West's Islamic State Focus Neglects Human Tragedy In Syria

Western states are focusing too much on tackling Islamic State and are forgetting the daily suffering of ordinary Syrians in areas of the country where the medical situation has become catastrophic.

Some 200,000 people have died and nearly half the Syrian population has been displaced by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in 2011 and spiraled into full-scale civil war.

The situation has been exacerbated since a U.S-led coalition began bombing areas of Syria controlled by Islamic State.

"Between 30 to 60 people are dying each day since the bombings started. There is only talk of extremism and Islamic State, but not the women and children who are killed, the bodies torn apart, the stomachs blown open, which is what doctors are dealing with each day."

Said Tawfik Shamaa, spokesman for the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM), a non-governmental association that brings together 14 groups.

The group has about 300 medical posts and 12 dispensaries across Syria, but said its efforts are limited given the lack of medicines, equipment and staff.

"The situation is unbearable, catastrophic," said Obaida al-Moufti, a Franco-Syrian doctor.

One doctor in Aleppo, who gave his name as Abdelaziz, said there were just five functioning hospitals to cater to 360,000 people encircled by government troops.

"There are only 30 doctors of all specialities," he said adding that people were dying of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, scabies and tuberculosis because there were no treatments or vaccines available.

The U.S.- led coalition has backed anti-government rebels to counter Islamic State, but it has not targeted government forces. 

Source: Reuters

Addition Of Assad's Atrocities To The US Holocaust Museum

No gallery for the 500,000+ Iraqi babies who died due to Western sanctions? Or the 1 million+ Iraqi citizens who've died since 2003? 

No gallery for the Palestinians who've died or been dispossessed since 1947? 

Of course not because these are "our" crimes rather than those committed by people on the official enemies list. 

Posted by Gutenberg

When Will Palestinians Learn?

Turning To International Law Isn't The Answer — Just Ask America and Israel

Throw an old dog a bone and sure enough, he’ll go chasing after it. So it is with “Palestine’s” request to join the International Criminal Court. An obvious attempt by Mahmoud Abbas to try Israel for war crimes in Gaza this year, we are told.

Or maybe a “two-edged sword” – yawns are permitted for such clichés – which could also put Hamas “in the dock”. Israel was outraged. The US was “strongly opposed” to such a dastardly request by the elderly potentate who thinks he rules a state which doesn’t even exist.

For years, the Palestinians have demanded justice. They went to the international court in The Hague to have Israel’s apartheid wall dismantled – they even won, and Israel didn’t give a hoot. 

Any sane Palestinian, you might think, would long ago have turned his or her back on such peaceful initiatives.

Yet still these wretched Palestinians persist, after this most humiliating of insults, in resorting to international law to resolve their conflict with Israel. Here they go again, dutifully seeking membership of the International Criminal Court. Will these Arabs never learn?

After all, the Palestinians would indeed have to abide by international law and – if the law applied retrospectively – they would have to carry the burden of opprobrium themselves for both Hamas crimes and past PLO murders. 

The United States, of course – and this fact oddly did not feature in the flurry of news reports on “Palestine’s” request to join – has itself refused to join the International Criminal Court. And with good reason; because, like the Israelis – although this is not quite how the whole fandango was explained to us – Washington is also worried that its soldiers and government officials will be arraigned for war crimes. Think waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, the report on CIA torture…

No wonder Jeffrey Rathke, the windbag who speaks for the State Department, says that the Palestinian request “badly damages the atmosphere” with Israel, “undermines trust” and “creates doubts about their (Palestinian) commitment to a negotiated peace”. 

And remember, Abbas only made his request after America had voted against – it has previously used its veto more than 40 times on Israel’s behalf to reject Palestine’s self-determination since 1975 – a UN Security Council resolution to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land by 2017.

The world is tired of witnessing the suffering of Palestinians. Those with an ounce of human sympathy are sickened at being slandered as anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist (whatever that is) every time they express their outrage at Israel’s cruelty towards the Palestinians.

Killing more than 2,000 Palestinians last summer, hundreds of them children, was a mass slaughter. We’ve watched this grotesquerie so many times now – in Gaza, for the most part – that even our statistics have become spattered with blood.

Who now recalls the fatalities of the 2008-9 Gaza war? One thousand four hundred and seventeen Palestinians dead, 313 of them children, more than 5,500 wounded. That was the conflict upon which President-elect Obama had no comment to make.

And who knows what other gory Pandora’s box ICC membership would open? That bomber pilot who in 2002 killed 15 civilians, 11 of them children, in a Gaza apartment block to assassinate a Hamas official, for example? Wouldn’t that constitute a war crime? Don’t these outrages “damage the atmosphere” and “undermine trust”. Were these bloodbaths not “entirely counterproductive”? And the Jewish colonisation of the occupied West Bank?

Sure, bang up those behind Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide attacks for war crimes. Get the Palestinian Authority thugs who torture and murder their own prisoners. 

But that’s not what Israel and the US are worried about. They are concerned that, after months of arguing and rowing and delving through thousands of documents, jurists may decide that Israel – horror of horror – may have to answer for itself before international justice, something which no routine US veto could prevent.

Now just imagine if Israel and America wanted the Palestinians to sign the Rome document. Conjure the thought – for a split-second only – that Israel and America insisted that the Palestinians must abide by an international treaty and become members of the International Criminal Court to qualify for statehood. Abbas’s refusal to do so would be further proof of his “terrorist” intentions. Yet when Abbas does sign the Rome document, when the Palestinians want to abide by an international treaty, they must be punished – surely a “first” in modern history.

By Robert Fisk

A Taboo On Telling The Truth About Palestine

Recently, while listening to a live performance of the Messiah, I remembered an article by John Pilger (right) which he adapted from his Edward Said Memorial Lecture presented in Adelaide, Australia, September 11.

The Adelaide lectures have been presented annually since 2005 in honor of the late Edward Said, the Palestinian scholar and political activist who was as a major face and voice of Palestine. 

I had been thinking about the absence of Christian outrage and action from the institutional Christian church over this summer’s Gaza massacre. Pilger, an Australian-born film-maker and author, who now lives in England, connected Said for me, to Psalm 2:3. He did so with a statement Pilger quotes from Said:

“There is a taboo,” said the visionary Edward Said, “on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free.”

Handel chose Psalm 2:3 to deliver this same wisdom in Part Two of his Messiah: “Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us.”

Our refusal to speak and act on the truth about Palestine’s physical and mental bondage imposed by the military might of Israel is a manifestation of our last taboo.

What exactly is this taboo?

Said (left) believed the “great destructive force behind Israel” demands that we honor the taboo against telling the truth about Palestine.

During this Christmas season, what does the Christian church say and do, in its individual and corporate forms, about this bondage? 

We sing about angels in Bethlehem, and we thrill to the musicality of theHallelujah chorus that follows Psalm 2:3 in Handel’s Messiah.

We preach about loving our neighbor, but we say and do nothing to love our Palestinian neighbors enough to speak out and act against the Israeli occupation bondage which our nation defends, endorses and finances.

Bethlehem is not a stage setting for a fairy tale envisioned by Walt Disney. The birthplace of Jesus is a real city surrounded by a gigantic prison wall.

The birthplace of Jesus is a city held in bondage by the taboo against telling the truth about Palestine

This cannot continue. The time has come when the intimidation and fear must end. Pilger writes,

“For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can’t look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australia, in this epic crime.”

Pilger reminds us that Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine “the greatest moral issue of our time”
.

Pilger denounces the “mass murder” in Gaza this past summer, as an act “sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them”.

The psalmist instructs us that we will remain in bondage to an “epic crime” so long as continue to honor the taboo against telling the truth about Palestine.

Television writers remind us in sci-fi films, “the truth is out there”. True enough, but the psalmist reminds us that the truth of our bondage is part of our daily existence, a bondage that keeps us from smashing down those taboos that keep us blind to the suffering that cries out to be heard.

It is that taboo which keeps us from seeing, as journalist Chris Hedges writes, that the current tangible force of evil that haunts us is a creature of our own making, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

ISIS is “our Frankenstein” Hedges (left), writes:

“The United States after a decade of war in Iraq pieced together its body parts. We jolted it into life. We bathed it in blood and trauma. And we gave it its intelligence. Its dark and vicious heart of vengeance and war is our heart. It kills as we kill. It tortures as we torture.

It carries out conquest as we carry out conquest. It is building a state driven by hatred for American occupation, a product of the death, horror and destruction we visited on the Middle East.

There is no taboo against speaking of ISIS.  The taboo related to ISIS is its connection to another American creation, the modern state of Israel.

Hedges opens a door into the darkness of our refusal to acknowledge our major role in Israel’s creation myth. He sees ISIS as an emulation of the modern state of Israel.

“ISIS now controls an area the size of Texas. It is erasing the borders established by French and British colonial powers through the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. There is little we can do to stop it.

ISIS, ironically, is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the contemporary Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state eventually carved out of Palestine in 1948.”

Why have we not seen the parallels between the creation of ISIS and the earlier creation of Israel?  The taboo against speaking the truth about Palestine is enforced by our mainstream media, our churches and our political leaders.

The bondage of the people of Palestine and the attacks by Israel are not limited to Palestinians. As Pilger points out:

“The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.”

Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who was based in Jerusalem, makes the connection between the rise of ISIS and the creation of the modern state of Israel:

“[ISIS] tactics are much like those of the Jewish guerrillas who used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel.

Antagonistic ISIS and Israeli states, infected by religious fundamentalism, would be irreconcilable neighbors. This is a recipe for apocalyptic warfare. We provided the ingredients.”

We are complicit in the creation of the modern Middle East. By honoring the taboo described by Edward Said, we made and now sustain Israel, not as a democracy which it claims to be, but as a war machine designed to extend the American empire over the bodies of dead children in Gaza and the West Bank.

Palestine Is Still The Issue:

Article by James M. Wall

I Love Israel and I Apologize

Palestinian refugees leaving a village near Haifa, June 1948. Photo by Corbis

... at a meeting convened by Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), the most successful politician in Israel at present explained: 

“This election is between those who apologize and those who are proud ... those who are objective and those who are in favor of the State of Israel.”

Well, [Habayit Hayehudi chairman] Naftali Bennett, I apologize and I love Israel (of course not your Israel and not the present Israel); I’m objective and I’m in favor of (a just) State of Israel; I apologize and I’m proud.

You’re going to stop apologizing? Israel never even started doing so. 

If only it had apologized a long time ago. If only it would acknowledge its sins, if only it would accept moral responsibility for them.

It’s no shame to apologize – it’s far more embarrassing not to do so. Apologizing is a strength, not a weakness, and on the way to reconciliation (with the Palestinians) we have to stop at the first station – an apology. 

It’s true that in the elite unit of Bennett and Yinon Magal they don’t apologize for anything, not even for acts of murder, assassinations and abductions (the murder of Abu Jihad, for example, or the abduction of Sheikh Obeid). In the settlements they don’t apologize for anything either – not for the exploitation, not for the disinheritance and not for the theft.

As a rule, in Israel people don’t apologize for anything, not in the occupation nor on the road. Guilt feelings are an embarrassment, and apologizing is for those with no backbone. 

That’s why Bennett’s election slogan: “Stop Apologizing. Be Proud” will become so catchy and popular: the “apologizers” vs. “the proud,” the “objective ones” vs. “lovers of the country.” I’m proud to belong to the former group.

I would like to apologize, if that would be of any significance, to the entire Palestinian people, throughout the generations. For 1948, for 1967 and for everything that happened in their wake. An apology for 1948 would not have made the state that was established less just – it would have become more just. For the mass expulsion and for preventing the return, for the ethnic cleansing in several districts and for several acts of slaughter, which may be part of every war – we can and should apologize.

We can and should apologize for the fact that what happened in 1948 has never ended. That the spirit of 1948 has not passed, and continues to this very day in the State of Israel’s basic attitude toward the Palestinian inhabitants of the land, in its sense of ownership and superiority, in its aggressiveness and violence, in its ultranationalism and racism.

Nor has anything changed in the policy of dispossession: Take what you can – then as now, when the State of Israel is already a regional power. We should apologize for that. We should apologize for the innumerable dead killed for no reason, for the endless lies and deception. For tyranny in the territories and for apartheid. For trampling a nation’s dignity, for suffocating its freedom and for separating it and breaking it up into tiny nations. For erasing its heritage and disdaining its culture. For short-changing Israeli Arabs and for demonstrations of racism against them. For the “price tag” crimes and the Operation Protective Edge crimes. For all of them we should apologize.

Apologizing would not solve anything or atone for anything, but it could signal a genuine intention to turn a new leaf.

Apologizing would broadcast moral strength and self-confidence, which the country so badly lacks, convinced as it is that it can live forever on its sword, even if there is not a single historical precedent for that. For all these things (and more) Israel will have to apologize some day.

Anyone who believes that even if the reconciliation is delayed, it will eventually come, understands that it must include an apology. That’s how it was in South Africa and that’s how it will be in Israel, if it’s not too late.

Gideon Levy

Palestine: What Hope Peace?

“It’s not about peace, it’s about justice.” ~ Gideon Levy, Award-winning veteran Israeli journalist.

This is a feature length documentary film which asks, and presents testimony on the following key questions:

1. Why is Israel presented as a liberal democracy?
2. Why are Palestinians portrayed as aggressors, rather than victims?
3. What is it like to live under Israeli occupation and bombardment?
4. What does life look like for marginalised groups within Israel?
5. Where do we go from here?

Kerry-anne Mendoza has been traveling to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank for twelve years.  When Operation Protective Edge commenced in July 2014, readers of Scriptonite Daily crowd funded her to return and report with a perspective and depth missing in the mainstream media.

You can see those reports here.

While producing daily written reports and live Q&A sessions from Gaza, she was also interviewing key witnesses to Israel’s brutal military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Kerry-anne traveled to the very worst hit areas of Gaza and recorded Israel’s military assaults as they happened, capturing footage you will see nowhere else.

This is a film which puts names and faces to the statistics.

It is about a people under siege, and the indomitable determination of the human spirit to be free.

Kerry-anne Mendoza will be touring the film from November 2014, along with Gaza resident Khalil AlTatari.

Bring the film to your school, community centre, cinema or any other venue, together with live Questions and Answers with Kerry-anne and Khalil, by emailing: scriptonitedaily@hotmail.co.uk

If you’d like to donate to support the film and the tour, please do so below:

Scriptonite Daily is a citizen funded news site. If we want to make an alternative media, then we need to build it. Your donations make the difference.

An Israeli Soldier's Story - Eran Efrati

Eran Efrati Speaks Out About Documenting IDF Abuse in Gaza, West Bank

ERAN EFRATI: In recent weeks I was on the border of Gaza and getting reports from soldiers in the Gaza Strip who leak information out to me. I am in the process of publication of two big stories in major U.S. newspapers, but there are some things I can share with you right now: Soldiers in two different units inside Gaza leaked information about the murdering of Palestinians by sniper fire in Shuja'iyya neighborhood as punishment for the death of soldiers in their units. After the shooting on the Israeli armored personnel carriers, which killed seven soldiers of the Golani Brigade, the Israeli army carried out a massacre in Shuja'iyya neighborhood. A day after the massacre, many Palestinians came to search for their relatives and their families in the rubble. In one of the videos uploaded to YouTube, a young Palestinian man Salem Shammaly calls the names of his family and looking for them between the ruins when he is suddenly shot at in his chest and falls down. A few seconds after that, there are two additional shootings from snipers into his body, killing him instantly. Since the video was released, there was no official response from the IDF spokesperson. Today I can report that the official command that was handed down to the soldiers in Shujaiyya was to capture Palestinian homes as outposts. From these posts, the soldiers drew an imaginary red line, and amongst themselves decided to shoot to death anyone who crosses it. Anyone crossing the line was defined as a threat to their outposts, and was thus deemed a legitimate target. This was the official reasoning inside the units. I was told that the unofficial reason was to enable the soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers (something that for years the IDF has not faced during its operations in Gaza and the West Bank), out on the Palestinian refugees in the neighborhood. Under the pretext of the so-called “security threat” soldiers were directed to carry out a pre-planned attack of revenge on Palestinian civilians. These stories join many other similar ones that Amira Hass and I investigated in Operation Cast Lead. The death toll that continues to rise is steadily reaching the numbers of the massacre of 2009.

More than 1,100 have been killed in Gaza, at least 80 percent of them civilians. Today it is cleared for publication that at least 4 soldiers were killed by a rocket in a gathering area outside of Gaza, and another soldier was killed in Gaza. They join 43 soldiers that have already been killed. We know that more acts of revenge will come soon and it is important that we not stay silent. This is the time to take to the streets and to social media. Demand from your representative wherever you are to stop supporting this massacre and to immediately boycott the state of Israel until the occupation ends, the blockade is lifted and Palestinians will be free. We all want to be in the right place at the right time when history knocks on our door, and history is knocking in Gaza right now. You need to decide on which side you want to go down in history.

In recent days I was arrested by authorities and questioned about my research regarding the use of illegal weapons in Gaza, my mail and Facebook accounts were blocked, And I received strong hints that my life is at risk and I need to be silent and keep low. But I'm not going anywhere. 

They may close my communication channels again,but that does not mean I'm not here, I'll find a way to get the information out to you,and I trust you will echo it on, go down with it to the streets ,And demand your representatives, your government to stop funding the slaughter in your name,to boycott Israel and to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. The whole world is watching now, history is being made.
I'm counting on you.

The video of the wounded Palestinian who was shot by a sniper was released by theInternational Solidarity Movement and can be viewed below. [Warning: The video is graphic, viewer's discretion advised.]

The massacre was described by Amnesty International as tantamount to possible war crimes:

The continuing bombardment of civilian homes in several areas of the Gaza Strip, as well as the Israeli shelling of a hospital, add to the list of possible war crimes that demand an urgent independent international investigation, said Amnesty International.

[...]

The Israeli military said that Shuja’iyyeh, a densely populated area with some 92,000 residents east of Gaza City, had been targeted because it was a “fortress” housing rockets, tunnels and command centres. Israeli military and government officials have repeatedly said that civilians were warned to evacuate the area days before it was attacked.

However, many civilians in Shuja’iyyeh and other areas did not evacuate because they had nowhere to go. All the UNRWA schools and other facilities opened as shelters are overflowing. Issuing warnings to evacuate entire areas does not absolve Israeli forces of their obligations to protect civilians under international humanitarian law.

“The relentless bombardment of Shuja’iyyeh and other civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, as well as the continuing indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, demand urgent international action to prevent further violations. The UN should impose an arms embargo on all sides, and all states should immediately suspend transfers of military equipment to Israel, Hamas, and other Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip,” said Philip Luther.

Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of indiscriminate bombing:

“While official claims that the objective of the ground offensive is to destroy tunnels into Israel, what we see on the ground is that bombing is indiscriminate and that those who die are civilians,” said Nicolas Palarus, MSF’s project coordinator in Gaza.

At the time of writing, Israel's “Operation Protective Edge” has claimed the lives of more than 1,650 and wounded nearly 9,000 Palestinians. Israel says the assault is targeting Hamas for firing hundreds of rockets across the border into Israel. Seventy-five percent of the Palestinians killed in this offensive have been civilians. Since the offensive started on June 8, 62 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in Gaza, and three civilians killed and around 400 injured in rocket attacks in Israel. 

Besides being a member of Anarchists Against the Wall and the pro-BDS Boycott from Within, Efrati was a member of Breaking The Silence*, an Israeli NGO comprised of former IDF soldiers whose aim is “to raise awareness amongst the public about the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.”

This is Israel's third military operation in Gaza in 6 years. Israel has bombed residential neighborhoods, schools, a playground, hospitals, shelters and refugee camps. On July 28, Israel attacked the only power plant in Gaza, plunging the congested strip of 1.8 million people into darkness. UN shelters are struggling to accommodate more than 250,000 Gaza residents who are fleeing the violence or whose homes have been destroyed by bombings. Six UN shelters have come under attack by Israeli forces. Excessive restrictions from Israel in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank is why most of the world and the United Nations considers this territory “occupied” by Israel. 

An Open Letter For The People In Gaza

We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.

On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.

We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.

We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008. Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.

This action also terrifies those who are not directly hit, and wounds the soul, mind, and resilience of the young generation. Our condemnation and disgust are further compounded by the denial and prohibition for Gaza to receive external help and supplies to alleviate the dire circumstances.

The blockade on Gaza has tightened further since last year and this has worsened the toll on Gaza's population. In Gaza, people suffer from hunger, thirst, pollution, shortage of medicines, electricity, and any means to get an income, not only by being bombed and shelled. Power crisis, gasoline shortage, water and food scarcity, sewage outflow and ever decreasing resources are disasters caused directly and indirectly by the siege.1

People in Gaza are resisting this aggression because they want a better and normal life and, even while crying in sorrow, pain, and terror, they reject a temporary truce that does not provide a real chance for a better future. A voice under the attacks in Gaza is that of Um Al Ramlawi who speaks for all in Gaza: “They are killing us all anyway—either a slow death by the siege, or a fast one by military attacks. We have nothing left to lose—we must fight for our rights, or die trying.”2

Gaza has been blockaded by sea and land since 2006. Any individual of Gaza, including fishermen venturing beyond 3 nautical miles of the coast of Gaza, face being shot by the Israeli Navy. No one from Gaza can leave from the only two checkpoints, Erez or Rafah, without special permission from the Israelis and the Egyptians, which is hard to come by for many, if not impossible. People in Gaza are unable to go abroad to study, work, visit families, or do business. Wounded and sick people cannot leave easily to get specialised treatment outside Gaza. Entries of food and medicines into Gaza have been restricted and many essential items for survival are prohibited.3 Before the present assault, medical stock items in Gaza were already at an all time low because of the blockade.3 They have run out now. Likewise, Gaza is unable to export its produce. Agriculture has been severely impaired by the imposition of a buffer zone, and agricultural products cannot be exported due to the blockade. 80% of Gaza's population is dependent on food rations from the UN.

Much of Gaza's buildings and infrastructure had been destroyed during Operation Cast Lead, 2008—09, and building materials have been blockaded so that schools, homes, and institutions cannot be properly rebuilt. Factories destroyed by bombardment have rarely been rebuilt adding unemployment to destitution.

Despite the difficult conditions, the people of Gaza and their political leaders have recently moved to resolve their conflicts “without arms and harm” through the process of reconciliation between factions, their leadership renouncing titles and positions, so that a unity government can be formed abolishing the divisive factional politics operating since 2007. This reconciliation, although accepted by many in the international community, was rejected by Israel. The present Israeli attacks stop this chance of political unity between Gaza and the West Bank and single out a part of the Palestinian society by destroying the lives of people of Gaza. Under the pretext of eliminating terrorism, Israel is trying to destroy the growing Palestinian unity. Among other lies, it is stated that civilians in Gaza are hostages of Hamas whereas the truth is that the Gaza Strip is sealed by the Israelis and Egyptians.

Gaza has been bombed continuously for the past 14 days followed now by invasion on land by tanks and thousands of Israeli troops. More than 60 000 civilians from Northern Gaza were ordered to leave their homes. These internally displaced people have nowhere to go since Central and Southern Gaza are also subjected to heavy artillery bombardment. The whole of Gaza is under attack. The only shelters in Gaza are the schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), uncertain shelters already targeted during Cast Lead, killing many.

According to Gaza Ministry of Health and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),1 as of July 21, 149 of the 558 killed in Gaza and 1100 of the 3504 wounded are children. Those buried under the rubble are not counted yet. As we write, the BBC reports of the bombing of another hospital, hitting the intensive care unit and operating theatres, with deaths of patients and staff. There are now fears for the main hospital Al Shifa. Moreover, most people are psychologically traumatised in Gaza. Anyone older than 6 years has already lived through their third military assault by Israel.

The massacre in Gaza spares no one, and includes the disabled and sick in hospitals, children playing on the beach or on the roof top, with a large majority of non-combatants. Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, schools, and press buildings have all been attacked, with thousands of private homes bombed, clearly directing fire to target whole families killing them within their homes, depriving families of their homes by chasing them out a few minutes before destruction. An entire area was destroyed on July 20, leaving thousands of displaced people homeless, beside wounding hundreds and killing at least 70—this is way beyond the purpose of finding tunnels. None of these are military objectives. These attacks aim to terrorise, wound the soul and the body of the people, and make their life impossible in the future, as well as also demolishing their homes and prohibiting the means to rebuild.

Weaponry known to cause long-term damages on health of the whole population are used; particularly non fragmentation weaponry and hard-head bombs.4, 5 We witnessed targeted weaponry used indiscriminately and on children and we constantly see that so-called intelligent weapons fail to be precise, unless they are deliberately used to destroy innocent lives.

We denounce the myth propagated by Israel that the aggression is done caring about saving civilian lives and children's wellbeing.

Israel's behaviour has insulted our humanity, intelligence, and dignity as well as our professional ethics and efforts. Even those of us who want to go and help are unable to reach Gaza due to the blockade.

This “defensive aggression” of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity must be stopped.

Additionally, should the use of gas be further confirmed, this is unequivocally a war crime for which, before anything else, high sanctions will have to be taken immediately on Israel with cessation of any trade and collaborative agreements with Europe.

As we write, other massacres and threats to the medical personnel in emergency services and denial of entry for international humanitarian convoys are reported.6 We as scientists and doctors cannot keep silent while this crime against humanity continues. We urge readers not to be silent too. Gaza trapped under siege, is being killed by one of the world's largest and most sophisticated modern military machines. The land is poisoned by weapon debris, with consequences for future generations. If those of us capable of speaking up fail to do so and take a stand against this war crime, we are also complicit in the destruction of the lives and homes of 1·8 million people in Gaza.

We register with dismay that only 5% of our Israeli academic colleagues signed an appeal to their government to stop the military operation against Gaza. We are tempted to conclude that with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics are complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza. We also see the complicity of our countries in Europe and North America in this massacre and the impotence once again of the international institutions and organisations to stop this massacre.

Paola Manduca a, Iain Chalmers b, Derek Summerfield c, Mads Gilbert d, Swee Ang e, on behalf of 24 signatories

Source: The Lancet

Lehi Terror Wartime Contacts With Germany & Italy

German cover letter from 11 January 1941 attached to a description of an offer for an alliance with Nazi Germany attributed to Lehi.

In mid-1940, Stern became convinced that the Italians were interested in the establishment of a fascist Jewish state in Palestine.^[4] He conducted negotiations, he thought, with the Italians via an intermediary Moshe Rotstein, and drew up a document that became known as the "Jerusalem Agreement". In exchange for Italy's recognition of, and aid in obtaining, Jewish sovereignty over Palestine, Stern promised that Zionism would come under the aegis of Italian fascism, with Haifa as its base, and the Old City of Jerusalem under Vatican control, except for the Jewish quarter. In Heller's words, Stern's proposal would "turn the 'Kingdom of Israel' into a satellite of the Axis powers."

However, the "intermediary" Rotstein was in fact an agent of the Irgun, conducting a sting operation under the direction of the Irgun intelligence leader in Haifa, Israel Pritzker, in cooperation with the British. Secret British documents about the affair were uncovered by historian Eldad Harouvi (now director of the Palmach Archives) and confirmed by former Irgun intelligence officer Yitzhak Berman.^]When Rotstein's role later became clear, Lehi sentenced him to death and assigned Yaacov Eliav to kill him, but the assassination never took place. However, Pritzker was killed by Lehi in 1943.

Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany. It offered assistance in transferring the Jews of Europe to Palestine, in return for Germany's help in expelling Britain from Mandatory Palestine. Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig (who also was involved with the Haavara or Transfer Agreement, which had been transferring German Jews and their funds to Palestine since 1933). Lubenchik told von Hentig that Lehi had not yet revealed its full power and that they were capable of organizing a whole range of anti-British operations.

On the assumption that the destruction of Britain was the Germans' top objective, the organization offered cooperation in the following terms. Lehi would support sabotage and espionage operations in the Middle East and in eastern Europe anywhere where they had cells. Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.

Stern also proposed recruiting some 40,000 Jews from occupied Europe to invade Palestine with German support to oust the British. On 11 January 1941, Vice Admiral Ralf von der Marwitz, the German Naval attaché in Turkey, filed a report (the "Ankara document") conveying an offer by Lehi to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for "the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich."

According to Yellin-Mor,

Lubebtchik did not take along any written memorandum for the German representatives. Had there been a need for one, he would have formulated it on the spot, since he was familiar with the episode of the Italian "intermediary" and with the numerous drafts connected with it. Apparently one of von Hentig's secretaries noted down the essence of the proposal in his own words.

According to Joseph Heller,

The memorandum arising from their connversation is an entirely authentic document, on which the stamp of the 'IZL in Israel' is clearly embossed.

Von der Marwitz delivered the offer, classified as secret, to the German Ambassador in Turkey and on 21 January 1941 it was sent to Berlin. There was never any response.

A second attempt to contact the Nazis was made at the end of 1941, but it was even less successful. The emissary Yellin-Mor was arrested in Syria before he could carry out his mission.

This proposed alliance with Nazi Germany cost Lehi and Stern much support. The Stern Gang also had links with, and support from, the Vichy France Sûreté's Lebanese offices.

Source: Wikipedia