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Top 5 Lies about Israel's Assault on Gaza

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Sunday, 4 January 2009

By Jeremy R. Hammond

Lie #1: Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.

Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.

Other of Israel’s bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.

Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.

Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.

Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.

Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response to the Israeli attacks.

Israel's actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.

Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.

There has been no evidence that Hamas has used human shields. The fact is, as previously noted, Gaza is a small piece of property that is densely populated. Israel engages in indiscriminate warfare such as the assassination of Nizar Rayan, in which members of his family were also murdered. It is victims like his dead children that Israel defines as “human shields” in its propaganda. There is no legitimacy for this interpretation under international law. In circumstances such as these, Hamas is not using human shields, Israel is committing war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other applicable international law.

Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel’s actions because they understand Israel’s justification for its assault.

The populations of those Arab countries are outraged at Israel’s actions and at their own governments for not condemning Israel’s assault and acting to end the violence. Simply stated, the Arab governments do not represent their respective Arab populations. The populations of the Arab nations have staged mass protests in opposition to not only Israel's actions but also the inaction of their own governments and what they view as either complacency or complicity in Israel's crimes.

Moreover, the refusal of Arab nations to take action to come to the aid of the Palestinians is not because they agree with Israel’s actions, but because they are submissive to the will of the US, which fully supports Israel. Egypt, for instance, which refused to open the border to allow Palestinians wounded in the attacks to get medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, is heavily dependent upon US aid, and is being widely criticized within the population of the Arab countries for what is viewed as an absolute betrayal of the Gaza Palestinians.

Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been regarded as a traitor to his own people for blaming Hamas for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Palestinians are also well aware of Abbas' past perceived betrayals in conniving with Israel and the US to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government, culminating in a counter-coup by Hamas in which it expelled Fatah (the military wing of Abbas' Palestine Authority) from the Gaza Strip. While his apparent goal was to weaken Hamas and strengthen his own position, the Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East are so outraged at Abbas that it is unlikely he will be able to govern effectively.

Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.

Israel claims it sent radio and telephone text messages to residents of Gaza warning them to flee from the coming bombardment. But the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. They are trapped within the Gaza Strip. It is by Israeli design that they cannot escape across the border. It is by Israeli design that they have no food, water, or fuel by which to survive. It is by Israeli design that hospitals in Gaza have no electricity and few medical supplies with which to treat the injured and save lives. And Israel has bombed vast areas of Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and other sites with protected status under international law. No place is safe within the Gaza Strip.

-Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online publications. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com.

Sunday, 4 January 2009

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 USER COMMENTS

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ronitc wrote on Sunday, 11 January, 2009 08:08:18
This article indeed is full with biased inaccuarcies and sows a great talent for lies on behalf of the author. The fact that thousands of Israelis live under the fear of Hamas rockets for the last eight years is been ignored. The fact that these attacks has worsen in the last months, more than two years after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip, has been ignored. The fact that Hamas has kidnapped an Israeli soldier two years ago, with no provocation from the Israeli side, has been ignored. And, above all, the simple logic of the blame of Hamas in the Palestinias' tragic situiation is constantly ignored. If Haas ceases fire and takes care of the Palestinian population, there will come prosperity to the Palestinian people.
Jaques wrote on Sunday, 4 January, 2009 11:59:50
Your article on the 5 lies was accurately portrayed and much softer on Israel and the Arabs than I am. Israel wouldn't have the guts to pull this operation with doing an international checkout and having the Arabs onside. Even Iran has gone soft. The Iranian President possibly doesn't want a nuclear conflagration but as well, Israel claims 14 Hebrew tribes are represented in Iran. One wonders about all the talk. Israel attacked Iraq's reactors back in the late '80's for Israel and was rewarded by Iran paying 10 times the value of weapons, planes, materiel and spares for hundreds of millions of dollars in arms. On wonders again about all the talk.

An Australian government back in the late 80's when plans such as the invasion of Iraq, the shift into a new world order assassination mode for the USA ultimately through Reagan and the requirement of governments to "privatise" taxpayer funded assets. The South Australian Government was complicit in Israel's international crimes was complicit in these illegal transactions as well and Missiles were being carried illegally and unknown to most of its citizens out of Australia on domestic flights.

Israel's aggression and covert actions are usually well done and it is well known by those who bother to find out anything outside the endless tapes of Israeli propaganda, an assassination machine with no conscience whatsoever. Germany, supporting Israel's war crimes right now has forgotten Israel assassinated three of its politicians, one most horribly and very personally by 5 Mossad killers, one a woman and videotaped the appalling operation, simply because these people were "in the way" of Israeli crimes in Germany

People are comparing this year, Israel with Nazi Germany, that's closer than they think as Israel more accurately termed " the Kingdom of Zion" was founded through very close and amicable cooperation between German Zionists and Hitler.

A lot of organising was very well done, a lot of money changed hands and a lot of money flowed in to the jewish sector of Palestine through German assistance

Now well-renowned for its treachery and inhumanity Israel also educated Bush's people on the torturing of New world Order victims.

"New Order was a term used by Stern when referring to the "Old Order" of jews, who were not wanting to leave Germany in the 1930's which he didn't give a tinker's cuss about and he said so, and so they died. These people didn’t “taje advantage” of the possibilities of leaving, and they were jewss attached to their country, not Zionists seeking control of Palestine. Along with other “undesirables” who preceded them They were sacrificed, an holocaust was offered for the new world order to flourish

One of the reasons WW11 was commenced was because of Hitler's fury with jewish business which had declared economic war on Germany, a blockade, whilst he was even negotiating transfers to Palestine with the Zionist. He spoke of his opinion of the control of “International Jewry” but until recently evidence of the blockade and the effect on Germany was well hidden other than from some investigative scientists. This and the Zoionist-Nazi alliance are tow of the most shocking secrets hidden from us for so long.

Zionists are not "Jews" but a fanatical political force brought into being very much by de Rothschild's plans in the 18th century for world domination by Bankers and financiers. A hundred million people might have lived were it not for that Jewish blockade. A lot of things may have happened if Hitler was not tipped over the edge.

Much later when some 100,000 or so zionists had left for Palestine the old order jews were dying on the street and in camps as was well known to the Allies and USA by late 1942. As later post war the Palestinians were desperate about the massive illegal zionist immigration . They had no illusions about the future but they never anticipated the terrorist invasion and massacres which commenced in June 1947 and erupted into mass murder and displacement and land grabs in 1948.

Stern the jewish terrorist was organizing, during those WW11 times, a Zionist complicity with the Nazis to attack Britain in the Middle East. British politicians generally supported the Balfour concept of giving away someone else's land to a zionist state and so the zionists were playing both ends. Once you understand the relationship between the Nazis and the Zionists this seems quite natural.

Here we are now, right now, with unspeakable crimes against humanity having been exercised in Iraq by Bush’s orders on Israel's bidding (as revealed and predicted by Ari ben Menashe Profits of War, 1991) finding that the Israeli lies, some few of which you mention, are being spouted around the world by Washington and its unwholesome government allies, Britain and Australia in particular and Europe under France and German and Polish and Chek conspiracy to disseminate the Israeli lies, which like Bush's have plenty of rebuttal.

They don't care any more about blatant lies and public mass murder...we are all under control, we talk and we do nothing. Those who have the courage of their convictions are labeled traitors and terrorists and imprisoned and tortured. Great democracy under Washington, isn't it...? That’s the sort of government under which our children will suffer.

Interestingly the strongest objection has come from el Salvador's ex-priest in the UN and the Malaysian Prime Minister and some African States. Most of the rest are mumbling Zionist lies.

By and large apart from Israel's bully boys standing over and terrorising the “Destiny”, in International waters where Israel has no more rights than a fisherman, from some brave aid workers attempting to bring supplies to Gaza nothing is happening. Some Zionist supporters are writing of these people being better drowned and even pretending they were importing weapons. In any event it was no right for Israel to start bullying them.

Disgustingly people are talking of "cease fires" as though the Palestinians were engaging the zionist forces rather than firing some rockets at cities which zion has destroyed and rebuilt....with virtually no casualties. The arriving of the little aid vessel would have stolen Israel's thunder in Israel’s theatrical " aid for humanity" performance.

Nothing to save them is happening as Palestinians are murdered, children and mothers splattered by guided rockets and killed by snipers. The Kingdom of Zion is a law unto itself. It ignores every order of the UN and has done so since inception. No one apart from real people gives a damn. Bigotry is at an all time high as foul and ignorant letters to the Jerusalem Post and other bigotry welcoming news services, show.

By holding Gaza in terror rather than occupying it totally it can more slowly exterminate them and by deliberately targeting the women and children, which several killings show it surely does do, encourage Palestinians to 'transfer" elsewhere and seemingly abandon Gaza to the "good old" boys in the Kingdom of Zion.

These crafty Zionist manipulators are not acting alone but are a part of the mosaic of the new world order's four branches, Finance Control, Deception, Assassination.

Yes they are all liars, yes the Israeli's broke the cease fire agreement, yes the attack has been planned for a long time, they say 6 months, I say 20 years ago, just brought up to date earlier in the year to meet the circumstances.

The people being turned into headless, limbless corpses and lamed and maddened pieces of humanity are suffering because their elected government is defending them with virtually no weaponry and certainly nothing of value to resist zion's start of the art technology supplied free by Washington..

Israel continues its interminable lies, Bush and his storm-troopers echo them .They are all a part of the same "new order" and while I sit and write people, subject to all sorts of vile insults about their courage and "hiding behind children" are being blown to pieces by a massively overwhelming force which was too gutless to attack the starving, under-armed HAMAS until 5 days of "softening up" and shock were performed.

It's easy to be a killer with International impunity isn't it...and with the victims derided by international conspirators with Israel and without hospitals schools, police, sewage, water and with few safe places to hide. Now zion can go in and pretend the dead men women and children were not killed in air strikes but attacking the "good guys". We are all to blame for letting Israel get this far without blockading it and forcing it back to the 1946 boundaries

I have no respect at all anymore, not a shred, for the Kingdom of Zion and it's liars and its IDF. I have none for George Bush either or Brown or Rudd or the other gutless politicians, fawning and fore-lock tugging to the Zionists and Washington. I have to say that whilst I hope no one dies on either side in my heart I hope Hamas kicks their backsides right back to Tel Aviv. As far as I am concerned the international war crimes Tribunal should be trying Bush’s gang and Israel’s killers right now.

Palestine is the Victim, Palestine was attacked many times in the land grabs since 1947. That’s the short story of the reality . The only story holding truth. The Kingdom of Zion is determined to control what it calls, ridiculously . “our lands”. which it hasn’t “owned” for more than 660 years of the last 5000, 10,000 years.
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