The UN chief has called a new Israeli airstrike on a Gaza UN school that killed 10 and injured 35 a "moral outrage and a criminal act." Ban Ki-moon called for investigation as official death toll keeps rising.
Palestinian rescue workers search through the rubble of a house that was hit by an Israeli military strike in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Aug. 3, 2014 (AFP Mahmud Hams)
GAZA CITY -- The death toll on the 27th day of Israel's offensive on Gaza hit at least 120 on Sunday as health officials reported that over 70 bodies had been recovered in Rafah, a day after the city came under fierce, prolonged bombardment by Israeli forces.
Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma'an that the bodies of 70 Palestinians had been recovered from the city in southern Gaza, while 55 other Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks across the Strip Sunday.
31st July 2014 | Gaza Ministry of Health | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Gaza hospitals are operating under impossible conditions, with surgery now being performed in corridors and on the floor due to the sheer numbers of wounded from massacres such as Shati park, UNRWA school and Shujeiyah market.
Yazan Hilliss is only 6 years old, but he probably has more to tell about the war in Gaza than any of the journalists working there. And as he told a Swedish radio journalist Johan-Matthias Sommarström this is what he is going to do when he grows up.
As Sommarström tells, the boy approached him outside his hotel and said: "I am a journalist. I am reporting on what is happening here, this is my flak jacket.”
Wearing an old black garbage bag which he tied around the belly and chest, Yazan had to borrow Sommarström’s helmet reading TV to complete his “reporter look”.
“I'm wearing a helmet and journalist clothing. I want to be a journalist when I grow up, I'll take pictures,”Yazan told Sommarström.
This is when the Swedish reporter took a picture that in just few days received close to 8,500 retweets on Twitter, on the moment of this publication. Nearly 4,500 people added the photo to their favorites.
“For a moment he shone with pride. His friends were laughing happily and dancing around him. He got a little embarrassed and then I took the picture,” Sommarström told Swedish Radio.
That day, July 31, they talked more, and Yazan shared his story.
“Yesterday and the day before I saw the rockets hit the port,” Sommarström quoted Yazan in his story published on Sveriges Radio website.
Palestinians who were displaced from their houses due to fighting between Israel's army and Hamas fighters return to recover belongings from their destroyed homes in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood, on August 1, 2014 (AFP Photo / Mahmud Hams)
Yazan comes from Shejaiya, one of Gaza's poorest and most crowded neighborhoods, which was targeted by Israeli rockets.
Now he and his family live in a construction site after they fled their home in the middle of the night without belongings. His uncle's house was destroyed when it was hit by a missile from F-16 planes, Sommarström reported.
They boy said he was not afraid of loud explosions anymore as they have become a part of everyday life in Gaza.
But he also admitted to Sommarström: “When I go to bed I cannot sleep, the sound of rockets makes me wake up all the time.”
"For me the picture is a powerful example of children's strong will to survive," Sommarström told Sveriges Radio. "He has seen us journalists go in and out of the hotel, he has seen that we survive. I think that in his pretend play he wants to be like us, someone who survives."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry said casualties have reached 1,830 killed, including 398 children. The death toll includes 207 women and 74 elderly people, Dr Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said.
1- We're looking into it. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
2- We warned Israel to reduce civilian casualties. 1500 is a lot, must be reduced by 50%. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
3- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
4- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
5- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
6- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
7- We have Israel's back. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
yes especially seeing them cheering for this. An orphaned Palestinian girl who lost both her parents and siblings and her home -- everything she had...
The West preaches to Palestinians about the pitfalls of “armed struggle”, but history shows that when Israeli tanks rumble into Shujaiya, Jabalya or Maghazi, there is no time to lay flat and sing “we shall overcome”
“Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!” was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich published in Mondoweiss.net on Dec 21, 2009. It was written almost exactly one year after Israel concluded a major war against Gaza, Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) which was until now the deadliest Israeli attack against the strip for many years.
Ehrlich was belittling the question of a ‘Palestinian Gandhi’, while responding to the patronising approach others had taken to the concept: “Not that I’m in any way playing into the Palestinian Gandhi dialogue, I think it’s actually pretty diversionary/racist. But sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry...”, he writes in his opening paragraph.
Indeed, the concept of a “Palestinian Gandhi” was and remains ignorant, patronizing and racist. But the question is also inescapable, especially for people who classify themselves as “pro-Palestinian activists”.
...The Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) from 2000-2005 illicited an extremely violent Israeli response. Israeli leaders at the time meant to send a message to the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, that they had no patience for any act of collective defiance. Israel was convinced that Arafat engineered the Intifada to strengthen his political position in “peace talks” which proved to be worthless.
Caught in an impossible situation that included facing a US-fed Israeli war machine - and having no faith in their leadership - Palestinians resorted to arms, using suicide bombings as well as other violent methods.
The tactic raised much controversy – due to the death toll among Israeli civilians – and was quickly used in Israel-Western propaganda to retrospectively explain Israel’s military occupation and justify its harsh military tactics.
Those who dared explain Palestinian violence within its proper context, or who underscored that many more Palestinian civilians were still being killed by the Israeli army, were shunned by the media, and at times seen as a liability by those who kept on classifying Palestinians as victims.
Many Westerners (from presidents, to philosophers, to journalists, to social media activists) deliberated the matter with enthusiasm. The fact that few Western countries have truly experienced an anti-colonial national liberation struggle in their modern history, and thus lack any real understanding of the humiliation and anger experienced by these nations, seemed to matter little. Some were simply concerned about Israel and no-one else. Others wanted to preserve the image of the Palestinian as an occupied, hapless, eternal victim.
Palestinian women struggle to take in the destruction in the Beit Hanoun area of Gaza during an humanitarian truce on July 26, 2014 (AFP Marco Longari)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Seven Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, a day after Israel said it was safe for residents of the north to return home.
The turmoil gripping the Middle East is a direct result of the provision of cash, weapons and surveillance to Israel by the US, the latest Snowden leak illustrates. Obama’s “helpless detachment” is just for show, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald writes.
In a bold examination, the former Guardian journalist reveals the amazing contrast between what the United States says publicly, and what it does behind the curtain. This involves President Barack Obama’s apparent heartbreak over the Middle Eastern region, as well as the American love for publicly listing Israel as a threat to regional peace at a time when billions of dollars’ worth of its weaponry and intelligence were being supplied to the Jewish state since the 1960s.
...“The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the US government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters,” Greenwald bluntly states.
That is despite the US president’s statement on how “heartbreaking” it is to see the Gaza crisis unravel,“as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold”, wrote Corey Robin, a Brooklyn College Professor.“Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”
Like President Obama, I’m complicit in this campaign of aggression in Gaza. We all are. The U.S. is using our money to pay for Israel’s party of death.
U.S. taxes are supporting $3.1 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Israel in 2014. Thursday, July 17th, 2014, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $621.6 million in U.S. funding for the U.S.-Israel Missile Defense Program. According to the Congressional Research Service’s April 11th, 2014 report, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” American taxpayers give Israel’s military campaigns $9.9 million per day – $121 billion in assistance to date.
This money is paying for the destruction of innocence – my tax dollars at work in the massacre of precious children, including a five-month-old baby. I will not be complicit in these crimes against humanity as they’re disguised as self-defense.
From International Solidarity Movement (Facebook page):
On Friday July 25th, Israeli forces shot dead three citizens of Beit Ommar during a protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Hashem Abu Mariya (45-years-old), the director of the Hebron district for Defense for Children International Palestine was married with three children. Sultan Za'aqiq was 30-years-old and was married with two children. Abdulhamid Braigeeth was 33-years-old and was married with two children.
Hashem was standing next to an ambulance when he was shot in the heart with live ammunition. Sultan was also shot in the heart, and Abdulhamid was shot twice while trying to help Sultan.
Since 2009, seven citizens of Beit Ommar have been killed by either the Israeli military or nearby settlers from illegal settlements. Four of them were children under the age of 18. Hundreds more have been injured.
The first picture shows the protest when they were killed.
The second picture shows a burning military watchtower after their funerals.
The third picture shows the mourning ceremony, which lasted for the three days.
(Reposted from Younes Arrar, photos by Mohamad Awad).
Normally I despise Al Jazeera and its hypocricies (you would be more aware of this if you watched the Arabic language channel) but the author of this post I like and concur with
The massacre that is taking place right now in Gaza must be stopped. But when it ends, Palestinians cannot accept a return to mere normality. For decades, the status quo for them has been intolerable. What is the point of returning to another seven years of siege, to wait for the next massacre? Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli government, Israel has only tightened its grip on the occupied territories. The result has been more settlements, more land confiscation and the normalization of an apartheid regime.
There is another way forward. In 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations — including all the major unions, grass-roots networks and parties — put forward an alternative vision for achieving freedom and justice, based on reasserting the rights of the entirety of the Palestinian people. Recognizing the importance of uniting the Palestinian people, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement demands pressure on Israel not only until it ends its occupation but also until it implements equality for Palestinians in Israel and the right of refugees to return to their homes.
The BDS call asks for the solidarity of people around the world to bring real, direct pressure on Israel until it complies with all relevant international laws and to take action to end companies’ and governments’ complicity in Israel’s human rights violations. BDS draws on the example of the international struggle against apartheid in South Africa and on the history of Palestinian resistance, rooted in the local traditions of self-reliance, popular mutual support and anti-normalization.
What most people don’t realize is that with the support of trade unions, faith groups, nongovernmental organizations and grass-roots movements around the world, BDS campaigning is widespread and has achieved significant success in recent years.
Yousef Jaber Drabiah,25 years old, was killed on August 1, 2014 when an Israeli tank shell struck an ambulance in Rafah when it was trying to reach injured people in the Msabbeh neighborhood north of Rafah. He was an ambulance volunteer, murdered while on duty trying to rescue others from the Israeli massacre.
Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, Moshe Feiglin, has called for the use of concentration camps for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”
As Israel’s campaign in Gaza entered its 27th day, at least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded when a suspected Israeli missile landed near a United Nations shelter for displaced Gazans.
The UN-run boys school in the town of Rafah had been housing roughly 3,000 civilians.
HRW cited several witness accounts who managed to get out of the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a between July 23 and July 25, who described Israeli forces targeting Palestinians civilian fleeing to Khan Younis seeking shelter or medical help.
“Israeli forces in the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a fired on and killed civilians in apparent violation of the laws of war in several incidents between July 23 and 25,” HRW said in the report. “Deliberate attacks on civilians who are not participating in the fighting are war crimes.”
Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008,in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the nextto support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.
Archinect, please boycott Israel (its about time!)
Gaza in Ruins: Israel strikes university, flattens buildings
Bodies piled in Gaza flower shop as morgue evacuated from Rafah
‘Criminal act’: Ban Ki-moon outraged over Israel's deadly strike on Gaza UN school
The UN chief has called a new Israeli airstrike on a Gaza UN school that killed 10 and injured 35 a "moral outrage and a criminal act." Ban Ki-moon called for investigation as official death toll keeps rising.
Is he really?
70 bodies found in Rafah as death toll hits 1,810
Published yesterday (updated) 04/08/2014 04:56
Palestinian rescue workers search through the rubble of a house that
was hit by an Israeli military strike in Deir al-Balah, in the central
Gaza Strip, on Aug. 3, 2014 (AFP Mahmud Hams)
GAZA CITY -- The death toll on the 27th day of Israel's offensive on Gaza hit at least 120 on Sunday as health officials reported that over 70 bodies had been recovered in Rafah, a day after the city came under fierce, prolonged bombardment by Israeli forces.
Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma'an that the bodies of 70 Palestinians had been recovered from the city in southern Gaza, while 55 other Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks across the Strip Sunday.
‘Appalled by disgraceful shelling’: US urges Israel to ‘meet standards’, avoid civilian casualties
Meet standards on what? There's a book of standards on murder? How about US ceases giving Israel the ammunition it's murdering the Palestinians with?
Who believes this PR nonsense? The US along with a horde of allies are complicit in the murder of children and innocents.
Gaza Ministry of Health: “Gaza surgery being performed in corridors, on the floor
in Gaza, Reports July 31, 2014
31st July 2014 | Gaza Ministry of Health | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Gaza hospitals are operating under impossible conditions, with surgery now being performed in corridors and on the floor due to the sheer numbers of wounded from massacres such as Shati park, UNRWA school and Shujeiyah market.
Yazan Hilliss is only 6 years old, but he probably has more to tell about the war in Gaza than any of the journalists working there. And as he told a Swedish radio journalist Johan-Matthias Sommarström this is what he is going to do when he grows up.
As Sommarström tells, the boy approached him outside his hotel and said: "I am a journalist. I am reporting on what is happening here, this is my flak jacket.”
Wearing an old black garbage bag which he tied around the belly and chest, Yazan had to borrow Sommarström’s helmet reading TV to complete his “reporter look”.
“I'm wearing a helmet and journalist clothing. I want to be a journalist when I grow up, I'll take pictures,”Yazan told Sommarström.
This is when the Swedish reporter took a picture that in just few days received close to 8,500 retweets on Twitter, on the moment of this publication. Nearly 4,500 people added the photo to their favorites.
“For a moment he shone with pride. His friends were laughing happily and dancing around him. He got a little embarrassed and then I took the picture,” Sommarström told Swedish Radio.
That day, July 31, they talked more, and Yazan shared his story.
“Yesterday and the day before I saw the rockets hit the port,” Sommarström quoted Yazan in his story published on Sveriges Radio website.
Palestinians who were displaced from their houses due to fighting between Israel's army and Hamas fighters return to recover belongings from their destroyed homes in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood, on August 1, 2014 (AFP Photo / Mahmud Hams)
Yazan comes from Shejaiya, one of Gaza's poorest and most crowded neighborhoods, which was targeted by Israeli rockets.
Now he and his family live in a construction site after they fled their home in the middle of the night without belongings. His uncle's house was destroyed when it was hit by a missile from F-16 planes, Sommarström reported.
They boy said he was not afraid of loud explosions anymore as they have become a part of everyday life in Gaza.
But he also admitted to Sommarström: “When I go to bed I cannot sleep, the sound of rockets makes me wake up all the time.”
"For me the picture is a powerful example of children's strong will to survive," Sommarström told Sveriges Radio. "He has seen us journalists go in and out of the hotel, he has seen that we survive. I think that in his pretend play he wants to be like us, someone who survives."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry said casualties have reached 1,830 killed, including 398 children. The death toll includes 207 women and 74 elderly people, Dr Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said.
Ireland
Berlin
US version:
1- We're looking into it. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
2- We warned Israel to reduce civilian casualties. 1500 is a lot, must be reduced by 50%. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
3- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
4- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
5- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
6- Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
7- We have Israel's back. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has every right to defend itself.
France
Gaza
London
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Gaza
Israelis cheering on the assault of Gaza
IDF’S GAZA ASSAULT IS TO CONTROL PALESTINIAN GAS, AVERT ISRAELI ENERGY CRISIS
http://boycottisraeltoday.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/idfs-gaza-assault-is-to-control-palestinian-gas-avert-israeli-energy-crisis/
The picture before that of the cheering israelis is the saddest I've ever seen
this one is partially for jla-x and echoes some of the points made earlier in this thread:
Gandhian struggle was never an option for Gaza
#GazaUnderAttack
Ramzy Baroud
Friday 1 August 2014 16:27 BST
The West preaches to Palestinians about the pitfalls of “armed struggle”, but history shows that when Israeli tanks rumble into Shujaiya, Jabalya or Maghazi, there is no time to lay flat and sing “we shall overcome”
“Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!” was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich published in Mondoweiss.net on Dec 21, 2009. It was written almost exactly one year after Israel concluded a major war against Gaza, Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) which was until now the deadliest Israeli attack against the strip for many years.
Ehrlich was belittling the question of a ‘Palestinian Gandhi’, while responding to the patronising approach others had taken to the concept: “Not that I’m in any way playing into the Palestinian Gandhi dialogue, I think it’s actually pretty diversionary/racist. But sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry...”, he writes in his opening paragraph.
Indeed, the concept of a “Palestinian Gandhi” was and remains ignorant, patronizing and racist. But the question is also inescapable, especially for people who classify themselves as “pro-Palestinian activists”.
...The Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) from 2000-2005 illicited an extremely violent Israeli response. Israeli leaders at the time meant to send a message to the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, that they had no patience for any act of collective defiance. Israel was convinced that Arafat engineered the Intifada to strengthen his political position in “peace talks” which proved to be worthless.
Caught in an impossible situation that included facing a US-fed Israeli war machine - and having no faith in their leadership - Palestinians resorted to arms, using suicide bombings as well as other violent methods.
The tactic raised much controversy – due to the death toll among Israeli civilians – and was quickly used in Israel-Western propaganda to retrospectively explain Israel’s military occupation and justify its harsh military tactics.
Those who dared explain Palestinian violence within its proper context, or who underscored that many more Palestinian civilians were still being killed by the Israeli army, were shunned by the media, and at times seen as a liability by those who kept on classifying Palestinians as victims.
Many Westerners (from presidents, to philosophers, to journalists, to social media activists) deliberated the matter with enthusiasm. The fact that few Western countries have truly experienced an anti-colonial national liberation struggle in their modern history, and thus lack any real understanding of the humiliation and anger experienced by these nations, seemed to matter little. Some were simply concerned about Israel and no-one else. Others wanted to preserve the image of the Palestinian as an occupied, hapless, eternal victim.
7 dead in Jabaliya strike after residents told safe to return north
Published yesterday (updated) 04/08/2014 14:52
Palestinian women struggle to take in the destruction in the Beit
Hanoun area of Gaza during an humanitarian truce on July 26, 2014
(AFP Marco Longari)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Seven Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, a day after Israel said it was safe for residents of the north to return home.
And you ask why the US is hated?
Obama’s ‘helplessness’ an act: Snowden reveals scale of US aid to Israel
The turmoil gripping the Middle East is a direct result of the provision of cash, weapons and surveillance to Israel by the US, the latest Snowden leak illustrates. Obama’s “helpless detachment” is just for show, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald writes.
In a bold examination, the former Guardian journalist reveals the amazing contrast between what the United States says publicly, and what it does behind the curtain. This involves President Barack Obama’s apparent heartbreak over the Middle Eastern region, as well as the American love for publicly listing Israel as a threat to regional peace at a time when billions of dollars’ worth of its weaponry and intelligence were being supplied to the Jewish state since the 1960s.
...“The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the US government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters,” Greenwald bluntly states.
That is despite the US president’s statement on how “heartbreaking” it is to see the Gaza crisis unravel,“as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold”, wrote Corey Robin, a Brooklyn College Professor.“Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”
And you ask why the US is hated?
who asked that? or was that a rhetorical question?
http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/
In Gaza, US Citizens are Paying Israel’s Tab
Like President Obama, I’m complicit in this campaign of aggression in Gaza. We all are. The U.S. is using our money to pay for Israel’s party of death.
U.S. taxes are supporting $3.1 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Israel in 2014. Thursday, July 17th, 2014, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $621.6 million in U.S. funding for the U.S.-Israel Missile Defense Program. According to the Congressional Research Service’s April 11th, 2014 report, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” American taxpayers give Israel’s military campaigns $9.9 million per day – $121 billion in assistance to date.
This money is paying for the destruction of innocence – my tax dollars at work in the massacre of precious children, including a five-month-old baby. I will not be complicit in these crimes against humanity as they’re disguised as self-defense.
From International Solidarity Movement (Facebook page):
On Friday July 25th, Israeli forces shot dead three citizens of Beit Ommar during a protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Hashem Abu Mariya (45-years-old), the director of the Hebron district for Defense for Children International Palestine was married with three children. Sultan Za'aqiq was 30-years-old and was married with two children. Abdulhamid Braigeeth was 33-years-old and was married with two children.
Hashem was standing next to an ambulance when he was shot in the heart with live ammunition. Sultan was also shot in the heart, and Abdulhamid was shot twice while trying to help Sultan.
Since 2009, seven citizens of Beit Ommar have been killed by either the Israeli military or nearby settlers from illegal settlements. Four of them were children under the age of 18. Hundreds more have been injured.
The first picture shows the protest when they were killed.
The second picture shows a burning military watchtower after their funerals.
The third picture shows the mourning ceremony, which lasted for the three days.
(Reposted from Younes Arrar, photos by Mohamad Awad).
Normally I despise Al Jazeera and its hypocricies (you would be more aware of this if you watched the Arabic language channel) but the author of this post I like and concur with
The case for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel
The massacre that is taking place right now in Gaza must be stopped. But when it ends, Palestinians cannot accept a return to mere normality. For decades, the status quo for them has been intolerable. What is the point of returning to another seven years of siege, to wait for the next massacre? Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli government, Israel has only tightened its grip on the occupied territories. The result has been more settlements, more land confiscation and the normalization of an apartheid regime.
There is another way forward. In 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations — including all the major unions, grass-roots networks and parties — put forward an alternative vision for achieving freedom and justice, based on reasserting the rights of the entirety of the Palestinian people. Recognizing the importance of uniting the Palestinian people, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement demands pressure on Israel not only until it ends its occupation but also until it implements equality for Palestinians in Israel and the right of refugees to return to their homes.
The BDS call asks for the solidarity of people around the world to bring real, direct pressure on Israel until it complies with all relevant international laws and to take action to end companies’ and governments’ complicity in Israel’s human rights violations. BDS draws on the example of the international struggle against apartheid in South Africa and on the history of Palestinian resistance, rooted in the local traditions of self-reliance, popular mutual support and anti-normalization.
What most people don’t realize is that with the support of trade unions, faith groups, nongovernmental organizations and grass-roots movements around the world, BDS campaigning is widespread and has achieved significant success in recent years.
Yousef Jaber Drabiah, 25 years old, was killed on August 1, 2014 when an Israeli tank shell struck an ambulance in Rafah when it was trying to reach injured people in the Msabbeh neighborhood north of Rafah. He was an ambulance volunteer, murdered while on duty trying to rescue others from the Israeli massacre.
Atif Alzamli was killed in the same attack.
Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza
Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, Moshe Feiglin, has called for the use of concentration camps for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”
Airstrikes in Gaza Hit Seventh UN School Sheltering Civilians
As Israel’s campaign in Gaza entered its 27th day, at least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded when a suspected Israeli missile landed near a United Nations shelter for displaced Gazans.
The UN-run boys school in the town of Rafah had been housing roughly 3,000 civilians.
HRW: Israel targets fleeing Palestinian civilians
HRW cited several witness accounts who managed to get out of the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a between July 23 and July 25, who described Israeli forces targeting Palestinians civilian fleeing to Khan Younis seeking shelter or medical help.
“Israeli forces in the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a fired on and killed civilians in apparent violation of the laws of war in several incidents between July 23 and 25,” HRW said in the report. “Deliberate attacks on civilians who are not participating in the fighting are war crimes.”
Today I saw a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic bag of meat: it was his son
A father opens a plastic bag: 'This is my son,' he says, killed by an Israeli shell
For those who wonder why this issue involves first and foremost the US and you, the US citizens amongst us:
Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008,in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.
One-fourth of Gaza’s population displaced by Israel’s violence
...
I Choose to Burn My Israeli Passport
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