Young love in Gaza

Newlyweds Rana and Mahmoud al-Zourby at their home in the Gaza Strip

 

 

 On the rehearsal morning about a week before their planned wedding, Mahmoud, 21, got dressed with the help of his younger brother, then sat smiling in the corner as he waited for Rana to come visit to write out invitation cards. Before Israel’s winter invasion of Gaza, it was easy for Mahmoud to recognize Rana from the merest glimpse. After the war he had to find new ways to sense her presence. “Sometimes I know she is around when I hear her giggle, or when I hear her talking to my mother,” he said.

For full article, visit http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10714.shtml

Amnesty International Report: Operation Cast Lead – 22 Days of Death and Destruction

“Soldiers came to the area at night [on 3  January 2009] and at dawn on 4 January many relatives came to my house to stay with us.  We though that if we stayed in our house we would be all right. After a while soldiers came to  the house and my father spoke to them in Hebrew; he told them: ‘These are my children, my  family, there are no terrorists here.’ The soldiers told us to leave our house and go to Wa’el’s  house across the road and we obeyed. We were many relatives, about 100 altogether, many of them children. We stayed there all day and all night. We had hardly any food in the house  and the children were hungry. Nobody could come to the area, not even ambulances. We were scared. The following morning (5 January) three of my cousins and I tried to go out of  the house, to the walled garden to get some tomatoes and some wood to cook something. As  soon as we got out of the door we were shelled. My cousins Muhammad and Hamdi were  killed and Wa’el and I were injured and we retreated back into the house. Then the house was shelled again – at least two shells – from above. Some 25 people were killed and most of
the others were injured. My little girl, Azza, was killed and my wife was injured. My mother Rahma was holding baby Mahmoud (six months old) and she was killed but she shielded the  baby with her body and saved him. My father was killed. Wa’el’s children, a boy and a girl, were both killed. Safa, the wife of my brother Iyad, was killed and Maha, the wife of my brother Hilmi, and their baby son Muhammad were all killed. Why did they shell the house after having put us all in there? We thought we’d all be killed; those of us who could ran out  of the house. Many of us were injured; I was injured in the head and blood was pouring down  my face as I ran. Nearby there were soldiers in the house of the Sawafiri family and they shouted to us to go back and shot at us, but we kept running. When we got to safety we raised the alarm, called the Red Cross to send an ambulance to the house to get the injured, but the army did not let any ambulances approach the area. We knew there were people still alive in the house because we called the mobile numbers and children answered; they were scared, with dead bodies all around them. Some of the injured died in the house waiting to be rescued. Only three days later could the Red Cross go in, but only on foot as the army did not let the ambulances approach; they found some children still alive and many others dead.”

For full report, click here.

Gideon Levy: Morality’s chief of staff

Allowing a child to drive an IDF-issued all-terrain vehicle? Forbidden. Killing children carrying white flags? Allowed. Lying about allowing your wife to drive an army-issued car? Forbidden. Killing women? Allowed. Administrative minutiae – a wife driving her husband’s car, a son driving an ATV and the hazing of fresh recruits – are grave matters. Mistakenly killing civilians is permitted.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107746.html

Fact finding committee leaves Gaza, disappointed over Israel’s lack of cooperation

Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation and claimed that its own investigation “proved that the Israeli army acted in accordance to international principles, and did not violate the International Law”.

Goldstone, a Jewish South African Judge, was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

For full article visit http://www.imemc.org/article/60704

Amnesty: Israel violated laws of war in Gaza

“Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians,” the group said in its annual report on the state of human rights worldwide.

For more, visit http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38146

Wounded adults and children of the Samouni and Daya families in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City were left among their dead relatives’ bodies in collapsed houses for four days as the ICRC and Palestine Red Crescent Society were denied access to the area by the Israeli army from 3 to 7 January 2009. Of 110 people sheltering in the houses, 30 had been killed. The ICRC said that the Israeli soldiers stationed nearby must have known of the people in the houses but that the wounded died as they waited for medical care due to the slow negotiations for access.

For full report, click here.

International Law Seldom Newsworthy in Gaza War

As of January 13, only two network evening news stories (NBC Nightly News, 1/8/09, 1/11/09) had even mentioned international law—a mere 3 percent of the total stories that NBC, ABC and CBS’s newscasts had broadcast on the Israeli military offensive since it began.

For full article, visit http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3767

Flags display toll of conflict

Hundreds of red, orange and pink flags lined the HUB lawn Tuesday, representing the Palestinian and Israeli causalities of the bombings in the Gaza Strip.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members were outside at 8 a.m. to plant the flags and raise awareness for the issue.

“We are here to spread awareness of the occupied Palestinian territory,” said Shadi Ghrayeb (graduate student-engineering).

For full article, visit http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2009/03/25/flags_display_toll_of_conflict.aspx

Human Rights Watch: Photographs of White Phosphorus Use

Ahmad Abu Halima kneels next to the hole in the roof of his house from a 155mm white phosphorus shell strike on January 4, 2009. His father, three of his brothers, and a sister were all killed by the ensuing fire. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

White phosphorus shell found in the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, struck on January 15, 2009. © 2009 Bill van Esveld/Human Rights Watch

At least three white phosphorus shells struck the main compound of the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) in central Gaza City on January 15, wounding three and starting fires that gutted four buildings and destroyed more than US$3.7 million worth of medical supplies. © 2009 Courtesy UNRWA Archives

A burning wedge of white phosphorus in Khuza’a village ten days after it hit the town. The spent wedges usually contain enough phosphorus after burning out that they reignite when kicked. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

White phosphorus artillery is air-burst over Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Each shell contains 116 felt wedges which can fall over an area up to 250 meters in diameter. © 2009 Getty Images

The car driven by the al-Haddad family on January 10, 2009, when it was hit by white phosphorus. The gas tank exploded, killing four and seriously injuring a fifth. The car was moved from the intersection where it had been hit to the vacant lot where it was photographed on January 28. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

The administration building of Al-Quds hospital was gutted by fire started by white phosphorous. The hospital was hit by two white phosphorus shells on January 15, 2009, forcing the evacuation of all patients and staff. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

The scorched children’s playroom inside Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City. The fifth-floor playroom was destroyed during a white phosphorus attack on January 15, 2009. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

Inside the Abu Halima house where the fire from the white phosphorus was so hot that it melted the outlets. Five civilians were killed in the fire, including four children and their father. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

The site where Hanan al-Najjar, 47, was killed by white phosphorus shell fragments. The roof of the house was littered with remnants of white phosphorus wedges, and inside lay the shell pieces that killed her. © 2009 Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch

For more pictures, visit http://www.hrw.org/en/features/israelgaza-photographs-white-phosphorus-use

Johann Hari: Israel’s Voice of Reason? An Exclusive Interview With Amos Oz

Oz is sitting in the coffee shop of Joseph’s bookstore in Golder’s Green, north London, looking older and more fragile than his vigorous black-and-white author’s picture. He is 70 now, his hair wispier and whiter. He greets me with a gravelly voice, and we order black coffees. It seems far away and long ago, but Oz once dreamed of bombing this city. He was once a child of what he calls “the Jewish intifada” – the stone-throwing, death-defying Jewish rebellion against British occupation. He believed the state that would emerge from the rubble would be a model of justice and idealism for all mankind. If you were a child in Gaza now, Mr Oz, would you be dreaming the same dreams against Israel? “I don’t even have to imagine the answer to this question – I know it,” he says. “Because I was a kid in Jerusalem in ‘48 when the city was besieged, shelled, starved, [and] the water supply [was] cut off. And I know the horror, and I know the despair, and I know the hopelessness, and I know the anger, and I know the frustration.” He says he was “not so much a child as a bundle of self-righteous arguments, a brainwashed little fanatic, a stone-throwing chauvinist. The first words I ever learnt to say in English were ‘British, go home!’”

For full article, visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/israels-voice-of-reason-a_b_176724.html

Johann Hari: Israel’s Troops Confirm It: They Were Ordered To Commit Atrocities

None of this had to happen. On the eve of the attack, Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, said that the way to stop rocket attacks on Israel was to draw Hamas, the elected Palestinian government, into negotiation and compromise – but “Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas.”