As Gaza Bleeds, Israel Expected To Launch Ground Invasion

January 2nd, 2009 - by: danny

Israel Pursues Diplomacy but Presses Attacks By Isabel Kershner and Ethan Bronner

Israel stepped up its diplomatic activity while continuing its airstrikes against Hamas for a sixth day, killing a senior Hamas leader and two of his wives and four children.

Ismail Zaydah/Reuters
A man carried the body of a boy killed in a strike on the home of a senior Hamas leader on Thursday. Medical officials in Gaza said Palestinians deaths topped 400.

The Media Line News Agency: Israel to Move Into Gaza

IDF Prepares for Ground Attack; Diplomatic Flurry Continues

The Israeli government approved a ground attack into the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning as officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world are stepping up diplomatic activity to bring an end to the Gaza crisis.

GAZA IS BLEEDING

The International Red Cross Says Aid Is Desperately Needed

“With air strikes continuing throughout the first night of 2009, more casualties have been arriving at Gaza hospitals. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), seven civilians were killed, including one child, and 17 were injured. Further damage was reported to homes and administrative buildings, including hospitals. This morning, the streets of Gaza were largely empty.

At Nasr children’s hospital in Gaza City, windows have been shattered by the force of the explosions. The ICRC plans to provide plastic sheeting to cover the windows as soon as possible to help keep the patients warm. Meanwhile, in the town of Khan Younis, the PRCS moved its ambulance station to nearby El Amal Hospital, fearing bombardments.

Several ministries were hit and destroyed. “With every bomb, our house shakes violently as if struck by an earthquake. The foundations might not resist much longer,” said one resident of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza strip.

“There is almost no electricity in Gaza city and cooking gas has run out. The water supply is extremely limited. People are trying to fill pots, pans and everything they have, if by chance they have electricity for pumping water and the water is running at the same time,” said an ICRC worker who is regularly assessing the situation on the ground.”

HEADLINES

• 8 foreign reporters allowed into Gaza

At the urging of the High Court of Justice, Israel agreed Thursday to allow eight foreign journalists into Gaza when it reopens the border crossing with the Hamas-ruled territory, the Justice Ministry said.

• ISRAEL STIFLES FREE PRESS

JERUSALEM — On one hand, one can’t blame the Israeli government for wanting to do what it can to prevent the world from seeing the effects of its devastating Gaza airstrikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

• We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas h/t to Shebar Windstone.

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.

• Hamas Continues to Fire at Israeli Civilians as Israel Transfers More Aid

• Gaza raids precursor to Iran war says John Bolton, Ex UN Ambassador, NeoCon Ideologue

• MUST READING: What’s Behind the War

It is crucial that one has her/his facts straight about Israel’s war on Gaza. What events brought about this dreadful situation? What needs to be done to make it stop?

These questions will be answered in the content of this article, using concrete facts from a variety of news sources.

Dennis Rakkonen: On Those Hamas Rockets

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.

ARAB STREET PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI ACTIONS

SHALOM: DESTROY HAMAS RALLY IN MIAMI BEACH SLATED

Rally For Israel To Destroy Hamas — January 4, 2009 11:00 A.M.

Across from the Holocaust Memorial Meridian Ave & Dade Blvd, Miami Beach, FL

Contact: Bob Kunst — 305-864-5110 – President of Shalom International

AN ISRAELI VIEW: Gideon Levy reports in Haaretz

Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our “target bank” for the Gaza Strip.

They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel’s weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.

In four days, they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. Ã¢â‚¬Â¦.

Obama’s silence on Gaza confirms low Arab expectations By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, with his silence on Israel’s attacks in Gaza, has confirmed Arab expectations that foreign policy changes will come small and slow when he moves into the White House next month.

On the fourth day of Israeli air strikes which have killed more than 380 people in Gaza, the U.S. President-elect has yet to take a position, though he spoke out after militants’ attacks in Mumbai and has made detailed statements on the U.S. economy.

“He wants to be cautious and I think he will remain cautious because the Arab-Israeli conflict is not one of his priorities,” said Hassan Nafaa, an Egyptian political scientist and secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum in Amman.

“Obama’s position is very precarious. The Jewish lobby warned against his election, so he has chosen to remain silent (on Gaza),” added Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.

“If Obama continues to remain silent … his silence will be seen and will have the operational effect of providing an endorsement for Israel’s war on Gaza,” said Paul Woodward of Conflicts Forum, an organization aimed at changing Western policy toward Islamist movements such as Hamas.

WATCH: YouTube pulls some IDF videos showing Gaza assault

By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

YouTube briefly yanked the clips on Tuesday, saying it was inappropriate, only to restore it a few hours later, labeling it inappropriate for minors, the military said.

“We were saddened on December 30, 2008 when YouTube took down some of our exclusive footage,” the military wrote on its YouTube channel page. Fortunately, due to blogger and viewer support, YouTube has returned the footage they removed.

YouTube did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment. In the past, YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., has been pressed to take down videos depicting violence. The site has no automatic review process.

BAILOUTS FOR THE BANKS, BULLETS FOR THE PEOPLE

Mass uprising of Greece’s youth by Valia Kaimaki

Why did Greek youth take to the streets? For the first time since the second world war young people have no hope of a better life than their parents. But there is also a failure of trust in politicians and all state institutions, particularly the police.

ECONOMY

AIG: WHAT WENT WRONG

Where We Are, Where We’re Heading (2009) by Implode-Explode Heavy Industries news via Bernanke Panky News

“We now are “discovering” what I have written about for more than a year first-hand – the so-called “growth” over the last seven years has all been a fraud, instead being nothing more than additional debt. Ponzi-finance has taken over every area of our economy, from government to private business, and has run to the natural limit of “the greater sucker”, now leaving all of the people beguiled and bedeviled exposed as the naked-swimmers that they are.”

Danny Postel: IWJ’s Communications Coordinator Report on Immigration Raid

The past six months have seen three of the largest workplace immigration raids in U.S. history. In May, the rural Iowa town of Postville was convulsed when 900 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stormed a kosher meatpacking plant and arrested 389 workers. In August, ICE agents descended on an electrical equipment factory near Laurel, Mississippi, detaining nearly 600 workers. And in October, the scene was repeated in Greenville, South Carolina, where 330 workers were swept up at a chicken-processing plant.

Madoff’s Shocking Scheme Is Just a Microcosm of a Much Bigger Disaster

All of Wall Street has been engaging in crimes and swindles like Madoff’s against the American people, and the rest of the world, for decades.

MIAMI HERALD: Haitian Madoff Surfaces in Florida

Federal and state regulators are investigating a self-styled investment guru who recruited hundreds of Haitian Americans and others to pour their savings into his ventures through a network of South Florida investment clubs.

Some investors claim they are victims of a massive Ponzi scheme concocted by George Theodule, a self-proclaimed evangelical minister from Haiti, who promised to double their money in three months.

A federal suit filed Friday in South Florida claims Theodule bilked hundreds of investors out of millions while promising to double their money through stock and options trading.

”Theodule said he was going to create 10,000 millionaires among the Haitian people and empower them,” said Jared Levy, a West Palm Beach lawyer for at least 50 investors represented in the suit.

“The sad thing is, they believed him.”

For his part, Theodule, 48, didn’t have much to say. ”This is just too delicate to talk about,” he said when contacted by The Miami HeraldÃ¢â‚¬Â¦”

The News Dissector