Gaza – Page 13 – Infinite Unknown

George Galloway convoy stoned by irate Egyptians

March 9, 2009 by Infinite

A British aid convoy led by George Galloway, the east London MP, that was carrying relief supplies for Gaza, was pelted with stones and vandalised in the Egyptian town El-Arish late on Sunday, an organiser said.

George Galloway: A security official said that during a power cut, which is a frequent occurrence in the town, children had pelted the convoy with stones Photo: PA

The convoy, which set out from London last month carrying relief supplies valued at £1 million ($1.4 million), was in El-Arish, a border staging post about 28 miles from the Rafah passage to Gaza.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” said the organiser of the aid shipment, Yvonne Ridley. “The power was cut. During cover of darkness members of our convoy were attacked with stones.

“Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans,” she said. “Several people in the convoy were injured in the attack.”

A security official said that during a power cut, which is a frequent occurrence in the town, children had pelted the convoy with stones.

Interview With Former Knesset Leader: ‘We Are Such an Angry People’

February 24, 2009 by Infinite

In a SPIEGEL interview, former Knesset president Avraham Burg discusses the right-wing surge in elections, the “monopoly of the Holocaust” on Israelis’ everyday lives and opportunities missed by the Palestinians and Israel.

Avraham Burg on the election of the right-wing parties and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s imminent return as prime minister: “The Israeli society has been kidnapped by the settler movement.” (AP)

SPIEGEL: Mr. Burg, a majority of Israelis voted for right-wing parties, and now Benjamin Netanyahu is prime-minister designate. As someone who supports the Israeli left, are you feeling a bit lonely these days?

Burg: I feel I am losing my political, ideological and spiritual home. My political home today, the Meretz party, shrank to only three seats in the Knesset. As an Israeli I feel lost because so many of my fellow countrymen are in love with war — as the solution for everything. But the most existential loss is spiritual: For me, being a Jew is being a universalist, a humanist. I can’t understand any Jew who votes right-wing. I can’t understand how a Jew can speak a language of xenophobia. And yet so many of them just did.

SPIEGEL: You’re referring primarily to the ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, whose Israel Beytenu Party became the third-strongest in Israel’s parliament.

Burg: If you had told me 20 years ago that a day would come when this racist ideology would be represented with 15 seats in the Knesset, I would have said that was impossible. Now it’s as if the crossing of this red line were natural. Lieberman doesn’t talk about the West Bank and the borders of 1967. He brings us back to 1948, when tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Now Lieberman wants the remaining Israeli-Arabs to leave the Jewish state.

SPIEGEL: How could an election result like this have happened?

Amnesty International: Gaza white phosphorus shells were US made

February 24, 2009 by Infinite

Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike over a UN school in Beit Lahia, Gaza (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

White phosphorus bombs used by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip were produced and supplied by American arms manufacturers, according to an Amnesty International report that called for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.

The report documented dozens of weapons used by Israel and Hamas during the three-week offensive, concluding that both groups had carried out attacks on civilians constituting war crimes punishable by international law. The UN Security Council should impose an embargo until a mechanism was established to ensure that military equipment was not used to carry out such violations, said Amnesty.

Donatella Rovera, who headed the Amnesty fact-finding mission, said that the group had systematically collected and catalogued shells across Gaza, and traced serial numbers back to factory production lines in the US.

“All of the evidence points to the failure of America to exercise due oversight of what they sell to Israel, which is in breach of their own laws… which require that weapons will not be sold to a country where they will be misused. And the manner in which these weapons were used in Gaza is a war crime.”

The human rights group said that weapons experts in Gaza found white phosphorus artillery shells marked M825 A1 – a US-made munition – throughout the coastal strip. The Times published photographic evidence that Israel was using the M825 A1 shells on January 8. At that time, Israeli military spokesmen denied that the weapon was being used, saying: “This is what we call a quiet shell – it has no explosives and no white phosphorus”.

Gaza desperately short of food after Israel destroys farmland

February 1, 2009 by Infinite

Officials warn of ‘destruction of all means of life’ after the three-week conflict leaves agriculture in the region in ruins

Gaza’s 1.5 million people are facing a food crisis as a result of the destruction of great areas of farmland during the Israeli invasion.

According to the World Food Programme, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and Palestinian officials, between 35% and 60% of the agriculture industry has been wrecked by the three-week Israeli attack, which followed two years of economic siege.

Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, the World Food Programme’s country director, said: “We are hearing that 60% of the land in the north – where the farming was most intensive – may not be exploitable again. It looks to me like a disaster. It is not just farmland, but poultry as well.

“When we have given a food ration in Gaza, it was never a full ration but to complement the diet. Now it is going to be almost impossible for Gaza to produce the food it needs for the next six to eight months, assuming that the agriculture can be rehabilitated. We will give people a full ration.”

UN nuclear chief boycotts BBC over Gaza appeal

January 28, 2009 by Infinite

Watch the Gaza aid appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee rejected by the BBC and Sky

The head of the UN”s nuclear watchdog has cancelled planned interviews with the BBC in protest at the corporation’s decision not to air an emergency appeal for Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee.

In a statement to the Guardian, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace prize winner, unleashed a stinging denunciation of the BBC, deepening the damage already caused by the controversy.

[ BBC accused of fakery over Barack Obama inauguration speech (Telegraph) ]

The statement, from his office at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the BBC decision not to air the aid appeal for victims of the conflict “violates the rules of basic human decency which are there to help vulnerable people, irrespective of who is right or wrong”.

It said the IAEA director had cancelled interviews with BBC World Service television and radio, which had been scheduled to take place at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Saturday.

Army rabbi gave out hate leaflet to troops

January 27, 2009 by Infinite

The Israeli army has been urged to sack Rabbi Avi Ronzki over the booklet

The Israeli army’s chief rabbinate gave soldiers preparing to enter the Gaza Strip a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and advising them that cruelty is sometimes a “good attribute”.

The booklet, entitled Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study Table for the Soldier and Commander in a Time of War, was published especially for Operation Cast Lead, the devastating three-week campaign launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire against southern Israel. The publication draws on the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Jewish fundamentalist Ateret Cohanim seminary in Jerusalem.

(“My Fight” can be literally translated into German as “Mein Kampf” (Adolf Hitler).

Related article: UN council urged to look at Israel’s conduct in Gaza (Reuters):
Richard Falk, a special U.N. investigator sent to the Middle East by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, has said there was evidence that Israel committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry.

Falk, who is Jewish, has compared the situation in Gaza to that of the Warsaw Ghetto during the World War Two, where the Nazis systematically starved and murdered Jews. Israel denies committing any war crimes during its assault on Gaza.

In one section, Rabbi Aviner compares Palestinians to the Philistines, a people depicted in the Bible as a war-like menace and existential threat to Israel.

In another, the army rabbinate appears to be encouraging soldiers to disregard the international laws of war aimed at protecting civilians, according to Breaking the Silence, the group of Israeli ex-soldiers who disclosed its existence. The booklet cites the renowned medieval Jewish sage Maimonides as saying that “one must not be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel”.

We will never work for the BBC again – actors and directors in Gaza protest

January 27, 2009 by Infinite

ACTORS and directors have warned the BBC they will not work for the corporation again if it does not broadcast the Gaza charity appeal.

In a letter written to Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, the actors Tam Dean Burn and Pauline Goldsmith, and the directors Peter Mullan and Alison Peebles, said they were “appalled” by the refusal to show the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal.

Their ultimatum came as the satellite broadcaster Sky also decided yesterday it would not screen the DEC film. Like the BBC, it said it wanted to protect the impartiality of its news reports.

Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with its 1.5 million population urgently needing food, water, medicine and shelter, after Israel’s three-week assault.

The BBC said yesterday it had received about 15,000 complaints about its decision not to screen the appeal for the DEC, which represents several charities.

Israeli troops were told to kill themselves to avoid capture

January 27, 2009 by Infinite

ISRAELI soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip offensive this month were ordered to kill themselves rather than be captured, and if necessary to kill any Israeli soldier they saw being taken into captivity, the Yediot Achronot newspaper has reported.

“No matter what happens, no one will be kidnapped,” the paper quotes one company commander telling his troops before the fighting began. “We will not have a Gilad Shalit 2.”

Corporal Shalit, the Israeli soldier taken prisoner three years ago, is being held by Hamas, which is demanding the release of more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds convicted of terrorism, in exchange for his release.

The newspaper quotes similar orders given in different Israeli field units, which reportedly reflect a new army policy.

In the past, there were standing orders, known as “Hannibal mode”, for firing at a vehicle taking Israeli troops into captivity to disable it and permit a rescue team to reach it, even at risk to the captive soldiers inside the vehicle. The new orders tighten those instructions, reportedly by permitting the vehicle to be blown up.

A soldier in a commando unit that operated behind Hamas lines said his unit was equipped with “special weapons”. “We were instructed to use them also against any vehicle carrying a kidnapped soldier,” he said.

And an Israeli company commander told the newspaper he had instructed his men to resist being taken prisoner “even if this costs you your life”.

Israel’s Channel Ten television station broadcast a recording of a battalion commander instructing his men just before they invaded the Gaza Strip, in which he says one of Hamas’s main goals was to capture soldiers to exchange for imprisoned terrorists. “No soldier from the battalion will be kidnapped, even if that means he blows up on his own grenade together with whoever wants to take him,” the commander says.

Gaza faces failed harvests after the bombardment by Israel

January 26, 2009 by Infinite

“It is unacceptable that staff of international aid agencies with expertise in emergency response are still not given full access into Gaza, and that the crossings are not fully operational for humanitarian and commercial flows of goods and people,” said Charles Clayton, head of the Association of International Development Agencies.

Samir Sawafiri pointed at several dozen hungry chickens scavenging for food between the crushed bodies of nearly 65,000 other birds strewn across a destroyed farm in Zeitoun in Gaza City.

“They are all that is left and I have nowhere to put them,” he said. The poultry farms around Zeitoun used to be the Gaza Strip’s main provider of eggs, according to Oxfam. Little but twisted metal and crumbling concrete now remains of the poor suburb on the eastern outskirts of Gaza, one of the areas hit hardest during the war.

“I evacuated on January 9,” Mr Sawafiri said. “Three days later, on January 12, tanks came with bulldozers and levelled the fields. They wanted to spoil the economy – that is the only answer. There is no justification for what they did.” Israel says that Zeitoun is a known Hamas stronghold, and that militants used its fields to launch Qassam rockets into Israel.

International aid groups say that while Israel’s continuing restrictions on the flow of goods and relief workers into the devastated enclave is hampering emergency efforts, the destruction of Gaza’s agriculture means that harvests are likely to fail and the Strip will depend more on handouts.

Related articles:
– The newspeak of Israeli propagandists (Guardian)
– Hamas insists it will not free Israeli soldier as part of Gaza truce (Telegraph)
– Hamas offers $52m handouts to help hardest-hit Gazans (Guardian)

In its efforts to choke Hamas, Israel has also frozen the flow of cash into Gaza, meaning that people have no money to buy basics. There are strict curbs on iron and concrete imports to prevent the militants rebuilding bunkers and rocket arsenals. But that also means that the 100,000 people who the UN says are homeless are once again refugees, as were their grandparents, who flooded Gaza after the 1948 Israeli war of independence.

Aid groups say only 100 or so trucks are being allowed in every day, while even before the fighting at least five times that number was needed.

In addition, there is pilfering. “There is quite a bit missing,” one UN worker said. “On some trucks it is 15 to 20 per cent of the goods. We don’t know who is taking it – the Palestinians or maybe Egypt, or Israel.” Another aid worker said that gunmen had been involved in some of the aid diversion. “We are well aware that hijackings do take place,” he said.

Tony Benn to BBC: If you won’t broadcast the Gaza appeal then I will myself

January 25, 2009 by Infinite

Tony Benn accuses the BBC ON AIR of capitualating to the Israeli Government by refusing to air an appeal for the Gazan people by the Disaster Emergency Commitee (DEC) he then broadcasts the Address himself much to the consternation of the interviewer.

Source: YouTube

Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza humanitarian appeal:
Launched by UK charities on 22 January to raise money for Gaza aid relief and reconstruction

Participants: Action Aid, British Red Cross, Cafod, Care International, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund, World Vision.

Disaster Emergency Commitee (DEC)
Gaza Crisis
PO BOX 999
LONDON
EC3A 3AA

Information on 0370 60 60 900 or at DEC website.

Ron Paul: Israel Created Hamas (Video)

October 13, 2017January 24, 2009 by Infinite

Israel admits troops may have used phosphorus shells in Gaza

January 22, 2009January 22, 2009 by Infinite

Amnesty warns Israel could be guilty of war crimes

White phosphorus shells
Israeli soldiers prepare white phosphorus 155mm artillery shells (light green) as troops keep position on the Israel-Gaza border. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Israel has admitted – after mounting pressure – that its troops may have used white phosphorus shells in contravention of international law, during its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip.

One of the places most seriously affected by the use of white phosphorus was the main UN compound in Gaza City, which was hit by three shells on 15 January. The same munition was used in a strike on the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City the same day.

Under review by Colonel Shai Alkalai is the use of white phosphorus by a reserve paratroop brigade in northern Israel.

According to army sources the brigade fired up to 20 phosphorus shells in a heavily built-up area around the Gaza township of Beit Lahiya, one of the worst hit areas of Gaza.

The internal inquiry – which the army says does not have the status of the full investigation demanded by human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – follows weeks of fighting in which Israel either denied outright that it was using phosphorus-based weapons, or insisted that what weapons it was using “were in line with international law”.

Dr Ahmed Almi from the al-Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis describes serious injuries and chemical burns, with victims covered in a white powder that continues to burn long after initial exposure

Phosphorus is a toxic chemical agent that burns on contact with air and creates thick white smokes in order to hide troop movements. However phosphorus shells are largely indiscriminate scattering large numbers of fragments over a large area, which can cause severe damage to both human tissue and property.

As the Guardian reported yesterday, Palestinian doctors have reported treating dozens of cases of suspected phosphorus burns.

Israeli use of white phosphorus ‘undeniable’: Amnesty International

January 20, 2009 by Infinite

AMNESTY International has said that Israel’s use during the Gaza offensive of white phosphorus – banned under international law for use near civilians – was “clear and undeniable”.

Tension eased in Gaza early yesterday as a fragile ceasefire entered its third day. There were no reports of shooting or rockets for the first time since Israel launched its massive assault on the besieged territory on December 27.

“Amnesty International delegates visiting the Gaza Strip found indisputable evidence of widespread use of white phosphorus in densely-populated residential areas in Gaza City and in the north,” the rights group said.

“We saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert touring Gaza as part of a four-person fact-finding team. Human rights groups and medics in Gaza reported treating dozens of people suffering burns caused by white phosphorus during Israel’s 22-day offensive in Gaza that killed more than 1300 people.

Related articles:
– Arabs: Israel ammo in Gaza had depleted uranium (AP)
– Gaza doctors struggle to treat deadly burns consistent with white phosphorus (Guardian)
– UN Says More than 50000 Left Homeless in Gaza Following Israeli Attacks (TransWorldNews)
– Israel: Report of Gaza mortar fire incorrect (AP)
– Robert Fisk: So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn’t it time for a war crimes tribunal? (Independent)
– Gaza ‘looks like earthquake zone’ (BBC News)
– Ban ‘appalled’ by Gaza’s damage (BBC News)
– Amid dust and death, a family’s story speaks for the terror of war (Guardian):
48 members of the Samouni family were killed in one day when Israel’s battle with Hamas suddenly centred on their homes
– Israel destroys, Saudi rebuilds (Middle East Online):
Saudi King donates one billion dollars to rebuild Gaza, calls for putting end to Arab rifts.
– Israel to keep tight grip on Gaza reconstruction (Reuters)
– Israel accused of war crimes over 12-hour assault on Gaza village (The Observer)

Under international law, white phosphorus is banned for use near civilians, but is permitted for creating a smokescreen.

Israel has insisted that all weapons used in its Gaza war were within the bounds of international law.

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s researcher on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, said the use of white phosphorus could amount to a war crime.

Israel accused of war crimes over 12-hour assault on Gaza village

January 18, 2009January 18, 2009 by Infinite

Photo of Israel’s use of White Phosphorous chemical weapons

Photo of Israel’s use of White Phosphorous in Gaza in the January 2009 attack. Note that there is little smoke cover generated, and LOTS of fires. This is White Phosphorous, a chemical weapon, being used in a clearly residential area, to wound, main, kill and set fire to the place, in other words, to ethnically cleanse it and, and in the process commit genocide. All war crimes. Source: World Press Network

Source: The Observer

White flags ignored and houses bulldozed with families inside, claim residents

Israel stands accused of perpetrating a series of war crimes during a sustained 12-hour assault on a village in southern Gaza last week in which 14 people died.

In testimony collected from residents of the village of Khuza’a by the Observer, it is claimed that Israeli soldiers entering the village:

attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside;
killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags;
opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded;
used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.

If the allegations are upheld, all the incidents would constitute breaches of the Geneva conventions.

The denunciations over what happened in Khuza’a follow repeated claims of possible human rights violations from the Red Cross, the UN and human rights organisations.

Hamas announces ceasefire in Gaza

January 18, 2009 by Infinite

The ceasefires follow three weeks of intense fighting

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has announced an immediate ceasefire with Israel in Gaza.

A statement read by a Hamas spokesman said the group would hold fire for a week to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip.

The move came hours after a unilateral Israeli ceasefire came into effect.

The cessation of hostilities was earlier cast into doubt by fresh rocket fire into Israel and an Israeli air strike on militants in Gaza.

Hamas’ deputy chief in Syria, Moussa Abou Marzouk, said the ceasefire was in the name of all “Palestinian resistance factions”.

Related articles:
– Israel hopes Iran and Hezbollah get message of Gaza offensive (Los Angeles Times)
– Thousands march in Melbourne against Gaza war (The Age)
– Gaza rescue teams find 100 Palestinian bodies under Gaza rubbles (Xinhua)
– Europeans keep up protests against Israel’s Gaza war (AFP)
– Thousands protest in UK over Gaza (BBC News)

“We… announce a ceasefire of our factions in the Gaza Strip and we stress that our demand is the withdrawal of the enemy forces from the Gaza Strip within a week, along with the opening of all the crossings for the entry of humanitarian aid, food and other necessities for our people in the Gaza Strip.”

The group said the ceasefire would be temporary unless Israel met these long-standing demands.

The BBC’s Bethany Bell, on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, says Israeli helicopters and drones have been flying overhead and Israeli troops are on high alert.

Many people are hoping that a ceasefire will last, but no-one on either side of the border will be surprised if the fighting starts up again, our correspondent adds.

The Palestinians say: ‘This is a war of extermination’

January 17, 2009January 17, 2009 by Infinite

Women at Kamal Edwan hospital, in Beit Lahiya
Palestinian women react after seeing the body of a relative killed in an Israeli missile strike at Kamal Edwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Fadi Adwan/AP

Everyone says something new is going on here; something different. The residents of Egyptian Rafah are used to the sounds of rockets and shells exploding on the other side of their border, but they’ve never heard the sounds they’ve been hearing over the last 20 days. Twenty-five miles further into Egypt the general hospital at el-Arish is used to receiving the Palestinian wounded. The staff have never seen injuries like these before. The hospital forecourt is swarming with ambulances, paramedics, press. The wounded are raced into casualty.

The Palestinians are mostly silent; each man working out where he finds himself and what he’s going to do. Fearing for their wounded and fearing for those they’ve left behind, they are silent but unfailingly courteous.

They try to answer questions. They must be exhausted? “The people of Gaza,” they say (not “we”; they’re too proud for that), “the people of Gaza just wish for an hour’s sleep.” The case you’re accompanying? “I’m here with my nephew. He’s 19. Shrapnel in his head. He was sitting with his friends. He’s a student. Architecture. The helicopter dropped a bomb and seven of the group were killed and six were injured. They found a boy’s hand on a 3rd floor balcony.”

Later, I see a boy sitting up in bed with a bandage round his head. He has wide brown eyes flecked with green and he frowns a little, as though he was trying to remember something important. In the next bed a 12-year-old also with a bandaged head is not quite conscious yet. He is flushed and fretful.

The Palestinians say: “This is a war of extermination.” They describe bombs which break into 16 parts, each part splintering into 116 fragments, the white phosphorus which water cannot put out; which seems to die and then flares up again.

No one I spoke to has any doubt that the Israelis are committing war crimes. According to the medics here, to reports from doctors inside the Gaza Strip and to Palestinian eye-witnesses, more than 95% of the dead and injured are civilians. Many more will probably be found when the siege is lifted and the rubble is cleared. The doctors speak of a disproportionate number of head injuries – specifically of shrapnel lodged in the brain.

They also speak of the extensive burns of white phosphorus. These injuries are, as they put it, ‘incompatible with life’. They are also receiving large numbers of amputees. This is because the damage done to the bone by explosive bullets is so extensive that the only way the doctors in Gaza can save lives is by amputating.

Israeli ‘phosphorous shells’ incinerate 1,000s of tons of UN food as Gaza starves

January 16, 2009 by Infinite

A UN foreign worker runs outside the UN warehouse in Gaza City after it was hit by Israeli strikes

ISRAELI shells set ablaze a food warehouse at UN headquarters in Gaza yesterday, destroying tons of emergency rations intended for needy Gaza civilians, a senior UN official said. A pall of black smoke rose from the UN compound, visible across Gaza City. Flour spilled on the ground and mixed with soot as Palestinian firefighters tried to douse the flames.

“The main warehouse was badly damaged by what appeared to be white phosphorus shells,” UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said at a news briefing in New York.

“Those on the ground don’t have any doubt that’s what they were. If you were looking for confirmation, that looks like it to me.” The compound belongs to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unwra).

The rights group Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using white phosphorus, which can create smoke screens or mark targets but also makes a devastating incendiary weapon.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the military fired artillery shells at the UN compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location, a version of events John Ging, director of Unwra in Gaza, rejected as “nonsense”

Mr Ging said Israeli shells first hit a courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN’s main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames. Later, fuel supplies ignited, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air.

“It’s a total disaster for us,” said Mr Ging, adding that the UN had warned the Israeli its shelling put the compound in danger.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, who is in the region to encourage a ceasefire, demanded a “full explanation” and said the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, had told him there had been a “grave mistake”.

Spent shells prove Israeli use of white phosphorus, Gaza doctors say

January 15, 2009 by Infinite

Remnants of an Israeli white phosphorus shell, identified by the marking on the outer casing – M825A1 – have been found in the village of Sheikh Ajilin in western Gaza.

Witnesses in Gaza said that the shell was fired on January 9 and was taken indoors as evidence. They recalled seeing thick smoke and smelling a strong odour in keeping with the garlic-like smell associated with white phosphorus.

Hebrew writing on the shell casing reads “exploding smoke” – the term the Israeli army uses for white phosphorus. Doctors who examined the shell said that it appeared to include phosphorus residue.

Related interview:
Israel attacks UN aid compound with White Phosphorous Shells (Sky News)

Residents said that they suffered burns on their feet when they walked where the shelling had taken place.

A suspected phosphorus victim was taken from Gaza across the border into Egypt yesterday. Abdul Rahman Shaer, 16, was transferred to an Egyptian hospital from Rafah. He was suffering from severe chemical burns to his face and body. Paramedics from Gaza said that doctors at the hospital were sure the chemical agent was phosphorus.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reiterated that they would not comment on specific weaponry being used in Gaza but added that any ammunition used by the IDF was “within the scope of international law”.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination.

Human Rights organisations have criticised the use of it in Gaza, saying that it was impossible to avoid exposing civilians to the chemical because Gaza is densely populated.

Israel attacks UN aid compound with White Phosphorous Shells

January 15, 2009January 15, 2009 by Infinite

UNRWA spokesman Johan Eriksson told the British Broadcasting Corp. via phone from Jerusalem that he had just spoken to the agencys boss in Gaza City, who confirmed to him that at least three shells containing white phosphorus hit their sprawling compound.

Fire is raging inside our compound. It is inside a mechanical workshop, Eriksson told the BBC, adding that shipping pallets loaded with humanitarian aid were also on fire inside the compound.

Firefighters cannot do anything. White phosphorus has landed and these fires cannot be put out, said Eriksson. Three people inside the compound are injured so far.

Added: 15 January 2009
Source: YouTube

Israel Strike Hits U.N. Complex in Gaza Strip

January 15, 2009 by Infinite

GAZA – Amid reports that a United Nations building had been hit, Israeli forces shelled areas deep inside Gaza City and edged forward toward the city center Thursday, sending thousands of panicked residents fleeing from their homes, witnesses said.

Among the buildings hit in the center of Gaza City, the witnesses said, was one housing the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that assists Palestinian refugees and another occupied by several media organizations.

The Israeli military would not give precise details of its ground operations, but a spokesman said that “fierce fighting” was under way “relatively deep inside Gaza.”

Related articles:
– Fighting in Gaza Intensifies as UN Chief Holds Talks in Israel (VOA News):
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has strongly condemned the Israeli shelling of the U.N. headquarters in Gaza City.
– Gaza: Israeli troops reveal ruthless tactics against Hamas (Times)
– Israel accused of Gaza ‘genocide’ (Al Jazeera):
The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel’s killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as “genocide”.
– Israeli soldiers say they have OK to use tough tactics in Gaza (McClatchy)
– Iran warns Israel over aid ship interception (Press TV):
A senior Iranian commander says if Israel continues intercepting humanitarian aid for Gazans, Iran will adopt an alternative approach.
– EU parliament urges halting relations with Israel (Middle East Online)
– Venezuela cuts ties with Israel over Gaza attacks (Reuters)

The military push may be aimed at stepping up pressure on Hamas as cease-fire talks in Egypt entered a pivotal stage.

US Congressman: Israel war violations ‘deliberate’

January 14, 2009January 14, 2009 by Infinite

Congressman Kucinich: America arming Israel with weapons that are used against Palestinian civilians.

PACIFICA – Israel must take the responsibility for its attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, said Congress member Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, during an interview with Democracy Now! on Monday.

“When you look at what the targets of the attacks have been, you know, the Israeli army is given a lot of credit for its precision, so when UN schools are hit, the American university there, when you look at the damage or destruction of the Red Cross’s efforts there, you have to come to an understanding that this is deliberate. This isn’t accidental. Accidents can happen in war, but when you’re using that kind of destructive power, you have to take the responsibility for the consequences of it,” said Congressman Kucinich.

“There’s no question there’s a use of disproportionate force here, and no amount of reasoning or attempt to try to take the side of Israel is going to remove that single fact,” he added.

“Just look at the numbers. Look at the destruction. I mean, believe what you see with your eyes. And that’s, I suppose, one of the reasons why the Israeli government doesn’t want the media to get in there. When you tell civilians to go to a house to be protected, and then you shell that house, I mean, what does that say?” Asked the Congressman.

Related articles:
– Israel defends munitions amid white phosphorus accusations (The Raw Story)
– UNICEF: 300 Children Killed in Gaza (Voice of America)
– Lebanon rockets fired on Israel (BBC NEWS)
– Israel hit by second round of rockets from Lebanon (LA Times)
– Stunning photos capture Israeli bombs falling on Gaza (Telegraph)
– Hamas May Survive Offensive, Israel Says (Washington Post)
– Gazans seek new places to bury the dead (AP)
– Bowen diary: A just war? (BBC NEWS)
– Benjamin Netanyahu says Hamas must be ‘removed’ from Gaza (Telegraph)
– Netanyahu casts himself as player on a world stage (Independent)
– Gaza-bound Iranian aid ship turned away by Israel (Irish Times)

Congressman Kucinich said the US must make sure that its military aid to Israel will not continue to be used against the civilian population in Gaza.

“Not only F-16 jets, Apache helicopters, but now we’re seeing white phosphorus used against the people in Gaza. This should be a great concern to every person in this country, because of the amount of money that we’re giving to Israel,” said the US Congressman.

Such use is even in violations of the US conditions.

“In 1976, Congress passed a law that says that if the United States is going to give arms to another country, that it can attach and does attach conditions that says that those arms are transmitted under the condition, first of all, that they’re used for defensive purposes only, and second, that they not be used to escalate a preexisting conflict. On both of those cases, I think that Israel has failed,” noted Congressman Kucinich.

But Israel seems to be encouraged by Washington.

“The Bush administration encouraged Israel to continue the aggression that occurred in South Lebanon that resulted in, the closing days of that war, the destruction of South Lebanon, which is one of the reasons why I’m concerned about what might happen yet in Gaza in the closing days of this current war,” said Congressman Kucinich.

The US Congressman also addressed the root cause of the conflict – Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“You have to go back to the blockade and the occupation, and you have to look at Israel’s conduct in the West Bank, as well. I mean, if Israel was so gentle with the people of Gaza, you look at the West Bank and look at what’s happened there,” he explained.

But – outside the US – Israel has failed justify its violence.

“The whole world is watching this, and the world understands what’s happening. You know, no amount of attempt to rationalize this violence in Gaza is going to work for Israel,” he said.

On the timing of the Israeli assault, Congressman Kucinich said: “Israel has a lot of talent, very bright people running their government. They chose to use violence. They chose it on the eve of a presidential inauguration in the United States. They’re trying to take advantage of this situation, because they know the Bush administration couldn’t care less about international law.”

Olmert says called Bush to force change in U.N. vote

January 13, 2009 by Infinite

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a telephone call he made to U.S. President George W. Bush last week forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain in a U.N. vote on the Gaza war, leaving her “shamed.”

Pouring on political bravado in a speech late Monday, Olmert said he demanded to talk to Bush with only 10 minutes to spare before a U.N. Security Council vote Thursday on a resolution opposed by Israel calling for an immediate cease-fire.

“When we saw that the secretary of state, for reasons we did not really understand, wanted to vote in favour of the U.N. resolution … I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech,” Olmert said.

“I said, ‘I don’t care. I have to talk to him now,'” Olmert said, describing Bush, who leaves office on January 20, as “an unparalleled friend” of Israel.

“They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, ‘You can’t vote in favour of this resolution.’ He said, ‘Listen, I don’t know about it, I didn’t see it, I’m not familiar with the phrasing.'”

Olmert said he then told Bush: “‘I’m familiar with it. You can’t vote in favour.’

“He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it — a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged,” Olmert said.

Fourteen of the Security Council’s 15 members supported the resolution, which has failed to halt Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip and Hamas’s cross-border rocket fire.

Olmert, under police investigation over alleged corruption, resigned as prime minister in September but is serving in a caretaker capacity until a new government is formed after Israel’s February 10 parliamentary election.

Israel testing nasty weapons in Gaza, claims Mads Gilbert

January 13, 2009 by Infinite

ISRAEL is testing a new “extremely nasty” type of weapon in Gaza, two medics charged as they returned home to Norwayafter spending 10 days working at a hospital in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Related article: Gaza death toll tops 900 (Reuters)

“There’s a very strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons,” Mads Gilbert said at Oslo’s Gardermoen airport, commenting on the kinds of injuries he and his colleague Erik Fosse had seen while working at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

The two medics, who were sent into the war zone by the pro-Palestinian aid organisation NORWAC on December 31, said they had seen clear signs that Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), an experimental kind of explosive, were being used in Gaza.

“This is a new generation of very powerful small explosives that detonates with an extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres,” Mr Gilbert, 61, said.

“We have not seen the casualties affected directly by the bomb because they are normally torn to pieces and do not survive, but we have seen a number of very brutal amputations … without shrapnel injuries which we strongly suspect must have been caused by the DIME weapons,” he said.

The weapon “causes the tissue to be torn from the flesh. It looks very different (from a shrapnel injury). I have seen and treated a lot of different injuries for the last 30 years in different war zones, and this looks completely different”, Mr Fosse, 58, said.

“If you are in the immediate (vicinity of) a DIME weapon, it’s like your legs get torn off. It’s an enormous pressure wave and there is no shrapnel,” he explained.

Mr Gilbert also accused Israel of having used the weapon in the 2006 Lebanon war and previously in Gaza, and referred to studies showing wounds from the explosive could cause lethal forms of cancer within just four to six months.

“Israel should disclose what weapons they use and the international community should make an investigation,” he said, stressing the amount of damage apparently caused by the new form of explosive.

“We are not soft-skinned when it comes to war injuries, but these amputations are really extremely nasty and for many of the patients not survivable,” he said. From correspondents in Gaza

January 13, 2009 06:30am

Source: Herald Sun

Gaza: UN official reports horrific hospital scenes of casualties

January 13, 2009 by Infinite

In a UNICEF warehouse in Zarka, Jordan, workers review boxes of supplies for shipment to the Gaza Strip

12 January 2009 – Appalled that fighting was still continuing in Gaza despite the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, senior United Nations officials said today they were horrified at the human costs amid reports that over 40 per cent of the nearly 900 Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive, and almost half of the 3,860 wounded, were women and children.

“Behind those statistics that we read out every day is really profound human suffering and grave tragedy for all involved and not just for those who are killed and injured but for their families as well,” UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Director of Operations John Ging told a news conference in New York, speaking by video link from Gaza, where he had just visited the main Al Shifa hospital.

“(It) is the place of course where you see the most horrific human consequences of this conflict. Among the tragic cases that I saw were a child, six years of age, little or no brain activity, people don’t have much hope for her survival; multiple amputee – another little girl; and a pregnant woman who’d lost a leg,” he said, as the Israeli offensive went into its 17th day with the stated aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks into Israel.

“The hospital is really full of patients whose lives have been in many instances really destroyed, and they’re alive.”

UK, Europe hit with riots over Israel’s Gaza campaign

January 12, 2009 by Infinite

Protesters in London smash a Starbucks, throw shoes at Israeli embassy

A London protest against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza turned violent Saturday night as police charged demonstrators outside the gates of Israel’s embassy.

It was one of the largest of many, many demonstrations across Europe on Saturday. Protests in Paris, France also turned violent.

One police officer was knocked unconscious and two were injured in the fray, according to The London Paper. An estimated 300 police in riot gear charged protesters as the crowd chanted “free, free Palestine,” hurling hundreds of shoes over a police barrier in front of the embassy.

Tensions continued to rise as the crowd found more objects to hurl — signs, eggs, red paint, barriers, rocks, etc. — until police began efforts to disperse the demonstrators.

Protesters smashed and destroyed a Starbucks, and the Daily Mail reported that others tried to set police vehicles on fire.

The Daily Mail also published a striking series of photos from the protest.

London police told BBC that just 20,000 people were involved in the protest, but BBC estimated 50,000. The London Paper gave a figure twice that, claiming over 100,000 joined the demonstration.

“We want the British government to take a much stronger position,” said Lindsey German, an organizer with protest group ‘Stop the War,’ in a BBC report. “There would have been outrage from governments around the world if this had happened anywhere else – the condemnation has been at best half-hearted.”