Clinton: Israel has right to respond to Gaza rocket attacks (more…)

After today’s attack, Palestinians living close to the area said that heavy shooting could be heard and reported seeing Israeli attack helicopters in the air. Shortly afterwards, an Israeli warplane flew over the strip causing a sonic boom, apparently in a warning to the population. (more…)

“For us to broadcast such a thing would in my view be out of keeping with our strict duty to be impartial,” he told one of the BBC’s radio channels. (more…)

The BBC has a difficult choice before them indeed—should they appeal to help save lives and in doing so demonstrate a partiality for humanitarian concerns? Or should they simply do nothing and demonstrate a partiality for dying Palestinians?

It’s quixotic, being a peace activist in Sderot, an Israeli town that has borne the brunt of rocket attacks from Gaza. When Israeli air strikes on Gaza began last month, hundreds of people from Sderot swarmed to a vantage point known as Horseman’s Hill to watch the fiery spectacle and cheer. Nomika Zion was not among them. “I listened to one of my neighbors telling Israeli TV that the sound of the bombing was like a symphony, that he’s never heard such powerful music before,” she says. “And I was thinking, How many people are dying because of that ‘music’” (more…)

George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s special Middle East troubleshooter, was chairman of a law firm that was paid about $8 million representing Dubai’s ruler in connection with a child-trafficking lawsuit. (more…)

Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks in the North and South Waziristan Agencies. They condemned the killings and asked US President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons. . . They claimed that all those killed in the attack were innocent and local villagers, who had nothing to do with militancy or Taliban.(more…)

They taught us to dread zarchan [from the Hebrew root to shine or glow]. They taught us, as medics, that if we treated a phosphorous wound, prepare for the worst. It doesn’t merely burn, they taught us, it burns first through the skin, then through the soft tissue, until it reaches bone. They taught us to take an instrument, or, in its absence, a stick, to dig out the phosphorus crystals from the flesh, or the burning would go on and on. (more…)

Over the last four weeks the powerful Israeli propaganda machine has been churning out lie after lie about Hamas in order to excuse its own inexcusable onslaught. Israel stopped journalists going into Gaza, preventing any independent reporting on the war crimes its forces were committing. Truth is usually the first casualty in war. Gaza was not even a war in the conventional sense of the word; it was one-sided carnage. (more…)

The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles. (more…)

We must not be led astray in this election campaign and consider both Livni and Barak as moderates, in contrast to the “extremist” Netanyahu. This is a deception. Kadima and Labor, the center and left-wing parties, have led Israel to two awful wars within two years. Netanyahu has yet to go to war once. True, he speaks more radically than the other two, but so far it has only been words, while the “moderates” have taken radical, aggressive action. (more…)

Many of Obama’s initiatives in his first few days in office — preparing to depart Iraq, ending torture and closing Guantánamo — were aimed at signaling a sharp turn away from Bush administration policies. In contrast, the headline about the strike in Waziristan could as easily have appeared in December with “President Bush” substituted for “President Obama.” (more…)

In Gaza, Palestinians have once again been blamed for their own deaths. The British made a similar argument 151 years ago when they killed thousands of Indian civilians — 1,200 in a single village — in response to the largest anti-colonial uprising of the 19th century. If Israel truly desires peace with the Palestinians and safety for its citizens, it should look back to one of the greatest, and misunderstood, independence movements in history. (more…)

At 7.30 am Jan. 22, five days after Israeli authorities declared a ‘ceasefire’ following their 22-day air, land and sea bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunboats renewed shelling off the Gaza city coast, injuring at least six, including four children. (more…)

“We all put our hands up and yelled, ‘We’re women and children. We’re not the resistance,’ ” recalled Sherine Helw, Fuad’s daughter-in-law.

The soldiers opened fire on Fuad, said Sherine, and he died in front of his family. (more…)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the Gaza Strip last week, called for a “full investigation,” Amnesty International is accusing Israel of “war crimes,” and Louis Michel, the EU’s commissioner for aid to developing countries, says: “It is evident that Israel does not respect international humanitarian law.” (more…)

Back to the daily From Lebanon segment on LBC-TV, which features “rich and famous” Lebanese, even if they are not Lebanese. Today, it featured former Sen. George J. Mitchell from Maine. Here is a story about Sen. Mitchell (whose mother had immigrated from Lebanon). A former student of mine in Washington, DC was working part-time in the US Senate. He was half-Lebanese. He once found himself in the same elevator with Sen. Mitchell, and he greeted him warmly, and asked him: “Do you speak Arabic? I heard that you are Lebanese.” Very rudely, Sen. Mitchell told him: “I am Irish. I am not Lebanese.” Keep bragging, LBC-TV. We are laughing at you. (original…)

This short documentary by CBS is by far, one of the most honest and brave television broadcasts to come out of the United States about the conflict.

“A missile targeted my relatives,” said Adhem Abdulal, a tall boy with a bright grin. “My cousin got shrapnel in his leg. Another cousin got shrapnel in his head.”

“The F-16 bombed my uncle’s house. His stomach got ripped out, and he died,” said Mohammed Abu Hassan, fidgeting with the zipper on his red leather jacket.

“Our house was burned by the shelling,” said Othman Abu Ghaioon, his dark brown hair framing a pale, expressionless face. “The top two floors are destroyed, but the ground floor got fixed. There are 20 of us there now.” (more…)

Another aid worker put it more bluntly: “Gaza needs to be fed through its mouth, not to be fed anally.” (more…)

“[There is] a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national weaknesses. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it.” (more…)

Flights by Israel Air Force F-16s over Gaza earlier Sunday sparked fears in the coastal territory that a new Israeli military offensive was underway. (more…)

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Sanctions Torture (more…)

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves if we imagine this is already a U.S. challenge,” says Israel’s foremost political analyst, Chemi Shalev. “The Mitchell mission should not be viewed as a big deal by anyone worried this heralds a major U.S. peace drive. (more…)

Israeli forces used aerial bombing, tank shelling and armoured bulldozers to eliminate the productive capacity of some of Gaza’s most important manufacturing plants during their 22 days of military action in the Gaza Strip. The attacks – like those which destroyed at least 4,000 homes, left some residential areas resembling an earthquake zone and more than 50,000 people in temporary shelters at their peak – destroyed or severely damaged 219 factories, Palestinian industrialists say. (more…)

“I do not know of any military that is more moral, fair and sensitive to civilians’ lives than the IDF,” he said. (more…)

They had just gone a little distance when there was an explosion. We were hit. We fell down, and I couldn’t see or hear anything. Then I started hearing again. I heard combat helicopters and gunfire, and I didn’t know where they were firing. Husam, Mahmoud, and I stayed where we were for about an hour, maybe more. Then the daughters of our neighbors came and took us into one of the houses. My father and uncle came there and took us to an ambulance. They told me that Husam had been killed and Mahmoud was wounded. My eyes were hurt, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to see again. (more…)

No one has to pressure Israel into making peace – because no one wants peace more than Israel. (more…)

“I have no intention of building new settlements in the West Bank,” Netanyahu told Blair in a meeting Sunday. “But like all the governments there have been until now, I will have to meet the needs of natural growth in the population. I will not be able to choke the settlements.” (more…)

Branding foreign journalists “spoiled crybabies” unwilling to make “a little effort” to get into Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, Government Press Office head Danny Seaman denied Sunday there had been any ban on their entry into the Strip during the battle. (more…)

Just like an Israeli propaganda chief to call the international media “crybabies” while placing a media ban on Gaza so harsh that even the New York Times and CNN questioned Israel’s intentions.

“Israel has never restricted media access like this before, and it should be ashamed,” says Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times. CNN’s Ben Wedeman complains it feels like North Korea. (more…)

The poll also found that 35% of Israeli pupils think Israel is a racist society, with more youth in the periphery of the country – 41% – holding such a view, and fewer – 29% – in the center of the country. (more…)

In February 2005, Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz and Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon adopted the recommendation of a team appointed to analyze the matter, headed by Major General Udi Shani, that the policy should be terminated. The team found that house demolition does not serve to deter and causes greater damage than benefit. The team’s findings undermined the claim of deterrence that Israel had argued for many years.

Despite this, yesterday Israel sealed parts of the Abu Dahim house, as stated above, which is home to the parents, brothers and sisters of ‘Alaa Abu Dahim. The floors that were sealed were a residential floor, on which the perpetrator, his parents and one of his brothers lived, and the basement floor, which has apartments for rent. (more…)

A new book published in the United States alleges that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is an active and open supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Lebanese Shi’ite militia with training for its fighters. (more…)

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’ (more…)

I went to the burns department in Shifa hospital. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. These phosphorus burns. Their bodies were black. One person has stitches everywhere. It’s worse than killing people. They look like the living dead. I also went to the north, to Beit Lahiya. This was one of the most beautiful areas of farmland. Now it’s gone, you can’t recognise the place. I wanted to cry. (more…)

Palestinian boy Mohammed Kutkut, 14, right, covers his face as he sits next to the name sign of his killed friend Ahed Qaddas in the Fakhoura boys school in Jebaliya, northern Gaza strip, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009. Three friends of his class where killed when the Israeli army shelled Jebaliya in the past weeks. Tens of thousands of children have flocked back to schools throughout the Gaza Strip, days after Israel ended its fierce military operation against the territory’s rulers. (more…)

Since Al-Jazeera English went on the air in November 2006, it has struggled to gain a spot on traditional American airwaves. The station says only three small cable operators offer the network in Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C.

None of the biggest U.S. cable systems carries Al-Jazeera English, claiming viewer interest is not sufficient. (more…)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. “Guy walks into a bar …” No, not that one — this one: “This is the most critical year ever for Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy. It is five minutes to midnight. If we don’t get diplomacy back on track soon, it will be the end of the two-state solution.” (more…)

The airstrikes were authorised under a covert programme approved by Obama, according to a senior US official. It was a dramatic signal in the president’s first week of office that there will be no respite in the hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. (more…)

Despite constant bombardment, particularly during the early stages of the conflict, some of the smugglers’ tunnels remained open, Rafah residents and tunnel operators said. Many others have reopened since Israel and Hamas separately announced cease-fires a week ago. (more…)

“It is unbelievable that, all over the world, people were supporting Gaza,” Yazid Khader, a spokesman for the movement, said last week. “Yet here on the West Bank people were unable to do so. We ask: will the blood spilled in Gaza be enough for the Palestinian Authority to move towards reconciliation with us?” (more…)

Forwarding mail should go to The Bush Ranch, Crawford, Texas. If it looks like a bar tab, just send it to Cheney (about time the old skinflint paid for something), and if it’s from either of the Blairs just toss it. If I never get another one of her begging letters as long as I live, it’ll be too soon. Finally, don’t get the two buttons under the desk confused. I once rang for a beer and nearly took out Tehran. (more…)

At first the 44 children that live in the Zani family home in Beit Hanoun were wary of the unexploded F-16 rocket whose tail has protruded menacingly from their garden since it landed in the first week of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Now, they have grown used it – playing excitedly near it and even building fires next to it, a relative says. (more…)

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” (more…)

When did Muammar Qaddafi become a historian? Never, that’s when. This clown simply wants his name in the New York Times, with the benign sounding “leader of Libya” adjacent.

How politically correct. And how very much like Qaddafi to spit on the Palestinians by reinventing history.

Israel is a small country living in a permanent state of siege, highly security-conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country whose borders are notoriously permeable, an open society known for its lax and easygoing ways. (more…)

How do you talk to an eight-year-old about a rocket attack that killed her mother, her sister and her four brothers? (more…)

The first taste of the Obama’s administration’s prosecution of the “War on Terror”. Unilateral bombardment of Pakistan. Now that’s keeping your “eye on the ball”.

Thus far, Obama appears to have hewed closely to the line held by the Bush administration, among the most pro-Israel presidencies in U.S. history. (more…)

I do believe that the violence in the Middle East has roots deep in history, and in the competition of the three monotheistic faiths, each of which claims divine title to much of the same land. (more…)

Oh really Mr. Moyers? The conflict is religious is it? It has nothing to do with decades of brutal occupation and Zionist dispossession? What a refreshing perspective.

“Everybody’s busy rebuilding now,” said a manager of one digging team. “In a month, it will be back to normal.” (more…)

Over half of the Israeli population, some 55 percent, supports holding negotiations with Palestinians with the aim of reaching a permanent agreement, according to a ‘New Wave’ poll commissioned by the Geneva Institute. (more…)

Amira Qirm lay on a hospital bed today with her right leg in plaster, and held together by a line of steel pins dug deep into her skin. For several days after her operation Amira, 15, was unable to speak, and even now talks only in a low whisper.

In her past are bitter memories: watching her father die in the street outside their home, then hearing another shell land and kill her brother Ala’a, 14, and her sister Ismat, 16, and then the three days that she spent alone, injured and semi-conscious, trying to stay alive in a neighbour’s abandoned house before she could be rescued last Sunday. (more…)

Look at New York City. Look at the major newspapers. They have a Zionist agenda. They do. I’m not Jewish. I’m not anything. I don’t care about the Israelis. And I’m not anti-Semitic. It’s just a fact. I suggested to my publisher writing a book on Israel, and he said forget it. You can’t talk about the reality of Israel. The only place you can talk about the reality of Israel is in Israel. They tell you things you will never hear in the United States. … For instance, why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? You would never get that in the New York Times. Look at the New York Times; it’s almost an extension of Israel. (more…)

In American politics, you can’t do anything in the Middle East without the approval of Tel Aviv, at least on some level. It’s impossible. I mean, I cannot think of a country that is so beholden to a small country like this, even a superpower, in all of history. I can’t even think of it. (more…)

Schools in the Gaza Strip operated by the United Nations have reopened for the first time since the Israeli offensive against Hamas militants. (more…)

The Obama administration is reluctant to turn over too many rocks in the Bush administration’s conduct in the War on Terror. Obama has pledged to reach a post-partisan nirvana, and Republicans could condemn any investigation of Bush administration abuse of the republic as a partisan witch-hunt. Also, the Obama administration has a conflict of interest in pursuing investigations and prosecutions against Bush administration officials because now that Obama is president, he may not want to entirely discredit Bush’s precedents, which significantly expanded executive powers. (more…)

Through the hole in the wall of his house, Sadala sees a landscape in gray and brown. This is where a neighbourhood had stood, his neighbourhood. Now there is a snake of sand around the bomb crater. It is impossible to tell where the streets once stood. Family houses have turned into piles of debris. People have built refuges using cloth and rubble. They stand alongside dead donkeys and sheep, whose stomachs swell up. No one here has time to remove rotting corpses. (more…)

Zahwa, la veuve d’Atiyeh, raconte en détail, les larmes aux yeux, le drame qu’elle a vécu. “C’était comme un jeu pour les soldats. Ils riaient”, affirme-t-elle. Zeinab, 12 ans, qui a perdu son père, sa mère, deux frères et des cousins. Shiffa, 19 ans a également enterré son père, sa mère, sa tante et son oncle. Almassa, 13 ans, se souvient comment un soldat a tiré sur Messaouda qui avait son bébé de 6 mois dans les bras, et qui est mort. Tous ont perdu plusieurs proches. (more…)

After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive. (more…)

“It took two longs days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in U.S. Middle East policy,” said As’ad Abu Khalil, Lebanese-born and pro-Palestinian professor of political science at California State Univerity.

“Obama’s speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulphuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza,” he added. (more…)

But the devastation of war is everywhere, the terrifying memory of it still raw. Sitting in the ruins of Zeitun, a district almost completely destroyed, Arafat Samouni painfully recounts the events that ended in the death of 30 members of his extended family in one of the war’s most publicised tragedies. Still in shock, he struggles to remember the names of all the dead and how they were related to him. Asked whom he blames, he has no doubt. “The Israelis, of course. They knew this area. They knew there were civilians here.” He refuses to blame Hamas (more…)

In the aftermath of the war, there are scenes of devastation at nearly every turn in Gaza. Whole blocks are pockmarked by bullet holes. The earth craters where tall buildings once stood. Mourning tents line the roadways. (more…)

“[George Mitchell] is neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian,” said Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel. “He is, in a sense, neutral.” (more…)

This former research director for AIPAC must have a very clear understanding of neutrality. In fact, I am now convinced that Mitchell’s appointment is a bad decision purely because of Indyk’s endorsement.

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two. (more…)

Whatever the damage done to Hamas, what happened in Gaza was, simply put, a civilian slaughter. (more…)

To that end, Mr Obama needs to make it clear, preferably before Israel’s election next month, that America will no longer countenance Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank. The Jewish settlements there should never have been built, and Israel has promised to freeze them. This has become a test. If Mr Obama cannot hold Israel to its promise, his chances of restoring America’s standing as the indispensable mediator in this conflict are nil. (more…)

White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing. (more…)

Well, it took two longs days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in US Middle East policy. For some reasons, many Arabs and many American leftists I know (you know yourselves) have wanted to believe so bad that Obama will deviate from the Zionist path of US foreign policy. I knew that it would be a matter of weeks that he would prove me right, but I did not know that he would prove me right in a matter of hours.

His speech on the Middle East today could have easily been written by Benjamin Netanyahu. Only this morning, my mother was quizzing me again about Obama, which has been doing regularly in every conversation. She–like many Arabs and Muslims–wants to believe that he would be different than Bush. The fact that he is–unlike Bush–intelligent, competent, and articulate is irrelevant. The set of Zionist–in fact, we should say Revisionist Zionism because American establishment Zionism has been Revisionist Zionism since the Reagan administration (there was a slight deviation from Revisionist Zionism during the Bush-Baker administration, but Clinton quickly “corrected” that) dogmas that guide US foreign policy will remain in place, even if a potato or Sarah Palin is president of the US. Richard Holbrooks is his special envoy to Pakistan-Afghanistan and the man did not waste time before establishing his foreign policy credentials when he said that Afghanistan and Pakistan are “distinct” countries (that reminds me of the wisdom of Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings who yesterday told CNN–you have to monitor the insights of this dude–that we learned from our experience in Iraq that we can’t predict the future exactly in Iraq–I kid you not, he said that).

But Obama’s speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulfuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza–those who survived the Israeli terrorist festival of butchery and massacres. His remarks leave you with the impression that there are two sets of problems in the holy land: that there was terrorism against civilians in “southern Israel” and then there is some undefined civilian suffering in Gaza from some undefined natural disaster–an earthquake or hurricane. He specifically mentioned the violence against “southern Israel” left it unclear as to what happened in Gaza. He then did the typical dance: of saluting Mubarak for not only oppressing his own population but for oppressing the Palestinians and imposing the siege on them. He then followed the Zionist line that all aid should pass through the transparent gangs in Ramallah–but that is important because Fatah has a very long record of integrity, transparency, merit, and high ethical standards–along with collaboration with Israel. He also defined the requirements for implementing the “Arab peace plan”: Arab governments have to normalize relations with Israel.

All Arabs are now asked by Obama to hug the nearest Israeli: and no, shoes are not accepted as tools of affection–not in the Western culture. But you may tell me, optimistically, that he did not mention Dahlan. I say: oh, no: he did mention Dahlan, I kid you not. He made reference to the Jordanian oppressive state’s training of “Palestinian security forces.” Palestinian security forces is a mere fancy name for the Dahlan gangs (seen above). But I also noticed when he left the podium he went down to shake hands, and the first head I saw was none other than Martin Indyk. If Obama would now appoint Steven Emerson at his ambassador-at-large to the Muslims world, I would expect the Arab-Israeli conflict to end, as well as US problems with the Muslim world. (more…)

So let’s hope Obama launches the new era by accepting a fair measure of responsibility on America’s part for the slaughter of some 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza, a large number of them women and children, killed by US weapons furnished to Israel along with moral and political support for its criminal actions. Let him deplore publicly Israel’s savage assault, which came in the run-up to his inaugural. (more…)

“Hamas must end its rocket fire, Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza. The United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime so that Hamas cannot rearm,” the new president said in his first major speech on the region as president. (more…)

The report concludes that, when it comes to covering wars, editors and reporters behave in a patriotic manner that is “almost instinctual” and that, instead of scrutinizing press releases, they eat out of the hands of official spokespersons. As Be’er puts it: “In crisis situations, the media constantly endeavor to justify military actions, and they accept the narrative of the government or of military officers without criticism.” And, he adds, it was no different this time in Gaza. (more…)

One nine-year-old boy said his father had been shot dead in front of him despite surrendering to Israeli soldiers with his hands in the air. Another youngster described witnessing the deaths of his mother, three brothers and uncle after the house they were in was shelled. He said his mother and one of his siblings had been killed instantly, while the others bled to death over a period of days. A psychiatrist treating children in the village of Zeitoun on the outskirts of Gaza City, where the alleged incidents took place, described the deaths as a “massacre”. Rawya Borno, a Jordanian doctor, said civilians, including children, were rounded up and killed by Israeli troops. (more…)

For three weeks barbarism has been on show before a universal public, which has watched, judged and with few exceptions rejected Israel’s use of armed terror against the one and a half million inhabitants blockaded since 2006 in the Gaza Strip. Never have the official justifications for invasion been more patently refuted by the combination of camera and arithmetic; or the newspeak of ‘military targets’ by the images of bloodstained children and burning schools. Thirteen dead on one side, 1360 on the other: it isn’t hard to work out which side is the victim. There is not much more to be said about Israel’s appalling operation in Gaza. (more…)

Barack Obama, the US president, today signed an executive order to shut down the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, the most potent symbol of excess in George Bush’s “war on terror”. (more…)

In Gaza, Ms. Abu Halima said that when her family was hit, “fire came from the bodies of my husband and my children.”

“The children were screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’ and there was smoke everywhere and a horrible, suffocating smell,” she said. “My 14-year-old cried out, ‘I’m going to die. I want to pray.’ I saw my daughter-in-law melt away.” (more…)

The three week long shooting-fish-in-a-barrel exercise killed, on the Palestinian side, 280 children and minors, 111 women, and 503 male noncombatants. Gaza police accounted for 167 of the dead; can you just read off Gaza police as “Hamas militants”? Or were they traffic cops & etc.? The Palestinian Center for Human rights estimated that the Israelis killed 223 Hamas guerrillas. In other words, if this count is correct, the Israelis managed to kill more children than real militants. (more…)

TV images on Wednesday showed a truck being filled with petrol, apparently smuggled in through a tunnel.

And on Thursday, one tunnel owner told Reuters: “Soon it will be operational, I will not bring drugs or weapons, I plan to use it to bring in what people need most – food and fuel, and that is very profitable.” (more…)

After ruling, Cheney becomes sole authority on determining which of his records will be released. (more…)

The media continued to make excuses around the Israeli operations in Gaza. What was striking was the attacks on the United Nations facilities, which under other circumstances would have brought outrage in the major media in the United States; certainly if Hamas had accidentally hit a United Nations facility, there would have been charges of atrocities. But each of these attacks, on the civilian populations, on the United Nations, were treated again and again as simply collateral damage, as simply one of the unfortunate outcomes of any military conflict. There was no background on what was going on. There was very little attention to the Vanity Fair piece that described the coup that the United States, Israel, and the Fatah warlord had been planning back in 2006. (more…)

But Mr. Obama must be mindful not to delay too much. Through no fault of his own, he has inherited a system in which many detainees have been held for years without a meaningful review of their cases. They have been denied the opportunity to scrutinize the evidence against them or to gather and present information that could exonerate them. Some have been abused or tortured. Relying on a deeply flawed and unjust legal process such as the one in place at Guantanamo is untenable — but so would be continuing to hold detainees under no process at all. (more…)

Victor Navasky of the Nation magazine apparently considers Obama to be a paragon of the left—and not of the center. As he puts it, “he seems to me a liberal wolf in centrist sheep’s clothing”. This verdict explains a lot about that particular magazine’s reporting: the state of the American left. Pathetic.