Israeli tanks advanced briefly into the Gaza Strip following clashes with Palestinians in which two Israeli soldiers died, reports say.

Witnesses in Gaza said tanks and bulldozers moved towards the southern town of Khan Younis before withdrawing.

They also said there had been firing from the Israeli navy along the Gaza coastline.

It is the first time Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since Israel's 22-day offensive there more than a year ago.

Reports say at least two Palestinians have also been killed.

Read more & watch video @ BBC News

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd6SklTzn1A]

On Monday 15th March Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Children of Gaza". It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences.

It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children’s literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal and ongoing siege.

The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from.

For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed.

EDIT - Alternative Source

Something that I noticed over at London Muslim - An aid convoy from Turkey will try to breach the blockade that has been imposed by Israel and Egypt on Gaza by providing material that is blocked under the blockade - hazardous and dangerous things like building materials, medicine, generators and medical equipment. Scary, wooo.

London Muslim calls Turkey the "leader of the Muslim world" and I must agree that it is fast earning that title.

20 Ships to Head for Clash in Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) The Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation announced that a fleet of 20 ships would be sent to break Israel’s embargo on Hamas-run Gaza two months from now. Five of the ships will be under the auspices of IHH; the support of charitable businessmen in Turkey is being sought for funding to purchase them.

IHH was founded in 1992 to provide humanitarian aid to Bosnia, and later extended its reach to “deliver foodstuff, clothes and tents to crisis regions hit by wars, conflicts, and natural disaster to meet urgent needs of victims.”

However, it has now added political intervention to its agenda, vowing that its “aid ships will continue to head for Gaza until Israeli embargo is lifted.”

The cargo ships are to carry “Israeli-embargoed building materials, generators, medication, medical equipment and educational materials.” In addition, passenger ships accompanying the cargo ships are scheduled to carry “journalists, human rights advocates, activists and lawmakers from various countries.”

Read more @ Israel News Network

Israel is the worst country on Earth.
Germany was bad but Israel is badder. Zionists are much more cruel.

What do you say about Israel; tell te truth, share your opinions?

30 December 2009

Israel: A monster beyond control?

By Alan Hart, researcher for ITN and BBC Panorama. (www.alanhart.net)

On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip -- in my view it was a demonstration of Israeli state terrorism at its most naked -- it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians, 53% of whom are children.

What is actually happening in the blockaded Gaza Strip, and less obviously on the occupied West Bank, is the continuation by stealth of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. My friend Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” (meaning honest) historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, would and has put it another way. What we are witnessing is, in his words, “genocide in slow motion.” And that, really, is what the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in.

The question that provokes in my mind is: Why, really, are the major powers (and others) allowing it to happen?

The only answer that makes some sense to me is this. They have concluded, but cannot say, that nuclear-armed Israel, with the assistance of the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations, is a monster beyond control.

In my analysis it’s possible to identify the moment in history when the major powers abandoned any hope they might have had of containing Zionism’s colonial ambitions.

It came, the moment, in the immediate aftermarth of the 1967 war.

Contrary to Zionism’s version of the story, it was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense. As I document in some detail in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Israel’s military and political leaders knew the Arabs were not intending to attack.

That being so, what the major powers ought to have said to Israel (in the diplomatic language of a Security Council Resolution and more explicitly behind closed doors) is something like: “Aggression cannot be rewarded. Aggressors cannot keep territory conquered in war. You are now required to get the hell out of it without laying down conditions for your withdrawal.”

To drive home the point, they could and should have reminded Israel of what President Eisenhower said to the people of America when he demanded Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from Egyptian territory after its collusion with Britain and France in 1956. Eisenhower, the first and the last American president to contain Zionism, said this:

“If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and gaining national advantage… If the UN once admits that international disputes can be settled using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organisation and our best hope for establishing a real world order.”

As it happened, the major powers could not say that to Israel in 1967 because the Johnson administration had colluded with Israel to the extent of giving it the greenlight to smash Eygpt’s armed forces, in the hope that a humiliating defeat for them would lead to the overthrow of President Nasser.

But also true is that President Johnson sought and obtained an assurance that Israel would not take advantage of the war situation to grab Jordanian and Syrian territory. It was because some in the Johnson administration (probably Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) didn’t trust Israel to keep its word that the U.S. spy ship, the Liberty, was stationed off the Israel/Gaza coast to listen to IDF movement orders. And it was because Israeli Defense Minister Dayan didn’t want Johnson to know that he intended to take the West Bank and the Golan Heights that he, Dayan, ordered the attack on the Liberty. (The full story of that attack and Johnson’s cover-up of it is also in my book, in a chapter headed The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”).

Despite that, the major powers, including and led by America, could still have acted firmly to contain Zionism’s colonial ambitions. They could have said to Israel something like: “We can just about live with the fact that you will retain the newly occupied Arab territories as a bargaining chip, to be exchanged for peace with your Arab neighbours, but we will not allow you to settle those territories. Not one building. If you defy us on this matter, the Security Council will authorize enforcement action as necessary to oblige you to comply with international law.”

In what became Security Council Resolution 242, it was the failure of the major powers to read the riot act to Israel on the matter of not settling the newly occupied territories that marks the moment when they, the major powers, became resigned to the fact that the Zionist state, assisted by its awesomely powerful global lobby, was a monster they could not control. (They could slap it on the wrist from time to time but not control it).

The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the Liberty was that there is nothing the Zionist entity might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way. (In my book I explain, on the basis of a conversation with Dayan, the real reason for Israel’s decision to acquire a nuclear arsenal. It was to have the deterrent threat capability of saying to its friends, “Don’t push us further than we are prepared to go or we’ll use these things.”)

So in the full light of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, it’s not surprising that the major powers (and others) are today complicit, more by default than design I say, in Zionism’s crimes.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=210885

Eruption of violence comes as Israelis who opposed the war a year ago say they are being silenced and vilified

sraeli troops yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents, as evidence emerged that an increasingly fragile ceasefire between armed groups loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Israel appeared to be in danger of breaking down.

The shootings, the most serious violence in months, came a day before today's first anniversary of the outbreak of Israel's war against Gaza in which almost 1,400 Palestinians died – and as allegations have emerged from Israeli human rights campaigners who opposed the war that they are facing concerted attempts to silence them.

Read more @ The Guardian

Muslim Hands Winter Walk is Back and taking place on Saturday 5th December 2009!

This year, set in the beautiful Kensington Gardens, in the heart of historic London, we invite you to wrap up warm, bring your family and friends and raise money in our 10 km sponsored walk. We’ll also be joined by Moazzam Begg, who will be supporting the cause and showing that we have not forgotten the continuing plight of victims suffering since the bombing. “Children in Gaza are growing up surrounded by broken buildings and a childhood full of difficult memories of losing parents and loved ones... the Winter Walk is a chance to show that we care for Gaza’s future as much as its past,” he describes.

Last winter, almost 150 walkers took to Hyde Park to raise more than £30,000 in emergency aid for Gaza. Through Muslim Hands, the money raised was used to provide ambulances, intensive care facilities, winter blankets and food parcels for families in Gaza. One year on, we’re looking to run programmes from its new Maternity and Childhood Centre focussing on providing treatment to 2500 children suffering from trauma and anxiety. Children will be provided counselling as well as being given the rare chance to enjoy sports activities, creative workshops and trips to the zoo. These experiences that have otherwise been denied to children in Gaza help treat emotional disorders - which otherwise hinder their education and emotional development, echoing far into their adult lives.

The Winter Walk is open to all. It will take sponsored walkers round the historic Kensington Gardens on a 10 kilometre route, starting from 10:30am. For more details and to register for a sponsorship pack, please visit the Muslim Hands website www.muslimhands.org/winterwalk.

Please direct any queries to afaaf.rajbee@muslimhands.org or call 0203 246 0015