Jimmy Carter, "Don't Punish the
Palestinians," Washington Post, February 20, 2006
Donald Neff, "Vetoes
Cast by the United States to Shield Israel from Criticism by the U.N. Security Council,"
Washington Report, May/June 2005, page 14
Ron Jacobs, "The
Insulting Logic of Tel Aviv: Killing a Nation to Rescue a Soldier,"
counterpunch.org, June 28, 2006
[Overnight the Israeli army arrested at least 64 Hamas representatives, 38
of them MPs, in the West Bank.--Ferry Biedermann, "Israel
holds Hamas leaders amid crisis," Times, June 29, 2006]
Brian Dominick, "Israel
Abducts Palestinian Ministers," FAIR, June 29, 2006
[Let's look at the context. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September
2005 'til today, the estimates run between 7,000 and 9,000 heavy artillery
shells have been shot and fired into Gaza. On the Palestinian side, the
estimates are approximately 1,000 Kassam missiles, crude missiles, have been
fired into Israel. So we have a ratio of between seven and nine to one.
Let's look at casualties. In the last six months, approximately 80
Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing. Now,
on the Israeli side, we hear all of these terrible things about these
Kassams. Even Shlomo Ben-Ami, yesterday on your program, who I respect, he
said what's Israel to do about these Kassams? What does the record show? I
mentioned a moment ago, 80 Palestinians killed in six months. There have
been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Kassam
missiles. Again, we have a huge disproportion, a huge discrepancy.
Now, Josh says Israel has a responsibility to protect its citizens. I
totally agree with that. But Hamas is the elected government of the
Palestinians. They have a responsibility to protect their citizens. They
have a responsibility to get back their 9,000 hostages.--Norman Finkelstein,
"AIPAC
v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza,"
democracynow.org, June 29, 2006]
[The response is disproportionate and cruel, even if one believes that it is
merely an effort by the Olmert government to free its soldier, an excuse
that even the Israeli press no longer believes. . . . Worse still, if
Israel's intention here, as some Israeli commentators suggest, is to bring
down the Hamas government, then their behavior is tantamount to an act of
terrorism--James Zogby, "Watching Gaza:
'The Genovese Syndrome'," truthout.org, July 6, 2006]
Patrick O'Connor, "Crisis in US Media Coverage of Gaza," zmag.org, July 5, 2006
[CityPass, was awarded a $500 million contract to construct a light railway
system connecting Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements in East
Jerusalem. Road works around Jerusalem's Old City mark the beginning of the
project which is planned for completion in 2020. Connex will run the
operation of the line for the next 30 years, while another French partner,
Alstrom, will provide the trains.--Nick Dearden, "The Corporate
Interests Fueling Conflict in Palestine," counterpunch.org, July 6, 2006]
Maureen Clare Murphy, "Entry denied:
Deporting witnesses of Israeli occupation and unilateralism," Electronic
Intifada, July 11, 2006
Simon Tisdall, "UN impotence
laid bare as Gaza suffers," Guardian, July 12, 2006
Jonathon Cook, "Echoes of 1948 and
1967," counterpunch.org, July 12, 2006
[Israel on Thursday stepped up its military campaign in Lebanon, launching
air strikes against Beirut airport, imposing a naval blockade, and
intensifying reprisals that have killed up to 50 civilians since Hizbollah
fighters seized two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday.--William Wallis and Ferry
Biedermann, "Israel launches two-pronged attacks," Financial Times, July 12, 2006]
"US
vetoes UN resolution urging end to Israeli attacks in Gaza,"
breitbart.com, July 13, 2006
[What's happening in Gaza, . . . begins with the Hamas election, back the
end of January. Israel and the United States at once announced that they
were going to punish the people of Palestine for voting the wrong way in a
free election. And the punishment has been severe.
At the same time, it's partly in Gaza, and sort of hidden in a way, but even
more extreme in the West Bank, where Olmert announced his annexation
program, what's euphemistically called "convergence" and described here
often as a "withdrawal," but in fact it's a formalization of the program of
annexing the valuable lands, most of the resources, including water, of the
West Bank and cantonizing the rest and imprisoning it, since he also
announced that Israel would take over the Jordan Valley.
. . . the inciting event in the present case, events, are those that I
mentioned - the constant intense repression; plenty of abductions; plenty
of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in
effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation, the end of
Palestine; the abduction on June 24 of the two Gaza civilians; and then the
reaction to the abduction of Corporal Shalit. And there's a difference,
incidentally, between abduction of civilians and abduction of soldiers. Even
international humanitarian law makes that distinction.
If there's a conflict going on, aside physical war, not in a military
conflict going on, abduction -- if soldiers are captured, they are to be
treated humanely. But it is not a crime at the level of capture of civilians
and bringing them across the border into your own country.--Noam Chomsky,
"U.S.-
Backed Israeli Policies Pursuing 'End of Palestine',"
democracynow.org, July 14, 2006]
["I am the son of Holocaust survivors. I loathe what Israel is doing to
Palestine and Palestinians. For that reason, I have always refused to visit
Israel. I am so frustrated by events in the Lebanon."--Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
"Nothing but anti-Arab racism can fully explain the
behaviour of the Israelis," Independent, July 17, 2006]
[Israel no longer knows any moral boundaries - if it ever did. Those who
continue to support Israel, who make excuses for it as it descends into
corruption, have lost their moral compass--Kathleen Christison,
"Atrocities
in the Promised Land," counterpunch.org, July 17, 2006]
[ . . . June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a
car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between
Jabalya and Gaza City.--Alexander Cockburn, "Hezbollah, Hamas
and Israel: Everything You Need To Know," counterpunch.org, July 21,
2006]
VIDEO: " Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the
Israel-Palestine Conflic," Media Foundation, July 22, 2006
Anne Penketh, "Israel's secret war: the humanitarian disaster unfolding in
Palestine," Independent, July 29, 2006
[From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite
the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000
Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban
neighbourhoods demolished.
. . . imprisoning large numbers of Palestinians in enclaves in the West Bank
and the Gaza strip, controlling thorough an apartheid system the Palestinian
minority in Israel, and rejecting categorically any repatriation of the
Palestinian refugees.--Ilan Pappe, "How
Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing," Socialist Worker, July 29,
2006]
Brent Scowcroft, "This Is the Time for a U.S.-Led Comprehensive
Settlement," Washington Post, July 30, 2006
[America is a world power with a broader interest in the Middle East than
Israel's, and if we are to protect those interests and play the role history
has assigned us, we cannot allow any nation to exercise veto power over whom
we talk to. While most Americans wish to maintain our commitment to the
security and survival of Israel, we must declare our political and
diplomatic independence of Israel, as Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan all
did.--Patrick J. Buchanan, "On Talking With
Terrorists," antiwar.com, August 5, 2006]
[From Golda Meir to Ehud Olmert, the lie has held that the war with the
Palestinians is an existential one for survival imposed on Israel when it is
actually a war for real estate, one dunam after another, that does not
belong to us.--Gideon Levy, "The real estate
war," Haaretz, August 7, 2006]
Nigel Parry, "Behind the
media's Gazan blind spot," Electronic Intifada, August 9, 2006
[We have to admit that Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi
Germany. Abe Foxman and the ADL are correct for a change, we all need a
reality check. We should never compare Israel to Nazi Germany. As far as
evilness is concerned, we should now let Israel take the lead.--Gilad
Atzmon, Beyond Comparison, peacepalestine.blogspot.com, August
10, 2006]
[Israel has now arrested four members of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian
Cabinet and 28 Hamas lawmakers.--Mohammed Daraghmeh, "Israel Arrests Palestinian Deputy PM,"
Associated Press, August 19, 2006]
Nigel Parry, "Gaza
doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries'," Independent, September 4, 2006
Patrick Cockburn, "Gaza
is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now,"
Independent, September 8, 2006
[An Israeli military judge has ordered the release of 21 Hamas ministers and
parliamentarians detained in the wake of the seizure of an Israeli soldier
by Gaza militants in June.--Donald Macintyre, "Israeli
judge orders release of detained Hamas leaders," Independent,
September 13, 2006]
"Militants
threaten Hamas leaders," BBC News, October 3, 2006
[The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They
are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called "what
happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like
battery hens."
These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison (since 1991); remove the
prisoners' usual means of livelihood; seal off all outlets to the outside
world, nearly hermetically; destroy existing means of livelihood by
preventing the entry of raw materials and the marketing of goods and
produce; prevent the regular entry of medicines and hospital supplies; do
not bring in fresh food for weeks on end; prevent, for years, the entry of
relatives, professionals, friends and others, and allow thousands of people
- the sick, heads of families, professionals, children - to be stuck for
weeks at the locked gates of the Gaza Strip's only entry/exit.
Steal hundreds of millions of dollars (customs and tax revenues collected by
Israel that belong to the Palestinian treasury), so as to force the
nonpayment of the already low salaries of most government employees for
months; present the firing of homemade Qassam rockets as a strategic threat
that can only be stopped by harming women, children and the old; fire on
crowded residential neighborhoods from the air and the ground; destroy
orchards, groves and fields.
Dispatch planes to frighten the population with sonic booms; destroy the new
power plant and force the residents of the closed-off Strip to live without
electricity for most of the day for a period of four months, which will most
likely turn into a full year - in other words, a year without refrigeration,
electric fans, television, lights to study and read by; force them to get by
without a regular supply of water, which is dependent on the electricity
supply.--Amira Hass, "Not an
internal Palestinian matter," Haaretz, October 4, 2006]
"America courts 'thug' to stand up to Hamas,"
Telegraph, October 15, 2006
Rory McCarthy, "Gaza
doctors say patients suffering mystery injuries after Israeli attacks,"
Guardian, October 18, 2006
Uzi Mahnaimi, "Israel
orders killing of Hamas politicians," Sunday Times, November 19, 2006
[The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, recently said she would ask
Congress for tens of millions of dollars to strengthen Abbas's security
forces.--Peter Beaumont and Ned Temko, "Abbas
threatens to sack Hamas-led government," Observer, December 17, 2006]
Amira Hass, "Impossible
travel," Haaretz, January 19, 2007
[A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its
bystanders.--John Pilger, "Looking to the side,
from Belsen to Gaza," johnpilger.com, January 25, 2007]
Electronic Intifada