BAUAW Newsletter: 01/04/2009

Friday, January 09, 2009

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2009

Thursday, January 08, 2009

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2009

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PROTEST THE ISRAELI GROUND INVASION OF GAZA!!!!
NATIONAL DAY OF EMERGENCY MASS ACTION
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 11:00 A.M., CIVIC CENTER
[THERE ARE ALSO DEMONSTRATIONS SCHEDULED AROUND THE WORLD!
STOP ISRAEL'S BLOODY ASSAULT ON GAZA!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL NOW!...BW]

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Stop the Bombing and Blockade of Gaza!
End all U.S. Aid to Israel!
Bring the Troops Home Now from Iraq and Afghanistan!

A Statement Issued by the National Assembly to
End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Join with the National Assembly and other coalitions, networks and organizations on March 21, 2009 for a national mass March on the Pentagon in D.C. (and actions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities) to demand:

Stop the Wars Against Iraq and Afghanistan! -Bring the Troops Home Now!

End U.S. Support for the Occupation of Palestine!

No to U.S. Wars Against Iran and Pakistan!

Money for Jobs, Health Care, Housing, Pensions, and Education-Not for Wars and Corporate Bailouts!

For further information contact:

National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

natassembly.org, natassembly@aol.com, 216-736-4704

As of January 3, the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza has killed over 450 Palestinians-the largest number of people killed by Israel in such a short time in decades. 1,600 more have been wounded, an overwhelming number of whom are civilians-women, children and the elderly. The massing of soldiers and tanks along the Gaza border suggests that additional horrors are contemplated.

The ruination of Gaza has been long in the making. Over 75 percent of Gaza's inhabitants are refugees from land that became Israel. They have been denied the internationally recognized right to return to their homes and are now denied the elementary right to flee relentless bombing and a threatened invasion. These are the families who had developed the agriculture and economy of Palestine under the rule of foreign empires for generations. Ripped from their land, they were crowded into what is now the most densely populated 360 square kilometers in the world.

Their homes have been bulldozed, their crops and livelihoods destroyed, food and fuel severely restricted, their borders closed, their water pilfered by settlers, their fishing restricted.

In 2006, the Palestinians of Gaza conducted a democratic election and chose Hamas as the governing party. They have desperately reached out to obtain basic food, medical supplies and the essentials for survival that have been denied them. It is for these "crimes" that the Palestinians of Gaza are being punished-for choosing their own leaders, seeking freedom, and refusing to be driven from their homeland.

The people of Gaza have seen their elected officials imprisoned. They have been put on a starvation diet and placed in darkness by an internationally-enforced blockade. They are subjected to nighttime sonic booms that shatter windows and cause miscarriages, and suffer recurring aerial bombardments that have decimated their infrastructure.

The Hamas government's signing and enforcement of the June 2008 truce with Israel led to no relief from this relentless siege. On November 4, Israeli strikes killed dozens of Palestinians. Isolated shelling attacks from Gaza, which resulted in few, if any, Israeli casualties, have been used as a pretext by Israel to launch genocidal attacks, which have been denounced by people around the world. Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, now says this will be a "war to the bitter end."

The Israeli government claims that Gaza is no longer "occupied" since "settlers" were withdrawn a few years ago. This is a boldface lie used to abdicate legal and moral responsibility for the welfare of an occupied people and to demonstrate that Gazans cannot govern themselves and live peacefully with their neighbors. A land that is completely surrounded and controlled, lacking the very basics of survival, is even more cruelly "occupied" than before. This describes a prison, not a sovereign territory.

The horrors experienced in Gaza are closely linked to the murderous U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which aim to control the resources in the Middle East. The systematic torture of Gaza, many call genocide, is a crime against all people of this planet. No one can be free while others are oppressed. It is time for the people of the world to unite and say, "No to the U.S.-Backed Israeli War in Gaza!" and "No to the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!"

The atrocities carried out against Gaza are made possible by $3 billion in yearly U.S. aid to Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, with $30 billion more to be allocated over the next ten years. Israel has the fourth largest military in the world.

Hundreds of billions of our tax dollars go yearly for the U.S. war machine-for the most modern weapons of mass destruction, mainly profiting U.S. contractors and weapons makers."

We demand that Congress and the current president of the United States end all support for Israel's war, invasion and occupation of Palestine. We join with people all across the world in demanding that Israel initiate an immediate cease fire and withdraw all military forces from Gaza. We call upon president-elect Barack Obama to denounce the present atrocities committed against the people of Gaza. We call upon the people of the U.S. and the international community to declare solidarity and to offer all assistance to the besieged Palestinians.

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U.S. resisters' solidarity with Israeli "shministim" refusers
Courage to Resist

Statement signed by over two dozen U.S. military war resisters. Reprinted by AlterNet, Democracy Now, The Progressive, Common Dreams, Indymedia, and Daily Kos.

We are U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who have refused or are currently refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We stand in solidarity with the Israeli Shministim (Hebrew for "12th graders") who are also resisting military service. About 100 Israeli high school students have signed an open letter declaring their refusal to serve in the Israeli army and their opposition to "Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel." In Israel, military service is mandatory for all graduating high school seniors, and resisters face the possibility of years in prison.
Read more at:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/

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March on the Pentagon! March 21, 2009

The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is joining with other coalitions, organizations, and networks in a united MARCH 21 NATIONAL COALITION to organize the broadest mobilization of people across the United States to take part in a March on the Pentagon on the sixth year of the military invasion and occupation of the Iraq War: Saturday, March 21.

Demonstrations will also be held on that date in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities across the U.S.

These actions will remind the nation that all U.S. military forces must be brought home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the U.S. antiwar movement - marching behind a banner demanding "Out Now!' - will intensify its struggle to make it happen.

The actions are needed to assure the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries threatened by Washington's expansionist policies that tens of millions of people in this country support their right to settle their own destinies without U.S. interventions, occupations and murderous wars. International law recognizes - and we demand - that the U.S. respect the right to self-determination. We reject any notion that the U.S. is the world's self-appointed cop.

The March 21 united mass actions are also needed at this time of economic meltdown to demand jobs for all; a moratorium on foreclosures; rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure; guaranteed, quality health care for all; an end to the ICE raids and deportations; and funding for sorely needed social programs. So long as trillions of dollars continue to be spent on wars, occupations, and bailouts to the banks and corporate elite, the domestic needs of the people of the U.S. can never be met.

The So-called Status of Forces Agreement

As for Iraq, the so-called "Status of Forces Agreement" offers proof positive that far from ending the U.S. occupation, the plan is to extend it indefinitely. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops and mercenary soldiers will be maintained to carry out a number of stated missions, but in reality their aim is to carry out the one mission that is not stated: Ensure the U.S. subjugation of Iraq to exploit its oil resources and dominate the Middle East.

Any doubt about Washington's intentions should be dispelled by the statement by Gen. Raymond Odierno who said on December 13, 2008 that U.S. forces would remain indefinitely in dozens of bases in Iraq cities, despite the language in the Status of Forces Agreement that appears to require a withdrawal from urban areas by next summer. (Wall Street Journal 12/15/08)

As for Afghanistan, it is not the "good war" claimed by the Obama administration and the power structure, which plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country by 20,000. Afghanistan will prove to be another U.S. Vietnam. The Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan resulted in a million Afghanis being killed, along with 15,000 Soviet troops. The U.S. war will only result in a continuation of the slaughter that has been the hallmark of all previous occupations by foreign powers.

The daily U.S. bombing and killing of Afghanis attending weddings, classes, funerals, or simply trying to survive shows how cruel and deadly this war is. It is directed against the same forces that the U.S. armed, financed, and helped bring to power.

Why is the U.S. at war against Afghanistan? To gain control of a pipeline across that country. (See the 1998 statement submitted to Congress by the Union Oil Company of California, which later merged with Chevron, stressing the need to build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. And note Dick Cheney's 1998 statement made when he was chief executive of a major oil services company: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian," which led the Guardian newspaper to remark "But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route that would make both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.")

The March 21 demonstration will also highlight the dangers of expanding Washington's two wars to Iran and Pakistan. It will also condemn U.S. support for the continued occupation of Palestine.

The National Assembly

From its inception, the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations has called for united antiwar demonstrations this spring. We urge the entire movement to unite now around March 21. We will do everything possible to make this unity a reality.

Think of the civil rights, union, anti-Vietnam War, women's liberation and gay rights movements. They would not have achieved victories without having built truly massive movements that were able to organize repeated and powerful independent mobilizations in the streets.

Why the demonstration in Washington? Because it is the seat of power, where foreign and domestic policies are decided, where money for war is allocated, and bailouts of the banking industry and corporate rich are given away.

Join us in mobilizing the largest possible outpouring of antiwar opposition built by a united movement on March 21. Let's march and continue to march until all U.S. forces come home, U.S. bases are dismantled, and the sovereign people of the world have the right to control their own resources and determine their own futures.

To endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon, please click here.

http://natassembly.org/Continuation.html#March21

To send a contribution to support the National Assembly's work, please click here.

http://natassembly.org/donate.html

For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at www.natassembly.org or write natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704.

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MARCH 21 NATIONAL COALITION FOR A MARCH ON THE PENTAGON
ON THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR

SATURDAY, MARCH 21, DC, SF, LA AND SEATTLE

The ANSWER Coalition is joining with other coalitions, organizations, and networks in a March 21 National Coalition to bring people from all walks of life and from all cities across the United States to take part in a March on the Pentagon on the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war: Saturday, March 21.

The Iraqi journalist Muntather Al-Zaidi spoke for millions of Iraqis and outraged people everywhere when he threw his shoes at George Bush during Bush's publicity stunt "victory lap" in Baghdad yesterday. As he threw his shoes, Muntather said, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"

Tragically, the criminal occupation of Iraq will not be over even by the sixth anniversary of the start of the war in March 2009. People around the world will be marching together on the sixth anniversary in the strongest possible solidarity with the people of Iraq demanding an end to the occupation of their country.

Marking the sixth anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq, on March 21, 2009, thousands will March on the Pentagon to say, "Bring the Troops Home NOW!" We will also demand "End Colonial Occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Everywhere" and "Fund Peoples' Needs Not Militarism and Bank Bailouts." We will insist on an end to the war threats and economic sanctions against Iran. We will say no to the illegal U.S. program of detention and torture.

To endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon, click here. To sign up to be a Transportation Organizing Center, click here.

http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=4580&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS

While millions of families are losing their homes, jobs and healthcare, the real military budget next year will top one trillion dollars--that's $1,000,000,000,000. If used to meet people's needs, that amount could create 10 million new jobs at $60,000 per year, provide healthcare for everyone who does not have it now, rebuild New Orleans, and repair much of the damage done in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost for the occupation of Iraq alone is $400 million each day, or about $12 billion each month.

The war in Iraq has killed, wounded or displaced nearly one third of Iraq's 26 million people. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have suffered severe physical and psychological wounds. The U.S. leaders who have initiated and conducted this criminal war should be tried and jailed for war crimes.

The idea that the U.S. is in the process of ending the criminal occupation of Iraq is a myth. Washington and its dependent Iraqi government signed a "Status of Forces" agreement, supposedly calling for the U.S. military to leave Iraqi cities by July 1, 2009, and all of Iraq by 2012. But even this outrageous extension of an illegal occupation is just one more piece of deception, as was soon made clear by top U.S. and Iraqi officials.

The ink was hardly dry on the agreement when, on December 12, official Iraq government spokesman Ali al Dabbagh dismissed the idea that U.S. troops would leave by 2012: "We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years."

The next day, General Raymond Odierno, commander of "coalition (U.S.) forces" in Iraq, stated that thousands of U.S. troops could remain inside Iraqi cities after July 1, 2009, as part of "training and mentoring teams."

Government propaganda aside, the reality remains that only the people can end the war and occupation in Iraq. To sign up to be a Transportation Organizing Center, click here.

http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=4680&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS

The war in Afghanistan is expanding. The incoming administration and Congressional leaders have promised to send in more troops.

Federal bailouts and loan guarantees for the biggest banks and investors, many of whom have also made billions in profits from militarism, are already up to an astounding $7.2 trillion this year. None of that money is earmarked for keeping millions of foreclosed and evicted families in their homes.

Coming just two months after the inauguration of the next president, the March 21, 2009, March on the Pentagon will be a critical opportunity to let the new administration in Washington hear the voice of the people demanding an immediate end to war and occupation, and demanding economic justice. Joint actions will take place on the West Coat in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.

Sincerely,
Brian Becker
National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition

P.S. You can make a difference. Please continue to support the ANSWER Coalition's crucial anti-war work by making your end-of-the-year tax-deductible donation online using our secure server by clicking here, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311

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"A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning and violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!"
—Leon Trotsky, "Their Morals and Ours," 1938
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm

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Doctor Decries Israeli Attacks
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA&feature=channel_page

Israeli Crimes of War in Gaza
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=3ebswF8Kly4

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ARTICLES IN FULL:

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1) Israeli tank fire kills 40 at U.N. school
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Tue Jan 6, 2009 3:33pm GMT
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE5054CU20090106

2) Unprecedented Numbers of Americans Question
Israel's Actions in Gaza
By Max Blumenthal, Huffington Post. Posted January 6, 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/why-arent-more-americans_b_155194.html

3) US troops 'monitoring Rafah crossing'
Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:23:47 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=80731§ionid=351021701

4) The Gaza Ghetto Uprising
Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada,
4 January 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml

5) Israeli Strike Hits Refugees Near a U.N. School in Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?hp

6) Israel Puts Media Clamp on Gaza
"Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story; American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead."
By ETHAN BRONNER
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/middleeast/07media.html?hp

7) The Afghan Quagmire
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
January 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/opinion/06herbert.html

8) An Ex-Detainee of the U.S. Describes a 6-Year Ordeal
By JANE PERLEZ, RAYMOND BONNER and SALMAN MASOOD
January 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/world/asia/06iqbal.html?ref=world

9) Gaza's Future in the Context of its Heroic History
The Struggle Continues.
The Free Palestine Alliance
January 6, 2009
www.freepalestinealliance.org

10) Witnesses to Israel’s war crimes
By Rami Almeghari
The Electronic Intifada
January 6, 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10126.shtml

11) Venezuela expels Israeli ambassador over Gaza
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ
January 6, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hj0ehBqPmjVyWuBEdqsfMorPjobQD95HT4700

12) This brutality will never break our will to be free
For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire.
Israel broke it repeatedly from the start.
By Khalid Mish'al
January 6, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas

13) Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/world/middleeast/08scene.html?hp

14) Israel threatens to bomb Al-Shefa hospital
January 8, 2009
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7qLH7kOUD%2bHWDD2BCzibTi2JOT8IBDY7Ggc%2bBki%2f%2fIVHnwntbRAVZQ13h87m2PzXb2W2XGsqwN99mvaZeA1%2b9y865q%2bwzuMHjklE2Nnv6inI%3d

15) U.N. Suspends Food Aid Into Gaza
"Casualty figures in the Gaza war are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians. But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms. Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire."
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
January 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09mideast.html?hp

16) Gaza Children Found With Mothers’ Corpses
By ALAN COWELL
January 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09redcross.html?ref=world

17) Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation
By SHAILA DEWAN
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html

18) Labor Calls for Unity After Years of Division
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/08labor.html?ref=us

19) Iraqi Gets $240,000 Settlement in T-Shirt Incident at U.S. Airport
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/08arabic.html?ref=us

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1) Israeli tank fire kills 40 at U.N. school
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Tue Jan 6, 2009 3:33pm GMT
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE5054CU20090106

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians on Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international calls for a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was looking into information on the incident at al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.

People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood on the street. Witnesses said two Israeli tanks shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 40 civilians -- Palestinians who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings.

In a separate attack earlier in the day, three Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on another school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The deaths raised to 75 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday alone, according to medical officials.

They said four militants also were killed in fighting during the day and put the total Palestinian death toll since Israel began the offensive on December 19 at 629.

More than 2,700 Palestinians have been wounded since Israel began the campaign with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks on its southern towns. Nine Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict.

At least five rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in Israel on Tuesday, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28 km (17 miles) from Tel Aviv, police said. A three-year-old girl was wounded.

International efforts already under way to end the fighting have focussed on securing a cease-fire deal that would meet an Israeli demand to ensure Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip, could not rearm once hostilities end.

"That is the make-or-break issue," Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said about ensuring an end to weapons smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt frontier by Hamas.

A senior Israeli official said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a Middle East visit and in partnership with Egypt, was pursuing "a serious initiative" for a cease-fire in Israel's 11-day-old operation and Hamas rocket strikes.

Talks were focussing, the official said, on the size of an "international presence" along the blockaded Gaza-Egypt border, where rockets and other weapons have reached Hamas through a network of tunnels.

Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Sarkozy, the European Union and the United States were all in agreement that new anti-smuggling measures would be needed to clinch a cease-fire.

"What is being talked about is a credible plan to stop the smuggling," Blair, a former British prime minister, told reporters in Jerusalem.

He said he hoped the plan could be completed quickly and that enhanced Israeli security would lead to "a significant advance in opening up Gaza to the outside world."

SYRIA

In Damascus, Sarkozy, who met Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, said after talks with President Bashar al-Assad he had no doubt the Syrian leader "will throw all his weight to convince every one to return to reason."

Syria is one of the main backers of Hamas, an Islamist group that seized the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Fatah group in fighting in 2007.

Hamas, which has rebuffed Western demands to recognise Israel, end violence and accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future cease-fire.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces pushed into Khan Younis in southern Gaza as the army widened the ground assault it launched four days ago against Hamas militants after a week of air strikes failed to stamp out cross-border rocket fire.

Most of the deaths reported by Gaza hospitals in recent days have been civilians.

The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since December 27 might be close to 700 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.

Many of the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million people lack food, water or power. In southern Israel, schools remained closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets.

(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald, Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

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2) Unprecedented Numbers of Americans Question
Israel's Actions in Gaza
By Max Blumenthal, Huffington Post. Posted January 6, 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/why-arent-more-americans_b_155194.html

Could it be the rise of online progressive media telling the truth about Israel, or that the public rejects the same pundits who sold us Iraq?

Almost as soon as the first Israeli missile struck the Gaza Strip, a veteran cheering squad suited up to support the home team. "Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life," Charles Krauthammer claimed in the Washington Post. Echoing Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz called the Israeli attack on Gaza, "Perfectly 'Proportionate.'" And in the New York Times, Israeli historian Benny Morris described his country's airstrikes as "highly efficient."

While the cheerleaders testified to the superior moral fiber of their team, the Palestinian civilian death toll mounted. Israeli missiles tore at least fifteen Palestinian police cadets to shreds at a graduation ceremony, blew twelve worshipers to pieces (including six children) while they left evening prayers at a mosque, flattened the elite American International School, killed five sisters while they slept in their beds, and liquidated 9 women and children in order to kill a single Hamas leader. So far, Israeli forces have killed at least 500 Gazans and wounded some two thousand, including hundreds of children. Yesterday, the IDF blanketed parts of Gaza with white phosphorus, a chemical weapon Saddam Hussein once deployed against Kurdish rebels.

"It was Israel at its best," Yossi Klein Halevi declared in the New Republic.

By New Year's Day, Israel's cheering squad had turned the opinion pages of major American newspapers into their own personal romper room. Of all the editorial contributions published by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times since the Israel's war on Gaza began, to my knowledge only one offered a skeptical view of the assault. But that editorial, by Israeli novelist David Grossman, contained not a single word about the Palestinian casualties of IDF attacks. Even while calling for a cease fire, Grossman promised, "We can always start shooting again."

Israeli public relations agents fanned out to broadcast studios from the US to Europe, fulfilling an aggressive strategy conceived after the country's catastrophic 2006 attack on Lebanon. An analysis by Israel's foreign ministry of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media concluded that Israeli representatives received a whopping 58 minutes of airtime compared to only 19 minutes for Palestinians. "Quite a few outlets are very favorable to Israel, namely by showing [its] suffering. I am sure it is a result of the new co-ordination," said Major Avital Leibovich, an IDF spokesperson who has become a fixture on cable news in the past weeks.

But while Israel's PR machine cranked its Mighty Wurlitzer to full blast, drowning out all opposing voices with its droning sound, a surprisingly substantial portion of the American public decided to dance to its own tune. According to a December 31 Rasmussen poll (so far the only measure of US opinion on the Gaza assault), while Americans remained overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, they were split almost evenly on the question of whether Israel should attack Gaza -- 44% in favor of the assault and 41% against it. The internals are even more remarkable.

While Republicans supported the assault on Gaza by a large margin, a predictable finding, only 31% of Democrats did. Members of the Democratic base thus stood in sharp contrast to most of their elected representatives (freshman Rep. Donna Edwards is a notable exception), who backed the latest Israeli assault in lockstep, and seem to support Israel no matter what it does. The rift between the progressive base and the party played out on Barack Obama's Change.gov site, which was deluged in recent days with demands for a statement condemning Israel's assault on Gaza.

So what accounts for the surprising trend in American opinion on Gaza? The proliferation of progressive online media and social networking sites could be a factor, but I have another theory: The same pundits who are cheerleading Israel's assault on Gaza once sold the occupation of Iraq to America, and with a nearly identical set of arguments. In their voices and those of the grim Israeli PR agents carted out for cable news, many Americans hear echoes of the Bush administration's most fantastical lies. When they see images of Gazans under withering bombardment, they flash back to Fallujah and the assorted horrors of Iraq. When they look at Israel, they see themselves during the darkest days of the Bush era.

Now, an increasing share of Americans know what Israel is doing to Gaza. And they reject it, even when Israel is "at its best."

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3) US troops 'monitoring Rafah crossing'
Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:23:47 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=80731§ionid=351021701

US troops are helping Egypt prevent "arms smuggling" from tunnels in the Rafah border-crossing, as Israel continues its attacks on Gaza.

NBC anchorwoman and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said Sunday that US military officers from the Corps of Engineers had been stationed on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing in order to prevent "arms smuggling from illegal tunnels" by Palestinian fighters.

" And there are US Army Corps of Engineer personnel on the ground right now on the Egypt side looking at the tunnels to see how Egypt could be reassured that there won't be continued smuggling through on that," she said on Meet the Press.

The US and Israel say the tunnels are used for smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip. Israeli warplanes have bombing the Rafah border to destroy the tunnels.

Tunnels between the two sides of the Rafah border crossing have been almost the only way for Gazans to obtain food and medicine after Israel besieged the costal strip in mid-2007, after Hamas took control of the region.

Meanwhile, Israel pushes forward with its offensive on the Gaza Strip.

At least 551 Palestinians have lost their lives, and some 2,790 others are reported wounded -- most of whom are civilians.

Despite international calls for an immediate halt to the ongoing crisis in Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier Monday that the ground incursion would be continued until the objectives are reached.

RE/RE

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4) The Gaza Ghetto Uprising
Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada,
4 January 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml

One is often baffled by the ironies of international relations and the alliances they foster. Take for example the Israeli colonial settlement that had declared war on the Palestinian people and several Arab countries since its inception while at the same time it built alliances with many Arab regimes and with Palestinian leaders.

While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist relations have always been known and documented, there has been less documentation of the services that Israel has provided and continues to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized that Israel's 1967 invasion of Egypt aimed successfully to destroy Gamal Abdul-Nasser, the enemy of all US dictatorial allies among the Arab regimes, whom the US and before it Britain and France had tried to topple since the 1950s but failed. Israel thus rendered a great service to Arab monarchies (and a few republics) from "the ocean to the Gulf," whose survival was threatened by Nasser and Nasserism. Israel 's subsequent intervention in Jordan in 1970 to help the Jordanian army destroy Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas and its final crushing of that organization in its massive invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were also important services it rendered to these same regimes threatened by the PLO's "revolutionary" potential and its sometimes recalcitrant positions. Israeli intelligence has also provided over the decades crucial information to several Arab regimes enabling them to crush their political opposition and strengthen their dictatorial rule. Prominent examples among recipients of Israeli intelligence largesse include the Moroccan and the Omani dictatorships.

Israel 's services to Arab regimes continue apace. Its 2006 invasion of Lebanon , engineered to destroy Hizballah, was cheered by Arab regimes and neoliberal Arab intellectuals hostile to Hizballah and employed exclusively by Saudi media outlets. Though the massive Israeli destruction of southern Lebanon and south Beirut and the massacres of more than a thousand Lebanese strengthened Hizballah and weakened Israel 's military standing, the invasion was much appreciated by Israel 's Arab allies. Indeed since 2006, Israel 's Arab regime allies as well as neoliberal Arab intellectuals have been openly calling on it to neutralize the so-called Iranian "threat" for its own sake and at their behest as well. The US has seen this as an opportune moment to fully integrate Israel in the region, so much so that it signaled to its Gulf allies to make proposals for a new regional alliance that includes Israel in its midst. The Bahraini foreign minister suggested a few weeks ago that Israel join the Arab League. Many such proposals have already been made in the past few months welcoming the colonial settlement to the regional alliance against Iran .

Since 2006, Arab regimes, neoliberal Arab intellectuals, as well as the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority (PCA) in Ramallah have reached an understanding that only Israel will be able to save them from Hizballah and Hamas, both organizations constituting a threat to the open alliance Arab regimes have with the US and Israel against Iran and all progressive forces in the region. These were not closely guarded secret hopes, but strategies that were openly discussed in private meetings, which often spilled into the public realm. The discussions in the Arab media and the declarations made by Israeli officials in the context of the ongoing Israeli massacres of the one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 days have left little to the imagination. A veritable open alliance now exists between the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority, Arab regimes, and Israel with the support of neoliberal Arab intellectuals, wherein Israel is subcontracted to decimate the Hamas government -- the only democratically elected government in the entire Arab world.

Here let us remember that Hamas was democratically elected in free elections and that its elected officials and members of parliament were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation and have been languishing in Israeli jails for years, and that the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority set their offices on fire, staged strikes against them, and signaled the PCA bureaucracy not to follow their orders. It was after all this failed to dislodge Hamas from power that the US , Israel , and the PCA staged a coup to massacre Hamas leaders in Gaza that backfired on them. The carnage unleashed by Israel in the last 10 days is the latest attempt by Israel to ensure that all Arabs and all Palestinians are ruled by dictators and never by democratically elected officials.

Many are wondering how the Arab regimes and the PCA can be so brazen in their "treachery" of the Palestinians. "Don't they fear being overthrown by the people?" is an oft-repeated question. The answer of course is a resounding "no." It is true that collaboration with Israel by Arab regimes is not new, and that what is new is merely their openness about it, but there is a perfectly good reason for this. In the 1940s and the 1950s, these regimes could not declare openly their alliance with Israel , as there were popular and international forces that would have removed them from power had they done so. Indeed, some at the time flirted with alliances that unofficially included Israel , like the Baghdad Pact, but they paid a heavy price for such collaboration. The Cold War, Third World revolutionism, Arab nationalism, the Soviet Union, China , Nasser , were all factors to be considered. While a few of these factors had remained when Egypt 's Sadat declared his open alliance with the US and Israel in the late 1970s, none of these factors remains today. The US, Israel, and their major Arab allies have neutralized these forces one by one since 1967, opening the way for this brazen alliance between Israel and the Arab dictatorships, all of which are in the service of US interests in the region. These Arab regimes rule by terror and fear and have at their disposal the best secret police and repressive security apparatus that the US can train and equip and which oil money and US aid can buy.

When Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was asked point blank by al-Jazeera's anchorman if Israel had an arrangement with Arab regimes to commit the Gaza massacres, she refused to answer and finally denied such an arrangement existed but could not help but affirm that there are those in the Arab world who "think" as Israel does and that Hamas is their enemy as it is the enemy of Israel. This is, incidentally, the same Tzipi Livni, who only a few weeks ago informed Palestinian citizens of Israel that she has slated them for denationalization and deportation to the Palestinian Bantustans once Israel and the international community grants these West Bank prisons the status of an independent Palestinian state enclosed within the apartheid wall. After her war on Palestinians in Gaza started last week, Livni declared that her war against the Palestinian people is not only about security but also about Israel 's "values" which non-collaborator Palestinians (unlike the PCA) do not share. Livni is of course right. Unlike Livni and the Israeli leadership, whose ethnic-cleansing ideals and plans are to make Israel a purely Jewish state that is Palästinenser-rein, most Palestinians believe that they should remain present on their lands even and especially if this sullies the purity of a Jewish Israel.

Livni has also asserted that Israel 's values are shared by the "free world" and by unfree Arab regimes that are allies of the "free world." We can add, that her values are also shared by Saudi-funded neoliberal Arab intellectuals and by the leadership of the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority ensconced in the Green Zone of Ramallah. The civilized values of Israel are not unlike those espoused by the US in its ongoing wars against Arabs and Muslims, and are very much like European colonial values during the high age of colonialism and beyond. Livni and the Israeli leadership speak of human rights, democracy, peace, and justice as universal while applying them only to Jews and denying them especially to Palestinians. This is hardly an Israeli ruse. Let us remember the undying words of Frantz Fanon in this regard: "leave this Europe where they never tire of talking of man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe."

On the Palestinian front, the term of chief Palestinian collaborator and coup leader Mahmoud Abbas ends on 9 January. Israel hopes to extend his collaborationist rule as head of the PCA it set up through the Oslo agreement in 1993. As Palestinians are murdered and injured in the thousands, world powers are cheering on. This is hardly a new development. It happens often in the context of other populations being murdered by allies of the US and Europe , and it even happened during World War II as the Nazi genocide was proceeding. On 19 April 1943, Britain and the US met in Bermuda, presumably to discuss the situation of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe . That was also the day when the Nazis had launched their war against the remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto but were met with unexpected courageous resistance. Little came out of the Bermuda Conference and the ongoing war against the Warsaw Ghetto proceeded uninterrupted. The Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto executed Jewish collaborators with the Nazis and bravely faced up to the Nazi army with what little weapons it had before being massacred. Their uprising was always inspirational to the Palestinians. In the heyday of the PLO as a symbol of Palestinian liberation, the organization would lay flower wreathes at the Warsaw Ghetto monument to honor these fallen Jewish heroes.

Szmul Zygielbojm was the leader of the Jewish socialist party, the Bund, in Poland and was part of the resistance against the Nazi invasion in 1939. He would later become a hostage held by the Nazis but would later be released and made a member of the Jewish council or judenrat, the Nazi equivalent of the Israeli-created Palestinian Collaborationist Authority, and which was charged with building a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Zygielbojm opposed the Nazi order and fled to Belgium , France , the US , and in 1942 ended up in London where he joined the Polish government in exile. On 12 May 1943, after he received word that the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto was finally crushed and many of its fighters killed, Zygielbojm turned on the gas in his London flat and committed suicide in protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allies to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe . He also felt that he had no right to live after his comrades were killed resisting the Nazis. In his suicide letter, Zygielbojm insisted that while the Nazis were responsible for the murder of the Polish Jews, the Allies, through their inaction, were also guilty:

The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions, tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility ...

I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people ...

The Palestinian Collaborationist Authority that runs the judenrat set up by Oslo has never even attempted to resist Israeli orders. Not one member of the top leadership decided to resign and not serve. Mahmoud Abbas, having provided so many dishonorable services to Israel , lacks Zygielbojm's integrity and noble principles and would never follow in Zygielbojm's footsteps.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people will resist the invading Israelis with all their might and against astronomical odds. The Palestinian people, like Zygielbojm before them, understand very well that Abbas, his clique, the Arab regimes, the US and Europe are all culpable in their slaughter as much as Israel is. In the case of Zygielbojm, he blamed world powers for their indifference and inaction, in the Palestinian case, world and regional powers are co-conspirators and active partners in crime.

The crushing of the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and the slaughter of its defenseless population will be relatively an easy task for the giant Israeli military machine and Israel 's sadistic political leadership. It is dealing with the aftermath of a strengthened Palestinian determination to continue to resist Israel that will prove much more difficult for Israel and its Arab allies to deal with. While the thousands of dead and injured Palestinians are the main victims of this latest Israeli terrorist war, the major political loser in all this will be Abbas and his clique of collaborators. The test for Palestinian resistance now is to continue to refuse to grant Israel the right to conquer populations, to steal their land, to destroy their livelihoods, to imprison them in ghettos, and to starve them without being resisted.

The only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel's crimes become. The Gaza Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a racist European colonial settlement in their midst.

Joseph Massad is associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York

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5) Israeli Strike Hits Refugees Near a U.N. School in Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?hp

JERUSALEM - The Israeli military struck near a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people among hundreds who had sought refuge at the school from the fighting in the beleaguered territory, the United Nations and hospital officials in Gaza said.

The officials said those killed included men, women and children. The Israeli military, in a statement, confirmed it had carried out a mortar attack on the school, saying an initial investigation suggested its forces had responded to mortar fire coming from the school.

The United Nations has opened its schools in Gaza to provide shelter and gave the Israelis the coordinates of those locations. John Ging of the United Nations relief agency said.

Barack Obama, the United States president-elect, broke his silence about the Israeli assault on Gaza on Tuesday, saying "the loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern for me." He did not comment more, repeating his statement that the United States has only one president at a time.

The number of those killed at the United Nations school could not be immediately independently confirmed.

According to Mr. Ging, 30 people had been killed in the strike near the school, where 350 people were taking shelter and which is in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. Another 55 were injured, five of them critically, he said. Most of the casualties occurred outside the school rather than in the building itself, Mr. Ging said, describing the neighborhood as a built-up area.

But in Gaza, three hospital officials at Shifa hospital, where some of the wounded from the school were taken, said at least 42 people were killed and that the number of dead was likely to rise. Despite mounting diplomatic pressure to end its offensive in Gaza, Israel's military onslaught unfolded for an 11th day on Tuesday. Since launching its ground offensive, Israel has killed 130 Hamas fighters, Israeli officials say. Hamas has killed five Israelis by rocket fire and in combat. Palestinian medical officials on Tuesday estimated that the death toll during the 11-day war exceeded 560, and the United Nations said that about a quarter of those killed were civilians.

Israel has been criticized in the past for the inaccuracy of its shelling. The Israeli Army has repeatedly emphasized that its operation is not aimed at Gaza's residents, amid sensitivity to deep opposition worldwide to the toll on civilians in Gaza.

But parts of Gaza, a narrow coastal strip with a population of 1.5 million, are among the most densely crowded areas in the world, and artillery and tank fire can easily cause collateral damage. In November 2006, Israel all but stopped firing tank and artillery shells into Gaza after 18 Palestinian civilians, most from one family, were killed by Israeli shells that missed their target and hit a row of houses in Beit Hanoun.

In another strike, during its conflict with Hezbollah in July 2006, Israel suspended air attacks in southern Lebanon for 48 hours after one of its air strikes on the southern town of Qana left dozens of civilians, many of them children, dead.

On Tuesday, the Israeli Army would not confirm reports that its ground troops were pushing further south through Gaza toward Khan Yunis, the territory's second city. The Israelis had been concentrating their massive firepower in the north of Gaza.

A rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza fell in the Israeli town of Gadera, less than 20 miles south of Tel Aviv and the furthest north that any of the hundreds of missiles fired from Gaza has yet struck since the Israeli offensive began, the Israeli Army said. Amid the fighting within Gaza, four Israeli soldiers were killed by shells from their own tanks, the first Israeli deaths from so-called "friendly fire" in the conflict.

As the diplomatic pressure on Israel intensified, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is touring the region in quest of a truce, met with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in Damascus. Mr. Sarkozy sought to enlist Syria, a key backer of Hamas, in maneuvers toward a cease-fire. But while the French leader launched an impassioned plea for an end to the fighting, describing it as "unbearable," Mr. Assad accused Israel of committing a war crime by invading Gaza and said it would pay "the highest price."

The Israeli campaign has not proceeded without mishaps for Israel, which said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers in Gaza were killed by shells from their own tanks. The Israeli Army said three Israeli soldiers were killed by tank fire directed at a building they had occupied in northern Gaza, and a fourth soldier was killed in a separate incident, also apparently caused by a tank shell.

Defying Israeli and international demands, Hamas militants in Gaza fired more rockets into Israel Tuesday, one of them falling in Gadera.

The location was significant to many Israelis since Gadera, about 25 miles north of Gaza, is perceived as being linked to Tel Aviv, meaning that central Israel may now be vulnerable to Hamas rockets along with the southern cities that have borne the brunt of the missile fire. Shrapnel from the attack slightly injured a three-month-old baby, the army said.

Since the operation began, Israeli officials in Washington said, the number of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza has fallen to about 20 a day from a peak of 80 on Christmas Day.

"The situation has obliged them to contract and pull back the rockets," said Jeremy Issacharoff, the Israeli deputy chief of mission in Washington. "The rate of attrition is important," he said, noting that Hamas was now launching fewer rockets than Israeli forces had expected.

In the north of Gaza, three Palestinian men were killed late Monday night when a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school compound was hit by Israeli fire, according to a statement released on Tuesday by the organization, which provides assistance to registered Palestinian refugees. More than 400 Palestinians from northern Gaza were taking refuge in the school in Gaza City at the time, and the building was clearly marked as a U.N. installation, the statement said.

The latest fighting coincided with a new and inconclusive diplomatic effort to bring pressure on Hamas to halt the rocket attacks - one of Israel's conditions for a cease-fire, along with the destruction of Hamas as a fighting force and measures to prevent the Islamic militants from re-arming.

In Damascus, President Sarkozy met with President Assad after holding earlier talks in Egypt and discussions with Israeli leaders and Palestinian officials in the West Bank. Hamas is headquartered in Syria, and Mr. Assad is key ally of both Hamas and the Islamist Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. There was no immediate indication that the French leader had secured a commitment from Mr. Assad to put pressure on Hamas.

After talks with Mr. Sarkozy, Mr. Assad said that Israeli leaders "have not learned the lessons of the war in Lebanon" in 2006 when Hezbollah emerged politically strengthened from a bruising battle with Israel.

"Israel is falling into the same trap again and the Israelis will pay the highest price," Mr. Assad said, calling the Israeli offensive a "war crime."

Mr. Sarkozy said the violence "must stop immediately, as soon as possible."

Both sides in the Gaza conflict have adopted uncompromising positions.

On Monday, the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said after a meeting with officials from the Czech Republic, Sweden and France that Israel would "change the equation" in the region. She added that in other conflicts, "countries send in forces in order to battle terrorism, but we are not asking the world to take part in the battle and send their forces in - we are only asking them to allow us to carry it out until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been reached for this point."

Israeli officials have said repeatedly that they are not ready to accept any cease-fire proposal that did not guarantee a permanent halt to rocket attacks as well as smuggling of weapons through tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt.

The Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, speaking from a hiding place in a recorded speech on Hamas television, said: "The Israeli enemy in its aggression has written its next chapter in the world, which will have no place for them. They shelled everyone in Gaza. They shelled children and hospitals and mosques, and in doing so, they gave us legitimacy to strike them in the same way."

Israel said it had hit some civilian targets because they housed rockets, launchers or militants. It offered limited evidence of its claim.

Toward night on Monday, northern Gaza was the site of heavy fighting, including artillery, helicopter and tank fire, witnesses said. Plumes of smoke were visible in the night sky.

Inside Gaza City, windows are blown out, electricity is cut and drinking water scarce. While phones rang with the recorded threats against Hamas, leaflets dropped from airplanes littered the streets, saying: "Hamas is getting a taste of the power of the Israeli military after more than a week and we have other methods that are still harsher to deal with Hamas. They will prove very painful. For your safety, please evacuate your neighborhood."

Israeli officials hope an eventual deal will be struck without engaging directly with Hamas, but Mark Regev, the spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel would not exclude a tacit understanding.

"The endgame for us is threefold: that Hamas's military machine would be substantially destroyed; two, Hamas understands that shooting rockets means paying a price they don't want to pay; and three, there are mechanisms in place to prevent Hamas from rearming," Mr. Regev said.

But as the offensive unfolds, so, too, evidence is mounting of a severe humanitarian crisis.

Maxwell Gaylard, United Nations humanitarian affairs coordinator, said at a Jerusalem news briefing on Monday that because of the attacks, people could not reach available food.

Children are hungry, cold, without electricity and running water, he said, "and above all, they're terrified. That by any measure is a humanitarian crisis."

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza City. Ethan Bronner contributed reporting from the Israel-Gaza border; Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel; Mark Landler from Washington. Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations; Alan Cowell from Paris; and Graham Bowley from New York.

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6) Israel Puts Media Clamp on Gaza
"Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story; American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead."
By ETHAN BRONNER
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/middleeast/07media.html?hp

JERUSALEM - Three times in recent days, a small group of foreign correspondents was told to appear at the border crossing to Gaza. The reporters were to be permitted in to cover first-hand the Israeli war on Hamas in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling against the two-month-old Israeli ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza.

Each time, they were turned back on security grounds, even as relief workers and foreign nationals were permitted to cross the border. On Tuesday the reporters were told not even to bother coming.

And so for an 11th day of Israel's war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it wait in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel's history, in this one, the government is seeking to control entirely the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.

"This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon War against Hezbollah," noted Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel's public diplomacy. "Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today Israel is trying to control the information much more closely."

He and others, including the post-Lebanon war investigation commissioned by the government, said that the army found that when reporters were allowed onto the battlefield in Lebanon, they got in the way of military operations by posing risks and asking questions.

As Maj. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, said, "If a journalist gets injured or killed, then it is Central Command's responsibility." She said they are trying to protect Israel from rocket fire and "not deal with the media."

Beyond such tactical considerations, there is a political one. Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, said that "any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that."

Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. It seems that many Israelis accept Mr. Seaman's assessment and shed no tears over the lack of media access to the conflict, despite repeated Foreign Press Association protests, including again on Tuesday.

A headline in Tuesday's Yediot Aharonot, the country's largest selling daily newspaper, expressed well the popular view of the issue. Over a news article describing the generally negative coverage so far, especially in the European media, an intentional misspelling turned the headline "World Media" into "World Liars."

This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli media whose articles have been filled with "feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy," according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but non-partisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.

The Foreign Press Association of Israel has been fighting for weeks to get its members into Gaza, first appealing to senior government officials and ultimately taking its case to the country's highest court. On Wednesday, the justices worked out an arrangement with the organization whereby small groups would be permitted in to Gaza when it was deemed safe enough for the crossings to be opened for other reasons.

So far, every time the border has been opened, journalists have not been permitted to go in.

On Tuesday, the press association released a statement saying, "The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world's media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs."

At the same time that reporters have been given less access to the conflict, the government has created a new structure for shaping its public message, ensuring that spokesmen of the major branches meet daily to make sure all are singing from the same sheet.

"We are trying to coordinate everything that has to do with the image and content of what we are doing and to make sure that whoever goes on the air, whether a minister or professor or ex- ambassador, knows what he is saying," said Aviv Shir-On, deputy director general for media in the foreign ministry. "We have talking points and we try to disseminate our ideas and message."

Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story; American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead.

Israel and its supporters feel that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening - years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered and a message had to be sent to Israel's enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.

There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict of course. But no matter what, Israel's diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the media far away from the death.

John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and entered on Monday as journalists were kept out, told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy is a problem.

"For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in," he said.

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7) The Afghan Quagmire
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
January 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/opinion/06herbert.html

The economy is obviously issue No. 1 as Barack Obama prepares to take over the presidency. He's charged with no less a task than pulling the country out of a brutal recession. If the worst-case scenarios materialize, his job will be to stave off a depression.

That's enough to keep any president pretty well occupied. What Mr. Obama doesn't need, and what the U.S. cannot under any circumstances afford, is any more unnecessary warfare. And yet, while we haven't even figured out how to extricate ourselves from the disaster in Iraq, Mr. Obama is planning to commit thousands of additional American troops to the war in Afghanistan, which is already more than seven years old and which long ago turned into a quagmire.

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who is now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, wrote an important piece for Newsweek warning against the proposed buildup. "Afghanistan will be a sinkhole," he said, "consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government can afford to waste."

In an analysis in The Times last month, Michael Gordon noted that "Afghanistan presents a unique set of problems: a rural-based insurgency, an enemy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, the chronic weakness of the Afghan government, a thriving narcotics trade, poorly developed infrastructure, and forbidding terrain."

The U.S. military is worn out from years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The troops are stressed from multiple deployments. Equipment is in disrepair. Budgets are beyond strained. Sending thousands of additional men and women (some to die, some to be horribly wounded) on a fool's errand in the rural, mountainous guerrilla paradise of Afghanistan would be madness.

The time to go all out in Afghanistan was in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. That time has passed.

With no personal military background and a reputation as a liberal, President-elect Obama may feel he has to demonstrate his toughness, and that Afghanistan is the place to do it. What would really show toughness would be an assertion by Mr. Obama as commander in chief that the era of mindless military misadventures is over.

"I hate war," said Dwight Eisenhower, "as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

What's the upside to the U.S., a nation in dire economic distress, of an escalation in Afghanistan? If we send 20,000, or 30,000, or however many thousand more troops in there, what will their mission be?

In his article for Newsweek, Mr. Bacevich said: "The chief effect of military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications.

"No country poses a greater potential threat to U.S. national security - today and for the foreseeable future - than Pakistan. To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake."

Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require a wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government at the expense of rebuilding the United States, which is falling apart before our very eyes.

The government we are supporting in Afghanistan is a fetid hothouse of corruption, a government of gangsters and weasels whose customary salute is the upturned palm. Listen to this devastating assessment by Dexter Filkins of The Times:

"Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it."

Think about putting your life on the line for that gang.

If Mr. Obama does send more troops to Afghanistan, he should go on television and tell the American people, in the clearest possible language, what he is trying to achieve. He should spell out the mission's goals, and lay out an exit strategy.

He will owe that to the public because he will own the conflict at that point. It will be Barack Obama's war.

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8) An Ex-Detainee of the U.S. Describes a 6-Year Ordeal
By JANE PERLEZ, RAYMOND BONNER and SALMAN MASOOD
January 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/world/asia/06iqbal.html?ref=world

LAHORE, Pakistan - When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants.

In November, a Pakistani surgeon operated on his ear, physical therapists were working on lower back problems and a psychiatrist was trying to wean him off the drugs he carried around in a white, plastic shopping bag.

The maladies, said Mr. Iqbal, 31, a professional reader of the Koran, are the result of a gantlet of torture, imprisonment and interrogation for which his Washington lawyer plans to sue the United States government.

The coming administration of President-elect Barack Obama is weighing whether to close the Guantánamo prison, which many critics have called an extralegal system of detention and abuse.

But the full stories of individual detainees like Mr. Iqbal are only now emerging after years in which they were shuttled around the globe under the Bush administration's system of extraordinary rendition, which used foreign countries to interrogate and detain terrorism suspects in sites beyond the reach of American courts.

Mr. Iqbal was never convicted of any crime, or even charged with one. He was quietly released from Guantánamo with a routine explanation that he was no longer considered an enemy combatant, part of an effort by the Bush administration to reduce the prison's population.

"I feel ashamed what the Americans did to me in this period," Mr. Iqbal said, speaking for the first time at length about his ordeal during several hours of interviews with The New York Times, including one from his hospital bed in Lahore.

Mr. Iqbal was arrested early in 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia, after boasting to members of an Islamic group that he knew how to make a shoe bomb, according to two senior American officials who were in Jakarta at the time.

Mr. Iqbal now denies ever having made the statement, but two days after his arrest, he said, the Central Intelligence Agency transferred him to Egypt. He was later shifted to the American prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and ultimately to Guantánamo Bay.

Much of Mr. Iqbal's account could not be independently corroborated. Two senior American officials confirmed that Mr. Iqbal had been "rendered" from Indonesia, but could not comment on, or confirm details of, how he was treated in custody. The Pentagon and C.I.A. deny using torture, and American diplomatic, military and intelligence officials agreed to talk about the case only on the condition of anonymity because the files are classified.

After Mr. Iqbal was picked up in Jakarta and interrogated for two days, American officials generally concluded that he was a braggart, a "wannabe," and should be released, one of the senior American officials in Jakarta said. "He was a talker," the senior American official said. "He wanted to believe he was more important than he was."

There was no evidence that he had ever met Osama bin Laden, or had been to Afghanistan, the two senior American officials said. But in the atmosphere of fear and confusion in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Iqbal was secretly moved to Egypt for further interrogation, said one of the senior American officials.

Mr. Iqbal said he had been beaten, tightly shackled, covered with a hood and given drugs, subjected to electric shocks and, because he denied knowing Mr. bin Laden, deprived of sleep for six months. "They make me blind and stand up for whole days," he said in halting English, meaning that he had been covered with a hood or blindfolded.

The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have a policy of not talking about the detainees, but a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said, "The agency's terrorist detention program has used lawful means of interrogation, reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice and briefed to the Congress.

"This individual, from what I have heard of his account, appears to be describing something utterly different," Mr. Gimigliano added. "I have no idea what he's talking about. The United States does not conduct or condone torture."

Mr. Iqbal said he traveled to Jakarta in November 2001 on a personal odyssey to inform his stepmother that her husband - Mr. Iqbal's father - had died of a stroke in Pakistan.

He fell in with members of the Islamic Defenders Front, according to his statement to the combatant status review tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004. The group is an Indonesian urban-based organization. It is not banned in Indonesia and has not been connected to any terrorist attacks.

According to Mr. Iqbal's statement before the review tribunal at Guantánamo, he said he had told his new friends that he knew how to make a bomb that could be tucked into a shoe. He denies that now, saying someone else in the group made the boast.

Whatever the truth, the conversation among that circle of acquaintances caught the attention of Indonesian intelligence.

The Indonesian agents passed the information on to the C.I.A. in Jakarta, and Mr. Iqbal was seized at his rented room just before dawn on Jan. 9, 2002.

Mr. Iqbal said he had received his first round of physical abuse at the Jakarta airport, before being shoved onto the plane, shackled and blindfolded.

"One person from Egyptian intelligence, he come and he punch me here, very hard," he said, pounding his chest, "and he grab me like this and he throw me against the wall. Then they make me naked, they torture me."

He said he knew that his assailant at the airport was Egyptian from his Arabic accent. According to a senior American official and two Indonesian officials, Mr. Iqbal was flown from Jakarta to Cairo on a C.I.A. aircraft.

During the flight to Cairo, Mr. Iqbal said, he was bleeding from his nose, mouth and ears, and was unable to move because shackles wound tightly around his body.

When the plane landed, he was told he was in Cairo, he said. He was assigned a basement room like "a grave," about 6 feet by 4 feet, he said, and was kept there for 92 days, according to the transcript of his tribunal hearing. On Jan. 11, 12 and 20, 2002, he was interrogated for 12 to 15 hours on each occasion, he said during the interviews here.

He described the interrogators as Egyptians. Mr. Iqbal said there were other men in the room whose faces were covered and who did not speak, but who passed notes with questions to the Egyptians.

He was asked when he had gone to Afghanistan and how he had met Mr. bin Laden. When he replied that he had never been to Afghanistan and had not met Mr. bin Laden, the Egyptians tortured him with electric shocks, he said. "I cry and I yell," he said. "Also they gave me brain electric shocks." He said he was forced to consume liquids that were laced with drugs "so you don't know what you are talking about."

In early April, he said, the Americans flew him to Bagram, the American air base outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. He was held there for almost a year, at times shackled and handcuffed in a small cage with other detainees, and further interrogated, he said.

"A C.I.A. person said, 'We forgive you; just accept you met Osama bin Laden.' I said, 'No, I'm not going to say that.' " Even though polygraph tests showed that he was telling the truth, he said, he was shifted from cell to cell every few hours and deprived of sleep for six months.

Once he arrived at Guantánamo, on March 23, 2003, Mr. Iqbal was treated as an outcast by the other prisoners because he had not been trained in Afghanistan, according to a fellow inmate, Mamdouh Habib, an Australian who befriended him.

Mr. Iqbal became so depressed he tried to hang himself twice, and went on three hunger strikes, Mr. Habib said.

According to a statement in April 2007 by Dr. Ronald L. Sollock, the commander of the Naval Hospital at Guantánamo Bay, filed with the Court of Appeals in Washington, Mr. Iqbal was diagnosed with a perforated left eardrum, inflammation of the left external ear canal and inflammation of the left middle ear.

From 2003, according to the court filing by Dr. Sollock, Mr. Iqbal was prescribed antibiotics.

By the time he returned home to Pakistan, Mr. Iqbal was dependent on a "long list of drugs," Mohammad Mujeeb, a professor of ear, nose and throat at the Services Hospital in Lahore, said in an interview. He said that part of Mr. Iqbal's difficulty in walking appeared to be psychological, with scans showing only "mild to moderate" compression of the nerves in his back.

After Guantánamo, he was flown on an American military aircraft to the Islamabad airport, where two American Embassy officers, First Lt. Brian Strait and Keith Easter, witnessed his release, according to a United States government document he displayed. He was admitted to a hospital in Islamabad for treatment, and then questioned for three weeks at a safe house by Pakistani intelligence officers in what Mr. Iqbal called friendly sessions. Pakistani security officers then drove him back to Lahore and his extended family. "It was like a new life for me," he said. "I was born again. There is no word to explain."

Mr. Iqbal's case is now being fought in the American courts. His lawyer, Richard L. Cys of Davis Wright Tremaine, who visited him in Guantánamo, said he planned to sue the American government for the unlawful detention of Mr. Iqbal.

Mr. Cys has also filed a lawsuit in the federal courts to win the release of Mr. Iqbal's medical records for the period he was at Guantánamo, hoping to confirm Mr. Iqbal's account of his abuse in Egypt.

In Lahore, Mr. Iqbal wants to return to teaching the Koran. "It's easy for the United States to say no charges were found," he said. "But who is responsible for the seven years of my life?"

Jane Perlez and Salman Masood reported from Lahore, Pakistan, and Raymond Bonner from Jakarta, Indonesia.

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9) Gaza's Future in the Context of its Heroic History
The Struggle Continues.
The Free Palestine Alliance
January 6, 2009
www.freepalestinealliance.org

As we prepare this eleventh FPA statement, the devastating images of murdered children and entire families are piercing the hearts of every person with conscience. Today, at least 42 Palestinians were murdered together and 45 were injured as they were collectively shelled in the UNRWA school of Al-Fakhoura in the dense refugee camp of Jabalya. Hundreds had taken refuge together from the fascistic Zionist bombardment in that UN-run school. The numbers of killed and injured are sure to rise as more dismembered bodies are removed from under the destroyed school.

And to the satisfaction of Bush, Arab despots, and of course, Zionist leaders, yet another entire family was slaughtered outright today. The father, mother, children and grandchildren, a total of 13, were murdered wholesale as they too were huddled in their home. They join many other families killed in the past few days in this sadistic spree of Zionist murders. Lest there are doubts remaining, the butchery is live on television for the despots of the world to savor and for all others to be outraged in fury.

Today alone, at least 82 Palestinians were butchered, making the total thus far at least 660 murdered Palestinians and more than 2,950 injured. The majority are children and families seeking refuge. Images of Deir Yasin, Sabra and Shatila, and the fully erased 417 Palestinian villages and towns, race to the present day as we witness yet another display of colonial Zionist savagery.

The FPA continues to renew its call to sustain a widespread popular protest, and to heed a call for a National Emergency Plan of Action issued by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, MAS Freedom, the Free Palestine Alliance, the National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda. We call on our community to join the National March on Washington on January 10, as we have an obligation to send a loud and clear message of condemnation and outrage to the Bush administration and to the incoming silent president, Barak Obama, who has arrived to Washington awaiting his inauguration.

· For details and to find out about a protest near you, please go here:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage

· For all previous FPA statements, go here:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8869

· To know more about the FPA, go here:
http://freepalestinealliance.org/
As the Egyptian regime continues to hamper any humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, and as Arab despots, western powers, and the US continue to wrestle in the UN and everywhere with a more palatable way to allow the massacre while saving some face, it is critical for all of us to take a step back and review the political possibilities of the near and long term future.

Here is the setting of Gaza: The Gaza Strip is disjointed from the West Bank, bordered to the west by the Mediterranean Sea, from the north, south and east by Palestinian areas colonized by Zionists in 1948. It has only one connection away from Israel's control; it is the Rafah Egyptian connection at the very tip of Palestine to the south. That means Gaza is locked within the 360 square kilometers. The Gaza Strip has a population of 1.5 millions. The majority are refugees. Al-Qita' (or the Strip) is impoverished, with little access to significant industry, agriculture, and commercial centers. With the imposition of the blockade, Al-Qita' quickly transformed to a tinder box.

Given the wretched poverty and dispossession of the area, the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip have displayed heroic abilities to organize, rebel, and forge a change. In fact, when the Zionist army conquered the remaining portions of Palestine in 1967, it especially targeted the various Gaza refugee camps for displacement. This displacement included the complete destruction of thousands of homes and the transport of families to various areas with the goal of securing a "governable" and "controllable" Gaza. Those were the days of a protracted and entrenched leftist rebellions lead by the likes of Guevara Gaza in Jabalya, Beach Camp, and other Gaza areas. You can look forward to details on some of these events in upcoming FPA statements.

At that time, the Zionist forces sought to create an alternative to the resistance by propping up Palestinian oligarchy and allies of the Hashemite regime to act as functionaries. Aided by Arab regimes and Zionists, these functionaries attempted to build a power structure that could control the daily lives of the Palestinians, from travel documents to becoming day laborers at Israeli factories. It was not long after that the dawn of every morning would witness thousands of young and old Palestinians forced by poverty to be lined up as cheap wage labor to build the very Israeli economy used for their suppression. This was primarily enabled by the oppressive structure created by imposed functionaries.

The fact that leftist and Pan-Arab (Qawmi) culture of resistance evolved strongly in the Gaza Strip was not accidental either. During the period between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank was controlled by the Hashemite Monarch, the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. Lead by the incomparable Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the Egyptian administration facilitated the development of a powerful Pan-Arab Palestinian culture, despite periodic political disagreements with various Palestinian political forces. Pan-Arabism and a strong feeling of pride in being Palestinian Arabs prevailed from elementary school children to the older generation. This developed into a unique awareness of the meaning of resistance and evolved to produce one of the most glorious periods of the Palestinian movement during the Gaza guerilla warfare of the late 60s to mid 70s.

It was in Jabalya Camp that the Intifada of 1987 erupted. And it is in the Gaza Strip where Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, was born. Factors leading to the emergence of Hamas will be detailed by the FPA in future statements, but they are similar on the socio-economic front to the ones that produced the emergence of the left and Pan-Arabists earlier. They differ, however, in terms of the international, regional, and local balance of power. A summary is forthcoming in future statements.

With this significant political and socio-economic history, the Gaza Strip emerges as non-governable by any colonists, regardless of the level of suppression and violence imposed. Hence, the FPA believes that regardless of the outcome of this assault in terms of destruction and death, the only possible result in the long run is that Gaza will continue to be an anchor for Palestinian and Arab liberation. Here is why?

The socio-economic conditions that have produced the culture of resistance will likely remain, producing a more acute and developed form as a result of the viciousness of the recent assault. Hence, the possibility that Gaza will soon be sanitized from its soul is wishful thinking and will not happen, even if the combination of the various political forces are weakened, including Islamists, Pan-Arabists, and leftists.

Even if one assumes that the Zionists and their allies are able to enter the Gaza Strip, who then will implement administrative control? The conditions as they stand today render impossible the ability of Abbas to govern Gaza. The Israelis will never remain as they will sustain heavy casualty, and are likely to run. The Egyptian regime wants to stay as far from Gaza and the Palestinian movement as possible. Internationals would require a local administrative control. How then will Israel be able to administer a non-governable population that refuses to be colonized? The answer is simple. It can't. It is for that reason that we believe that no matter what occurs, the political end result will undoubtedly be in favor of the Palestinian people and their option of resistance.

However, this condition will likely have a more dire implication for the US-Zionist-Arab regime axis. It will further weaken their grip on the region, especially with the recent Israeli defeat in Lebanon in 2006, and the inability of the US to sustain an occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Palestinian functionaries will have to reconsider their roles and positions, as they have already, and the likes of Dahlan will be dealt a blow. In fact, this assault has placed the PA in a position where it could no longer behave as it once did.

Essentially, as the violence of the colonists escalates, causing that much more suffering for the colonized, the political formulation of those in power will be taken to its ebb. Often, as has been the case throughout history, the colonists will eventually be forced to accept defeat and the will of the people for freedom and liberation will prevail. Such will be the case in the Gaza Strip despite all the suffering of today.

To join the FPA mailing list or to contact us, write to: JoinFPA@gmail.com
www.freepalestinealliance.org

Yousef
Please visit
http://wewillreturn.blogspot.com

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10) Witnesses to Israel’s war crimes
By Rami Almeghari
The Electronic Intifada
January 6, 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10126.shtml

“At about 2:00 A.M. early this morning, a group of Israeli soldiers broke into my house. They began screaming loudly, smashing everything in front of them, destroying the house completely,” Nasir Hejo, 38, said on Monday, with a weary face, uncombed hair and bare feet.

“They shouted at us, forced out of the house. We wanted to move right after they attacked us. They ordered us to move south. Soldiers began shooting at us, killing my 17-old-year,” Nasir stated.

After their flight from their one-story house next to the Tawhid mosque, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Nasir Hejo and 20 family members fled to a school run by the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Israel claims to have attacked 1,000 of what it calls “Hamas targets.” Independent media, UN aid officials and human rights organizations have documented that most of these attacks struck private homes, mosques, universities, schools, government buildings, police stations and charities. As of January 6, the death toll from the Israeli attack approached 600 with thousands more injured.

Surrounded by his crying children at the elementary school for girls, Hejo added that the Israeli army was heavily deployed around his neighborhood, from the eastern part of Gaza City, close to the Handasiya cement company, a local landmark.

Hejo and the other family members fled after being forced to leave by the Israeli soldiers but his wife and brother remained behind to try to handle the death of his son.

“They killed my brother, they attacked our home, they even messed up the salt and sugar cans,” Hejo’s 18-year-old daughter said while crying on her father’s shoulder.

This is just one of many stories of atrocities Palestinians can recount since Israel began its all-out bombardment of the Gaza Strip on December 27 followed by an ongoing land invasion.

About 600 Palestinian men, women and children were also sheltering at the school after fleeing a massive onslaught on their homes in the Moghraqa village in southern Gaza City.

Eisa Abu Sido, 54, who lived in that area, said that his sons Muhammad and Esam were struck a couple of days ago, inside the family’s home.

“The 1967 Israeli-Arab war was not as fierce as what is going on nowadays,” Abu Sido Said. “That war only lasted six days with no great loss observed, but this is not a war, this is ethnic cleansing.”

Standing close to his wife in front of the classroom that is now their shelter, Abu Sido appealed to all the world to save Gaza from the Israeli atrocities.

“For God’s sake, I appeal to all nations around the world to save Gaza,” he screamed.

The schools’ sports field is now full of displaced residents, like the Abu Hwaishel family, who sat in the sun, trying to warm up from the winter weather.

“The situation is so miserable and we are out in the open. As you see we are gathering here under sun,” said Ibrahim Abu Hwaishel, 45, “when the night falls our flesh creeps from the cold.”

UNRWA schools all over Gaza have become shelters for displaced people, but they are by no means safe. On Tuesday, Israeli shells hit one such school in the Jabaliya refugee camp just east of Gaza City. At least 30 civilians were sheltering there. Another Israeli attack on a school in the same area killed three according to medical officials.

According to UNRWA, thousands of people from various areas of the Gaza Strip have been forced to flee the Israeli shelling day and night. But there are few places to seek shelter in the besieged, densely packed coastal territory.

“The situation in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly, 25 percent of those killed are children and women,” UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna told Electronic Intifada (EI). “The food assistance we have meets the needs of the people for six days only. We provide blankets and other items to these displaced people, but there is no doubt that their conditions are so difficult, and we are currently evaluating the situation as well as their needs.”

Rami Almeghari is writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, January 6, 2009

Almeghari is contributor to The Electronic Intifada, IMEMC.org and Free Speech Radio News and is a part-time lecturer on media and political translation at the Islamic University of Gaza. Rami is also a former senior English translator at and editor-in-chief of the international press center of the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Service. He can be contacted at rami_almeghari@hotmail.com.

—The Electronic Intifada, January 6, 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10126.shtml

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11) Venezuela expels Israeli ambassador over Gaza
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ
January 6, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hj0ehBqPmjVyWuBEdqsfMorPjobQD95HT4700

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela ordered the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador on Tuesday to protest Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

President Hugo Chavez has condemned the campaign in Gaza, where nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in ground and air strikes. Israel launched the attacks Dec. 27 to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into southern Israel.

Venezuela's Foreign Ministry announced the decision in a statement, saying it "has decided to expel the Israeli ambassador and part of the personnel of the Israeli embassy."

Chavez earlier condemned the Israelis carrying out the military campaign as "murderers" and urged Jews in Venezuela to take a stand against the Israeli government.

"Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community speaks out against this barbarism. Do it. Don't you strongly reject all acts of persecution?" Chavez said.

"How far will this barbarism go?," he said in an appearance on state television. "The president of Israel should be taken before an international court together with the president of the United States, if the world had any conscience."

The foreign minister said its U.N. mission is joining with other countries in demanding the Security Council "apply urgent and necessary measures to stop this invasion."

Officials could not immediately be reached at the Israeli Embassy in Caracas, which had closed by the time of the announcement.

Chavez has long been critical of the Israeli government's policies in the Middle East and has supported the Palestinians' stance in the conflict.
Hosted by Google

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12) This brutality will never break our will to be free
For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire.
Israel broke it repeatedly from the start.
By Khalid Mish'al
January 6, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas

For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.

This river of blood is being shed under lies and false pretexts. For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment did not halt, but accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not.

When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings, including Rafah. Our calls fell on deaf ears. Yet still we would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces from Gaza.

No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank. But 50 died and hundreds more were injured there last year at Israel's hands, while its expansionism proceeded relentlessly. We are meant to be content with shrinking scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel's mercy, enclosed by it from all sides. The truth is that Israel seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone, in return for siege, starvation, bombardment, assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement. What Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.

The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not.

What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel's dictates, he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.

Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire. Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel's crimes is long. The justifications change, but the reality is the same: colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending injustice. If this is the "free world" whose "values" Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.

Israel's leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to set clear goals for the attacks - from ousting the legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to break Gaza's resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance. But they will achieve neither. Gaza's people are more united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their cause, have already caused many casualties among the occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.

Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush's disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation - witness the daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.

Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation.

Khalid Mish'al is the head of the Hamas political bureau

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13) Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/world/middleeast/08scene.html?hp

JABALIYA, Gaza — The bodies of the children who died outside the United Nations school here were laid out in a long row on the ground. Some were wrapped in the vivid green flag of Hamas, some were in white shrouds and some were in the yellow flag of Fatah, which is rarely seen these days in Hamas-run Gaza.

Hundreds of Gazans crowded around, staring at the little faces, some of them with dark eyes still open, but dulled.

Abdel Minaim Hasan, 37, kneeled, weeping, next to the body of his eldest daughter, Lina, 11, who was wrapped in a Hamas flag. “From now on I am Hamas!” he cried. “I choose resistance!” But then he cursed other Arab nations for ignoring the plight of the Gazans. “The Arabs are doing nothing to protect us!” he shouted.

The streets were crowded Tuesday evening when the mortars struck, Mr. Hasan said. “We were in a United Nations school, we were so far from the tanks.” There were many children around, and he gave Lina a shekel to run to a nearby grocery store. She was hit by shrapnel and died.

Some 280 families — 1,674 people — had been sheltering inside the school, Al Fakhura, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees and their descendants and which runs the school. Most came from farther north in Gaza, near Beit Lahiya, where the fighting has been intense, an hour’s walk away. They were ordered to evacuate for their safety by Israeli forces, who used leaflets and loudspeakers to get them to leave their homes.

But Al Fakhura, set in the northern part of the densely packed Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, is in a crowded neighborhood full of Hamas fighters. Israel said that a preliminary investigation showed that mortar fire from the school compound prompted Israeli forcesto return fire. The Israeli mortars killed as many as 40 people outside the school; Palestinian hospital officials said Tuesday that 10 of the dead were children and 5 were women.

Residents of the neighborhood said two brothers who are Hamas fighters were in the area at the time of the attack. The military identified them as Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, and said they had been killed.But the residents also said the mortar fire did not come from the school or its compound, but from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

The director of the United Nations relief agency in Gaza, John Ging, who was not at the school when it was attacked, denied that Hamas fighters had been sheltering in the school or using its premises. “There are no military people inside the school, it is fully controlled,” he said.

Mr. Ging put the death toll at 40, and said 15 more people were critically wounded and 40 others less seriously wounded. He called for an international investigation. “Those who died or were injured deserve accountability,” he said.

Mr. Ging spoke at the school during a three-hour lull in the fighting on Wednesday. The lull, which Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced would take place every other day, is to allow humanitarian organizations to deliver supplies and Gazans to emerge from their houses and shelters to shop.

But while there is food in the city, Gazans are running out of cash to buy it, with banks shut and A.T.M.’s empty and nonfunctional because of a lack of electricity.

The lull was also used for funerals, and a senior Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, emerged from hiding to congratulate those he called martyrs. Some parents shook his hand; some stared at him coldly. On a loudspeaker, a man praised the dead and said: “What Israel is doing is bringing us unity again! We are all together!”

That idea appeared to explain the willingness of Hamas to have Fatah flags in such evidence.

Halfway along the row of bodies — uncountable in the press of the mourning crowd — Huda Deed was weeping. She lost nine members of her extended family, ages 3 to 25. “Look, they’ve lined them up like a ruler!” she said, inconsolable. But when asked for an interview by Al Aksa television, the Hamas channel, which is back on the air, she refused.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the militants knowingly endangered civilians by operating among them. Asked later about the presence of Hamas fighters in the streets around the school, Ms. Deed avoided a direct answer, but implied that her heart was not with Hamas. “We want to live like everyone else in the world,” she said.

Inside the school, Shaaban Hasouni, 47, said he came three days ago from Beit Lahiya with eight members of his family between 2 and 29 years old. The Israelis had told them to evacuate, first in calls to their cellphones and then with leaflets and loudspeaker announcements, he said. They were supposed to hold up white sheets as they evacuated. But he said he and his family left their home only when Israeli forces fired some sort of gas into it. “I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what it was, but we escaped,” he said.

Mr. Hasouni was able to make a quick trip home on Wednesday morning and came back with mattresses and blankets, saying that it was so cold, even with 40 people in every classroom, that his children could not stand it without blankets.

Asked about fighters, he said: “Of course we don’t want them around us. But we don’t know who they are, we don’t know their faces. And they wear normal clothes.”

Mahmoud al-Sous, 39, arrived on a donkey cart with blankets, mattresses, water bottles and sacks of clothes. “My children were dying from the cold,” he said. “After two days I couldn’t stand it, so I risked going back to bring these things.”

Atif Suboh, 25, here with six members of his family, was not so lucky. Three of his cousins, aged 6, 8 and 12, he said, went back to Beit Lahiya on Wednesday morning to get blankets. They died from shelling, he said. Asked how he could have let them go, he started to wail. “They didn’t tell us they were leaving,” he said.

If he had known that fighters would be around the school, he said, “I would never be there.”

Samira Shakoura, 40, lives in the neighborhood. “It was terrifying,” she said. “We hid in the house.”

She was defiant about the presence of Hamas. “Listen, I will always open my house to protect the fighters,” she said. “We have to be patient. We are dead anyway like this. And when Hamas runs in the elections, I’ll vote for them; they have Islam.”

Nearby, while a funeral went on, people surged toward a shop 200 yards away. There at least as many people at the shop as at the funeral. A shipment of flour had arrived.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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14) Israel threatens to bomb Al-Shefa hospital
January 8, 2009
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7qLH7kOUD%2bHWDD2BCzibTi2JOT8IBDY7Ggc%2bBki%2f%2fIVHnwntbRAVZQ13h87m2PzXb2W2XGsqwN99mvaZeA1%2b9y865q%2bwzuMHjklE2Nnv6inI%3d

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation army that launches a monstrous military aggression on Gaza Strip has threatened to reduce Al-Shefa hospital to rubbles, alleging that Hamas leaders were hiding inside it.

The hospital is considered the biggest hospital in the tiny Strip where hundreds of patients are lying.

Dr. Muaweya Abu Hassanein, the director of the emergency department in the hospital categorically denied the Israeli allegations, affirming that no Hamas leaders is using the hospital as a hideout, warning at the same time that if Israel carried out its threat, thousands of Palestinians in and around the hospital could be killed.

The hospital, and other smaller hospitals and clinics were previously shelled by the Israeli warplanes and tanks, stressed Hassanein. He also denied Israeli claims that medicine and medical supplies had arrived to Gaza hospitals.

The Hebrew Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted on Wednesday Israeli military officers as alleging that Hamas leaders were using tunnels under the hospital to hide and run the show, and that they were using sick Palestinians as "human shields".

At least nine Palestinian paramedics and doctors were killed in Israeli shelling of the tiny Strip, and addition to destroying 11 ambulances and a number of the civil defense vehicles.
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15) U.N. Suspends Food Aid Into Gaza
"Casualty figures in the Gaza war are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians. But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms. Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire."
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
January 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09mideast.html?hp

The United Nations suspended its food aid deliveries into Gaza on Thursday after one of its contract drivers was killed during an Israeli attack on a delivery convoy at a border crossing, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said.

The suspension by the United Nations came after rockets were fired from Lebanon on Thursday, landing in northern Israel and raising concerns they could represent a broadening of the conflict, although both the Israeli and Lebanese governments played down their significance. International efforts to end the 13-day war in the Gaza Strip continued with the arrival of Israeli negotiators in Cairo.

In signs of mounting diplomatic pressure on Israel, the United Nations Security Council appeared close to a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire by both sides and could vote on the resolution as early as Thursday, according to Arab diplomats. The break-through was reached after a delegation of high-ranking Arab ministers overcame the reluctance of the United States, Britain and France in calling for the cease-fire, the diplomats said.

The new resolution would specifically mention Hamas, whereas the earlier proposed resolution put forth by Libya, a member of the Security Council, had only referred to a cessation of firing rockets, without specifying which side was firing them.

In Cairo, Egyptian officials said the Israeli officials were meeting with the head of Egyptian military intelligence, Omar Suleiman, to explore a proposal devised by Egypt and France as what officials in Paris called a road map to a cease-fire. There was no immediate word on the outcome of the talks.

As Israel’s offensive in Gaza continued with tanks on the ground in the beleaguered coastal strip and bombardment from the air, Israel again ordered a temporary lull in the fighting on Thursday to give the 1.5 million population a three-hour opportunity to seek medical help and buy supplies.

A similar pause on Wednesday enabled rescue teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter some areas for the first time since Israel’s ground offensive began last weekend after days of air-strikes. In one area, the Committee reported Thursday, its representatives discovered “shocking” scenes including four children next to their mother’s corpses. The children were too weak to stand on their own, the aid organization said.

Three forklift trucks operated by the only trucking company authorized to carry out deliveries near the Israeli-Gaza border were collecting food at Kerem Shalom crossing when they came under Israeli fire at 9 a.m. on Thursday, killing one of the drivers, named as Bassem Quta, 32, an official of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said.

“We have suspended all food distribution because of lack of security,” according to the official, Andrew Whitley, director of the United Nations relief agency office in New York.

He said the delivery had involved prior coordination with the Israeli military and food deliveries would be suspended until Israel could guarantee the safety of its convoys.

The latest incident followed a similar attack on Monday when two trucks were hit by missiles from a helicopter as the trucks were leaving a garage in Gaza City, Mr. Whitley said. That attack left two dead. The trucking company, Shuhaiber, had refused to continue deliveries, he said, and so the United Nations had been forced to suspend its operations.

“The U.N. is suspending its aid operations in Gaza until we can get safety and security guarantees for our staff,” spokesman Chris Gunness told the Associated Press. The Israeli military was investigating the incident, the A.P. reported.The discussions in Cairo got underway hours after at least three missiles from Lebanon landed near the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, slightly injuring two Israelis, and the Israeli army responded with fire. The rockets from Lebanon raised concern that they could presage a second front in the conflict that would complicate peace efforts and revive memories of the bloody war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006.

But the Israeli Army later dismissed the rockets on Thursday as “a minor event” and, in Lebanon, the government said Hezbollah had distanced itself from the attack. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon immediately condemned the rocket-fire. In a statement, Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri said: “Hezbollah assured the Lebanese government that it remains engaged in preserving the stability in Lebanon and respects Security Council resolution 1701.”

United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 laid out the terms of the ceasefire that ended the war between Israel and Lebanon in August 2006.

The Israeli Army said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

The rockets from Lebanon fell in residential areas. Shimon Koren, head of the northern district police, instructed residents of Nahariya and Kabri to enter bomb shelters and he instructed residents in nearby localities to open their shelters. School was canceled in Nahariya and nearby Shlomi.

So far there has been no claim of responsibility.

The lull Thursday coincided with news from Cairo that the Israeli delegation had arrived to open talks. Israeli officials said on Wednesday that their country would be represented at the Cairo talks by two officials — a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shalom Turgeman, and a senior defense official, Amos Gilad.

International pressure for a negotiated cease-fire intensified after Israeli shells killed some 40 people at a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday. Israel said Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from the school compound prior to Israel’s shelling.

The Israeli government said Wednesday that it welcomed the efforts of France and Egypt to work out a durable cease-fire. It said it would end its assault if Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel and ended the smuggling of weapons from Egypt. It said that if a durable cease-fire took hold, it would reopen border crossings into Gaza for goods and people. But Israeli and Hamas officials both denied an assertion on Wednesday by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that a cease-fire had been agreed upon.

“There is an agreement on general principles, that Hamas should stop rocket fire and mustn’t rearm,” a senior Israeli official said Wednesday evening. “But that’s like agreeing that motherhood is a good thing. We have to transform those agreed principles into working procedures on the ground, and that’s barely begun.”

The United States has been involved behind the scenes, senior Israeli and French officials said, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “constantly on the phone” with Mr. Olmert, according to one Israeli official.

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, said of talks about a cease-fire: “As I understand, the Israelis are open to the concept, but they want to learn more about the details; so do we.”

At the United Nations, several Arab delegates said Wednesday night that they thought they now had enough votes to approve a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. That would likely put the United States and other Western powers, which oppose a binding resolution, in the awkward position of having to veto a cease-fire.

A senior French official in Paris said that Mr. Sarkozy’s earlier comment about an agreement on a cease-fire was misunderstood: “The plan is not a cease-fire; the plan is a road map toward a cease-fire.” One crucial aspect of any deal is how to prevent new smuggling tunnels from being built under Egypt’s border with Gaza.

The senior Israeli official raised the possibility of reaching “tacit agreements” with Hamas to end rocket fire, while also persuading Egypt to allow American and perhaps European army engineers to help seal its border with Gaza above and below ground.

Hamas is insisting that any new arrangement include the reopening of border crossings for trade with Israel and the reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt for people.

Casualty figures in the Gaza war are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians.

But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms.

Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire.

Graham Bowley reported from New York. Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem; Thanassis Cambanis from Beirut, and Michael Slackman from Cairo. Alan Cowell and Katrin Bennhold contributed from Paris; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

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16) Gaza Children Found With Mothers’ Corpses
By ALAN COWELL
January 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09redcross.html?ref=world

PARIS — The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered “shocking” scenes — including small children next to their mothers’ corpses — when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza battered by Israeli shelling. It accused Israel of failing to meet obligations to care for the wounded in areas of combat.

In response, the Israeli military did not comment directly on the allegation. In a statement, it accused Hamas, its foe in Gaza, of deliberately using “Palestinian civilians as human shields” and said the Israeli Army “works in close cooperation with international aid organizations during the fighting so that civilians can be provided with assistance.”

The Israeli military “in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians,” the statement said, promising that “any serious allegation” would “need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation.”

In an unusually blunt criticism, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross said it had been seeking access to shell-damaged areas in Zeitoun in the east of Gaza City since Saturday but the Israeli authorities granted permission only on Wednesday — the first day that Israel allowed a three-hour lull in the attacks on Gaza on humanitarian grounds.

The statement said a team of four Palestine Red Crescent ambulances accompanied by Red Cross representatives made its way to Zeitoun Wednesday where it “found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all, there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses.”

In another house, the statement said, the rescue team “found 15 other survivors of this attack including several wounded. In yet another house, they found an additional three corpses. Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do. There were several other positions of the Israeli Defense Forces nearby as well as two tanks.”

Because of berms built by Israeli forces, the ambulances could not enter the area so “the children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances on a donkey cart,” the statement said.

The statement quoted Pierre Wettach, an International Red Cross representative for Israel and the Palestinian areas, as calling the incident “shocking.”

“The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded,” he was quoted as saying.

The statement said the international Red Cross “believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.”

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17) Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation
By SHAILA DEWAN
January 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other “beneficial uses.” In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil’s ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year — 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.

The amount of coal ash has ballooned in part because of increased demand for electricity, but more because air pollution controls have improved. Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities.

“Your household garbage is managed much more consistently” than coal combustion waste, said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who testified on the health effects of coal ash before a Congressional subcommittee last year. “It’s such a large volume of waste, and it’s so essential to the country’s energy supply; it’s basically been a loophole in the country’s waste management strategy.”

As the E.P.A. has studied whether to regulate coal ash waste, the cases of drinking wells and surface water contaminated by leaching from the dumps or the use of the ash has swelled. In 2007, an E.P.A. report identified 63 sites in 26 states where the water was contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps, including three other Tennessee Valley Authority dumps. Environmental advocacy groups have submitted at least 17 additional cases that they say should be added to that list.

Just last week, a judge approved a $54 million class-action settlement against Constellation Power Generation after it had dumped coal ash for more than a decade in a sand and gravel pit near Gambrills, Md., about 20 miles south of Baltimore, contaminating wells. And Town of Pines, Ind., a hamlet about 40 miles east of Chicago, was declared a Superfund site after wells there were found to be contaminated by ash dumped in a landfill and used to make roads starting in 1983.

Contamination can be swift. In Chesapeake, Va., high levels of lead, arsenic and other contaminants were found last year in the groundwater beneath a golf course sculptured with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, the same type of coal ash involved in the Tennessee spill. The golf course opened in 2007.

State requirements for the handling of coal ash vary widely. Some states, like Alabama, do not regulate it at all, except by means of federally required water discharge permits. In Texas, the vast majority of coal ash is not considered a solid waste, according to a review of state regulations by environmental groups. There are no groundwater monitoring or engineering requirements for utilities that dump the ash on site, as most utilities do, the analysis says.

The lack of uniform regulation stems from the E.P.A.’s inaction on the issue, which it has been studying for 28 years. In 2000, the agency came close to designating coal ash a hazardous waste, but backpedaled in the face of an industry campaign that argued that tighter controls would cost it $5 billion a year. (In 2007, the Department of Energy estimated that it would cost $11 billion a year.) At the time, the E.P.A. said it would issue national regulations governing the disposal of coal ash as a nonhazardous waste, but it has not done so.

“We’re still working on coming up with those standards,” said Matthew Hale, director of the office of solid waste at the E.P.A. “We don’t have a schedule at this point.”

Last year, the agency invited public comment on new data on coal combustion wastes, including a finding that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

If such regulations were issued, the agency could require that utilities dispose of dry ash in lined landfills, considered the most environmentally sound method of disposal, but also the most expensive. A 2006 federal report found that at least 45 percent of relatively new disposal sites did not use composite liners, the only kind that the E.P.A. says diminishes the leaching of cancer-causing metals to acceptable risk levels. The vast majority of older disposal sites are unlined.

Most coal ash is stored wet in ponds, like the one in Tennessee, almost always located on waterways because they need to take in and release water. But scientists say that the key to the safe disposal of coal ash is to keep it away from water, by putting dry ash into landfills with caps, linings and collection systems for contaminated water.

Environmentalists, scientists and other experts say that regulations could have prevented the Tennessee spill. Andrew Wittner, an economist who was working in the E.P.A.’s office of solid waste in 2000 when the issue of whether to designate coal ash as hazardous was being debated, said the agency came close to prohibiting ash ponds like the one at Kingston. “We were going to suggest that these materials not be wet-handled, and that existing surface impoundments should be drained,” Mr. Wittner said.

If storing coal ash were more expensive, environmental advocates say, utilities might be pushed to find more ways to recycle it safely. Experts say that some “beneficial uses” of coal ash can be just that, like substituting ash for cement in concrete, which binds the heavy metals and prevents them from leaching, or as a base for roads, where the ash is covered by an impermeable material. But using the ash as backfill or to level abandoned mines requires intensive study and monitoring, which environmentalists say is rarely done right.

The industry takes the position that states can regulate the disposal of coal ash on their own, and it has come up with a voluntary plan to close some gaps, like in the monitoring of older disposal sites.

“There probably isn’t a need for a comprehensive regulatory approach to coal ash in light of what the states have and our action plan,” said Jim Roewer, the executive director of the Utility Solid Wastes Activity Group.

Mr. Roewer said there was a trend toward dry ash disposal in lined landfills, though that trend was not identified in the 2006 federal report on disposal methods.

Environmentalists are skeptical of the industry’s voluntary self-policing plan and the states’ ability to tighten controls.

“The states have proven that they can’t regulate this waste adequately, and that’s seen in the damage that is occurring all over the United States,” said Lisa Evans, a former E.P.A. lawyer who now works on hazardous-waste issues for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice. “If the states could regulate the industry appropriately, they would have done so by now.”

Utility companies are often aware of problems with their disposal system, Ms. Evans said, but they put off improvements because of the cost.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the Kingston Fossil Plant, where the Tennessee spill occurred, tried for decades to fix leaks at its ash pond. In 2003, it considered switching to dry disposal, but balked at the estimated cost of $25 million, according to a report in The Knoxville News Sentinel. That is less than the cost of cleaning up an ash spill in Pennsylvania in 2005 that was a 10th of the size of the one in Tennessee.

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18) Labor Calls for Unity After Years of Division
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/08labor.html?ref=us

The presidents of 12 of the nation’s largest labor unions called Wednesday for reuniting the American labor movement, which split apart three and a half years ago when seven unions left the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and formed a rival federation.

The union presidents issued their joint call after the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama signaled that it would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices.

David E. Bonior, a member of Mr. Obama’s economic transition team who withdrew from consideration as labor secretary, helped arrange and oversee a meeting of the union presidents on Wednesday in Washington.

The leaders are hoping, by April 15, to approve a plan to reunify, one union official said. But some officials said they might fail to reach agreement.

Mr. Bonior, a former House majority whip, said he would organize meetings with labor leaders over the next few weeks in the hope of hammering out details about what form a reunified labor federation would take.

The 12 union presidents issued a statement, saying: “The goal of the meeting is to create a unified labor movement that can speak and act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans. While we represent the largest labor unions, we recognize that unity requires broad participation.”

The call for reunification was something of an about-face for the presidents of the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and several other unions that quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O., asserting that the federation was stodgy and had not done enough to reverse organized labor’s long decline. The breakaway unions formed a federation called Change to Win.

“There was a real sense of commitment to unifying our movement again,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday. “It was clear that many of us felt that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and we really want to do things to help American workers get their rightful place in society.”

To bring about reunification, several labor leaders have called for revamping and modernizing the A.F.L.-C.I.O., traditionally the nation’s main federation, currently with 56 member unions. But several labor leaders have called for replacing the A.F.L.-C.I.O. with a new, more dynamic group.

There was general agreement that any future federation should focus on political and legislative matters, while also serving to encourage individual unions to do more to organize workers.

The leaders of several breakaway unions have called for changing the name of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. because they had vowed never to return to the same federation.

But many A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials argue that it would be silly to alter the name of such a well-known organization and replace it with a name that few Americans are familiar with.

Labor officials said they did not discuss on Wednesday who would succeed John J. Sweeney, 74, who is scheduled to step down this year after heading the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for 13 years.

Richard Trumka, the federation’s secretary-treasurer and former president of the United Mine Workers, has been lobbying among union presidents to succeed Mr. Sweeney. But some union leaders, especially those in the rival labor federation, say they want a fresh voice leading organized labor.

The reorganizing proposals that unions president have floated in recent days include a rotating presidency for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. or its successor federation, with the presidents of individual unions serving two-year terms as head of the parent federation.

One A.F.L.-C.I.O. official described that plan this way: “The dukes want to replace the king.”

But many officials oppose a rotating presidency, saying the parent federation needs a strong, visible president who, by dint of serving for several years, is recognized by Congress and the news media as the undisputed voice for labor.

Several presidents have also called for creating a strong executive director’s position, partly in the hope that the parent federation would have two strong voices rather than one.

Those at Wednesday’s meeting included Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees union, who led the walkout in 2005; as well as the presidents of the Teamsters, the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

One somewhat surprising attendee was Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which, with 3.2 million members, is the nation’s largest labor union, but has traditionally remained outside any larger labor federations.

Officials from several Change to Win unions have said in recent months that they were seeing little advantage in maintaining a separate labor federation.

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19) Iraqi Gets $240,000 Settlement in T-Shirt Incident at U.S. Airport
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
January 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/08arabic.html?ref=us

An Iraqi-born resident of the United States who was ordered to cover a T-shirt with Arabic script before boarding a plane in New York has received $240,000 in a settlement with two officials of the Transportation Safety Administration and JetBlue Airways.

The Iraqi, Raed Jarrar, was headed for a JetBlue flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Oakland, Calif., in August 2006 when, according to court papers, he was told at a security checkpoint that his T-shirt, which said “We will not be silent” in Arabic and English, would have to go.

One federal employee, according to Mr. Jarrar’s account, told him that wearing a shirt with Arabic script to an airport was like going to the bank in a shirt that said “I am a robber.”

Ultimately, the JetBlue workers gave Mr. Jarrar another T-shirt to wear over the first one, and led him to a seat at the back of the plane, even though his original ticket had been issued for a seat at the front.

In an interview, Mr. Jarrar, 30, a legal resident, called the experience “very painful.” At the time, he said, he was a new immigrant to the United States and had been reading histories of discrimination and the civil rights movement, which he thought of as “things that happened in the past, and in this other place and time.”

“When it happened to me,” he said, “it was very much of a shock.”

The settlement, made public Monday, was reached last month, said Aden Fine, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who represented Mr. Jarrar. The size of the settlement “should send a clear and strong message to all T.S.A. officials and airlines that they can’t discriminate against people for how they look or for the ethnic content of their speech,” Mr. Fine said.

Neither the Transportation Safety Administration officials or JetBlue admitted having done anything wrong, and the settlement agreement states that it “is not an admission of liability or fault or wrongdoing or responsibility.”

The agreement says that the government employees, Garfield Harris and Franco Trotta, “disavow any allegation” that they had violated Mr. Jarrar’s rights, and said that “their actions were at all times reasonable and within their discretion and authority.”

Bryan Baldwin, a spokesman for the airline, said the company was “pleased” with the settlement, although it denied Mr. Jarrar’s version of events. The company settled, Mr. Baldwin said, “to stop incurring future legal cost.”

The incident occurred at a time of heightened tension for air travel, just after the arrests of two dozen people in England who were accused of plotting to detonate liquid explosives on several airliners on flights from London to the United States and Canada.

Mr. Jarrar said he was “disappointed” that the agency and airline did not admit fault or apologize. But, he said, “the point was proven.”

If they had done nothing wrong, he asked, “why did they pay $240,000?”

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