From Democracy Now! – a live report from a Gaza hospital
The blurb for the show:
We get a live report from independent journalist Mohammed Omer from a hospital in Gaza City, where injured journalists, medical workers and civilians — including children — are arriving for treatment. An award-winning journalist based in Gaza, Omer has been covering the latest Israeli assault since it began six days ago. We’re also joined by Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]
Maybe this is a good place to list live resources from the actual scene:
Documentarist and activist Harry Fear’s reporting from Gaza: link to ustream.tv
Grass roots independent news team OccupiedAir: link to ustream.tv
Russia Today / AP’s live feed of Gaza (not the news stream): link to rt.com (just found this one, not really sure what’s this about)
Streams are a bit spotty because of electric and internet cut offs.
I do have to say, although we must always honor the bedrock underlying context of dispossession, oppression, and a gross differential in power, clearly the Hamas leadership knew full well that this would be the consequence of continuing to launch rockets into Israel. They felt they could benefit politically by creating this confrontation, but it accomplishes nothing positive for the people of Gaza or the Palestinians generally. The Israeli establishment is immune to shame, and it’s hard to imagine anything they could do that would cost them the unequivocal support of the United States. I truly have nothing but contempt for the leaders on both sides of this awful fight, and both are responsible for the fate of the innocents caught in the middle.
Any information, Professor, on the provenance of the Hamas rockets, particularly whether there is a “leadership” in the sort of unitary sense that Cervantes seems to assume? And do the Hamas “leaders” really warrant contempt in the same way the bully-boys with the huge arsenal Uncle Sucker has helped to fill might attract negative emotions from others in the world? Or is that post just another example of that “false equivalence” thing?
Come now, I was extremely careful to avoid false equivalence. I heard Rashid Khalidi on NPR yesterday saying essentially what I did. He does contend that the Hamas leadership has been more or less dragged into condoning the rocket attacks by militant hotheads. But in the past, when they were determined to prevent it, they did.
Juan what do you think about this analysis: “the real goal is to strike Iran”:
link to msnbc.msn.com
Raincrow
There have been fairly consistent reports of the Israelis drawing back from a land invasion of Gaza, under US and European pressure, this morning
I wonder to myself if this doesn’t make the “War War Bomb Iran” party of Netanyahu and Lieberman look rather weak.
If they can’t buy a US president and flatten defenceless Gaza (says Ariel Sharon’s son)http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=292466 how will they cope with Lebanon and the Iranian Air Defence systems?
What will this do to the elections in January?