Israel and the United States will strangle Gaza by cutting off all money and goods, including fuel and most food, ...
Starving Gaza | By Chris Hedges

08/20/07 "Truthdig" -- -- -Gaza has become the Sarajevo of the Middle East. Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza’s industry, farming and infrastructure.

The tactic is clear: Israel and the United States will strangle Gaza by cutting off all money and goods, including fuel and most food, to reduce one of the most densely populated places on the planet to an impoverished ghetto. Hunger and anarchy, they hope, will motivate Gazans to turn on Hamas, and the anarchy will perhaps be used to justify a reoccupation by the Israeli military and see the return of the quisling President Mahmoud Abbas, who was ousted after he led an abortive coup to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government. He is now in the West Bank. ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:04 PM

Isreali IDF states it will "reexamine their policy" of conducting such [military training] raids on uninformed, panic-stricken Palestinian villages
Israel Conducts Military Training Exercises On Palestinians | By Mary Sparrowdancer | ©.2007 Mary Sparrowdancer | 8-19-7

After several complaints made by sympathetic Israeli paratroopers to a Jewish human rights group called Yesh Din, the Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF) has announced that it will discontinue its practice of "capturing" populated Palestinian villages during military training exercises. The IDF states it will "reexamine their policy" of conducting such raids on uninformed, panic-stricken Palestinian villages.

Let us reflect upon this announcement for a moment and consider its implications. Most of us living in the United States have never been flushed from our own homes and rounded up in the streets during military training exercises conducted by a foreign military that is illegally occupying our neighborhoods with tanks, bulldozers and shelling us from overhead with their air force. In fact, if this were done to us even once, most of us would probably arm ourselves as stipulated in the Constitution, and we would attempt to protect ourselves and our families from future illegal military ambushes.

The Palestinians, however, are not permitted such reasonable steps toward self-protection. The Israeli military incursions into their neighborhoods, both deadly as well as "practice" runs, are being carried out daily and nightly without cessation, and Palestinians are not permitted to "resist" any barbaric treatments given to them by Israel, nor are the Palestinians permitted to fight back or protect themselves or their families. The few who have fought back have been immediately labeled by the mainstream press as "Resistance Fighters," or "Militants," or "Extremists," or "Terrorists." More recently numerous Palestinians are simply being referred to as "Wanted" during midnight incursions into their neighborhoods where Israeli troops have arrested hundreds, including children who have been pulled from their beds by soldiers. An estimated 11,000 men, women, children, babies born in prison, and the elderly are currently being held in inhumane Israeli jails at this time, some without charges, others without legal counsel, and babies without access to sunlight. (1) (2)

The announcement by the IDF means that just out of sight and out of hearing range of the rest of the world, the US-backed Israeli military, which is one of the deadliest on earth, has been trespassing and terrorizing uninformed, unarmed Palestinian citizens in their own villages--simply because it can. ...
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It would appear that Palestine and the Palestinians have long been viewed as an open opportunity waiting to be freely exploited by the Zionists. They have exploited the Palestinians for sixty years without regard or concern for the human costs and suffering endured by the Palestinians. In 1948, when Israel declared itself a "Jewish-only" state within the land of Palestine, the popular slogan coined by Zionists was that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without a land." ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:00 PM

as if 400-500 KKK members where put in the middle of New York's Harlem and were given... protection (with 5,000 white soldiers) to [attack] blacks
Mazin Qumsiyeh: Israel's ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine

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Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts.
...

Israeli colonies dot the landscape from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan on land stolen from the native people. Six of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are now refugees or displaced people and the remaining Palestinians live in increasingly shrinking and impoverished ghettos (à la South African Bantustans at the time of Apartheid).

In all areas we visited the trend is the same: maximizing geography (under Israeli control) and minimizing demography (Palestinians on their land). Israeli authorities have evolved ingenious ways of ethnic cleansing since the more direct uprooting practiced in 1947-1949, when 850,000 Palestinians were driven out. The details of how this is done differ from area to area. A few examples may illustrate this.

The Gush Etzion block of colonies (Gilo, Har Gilo, Efrata etc) was successful in destroying the Palestinian economy in the Southern West Bank (from Jerusalem to Hebron). Jewish colonial settlers live in subsidized housing built on stolen Palestinian land and drive to Western Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without ever seeing the victims or noticing their plight. But movement of Palestinians is impossible between Arab Jerusalem and its suburbs like Bethlehem and Alkhader or areas farther south. This killed the Palestinian economy on both sides of the apartheid wall. Jerusalem's Arab old city is a ghost town compared to what it was just 20 years ago. And the unemployment rate in Bethlehem is twice what it was in the US during the height of the Great Depression.

The old city of Hebron, near the Ibrahimi Mosque (the mosque of Abraham), is deserted. Tens of thousands of local Palestinians (and thousands of foreigners) used to flock to this busy commercial district until the few extremist Israeli settlers (with Israeli government support and protection) literally just moved in uninvited. They took over whole buildings or, in some cases, just the upper floors. They go on rampages [pogroms? ed.] , making life impossible for the native Palestinians. From the upper story rooms they squat in, they throw trash at the shops and pedestrians below. They routinely shoot at Palestinian civilians and destroy shops.

Thus some 400-500 colonial racists (under the protective eye of over 5,000 Israeli occupation soldiers, many of them from the settlements) control the lives and destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of native Palestinians. It is as if 400-500 KKK members where put in the middle of New York's Harlem and were given permission and protection (with 5,000 white soldiers) to do what they want with the black population. ...

- posted by Editor @ 1:48 PM

Arab MK slams 'ethnic cleansing' after demolitions in W. Bank
09/08/2007 | Arab MK slams 'ethnic cleansing' after demolitions in W. Bank | By Yoav Stern and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent

After Israel demolished structures in at least five Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley in the last week, Hadash Chairman Mohammed Barakeh called on Thursday for an end to what he termed the "ethnic cleansing" in the area.

Pools, tents and tin structures built without permits and belonging to Palestinian residents, were destroyed in the villages of Bakia, Jeftlik, Beit Dajan and Bardella, which are scattered along the Jordan Valley.

Barakeh said that the demolitions prevent the residents from providing for themselves through working the land and raising livestock. The information was received by the Hadash chairman from the residents - who also turned to Amnesty International - and was verified by Haaretz. ...
- posted by Editor @ 9:29 AM