REPORT On the use of radioactive weapons in the Gaza Strip during « Operation Cast Lead » (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009)
ACDN – Action of Citizens for the total Dismantling of Nukes
…Genocide means the extermination of a human group. DU weapons are weapons of extermination. They strike indiscriminately against a whole population, even attacking its genetic heritage. The human group they strike is everybody who breathes in or ingests the fallout. This group is not defined by political, national, religious or ethnic affiliation, but by geography. Its location makes it, for physical or meteorological reasons, the “privileged” victim of extermination, although no frontier can reassure the neighbours that they will not share the same fate to an unknown degree. The same remark applies for the victims of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests or catastrophes. Chernobyl is in Ukraine, but its victims can also be in Belarus, Russia or France. It follows that the use in Gaza of DU weapons, in particular GBU-39 bombs constitutes doubly a crime against humanity: the humanity of the Gazans, humanity in general. Genocide is sufficiently proven if the civilian or military leaders responsible for the use of radioactive weapons know, before using them, the extent to which they attack the life, the environment, the survival and dignity of the victims of these weapons – in a word their genocidal character…
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Iraq: The Return of the Resistance
Dahr Jamail
At least 20 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in May, the most since last September, along with more than 50 wounded. Iraqi casualties are, as usual – and in both categories – at least ten times that number. Attacks against US forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils), and began taking payments from the US milit ary in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq…
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Obama Wants $736 Million Colonial Fortress in Pakistan
Jeremy Scahill
Ah, good thing the US quest for violent global domination was brought to a screeching halt with the November presidential election. Without Obama’s election, we’d still have an occupation of Iraq, mercenaries on the US payroll, torture of prisoners, an unending and worsening war that kills civilians in Afghanistan, regular airstrikes in Pakistan, killing civilians and an embassy the size of Vatican city in Baghdad, which was built in part on slave labor . Not to mention those crazy “Bush/Cheney” neocons running around trying to become the “CEOs” of foreign nations. Wow, glad that’s all over. Whew! And, it’s a really good thing Bush is no longer in power or else the US would come up with some crazy idea like building a colonial fortress in Pakistan to defend “US interests” in the region…
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Knesset turns down “loyalty oath bill”
Israeli sources reported Sunday that the Knesset’s Ministerial Legislative Committee turned town a bill submitted by member of Knesset David Rotem of the extremist right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party demanding any person who retains an Israeli citizenship to declare loyalty to Israel as a Jewish,Zionisgt, democratic state. The bill also requires persons who apply for Israeli citizenship to serve in the military or any other equivalent alternative, Israeli Ynet News reported…
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Ancient Iraqi nomenclatures new victims of U.S. invaders
By Kadhim al-Hamami, Azzaman,
U.S. invaders of Iraq do not seem to be satisfied with the great calamities they have directly or indirectly caused the living in Iraq. It now appears they have extended their unjustified violence and marauding practices to the country’s ancient heritage. The new victims are centuries old appellations which Iraqis have commonly employed in referring to ancient Mesopotamian sites. One case in point is Tall al-Laham, which nearly 5,000 ye ars ago was the location of an ancient Sumerian city, some 30 kilometers south of the fabled Ur of the Chaldees. Tall al-Laham is a name and a site to which Iraqis are greatly attached. It is also the scene and title of one of Iraq’s most popular novels by Najem Wali…
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Week Two in Wounded Gaza (Diary)
Eva Bartlett, In Gaza
Rafah crossing largely remained sealed under an Israeli-led, Egyptian and internationally-backed siege. It is supposed to open today. I awake in Rafah to the explosions of Israeli warplanes again bombing the tunnels along the border. For the next two days, I follow the progress of a number of friends trying to leave Gaza. One will receive professional training in the UK, and another would see his estranged West Bank family, from whom he has been exiled for 7 years. I learn later, that he is again unable to leave Gaza. A monthly average of 800-1000 Palestinians need to leave Gaza for medical care. Over 320 Palestinians have died in Gaza due to denied access. Returning to Gaza City, the taxi passes el Zahara district, near central Gaza’s Deir el Balah. Despite driving at full speed, the car is permeated with the stench of untreated sewage: to the west lies the black sludge that is emptied into the sea…
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For God’s sake, Let them be Sad
GILAD ATZMON
As part of their racist campaign against the indigenous Palestinians, Israeli lawmakers are now insisting upon making the commemoration of the Nakba illegal. Recently a number of Israeli cabinet and Knesset Members proposed a “draft law” that would criminalize the remembrance of 1948 Palestinian holocaust (Nakba) by Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship. Interestingly enough, the Jewish state that sets its raison d’être around the remembrance of Jewish suffering is attemptin to ban Palestinians from doing exactly the same with their own. As we know, Israel had wiped out every possible remnant of Palestinian existence on the ground. Palestinian villages, towns, orchards, fields and cultural assets had been erased soon after 1948. Currently, the Israeli lawmakers are taking the war against the Palestinian heritage one step further. It is not just a physical expulsion and erasure of facts on the ground, it is not just racially motivated ethnic cleansing, starvation, land confiscation, house demolition, bombing schools or spreading white phosphorous over populated neighbourhoods, from now on, Israel wants to invade the Palestinian mind. Israeli Knesset members insist upon eradicating the Palestinian collective memory. At least formally, they are trying to ban the right to remember…
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Grim housing, water situation in Gaza
IRIN news
- Reports published recently by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Israeli NGO B’Tselem and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) paint a grim picture of life in Gaza more than four months after the 23-day Israeli offensive ended on 18 January. At the end of April 2009, UNRWA and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) completed their assessments of damage caused during the offensive: Some 3,500 houses were totally destroyed or are beyond repair and ma ny others have yet to be repaired. Israel has not allowed cement and building materials into Gaza since June 2007. Some IDPs are living with family members, while others live in the makeshift tent camps…
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Bloody New Battles Suit Israel
By Mel Frykberg
The inevitable has happened. Simmering tensions between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have left six Palestinians dead, in the bloodiest confrontation between the two groups since Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in June 2007. A bloody gun battle broke out Sunday morning in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilia between a group of Hamas gunmen and security forces from the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Authority (PA)…Bloody Palestinian infighting might just be what a cornered Israeli government needs at the moment to focus attention elsewhere….
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The Telegraph kerfuffle
Stephen C. Webster
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking to reporters on Saturday, took time to distribute a Salon article in which Ret. Gen. Antonio Taguba “corrects” a report last week by U.K. newspaper Daily Telegraph. Problem is, the report was only inaccurate on a technicality [...] The Daily Telegraph reported that Gen. Taguba, who conducted an investigation into torture at Abu Ghraib, said that photos of prisoner abuse depict rape and all manner of sexual horror. The Telegraph p ublished this as a description of the photos sought by the ACLU and the White House came back swinging. Gen. Taguba was not mistaken in summarizing what he’s seen. However, the photos he described are allegedly not among the 44 party to the ACLU’s lawsuit. So, the Telegraph’s error rises roughly to the level of technicality, seeing as the most important statements of fact in their story are correct … Only slightly complicated, no? And if I do say so myself, quite a convenient opportunity for the Obama administration to refute an embarrassingly horrifying report, without actually denying it…
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Hamas studies suspending participation in Cairo talks
Palestinian Information Center
Hamas on Sunday said that it was studying the suspension of its participation in the Cairo talks for internal Palestinian conciliation in the wake of the assassination of two of its armed wing’s commanders in Qalqilia at the hands of PA security forces. Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil, one of the Hamas leaders in Gaza Strip, read out a statement for his Movement at a press conference said that Hamas was pondering the step in view of the escalating crimes against its cadres in the West Bank…
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Qassam Brigades: Qalqilia incident a turning point
Palestinian Information Center
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, on Sunday said that the PA security forces’ assassination of two of its commanders in the West Bank represented a turning point in dealing with those who chase its cadres. Abu Obaida, the Qassam spokesman, said in a press conference in Gaza city that his armed wing would not allow anyone to harm its fighters without being punished. He held Mahmoud Abbas, the former PA chief, fully responsibly for what happened and for its consequences…
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Israel’s Netanyahu holds firm on Gaza blockade
AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday there would be no let-up in Israel’s much-criticised blockade of Gaza, warning that the ceasefire with the territory’s Hamas rulers remained fragile. “We are being asked to ease the living conditions of the population and allow goods and equipment in, but we have other priorities in the Gaza Strip,” a senior official quoted Netanyahu as telling a cabinet meeting…
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Hamas and Fatah exchange accusations over Sunday’s bloodshed
Ma’an News
Fatah and Hamas traded accusations over responsibility for clashes in the northern West Bank on Sunday morning that left six dead, including three security officers, two Hamas gunmen, and a building owner. Fatah in Qalqiliya accused Hamas of massing weapons in order to disturb order in the Israeli occupied West Bank district. The movement asserted it would support Palestinian Authority security services in their efforts to keep order in Qalqiliya. “We will never allow a repeat of the Gaza events in the West Bank,” Fatah said in a statement released in the aftermath of the bloodshed…For their part, Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades accused PA security services of pursuing the group the week leading up to Sunday’s incident. They said in a statement, “PA security conducted a wide-scale arrest campaign in Qalqiliya, particularly against dozens of Hamas affiliates. Then they besieged [the two Hamas men], demanding they hand themselves over, but they refused and asked security services to withdraw and let them go. PA security began shooting at the Hamas activists, and so they were forced to fire back.”..
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Israel “disappointed” over US demands on settlement freeze
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Israeli officials said Sunday that a noticeable tension is shadowing the Israeli-American relations over a US demand that Israel should halt its settlement activities in the occupied West Bank. The tension rose after a failed round of talks between US envoy George Mitchell and Israeli officials in London last week. “We are disappointed”, an Israeli official stated, “all of the understandings we achieved with former president, George Bush, do not mean anything to the new administration”…
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Six Palestinians killed in internal clashes in Qalqilia
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinians medical sources reported on Sunday at dawn that six Palestinians were killed in Qalqilia, in the northern part of the West Bank, during clashes that took place between Palestinian security forces and a group of fighters of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. Three Palestinian security officers were killed on Sunday at dawn; two of them were identified as ShaherAbu Al Tayyib, Abdul-Rahman Yassin, both were members of the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces, while the third is a security officer of the National Security forces. Also, two members of the Al Qassam Brigades were killed after barricading themselves in a building during clashes with the security forces. They were identified as Samir Yassin and Mohammad Al Samman…
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Lebanon arrests two more in Israeli spy inquiry
Reuters
A Lebanese army colonel and a senior retired customs officer have been detained on suspicion of spying for Israel, security sources said on Sunday. The army officer was the second colonel arrested in less than a week in an espionage investigation that has produced charges against at least 21 suspects and several confessions, the authorities say. Israel has not commented on the arrests…
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