Quote of the Week, 26.1.06

Quote of the Week, 26.1.06

When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army. But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me. In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either. You become so apathetic you don't care at all. Shooting is the IDF soldier's way of meditating. It's like shooting is your way of letting go of all your anger when you're in the army. In Hebron there's this order they call "punitive shooting": just open fire on whatever you like. I opened fire not on any sources of fire but on windows where there was just wash hanging to dry. I knew that there were people who would be hit. But at that moment it was just shoot, shoot, shoot.

Extract from an interview with Israeli soldiers (who are identified by pseudonyms) conducted by Israeli journalist Uri Blau and printed in Kol Ha'Ir, a Jerusalem weekly, in September 2001. Translated from Hebrew by Tal Haran, and published in English translation in the April 2002 edition of Harpers Magazine. - From Lawrence of Cyberia

Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that "the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him. But the style is the same." - Joshua Micha Marshall in The Washington Monthly.

Media disinformation

Media disinformation

Recently, you saw headlines like this: "Suicide bomber in Netanya (Israel)". What you never see - because the U.S. media hides it - are the acts of aggression by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and the colonialists (euphemistically called "settlers" by the American media) against people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT - Gaza Strip and West Bank). The victims of this aggression by the world's sixth largest military are largely Palestinian, who are among the world's poorest. Many of the victims are children but they also include Americans, internationals and Israeli Jews who support the Palestinians in their quest for dignity and liberty. News crawler below shows you what happened in the OPTs in the last two weeks of November, 2005.

Full reports are available online.

Israeli War Crimes

Israeli War Crimes

Democracy Now!: Class-action lawsuit filed against Moshe Ya'alon, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defenses Forces, currently in the US. He is being sued for alleged war crimes committed during the Israeli shelling of a U.N. compound in the Lebanese town of Qana in 1996. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the bombings. They had taken refuge in the compound following Israeli attacks on their villages.

Similar suit filed against Avi Dichter, the former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service. Dichter is being sued on behalf of the family members of 14 Palestinians killed during an IDF assassination attempt on a Hamas leader in Gaza in July 2002.

A slow genocide

A slow genocide

In Hebron, where 600 Uzi-toting Jewish settlers live among 240,000 Palestinians, 85% of the water is diverted to the few Jewish settlers. The remainder is rationed among Palestinians.

The reality is a cruel contrast between a people with swimming pools amidst green lawns and a people who must share bathing water.

Israel: a Middle East superpower

Israel: a Middle East superpower

Did you know Gaza is a giant prison and the Israelis are still the jailers?
The U.S. provides Israel with the money and military financing that makes occupation possible. Because of access to American technology and financial support:

Israel has the world's sixth largest military.
Israel has become the third largest arms producer in the world*.
Israel is the world's fourth largest nuclear power.

Israel produces 12% of the world's arms. And it sells to countries few other want to associate with: Apartheid-era South Africa (where it trained the notorious security forces and helped develop the regime's nuclear program), Mobutu's Zaire, Liberia under Charles Taylor, the Burmese generals, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras and Guatemala under their military dictatorships, the corrupt and brutal regimes of Central Asia and Rwanda, where it sold small arms to the Hutu before and during the genocide, then, without interruption, to the Tutsis immediately afterwards. [ED. Israeli arms merchants are now in Sudan as the Darfur genocide unfolds.] +

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Merry Christmas Israel! Here's a $600 million Xmas bonus!
While cutting back on social programs that help U.S. citizens, Uncle Sam is not a total Scrooge this holiday season. In addition to gifts for the super rich of the good 'ole USA, Israel is also receiving a Xmas bonus. [+].
ED. Earlier this year, Israel handed the U.S. a $2.2 billion bill for the Gaza redeployment (see News archives). Is this the first installment?

Poverty and Occupation

Poverty and Occupation

Did you know 81% of the 1.3 million people in the Gaza Strip live below the poverty line and that it is ranked the second poorest place on Earth?

As the occupying power, Israel is responsible for the well-being of this hostage population.

Source: nationmaster.com

"Don't Bomb Us!

"Don't Bomb Us!

A Blog by Al Jazeera Staffers: Sabbah has just posted that Al Jazeera staff members decided to start a new blog to give voice to a lot of concern around the office regarding what is going on (recent leaked memo revealed that, in 2004, Blair stopped Bush from bombing AlJazeera's offices in Qatar; U.S. has bombed AJ in Afghanitan and in Baghdad by "mistake") and will also serve as a tribute to fallen journalists.

They have also started a Flicker album!

Scowcroft on Gaza Disengagement: "Terrible news" -
Bush "wrapped around the little finger" of Israel's PM Ariel Sharon

Former National Security Adviser to Ford and George H.W. Bush and mentor to Condoleeza Rice, Brent Scowcroft talks of his last meeting with Rice:

"We were having dinner just when Sharon said he was going to pull out of Gaza," at the end of 2003. "She said, 'At least there's some good news,' and I said, 'That's terrible news.' She said, 'What do you mean?' And I said that for Sharon this is not the first move, this is the last move. He's getting out of Gaza because he can't sustain eight thousand settlers with half his Army protecting them. Then, when he's out, he will have an Israel that he can control and a Palestinian state atomized enough that it can't be a problem." Scowcroft added, "We had a terrible fight on that."

Unlike the current Bush Administration, which is unambiguously pro-Israel, Scowcroft, James Baker, and others associated with the elder George Bush believe that Israel's settlement policies arouse Arab anger.... article

Even more shockingly, Republican elder statesman, Gen Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Bush's father, accused Bush Jr. of being "wrapped around the little finger" of Israel's PM Ariel Sharon.

Scowcroft has finally said aloud what no one in official Washington or the media dared to utter. His accusation helps explain much about the Bush AdministrationÍs foreign policies and why they seem so often to damage rather than promote US interests. article

Abbas and the Lame Duck

The long campaign for the elimination of [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas is entering its final phase.

Much to the regret of Sharon & Co., Abbas cannot be "eliminated" the usual way, as were Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and many other Palestinian leaders. In the case of Abbas, it is not even allowed to use the word "elimination" - an official term of the Israeli army, taken straight from the Mafia lexicon. more

Children living under occupation - how do they cope?

"I want to tell the world that we are living in hard conditions under Israeli occupation... the schools are closed and pupils had to stay at home. We can't study and if we want to, the explosions that are often heard, the bombing, the noise of tanks prevent us to do so." more