Israel Strikes At Gaza Tunnels

Israeli aircraft have struck out at smuggle tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, the Reuters news agency has reported.

Residents said three strikes early on Wednesday sent hundreds of people fleeing the Gaza town of Rafah, Hamas officials said.

Witnesses said a bomb or missile caused a large explosion, but there was no reports of any casualties.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was checking the report.

The strike is said to have been a response to Tuesday’s attack by Gaza militants on an Israeli military vehicle.

Celebrities Boycott BBC for Gaza

CAIRO — A galaxy of British actors and directors threatened to boycott the BBC if the world’s biggest broadcaster did not reverse its decision not to air an aid appeal for the homeless population of the bombed-out Gaza Strip.

“We will never work for the BBC again unless this disgraceful decision is reversed,” they wrote in an open letter to BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson cited by The Scotsman on Tuesday, January 27.

Last week, the BBC refused to air an aid appeal by Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of charities including Oxfam, British Red Cross and Islamic Aid, to raise funds for the people of Gaza.

More than 1,350 people, including 437 children, were killed and 5,450 wounded in 22 days of air, sea and land Israeli attacks.

The deadly onslaught left Gaza infrastructure in tatters, with 4,100 homes totally destroyed as well as 17,000 homes, 1,500 factories, 25 mosques, 31 government buildings and 10 water or sewage pipes damaged.

Doctors Document Gaza Horrors

A team of Arab doctors who rushed to the rescue of thousands of civilians injured during Israel’s 22-day onslaught against the sealed off Gaza Strip are coming back with heart-breaking stories of horror and never-seen-before injuries.

“The destruction and death I saw in front of my bare eyes were unprecedented in human history,” Mohamed el-Sheriey, an Egyptian doctor, told a joint press conference on Sunday, January 25.

“They couldn’t even be masterminded by the most evil-minded of fiction writers.”

Fear and trauma in Gaza’s schools

Counselors and teachers are addressing the trauma and fears of students in Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]

Sunday, January 25, 2009
18:22 Mecca time, 15:22 GMT

By Alex Dziadosz in Gaza

As students filed into the courtyard of Asma elementary school in Gaza City for the first time since the Israeli offensive began, they were greeted by a bleak reminder of the violence that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands injured.

A hole punched by an Israeli rocket scarred the courtyard latrine and blood soiled the wall beside it.

Asma is one of over 600 schools in Gaza – most of which reopened on January 24 – that is today facing a large number of post-war operational challenges.

Educators across the Gaza Strip are now considering whether to reschedule exams which were abandoned when Israel began bombing the territory on December 27.

Teachers are also faced with the task of teaching in rooms which had served as shelters for dozens of refugees.

Addressing the trauma

Inside the classrooms, debris left by the scores of refugees housed there until a few days ago still covered the floors – a box of tomatoes, empty bottles and, in some rooms, the shattered remnants of boards and chairs used for firewood in the absence of gas and electricity.

Gaza : “Worse than an earthquake”

Kathy Kelly writing from Rafah, occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 22 January 2009

Traffic on Sea Street, a major thoroughfare alongside Gaza’s coastline, includes horses, donkeys pulling carts, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and cars, mostly older models. Overhead, in stark contrast to the street below, Israel’s ultra-modern unmanned surveillance planes crisscross the skies. F-16s and helicopters can also be heard. Remnants of their deliveries, the casings of missiles, bombs and shells used during the past three weeks of Israeli attacks, are scattered on the ground.

Workers have cleared most of the roads. Now, they are removing massive piles of wreckage and debris, much as people do following an earthquake.

“Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake,” said a doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. “We feel very frustrated,” he continued. “The West, Europe and the US watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.”

Sharpeville 1960, Gaza 2009

The 2009 massacre in Gaza will be for international solidarity with Palestine what the Sharpeville massacre was for the international solidarity against apartheid in South Africa. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Dr. Haidar Eid, The Electronic Intifada, 22 January 2009

“Where can I bring him a father from? Where can I bring him a mother from? You tell me!”

These are the desperate words of Subhi Samuni to Al-Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent. Subhi lost 17 members of his immediate family, including the parents of his seven-year-old grandson. Shockingly, even as I write this article, corpses of the Samuni family are still being retrieved from under the rubble — 15 days after the Israeli occupation forces shelled the two houses. The Israeli army locked 120 members of the family in one house for 12 hours before they shelled it.

Subhi’s words echo the harsh reality of all Palestinians in Gaza: alone, abandoned, hunted down, brutalized, and, like Subhi’s grandson, orphaned. Twenty-two days of savage butchery took the lives of more than 1,300 Palestinians, at least 85 percent of them civilians, including 434 children, 104 women, 16 medics, four journalists, five foreigners, and 105 elderly people.

Israel’s Next War: Today the Gaza Strip, Tomorrow Lebanon?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research

In the Middle East, it is widely believed that the war against Gaza is an extension of the 2006 war against Lebanon. Without question, the war in the Gaza Strip is a part of the same conflict.

Moreover, since the Israeli defeat in 2006, Tel Aviv and Washington have not abandoned their design to turn Lebanon into a client state.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, in so many words, during his visit to Tel Aviv in early January that today Israel was attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that tomorrow it would be fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.[1]

Lebanon is still in the cross-hairs. Israel is searching for a justification or a pretext to launch another war against Lebanon.

Washington and Tel Aviv had initially hoped to control Beirut through client political forces in the March 14 Alliance. When it became apparent that these political forces could not dominate Lebanon politically the Israeli military was unleashed on Lebanon with a goal of bringing about the ultimate downfall of Hezbollah and its political allies. [2] Areas where support for Hezbollah and its political allies were strongest saw the harshest Israeli attacks in 2006 as part of an attempt to reduce, if not remove, popular support for them.

[Live from gaza] Suffering continues despite the cease fire

A child full of light will never see again
Sameh A. Habeeb writing from the occupied Gaza Strip

Eight-year-old Louay Sobeh, blinded by Israeli bombs. (Sameh A. Habeeb)

As a Gazan journalist who is devastated by the holocaust the Israel army is perpetrating against us, I find myself at loss. The list of horrendous crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinians is endless and the crimes are countless.

Should I write about the 45 evacuees who were massacred in their refuge at the United Nations-administered al-Fakhoura school? Should I write about the most horrifying crime when Red Cross personnel found four starving children who had spent four days with the dead bodies of their mothers and other relatives in the ruins of a house in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood?

Arabs hope for Obama change, Israelis expect more of same

21 January 2009 – Yahoo News
Arabs were hopeful on Wednesday that President Barack Obama will make changes to US policy on the Middle East, in stark contrast to Israel in the wake of the Jewish state’s deadly assault on Gaza.

“This region is looking forward to your handling of the Palestinian cause from the first day of your tenure,” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a cable to congratulate Obama on his inauguration.

“It is an urgent priority and the key to all the other difficult crises of the Middle East,” said Mubarak, whose country is hoping to negotiate a lasting ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Hamas tells Obama to learn from Bush’s mistakes

Two members of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing, give a press conference in Gaza City on January 19, 2009. Hamas’s armed wing said today that it lost only 48 fighters during Israel’s 22-day operation in Gaza. Israel has said that it killed more than 500 Hamas members during Operation Cast Lead that it launched on Gaza on December 27 and which it ended on Sunday with a unilateral ceasefire.[Images by AFP/Getty Images - Daylife.Com]

21 January 2009 – Yahoo News

Hamas on Wednesday called on President Barack Obama to learn lessons from the mistakes of his predecessor George W. Bush and said it would judge the new US leader by his acts.

“We will judge him by his policies and actions on the ground and how he will learn lessons from the mistakes of the previous administrations,

Palestina Bantu kemerdekaan Indonesia

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Kalau ada ribut-ribut di negara- negara Arab, misalnya di Mesir, Palestina, atau Suriah, kita sering bertanya apa signifikansi dukungan terhadap negara tersebut. Hari ini ketika Palestina diserang, mengapa kita (bangsa Indonesia) ikut sibuk?

Sebagai orang Indonesia, sejarah menjelaskan bahwa kita berhutang dukungan untuk Palestina dan negara arab lain.

Dari berbagai sumber yang diperoleh, Sukarno-Hatta boleh saja memproklamasikan kemerdekaan RI de facto pada 17 Agustus 1945, tetapi perlu diingat bahwa untuk berdiri (de jure) sebagai negara yang berdaulat, Indonesia membutuhkan pengakuan dari bangsa-bangsa lain. Pada poin ini kita tertolong dengan adanya pengakuan dari tokoh tokoh Timur Tengah, sehingga Negara Indonesia bisa berdaulat.

[Video] Dua for people of Gaza and Iraq

Indonesian Translation :

English translation :

[Video] Israel Terrorism in Gaza

Israel Harus Dicap Negara Teroris

BASHAR AL ASSAD: mengimbau KTT Arab untuk secara resmi mendeklarasikan Israel sebagai satu negara teroris
Photo by : GUIM.CO.UK

By Republika Newsroom
Senin, 19 Januari 2009 pukul 19:19:00

KOTA KUWAIT — Israel harus dicap sebagai satu negara teroris karena serangan 22 harinya di Jalur Gaza, kata Presiden Suriah Bashar al Assad dalam satu KTT Arab di Kuwait, Senin.”Negara-negara Arab harus mengumumkan satu dukungan tegas bagi perlawanan Palestina… Saya mengimbau KTT Arab untuk secara resmi mendeklarasikan Israel sebagai satu negara teroris karena kejahatan yang dilakukannya di Gaza,” kata Bashar.

“Gencatan senjata tidak berarti berakhirnya agresi karena pasukan pendudukan masih berada di Gaza,” kata pemimpin Suriah itu dan mendesak “solidaritas Arab… bagi perjuangan kita.”