediately, half a million residents of Gaza City will be completely deprived of water,” warned Javier Cordoba, the ICRC’s water and sanitation coordinator. “Ensuring safe access for technicians to repair the power lines is now an urgent priority,” he said.”

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is significant and cannot be understated. It follows what the UN had described as an 18 month long “human dignity crisis” in the Gaza Strip, entailing a massive destruction of livelihoods and a significant deterioration of infrastructure and basic services…People are living in a state of fear and panic…80% of the population cannot support themselves and are dependant on humanitarian assistance. This figure is increasing…

The utilities are barely functioning: the only electric power plant has shut down. Some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza do not have electricity at all due to the damage to fifteen electricity transformers during the air strikes. The water system provides running water once every 5-7 days and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage and is dumping 40 million litres of raw sewage into the sea daily. Fuel for heating, needed due to the cold weather, and cooking gas, are no longer available in the market.”

Amnesty International (5 December):

“The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is having ever more serious consequences on its population. In the past month the supply of humanitarian aid and basic necessities to Gaza has been reduced from a trickle to an intermittent drip…

As supplies are being further withheld, most mills have shut down because they have little or no grain. People who have long been deprived of many food items now cannot even find bread at times. Reserves of food have long been depleted and the meagre quantities allowed into Gaza are not even enough to meet the immediate needs. Families never know if they will have food for their children the following day.

When people do have food, they generally have no cooking gas or electricity with which to cook it. Last week, less than 10 per cent of the weekly requirement of cooking gas was allowed into Gaza…

Shortages of fuel, electricity and spare parts are causing water and sanitation infrastructure and other crucial services to deteriorate a bit more every day. Eighty per cent of the wells are now only functioning at reduced capacity and water supply is only available for a few hours every few days…Routine blackouts disrupt every aspect of life for everyone. Hospitals are struggling to power life-saving machinery and it is ever more difficult to maintain laundry and other essential services.”

UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness (5 January):

“It’s absolutely horrifying. The people of Gaza are terrorized. They’re traumatized. And they are trapped.”

UN OCHA (6 January):

“Thousands of people have fled their homes in search of security and essential infrastructure has been destroyed, or lacks the necessary fuel to operate at the required capacity. More than one million Gazans are without electricity or water…Gaza’s water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse due to a lack of power and fuel…

Over 530,000 people (approximately 400,000 people in Gaza and North Gaza, 100,000 people in Rafah, and 30,000 people in the Middle Area) are entirely cut off from running water, and the rest are receiving water only intermittently (every few days)…

The sewage situation is becoming very dangerous, posing a serious risk of the spread of water-borne disease. Five of Gaza’s 37 waste water pumping stations were shut down due to a lack of electricity and sewage is now flooding into populated areas, farmland, and the sea. The remaining 32 stations are operating only partially and will shut down within three-to-four days without additional fuel supplies…Seventy-five percent of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off. Since the ground operation, all of Gaza Governorate and most of North Gaza and the Middle Area are without electricity.”

IRIN news (5 January):

“The UN has warned that power networks were down in large parts of the Gaza Strip on 4 January, with hospitals relying on generators. Without power for pumps, 70 percent of Gazans are estimated to be without tap water…

“The water and sewage system in Gaza is collapsing, cutting people off from the water supply and causing sewage to flood the streets,” said Maher al-Najjar, deputy director of Gaza’s water utility (CMWU). He also said 48 of Gaza’s 130 wells were not working at all due to lack of electricity and damage to pipes. “At least 45 other wells are operating only partially and will shut down within days without additional supplies of fuel and electricity,” al-Najjar said.”

Norwegian volunteer doctor, Dr. Mads Gilbert (6 January):

“We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children. A pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Pass it on, send it around, shout it out. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are living in a history book now, all of us”,

and Dr. Gilbert again (5 January):

“We have been doing surgery around the clock. I just spoke to one of my colleagues … who had not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we’re running six/seven ORs and there are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world. Children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child who … we had to amputate both legs and the arm, and the only crime they have done is being civilians, Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs, the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately. This cannot go on. It’s a disaster…

We came on New Year’s Eve in the morning - I’ve seen one military person among the … hundreds that we have seen and treated. So anybody who tries to portray this as sort of a ‘clean’ war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza.”

As you can see, “Hamas targets” appears to be a technical term referring to the entire Gaza Strip and everything and everyone located within it. That Israel employs this special definition is not particularly surprising. It has long since behaved as if, in Yaron London’s approving words, “the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad.” Thus, for example, earlier this year Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin claimed that Israeli forces had killed roughly 1,000 “terrorists” in Gaza over the past two years, thereby branding every Palestinian killed by the IDF in Gaza throughout 2006 and 2007 a “terrorist”, including, as B’Tselem pointed out, 152 minors, including 48 children under the age of 14, as well as “many men and women [who] were killed in Gaza who took no part in the hostilities”. Similarly, in December 2006 Ehud Olmert boasted that the IDF had killed “more than 400 members of terrorist organisations” in six months, a designation that included 206 civilian non-combatants.

So, as I say, it isn’t at all surprising to find Israel referring to hospitals, mosques, schools, residential homes, apartment blocks, shops, markets, women, children and civilians as “Hamas targets” and “terrorist infrastructure”. What’s appalling is that – despite recognising Israel’s intensive propaganda drive – so many Western journalists and commentators have gone along with it.

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