See the notes on the source at the end of the article.
Bodies Unearthed From Rubble As Israel Violates Ceasefire
Press release, Al Mezan, 18 January 2009
Israel has announced to unilaterally cease fire in the Gaza Strip while leaving its troops in positions they had seized during the so-called Operation Cast Lead. Al Mezan Center's staff visited some of the areas the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) left last night and this morning. It found out that a disaster had struck these areas, which had not been accessible for weeks. The findings provide evidence about the likelihood that the IOF had perpetrated war crimes in these areas. In particular, dozens of civilians' corpses have been found in a bad condition under the rubble of destroyed houses. Moreover, the scene of destruction of neighborhoods suggests that wide-scaled home demolitions were systematically conducted by the IOF.
Al Mezan Center's field workers reported that entire urban blocks have disappeared in the areas of Ezbet Abed-Rabu, al-Salatin, al-Atatra, al-Israa in North Gaza District, and al-Kashif and al-Rayis Hills and the eastern suburbs of Gaza City. As of 2pm, medical teams had found 62 corpses of people under the rubble of houses, or rubble moved by Israeli bulldozers. Among them were eight children and 10 women. It is not known yet whether those were buried under the rubble alive or dead.
According to Al Mezan Center's monitoring, the IOF has breached the unilaterally declared ceasefire. Shooting and shelling from artillery batteries, tanks and naval vessels have occurred in various areas throughout the day. Israeli aircraft also launched raids on open areas. At 10:30am, Israeli troops opened fire at civilians who were trying to reach their homes in Khuzaa village, east of Khan Younis. A man, 22-year-old Mahir Abu Irjila, was killed as a result. The victim and his family had evacuated their house and stayed in a UN shelter.
With these casualties, the number of Palestinians killed by the IOF in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Cast Lead on 27 December 2009 has risen to 1,253, including at least 280 children and 95 women. Another 4,009 people were injured, including 860 children and 488 women.
Al Mezan Center has started a campaign to document with detail the implications of the IOF's operations on life and property in the Gaza Strip. It has also started to investigate dozens of cases where the likelihood of the perpetration of war crimes is evident.
Al Mezan Center highlights the necessity of ensuring that the IOF would not return to its disproportionate, indiscriminate military actions in the Gaza Strip. The Center has witnessed the manner in which the IOF carried out its operations, with flagrant disregard to applicable international law and to civilian life. As the Center continues its monitoring and documentation efforts with regard to what has already happened in Gaza, it demands that the international community takes a solid stance concerning the behavior of the IOF: civilians must not be targeted and international law must be observed at all times, especially during armed conflict. Al Mezan remains alarmed by the current fragile conditions which have resulted from unilateral arrangements that might not end the hostilities.
Al Mezan expresses its outrage by the facts it has found in those areas which the IOF had invaded more than two weeks ago. The findings proved that the fears that civilians and civilians property in these areas had been treated in cruel ways. Dozens of corpses have been brought to hospitals with increasing allegations that civilians were killed or left to die as the IOF refrained from making any efforts to aid the wounded or survivors. Al Mezan condemns this practice, which represents a serious violation of international law and norms of armed conflict.
Al Mezan Center also calls on the international community to promptly relief aid for the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, particularly those who have lost their breadwinners, parents, homes and assets due to the Israeli attacks. The Center calls on UNRWA [the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees] to continue its efforts to aid the displaced people; thousands of whom have lost their homes as a result of IOF's raids and demolitions. As schooling is expected to be resumed on 23 January, alternative shelters are needed for those who cannot return to their homes.
Al Mezan also asserts the need for urgent international intervention to prevent any IOF attacks against civilians and civilian objects in Gaza in the future, and to investigate the IOF's actions, many of which represent war crimes, in accordance with international law.
Al Mezan Center also renews its calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, of 1949, to live up to their legal and moral responsibilities upholding their own obligations under Common Article 1, by respecting, and ensuring respect of, the Convention.
Comment: The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is a nongovernmental organization based in the Jabalia Palestine refugee camp in Gaza. It is funded by Dutch, Swiss and Swedish groups. While right wing groups in Israel consider it a propaganda organ of the Palestinians, Israel's human rights organization, B'Tselem, is supportive. B'Tselem is an Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO). It refers to itself as "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories". The group was founded on February 3, 1989 by a group of Israeli public figures, including lawyers, academics, journalists, and members of the Knesset.
B'Tselem's stated goals are "to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel". B'Tselem is financed by the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom and Norway, as well as foundations based in Europe and North America.
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This statement, recently delivered by Sir Gerald Kaufman, a former front-bench foreign affairs spokesman for the Labour Party in the British Parliament, may be of interest.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab): I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.
I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.
I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians -- the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that
"500 of them were militants."
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni's father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.
Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah's previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat's death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.
The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:
"You make peace by talking to your enemies."
However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.
It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.
don't trip over the outhouse, you'll get some of the stuff you sling on you...and stop bastardizing an American hero--albeit, imaginary one...give it up....
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