Palestinians Pushed Toward Another Massacre By Israel - Pt 1: Gaza Cut Off From All Sides As 'Collective Punishment' Deepens

(click to see full-size image)

By Sarah Lazare
Despite widespread calls for increased humanitarian aid and economic activity, the approximately 1.8 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been further isolated from the outside world following Israel's closure Sunday, and Egypt's closure last week, of border crossings into the Palestinian territory.

The Israeli Defense Ministry stated Sunday it has closed its Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings to Gaza in response to a single rocket fire from Gaza, which resulted in no injuries, deaths, or damages. Gisha, a legal center that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement, reported Monday that both passages remained closed for a second day, save for extremely limited transport of fuel in and medical patients.

The U.S.-backed Egyptian government last week shut the Rafah crossing into Gaza and commenced destroying Egyptian nearby homes to create a so-called "buffer zone" along the border.

Palestinian rights campaigners warn that the closures are especially dangerous as traumatized and displaced Gaza residents struggle to rebuild from Israel’s recent seven-week military assault in which 2,000 Palestinians—at least 75 percent of them civilians—were killed.

The Erez crossing to northern Gaza is one of theborder crossings now closed off by Israel. (Photo: Zero0000/
WIkimedia/cc)

"As winter approaches, and in the wake of the recent military operation, civilians in Gaza are increasingly vulnerable. Israel, like dozens of donor countries, has recognized the obligation to allow Gaza’s urgent reconstruction," the statement from Gisha continued. "Unfortunately, this latest act of closure as a response to rocket or mortar fire can be interpreted as collective punishment and represents a disturbing and dangerous regression to a policy that has harmed hundreds of thousands of civilians and also proven ineffective."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reports that 18 of the school building they administer in the Gaza Strip are currently serving approximately 32,419 internally displaced Palestinians. "The critical immediate priority in Gaza remains the reconstruction of people’s homes," writes the agency.

Meanwhile, Defence for Children International-Palestine reports that Gaza residents are scrambling to assemble classrooms following the mid-September start to the school year. At least 26 schools were destroyed in the offensive, 228 were damaged, and another 31 schools continue to serve as shelters for displaced people.

"I think it's shameful that Israel continues to its now seven-year siege on the people of Gaza, following the deadly war and all the destruction created through the war—of houses, factories, and schools," Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation told Common Dreams. "This is in an additional amount of suffering placed on people in Gaza."

"This means they are not able to get materials to rebuild homes, and they are having to deal with shortages in food, medicine, electricity, and clean water," Kudaimi continued. "In the past seven years, Israel has conducted a massive bombing campaign against Gaza at least three times. People are not being given the opportunity to rebuild their lives."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Israel Weighs New Measures to Quell Arab Unrest in Jerusalem: One New Measure Not Under Consideration — Not Stealing Land and Killing Palestinians

By Calev Ben-David
Israel’s prime minister ordered officials to speed up legislation designed to quash months of violence in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, including punishing the parents of minors who take part in disturbances.

Jerusalem has become a flashpoint for tensions between Israelis and Palestinians since the collapse of U.S.-backed peace talks in April, and the conflict in July and August between Israel and militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The city lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians claiming its eastern sector, captured by Israel in 1967, as capital of a future state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened top security and justice officials today to discuss how to quell the unrest, according to a text message from his office. Possible steps include tougher penalties for stone-throwing and financial penalties for the parents of minors involved, it said.

Arab residents have clashed with police on a near-daily basis in recent months, and have hurled stones and firebombs at vehicles driven by Jewish residents. They’ve also vandalized the city’s light-rail system repeatedly, causing passenger numbers to plummet. Additional security forces have been deployed to quell the unrest, which Netanyahu blames on Islamic extremists.

[...]

About 300,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan along with the West Bank in 1967. Netanyahu has said that Israel, which annexed east Jerusalem in a move that isn’t internationally recognized, won’t share sovereignty over the city with the Palestinians.

Israel’s construction of housing for Jews in those areas is a major source of friction between the sides. An Israeli official said today the government has decided to advance plans to build about 1,000 new homes in Jewish areas of east Jerusalem.

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Aerial Photography Demonstrates The Extent of Israel's Savagery in Gaza (Video)

The Beautiful Smiles of the Fallen Children of Gaza — Killed During Israel's Latest Massacre

The many children who have been murdered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza are not just statistics. They are real human beings who shared loved ones, stories and dreams. Here is a selection of pictures of some of them.

Source: SACSIS

By Fazila Farouk
On 28 July 2014, Defence for Children International Palestine reported that the death toll for the children in Gaza was 200 and rising. However, in the past day or two, the world received news that Israel had bombed a United Nations school in Gaza killing 15 people, mostly women and children. The Guardian newspaper reports, “United Nations officials described the killing of sleeping children as a disgrace to the world and accused Israel of a serious violation of international law…” Meanwhileeight children were killed in a playground in Gaza strip earlier this week.

The killing of a terrified and defenceless civilian population has taken place in large numbers since Israel commenced its assault on Gaza on July 8, 2014. We should all be demanding an end to the slaughter of the people of Gaza. But the media’s cautious reporting has alleviated the horrors of this war and erased the humanity of the people of Gaza in the public’s mind.

Many of the deaths have been presented as sterile statistics. CNN’s clumsy pie chart, which shows that 826 civilians were killed by July 29 exemplifies the media's detached treatment of the on-going tragedy in Gaza. And when we are not being offered mind-numbing statistics, we are shown pictures of faceless bundled children wrapped in blood-soaked burial cloths, variously presented as civilian casualties, collateral damage or worse, human shields.

One has to trawl alternative media sites on the Internet to find the brave journalists and commentators who speak truth to power or simply write in a manner that presents Palestinians as human beings worthy of compassion.

One noteworthy new initiative is the Humanize Palestine website that’s been created to restore the humanity of those killed in Gaza. They describe their work simply as:

“(Attempting) to restore the humanity that is often stripped away when Palestinians are reduced to calculative deaths, forgettable names, and burned and mutilated bodies, rather than people who shared loved ones, stories, dreams and aspirations.”

We bring you a brief collection of photographs from Humanize Palestine showing some of the children who’ve lost their lives in recent days and weeks.

An unknown person once famously said, “A child's smile is one of life's greatest blessings.” Let us remember the fallen children of Gaza for the beautiful blessings they bestowed on the world.

cc SACSIS

ASEM KHALIL ABED (4)

Four-year-old Asem Khalil Abed Ammar was killed in the Shuja’iyya massacre in Gaza on July 20, 2014 along with his siblings 9-year-old Eman Khalil Abed Ammar and 13-years-old Ibrahim Khalil Abed Ammar.

cc SACSIS

KENAN HASSAN AL-HALLAQ (6) AND SAJI HASSAN AL-HALLAQ (4)

Six-year-old Kenan Hassan al-Hallaq (left) and his brother four-year-old Saji Hassan al-Hallaq were killed on July 20, 2014 in an Israeli attack on their house in the al-Ramal area of Gaza. The boys' mother and other members of the family were also killed in the strike. Their father, Hassan who survived the attack, said Kenan loved solving puzzles.

cc SACSIS

IMAN KHALIL ABED AMMAR (9)

Nine-year-old Iman Khalil Abed Ammar was killed on July 20, 2014 in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood.

cc SACSIS

YASMEEN NAYEF AL-YAZJI (4) AND HATEM ZAIN NAYEF AL-YAZJI (3)

Four-year-old Yasmeen Nayef al-Yazji and three-year-old Hatem Zain Nayef were killed along with their grandparents on Monday July 21, 2014. Israeli warplanes bombarded the family's house in the west of Jabalya.

cc SACSIS

SAHIR ABU NAMOUS (4)

Four-year-old Sahir Abu Namous was killed on Friday July 11, 2014 by shrapnel from a missile launched by Israel. His cousin described his killing: "He was playing and smiling next to his mother when missile shrapnel divided his head."

cc SACSIS

JIHAD ISSAM SHUHEIBER (10) AND WASEEM ISSAM SHUHEIBER (9)

Ten-year-old Jihad Issam Shuheiber and nine-year-old Waseem Issam Shuheiber were both killed with their cousin 10-year-old Afnan (Fulla) Tarek Shuheiber in an Israeli airstrike on July 17, 2014 in Gaza City. They were playing on the rooftop of their home when the attack occurred.


** All pictures and descriptions are from the Humanize Palestine website. Farouk is founder and executive director of The South African Civil Society Information Service, where this article was first published.

 

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

Israel’s Exterminatory Impulse Toward Gaza — A Protracted Genocide

Holocaust Memorial - Berlin Germany. (Photo by Philippe AMIOT)

"The sustained killing by Israelis, constant, multipronged (weaponry: air, sea, land), intended for obvious and blatant terrorization pure and simple—only an [Nazi] Eichmann would array the forces to strike and a Sade to wait for a crowded courtyard or a middle-of-the-night bombardment—requires a gift for words to describe I do not have."

By Norman Pollack
Disproportionate power yields the psychopathology of sadism. This becomes circular, for sadism does not come out of thin air, its presence—whether through the experience of conquest, arrogance inhering in a superiority mindset, the profound darkness of introversion and collective nightmare of, here, having suffered the Holocaust and internalizing poisonous thoughts, values, and actions of the Perpetrators, or, as I believe, ALL of the foregoing—is itself the catalyst for creating and enlarging disproportionate power ready for use and to be used continually to demean and debase the Other and periodically in spurts, as now in Gaza, to take special delight in cruelty while therefore, because of subjugation of the weaker and defenseless, taken as self-confirmation of moral-political exceptionalism. Netanyahu (not the individual alone, but the personification of a nation, particularly its military elite, self-regarded and identified as The Jewish State, conferring a certain license on those deemed included, rather than an equalitarian-based democratic polity) combines the bureaucratic grounding down, impersonal, unfeeling, of the Gazan people, with—again, the nation in support of his policies—the delight in cruelty of the Marquis de Sade. Eichmann/Sade, the unrestrained execution, under premises of search-and-destroy in UN safe havens, now JABALIYA, of penned-in fear-stricken children. Child murder may not, although it should, get one before The Hague Court, but the stain of war criminal will not be easily removed from Israel’s international reputation. What I write is not anti-Semitism; rather, it is condemnatory of Israel exactly because of its defamation and distortion of Judaism as I’ve known it, the radical-humanistic-intellectual-aesthetic record over the last 150 years, courageous in the struggle for human emancipation, freedom of thought, social transformation—all directly violative and destructive of the rights and aspirations of Palestinians and, increasingly, the oppressed everywhere.


***

Inflated rhetoric? Hardly. The sustained killing by Israelis, constant, multipronged (weaponry: air, sea, land), intended for obvious and blatant terrorization pure and simple—only an Eichmann would array the forces to strike and a Sade to wait for a crowded courtyard or a middle-of-the-night bombardment—requires a gift for words to describe I do not have; but inflated, no. The situation is far worse, the child, two weeks premature, delivered by cesarean section from the mother killed by an Israeli bomb, and, despite frantic efforts, who died age five days; the deliberate targeting of the major power plant which supplies electricity to Gaza, so that all the services dependent on it, from hospitals to water treatment plants, were impeded in their functions or halted altogether; a virtual pond of sitting ducks unable to move, to be shot at the whim of the invader/occupier. And Israelis turn a blank face to the atrocities, or offer pro forma tears, and in some cases, go out and celebrate (as I earlier described, the hillside spectators at Siderot with their cheers, drinks, and munchies). Yes, the sadism of power, the power of sadism, a reciprocal process of dehumanization leading to more atrocities.

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Israel's 'Dahiya Doctrine': State Terrorism and a Philosophy of War Crime

Photo provided by Boris from Vienna.

By Stephen Benavides

What Is the Dahiya Doctrine?

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel Defense Force Northern Commander Gadi Eisenkot, now the deputy chief of general staff, recommended and had approved the application of a military strategy that would target and destroy an entire civilian area rather than fight to overtake fortified positions one by one. This was in an effort to minimize IDF casualties while at the same time holding the entire civilian populace accountable for the actions of a few. A move some called revolutionary in modern warfare, the doctrine did away with the effort to distinguish between militant and civilian, using an overwhelming display of force through airstrikes to destroy the entire Lebanese Dahiya quarter.

The strategy itself calls for the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in order to induce suffering and severe distress throughout the targeted population. By targeting indiscriminately, the IDF hopes to deter further military attacks against Israel, destroy its enemies, as well as influence the population to oust the militants seen as the primary target. The IDF has planned on using the strategy since 2008, and is seen as doing so in the current conflict in Gaza based on the increasing number of civilian casualties. The result so far has been the death of more than 1,200 Palestinians, including 241 children and 130 women. Of the estimated death count, more than 70 percent have been identified as innocent civilians. The Dahiya Doctrine amounts to the direct use of state terrorism and is now the functioning military policy of the IDF.

The destruction of locations such as UN Relief and Works Agency shelters, mosques and residences of unaffiliated individuals is at minimum an agreed upon collateral objective in addition to the Hamas tunnel system and the militants themselves.

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Israel's Gaza Doctrine: The Worsening of Life for People in Gaza Is A Deliberate Goal of the Israeli Military — And That's A War Crime

Photo by Takver.

Collective Punishment:
That's what the Nazis specialized in.

"Israel is waging war on civilians in Gaza. Ordinary Palestinians, television stations, schools, hospitals, power plants and water facilities are all targets in the eyes of the Israeli army, one of the most powerful militaries in the world."

By Alex Kane
On Monday night, in what is being described as the most intense Israeli bombardment since the assault began three weeks ago, the air force bombed Gaza’s sole power plant, and killed over 100 people.

It is a violation of international law to destroy civilian infrastructure and lives if there is no concrete military advantage in doing so. “Israel is repeatedly and flagrantly violating the law of armed conflict,” a group of international legal scholars said in a statement released this week. “Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terrorize the civilian population.”

But Israel, shielded from accountability by the U.S., continues to violate the laws of war. In fact, it is following a specific military doctrine developed by Israeli military officials that calls for punishing the civilian population in the territory where resistance to Israeli actions emanates from. Its purpose is to restore Israeli deterrence; to make Israel’s armed enemies think twice before resisting, a goal Israel attempts to meet by wantonly destroying civilian infrastructure. Another goal is to turn the civilian population against the authorities that rule them. In this war, it’s Hamas Israel wants to weaken.

The Dahiyeh doctrine, as it is known, was first used in 2006. In the summer of that year, Israel went to war in Lebanon to battle the militant group Hezbollah, which was created in the late 1980s for the express purpose of resisting Israel’s occupation of Lebanon. Sparked by an attack on Israeli soldiers and the subsequent capturing of two soldiers to press for the release of Hezbollah prisoners in Israel, the 2006 assault on Lebanon inflicted enormous damage on the country. Over 1,000 Lebanese, the majority of them civilians, were killed.

The neighborhood of Dahiyeh was particularly hit hard. Dahiyeh is a Lebanese neighborhood in the south of the country, populated by low-income Shi’a Muslims. While not all of them are Hezbollah supporters, Shia Muslims are the constituency the Islamist party serves, and so Israel sought to punish them all, with no regard to who was a civilian and who was a combatant.

The doctrine was summed up by Israeli north command chief Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction,” he said in 2008, two years after the doctrine was put into place. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

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