Bombing Refugee Camps in Gaza
Instead of Paying the Refugees Reparations
The news keeps reporting that the Israeli air force bombed refugee camps in Gaza.
Did you ever wonder how those refugee camps got to be in Gaza? Cont'd . . .
I mean, where are they refugees from? There didn't used to be refugees in Gaza, before 1948, after all. The grandparents of today's refugees were living in their own homes, which their ancestors had lived in for centuries if not millennia.
After Germany created Jewish refugees in WW II, it was made to pay reparations to the victims, right?
Israel hasn't paid a dime to any of the Palestinian families it expelled in 1948, [pdf] which is itself a violation of international law.
Palestinian refugees created by Israeli military actions, 1948.
Update: Israel continued to bomb Gaza on day 7 of blitz. The airstrikes continued Friday morning.
Israel has killed 37 children and 17 women since it began its bombardment last Saturday. About a fourth of the over 400 persons killed are estimated to be obviously civilians because they were children or women; the proportion of the civilians killed is likely actually higher because a lot of the men are probably noncombatants, too. Likewise, large numbers of the over 2000 Gazans wounded have been innocent civilians.
Gazans are facing starvation and death, according to UN humanitarian chief John Holmes. The power plant has been knocked out, making it impossible for the hospitals properly to treat the over 2000 wounded in the airstrikes, or indeed, for patients needing oxygen & etc. to get it. Hospitals have resorted to generators, but they run on fuel, which is in short supply and many Gazans are without electricity. Some 20,000 a day are not getting the UN wheat rations and other foodstuffs on which they rely, given that Israel long ago destroyed their economy. That is, there is real and increasing hunger in Gaza, 50% of the population of which is children.
Tzipi Livni said the purpose of the operation was to weaken Hamas.
Wasn't that the purpose of all those assassinations carried out by Ariel Sharon in 2003-2004? Didn't they assassinate Sheikh Yasin and Rantisi & etc. then? Did Hamas disappear? If Livni and Ehub Barak think that aerial bombardment is the right way to deal with a group like Hamas in a place like Gaza, they are just as out of touch with reality as George W. Bush.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/02/2009 12:04:00 AM
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7 Comments:
Israel's colonialism is bizarre. It is a country the size of an average US county. A third of its 8million population are Arabs who are colonial victims themselves.
Without US support and instigation, the very idea of occupying any part of Arab land would have been comical. The Europeans colluded with the US until the 1970s when France reduced its support. The Germans and British are still in the Israeli camp, but they are gradually reducing that. Brown, the British PM who is beholden to Murdoch, initially refused to call for a ceasefire (Blair did the same during the assault on Lebanon in 2006) but his FM, who happened to be a Jew, changed the stance just one day later and the USA is now alone in supporting the barbaric bombing campaign.
The problem for the Zionists is that they are totally dependent on the occupant of the White House, and the price the US is paying for supporting Israel's comical imperialism is growing fast. If that support ends, Israel will be made to face up to its past crimes for sure.
Absolutely -nobody- is as out of touch with reality as George Walker Bush is.
Give the man some credit.
Thank you for your insight and your courage in adressing injustice.
On a practical matter, I prefer the previous presentation of your articles, where all the text of the articles are on the same page.
lgr, montréal
They are doing this for one reason - to provoke a reaction. My bet is they are hoping Hezbollah will do something, anything, to give them a pretext for launching air strikes on Iran. So they are going to make Gaza as horrible as they possibly can. All they need is one Hezbollah commander to lose his cool, one missile fired from Lebanon.
B'Tselem questions Israeli account of attack (YouTube).
The grin on the face of Major Avital Leibovich is deeply disturbing.
BF.
PNAC signatory and current US Ambassador to the UN Khalilzad is asked whose interests her represents- Israel or USA- and why US taxpayers should pay for another Israeli ME war:
http://www.un.org/webcast/2008.html
Thank you Juan Cole for your informed comment, all these months and now years.
I work in Spanish media; the Israeli embassy sent a note protesting the graphic images from Gaza displayed on Spanish television, saying such images could give the wrong idea (I am sorry I don't have the text before me to quote right now). I haven't noticed any change in coverage, except that, as we head towards the 8th day, the story gets put back deeper in the newspaper, regardless of the front page photo.
Another thing, as I review every Reuters report, I must mentally add "democratically elected" before the name Hamas because it seems no one remembers that in fact, there was an election in Gaza, and that Hamas won.
Apart from that, though I don't read Arabic my Arab colleagues have informed me that Hamas is not the only group to claim responsibility for the rockets launched into Israeli territory. The armed wing of a secular group has also recently - today - taken responsibility for some. If you have access to the information I would appreciate your looking into this.
Again, thank you Juan Cole.
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