UN Secretary General criticized the Israeli new penal measures on the Gaza Strip, "unacceptable" ... denounced the Israeli mass punishments ...
International rejection of Israeli penal measures against Gaza | GAZA, (PIC)--

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, on Tuesday criticized the Israeli new penal measures on the Gaza Strip, describing them as "unacceptable" and doubled the human suffering of the Gaza inhabitants.
...
For her part, the EU commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, condemned the measures that affect the basic necessities of the Palestinians and warned of mass punishment against the Strip.
...
A Russian foreign ministry statement said that the isolation and punishments would affect the inhabitants' basic needs.
...
The organization of Islamic conference denounced the Israeli mass punishments and warned of its serious ramifications on the human and health fields. ...
- posted by Editor @ 7:36 PM

"When I hear, 'that used to be my home,’ it is painfully similar to the treatment in South Africa when coloureds had no rights,"
Desmond Tutu Likens Israeli Actions to Apartheid | October 29, 2007

BOSTON - South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu compared conditions in Palestine to those of South Africa under apartheid, and called on Israelis to try and change them, while speaking in Boston Saturday at historic Old South Church."We hope the occupation of the Palestinian territory by Israel will end," Tutu said.

"There is a cry of anguish from the depth of my heart, to my spiritual relatives. Please, please hear the call, the noble call of our scripture," Tutu said of Israelis.

"Don’t be found fighting against this god, your god, our god, who hears the cry of the oppressed," Tutu said.
...
Israeli policy toward Palestine is an inflammatory topic in the U.S. and is not commonly discussed in large, public forums.
...
Tutu drew parallels between the apartheid of South Africa and occupied Palestine of today, including demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli government and the inability of Palestinians to travel freely within and out of Palestine.

"I experienced a déjà vu when I encountered a security checkpoint that Palestinians must negotiate every day and be demeaned, all their lives," Tutu said.

Tutu said that Palestinian homes are being bulldozed, and new, illegal homes for Israeli’s built in their place.

"When I hear, 'that used to be my home,’ it is painfully similar to the treatment in South Africa when coloureds had no rights," Tutu said. ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:11 PM

Israel's Attorney General has forced his Government to restore full electricity supplies to Gaza Strip ...
Times Online | October 30, 2007 | Israeli legal chief forces Gaza fuel U-turn

Israel's Attorney General has forced his Government to restore full electricity supplies to Gaza Strip, leading ministers to threaten large-scale military action to root out militants.

Menachem Mazuz's decision, which came after a petition by 10 human rights groups to the country's Supreme Court, places the administration of Ehud Olmert at loggerheads with his legal system. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:41 AM

Israelis can surround Gaza with troops, barbed wire, checkpoints ...bomb and strafe Gaza targets indiscriminately ...
The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine | Round Two | Terrell E. Arnold | 10-28-7

... Having kept it virtually sealed off from the outside world ever since Hamas beat Fatah for control of it, Israel now plans to use creeping electric power outages to make life in that open-air prison totally intolerable. Since no major power appears to have objected loudly enough to the trial balloons, Israel seems confident it can shut Gaza down without significant political repercussions.

Gaza, indeed Palestine as a whole, now poses a unique case of global insensitivity, and we should ask why. Is it because everybody else considers the Palestinian people less than human? Is it because the Israelis still keep control of the moral high ground after six decades of unremitting ethnic cleansing? Is it because the killing and displacement of Palestinians has become so common a feature of the Middle East human scene that nobody cares? Is it because objections to the usually pointless lobbing of mortar shells across the Israeli boundary are so mind numbing that people stop looking at or listening to what is actually happening to the Palestinian people?

No. All of those probably figure in some degree in the mindless global reactions to the human tragedy that is Palestine, but the hammer is fear of the charge of anti-Semitism. In addition, the hammer most artfully pairs with the universal negative: "Terrorism." It simply does not matter what the Palestinians try to do in their own defense, so long as the Israelis and international media can lump any actions to fight back under the label "terrorism." Thus, the Israelis can surround Gaza with troops, barbed wire, checkpoints and a neighbor such as Egypt that, if anything, helps the Israelis; Israel's Defense Force can bomb and strafe Gaza targets indiscriminately; and because Gaza happens to be under the elected political leadership of a US-designated terrorist group, the outside world considers those actions all right.

... Thus, humanity at large appears to have bought into the systematic theft of the Palestinian homeland by Zionists. It is therefore not surprising that, particularly in the Western view, even though the Israelis have taken all of Palestine up the 1967 truce-line by force, the Palestinians simply should recognize Israel's right to the land and move on. People would treat no other scrap of land on the planet with such casual disregard for ownership.
...
... He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State whose immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counter Terrorism and Emergency Planning. He will welcome comment at
wecanstopit@charter.net
- posted by Editor @ 5:47 PM

Israel prepared to cut electricity supplies to Gazans in retaliation for an escalation in cross-border rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian milita
Israel moves to further isolate Gazans | By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor | from the October 25, 2007 edition

The country prepares to cut power to Gaza, hoping that residents will turn against Hamas.

Gaza City and Tel Aviv - Ratcheting up pressure on Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Israel prepared to cut electricity supplies to Gazans in retaliation for an escalation in cross-border rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants.
...
Since Hamas took over, the group has attempted to regulate the smuggling of illicit goods. "Hamas said you can smuggle anything except weapons and drugs," tunnel smuggler Hashem says. He has shifted from moving AK-47s and bullets to cheese, salted fish, and painkillers.

Israeli officials say intelligence reports indicate that sophisticated antitank weapons and rockets still flow into Gaza.

Up and down the coast, Israel's policy of blocking imports has left store shelves so bare that it's impossible to find a can of soda. The price of cigarettes has doubled, pushed up also by a tax that Hamas charges the smugglers. The price of 50-kg (110-lb.) sacks of flour rose 80 percent to 180 shekels ($45).

An absence of raw materials has forced most businesses to close, or work at minimum capacity; the lack of cement has silenced 95 percent of the building projects in Gaza. According to United Nations agencies, some 70,000 people have lost their jobs in a territory where 80 percent already live in poverty.
...
But instead of blaming just Hamas for the conditions in Gaza, fingers are pointing at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also called Abu Mazen, for contributing to the air of crisis. Many Gazans believe that the Fata-run government in Ramallah has given tacit support to the sanctions. "People are blaming both governments – in Ramallah and Gaza," he says. "People are victims of the Abu Mazen and the Hamas governments."
- posted by Editor @ 5:37 PM

FACTS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL
Sunday, October 28, 2007 | FACTS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL

Updated: Did you know?

… that non-Jewish Israelis can’t buy or lease land in Israel.

… that Palestinian license plates in Israel are color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews.

… that Jerusalem, both East and West, is considered by the entire world community, including the United States, to be occupied territory and NOT part of Israel.

… that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the “territories”? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron’s 120,000 Palestinians.

… the United States awards Israel $5 billion in aid each year. Update: Here is a short clip from the documentary “Occupation 101,” exposing US Aid to Israel:

… that yearly US aid to Israel exceeds the aid the US grants to the whole African continent.

… that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons.

… that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites.

… that Israel currently occupies territories of two sovereign nations (Lebanon and Syria) in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

… that Israel has for decades routinely sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies.

… that high-ranking military officers in the Israeli Occupation Forces have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed by the IOF.

… that Israel refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war.

… that Israel routinely confiscates bank accounts, businesses and land, and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer the confiscation.

… that Israel blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors.

… that the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders, is the Israeli AIPAC.

… that Israel stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions.

… that today’s Israel sits on the former sites of more than 400 now-vanished Palestinian villages, and that the Israeli’s re-named almost every physical site in the country to cover up the traces.

… that it was not until 1988 that Israelis were barred from running “Jews Only” job ads.

… that four prime ministers of Israel Begin, Shamir, Rabin, and Sharon, have taken part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages.

… that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pays two American public relations firms to promote Israel to Americans.

…that Israel’s government includes a party which advocates expelling all Palestinians from the occupied territories.

… that Israel’s settlement-building increased rapidly since Oslo.

… that settlement building under Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu.

… that Israel once dedicated a postage stamp to a man who attacked a civilian bus and killed several people.

… that recently-declassified documents indicate that David Ben-Gurion in at least some instances approved of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

We often hear of Ehud Barak’s generosity about an alleged return of 95% of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. When Palestinians refused, they were blamed for “missing an opportunity.” The Palestinians have already accepted Israel’s existence on 78% of what was Palestine. For those who use the argument of the Bible: God said to Abraham, “Unto thy seed, I will give thy land.” Abraham had two sons. Ismael - the Arab son, and Isaac - the Jewish son. So even if one wants to go to the Bible, the land would belong to both.

… that Palestinian Christians are considered the “living stones” of Christianity because they are the direct descendants of the disciples of Jesus Christ.

… that despite a ban on torture by Israel’s High Court of Justice, torture has continued by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners.

… that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world.
- posted by Editor @ 6:46 PM

Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them ...
Much Like Auschwitz | By Khaled Amayreh

Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them, writes Khaled Amayreh in the occupied West Bank

10/25/07 "Al-Ahram" --- - A few weeks ahead of the upcoming "peace conference" in Annapolis, Maryland, Israel has been displaying its "goodwill" towards the Palestinians. At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts.
...
Rudely awoken, Kitziot's estimated 1,200 inmates, already fed-up with draconian punitive measures, decided to resist their tormentors. According to one prisoner leader, this resistance had not been planned, coming as an instinctive defensive reflex to "obvious provocation".

Some prisoner leaders pleaded with the detention camp's administration to wait until morning to carry out the impromptu inspection. The administration's response came in the form of bullets, sonic grenades (which the Israelis call stun grenades), tear-gas and smoke bombs.

"I don't know what a Nazi concentration camp looked like, but I imagine that Kitziot looked very much like a concentration camp yesterday," said Abu Ahmed, a detainee from Hebron, who has been languishing at the facility for nine months without charge or trial.

Abu Ahmed, who was speaking via a smuggled mobile phone, described the assault on the prisoners as "planned and premeditated", calling Israeli claims that the soldiers were only defending themselves against rioters "obscene lies meant to cover up a criminal act".

The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area. When the dust settled, there were hundreds of prisoners who suffered significant to serious wounds, mostly in the head and upper body. At least nine inmates were severely injured, including Mohamed Sati Al-Ashkar, who was hit with a live round in the head, causing massive brain haemorrhage.

On 23 October, Al-Ashkar was pronounced clinically dead. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:23 PM

Israeli forces demolish electricity transformer in northern Gaza ... residents completely immersed in darkness
Israeli forces demolish electricity transformer in northern Gaza | Ma'an News | October 20, 2007

Gaza – Ma'an – Israeli forces completely demolished the main electricity transformer in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening.

Local residents of northern Gaza reported spending Friday night completely immersed in darkness after the destruction of the transformer which supplies power to the area.

Eyewitnesses stated that an Israeli tank launched a shell towards the transformer located near the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:47 AM

Gaza: A zoo, caged: closed in on three sides by fences, the 4th with Isralei navy, overhead, unmanned aircraft, not air baloons ...
16/10/2007 | The 41st kilometer | By Amira Hass

A zoo. This is one of the ways that Palestinians describe the conditions under which nearly 1.5 million of them have been living: in an area of some 360 square kilometers, closed in on three sides by sophisticated barbed-wire fences, concrete walls and military lookout towers, and to the west by Israeli navy ships that seal them off from the sea. Overhead, in the sky, unmanned aircraft and hot air balloons continually photograph whatever happens inside this closed cage, which has seven gates connecting it to the world, all of which are sealed off almost hermetically.

During the past four months, Israel has permitted about 2,000 people to leave the Gaza Strip - a minority of them were ill; more than half were Fatah senior activists or loyalists who were fleeing from the Strip; and the rest were individuals holding dual citizenship or visas for prolonged stays abroad. For the sake of comparison: In 1999, 1,400 people a day went through the Rafah crossing point alone, in addition to the thousands who passed though the Erez crossing point, despite the permanent closure policy. Now, 1.5 million human beings are living with the knowledge that the length of their world is at most 41 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide. ...
...
Since 1991, Israel has been using the partial or total imprisonment of the Gazans in their cage, for longer or shorter periods, as a political strategy: Sometimes it is depicted as punishment, sometimes as a deterrent action and always as a preface to a political plan. Until not long ago, it seemed as though the terms of imprisonment could not be any worse. The past four months have proven that there is always "worse."
- posted by Editor @ 5:04 PM

Gaza: The Auschwitz / Warsaw ghetto of our Time | Largest detention camp in the World
Gaza: The Auschwitz of our Time | Largest detention camp in the World | by Khalid Amayreh | Global Research, August 11, 2007

In 1940, several months after invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced about 500,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, surrounding it with a high wall. Tens of thousands died from hunger and disease. Eventually, 300,000 were sent to death camps, mainly Treblinka in eastern Poland.

Similarly, Israel is now incarcerating nearly a million and a half helpless Palestinians in the Gaza Strip into a hell similar in nature to the Warsaw Ghetto. The Gaza concentration camp is not only fitted with a wall, but also with every conceivable tool of repression, such as electric fences and watch towers manned by Gestapo-like trigger-happy Jewish soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later.

Moreover, thousands of Israeli soldiers, are surrounding Gaza in a hermetic manner, shooting and killing any Palestinian trying to escape, e.g. enter Israel to search for work or even food.
...
Moreover, Israel, which has been telling the world that it had ended its occupation of Gaza, still retains full control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, thus reducing the Gaza Strip into the largest detention camp in the world.

To make a long story short, Gazans are being pushed into a situation very similar to that which prevailed at the Ghetto Warsaw. They are not allowed to work (unemployment in Gaza stands at more than 70%), they are not allowed to travel abroad, they are not allowed to enter Israel for work, they are not allowed even to go fishing offshore since Israeli gunboats would open fire at any fishing-boat daring to go more than a mile off the shore. ...
...
But Israel is not the only guilty party in this tragedy. The US is actually as criminal as Israel, since the Bush administration is urging Israel to keep up the pressure on Gaza.

In fact, American officials keep congratulating their Israeli colleagues on the "success" of the blockade against Gaza. I wonder what kind of politicians are those who enjoy watching children starve to death? Are they human beings or cannibalistic beasts? This question ought to be directed to Condoleezza Rice whose behavior toward the Palestinian people is probably a thousand times worse than the behavior of the worst American white slave masters toward here forefathers.

Maybe it is naive to appeal to Rice's sense of justice and morality since her manifestly criminal record with regard to the Palestinian cause leaves no doubt as to the woman's unethical and evil character. ...
- posted by Editor @ 11:07 AM

`We - Israeli Soldiers - were put there to punish the Palestinians`
A NEW ISRAELI STUDY CONFIRMS OUR WORST FEARS : On the academic research of Psychologist Nofer Ishai-Karen and Psychology Prof. Joel Elitzur, Dalia Karpel | shortened translation of article in Haaretz `Hamedovevet` | 21.09.07

`We - Israeli Soldiers - were put there to punish the Palestinians`, says Ilan Vilenda, an Israeli soldier who served in Rafah during the first Intifada.
...
The soldiers spoke freely to Nofer, who served with them in the same ASHBAL platoon 20 years ago; They disclosing their innermost emotions about the horrendous crimes, in which they took part: Murder, breaking bones of Palestinian children, actions of humiliation, destruction of property, robbery and theft.

Soldier `A` testimony: `We decided to turn an old shower in our base to a make-shift detention cell. A Palestinian was brought there, handcuffed and mouth banded so he couldn`t talk, or move. We `forgot him there for three days`...

Soldier `B` testimony:
`I was on my first patrol. Others simply shot like mad. I started to shoot as they did. They `set my on`. I took my weapon and shot. Nobody was there to tell me otherwise`

-- Psychologist Ishai-Karen was shocked to find that the soldiers enjoyed the `intoxication of power`, and had pleasure from using violence. She said: `Most of my interviewees enjoyed their own instigated violence during their Occupation service``.
...
Soldier `E` testimony: We drove an APC through Rafah. A man of 25 walked nearby. He didn`t hurl a stone at us or anything. Then without any reason `X` shot him in the stomach. We left him lying on the sidewalk`.
...
Nofer Ishai-Karen: `Some NCOs encouraged the soldiers to behave brutally, and provided their own example.
...
Some guys couldn`t stomach it. The case of severe abuse of three young adolescents, who were bounded hand and foot by a staff sergeant, got them to alert a senior officer. `When the medic arrived the boys were bleeding all over, their clothes were soaked with blood, and they were shivering from fear. They were made to kneel like dogs and were afraid to move`. The NCO was punished by 3 months detention. But the platoon commander backed the NCO and reprimanded the conscientious soldiers for `defaming the platoon`.`
...
The events, which Nofer Ishai-Karen researched, happened some 17 years ago. The situation has further deteriorated since that time. Now Israeli Army and Air Force General openly take pride in acts of revenge against Palestinian civilians. Maj-Gen Eliezer Shkeidi took pride in announcing that his pilots break the sound barrier over Gaza, producing sonic booms.
- posted by Editor @ 4:40 PM

Israel has expropriated 275 acres in the West Bank for a new road ... enable settlement expansion ...
Israel Takes West Bank Land for New Road | Oct 9, 12:13 PM (ET)

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has expropriated 275 acres in the West Bank for a new road for Palestinians that would bypass a large Israeli settlement and enable its expansion, Palestinian officials said Tuesday.

Palestinians said Israel's latest step is meant to consolidate Israeli control over a large swath of the West Bank, near Jerusalem, and undermines trust at a time when the two sides are trying to reach agreement on the principles of a future peace deal. ...
- posted by Editor @ 10:11 AM

IOA demolishes Islamic archeological fence in Jerusalem built 491 years ago
IOA demolishes historical fence in Jerusalem built 491 years ago | 2007-10-04 | OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)

Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, strongly denounced the IOA for demolishing an Islamic archeological fence adjacent to the fountain of Sultan Suleiman al-Qanoni, outside Al-Khalil gate in occupied Jerusalem, which was constructed 491 years ago. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:37 PM

Hamas warns of catastrophic Gaza medicine shortage ... Israel has sealed Gaza's borders
Hamas warns of catastrophic Gaza medicine shortage | 14 hours ago

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Hamas warned on Thursday of a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip which it has run for more than three months due to a dire shortage of basic medical supplies.
...
Since then, Israel has sealed Gaza's borders allowing only humanitarian supplies in and severely limiting the number of people who can get in and out.

But relief agencies have warned that the current flow of deliveries is not enough to stem a crisis in a territory already reeling from a Western freeze on direct aid, Israeli military incursions and border closures.

The United Nations has repeatedly appealed for the opening of all crossings into the Gaza Strip, warning of the restrictions' severe impact on Gaza's population, more than 80 percent of whom depend on international aid. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:44 PM