A Small Crime in Gaza

This is all that is left of a Gaza family's 14 year old son.

“The Israeli forces had been bombing hard so we’d evacuated the house, gone to Fakoura (UN school which had [already] been bombed with white phosphorous). The first 3 days at the school we had only the clothes we were wearing, no blankets, no food. At night in Fakoura it was so cold and windy, so when we heard on the radio that there would be a cease-fire between 8 am and 11 am, Abed asked if he could return home to grab a jacket. We all went with him,” Abu Abed explained, now holding the yellow bag.

“When we were in the house, the Israeli army starting bombing in the area,” said Umm Abed. “We were very frightened, we had thought the cease-fire meant we could return home safely. We quickly took whatever clothes and food we could and left the house. I thought Abed was ahead of us. At the school friends told us Abed hadn’t come back. They also said that a drone had fired a missile at our area. People were saying the missile had hit a child and shattered him to pieces. We didn’t know it was Abed.”
http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/all-weve-got-left-of-him
blogged by a very brave lady in Gaza

I would like you to look at her weblog, and read her personal encounter reports. They are more telling than any amount of TV news, from either side.

Child of Gaza

Child of Gaza, originally uploaded by smallislander.

I published this photo on Flickr on January 4th 2009, after a few days of the Hannukah Massacre, Since then, it's had over 2000 views, which is quite something for a photo-sharing club.

The original photo is by Fady Adwan of Getty Images. I added only a title.

Elephant in the Room

David Seaton's News Links has posted a link to a wonderful Dutch TV programme on the American-Israeli lobby. It's a must-watch; you won't ever see anything like this on American TV.

George W. Bush Sewage Plant

Balter's Blog: George W. Bush Sewage Plant

In 1973-4, I was 'Project Manager' for the hotel company that was due to run the Golden Sands Hotel in Famagusta, Cyprus, at 600 bedrooms probably one of the biggest (and most hideous) hotel projects in Europe at that time.

There was a certain problem with sewage. The town system never quite got connected to the new hotel project, for the usual reasons (corruption, laziness, indifference, etc) and a temporary solution had to be found.

So a huge, shallow cesspit was built, in the only space available, right in front of the hotel, held in place and covered by a concrete shell, and disguised with a rose garden on top.

On Grand Opening Day, the usual crowd of dignitaries and uppities were gathered for a big lunch and ceremony.

Pierre Beaufort, the Parisien gangster who was my nightclub-hopping mate at the time, (and would be still, if I could find him) and also head chef at the hotel, gave them a bloody good lunch. Each of the dignitaries and uppities was also given private use of a hotel bedroom, to 'wash and brush up' after lunch.

After that, they all assembled for a group photograph in front of the hotel. The Cyprus government's protocol advisor took about half an hour to get them all ranked in order, and the official photographer, with a full-plate camera, and a genuine billiard cloth covering himself, directed the crowd from the middle of the rose garden.

Meanwhile, the hotel's drainage system was in full operation mode, for the first time ever. All those washes and brush-ups (showers 'n shits) began to rumble.

Just as the photographer got almost everyone to say 'Cheese!' (you can't get a Frog to say 'fromage' with a smile) the whole scene erupted.

The rose garden blew up, under severe subterranean pressure, quite spectacularly.

Anyone who was anybody in Cyprus at the time was showered with shit.

Which was only a foretaste of what would happen a little later in 1974. Henry the K confessed himself that the 1974 invasion/occupation of Cyprus by the Turks was nothing more than a passing whim.

So, I hereby name that unnoticed incident in 1974 as 'Henry Kissinger's Shit Show'.

I wish now that I hadn't witnessed it.

AP's flawed 'Factbox' about Golan

Facts about the Golan Heights

Original - Additions in bold

Associated Press - Wed May 21, 9:42 AM ET

JERUSALEM - Israel and Syria said Wednesday they are holding peace talks through Turkish mediators on a dispute that centers on the Golan Heights. Some facts about the territory:

• Plateau at southwestern corner of Syria overlooking Sea of Galilee and northern Israel, roughly 40 miles long and 15 miles wide.

• Soldiers shelled northern Israel from the Golan Heights between 1948 and 1967. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed it in 1981. No country recognized the annexation.

HC - No they [Syrian soldiers] didn't. This contains zero reference to the actions the Israeli military were taking in that period, when they were systematically advancing into the "demilitarized zone" that had been declared by the United Nations along the seam-line between the Israeli and Syrian armies in 1949, and the associated attacks the IDF maintained throughout that period against Syrian farmers, the Syrian military, and even UNTSO peacekeepers.

RP - The seam-line and demilitarized zone (green) are shown in the map above, which was taken from an article named 'Israel's Diminishing Borders', written, as usual by a hasbara.

HC - According to the AP version, the Syrians forces in Golan were just gratuitously shelling Israeli positions?

Excuse me?

• Most of the 100,000 Syrian residents of the Golan Heights fled during the 1967 war and were not allowed to return. A few of the roughly 17,000 left have accepted Israeli citizenship. About 18,000 Israelis live in 32 settlements built since 1967.

HC - Zero mention of the fact that these Israeli settlements are completely illegal under international law.

RP - Or of another 100,000 inhabitants driven from their ancestral lands by Israeli miltary activities, and not allowed to return.

HC - How about we have some mention of the plight of Syrian families split up by Israel's continued occupation of Golan and of the dire human-rights situation of the indigenous Golanis?

Israel-Syria peace talks broke down in 2000. Israel offered to withdraw from all of the Golan Heights down to the international border in exchange for full peace. Syria insisted on recovering land across the border.

HC - That is quite simply not true. The reason the peace bid that Israeli PM belatedly made in 2000 got absolutely nowhere was precisely because he pulled back on assurances PM Yitzhak Rabin had earlier given that Israel would withdraw to the international border. Barak was not prepared to do that, but Pres. Hafez al-Asad insisted as always that that was the only basis on which he would conclude a peace deal.

Asad did not ask for-- far less insist on-- a single inch of land that was not Syria's under international law.

• Syria fought in three wars against Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and battled Israel when it invaded Lebanon in 1982. Damascus backs Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and is a close ally of Iran. Israeli warplanes carried out a September attack on a Syrian installation that the U.S. has said was an unfinished nuclear reactor built by North Korea.

RP - Israel started a colonial war of occupation in 1948, another 'pre-emptive' one in 1967, was surprised by a counter-attack into Israeli-occupied Sinai in 1973, and invaded Lebanon in 1982, occupying 20% of the country for 18 years

Is this a "peace-loving democracy"? I don't think so.

Thanks to Helena Cobban for 95% of the counter-comments (in bold) above.

Why Can't the Israelis Behave Like Boers?

Remember this? It was the day in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison in South Africa.

The US had withdrawn its support for the apartheid Afrikaaner government in South Africa, and Mandela, as part of the consequences, was released.

Within three years, elections were held, with full participation by the now properly-enfranchised black majority of the country, who won, hands down.

The Afrikaaner sate was gone, finished, dead. But the Afrikaaners themselves, many of whom had been settlers since the 18th century, and who had themselves fought (and lost) a war for independence, were not massacred, or 'pushed into the sea'.

Sure, their rights are now no better than anyone else's in South Africa, but they're still there, but not lording it over everyone else.

Why can't Israelis accept the same?

First Good News From Gaza

I've been too depressed by the whole situation between Israel and the Palestinians to wite anything at all recently.

Incompetent US Presidents, Secretaries of State, ex British Prime Ministers, etc, flock to Israel to kowtow and pay obeisance to, and fulfil every wish of an incompetent Israeli Prime Minister (just about to be sacked, finally, for his incompetence) and a so-called Palestinian President who has no control over a large section of his subjugated population.

Meanwhile, the 1.5 million inhabitans of Gaza were being put under total siege, while the rest of the world ignored them.

Now, thank God, they've taken matters into their own hands:

From the BBC:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have surged into Egypt from the Gaza Strip after masked militants destroyed parts of the border wall. Gazans rushed to buy food, fuel and other supplies that have become scarce because of an Israeli blockade - aimed at stopping rocket attacks from Gaza.
Egyptian police took no action to stop people crossing.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak says he allowed Gazans in to buy food, but Israel urged Egypt to restore security.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for urgent talks with Egypt and his Palestinian rival, President Mahmoud Abbas, on border crossings.

"We do not want to control everything, we are part of the Palestinian people," Mr Haniya said, apparently in response to an offer from Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayad to control Gaza's borders - so far rejected by Israel.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since last June.

A total of 350,000 Gazans crossed the Egyptian border, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported.

Hamas has not taken responsibility for breaching the border but quickly moved in to police it, the paper said, confiscating seven pistols from a man returning to Gaza.

We want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese
Haaretz quoted one Gazan, Mohammed Abu Ghazel, as saying he had crossed the border three times with cigarettes which he had sold for five times the price he bought them.
"This can feed my family for a month," he said.

Correspondents say the breaching of the border is a security concern for Israel, as Egypt is a main source of weapons for the militant groups in Gaza.

But the BBC's Tim Franks in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border says it will be difficult for the Egyptians to reseal the border on their own, and Hamas has very little incentive to co-operate.

EGYPT-GAZA BORDER 12km (7.4 miles) long. Egyptian side patrolled by 750 soldiers under 2005 agreement with Israel. Border crossing terminal south of town of Rafah. PA control of terminal under EU supervision collapsed after Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007 Border closed almost continuously since

Palestinians have broken through the border before, in 2005, and it was quickly resealed with barbed wire, but reports say that on this occasion two-thirds of the border wall was destroyed.

Overnight, gunmen set off a number of explosions along the wall near the Rafah crossing.

People then packed into cars and donkey carts, or crossed the border on foot, to buy essential goods.

Among them was Ibrahim Abu Taha, a father of seven, who told the Associated Press news agency: "We want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese."

One Gaza woman told the BBC as she crossed the border: "We're going over there to our family. They're all there. I haven't seen [them] for 10 years."

President Mubarak said he had allowed the Palestinians to come in.

He said he had told Egyptian troops to "let them come to eat and buy food and go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons".

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said his government was concerned about the chaos.

But in a BBC interview, he added: "It's the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly according to the signed agreements."

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Washington was concerned about the situation, as was Egypt.

In recent months the border has been mostly sealed, in an understanding between Israel and Egypt.

The territory has been short of fuel and other essential goods since last week, when Israel imposed the blockade.

It was eased slightly on Tuesday to allow some fuel and medicines through.