Here George Galloway recives his new Palistinian Passport from Hamas leader Hania. At least now the UK can deport him to somewhere he is a citizen of, and who’s views and objectives he shares.
Category Archives: Israel
ISRAEL: FAILED ATTACK IN HAIFA ‘WORK OF HEZBOLLAH
ISRAEL: FAILED ATTACK IN HAIFA ‘WORK OF HEZBOLLAH’, PRESS
(ANSAmed) – TEL AVIV, MARCH 23 – Lebanese Hezbollah could be behind Saturday night’s failed terrorist attack in the Lev ha-Mifratz Mall in Haifa, where a technical defect in a powerful car-bomb caused only a partial explosion, and did not cause any casualties, reported Israeli daily, Haaretz, citing distinguished sources from the Palestinian National Authority. According to these sources, Shiites have been trying to recruit al-Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank for some time in order to perform a large terrorist attack in retaliation for the murder of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh one year ago in Damascus. The Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have been highly secretive regarding their investigations into the matter. According to police, the automobile used for the attack was stolen in Jerusalem and the licence plate was later changed. Some 100kg of explosives were then hidden inside of the car, which the attackers parked next to a wall outside a theatre in an attempt to cause the entire building to collapse and bury the spectators in the rubble. “The power of the blast should have equalled that of 10-15 suicide bombers”, said a bomb-disposal expert from the police. Yesterday Premier Ehud Olmert said that the attack was carried out by a well-established organisation, probably with aid in the West Bank, referring to Hamas. An Hamas leader, Ayman Taha, replied that he does not know who organised the attack, which, he specified, “should be hailed as an heroic operation”. (ANSAmed).
Warning Over Terrorist Attack In Israel
A sophisticated ‘terrorist infrastructure’ is planning a mass attack on civilians in Israel after a botched attempt which could have killed hundreds.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says ‘a huge disaster was prevented’ in Haifa after a car packed with dozens of kilos of explosives did not explode.
Police say a passerby heard a small explosion in the car, thought to be the detonator going off.
It failed to ignite the rest of the device and police were called and defused it manually.
Authorities say the attack could have killed hundreds of civilians had it gone to plan.
Israeli shopping malls are protected from car bomb attacks because vehicles are searched on entry.
These attackers evaded inspection by parking the car outside the mall, but close enough to do massive damage if the device gone off.
The attempted attack is causing alarm here both because of the numbers of casualties it could have caused and the apparent sophistication of the group responsible.
The worst terror attacks in Israel have killed two or three dozen at the most.
That is far less than the number the Israeli Prime Minister claimed could have been killed in Haifa over the weekend
According to reports here, the attackers stole the vehicle number of another car to enable them to present licences had they been stopped and asked for them.
They also bought and stored substantial amounts of explosives and had the expertise to add bits of metal to create a shrapnel effect which would have killed and maimed more people.
A little known armed group called Liberators of the Galilee claimed responsibility for the attack.
Israeli newspapers are speculating about the possible involvement of Hizbollah, Lebanon’s Shiite militant movement.
Hizbollah has yet to fulfil its threat of retaliation for the assassination of one of its key commanders, Imad Mughniyeh, in a car bomb in Damascus widely blamed on Israel.
The anniversary of his death passed last month.
Dominic Waghorn, Middle East
Kristallnacht will begin at Starbucks. And it will be soon.
Readers of Vlad will know we follow two threads especially. Artists and Islam and for very important reasons, not the least of which, is that artists like gay groups which are famously liberal (as are we at Vlad) have somehow been conned into joining the most illiberal forces on earth today masquerading as human rights groups or ‘peace’ groups. This tactic is what destroyed an otherwise pretty decent Iran. And the Jihad against starbucks. Initially it was a kind of curiosity to us. How the left and militant Islam had joined forces to try and destroy Starbucks. We have seen Starbucks locations destroyed in Europe during pro Hamas demonstrations and various locations of Starbucks in Canada and elsewhere have had peculiar protests and memo’s from head office. Muslims with a motive of pure anti semitism have managed to co-opt students leftists and basically anyone stupid or uneducated enough to wear a Che T shirt, to attack Starbucks for the ‘anti corporate’ agenda so fashionable with kids who do not have to pay their own bills. Kristallnacht will happen again, it will happen soon, and it will start at Starbucks.
Now we have this in Lebanon…
From The Lebanon Daily Star Beirut:
Activists protest against Starbucks, drive off customers
By Marc Abizeid
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
 |
BEIRUT: About 25 young activists belonging to the Union of Lebanese Democratic Youth (ULDY) demonstrated outside a Beirut Starbucks Monday evening to protest the Seattle-based coffee shop’s ties to Israel. Members handed out leaflets and shouted slogans outside the store, catching the attention of passers-by and virtually ending all traffic heading in for a drink. A handful of police officers guarded the entrance of the store while two army trucks unloaded about a dozen soldiers across the street in anticipation of violence.
“It’s not just Starbucks that we’re demonstrating against,” 25-year-old ULDY member Hassan Zeitouny said. “It’s a demonstration against all that send aid to Israel, especially those that give money to Israelis to return back to Israel.”
ULDY – a leftist organization with ties to the Lebanese Communist Party – organized a similar demonstration outside the Hamra Starbucks during Israel’s devastating 22-day assault on Gaza in January. The group is also active in the larger campaign to boycott other American products and companies which it accuses of supporting Israel such as CocaCola and Phillip Morris.
The activists held signs up to the cafe’s windows with one displaying a drawing of a Starbucks’ cup overflowing with blood while another carried a mock-menu offering “coffee to kill my family,” and “espresso to knock down my house.”
Cheers were sung as each customer left the shop. After the last customers exited quietly, the cafe was left empty except for a few discouraged-looking employees sitting around a table drinking their own product.
“It’s good that people are leaving. I think they understood something – they understood this shop here is against Lebanon,” Zeitouni said. “Some citizens don’t know that Starbucks gives money to Israel while others know but don’t want to understand how much this flies in the face of what we stand for.”
Egyptian TV cleric explains jew hatred has nothing to do with Israel
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It’s important to note that nothing this cleric says can be considered a ‘radical’ or warped interpretation of Islam. In fact he says nothing that is not repeated over and over again in the various texts from Quoran to Hadith etc.
It’s also funny to note how at the end when he gets all passionate how they add reverb to his voice to make it sound like the voice of god. It’s rather a crappy reverb unit as well. Sounds like a spring unit from a 1960s twin reverb. Which sounds good with a strat through it but is piss poor when its someone spouting genocide. Also, the last few sentances sound suspiciously German in a way.
Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 17, 2009.Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub: If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them. Absolutely not. The Jews are infidels – not because I say so, and not because they are killing Muslims, but because Allah said: “The Jews say that Uzair is the son of Allah, and the Christians say that Christ is the son of Allah. These are the words from their mouths. They imitate the sayings of the disbelievers before. May Allah fight them. How deluded they are.” It is Allah who said that they are infidels.
That’s Qur’an 9:30.
Your belief regarding the Jews should be, first, that they are infidels, and second, that they are enemies. They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing. Allah said: “You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the disbelievers [sic] to be the Jews and the polytheists.”
Qur’an 5:82.
Third, you must believe that the Jews will never stop fighting and killing us. They [fight] not for the sake of land and security, as they claim, but for the sake of their religion: “And they will not cease fighting you until they turn you back you’re your religion, if they can.”
Qur’an 2:217.
This is it. We must believe that our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will not end until the final battle – and this is the fourth point. You must believe that we will fight, defeat, and annihilate them, until not a single Jew remains on the face of the Earth.It is not me who says so. The Prophet said: “Judgment Day will not come until you fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and tree will call: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews.” I have heard that they are planting many of these trees now. […]
That Hadith can be found at Sahih Muslim 6985.
As for you Jews – the curse of Allah upon you. The curse of Allah upon you, whose ancestors were apes and pigs.
That’s Qur’an 2:62-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166.
You Jews have sown hatred in our hearts, and we have bequeathed it to our children and grandchildren. You will not survive as long as a single one of us remains.[…]
Oh Jews, may the curse of Allah be upon you. Oh Jews… Oh Allah, bring Your wrath, punishment, and torment down upon them. Allah, we pray that you transform them again, and make the Muslims rejoice again in seeing them as apes and pigs. You pigs of the earth! You pigs of the earth! You kill the Muslims with that cold pig [blood] of yours.
And now the learned analysts will turn to one another and repeat once again that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with theology, nothing to do with Islam.
Bedouin Muslim speaks back to Israel Apartheid week
Israeli Bedouin Says Organizers of ‘Apartheid Week’ Falsely Vilify Israel…….Ishmael Khaldi: You’re part of the problem, not part of the solution
Lost in the blur of slogans (Thanks to Tundra Tabloids and Muslims against Sharia both superb blogs)
By Ishmael Khaldi
Last year, at UC Berkeley, I had the opportunity to “dialogue” with some of the organizers of these events. My perspective is unique, both as the vice consul for Israel in San Francisco, and as a Bedouin and the highest-ranking Muslim representing the Israel in the United States. I was born into a Bedouin tribe in Northern Israel, one of 11 children, and began life as shepherd living in our family tent. I went on to serve in the Israeli border police, and later earned a master’s degree in political science from Tel Aviv University before joining the Israel Foreign Ministry.
I am a proud Israeli – along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deals honestly. By any yardstick you choose – educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay’s rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation – Israel’s minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East
So, I would like to share the following with organizers of Israel Apartheid week, for those of them who are open to dialogue and not blinded by a hateful ideology:
You are part of the problem, not part of the solution: If you are really idealistic and committed to a better world, stop with the false rhetoric. We need moderate people to come together in good faith to help find the path to relieve the human suffering on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Vilification and false labeling is a blind alley that is unjust and takes us nowhere.
You deny Israel the fundamental right of every society to defend itself: You condemn Israel for building a security barrier to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and for striking at buildings from which missiles are launched at its cities – but you never offer an alternative. Aren’t you practicing yourself a deep form of racism by denying an entire society the right to defend itself?
Your criticism is willfully hypocritical: Do Israel’s Arab citizens suffer from disadvantage? You better believe it. Do African Americans 10 minutes from the Berkeley campus suffer from disadvantage – you better believe it, too. So should we launch a Berkeley Apartheid Week, or should we seek real ways to better our societies and make opportunity more available.
You are betraying the moderate Muslims and Jews who are working to achieve peace: Your radicalism is undermining the forces for peace in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. We are working hard to move toward a peace agreement that recognizes the legitimate rights of both Israel and the Palestinian people, and you are tearing down by falsely vilifying one side.
To the organizers of Israel Apartheid Week I would like to say: If Israel were an apartheid state, I would not have been appointed here, nor would I have chosen to take upon myself this duty. There are many Arabs, both within Israel and in the Palestinian territories who have taken great courage to walk the path of peace. You should stand with us, rather than against us.
Ishmael Khaldi is deputy consul general of Israel for the Pacific Northwest.
Source: Tundra Tabloids
7000 show up to protest tennis match.
There are clearly yelling a chant about Jews and Khaybar – the battle between Muhammad and the Jews in 629. Does anybody have an exact translation?
Dozens of anti-Israel activists clashed with
police Saturday as they tried to storm a closed arena where Sweden and Israel were playing a Davis Cup tennis
match.
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Protesters carrying Palestinian flags gather in central Malmo, Sweden, Saturday.
Photo: AP
The activists hurled rocks and firecrackers at police vans as they tried to break through the barricades set up to keep protesters from the arena. Hundreds of riot
police pushed them back using truncheons.
There were no immediate reports of injuries. At least five people were detained,
police spokesman Lars Hakan Lindholm said.
The clashes erupted after about 7,000 people gathered at a square in downtown Malmo to hear speeches condemning Israel’s operation in Gaza and urging support for Palestinians.
Organizers of the “stop the
match” protest had said the demonstration would be peaceful, but extreme-left activists had vowed to disrupt the
match, which is being played without fans in Malmo.
Sweden’s Left Party leader Lars Ohly told the crowd that the European Union and the rest of the world should “boycott the racist regime in Israel.”
The protesters then marched toward the Baltic Hall arena, where some of them attacked the
police line with eggs, rocks and firecrackers.
The doubles match between Sweden and Israel started as planned before about 300 special guests invited by the two countries’ tennis federations. About 1,000
police from southern Sweden were deployed in Malmo to keep the protesters from entering the arena.
Why censorship remains a bad idea.
Recently various hate groups held an event called ‘Israel Apartheid week’ on campus’s across North America. They had a poster to mark the event which was banned from at least two universities at least in Ottawa and I don’t know where else. The poster depicts a young Palestinian children being targeted by an Israeli attack helicopter.
Banned at U of O
The response to this poster by Ottawa universities was for both Ottawa U and Carleton to ban it. One can see why they chose to do so. It is both inflammatory and untruthful. Israel in fact waged the most compassionate and cautious war in the entire history of warfare and many military men have said so. Perhaps more importantly, Hamas created a deliberate strategy of using its own children as civilian shields as would be known by anyone who had done any meaningful research. Vlad has a number of videos of Hamas operatives ducking across lines of fire grabbing children as they did so to protect themselves and dumping the children on the ground once safe. However, the response to lies is not to ban them. The response should always be the truth. After all, would we or anyone wish to post our own more factual and one hopes more effective poster on campus they would have had to ban them as well. It would have been far more preferable if the strategy by the Israel apartheid week people had backfired on them because everyone had the freedom to state their own cases. Here are two great examples of the proper response to this now banned and consequently famous poster above:
New movie on Islam and the west.
I believe this is actually a clip from the most excellent film Farewell Israel which someone appears to have put on youtube. I will post a segment or two here but I strongly recommend getting this scholarly film which truly does explain the current period of conflict very well.
The entire movie appears to be here although I’m not 100% sure its the original edit as some parts appear to have been edited in differently than the original. It is still very worth watching. Also worth getting the original from Amazon.com
Once again, the Czech republic shines the light of reason
Europe Concerned About Freedom of Speech – Czech EU Presidency
Europe concerned about freedom of speech – Czech EU presidency
published: 04.03.2009, 20:04 | updated: 04.03.2009 20:15:29
?R a Evropa se na konferenci o rasismu obávají o svobodu slova
Geneva – The Czech Republic, as the EU presiding country, and other European countries today expressed fears that the freedom of speech would be at risk if Islamic countries pushed for a ban on “defamation of religion” at the conference on racism in April, Reuters has reported.
Geneva – The Czech Republic, as the EU presiding country, and other European
countries today expressed fears that the freedom of speech would be at risk if
Islamic countries pushed for a ban on “defamation of religion” at the
conference on racism in April, Reuters has reported.
Representatives of the EU countries also warned in their speeches to the U.N.’s
Human Rights Council today that they could not accept any pillorying of Israel
as “racist” and any promotion of anti-Semitism at the April conference in
Geneva.
Reuters reported that the same opinions were expressed in the U.N. Human Rights
Council this week by the delegations of the Czech Republic, holding the EU
presidency in the first half of 2009, Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands,
Poland and Switzerland.
“The freedom of expression must be the cornerstone of our fight against
racism,” Reuters quotes Sweden’s delegate Frank Belfrage as saying in the U.N.
The draft declaration for the Geneva conference has also been criticised by
Israel, which, along with Canada previously decided to boycott the event. The
United States and France are considering this step.
The World Conference Against Racism, also called Durban II, will be held at the
UN headquarters in Geneva on April 20-24, as the continuation of the conference
in Durban, South Africa, in
2001.
Kenney praises U.S. for Durban II boycott
By SHERI SHEFA, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 05 March 2009
Now that the United States has followed Canada and Israel’s lead in boycotting the upcoming Durban II world anti-racism conference over concerns about anti-Semitism, Canada’s citizenship, immigration and multicultural minister, Jason Kenney, said he hopes other countries will do the same.
“I would like to believe that we had some positive impact, and certainly the recent decision of the Obama administration, I am confident, will be followed by other European allies,” Kenney told The CJN on Sunday in Toronto, referring to the followup conference to the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, known as Durban II.
The 2001 human rights meeting in Durban, South Africa, singled Israel out for criticism and compared Zionism to racism. Israel and the United States walked out.
Kenney – who was meeting with representatives from Jewish groups, including Canadian Jewish Congress and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, to brief them on last month’s inaugural conference in London of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism – said he hopes to deepen his close relationship with the Jewish community.
“Canada under the Harper government takes a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, both domestically and internationally, and we understand the direct connection between Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism,” Kenney said.
He added that when he attended the Feb. 17 London conference, the Obama administration had not yet opted to pull out of the Durban II conference, set to take place in Geneva next month.
The CJC released a statement that applauded last week’s decision by the United States to join Canada and Israel in refusing to participate in the United Nations Durban Review Conference.
“In the preparatory conferences for Durban II, it has already become clear that Israel would be singled out among all the nations of the world for condemnation… Durban II has already become nothing more than a venue for the most pernicious and vile anti-Semitism,” CJC co-president Rabbi Reuven Bulka said.
Congress CEO Bernie Farber added that the refusal of democratic countries such as Canada, Israel and the United States to take part sends a message of tolerance and hope to the international community.
“We now call on all other democratic countries to be true to their pluralistic values. They should follow Canada’s lead, together with Israel and the United States, in dissociating from the hatefest that Durban II has already become,” Farber said.
Kenney told The CJN that anti-Semitism in Canada is fuelled by “anti-Zionist rhetoric” and has become “almost epidemic in Canada.”
But he said he hopes that the London conference last month will push other members of the international community to actively combat anti-Semitism, starting with a boycott of the Durban II conference.
Kenney said that Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has said that “Italy is ready to withdraw, but it wasn’t announcing that it was doing so.”
He added that Britain is also close to making the decision now that the United States has pulled out.
But the main message Kenney said he wanted to present to the Canadian Jewish community was that his government recognizes that “the new anti-Semitism – that is to say, anti-Semitism taking on the form of anti-Zionism, this notion that Israel is an abomination, that the Jewish people alone have no right to a homeland and that Israel must be destroyed – is [manifesting itself] even here in Canada.”
He said that events such as Israeli Apartheid Week, happening this week on campuses worldwide, are efforts to scapegoat and delegitimize the Jewish state.
“[Israel] is not a perfect country, and it is entirely fair, as I said in London, to disagree with particular policies of the Israeli government, but this anti-Zionism is much more profound than that,” Kenney said.
“It questions, essentially, the right of Israel to exist as a democratic Jewish state, and for the government of [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper, that is a totally outrageous and unacceptable position.”
Office of the Hon. Jason Kenney, PC, MP / Bureau du député
Calgary Southeast / Calgary-sud-est
Office of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism/
Cabinet du Ministre de la Citoyenneté, de l’immigration et du Multiculturalisme
325 East Block / Édifice de l’Est, Pièce 325
House of Commons / Chambre des communes Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Phone / Tél. : 613-992-2235
Fax / Téléc. : 613-992-1920
www.jasonkenney.com
Durban lite: Israel apartheid week
March 1 through to 8, 2009, is Israel Apartheid Week, the fifth annual event of it’s kind organized to bring awareness to the plight of Arabs and Muslims world wide, persecuted at the hands of the great Zionist entity, Israel. Over forty universities will hold seminars, dialogues and discussions inviting guest speakers to illuminate students of the ongoing injustice and discriminatory practices of Israel. Sounds fine. Nice. Informative.
Many would presume this event as benign and nothing but a registered, legitimate forum to counter severe bias and discrimination. What an opportunity for a young thinking man or woman to oppose such terrific injustice and perpetual hardship and to flex their intillectual bicepts in the world of geo-politics. It is easy to latch onto a cause, any cause, especially if it is distant enough to cushion any real responsibility. It is even easier when university administrators and student bodies lie in absolute apathy, paving the road for extremist ideology to flourish. And easier still when young bloods are culled to swallow extremist rhetoric by foreign influenced agencies.
Israel Apartheid Week is anything but benign. Like the Durban conferences, which both Canada and the United States have seen fit to abandon realizing it to be THE festival of hatred, IAW seeks to annually undermine Israel at every opportunity, de-legitimize it’s right to defend itself at the hands of terrorist assault and aggression and seeks to deny Islam’s participation as a political, religious and warring aggressor. While the Durban conferences denouce Jews as a sub-human group worthy of abuse and seeks to condemn open criticism of religion, Israel Apartheid Week seems a spawned copy of the anti-Semitic and anti free expression propaganda machine, seduced into action by Canadian Arab and Muslim organizations loudmouthing on behalf of their instructors abroad. In 2008 school children were invited by both the CAF and the CIC to write essays for a cash prize on the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’ as part of the celebration of Canadian Islamic History Month, held every October. Coincidence perhaps?
National Post columnist Craig Offman writes an article detailing the heightened tensions between Arab/Muslim and Jewish students on Canadian university campuses. Jewish students are warned of increasing threats of violence and police probes have been launched into instances of campus racism. It would seem to me that Canadian universities have become a flourishing platform which mirrors a broader based coalition of anti-Semitic and Islamist nations intent upon importing radicalism, excusing terror and promoting intolerance.
I would wonder what the cushioned, left world reaction would be to the hosting of say, an annual Islamic Terrorism Week?
Grace
Puzzled in Gaza. Jerusalem Post
(Thanks D.E.)
Puzzled in Gaza
By YVONNE GREEN
I’m a poet, an English Jew and a frequent visitor to Israel. Deeply disturbed by the reports of wanton slaughter and destruction during Operation Cast Lead, I felt I had to see for myself. I flew to Tel Aviv and on Wednesday, January 28, using my press card to cross the Erez checkpoint, I walked across the border into Gaza where I was met by my guide, a Palestinian journalist. He asked if I wanted to meet with Hamas officials. I explained that I’d come to bear witness to the damage and civilian suffering, not to talk politics.
A Palestinian man holds bags of rice before their distribution to Palestinians at a United Nations food distribution center in Sha’ati refugee camp in Gaza City.
Photo: AP
What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on all of Hamas’ infrastructure. Does UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners? The Gazans I met weren’t mourning the police state. Neither were they radicalized. As Hamas blackshirts menaced the street corners, I witnessed how passersby ignored them.
THERE WERE empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere. Hamas is reduced to wielding its unchallengeable authority from extensive air raid shelters which, together with the hospital, were built by Israel 30 years ago. Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren’t in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there.
From the mansions of the Abu Ayida family at Jebala Rayes to Tallel Howa (Gaza City’s densest residential area), Gazans contradicted allegations that Israel had murderously attacked civilians. They told me again and again that both civilians and Hamas fighters had evacuated safely from areas of Hamas activity in response to Israeli telephone calls, leaflets and megaphone warnings.
Seeing Al-Fakhora made it impossible to understand how UN and press reports could ever have alleged that the UNWRA school had been hit by Israeli shells. The school, like most of Gaza, was visibly intact. I was shown where Hamas had been firing from nearby, and the Israeli missile’s marks on the road outside the school were unmistakeable. When I met Mona al-Ashkor, one of the 40 people injured running toward Al-Fakhora – rather than inside it as widely and persistently reported – I was told that Israel had warned people not to take shelter in the school because Hamas was operating in the area, and that some people had ignored the warning because UNWRA previously told them that the school would be safe. Press reports that fatalities numbered 40 were denied.
I WAS TOLD stories at Samouni Street which contradicted each other, what I saw and later media accounts. Examples of these inconsistencies are that 24, 31, 34 or more members of the Fatah Samouni family had died. That all the deaths occurred when Israel bombed the safe building it had told 160 family members to shelter in; the safe building was pointed out to me but looked externally intact and washing was still hanging on a line on one of its balconies. That some left the safe building and were shot in another house. That one was shot when outside collecting firewood. That there was no resistance – but the top right hand window of the safe building (which appears in a BBC Panorama film Out of the Ruins” aired February 8) has a black mark above it – a sign I was shown all day of weaponry having been fired from inside. That victims were left bleeding for two or three days.
I saw large scoured craters and a buckled container which appeared to have been damaged by an internal impact (its external surfaces were undamaged). Media accounts of Samouni Street don’t mention these possible indications of explosive caches (although the container is visible on media footage). The Samouni family’s elder told me during a taped interview that he had a CD film of the killings. As far as I’m aware, no such film has been made public. He also told me that there are members of his family who have still not been found.
The media have manufactured and examined allegations that Israel committed a war crime against the Samounis without mentioning that the family are Fatah and that some of its members are still missing. They have not considered what might flow from those facts: that Hamas might have been active not only in the Samouni killings but in the exertion of force on the Samounis to accuse Israel.
THE GAZA I saw was societally intact. There were no homeless, walking wounded, hungry or underdressed people. The streets were busy, shops were hung with embroidered dresses and gigantic cooking pots, the markets were full of fresh meat and beautiful produce – the red radishes were bigger than grapefruits. Mothers accompanied by a 13-year-old boy told me they were bored of leaving home to sit on rubble all day to tell the press how they’d survived. Women graduates I met in Sajaya spoke of education as power as old men watched over them.
No one praised their government as they showed me the sites of tunnels where fighters had melted away. No one declared Hamas victorious for creating a forced civilian front line as they showed me the remains of booby trapped homes and schools.
From what I saw and was told in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead pinpointed a totalitarian regime’s power bases and largely neutralized Hamas’s plans to make Israel its tool for the sacrifice of civilian life.
Corroboration of my account may be found in tardy and piecemeal retractions of claims concerning the UNWRA school at Al-Fakhora; an isolated acknowledgment that Gaza is substantially intact by The New York Times; Internet media watch corrections; and the unresolved discrepancy between the alleged wounded and their unreported whereabouts.
The writer is a poet and freelance writer who lives in London. Her collection Boukhara was a 2008 Smith/Doorstop prize winner. She also translates the poetry of Semyon Lipkin, the Russian World War II poet.
Geert Wilders at US Jewish temple
I hope to find the rest of this somewhere. He is very good and clear in this short speech.