Protests condemn Israel offensive

As international protests against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip continue, Israel is facing a fresh round of condemnation from around the world.

The protests followed on the heels of the UN Security Council's failure to issue a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire despite hours of closed-door talks.

On Sunday the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union pledged an additional $4.2 million in emergency aid for Gaza and called on Israel to respect international law.

Al Jazeera

Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places.

We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas

Gaza is a secular society where people listen to pop music, watch TV and many women walk the streets unveiled

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management. They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony. Were they “dangerous Hamas militant gunmen”? No, they were unarmed police officers, public servants killed not in a “militant training camp” but in the same police station in the middle of Gaza City that had been used by the British, the Israelis and Fatah during their periods of rule there.

timesonline.co.uk

Roseanne Barr: Israel is a 'Nazi state'

Former television star Roseanne Barr has denounced Israel's military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, labeling Israel a "Nazi state."

In a post on her personal blog, which appears at her Web site, Roseanne World, the comedienne, who is Jewish, wrote on December 30 that she had planned to travel with pro-Palestinian activists on a protest boat sailing from Cyprus to Gaza.

After an encounter with an Israel Navy vessel, the boat was turned back and sailed into a Lebanese port on Tuesday.

"I said Israel will attack any boat carrying doctors and medical supplies," Barr wrote on her blog, adding that, "Israel is a NAZI state. The Jewish Soul is being tortured in Israel."

The Jerusalem Post

Israeli troops 'move into Gaza'

Israel has carried out more than 800 strikes on the Gaza Strip since launching the offensive eight days ago, including 40 on Saturday.

The UN has warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis, and believes 25% of more than 400 Palestinians killed by Israel so far were civilians. Israel says about 80% of those killed were Hamas militants. Four Israelis have been killed by rocket fire from Gaza.

BBC News

Protests against Gaza attack sweep across the world

From Jakarta to London, a wave of protest erupted across the world today against Israel’s assault on Gaza.

More than 10,000 marched through the Indonesian capital and Israeli flags were burnt and trampled upon in Asia as the Palestinian death toll in the offensive rose above 430, including three young brothers killed this morning.

Thirty new Israeli raids struck the Gaza Strip today as thousands of Hamas supporters attended the funeral of Nizar Rayan, the most senior Hamas victim of the offensive. He was killed with his four wives and 11 of his children in another Israeli raid yesterday.

Hamas leaders responded by calling for a “Day of Wrath” to avenge the deaths as the party warned that it may resume suicide attacks against Israel for the first time since January 2005.

timesonline.co.uk

Gaza and the rise of the Fourth Reich

One would think that a people who have historically been on the receiving end of heartless treatment would have chosen to shun such techniques rather than to embrace them.

Ironically, Israel has become the Fourth Reich, dealing with basic human rights and dignity in a brutal and arrogant manner, much as their unexpected mentors taught.

The Nazis would be proud and yet horrified that the evil torch of their methods is being carried onward by some of the very people they sought to repress.

PressTV

UNSC fails to pass anti-Israel resolution, again

The UN Security Council has declined to issue a resolution censuring the Israeli blitz on Gaza despite global calls for an end to the assault.

The draft resolution put forth by Libya, representing the 22 nations in the Arab League, was swiftly rejected in the course of an emergency session held on Wednesday, AP reported.

The US, a permanent UNSC member holding veto power, has been quick to remove the circulated draft on accounts that it was 'unbalanced' as it did not condemn the Palestinian Hamas.

Presstv.com

McKinney to Obama: “Say Something” About Gaza Humanitarian Crisis

Asks Congress to Stop Sending "Weapons of Mass Destruction"

"As we are about to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, let us remember what he said. He said that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. And guess what: we experienced a little bit of that violence, because the weapons that are being used by Israel are weapons that were supplied by the United States government."

Black Agenda Report

The truth about those Hamas rockets

By Dennis Rahkonen

Five years ago, the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction to dupe us into supporting an illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq.

A few days ago, Israel trotted out only an infinitesimally more credible excuse -- the Hamas rockets case -- as justification for its own murderous shock and awe in Gaza, a long-planned campaign perniciously aimed at ousting a “regime” that came to power via popular, democratic vote.

Yes, such rockets exist, but they’re little more than slingshots against Israel’s incredible military might, and they’re used out of desperation by Palestinians who’ve never been accorded the democratic space within which to gain redress of their eminently just grievances.

Israeli apologists have presented absurd propaganda about those devices.

We’ve been asked, for instance, what would we do if rockets were being launched on our homes in New York or Texas, from Canada or Mexico?

The proper answer is that, if those two nations had been unlawfully occupied or embargoed by the United States for 60 years of relentless oppression and repression, and if all attempts at peaceful change had been forcefully prevented or scuttled by the U.S., then such attacks would be an understandable, indeed a justifiable attempt at gaining intolerably deferred liberty.

Our appropriate response wouldn’t be to bomb the hell out of the nearest Canadian or Mexican city, but to collectively look into mirrors and earnestly ask ourselves, “What have we done wrong to incur their wrath?”

And then act to correct the situation.

Onlinejournal.com

US military aid underpins Gaza offensive - 31 Dec 08