Just imagine an American journalist doing this:
Category: War Crimes
‘Reaping what we have sown in Gaza’
It’s our responsibility, as moral human beings, to bear witness to these shameless atrocities. To remember, and to speak out. Here’s Amira Hass writing in Haaretz:
I’m fed up with lying to myself – as if I could remotely, by phone, gather the information necessary to report on what the journalists located there are reporting on. Regardless, it’s information that is important to a small group of the Hebrew-speaking population. They’re looking for it on foreign news channels or websites. They do not depend on what is written here in order to hear, for example, about the short lives of Jihad (11) and Wasim (8) Shuhaibar, or their cousin Afnan (8) from the Sabra neighborhood in Gaza. Like me, they could read the reporting of Canadian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld on The Daily Beast.
“Issam Shuhaibar, the father of Jihad and Wasim, leaned on a grave next to where his children were buried, his eyes hollow, staring nowhere. His arm bore a hospital bandage applied after he gave blood to try to help save his family. His children’s blood still covered his shirt,” writes Rosenfeld. “‘They were just feeding chickens when the shell hit,’ he said. ‘I heard a big noise on the roof and I went to find them. They were just meat,’ he gasped, before breaking down in tears,” continued Rosenfeld’s article. We murdered them about two and a half hours after the humanitarian cease-fire ended last Thursday. Two other brothers, Oudeh (16) and Bassel (8) were wounded, Bassel seriously.
The father told Rosenfeld that there was a warning missile. Before the attack, they heard the humming of the UAVs, the kind that “knock on the roof.” So I asked Rosenfeld, “If the missile was one of our merciful ones, those that come along as a warning, was the house bombed afterward?” By chance, I found my answer in a CNN report. The network’s camera managed to catch the explosion that came after the warning: knock, fire, smoke and dust. But it was a different house that was bombed, not the Shuhaibar house. I rechecked with Rosenfeld and others. What killed the three children was not a Palestinian rocket that went astray. It was an Israeli warning missile. And Issam Shuhaibar himself is a Palestinian policeman on the payroll of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
I’ve also given up on trying to get a direct answer from the Israel Defense Forces. Did you mistakenly warn the wrong home, thus murdering another three children? (Of the 84 that have been killed as of Sunday morning.)
I’m fed up with the failed efforts at competing with the abundance of orchestrated commentaries on Hamas’ goals and actions, from people who write as if they’ve sat down with Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, and not just some IDF or Shin Bet security service source. Those who rejected Fatah and Yasser Arafat’s peace proposal for two states have now been given Haniyeh, Hamas and BDS. Those who turned Gaza into an internment and punishment camp for 1.8 million human beings should not be surprised that they tunnel underneath the earth. Those who sow strangling, siege and isolation reap rocket fire. Those who have, for 47 years, indiscriminately crossed the Green Line, expropriating land and constantly harming civilians in raids, shootings and settlements – what right do they have to roll their eyes and speak of Palestinian terror against civilians?
Hamas is cruelly and frighteningly destroying the traditional double standards mentality that Israel is a master at. All of those brilliant intelligence and Shin Bet brains really don’t understand that we ourselves have created the perfect recipe for our very own version of Somalia? You want to prevent escalation? Now is the time: Open up the Gaza Strip, let the people return to the world, the West Bank, and to their families and families in Israel. Let them breathe, and they will find out that life is more beautiful than death.
Now I’m starting to read that Israel is destroying Gaza because they want control of their natural gas fields. If true, they really are just like us.
Image vs reality
So the Israelis just bombed a rehab hospital into rubble:
Only after the facility was under heavy fire and in the process of being abandoned did Alashi receive a phone call from the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) relaying a message from the Israeli army. A women who identified herself as a delegate of the ICRC said, “the Israelis asked ‘how much time do you need to evacuate,’” said Alashi, answering “two hours.” However, within an hour when the woman called back and said the Israeli army “will halt the bombings, and not bomb the hospital any more,” the facility was already in rubble. Alashi responded, “Are you joking, are you making a mockery of me? I told her it’s too late they have already destroyed it.”
Your librul media covers Gaza
Just yesterday, I was reading and watching this guy’s heartbreaking coverage of the Israeli missile attack on a Gaza beach that killed four little kids playing soccer, and thought, “Now, there’s a real reporter.” Because I’ve had to cover tragedies, and let me tell you, it’s not easy. Ayman Mohyeldin did a remarkable job under difficult circumstances. Today, Glenn Greenwald reports he’s been pulled by NBC. I could pretend to wonder why, but I don’t. Because as always, our media moguls decide what we’re allowed to see:
Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday’s killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately.
According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, along with an American producer who has never been to Gaza and speaks no Arabic, into Gaza to cover the ongoing Israeli assault (both Mohyeldin and Engel speak Arabic).
Mohyeldin is an Egyptian-American with extensive experience reporting on that region. He has covered dozens of major Middle East events in the last decade for CNN, NBC and Al Jazeera English, where his reporting on the 2008 Israeli assault on Gaza made him a star of the network. NBC aggressively pursued him to leave Al Jazeera, paying him far more than the standard salary for its on-air correspondents.
Continue reading “Your librul media covers Gaza”
Four boys were playing on a Gaza beach
You can probably guess the rest.
Four boys who were playing on a beach in Gaza were killed by an Israeli barrage today, according to witnesses, the latest grim fatalities in the aerial battle between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
The military strike landed near a hotel where many of the foreign media are staying and the blast and its aftermath were witnessed by some of the media, including ABC News.
The boys were between the ages of 9 and 11 and all had the same last name and were two brothers and two cousins, Palestinian authorities said.
Your librul media covers Palestine
David Swanson at War is A Crime on how the media is covering Israel’s war on Gaza:
In this latest assault on Gaza, Israel had by Thursday already killed 69 Palestinians including 22 children and 13 women, plus 469 wounded including 166 children and 85 women, and 70 houses destroyed. These numbers have since increased significantly.
In this video from Thursday on CNN, Jake Tapper interviews Diana Buttu, a former advisor to the PLO. After failing to persuade her of Israel’s complete innocence, he tells her that Hamas is instructing women and children to remain in their homes to die as Israel bombs them. She responds by expressing doubt that people want to die. Oh no, says Tapper, Palestinians live in a culture of martyrdom; they want to die.
William Westmoreland once remarked on Vietnam, where the United States killed 4 million men, women, children, and infants: “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”
Banastre Tarleton stood up in Parliament and defended the slave trade on the grounds that Africans did not object to being slaves.
President William McKinley said little brown Filipinos appreciated being conquered and dominated.
The view that the people you are abusing don’t mind it has a long history of being employed to distract from the evil being done.
Just as powerful, if not more so, is the view that no evil is being done at all.
ABC News’ Diane Sawyer told her viewers that scenes of destruction in Gaza were actually in Israel, and was later forced to apologize, but did not note that scenes like those she’d shown do not exist in Israel, rather leaving the impression that a simple mistake had swapped out similar scenes from one country for the other.
80 dead in Gaza, including 18 children
The death toll from Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip has more than doubled in 24 hours as the besieged territory comes under relentless bombing. At least 44 Gaza residents have been killed in the past day, bringing the total this week to around 80. The Palestinian news agency Maan reports the dead include 18 children and 10 women. The Palestinian Ministry of Health says more than 600 people have been wounded. In the deadliest single attack since the offensive began, at least seven Palestinian civilians, including five children, were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed several homes in a densely populated area where the victims were sleeping. Bodies were pulled from the rubble of at least three homes and neighboring buildings.
A view from Gaza: This is a brutal attack, not a ‘military operation’
by Mona El-Farra
(Image: Middle East Children’s Alliance)
In Gaza last night, while Israeli army forces launched military attacks against Gaza, by sea, air and via artillery shells, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children were unable to sleep inside their roof- tinned homes, clinging to their parents, crying, and terrified. The shelling last night was earth shattering, and went through the entirety of the Gaza strip- at least 100 attacks have already taken place .
In Gaza, we do not have bomb shelters to escape and hide.
In Gaza, these bombs fall on top of our deteriorating economic situation. Unemployment because of the Israeli blockade against civilians is almost 40%. It is Ramadan, making it more difficult to get basic foods, and thousands of government employees cannot reach banks to access their salaries. I know there are internal problems between Fatah and Hamas, but the outcome is hardship, while the bombs keep dropping on top of our heads.
In Gaza, the feeling of insecurity throws its shadow against all of the population, and the military operation continues. With threats of expansion in the coming few days, there is no news about any ceasefire.
Prior to the attack, the local authorities warned the population against swimming in the Mediterranean sea (the only recreational outlet for 1.7 million people). The sea around Gaza has become overly polluted with sewage and wastewater, that the authority, due to lack of fuel, had to pump untreated into the sea.
In Gaza, over 90% of water is unsuitable for drinking.
Through my work at the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), we continue to implement the water purification systems at schools and kindergartens, to provide over 50,000 Palestinian children with clean water. Even though it is the summer holiday, the community had accessibility to our water units in schools, but the attacks make travel dangerous.
In Gaza today, imagine choosing between your child’s thirst and your child’s safety.
Also, at MECA, because of our deep understanding of the poor recreational facilities for Palestinian children, we continue our educational, entertainment and recreational activities, inside our partners’ community centres. It will be even more important during the difficult times ahead, to help the children and attract their attention away of the night shelling. Let the Children Play & Heal is an ongoing program, and I fear that there will be the need for more psycho-social programming, like we did in 2009 and 2012. While we help these children, we take care of the mothers too, via psycho-social trainings that aim to educate women about trauma, and how to deal with family and children during times of crises.
Today, different health facilities announced a need for more emergency supplies, which were already lacking because of the closure of the borders and the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza. Just before the attacks, MECA managed to send some highly needed emergency medications to the Red Crescent Society, but more is needed.
In Gaza, MECA’s team, along with the many humanitarian and health organisations are going through a very difficult situation. We are physically unsafe, and we cannot sleep. But we work hard to support people at this very difficult times.
The streets of Gaza are empty, few cars are here and there, and Israel continues a collective punishment assassination policy demolishing homes by aerial bombardment.
These air raids fall on the majority of the population living in very crowded areas, so while they hit their targets, civilians pay a big price- we have many causalities and the numbers are rising every hour.
In Gaza, it is not a war or a military operation though it may look so. It is collective punishment and it is a brutal attack against all Palestinian people, and mainly civilians are paying the price.
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Gaza is burning
While they observe the funeral of three Israeli teenagers (the children of squatters), the Israelis are once again bombing the shit out of Gaza. To them, all Palestinians are the same. No mention on the major news outlets (Fox did mention a “surgical strike” against Hamas on the tail end of the funeral story) but if this is surgery, it’s closer to butchery.
And if you’ll look at the picture in the lower left-hand corner, that’s white phosphorus aka “willy pete.” Using it in a populated area is a war crime, because it burns down to the bone and doesn’t stop. Israel used it the last time, denied they used it, and then finally admitted they used it more than a year after — but only for “illumination.”
Protected
The only reason I can think of that explains that kind of top-level protection is if the private mercenary army Blackwater was acting as a surrogate for the CIA — and I think we’ve already assumed as much:
WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.
American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.
After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”