Eru konur öšruvisu en karlar ķ hugsun?

 Jį, aš mķnu reynslu held ég žaš.

Žaš var nś fundur alžjóšlega samtaka žingkvenna ķ žinghśsi į Ķslandi ķ gęr. Talaš var um jafnréttismįl kvenna į öllum svišum og žaš aš Ķsland sżnist vera fyrirmynd į sviši jafnréttar ķ heiminum.

Žessi frétt kom mér til aš hugsa um hvaš jafnréttir eiginlega žżšir.

Žżšir žaš aš sem kona verš ég aš hugsa eins og karlmašur, til žess verša metin til jafns?

Ég hef tekin eftir žvķ til dęmis aš allar konur sem ég žekkir ķ kringum mig eru į móti strķši ķ hverju formi sem er. Žęr eru į móti žvķ aš Bandarķkin og ašrir NATO rķkir eru aš styšja uppreisnamönnum ķ Sżrlandi til žess aš koma Assad stjörnunni frį völdum. Žęr voru į móti žvķ aš Vesturlöndin voru aš styšja Nż-Nasista uppreisnamenn ķ Ukrainu aš komast til valda, žęr eru į móti žvķ a fara aftur ķ Kalda Strķšiš viš Rśssland śt af Krimsskaga mįlinu, žegar Krimsskagamenn sjįlfir völdu meš yfiržyrmandi meirihluta aš sameinast Rśssland.

Venjulega konur hugsa ekki um eitthvaš valdasamkeppni sem réttlętti strķš og ofbeldi.

Venjulegar konur sjį ekki heimurinn sem taflborš žar sem blóšugir leikir mega fara fram aš kostnaši žeirra saklausu. Į mešan karlmenn hugsar um barįttu, yfirrįšsvęšir, og strķš hugsa venjulega konur um samvinnu, mįlamišlun og friš.

En um leiš aš konur fara ķ pólitikinu eša fréttamennsku breytist višhorfiš. Tökum til dęmis Angela Merkel eša Hillary Clinton eša Victoria Nuland eša svo margar ašra įhrifakvenna. Fyrir žį er lifiš oršin valdabarįtta žar sem endurinn sem žau sękja eftir réttlęti öll leišin sem farin er ķ, og žaš inniheldir leiš ofbeldisins. Žessar konur til žess aš mega taka žįtt ķ karlmannsveldi žurftu aš ala inni ķ sér fulla karlmannshugsunarhętti. 

Aš mķnu mati er jafnrétti lķtils virši į mešan okkur sérstaka kvenlegur hugsunarhįttur er metin sem einskis virši. 

Og ef og žegar kvenhugsun veršur metin til fulls og jafns, žį munum viš lifa ķ betrum heimi. 

 


Fręgi fréttamašur John Pilger skrifar

aš žį sem vita sannleikan og segja hann ekki, aš žau bera jafn įbyrgš fyrir óbeldisverkin sem framin eru.

Greinin heitir:  Holocaust denied - The lying silence of those, who know

Žaš sem viš segjum eša ekki segjum um Gasa, žaš synir mannlega ešli okkar. Framin er žjóšarmorš fyrir framan augun okkar.

Pilger tala um fortišina, um žaš aš sagan byrjar įratugi įšur en Hamas var til.

Hann tala um įętlun "Dagan" frį 2001, žar sem 'Israelsherin viljandi drap leištogan Hamas hreyfingarinnar eftir žaš hefur komiš į leinilegt samkomulagi į milli Arafat og Hamas, aš sjįlfsmoršįrįsum uršu hętt. Ķsraels leynižjonustan vissu um žetta samkomulagi, en Ķsrael žurftu į sjįlfsmoršįrįsir Palestķnumanna aš halda ķ įróšastrķši žeirrar.Palestķnumenn ęttu alltaf aš lita śt eins og villimenn.

'Israel“s įętlun viš aš drepa allar žjóšarleištogar Palestķnumanna er, aš koma į stórnleysi ķ landinu, og algjör vonleysa. Žess vegna eru 'Israelar lķka aš eyšyleggja hįskólar og skólakerfiš ķ heild. Palestķnumenn eiga ekki aš menta sér, alveg eins og žręlar ķ Bandarrikjumum fyrir 150 įrum mįttu ekki menta sér, svo žau gętu ekki berjast fyrir sķna frelsiš og jafnrétti.

 

 


mbl.is Įframhaldandi loftįrįsir
Tilkynna um óvišeigandi tengingu viš frétt

Hérna er eitthvaš bakgrunn sem fjölmišla gefur žér ekki


Separating the Truth from the Hype

The Bloodbath In Gaza
By Mike Whitney

"Bandits with planes ...
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood."
poem by Pablo Neruda

January 06, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- In a rare moment of honesty, the New York Times divulged the real motive behind the bombardment and invasion of Gaza. In Ethan Bronner's article, "Israel Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket fire, or Both", Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said, "We need to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern. That is the most important thing. If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from reoccupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition...No matter what you call it, Hamas will obtain legitimacy."

According to the Times: "In addition, any truce would probably include an increase in commercial traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is Hamas's central demand: to end the economic boycott and border closing it has been facing. To build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet withholding the commerce would continue to leave 1.5 million Gazans living in despair." (Israel Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket fire, or Both; Ethan Bronner)

If Israel wants to prevent Hamas from "obtaining legitimacy," than the real objective of the invasion is to either severely undermine or topple the regime. All the talk about the qassam rockets and the so-called "Hamas infrastructure", (the new phrase that is supposed to indicate a threat to Israeli security) is merely a diversion. What really worries Israel is the prospect that Obama will "sit down with his enemies"--as he promised during the presidential campaign--and conduct talks with Hamas. That would put the ball in Israel's court and force them to make concessions. But Israel does not want to make concessions. They would rather start a war and change the facts on the ground so they can head-off any attempt by Obama to restart peace process.


Just days ago, Obama advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said in a televised interview, that the last eight years proves that resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is critical to US interests in the region. He added that the recent fighting shows that the two parties cannot achieve peace without US involvement. Brzezinski's comments suggest that, at the very least, the Obama camp is considering low-level (secret?) talks with Hamas representatives. Every day that Hamas abstains from violence; its legitimacy as a political party grows and the prospect of direct negotiations becomes more likely. This is Israel's worst nightmare, not because Hamas constitutes a real threat to Israeli security, but because Israel wants to install its own puppet regime and unilaterally impose its own terms for a final settlement. Neither Ehud Olmert or any of the candidates for prime minister have any intention of getting bogged down in another 8 years of fruitless banter like Oslo where plans for settlement expansion had to be concealed behind an elaborate public relations smokescreen. No way. The Israeli leadership would rather skip the pretense altogether and pursue their territorial aims openly as they have under Bush. And the goal is the same as always; to integrate the occupied territories into Greater Israel and leave the Palestinians trapped in bantustans. Negotiations just make that harder.

Ariel Sharon's senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, clarified Israel's position three years ago when he admitted, "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely." "Formaldehyde"; that says it all. The point of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was to silence critics and to make it appear as though the Palestinians had achieved some type of statehood. It was a complete sham. Sharon believed that disengagement would stop foreign leaders from badgering him to sit down with the Palestinians and work out a mutually-acceptable agreement. He never expected that elections would throw a wrench in his plans and raise the credibility of Hamas to the extent that it has today. In the last two years, Hamas hasn' t launched one suicide mission in Israel, which shows that it has abandoned the armed struggle and can be trusted to negotiate on its people's behalf. That scares Israel, which is why they initiated hostilities. Now, they need to seal the deal by either removing Hamas before Obama is sworn in or face pressure from the new administration for dialogue. Meanwhile, Israeli troop movements indicate that a plan may be in place to divide Gaza into three parts, thus making it impossible for Hamas to rule.

The UK Guardian confirms that the invasion was really about regime change not rockets or Hamas infrastructure.

According to the Guardian: "A couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for 'as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely'. Infuriated Israeli officials in Jerusalem warned her that such statements could set back the diplomatic offensive.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.

"This was something that was planned long ahead," he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery - whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police or the army - work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message."
In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on "the infrastructure of terror" in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.

Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion." (UK Guardian, "Why Israel went to war in Gaza")

The invasion was mapped out months ago, right down to the bullet points that were passed out to friends in the media. Nothing was left to chance. That said, the public relations campaign was on full display over the weekend when Israeli ground troops and armored divisions swept into Gaza unopposed. CNN had a coterie of ardent Zionists on hand to justify the invasion in a carefully scripted analysis of developments. Retired Brigadier Gen. David Grange accompanied the blatantly pro-Israel Wolf Blitzer saying that the IDF had been "lured" into Gaza by Hamas so that Hamas could execute its plan for "urban warfare". Utter nonsense. Grange implied that the subsequent slaughter of civilians was the work of Hamas, not Israel. Even by CNN's abysmal standards, this is new low.

The media has worked in concert with the IDF throughout, spinning a rationale from whole cloth and cheerleading from every available soapbox. But recent polls show that the public has remained skeptical. Anti-Israel protests have sprung up in capitals across the world, and support for Israel is at its nadir. . Many people are simply shocked to see the most advanced, technological weaponry in the world being used in densely populated areas where collateral damage is bound to be heavy. It just makes Israel look like a bully while the media looks like an enabler. So far, the war has been a public relations catastrophe. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed and 2,400 wounded in a debacle of Biblical proportions. Every day, new photographs circulate on the internet showing the carnage produced by the steady bombardment. On Monday, the IDF killed two more Palestinian families, in two separate incidents. The mother, father and eight children were killed when their house was bombed by an American made F-16 early Monday morning. Another family in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, was butchered when their home was struck by a shell from an Israeli ship off the coast. The civilian toll continues to balloon with no end in sight.

Here's how one Gaza resident summed up the bombing in an interview with an AP journalist: "The Israeli forces attack everywhere. They have gone crazy. The Gaza Strip is just going to die ... it's going to die. We were sleeping. Suddenly we heard a bomb. We woke up and we didn't know where to go. We couldn't see through the dust. We called to each other. We thought our house had been hit, not the street. What can I say? You saw it with your own eyes. What is our guilt? Are we terrorists? I don't carry a gun, neither does my girl. What does Israel want? There's no medicine. No drinks, no water, no gas. We are suffering from hunger. They attack us. Can it be worse than this?" All of Gaza has been traumatized.

The "invasion"--which is a word none of the Israeli-centric media dares to use--(Israel "entered" Gaza) is the equivalent of rampaging through a concentration camp. (similar to the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla) Still, newspapers, like the New York Times, provide cover for the attack by referring to Hamas "bases" within Gaza. In truth, there are no bases nor military installations of any kind. It's just more lies. They have no army, no navy, and no air force. The only threat that Gaza poses to Israel is its people's unshakable commitment to end the occupation.

On CNN, Alan Dershowitz and other prominent Zionists defend the invasion in their most polished, lawyerly prose, but the public remains unconvinced. What observers are seeing on the internet is the broken bodies of children pulled from the rubble of their homes and the terrifying explosions in a city that languishes in complete darkness. Nothing Dershowitz says can match the imagery splattered minute by minute on the screen. Israel has bombed mosques, ambulances, bridges, tunnels, even a terrorist girls dormitory. Since when is a girl's dormitory part of "Hamas infrastructure"? Five sisters and their mother were blow apart as they sat peacefully in their own living room. Does Dershowitz really believe he can elicit sympathy for the perpetrators of these crimes? American support for Israel is being tested; and that support is quickly eroding.

War is a blunt instrument for achieving one's political objectives, and the costs can be enormous for winner and loser alike. If Israel manages to incite Hamas to the point where they deploy suicide bombers to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem then, perhaps, attitudes will shift in Israel's favor. It is impossible to predict. But, clearly, retaliation with suicide missions would be the worst possible strategy for Hamas at this point. Israel has lost the moral high-ground, but one suicide bomber can change all that in a flash. Besides, the bombings alienate the people who sympathize with the Palestinian cause and make it harder for them to be openly supportive. The only people who benefit from suicide missions are the right-wing fanatics within the Israeli political establishment. Every Israeli civilian that's killed just strengthens the Likudniks and their ilk.

ENDING THE CEASEFIRE: Who's to blame?

The media has made a big issue of the fact that Hamas ended its ceasefire with Israel just days before the bombardment of Gaza. But as Johann Hari points out in his article "The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling" Hamas offered to maintain the ceasefire if Israel agreed to lift the blockade.

According to Hari:

"The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants - like much of the Israeli right-wing - dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognized this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" - and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.....Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them. (Johann Hari, "The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling")

Hari's article further confirms our basic thesis that the aggression in Gaza has nothing to do with terrorism, security, or Hamas infrastructure. In fact, Hamas appears to be ready to settle for much less than they originally hoped for. In this particular case, all they wanted was a promise from Israel to end the blockade, but Israel refused. Collective punishment of Palestinians has become a habit, like smoking or taking drugs. Israel can do what it wants. If it decides to cut off the food and medicine to 1.5 million people or bomb them into oblivion; no one can stop them. The UN and Washington just roll over and play dead. Why should they negotiate; they can do whatever they want. The world is their apple.

ISMAIL HANIYEH: "We do not wish to throw the Jews into the sea".

"Oh...who will stop the windmills in my head?
Who will remove the knives from my heart?
Who will kill my poor children...?
In order that they do not...grow up in the red
furnished apartments..." ("Ending" by Amal Dunqul; translated by Angry Arab News Service)

On Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed the offices of a man who has helped to save the lives of more Jews than anyone in the Knesset. That man is Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh has supported the ban on suicide missions which has lasted for more than two years despite the blockade of food, medicine, fuel, and electrical power to the Gaza Strip and despite the daily bombings, incursions, arrests, assassinations and countless other humiliations associated with occupation. Hundreds of Israeli civilians are alive today because Haniyeh and his Hams colleagues abandoned the armed struggle and entered politics.

On Friday, Israeli spokeswoman, Major Avital Leibovich, announced that "Hamas leaders were also marked men. We have defined legitimate targets as any Hamas-affiliated target." That means that Haniyeh is now on Israel's hit list.

In a February 2006 interview with the Washington Post, Haniyeh dispelled many of the lies circulating in the western media about Hamas. He said that he wanted to see an end the "vicious cycle of violence" and vehemently denied the claim that "Hamas is committed to destroying Israel". He said, "We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody....We are not war seekers nor are we war initiators. We are not lovers of blood. We are oppressed people with rights."

Wa Post: "Would Hamas recognize Israel if it were to withdraw to the '67 borders?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel withdraws to the '67 borders, then we will establish peace in stages... We will establish a situation of stability and calm which will bring safety for our people.

Wa Post: "Do you recognize Israel's right to exist?"

Haniyeh: "The answer is to let Israel say it will recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, release the prisoners and recognize the rights of the refugees to return to Israel. Hamas will have a position if this occurs."

Wa Post: "Will you recognize Israel?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them."

Haniyeh's answers are straightforward and rational. He asked for nothing that isn't already required under existing United Nations resolutions; a return to the 1967 borders, basic human rights, and settlement of the final status issues. An agreement could be facilitated tomorrow if Israel was willing to conform to international law. Instead, Israel has chosen to invade Gaza. For 60 years it has employed the same failed strategy.

Haniyeh again:

"Israel's unilateral movements of the past year will not lead to peace. These acts -- the temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the walling off of the West Bank -- are not strides toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections."

"We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps. America's complacency in the face of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the coded rhetorical green light: "Israel has a right to defend itself."

Haniyeh's efforts for reconciliation are doomed. Israel will not bargain or compromise. The Israeli state is driven by an ideology which requires continuous expansion and subjugation. There's nothing Haniyeh can do to change that. The answer to the present crisis lies within Zionism itself, the philosophical underpinning of Jewish nationalism.

In his recent article, "Israel's Righteous Fury and its Victims in Gaza", Ilan Pappe, the chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, explains Zionism in terms of its effect on Israeli policy vis a vis the invasion of Gaza:

"There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its "surgical" operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.

This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli, and before that Zionist, dispossession of Palestine. Every act whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction was always portrayed as morally just and as a pure act of self-defense reluctantly perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings. In his excellent volume The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, Gabi Piterberg explores the ideological origins and historical progression of this righteous fury. Today in Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, from the academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.

It is crucial to explore the ideological origins of this attitude and derive the necessary political conclusions form its prevalence. This righteous fury shields the society and politicians in Israel from any external rebuke or criticism. But far worse, it is translated always into destructive policies against the Palestinians. With no internal mechanism of criticism and no external pressure, every Palestinian becomes a potential target of this fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state it can inevitably only end in more massive killings, massacres and ethnic cleansing.

The self-righteousness is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. It explains why the Israeli Jewish society would not be moved by words of wisdom, logical persuasion or diplomatic dialogue. And if one does not want to endorse violence as the means of opposing it, there is only one way forward: challenging head-on this righteousness as an evil ideology meant to cover human atrocities. Another name for this ideology is Zionism and an international rebuke for Zionism, not just for particular Israeli policies, is the only way of countering this self-righteousness." ("Israel's Righteous Fury and its Victims in Gaza", Ilan Pappe)

It wouldn't make a bit of difference if Hamas surrendered tomorrow and handed-over all its weapons to Israel, because the problem isn't Hamas; it's Zionism, the deeply-flawed ideology which leads to bombing children in their homes while clinging to victim-hood. Ideas have consequences. Gaza proves it.
 

Despite the Bloodshed, Israel is Failing

What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

By SAREE MAKDISI

Israel has killed and wounded almost four thousand men, women and children so far in its assault on Gaza; it has entombed whole families together in the ruins of their homes. As I write these words, news is breaking that Israeli bombs have killed at least 40 civilians huddling in a UN school which they mistakenly thought would be safer than the homes from which Israel's relentless barrage-and its deliberately terrorizing "warning" leaflets and prerecorded phone calls-had already driven them. (I still have one of the leaflets the Israelis dropped on besieged Beirut in 1982 and the language is exactly the same-"flee, flee for your lives!"). Mosques, schools, houses, apartment buildings, have all been brought down on the heads of those inside.

All this death and destruction comes supposedly in retaliation for rocket attacks that had not inflicted a single fatality inside Israel in over a year. What happened to "an eye for an eye?"

As horrific as the toll of dead and injured already is, the scale of Israel's bombing, and its targeting of ambulances and medical and rescue crews-several doctors and paramedics have been killed or wounded so far-means that the true totals are actually unknown. Countless numbers of victims have bled to death in the streets or in the ruins of their smashed homes. Calls for help aren't getting through Gaza's phone networks, battered to pieces along with the rest of the civilian infrastructure-its water, sewage, electricity systems, all already crumbling as a result of the years of siege. The victims that are evacuated-as often, these days, in civilian cars as in the remaining ambulances-make it to hospitals that are overwhelmed; many will die that might have otherwise been saved.

Any hospital would be overwhelmed under the circumstances: how then for a hospital that has already been cut off by the three year old Israeli blockade of Gaza from urgently needed supplies, medicines, drugs, anesthetics, spare parts, fuel for generators? In fact, the true story of what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza is to be seen in the besieged territory's hospitals: the smashed, burned, dusty bodies of children being carried in on makeshift blankets (there aren't enough stretchers to go around); the morgue drawers full of bodies; the emergency rooms with badly hurt, crying people scattered on stretchers, on beds, on the blood-washed floors, as the doctors run from one to another trying to figure out who can be saved and who must be attended to first-the boy with his feet blown off? the old woman with the huge gash in her head? the young man with his guts hanging out of his stomach? the anguished little girl thrashing about in pain, in fear, in agony and begging for her mother who vanished in some monstrous explosion? And outside, on the crowded sidewalks, the other side of the human suffering that Israel has chosen to inflict on an entire population: the wailing mothers, fathers and children; the weeping young men; the panicked people rushing around trying to find loved ones after each new Israeli bombing.

All this to make Israelis feel secure? What security is this kind of barbarism ever likely to gain them?

These are the scenes that every Palestinian and every Arab around the world sees every single day on the uncensored, unedited, unfiltered and relentlessly, brutally honest coverage broadcast on the Arabic Al-Jazeera channel. Unlike the US and UK networks, Al-Jazeera has correspondents and camera crews all over Gaza; they are Arabs, some of them are Palestinians, and they all live among the people whose suffering they record for the whole world to see; they can communicate with them in their own language and in the language of the audience as well. The coverage continues continuously 24 hours a day.

Ordinary people around the rest of the world are seeing the version of events that gets filtered through the editing suites, the cutting rooms, the editorializing of foreign media, and that, in the case of the US, finally makes it to their living room largely (if not entirely) sanitized, and packaged to them in two-minute sound bites by correspondents posted safely outside of Gaza and inside Israel. The coverage broadcast from Israel is heavily monitored, controlled and censored. The Israeli army found in 2006 that its panicked soldiers in Lebanon were using cell phones to call home for help; this time it made sure to inspect all of its soldiers to make sure that none takes a phone with him into Gaza. The army imposes a smothering control over the flow of information; nothing that is reported from or datelined Israel can be read at face value or taken for granted.

If you get your news from an American television network, no matter how horrible you think what's happening in Gaza is, the reality that you are not seeing is much, much, much worse. (Perhaps that's why the English-language Al-Jazeera channel, widely followed in the rest of the world, is unofficially banned here-not a single cable or satellite provider carries it).

And yet even with this imperfect coverage it must be said that people all over the world, including in the US, are protesting what they are seeing. Huge, million-person demonstrations have been held, from Melbourne to Jakarta, from Calcutta to Istanbul, and from Vienna to London, not to mention the huge popular protests in Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Amman, across the length and breadth of the West Bank, and in some of the largest protests ever held in Palestinian communities inside Israel. Across the US, too, people have been protesting, holding vigils, writing letters to the editors of the newspapers demanding more balance to the warped coverage of the events that we see here, especially in papers like the New York Times. And the internet has been a major source of information for all those millions who have figured out that they will never learn what they need to learn from the New York Times or the Washington Post or ABC or CNN. Sites like Counterpunch, Electronic Intifada, Alternet, Truthdig, Huffington Post, Salon and many others besides have carried extraordinarily intelligent and detailed pieces by a range of commentators whose sense of what is happening far exceeds what is made available by professional journalists in the mainstream press-including many superb pieces by Jewish Americans who give the lie, once and for all, to the absurd notion that their community is solidly behind Israel's violence.

Indeed, it seems clear that the writing now being posted on alternative media outlets is also starting to outweigh the clumsy efforts still being churned out by America's army of paid and unpaid cheerleaders for Israel, who have forsaken what little remained of their own humanity and blinded themselves to suffering that ought to move any rational, caring, sentient human being to tears-the Dershowitzes and Foxmans, the Orens and Boots, the Krauthammers and Peretzes, the Bards and Goldfarbs, the cynical apparatchiks of CAMERA and AIPAC and the mindless busybodies and shuffling zombies of Stand With Us, the Israel Project and the Israel on Campus Coalition-who persist with their stubborn, craven defense of the indefensible. About these misanthropes there is much to be said, most of it too unpleasant to print, so I'll shift the burden here to those memorable closing lines of Wilfred Owen's war poem "Insensibility:"

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears."

As for Israel itself: once again it has revealed its true nature to the world. It was only after the first reports came in of their own serious fatalities-soldiers caught in an ambush, though the censored news reports from Israel claim that it was all friendly fire-that the Israeli media suddenly started carrying reports wondering whether things have gone too far. "The Price of Stubbornness over Gaza Exit is Dead Soldiers," write Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff in Ha'aretz. "For the first time, Israeli TV broadcasts raised the question of whether it was worthwhile for the operation to continue." Until this point, the Israeli media-and most of the country's liberal intelligentsia, never mind the militant right wing-had been moralistically defending the bombing, and sometimes actually cheering it on. Starting the attacks on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance," the Guardian's Seamus Milne quotes the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot as saying; "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed." The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe." The rational and genuinely ethical voices of Amira Hass and Gideon Levy have never seemed more isolated.

The brute fact of the matter is that, as long as their air force is killing an entirely defenseless people, the Israeli public and media do cheer them on. As soon as they start paying any kind of price-no matter how grotesquely out of proportion to the level of damage their soldiers are inflicting on unarmed and innocent people-their bloodlust quickly cools. In Gaza, the Israeli infantry won't take a single step forward unless the ground in front of them-and everything and everyone in it, armed, unarmed, whoever and whatever they are-has been safely cleared away for them by the air or by artillery. "These are 'Georgia rules,' which are not so far from the methods Russia used in its conflict last summer," write Harel and Issacharoff in Ha'aretz. "The result is the killing of dozens of non-combatant Palestinians. The Gaza medical teams might not have reached all of them yet. When an Israeli force gets into an entanglement, as in Sajaiyeh last night [where three Israeli soldiers were killed], massive fire into built-up areas is initiated to cover the extraction. In other cases, a chain of explosions is initiated from a distance to set off Hamas booby-traps. It is a method that leaves a swath of destruction taking in entire streets, and does not distinguish military targets from the homes of civilians." I'm not sure where the "Georgia" reference comes from: the Israelis used the very same tactics in Jenin and Nablus in 2002, and in southern Lebanon in 2006 and 1982. And it would be an act of futility to point out-for the millionth time-that the Israeli method of warfare takes place in sweeping disregard for the principles of international humanitarian law, not to mention total contempt for innocent human life. This is not to mention that most of the casualties pouring into Gaza's morgues and hospitals are the victims of the sheer indiscriminate unleashing on densely populated civilian areas of high explosive ordnance from land, sea and air that has been characteristic of Israel's military style since at least the 1970s.

Israel's disregard for innocent human life is not motivated only by a desire to forestall the political consequences-especially during an electoral campaign-of Israeli military casualties. It is also a clear indicator of the contempt that Israel has for Palestinian life in general. The cold, hungry, tired, desperate, and terrified men, women and children that Israel is now sweeping away by the dozen in balls of fire and showers of shrapnel are the very same people that it had already reduced to what one UN official months ago warned was "a subhuman existence," the deliberate product of the siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza for over three years, beginning in 2005, before the election of Hamas. They are the same people whose political and human rights Israel has been stifling since the occupation of 1967-twenty years before the creation of Hamas. They are the same people who were ethnically cleansed from their land in 1948 because, as non-Jews, they were inconveniently cluttering up the land that European Zionists wanted to turn into a Jewish state, no matter what the land's actual population had to say about it.

Israel's disregard for Palestinian life in Gaza today is, in short, a direct extension of its disregard for Palestinian life since 1948, and what is happening in Gaza today is the continuation of what happened six decades ago. Eighty percent of the people crammed into Gaza's hovels and shanties are refugees or the descendants of refugees that armed Zionist gangs, which eventually coalesced into the infant Israeli army, terrorized from their homes elsewhere in southwestern Palestine in 1948. They have been herded, penned, and slaughtered by a remorseless power that clearly regards them as subhuman. If you think I'm stretching the point, I'm not. Listen to the words of Professor Arnon Sofer, the government consultant who did so much to help plan the isolation and imprisonment of Gaza, in a interview with the Jerusalem Post in 2004: "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe," Sofer predicted. "Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure on the border is going to be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day." Sofer admitted only one worry with all the killing, which will, he says, be the necessary outcome of a policy that he himself helped to invent. "The only thing that concerns me," he says, "is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings."

Meticulously and clinically thought through even before the first rocket from Gaza claimed a life inside Israel, the slaughter in Gaza today has nothing to do with rockets or with Hamas. As Sofer himself explains, it is the purest and most distilled expression of Zionist ideology. "Unilateral separation doesn't guarantee 'peace,'" Sofer says in that same interview; "it guarantees a Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority of Jews."

And that-taken right from the horse's mouth-is what the slaughter of innocents in Gaza is fundamentally about: the people being killed today are the ones for whom there is no room in the Zionist vision of the state. They are regarded as an excess population. Not even Malthus thought that a redundant population should just be lined up and shot, or bombed into the ground. But, clearly, times have changed since 1798.

This inhuman madness will end only with the end of the violent ideology that spawned it-when those who are committed to the project of creating and maintaining a religiously and ethnically exclusivist state in what has always been a culturally and religiously heterogeneous land finally relent and accept the inevitable: that they have failed.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and the author of 
mbl.is Rįšist į Ķsrael frį Lķbanon
Tilkynna um óvišeigandi tengingu viš frétt

Notašir voru óvenjuleg vopn gegn óbreyttum borgaranum

Hérna er vištal viš lęknir frį Noregi, sem vinnur nś į sjśkrahśsiš ķ Gaza:

Unconventional Weapons against The People of Gaza

Interview of Dr. Mads Gilbert
by Akram al-Sattari

 Doctor Mads Gilbert is a member of a Norwegian triage medical team present in the besieged Gaza Strip. The team has exposed that Israel has used depleted uranium weapons in its war on the impoverished territory which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. He described the conditions inside Gaza in an exclusive Press TV interview.

Press TV: What can you tell about the uranium findings?

Dr. Mads Gilbert:The findings about the uranium I cannot tell you much about, but I can tell you that we have clear evidence that the Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy.

These weapons have an enormous power to explode.

The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 meters, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave are cut in pieces.

This was first used in Lebanon in 2006, it was used here in Gaza in 2006 and the injuries that we see in Shifa [Hospital] now, many many of them I suspect and we all suspect are the effect of DIME weapons used by the Israelis.

On the long term, these weapons will have a cancer effect on those who survive. They will develop cancer we suspect. There has been very little research on this but some research has been among other places in the United States, which show that these weapons have a high tendency to develop cancer. So they kill and those who survive risk having cancer.

Press TV: And what do you have to say about this?

Dr. Mads Gilbert: All that is happening in Gaza here now is against international law, it is against humanity and I think it is against what it means to be a decent person. You don't treat other people like this. Even if you disagree with him... maybe even if you fight with them, you don't treat civilians, children and women like this.

And I have an appeal to the Israeli doctors and nurses. They are my colleagues. We belong to the same international community, the medical community. I wish that the good doctors and nurses in Israel tell their government to stop these atrocities. We cannot continue with this. We may differ in opinions, but you cannot treat the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza in this way.

Today, they were bombing in Gaza City; we received 150 wounded and more than 50 killed.

Press TV: Only at Shifa?!

Dr. Mads Gilbert: Yes, here in Shifa. I treated a ten-year-old boy. He had his whole chest filled with fragments from the bomb. On his lap was another person's leg that had been cut off. We resuscitated him and did everything we could do to save his life but he died between our hands.

This is such a terrible experience and behind the numbers that you report all the time, there are human beings, families, women, grandmothers, children. That is in fact the reality in this situation. Those who are paying the price for the Israeli bombardments now are the common people, the Palestinian people.

Half of the population in Palestine are below 15 years and 80 percent of the people in Gaza live below the level of poverty defined by the UN. Now they don't have food, they don't have electricity. It's cold they don't have warmth and in addition to that, they are killed.

This must be stopped.

Press TV How many people did you see that are effected by this weapon?

Dr. Mads Gilbert: Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.

You know we have a lot to do. Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics do an incredibly heroic job to save their people. Doctor Eric and I are just a small drip in the ocean, but we learn from them. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to do research, we have to save lives, but this question should be researched by the international community.


mbl.is Barist viš Gaza-borg ķ nótt
Tilkynna um óvišeigandi tengingu viš frétt

Ķsraels frettaįtak til aš réttlęta strišsglępir sķnar

Olmert hafnar vopnahlé, samt eru fjölmišlar ķ öllum vestręnum löndum aš fylgja eftir ķsraelskum forsetningum: Allt er Hamas aš kenna, Ķsrael mį vernda sķnum borgaranum meš loftįrįsum, Gasabśa mega ekki vernda sķnu fólkiš meš einu eša neinu. 'Israel hefur drepist Hamas leištogum meš moršįrįsum śr lofti, jafnvel žeim sem voru ekki mešlimur ķ hernašadeildinni žeirrar, oftast nęr voru meš žeim drepin fjölkskyldur žeirrar, nįgrannar og venjulegir vegfarendur ķ grendinni. 'Ķsrael“s ašgeršir gegn Palestķnumenn eru aldrei kallaš hryšjuverk, bara ašgeršir Palestķnumanna gegn 'Israelum, žrįtt fyrir žaš aš 'Israelar drepa żfirlegt fleiri óbreytti borgarar en Palestķnumenn.

'Israelsmenn loka öllum landamęrin inn til Gaza og matvęlir eru aš endast, en žegar nokkrir Hamasmenn eru grafa göng til žess aš koma byršum inn ķ landiš, žį eru žau réttdrępir.

Žegar einn 'isrealsmašur hefur veriš drepinn af heimatilbśin eldflaugu, žį er žaš réttlętinlega aš drepa 500 Palestķnumenn ķ loftįrasum. Og til tryggja öryggju 'israels landhérs ķ įrįsinu, žį er žaš leyfilegt aš nota hvitt Phosphor sem vopn til "aš hreinsa svęšiš". Hver sem anda žessu aš sér brennur innan frį og deyr sįrsaukafullastandaušdag, sem hęgt er aš hugsa.

Ķsraelski fręšikona Yosefa Loshitzky ķ fjölmišlafręšum skrifur um fréttaįtök 'Israels:

Israel's blonde bombshells and real bombs in Gaza

I am not sure that most people understand the meaning of the name "Operation Cast Lead" chosen by Israel for its murderous and criminal attack on Gaza. The name is borrowed from a Hebrew nursery rhyme which was (and may still be) very popular among Israeli children in the 1950s. In this song, a father promises to his child a special Hannukah gift: "a cast lead sevivon." Sevivon, in Hebrew (A dreidel in Yiddish) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Somebody, in the Israeli army, who apparently feels nostalgic about his childhood, decided that if Israeli kids would enjoy a sevivon cast from lead there is no reason why Palestinian children would not appreciate it too. After all Operation Cast Lead is not the first (and unfortunately, will not be the last) of Israel's cruel war games.

The cynicism embedded in the name, selected for what Ari Shavit, one of Israel's most celebrated commentators, called "an intelligent, impressive operation," is symptomatic to the cold, meticulous and calculated cruelty with which this attack was "designed," "executed" and "marketed" to the world. As the perpetrators themselves proudly boast, Operation Cast Lead is not only a great military victory but also a success story of Israeli hasbara (meaning in Hebrew, explanation, but practically referring to misinformation, spin and lies).

...
Israel's oiled propaganda-machine was further lubricated by its self-acknowledged decision to select women as their masbirim (misinformation spokespersons) so as "to project a feminine and softer image." To add some cool glamour to Israel's hot lies, Tzipi Livni, the state's foreign minister and a natural blonde, announced, in response to calls for truce: "There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce." ...

The well-orchestrated propaganda machinery was also equipped with Israel's most successful "secret weapons" of mass deception: playing the role of the victim again. It is not an accident, therefore, that, as the Israeli spin doctors themselves explained in an interview to The Jewish Chronicle, that: "The international media were directed to a press center set up by the foreign ministry in Sderot itself so that foreign reporters would spend as much time as possible in the main civilian area affected by Hamas rockets." The scenes of crying, panic-stricken Israelis added some excessive emotionalism which counter-balanced, but nicely complemented, the team of the icy blonde offenders.

The designation of the Gaza Strip and south Israel as a "closed military zone," and the ban on media coverage of the Gaza carnage contributes to the sanitized view of the Gaza story as manufactured by Israel. The real horror and gore is reserved for the Al Jazeera's spectators, particularly the Arab ones. Ghetto-under-siege Gaza remains almost silent and partly invisible to the rest of us. We hardly hear or see in mainstream media, testimonies from the ground.

But we are bombarded by statements and "explanations" given by Israeli officials and "international experts" who discuss the "situation" calmly and "logically." After all, unlike the hysterical, always shouting and crying Gazans, they have not been bombarded by for nine days straight. They are interviewed in their comfortable (probably leather-clad) offices. They look and sound like respectable westerners, just like "us," and their foreign minister is very calm and cool as her blonde hair obliges.

A pioneering study by the Glasgow University Media Group on media coverage of conflicts, taught us that if you look respectable and calm you must be right. The Palestinians, by contrast, usually interviewed when they are in a state of shock, look disheveled, disoriented, slightly hysterical. And they are always surrounded by chaos and disorder. The buildings around are destroyed, debris is scattered everywhere, and the noise is unbearable (not to mention that they speak this incomprehensible language). Is something wrong with them? Also, even when they are not "extremists" they are always on the defense, almost apologetic, trying to convince us that they are not terrorists, not even militants, just ordinary people who want to survive, if not to enjoy this life. This makes them look even more suspicious.


mbl.is Olmert hafnaši vopnahléi
Tilkynna um óvišeigandi tengingu viš frétt

Strišsglępir nś og žį

They know no limits now"
Eva Bartlett skrifir beint frį Gaza Strip, 3 January 2009

In the haze of dust and smoke from the latest F-16 strike, a family self-evacuates. The dispatcher at the Jabaliya Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) receives call after call from terrified residents fleeing their homes. It's a new year, a new Nakba, and an old scene; Israel is bombarding Gaza once again and the world is standing idly by, sitting on a fence very different from the electrified border fence encaging Gaza, or the separation wall dividing and ghettoizing the West Bank. The world sits on the fence, justifying Israel's massacre of a civilian population already dying from the siege.

We are four ambulances out tonight, versus two last night. The ambulances weave nimbly along blacked-out streets of a manufactured ghost town -- like the streets all over Gaza -- dodging fresh piles of rubble,

It's absolutely impossible, unbelievable, it's a massacre. "They know no limits now," the medics report. "They are going crazy.".....


Žaš eru sumir ķ landinu
sem halda žvķ fram aš aš žaš sé einhver Gżšingarhatur Palestķnumanna sem hindra žvķ aš friš getur komiš ķ į milli Ķsraelar og Palestķnumenn. Žau segja aš Ķsraelsmenn og Palestķnumenn eru jafn sekir, jafn sjśkir ķ sįlinni vegna fordóma sķna gagnvart hvert öšru, žurfu bįšar į sįlarlękningu aš halda, ęttu aš fyrirgefa hvert öšrum, og žaš mundu binda enda į öll vandamįlin į svęšinu.
En vandamįliš ķ Palestķnu į ekkert skylt viš fordóma.

Žaš er valdastefnan Israels sem mįliš snżst um. Valdastefnan segir aš žaš į aš taka eins mikiš land og hęgt er, og helst allt drykkjarvatn, allar uppsprettur, įna Jordan, alla tinda, öll landamęri hringinn ķ kringum alla Palestķnu.

Ķsraelsmenn reyna aš koma ķ veg fyrir aš Palestķnumenn gętu lifaš af ķ sjįlfstęšu rķki, en vilja samt alls ekki gefa Palestķnumönnum borgararrétt ķ sameiginlegu rķki Palestķnu og Ķsraels. Ķsrael hefur fylgt žessu stefnu ķ 60 įr og ekki lįtiš undan į mešan Palestķnumenn voru nišurlęgšir, barin, drepin og stundum, eins og nś ķ Gaza, sett ķ algjör einangru, meš matarskorti og lokaš af rafmagni, hreinu drykkjavatni og öšru sem naušsinlegt er til aš lifa venjulegu lķfi.

PLO hefur višurkennt Israel ķ Oslo į 78% af gamla Paletķnulandinu, og jafnvel Hamas samtökin hafa ķ nokkur įr veriš reišubśin aš semja um friš, ef Ķsrael myndi draga sig til baka frį Vesturbakkanum og Austur-Jerśsalem. Komandi kynslóšir bįšar žjóšar, svo segir Hamas, gętu sķšan eftir nokkra įratuga frišsamlegs lķfs hliš viš hliš, įkvaršaš ķ žjóšaratkvęšagreišslu hvort Palestķna ętti įfram aš vera tvö rķki eša sameinast ķ eitt.

En Zķonistadraumurinn er Gyšingarrķki įn tillits til Palestķnumanna, og nęstum helming Ķsraelsmanna dreymir, samkvęmt žjóšarspį, um Gyšingarrķki ķ gjörvallri Palestķnu, įn nokkurra Palestķnumanna.

Žegar ungir Israelsmenn fara ķ bęinn aš skemmta sér, žį nota žeir oršatiltękiš: "Förum śt og drepum nokkra Araba." (Ein vinkona mķn sem bjó ķ Ķsrael meš ķsraelskum kęrasta um nokkurt skeiš sagši mér frį žessu).

Ég sjįlf bjó ķ Palestķnu bara ķ tępa tvo mįnuši og ég sį ķ raun daglega žjįningar Palestķnumanna. Ég var į Vesturbakkanum, ekki ķ Gaza. Žaš var ekki į helsta įrįsatķmanum, en samt fréttist stöšugt af Palestķnumönnum sem skotnir voru til bana af ķsraelskum hermönnum. Ein innrįs hermanna ķ palestķnska heimiliš žar sem ég bjó ķ borginni, endaši ķ blóšbaši žrįtt fyrir žaš aš ekkert af heimilisfólkinu var vopnaš. Hinir öldrušu foreldrar, 58 įra og 62 įra, voru drepin. (Į žessu kvöldi var fjölskydan aš undirbśa brśškaup eins sonar sķns. Žau voru aš skoša bošskortin sem nżkomin voru frį prentsmišjunni.)

Ég sį folk bariš til óbóta, įn žess aš hafa gert nokkuš af sér. Ég sį börn og unglinga barin, jafnvel stślkur į leiš ķ skóla. Ég sį unglinga verša handtekna og setta ķ fangelsi, žrįtt fyrir žaš aš ég vissi aš žeir vęru saklausir.

Ég sį hvernig israelska lögreglan heimtaši og nam peninga frį fjölksyldum žessara saklausa unglinga, svo žeir yršu lįtnir lausir. Hermenn og leynilögreglan tóku börn meš sér og hótar žeim pyntingar, ef žau gęfu ekki upplżsingar eša geršu žaš sem hermenninir skipa fyrir.

Į stöšum žar sem engar śtlendingar eša myndavélar eru, žar traška hermenn jafnvel į ungum börnum meš stķgvélum sķnum, žar sem ķ mörgum tilfellum hljótast beinbrot af.

Og vegna žess aš ég sjįlf er af Gyšingaręttum, žį tölušu sumir Israelsmenn viš mig og reyndu aš fį mig į sitt band. Ég sjį rassisma Ķsraelsmanna meš eigin augum og heyršu skošanir žeirra meš eigin eyru. Ég hef aldrei nokkur tķma į ęvinni heyrt eša lesiš jafn hrikalegar skošanir, nema žegar ég las skošanir nasista ķ žżskum sögubókum.

Žjóšir žessar, Israelar og Palestķnumenn, eru ekki jafn sekir og jafn sjśkar ķ sįl, eins og sumir ķ ķslenskum flölmišlum halda žvķ fram. Žaš er munur.

En til žess aš skilja hvaš er ķ raun og veru aš gerast, žį veršur žś aš skoša sögu sķonismans og hvernig saga Palestķnu og Ķsraels hefur žróast į sķšustu hundraš įrum:


žaš stefna Israels aš taka meira og meira land frį Palestķnumönnum. Žetta er engin lygi, žetta er hęgt aš sanna.

En žaš er algjör hręsni af okkar hįlfu aš segja Palestķnumönnum aš žeir verši aš fyrirgefa Ķsraelsmönnum allar sķna misgjöršir og rétta fram vinstri vangann einmitt į sama tķma og Israelsmen skjóta hęgri vangann śr börnum žeirra ķ loftįrįsum.
Palestķnumenn į Gaza eru innilokašir į sķnu svęši og geta hvergi fariš eins og Ķsraelsmenn śr litla bęnum Sderot gętu gert žaš, né hafa Palestķnumenn einhver loftvarnarbyrgi, eins og Israelsmenn eru alls stašar meš.

Er reiši Palestķnumanna vegna slķkra įrįsa ķ dag bara byggš į "fordómum og sjśkleika ķ sįlum žeirra" eša er hśn kannski byggš į raunverulegri upplifun?


Norman Solomon, ameriskur rithöfundur, blašamšur og fręšimašur ķ stjornmįlafręšum skrifir į sķšunni Antiwar.com:


Israel's air strikes"have killed at least 270 people so far (talan er nś meira en 400), injured more than 1,000,(um 2500 nśna) many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise," Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel's attack. "This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians." She mentioned that "the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year."

Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," Gandhi said.

What about a hundred eyes for an eye?

Og muniš žiš hvaš geršist mįnušina į undan?


Robert Berger frį VOA bureau ķ Jerusalem skrķfir:


The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is weakening the already-fragile health care system as hospitals run out of essential medicines and supplies and power cuts disable equipment, says a medical aid worker in the territory. Since the Israeli blockade of Gaza was tightened beginning Nov. 5, food and fuel have been running out and earlier this week electricity was cut, reports relief organization Oxfam...

A crippling Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip is creating food shortages.
Palestinian refugees wait to receive their monthly supplies of flour at a United Nations food aid distribution center, in Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Wednesday, 12 Nov. 2008.
A U.N. flour warehouse in Gaza is empty a week after Israel halted shipments in response to Palestinian rocket attacks. A warehouse containing canned meat is also about to run out of supplies, affecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.


U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk,
has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza

"a crime against humanity."

Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as
"a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

He has asked for
"the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law."
"It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,"

Falk has said of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza:
"This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."


Heišarleiki Falks hefur angraš Israel, og žegar hann ętlaši aš heimsękja Gaza sem fulltrśi Sameinašu žjóšanna nś ķ desember var honum ekki hleyft inn og hann var settur ķ 15 klukkutķma fangelsisvist įšur en honum var visaš śr landiš.

En Professor Falk er eiginlega heppin aš sleppa viš smį fangelsisvist, mašurinn sem hafši samskonar embętti įriš 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte frį Svišžjóš, var myrtur vegna žess aš hann sį žjįningar Palestķnumanna ķ flóttamannabśšum, fékk samśš meš žeim og reyndi aš koma į samningum sem mundi stušla aš žvķ aš Palestķnumenn gętu komist heim til sķn.
Moršingar Bernadottes voru śr Stern-genginu, leištogi hópsins į žessum tķma var Yitzhak Shamir, sem varš forsętisrįšherra Ķsraels įriš 1983.
Stern-gengiš bar lķka įbyrgš į mörg fjöldamorš ķ landinu eins og ķ Deir Yassin žar sem meira en 120 Palestķnumenn, konur og börn voru myrt meš köldu blóši, eftir aš karlmennirnir mešal žeirra voru afvopnašir žeim fįum vopnum sem žeir įttu:

Early in the morning of Friday, April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate. The village lay outside of the area that the United Nations recommended be included in a future Jewish State. Deir Yassin had a peaceful reputation and was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and one plan, kept secret until years afterwards, called for it to be destroyed and the residents evacuated to make way for a small airfield that would supply the beleaguered Jewish residents of Jerusalem.
By noon over 100 people, half of them women and children, had been systematically murdered. Four commandos died at the hands of resisting Palestinians using old Mausers and muskets. Twenty-five male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded through the Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, and then taken to a stone quarry along the road between Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot to death. The remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem.

Saman meš Irgun-genginu bįru žeir frįStern-genginu lķka įbyrgš į ótöl hryšjuverkum gagnvart breskum yfirvöldum ķ Palestķnu og sprengiódęšinu į King David hótelinu, žar sem um 100 manns, Bretar, Palestķnumenn og Gyšingar bišu bana. Leištogi Irguns į žessum tķma var Menachem Begin, sem varš forsętisrįšherra Ķsraels 1977.


Sumir halda žvķ fram aš einangrun Gaza og loftįrįsirnar nśna séu bara Hamas og eldflaugum žeirrar aš kenna.
Frjįlslyndi palestķnski fréttamašurinn Khalid Amayreh, sem ekki er fylgjandi Hamas, skrifar um paš:
Hamas did meticulously observe a six-month ceasefire, despite the persistence of the Nazi-like blockade which very much resembled the Ghetto Warsaw siege in 1942-43. However, on November 4. and 5., Israel carried out a foray into Gaza, killing 6 people.
More to the point, Israel killed 49 Palestinians during the ceasefire. Not a single Israeli was killed.


Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, sem var einn af frambošendum fyrir forsetisembętti Palestinu og hefur alltaf veriš talsmašur fyrir politisk barįttu gegn 'israelsk hernįm įn ofbeldis, skrifir:

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip. For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications. This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.

2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.

Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.


Sumir haldar greinilega aš žaš sem ég og ašrir segja um valdastefnu Israelsmanna gagnvart Palestķnumönnum sé bara hugarburšur eša öfgafullur hugsunarhįttur hjį okkur.

En žetta er allt hęgt aš sanna į margvķslegan hįtt, ekki bara meš žvķ aš benda į ašgeršir ķsraelskra stjórnvalda, heldur lķka meš beinum oršum marga rįšamanna Ķsraels, leištoga sķonistahreyfingarinnar og stundum lķka almennra hermanna:

"With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs... And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain..."
-wrote Joseph Weitz, (Director of the Jewish National Fund, the Zionist agency charged with acquiring Palestinian land)in his diary

"There is no Zionist settlement, and there is no Jewish State, without displacing Arabs and without confiscating lands and fencing them off."
-Yeshaayahu Ben-Porat, Yediot Aharonot, 14 July 1972.

"To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion."
-David Ben Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, The Philosophical Press, New York, 1954, p. 419.

"During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."
-Moshe Dayan, Ma'ariv, 7 July 1968.

"Palestine is a territory whose chief geographical feature is this: that the river Jordan does not delineate its frontier but flows through its centre."
-Vladimir Jabotinsky, at the 16th Zionist Congress (1929) (quoted by Desmond Stewart in The Middle East: Temple of Janus, p.304).

"'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"
- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979

"Take the American Declaration of Independence for instance. It contains no mention of the territorial limits. We are not obliged to state the limits of our State."
-Ben Gurion's diary, 14 May 1948 (quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.133).

"Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."
-Irgun proclamation against partition, quoted by Menachem Begin in The Revolt: Story of the Irgun, p.335.

"The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Thus when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have but paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors."
-Ben Gurion's Diary, 21 May 1948 (quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.139).

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
- Raphael Eitan, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, New York Times, April 14, 1983.

"[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs."
- Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982.



Pyntingar og strišsglępir:

"Torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as 'rogue cops' exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy."
-The Sunday Times, 19 June 1977.

"With my own eyes I have seen marks of torture on the faces and bodies of suspects and accused persons. I say it here and now, and challenge anyone to contradict it."
-Felicia Langer (Israeli lawyer) in a public address at the Conway Hall, London on 15 May 1974.

"In my opinion, the Israeli occupation regime in the conquered territories is not only not a liberal one; it is in fact one of the most cruel and repressive regimes in modern time."
-Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East International Supplement), May 1975


Hérna eru nokkur atburši frį sķšasta įratug sem israelski hermenn vitna sjįlf um ķ vištališ viš ķsraelskan sjįlfręšing- Nofer Ishai-Karen. Ķsraelski blašamašur Dalia Karpel vitna ķ bókin Nofers ķ greininu:
"Soldiers describe their war-crimes."

"I went out on my first patrol ... Others on the patrol were just shooting like crazies ... I also started shooting like all the others ... It was ... look, I won't tell you that it wasn't cool, because suddenly for the first time you come and hold the weapon seriously, you're not training in some drill or in some dugout in the dunes, or I don't know what, or you have some commander who is looking over your shoulder in the firing range. Suddenly you are responsible for what you are doing. You take the gun. You shoot. You do what you want." ....

"A 3-year-old kid, he can't throw, he can't hurt you no matter what he does, but a kid of 19 can. With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog(a shirt) at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with anymore."....

"They took the Arabs, the commanding officers did, and put them on the bus between the back door and the last seat, put them only between the seats. On their knees. Then they told us: Within two minutes - and this is still just basic training - within two minutes everyone is on the bus. No one steps on the seats ... And everyone started to trample them [the Arabs] and step on them on the run ...
It was a really bad winter. Minus 4 degrees [Centigrade] and rain and hail ... They each went out in the middle of the night ... They weren't given time to dress. Some of them had clogs, short-sleeved shirts ... Everyone opened the windows deliberately. People poured water on them from the canteens, so they would freeze from the cold. And the whole way they were bombarded with blows ... and I mean the whole way.".....

"After two months in Rafah a [new] commanding officer arrived ... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6 A.M., Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers. We all run with him. He grabbed the boy. Nufar, I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock ... The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.".....

"The best thing is, that you“re not obliged to follow any rules. You feel like you are the law. You are the law. You decide. It“s as if the moment you leave Israel and pass through the Erez Checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God." .....

Sumir hugsar kannski aš žessir strķšsglępir voru framdir af venjulegum hermönnum og eru ekki hluti einhverjar įkvešinnar stefnu. En vitiš žiš hvaš "kerfisbundiš ofbeldi" žżšir?
Ķ kerfi eins og ķ hernum eša ķ lögreglu eša hjį fangelsisvöršum, žį fylgja undirmenn yfirmönnum sķnum og vęntingum žeirra, jafnvel žeim sem eru ekki skrifašar beint. Ef žś sem yfirmašur gefur undirmönnum žķnum ótakmarkaš vald yfir varnarlausa fanga, žį leišir žaš nęr alltaf til misbeitingar valds, nema žś setur fangavöršum skżrar reglur um žaš, hvaš mį gera og hvaš mį alls ekki gera, og žś fylgir žessum reglum eftir meš refsingum ef naušsyn žykir.

Hersįlfręšingar Israels vita žaš aušvitaš bara allt of vel. Meš žvķ aš setja engar reglur og refsa hermönnum ekki fyrir ofbeldisverk gagnvart Palestķnumönnum, fylgir herinn ofbeldisstefnu, en hefur samt alltaf afsökun žegar eitthver vošaverk koma upp, aš žau voru bara gerš af einstökum hermönnum mešan herinn sjįlfur er saklaus.

Meš tķmanum leišir žessi stefna til algjörs lögleysisins.
Chris Hedges, fręgur blašamašur og bókahöfundur sem hefur sérhęft sig ķ stjórnmįlasögu Mišausturlanda hefur starfaš fyrir nokkur fręg amerisk blöš og tķmarit eins og Christian Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News og New York Times žar sem hann var ķ 15 įr.
Ķ nżjustu bók sinni "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning", segir hann frį hręšilegum atburšum, sem hann upplifši sjįlfur ķ Gaza į tķma Intifada, er Palestķnumenn rķsu upp gegn ķsraelska hernįmiš įriš 2000.
Hedges watched, ten- and eleven-year-old Palestinian children being lured to their neighborhood's perimeter fence by taunts from a loudspeaker on the Israeli side.
"Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!
The Israeli voice barked insults at the boys' mothers.
The boys responded by hurling their rocks at the jeep with the loudspeaker. The Israelis shot at them with M-16s fitted with silencers. Hedges found the victims in the hospital, children with their stomachs ripped out, and with gaping holes in their limbs.

'i "Harper's Magazine" (see The Nation, March 11, 2002), Hedges skrifaši um atburšin:
" Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered. Death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights in Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Til žess aš koma į raunverulegum friši ķ Mišausturlöndum, verša bęši Gyšingar og vinir žeirra um allan heim aš horfast ķ augu viš raunveruleikann. Fyrir flest fólk af Gyšingaręttum, eins og mamma mķn til dęmis, og fyrir flesta Ķsraelsmenn og vini žeirra, er žaš sįlfręšilega mjög sįrt. Ég veit žaš.

Žaš helsta sem žau geta gert ķ bili, er aš segja aš bįšar žjóšir eru jafn sekar. Og til žess aš žurfa ekki gera sér grein fyrir žvķ hve valdalitlir og varnarlausir Palestķnumenn eru ķ raun og veru, endurtaka vinir Ķsraels fyrir sjalfa sig hinn endanlausa įróšur Ķsraelsmanna, nefnilega aš hiš stóra, "vonda" land Ķran standi meš Palestķnumönnum og gefur žeim vopn. Skrķtiš er bara aš žessar "ķrönsku" eldflaugar skuli ekki draga lengra en aš fyrsta bęnum handan viš landamęrin frį Gaza, Sderot, og hitta sįrasjaldan ķ mark. Éf svo vęri ķ raun aš Ķran hefur gefiš Hamas žessi vopn, hefši ég nś haldiš aš hiš 70 milljón manna olķurķki Ķran ętti nś eitthvaš betra ķ vopnabśri sķnu, til aš "lįna" Palestķnumönnum, eitthvaš sem yfirhöfuš gętu draga örlķtiš lengra eša hitta betur.

Hlutleysi, aš segja bęši ašilar eru sekir og žurfa aš gefa eftir, er gott ķ mörgum tilfellum, en stundum, eins og hér, er hlutleysi žaš sama og mešhjįlp ķ strišsglępum og glępum gegn mannkyni.

Žegar hvķtir menn ķ Sušur Afriku voru aš pynta og drepa svarta ķbśa landsins til žess aš višhalda ašskilnašarstefnu sinni, žį var ekki sagt viš blökkumenn aš žeir yršu fyrst aš hętta uppreisninni og žį skulum viš segja hvķtu mönnunum aš hętta sķnum ofbeldisverkum.
Žaš var ekki sagt viš franskar eša pólskar andspyrnuhreyfingar aš fyrst verši žęr aš hętta uppreisninni og sķšan myndu Žjóšverjar fara śr landi.
Žaš var žżski Kanzlarinn Willie Brandt sem kraup frammi fyrir minnismeki um fórnarlömb žżsku innrįsarinnar og vošaverka ķ Póllandi og bašst svo fyrirgefningar fyrir hönd Žżskalands fyrir strišsglępin og glępiš gegn mannkyniš ķ heimstyrjöldinni sķšari, žaš voru ekki andspyrnumenn sem žurftu aš bišjast fyrirgefningar.

Til žess aš koma į friši og sįlarlękningu verša žeir sem valdameiri eru og hafa misnotaš vald sitt til aš traška į žeim sem minnimįttar eru og pynta žį og drepa, sjįlfir aš įkveša aš hętta žessu og gera sér grein fyrir žvķ aš hafa gert rangt.
Jį, žaš veršur aš fyrirgefa žeim sem hafa brotiš af sér įšur, jafnvel žeim sem drįpu ömmu og afa og börn. En fyrir fyrirgefningu kemur fyrst višurkenning į syndanna, ašeins Kristur sjįlfur gat fyrirgefiš žeim sem voru aš pynta hann mešan žeir voru enn aš žvķ. Viš hin erum öll of mannleg fyrir slķka skilyršislausa fyrirgefningu.

Til aš śtskķra hvernig ķ ósköpinum Israel hefur komist upp meš öll žessu glęparfaraldi į mót nįgranna sinna verša fjölmišlanir horfa ķ eigin barm. Žaš eru žau sem endurtaka ķsraelska įróšurin stundum śr hręšslu en oftast nęr įn žess aš hugsa, "self-censorship" kallar fręgi blašamašur John Pilger žaš.
Ef vestręnu fjölmišlanir halda įfram ķ sama spóra žį munu fjölmišlamenn eitthvaš vakna upp viš žį vondan draum aš engin mun lengur taka mark į žeim og fólkiš mun mun sjį žau sem mešsekir ķ strišsglępum ekki bara ķ Palestķnu heldur um allan heim.

Hérna er vištališ af Alan Hart viš John Pilger um fjölmišlar og mešferš žeirrar į Palestķnumįlinu.

1.hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7FvO7X7HMA&
2.hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B88XpXdBUEw&
3 hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNXXpZSKWEU&

Og hérna er velgerš heimildamyndin "Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land" sem tala lķka um hlutverk fjölmišlar ķ strišsrekstri 'Israels:

1. hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4
2. hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo2HW4T7wK4&
nęstsķšasti hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9EVIHiz8s
sķšasti hlutur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYM_M3hIiNI
mbl.is Gasaborg aš hluta umkringd
Tilkynna um óvišeigandi tengingu viš frétt

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