Read Amira Hass's report from Gaza
Amira Hass in perhaps the world's finest, living journalist. Her report from Gaza, published in today's Haaretz is a must read. Here are some excerpts:
There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue. Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent.(...) Dr. Haidar Eid is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University. He, too, saw the bodies and the wounded on Saturday. Also the children whose limbs had been amputated. "To pick a time like this, 11:30 [A.M.], to bomb in the hearts of cities, this is terrible. This choice was intended to cause as large a massacre as possible," he summed up.(...) From 11:25 until 11:30, as some 50 warplanes bombed their targets, hundreds of thousands of children were in the streets. Some were coming from the first shift of classes, others were going to the second. "In the schoolyard I saw 500 frightened girls, crying. They did not know me, but clung to me," Abu Muhammad related.(...) "There's been no electricity, nor gas, nor flour or bread nearly all of the past week," Umm Salah said. "And suddenly the electricity came back. I turned on the television, I saw the images, I turned it off and sent the kids to do their homework."
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David.
Can you elaborate on this ie the Spanish position?:
"Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos urged Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to halt the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Moratinos asked Livni to find a diplomatic solution to the situation and denounced Israel's "disproportionate" response to Hamas' aggression. (AFP)"
I'm getting the impression that the Europeans are not as reticent about condeming Israeli actions as they were during the Israeli '06 war on Lebanon. Considering the massive PR push by Livni other Israelis, and the US media, this state of affairs could be encouraging.
We can only hope that American weakness abroad is translating into eroding "support" for Israeli/US-sanctioned warmongering.
December 28, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only the Spanish hard right is pro-Israeli. Western Europeans in general are not either.
December 29, 2008 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
yes, it is a tragedy when innocent children are killed for any reason. and it is a cliche to show them in an attempt to make a political argument.
since you did use them, tho, I would like to ask on whose hands is their blood?
here's a quote from the Jerusalem Post today:
according to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas could have "prevented the massacre....We spoke to them and told them ‘Please, we ask you not to end the cease-fire. Let it continue,’” Abbas said during a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. “We want to protect the Gaza Strip. We don’t want it to be destroyed.” Aboul Gheit also attacked Hamas, saying the group had prevented people wounded in the Israeli offensive from passing into Egypt to receive medical attention. “
Hamas is not the romantic freedom-fighting Robin Hoods of the Middle East. it is a terrorist organization that does not mind in the least slaughtering innocents, especially if they are Jews.
Hamas is responsible for this action in Gaza, make no mistake.
do you think Israelis want to kill innocent children? of course not. all they want is to be left in peace to live in their land. that's what you and I want too. and that's what the Palestinians could have had years ago if they had been willing to accept Israel and work together to co-exist.
December 28, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I would like to ask on whose hands is their blood?"
Israel's mainly, and to a lesser extent Hamas. When Hamas kills innocent people just switch the terms "Israel" and "Hamas". That's simple enough.
And Israel does target innocent people at times--they did it in Lebanon in 2006 and many times before and they did it with their blockade of Gaza, which has caused great hardship. If that's an acceptable tactic to you then perhaps we should impose sanctions of an extremely harsh variety on Israel until they pull out of the West Bank settlements and stop treating the Palestinians like animals. I don't suggest doing this, but that's because I don't like hitting innocent people, because I'm not comfortable using the sorts of rationalizations you use to justify Israeli war crimes.
December 28, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"And if we're not left in peace we will fucking KILL your children! Um... but we don't want to though."
This is the thinking that leads to the insanity we're witnessing today.
Thanks gretz, you're a real humanitarian.
December 29, 2008 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are no white hats in this fight. And there will never be a military solution. We can only hope that sanity can prevail at some point, and do all we can to be instruments of peace despite such long odds against us. There is simply no other alternative.
Thanks for this David. I will be looking for more from Hass.
December 28, 2008 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink