In Gaza, a “ranch” turned to rubble

Tents for those whose homes were destroyed in Israel’s 22-day-long military siege of Gaza, 31 January 2009. (Matthew Cassel)

Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Lebanon, 3 February 2009

Piles of bricks, metal sheets and pieces of wood, are all that remains of tens of Palestinian homes in the Ezbet Abed Rabu (Abed Rabu Ranch) neighborhood, east of Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip.

“There is nothing left for us to live for — the house was lost and the furniture destroyed,” lamented Suad Muhammad Abed Rabu, a 53-year-old mother sitting in front of a fire stove in a still intact room of her badly damaged home. “We prefer to die in our demolished house rather than live life as outcasts,” she said. “Since we were born we have been suffering. Since 1948 we have moved from one refuge to another and from one war to another. All, including Arabs and Europeans, are conspiring against us, they don’t want us to live.”

Oxfam: Israel blocks half of Gaza need

[ 03/02/2009 - 04:02 PM ] – palestineinfo.co.uk

GAZA, (PIC)– The British organization Oxfam international accused Israel of barring the arrival of more than 50 percent of the Palestinian citizens’ needs in the Gaza Strip through the closure of border crossings despite the disastrous situation of Palestinians there which was further aggravated by the war.

Commenting on the UN efforts to raise funds for Gaza, Oxfam said, in a statement received Tuesday by the PIC, money alone could not solve the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.

“It is not enough for donor countries to reach out for their check books. They must also press Israel to open up the border crossings and make sure their aid money is used effectively,” Oxfam executive director Jeremy Hobbs said.

[Month in pictures] : Coping in Gaza, January 2009

Palestinian supporters of Hamas take part in a rally celebrating “victory” over Israel, 20 January. (Mohamed Al-Zanon/MaanImages)

Photostory, The Electronic Intifada, 1 February 2009

Twenty-two days of Israeli bombardment by land, sea and air left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and 5,000 injured; approximately 4,000 homes destroyed and 17,000 others damaged; and entire neighborhoods wiped out. The attacks, which began on 27 December 2008, mostly ended on 18 January 2009 after Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire.

The below photographs are a selection of images from the month of January 2009. “The month in pictures” is an ongoing feature by The Electronic Intifada. If you have images documenting Palestine, Palestinian life, politics and culture, or of solidarity with Palestine, please email images and captions to photos A T electronicintifada D O T net.

Palestinians inspect a house destroyed by Israel in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City, 18 January. (Mohamed Al-Zanon/MaanImages)

Palestinians work on constructing new and repairing old smuggling tunnels along the border with Egpyt, damaged during the Israeli military operation, 22 January. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Palestinian students in Rafah attend a class set up outside their school, which was destroyed by Israeli air strikes, 25 January. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Fidel Castro: Obama supports Israel’s ‘Palestinian genocide’

By News Agencies – Haaretz

Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Thursday threw his first punch at President Barack Obama after several weeks of praise for the new leader, criticizing the U.S. defense of Israel and demanding the return Guantanamo Bay military base to Cuba.

Castro’s latest essay, published on an official Web site, came one week after he called Obama “intelligent and noble” and said he would cut back on his writings to prevent interfering with Cuban government decisions.

In the essay, Castro lambasted Obama for backing Israel’s defense against attacks by Palestinian militants. He said it demonstrated “the abusive character of the empire’s power” and insisted it would contribute to “the genocide against the Palestinians.”

“It is the way our friend Obama has fallen into sharing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians,” Castro wrote in his called “Deciphering the thought of the new U.S. president.”

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.”

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.

[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?

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,

[Video] Israel Terrorism in Gaza

Sejarah Tidak Dimulai dengan Roket Qassam (Haaretz.com)

Ini jawaban untuk mereka yg memaki-maki Hamas, menyalah-nyalahkan Hamas, dan mengatakan, “Perang ini adalah kesalahan Hamas! Mengapa Hamas nekad melemparkan roket ke Israel!”

Artikel di bawah ini ditulis oleh orang Yahudi Israel sendiri, dimuat di koran terkemuka Israel : Haaretz.

Buat Anda yang berkali-kali posting komen memaki-maki saya, saya sarankan, baca tulisan ini baik-baik (dan sori, saya tidak akan meloloskan komen murahan yang berisi caci-maki. Bila Anda kontra pada pendapat saya, silahkan sampaikan pendapat Anda sendiri dengan elegan dan sopan!). Orang Israel aja (sebagian) bisa mikir bahwa memang mereka sendiri yang salah kok, mengapa Anda malah membela Israel dan menyalah-nyalahkan Hamas?

***

History did not begin with the Qassams
By Amira Hass (Haaretz.com)

(diterjemahkan oleh Dina Y. Sulaeman; frasa dalam [...] adalah penjelasan dari Dina)

Sejarah tidak dimulai dengan roket Qassam. Tapi bagi kita, orang Israel, sejarah selalu dimulai ketika orang Palestina melukai kita dan kemudian luka itu dilepaskan dari konteksnya sama sekali. Kita berpikir bahwa bila kita menimbulkan luka yang lebih besar lagi di tubuh Palestina, mereka akhirnya akan belajar [untuk tidak melukai kita]. Sebagian orang menyebut hal ini sebagai ‘keberhasilan’.

Hamas Claims ‘Great Victory’

A senior Hamas official has described the Gaza conflict as a “great victory” for Palestinians.

In a televised speech Ismail Haniya, the Prime Minister appointed by Hamas in Gaza, said: “God has granted us a great victory, not for one faction, or party, or area, but for our entire people.

“We have stopped the aggression and the enemy has failed to achieve any of its goals.”