The Egyptian Women

Here we will continue with our last part of that article,talking about Egyptian women in the Pharoh's era

From Warrior Women to Female Pharaohs: Careers for Women in Ancient Egypt (5)
By Dr Joann Fletcher

Careers

In fact, other than housewife and mother, the most common 'career' for women was the priesthood, serving male and female deities. The title, 'God's Wife', held by royal women, also brought with it tremendous political power second only to the king, for whom they could even deputise. The royal cult also had its female priestesses, with women acting alongside men in jubilee ceremonies and, as well as earning their livings as professional mourners, they occasionally functioned as funerary priests.
Their ability to undertake certain tasks would be even further enhanced if they could read and write but, with less than 2% of ancient Egyptian society known to be literate, the percentage of women with these skills would be even smaller. Although it is often stated that there is no evidence for any women being able to read or write, some are shown reading documents. Literacy would also be necessary for them to undertake duties which at times included prime minister, overseer, steward and even doctor, with the lady Peseshet predating Elizabeth Garret Anderson by some 4,000 years.
'By Graeco-Roman times women's literacy is relatively common...'
By Graeco-Roman times women's literacy is relatively common, the mummy of the young woman Hermione inscribed with her profession 'teacher of Greek grammar'. A brilliant linguist herself, Cleopatra VII endowed the Great Library at Alexandria, the intellectual capital of the ancient world where female lecturers are known to have participated alongside their male colleagues. Yet an equality which had existed for millennia was ended by Christianity - the philosopher Hypatia was brutally murdered by monks in 415 AD as a graphic demonstration of their beliefs.
With the concept that 'a woman's place is in the home' remaining largely unquestioned for the next 1,500 years, the relative freedom of ancient Egyptian women was forgotten. Yet these active, independent individuals had enjoyed a legal equality with men that their sisters in the modern world did not manage until the 20th century, and a financial equality that many have yet to achieve.

Now we've finished this,we will try to talk about Egyptian women through the history and in our modern world

Now What?!

Actually,i don't know !
Are things going to be better ?!
Again,i don't know,but i doubt it !
Not for only the Palestinians,but for the whole area !
The area is on fire as you may see,and add this too
US has a very great existance here 'military one',add to this,the EU as in UK,France and German,offered to send their ships 'frigate or something' to the region,and so is Russia which is already there !
From reading the history,our history 'which we will talk about inşallah' and the world's history ...
Thats not good...not good at ALL !

Ps: Again ...
Apology needed !
This took time than it was expected ''i thought the world really care for that humanitarian stuff!'' but i didnt find it in my heart to do otherwise
And dedicate all that past time to war on Gaza and Palestinian people!
We still will not forget of course ,as they said,its over when its over !
But at least now we can talk about different things,and not feeling bad about it !

Views On Gaza Ceasefire.

Eyal, legal worker, W Jerusalem
I am very upset because I think that we didn't achieve our goals. We should have finished Hamas and ended their attacks. I'm sure the rockets won't stop.
I'm sure Hamas is damaged, but I don't think it's as damaged as Olmert wants it to look like.
It's a political season and he has to show that he succeeded more than in Lebanon.

Rachel, W Jerusalem
It sounds pretty good. We're not withdrawing, which means the army can still react if they continue attacking Israel.
I don't think Hamas have been damaged enough. But at least our government are reacting – for eight years they haven't been reacting at all.
With Hamas I don't think it's that easy to have a deal, but Olmert tried his best.

Leon, retired, W Jerusalem
I feel elated. I am anxious to see a peaceful solution after so many years of hatred.
The ceasefire was right. There was tremendous pressure Israel to end the conflict because of all the casualties, and we want to show the world we are willing to take risks for a peaceful solution.
Only time will tell if the other side will compromise.

Erez, lawyer, W Jerusalem
I think the ceasefire came a bit early. I don't think this operation will achieve its goals.
A one-sided ceasefire will not be recognised by Hamas.
Hamas has not been damaged. They didn't fight. They just showed themselves as civilians, but most of them are terrorists. Once Israel leaves they will go out with their weapons again.

Then opinions of people whose land been taken,been into siege then finally were being killed !

Raafat, shop worker, Ramallah I am so happy because in the end we won. Their plan was to destroy Gaza and destroy the fighters, but we won. Hamas has not been damaged. It is not like if they destroy the regime they destroy Hamas – Hamas is part of the Palestinian people. They damaged the schools, the mosques, the homes. If they think this is a win, then OK, they won.

Saeda, student, E Jerusalem
They had to stop the war in Gaza. They were killing boys and girls without reason.
Sure Israel is stronger, but it's our land and Hamas must defend it.
I hope there will be peace. But I think the Israelis will continue to kill children. Israeli soldiers are killers and don't like Palestinian people.
I don't know if Hamas will stop fighting.

Imad, shop owner, E Jerusalem
When I heard yesterday I was happy, because that's enough killing people.
I think the Israelis went out with a victory, they said they achieved their goals.
Hamas came out from this war less than they were before, they have a lot of work to do to recover, to rebuild the Gaza Strip, but we can't say they destroyed Hamas.

Nayef, shoe seller, Ramallah
Definitely Israel didn't mean the ceasefire as it seems, there is something behind it.
This is just Israeli propaganda, not stopping the war on Gaza.
They didn't finish the resistance or Hamas. It's still going and it will not be defeated.

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/middle_east_views_on_gaza_ceasefire/html/5.stm

'Tungsten bombs'! ..War Crime ?

'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds
As it declares a unilateral ceasefire, Jerusalem faces a UN call for a war crimes investigation
By Raymond WhitakerSunday, 18 January 2009

Israel was facing demands for war crimes investigations as it declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza last night after a 22-day assault in which more than 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children, were killed and 13 Israelis died.
Two children were killed yesterday when Israeli tanks shelled a UN school in which families were sheltering, leading a UN spokesman, Chris Gunness, to say: "There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed." The call was dismissed by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, who said: "These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence." But among numerous allegations of disproportionate use of force, questions are also multiplying about the use of unconventional weapons by Israel, including a new type of bomb that causes injuries that doctors have not seen before, and which they find impossible to treat.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, claimed in a televised address last night that the military operation had "fully attained" its goals, "and beyond". Israel had declared the ceasefire in response to an appeal from the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, but troops would remain for now in Gaza, and Hamas would be "surprised again" if it attacked.
But even though Mr Olmert said Hamas had been "beaten badly", rockets landed in Israel a few minutes before he spoke. Despite the desperate state of Gaza's population, Hamas leaders said they would continue to fight for an end to Israel's closure of crossing points into the territory and a withdrawal of the Israeli forces.
Mr Mubarak invited the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh today. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said he might attend, and Gordon Brown is among other leaders due to take part.
Although Mr Olmert's announcement was only a first step towards halting the conflict in Gaza, the UN is not the only international body insisting that inquiries must be held as soon as possible into the tactics and weapons used by Israel. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza's hospitals during the conflict, said that Israel was using so-called Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space. The bombs are packed with tungsten powder, which has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it difficult to discover the cause of injuries.
Dr Fosse said he had seen a number of patients with extensive injuries to their lower bodies. "It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wounds," he said. "Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before." However, the injuries matched photographs and descriptions in medical literature of the effects of Dime bombs.
"All the patients I saw had been hit by bombs fired from unmanned drones," said Dr Fosse, head of the Norwegian Aid Committee. "The bomb hit the ground near them and exploded." His colleague, Mads Gilbert, accused Israel of using the territory as a testing ground for a new, "extremely nasty" type of explosive. "This is a new generation of small explosive that detonates with extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres," he said.
According to military databases, Dime bombs are intended for use where conventional weapons might kill or injure bystanders – to kill combatants in a house, for example, without harming people next door. Instead of being made from metal, which sprays shrapnel across a wide area, the casing is carbon fibre. Part of the motive for developing the bombs was to replace the use of depleted uranium, but Dr Fosse said the cancer risk from tungsten powde was well known. "These patients should be followed up to see if there are any carcinogenic effects," he said.
While the loudest controversy has been over accusations that white phosphorus was illegally used, other foreign doctors working in Gaza have reported injuries they cannot explain. Professor Mohammed Sayed Khalifa, a cardiac consultant from Sudan, said that two of his patients had had uncontrollable bleeding. "One had a chest operation, and continued bleeding even after having been given large quantities of plasma," he said. "The other had what seemed to be a minor leg injury, but collapsed with profuse bleeding. Something was interfering with the clotting process. I have never seen such a thing before."
Dr Ahmed Almi, an Egyptian cardio-thoracic consultant at al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said he had seen a number of patients with inexplicable injuries. A boy of 14 had a small puncture wound in his head, but extensive damage to his brain, making it impossible to save his life. "I don't know the nature or type of these weapons that make a very small [entry wound] and go on and make massive destruction in the tissues," he said.
Israeli military representatives have refused to confirm or deny using specific weapons, but insist that all Israel's weapons comply with international law. Neither white phosphorus nor Dime bombs are illegal, but campaigners say the way they have been used, especially in Gaza's densely packed urban areas, could constitute a war crime.

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/tungsten-bombs-leave-israels-victims-with-mystery-wounds-1418910.html

More Readings:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911916132228885.html

Ps:İ didn't publish pictures,they are awful,and you can see sample in the original article above
My heart just can't take anymore !

Shaky Truce İn Gaza .

Actually as long as there is an army on their land,that is what it will be
Shaky !

Shaky truce holds in Gaza Strip

Palestinians have been venturing out to survey the devastation of Israel's war on Gaza as separate ceasefires called by Israel and the Palestinian fighters appeared to be holding.Israeli troops and tanks were on the move on Monday, heading away from some key points in Gaza towards the border, but it remained unclear whether they would withdraw completely for the Palestinian territory.
Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips, reporting from the Israel-Gaza border, said Israeli military sources were saying that it was largely reservists who were leaving Gaza.
"Regular troops, by and large, are holding their positions and will remain alert, they will remain poised, to deal with any violation, as Israel sees it, of the Israeli ceasefire," he said.
"Given that the Israelis were always very unforthcoming about exactly how many troops were in Gaza at the height of the fighting, it is difficult for us to say how quickly they will leave." Israeli army radio quoted unnamed military officials as saying that troops would pull out of Gaza by the time Barack Obama, the US president-elect, takes office on Tuesday.

'Hamas victory'
Hamas and other Palestinian factions have claimed victory in the 23-day conflict

Israel had said the aim of its operations in Gaza was to cripple Hamas's ability to launch rockets into the south of the country.
However, in a televised news conference on Monday, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, claimed their rocket-launching capacity had not been diminished, and threatened to renew fighting if Israeli forces did not withdraw.
"They [Israel] say they weakened Hamas. We assure you that what we have lost in this war is nothing compared to what we [still] have," the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades spokesman said. The Israeli military said three rockets had landed in southern Israel since the Hamas-led truce announcement on Sunday.
Abu Obeida claimed only 48 Hamas fighters were among the 1,300 Palestinians killed in Israel's more than three-week assault. The Israeli military had claimed the figure was closer to 500.
He also reasserted that two Israeli soldiers had been captured early on in the fight, a claim which Israel denies.

Counting the cost
But the full price of the "victory" was only beginning to be revealed, as thousands of Gazans made their way back to previously inaccessible areas to find their homes and neighbourhoods devastated

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, in Gaza City, reported sewage on the streets as Gazans sifted through rubble of what was previously their homes to recover bodies and salvage whatever they could.
"The WHO [World Health Organisation] has been warning people that with the bodies now several weeks old ... [and] sewage flowing over many of the areas because of the destruction that happened to the infrastructure, it is ripe for an outbreak of epidemics," he said.
Scores of bodies have been discovered in the rubble of destroyed buildings since the fighting ended."We have pulled out the bodies of 15 children and women from under their house," Abed Sharafi, an ambulance driver, said in the early hours of Monday.
"They were so badly decomposed that we couldn't distinguish boys from girls. Some had been there for 15 days."

Homes destroyed

Bulldozers cleared tonnes of rubble from the streets, while the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics estimated that more than 22,000 building have been damaged or destroyed.

"We don't have homes anymore. I don't have anything anymore," Najette Manah said as she searched the wreckage of her home in Beit Lahiya.Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was preparing to visit the Gaza Strip amid the lull in violence, Israeli officials said."Ban is planning to begin his trip in Jerusalem and from there he will visit several UN sites in Gaza," Yossi Levy, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, told the AFP news agency.
Israel announced late on Saturday that it was unilaterally ending its offensive in Gaza.
Following that news, Hamas and several allied Palestinian factions announced on Sunday a conditional, one-week truce.
"We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods," Mousa Abu Marzuk, the deputy leader of Hamas's political bureau, said.
Besides Hamas, the Palestinian factions joining the ceasefire included Islamic Jihad, al-Nidal, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and al-Saeqa.

Source:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911915726719317.html

Jewish Voice For Peace !

İ just came through this today,and it actually cooled my heart a bit in those flammable events we have and watch everyday
Then,there is hope
Other people,specially fresh,and young generation fighting for the rights of others to live in peace
Refusing to be part of a killing machine aiming to civilians,women,children!
At their young age,they said NO !

Hats Off for them !

FREE THE SHMINISTIM – ISRAEL'S YOUNG CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. The Shministim are Israeli high school students who have been imprisoned for refusing to serve in an army that occupies the Palestinian Territories. December 18 marks the launch date of a global campaign to release them from jail. Join over 20,000 people including American conscientious objectors,Ronnie Gilbert, Adrienne Rich, Robert Meeropol, Adam Hochschild, Rabbi Lynn Gottleib, Howard Zinn, Rela Mazali, Debra Chasnoff, Ed Asner and Aurora Levins-Morales and show your support by contacting the Israeli Minister of Defense using the form below. 40,000 LETTERS AND COUNTING!


http://december18th.org/





March. 27 2005 250 Israeli high school students declare refusal to serve


A new declaration of refusal by "shministim" - students of the 11th and 12th grades of Israeli high schools - addressed to prime minister Ariel Sharon, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon and Education Minister Limor Livnat, has already collected 250 signatures of youngsters facing their term of compulsory military service.

The first members of the group are due to report at the IDF induction in the coming days, and the refusenik community is awaiting to see how the army treats them.

The text runs:

"We, boys and girls, citizens of Israel, who believe in the values of democracy, humanism and pluralism, hereby declare that we will refuse to take part in the policy of occupation and repression for which the Israeli government has opted. We come from a variety of backgrounds, but all are agreed that the following values are the basis of a just society. Every person is entitled to basic rights: the right to life, equality, dignity and freedom. It is our conscientious and civic duty to act in defence of these rights by refusing to take part in the policy of occupation and repression.

The occupation entails forfeiting human dignity and massive loss of human life. It affects the basic rights of millions of persons and causes daily killing and suffering. It leads to land confiscation, mass demolition of homes, arrests and extra-legal executions, ill- treatment and the murder of innocents, hunger, deprivation of medical care, collective punishment, construction and expansion of Jewish settlements and prevents any possibility of a normal life in the occupied territories and in Israel. This flagrant deprival of human rights runs counter to our entire philosophy, as well as international conventions which Israel has signed and confirmed.

The occupation does not contribute to the security of the state and its citizens, it merely harms them. It exacerbates despair and hatred among the Palestinian people, sustains terrorism and expands the cycle of violence. True security will be achieved only by ending the occupation, dismantling the Apartheid wall and working for a just peace agreement between the state of the Israel and the leadership of the Palestinian people and the Arab world overall. The present policy does not stem from defence needs, rather, from a nationalist and messianic world view.

The occupation corrupts Israeli society, rendering it militarist, racist, chauvinist and violent. Israel is wasting its resources on perpetuating the occupation and repression in the occupied territories, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens live in shameful poverty. The state's citizens have experienced a decline of all public systems in recent years. Education, health care, infrastructure, pensions, social benefits and everything to do with the welfare of Israel's citizens - are neglected in favour of supporting settlements that a majority wants to see dismantled. We cannot stand by in view of this situation, which constitutes the "focussed liquidation" of the principle of equality.

We want to see the society in which we live pursuing justice, upholding equality for every person and citizen. The policy of occupation and repression is an obstacle to realisation of that vision, and we shall refuse to take part therein. We wish to contribute to society in an alternative way, which does not involve harm to human beings.

We call upon all young people awaiting induction, and all the soldiers of the Israeli army, to reconsider whether to risk their lives in taking part in the policy of repression and destruction.

We believe there is a different way."

Peretz Kidron

Yesh Gvul

Shministim Highschool Seniors Refuseniks
Shministim - Israeli Youth Refusal Movement

12-th Graders' Letter ('michtav shministim')
http://www.shministim.org/

In:http://www.btinternet.com/~musicweaver/shministim_links.htm
New Shministim Letter - February 12, 2005
http://www.nimn.org/Perspectives/israeli_voices/000442.php
Yesh Gvul ("There is a limit !") is an Israeli peace group that has shouldered the task of supporting soldiers who refuse assignments of an immoral or illegal nature. http://www.yeshgvul.org/

Source:
http://www.jerusalemites.org/articles/english/march2005/27.htm





Hats Off !


Seems there is hope after all !





More :


http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

! فلسطين Filistin ! Palestine !

Gazza..! Gaza...!
! فلسطين Filistin ! Palestine !
The Dignity Boat
فلسطين Filistin 'Palestine' -Egyptian history
Gazza Under Fire!
To Be A Child İn Gazza!
عار ! Ar ! Shame !
Where To Go?!
How Can You Be İn Silence?!
War Against Civilan Palestinians - Dr. Mads Gilbert, Gaza
UNRWA -Red Cross

Delwa'aty,O'af We Fakkar ! Now Stop And Think About it.

Now try to stop for a while and think about it!
We here have tried to give some of the historical background of that tragedy.
İt's actually plain history,and recent one too,so none can deny it,but they can represent it differently,or let's say,in a way that makes the victim become the butcher in the eyes of people who don't know the truth,or the history!
Now I'm afraid you can't say you didn't know!

OK,imagine yourself sitting peacefully in your own home,a regular peaceful person,so you don't have any sort of weapons in your home,except maybe for some knives you use them in your own kitchen!
Your home is nice,has a very rich soil,and also in a very good district,but as you are a peaceful person,and also a poor one,so you don't use the source that you have well
You just live your day!
One day,a far away neighbour came to your home,first he said he would help you to become in better position,to use your sources well
But of course he was using them for his own benefits.
You didn't like it,you started to demand him to leave your home,he said he will,but he didn't
You started to use force...you have tried to push him out,but he had a gun !
You still kept fighting ,sometimes pushing him and you get wounded
Sometimes you just yell and shout,sometimes your kids go and disturb him and run away!
Suddenly,you have found him brought some men back home...armed men
One today,then another the second day,third...!
You didn't understand...You went to him and asked who are they?!
He said they are some relative staying with me
You said,but it is my house,and i don't want anyone here including you !
He said,but they want a house,they don't have one !
You said...But İT İS MY HOUSE !
They can go and find themselves another house...buy one,anything...just not mine !
While you are arguing,your wife came screaming...come..come they took over our bedroom !
You went there,angry,wanted to kick them off,but they shot you on the arm,and they said,we will take this room !
You said with weak voice,but it is ours !
They said not anymore !
You said,how about our things,our clothes,they are there,it is ours ?!
They said,we will take them too,it will belong to one of us and his wife !
Wife ! You said .
You went that neighbour of yours,asked him what is going on,what wife
Who are those people,and what are they doing in my house?!!
He said,i told you,they want a house,and they don't have one,so they will live here with you,that's why they are bringing their families too !
FAMİLİES ?!!!
İt is MY HOUSE !
What are you talking about ?!!!
On that time,your kids,young ones and old ones were trying to kick those people out
Keeping their mother and sisters in one room so no one would harm them,and took the knives,sticks,or anything they can get,and try to fight those people back,kick them and their families out.
But what would knives and sticks do in front of guns and machine guns ?!!
Some of your boys got wounded,some got killed,some run away from the house scared,some got kicked out,but they stayed on the terrace,and some run back to their mother and sisters to protect them,and defending the rest of the house!
Your far neighbour said...ok..ok that's enough !
Now you two will share the house
Half is yours,and half belong to that man and his family.
You didn't like it of course...you said...but it is MY HOUSE !
By what right,by what law you give what it doesn't belong to you to other people?!
İt belongs to ME..not to you !
The other man ,the armed one,of course accepted it,and said i agree we both live together!
And they brought more of them to your home
You are going NUTS of course
Your neighbour go out,and say loudly so other neighbours hear,look here people,this house belong to those two,they will share it,and will live together
You close neighbours who know you,said it is not fair,it belong to this man,not to the armed one
Other neighbors,and also the police who has good relation with your far neighbour and the armed men said OK..and i also agree,and let's sign papers say this !
Arghhhhhhhhhh!
You are losing your mind !
They are stealing me !
You said NO!
İ will fight you back....
And you do,again with knives and sticks,and this time you had some help from your poor neighbours out there
The well armed one of them had gun where men in your house have machine guns
You kept fighting for a while,but it ended up that you lost,and armed men almost took over the whole house,and kicked you all in one room,and some of your boys still on that terrace !
More over,they took the yards too,back and front yards
They try to use even rocks to come back home,but armed men reply with gun shootings.
Time pass,and your boys on the terrace manage to get some weapons...some guns!
Guns yes, at least it's better than knives and sticks!
But armed men also have better machine guns,rockets and many other weapons,they got them from some far neighbours,but strong,rich ones who still have their eyes on that area!
Your boys lived out there,even it's cold,no good food,but still,it's their home !
They got married there,have children also there...and they kept trying to get their home back !
You went to the armed men,told them OK,let's have peace
İ accept that we share the house,and allow my boys back home
Armed men said no,your boys won't come back,we need more area,so half of the house is not enough
But we agree that we have peace
You keep living in that room ,you and your family there,and you don't demand that the rest of your family to come back
And your boys out there and their families stop throwing rocks at us,and keep living there
And we promise we won't attack them..
OK?
We have peace ?!
Of course you refused,and your kids out there also refused,they have home,and want to be back home,raise their children there
So they kept fighting.
Sometimes by throwing some rocks and other times by trying to fire at the armed men .
The armed men got annoyed from your boys shooting at them and throwing rocks
So they decided to go and wipe them off
They don't want them out there...they can go to other neighbours,do anything...just leave
Sounds of rocks on the glasses annoying them
Of course window's glass is bullet proof,but the sound is annoying and maybe sometimes it got scratched!
So,it's deal,the decision is taken,they will attack the boys,and kick them no matter how many of them they kill or injured,no matter if they kill them,their kids,their wives!
They just don't want them out!
They kept fighting them,killing kids,women,and when neighbours cry..STOP!
The armed men say, we defend ourselves..
When you cry STOP...!
Asking your old neighbour to do something...to anyone to do anything
The rich,strong powerful neighbour says....İt is the armed men right to defend themselves,and their house !
Their House ?!
GOD,have mercy...you cry with tears.

You...is the Palestinians
Your boys,are Hamas and the rest of the resistance
Your far away neighbour is Great Britain
Your powerful strong neighbour is US
Armed men are israel
Your poor neighbours are rest of ME

Now their numbers are 1000 died,and almost 4800 injured

İsn't about time to have peace in that house ?!
Just a small question...
Would you and your boys considered to be terrorists ?

More Than 1000...Not Enough ?!

Gaza death toll passes 1,000

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel's 19-day war in Gaza, Palestinian medical officials have said, as clashes continue throughout the Strip.
Civilians make up about 40 per cent of casualities with children accounting for a third of the dead, aid agencies and Palestinian medics said.
About 1,017 people have been killed and at least 4,750 people injured, Hasanein Myawaya, the head of Palestinian emergency services, said.
Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, said while fewer Palestinians had been killed on Wednesday than during previous days, the situation for Gazans remained one of "complete fear and terror".
"For those who venture out [for food] ... they know that anytime they leave their house it could be the last time.
"More than 80,000 Palestinians have now fled their homes because of the fighting around them ... there is a sense of overcrowding ... UN schools have taken in 35,000 refugees.
'Desperation and fear'
"There is real desperation and fear among the people," he said.
Mohyeldin also said that the so-called "humanitarian corridor" - the Israeli three-hour daily lull in fighting to allow food and medical supplies into Gaza - is "simply not producing a cessation of hostilities".

Shelling could still be heard in parts of Gaza City during the three-hour armistice, he reported.
Mads Gilbert, a surgeon with the Norwegian Aid Committee, told Al Jazeera: "This is a man-made situation that affects mainly the civilian population of Gaza who are without protection."
Thirteen Israelis have been killed in the conflict, including three civilians and 10 soldiers.
Alan Fisher, reporting for Al Jazeera from Israel close to the Gaza border, said around 15 rockets had been fired from the Strip into Israeli territory.
As the death toll continued to rise, diplomatic efforts to bring about a ceasefire appeared to make little progress.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, arrived in Cairo earlier on Wednesday in a bid to kick-start ceasefire negotiations between Hamas - the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip - and Israel.
Ban met Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, on arrival and is expected to hold talks with the leaders of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey.
The UN chief has not said whether he will have direct contact with Hamas leaders.
Ban has repeatedly called for both sides to immediately end hostilities, so far to no avail.
Diplomacy doomed?
Robert Fisk, a journalist and Middle East expert, said neither the current Gaza war nor the broader 60-year regional conflict would end without resolving the Palestinian issue.

"Why are they [Palestinians] dispossessed? Why are settlements - colonies for Jews and Jews only - being built on Arab land illegally? And still it continues," he told Al Jazeera.
"Unless we deal with this [Palestinian refugees], there will not be an end to this war. There might be a ceasefire in Gaza, a ceasefire in the West Bank, but there will not be an end to the war. That is the problem."
Earlier this week, the United Nations Security Council agreed a binding resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Strip.
However, both Israel and Hamas have ignored it and continued fighting.
Fisk said that Israel will be able to flout the UN ceasefire demand as long as the US - the only country to abstain from the 15-member security council vote on the resolution - continues to back Israel.
"It's quite clear from Hillary Clinton [incoming US secretary of state] most recent comments that it [the US backing of Israel] will continue under Barack Obama.
"I see no change, I see no hope at all in the future," Fisk said

Source:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/2009114131318926177.html

BBC NEWS

Human Rights !

Too much for huma rights,eh ?!


´´All European Union countries abstained and Canada voted against the resolution.´´
Then those same countries/people,walk around crying over human rights in other countries!
People in Palestine don't have rights ?
Or they are not human ?!!!


UN watchdog condemns war on Gaza




A resolution condemning Israel's military offensive in Gaza has been adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.
The non-binding resolution, approved in Geneva on Monday, said Israel's operation had "resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people".
More than 935 Palestinians have died during the fighting, many of them women and children, and a further 4,300 have been wounded.
At least 25,000 have been displaced due to the ongoing bombardment, but are unable to flee the overcrowded territory as crossing points remain closed.
The resolution, drafted by Arab, Asian and African countries, called for an international mission to be sent immediately to the Gaza Strip to investigate Israel's actions.
It also called for an immediate end to the "launching of the crude rockets against Israeli civilians" by the Palestinian factions.



Israel launched its operation on December 27 after a ceasefire with Hamas ended a week earlier, stating its objective was to target the Palestinian faction's infrastructure and bring an end to the firing of homemade rockets into southern Israel.
'Fairytale world'Fewer states than expected supported the resolution, which passed by 33 votes to one, with 13 abstentions. The US, not a member of the council, took no part in the debate.
Israel dismissed it as one-sided and reflecting the "fairytale world" of the 47-member council.
The text of the document said the council "strongly condemns the ongoing Israeli military operations ... which have resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure".The resolution was opposed by Canada while European countries, Japan and South Korea abstained.The resolution was backed by, among others, Russia, China, Argentina and Brazil.During a debate on the resolution, Pakistan, speaking for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), denounced what it called Israel's "unrestrained use of force, killing of innocent civilians" and violation of UN havens.
At least 40 people died last Tuesday when the UN-run school they were sheltering in was hit by Israeli fire.

'Massive violations'
All European Union countries abstained and Canada voted against the resolution.Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera: "In the end they [the UN] passed the resolution, it was not unanimous. I would not say it was that heated, at the end of the day there were still differences of opinion.



Many states praised the Palestinian delegation for the flexibility they had shown in the negotiations, but they could not quite reach a consensus."
Speaking in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) operations in Gaza, repeated his call for an immediate end to the fighting.
"I say now, to all politicians, here in Israel and internationally, you have an obligation to the ordinary people in the name of humanity and all that is civilised, we need to stop this now. Those who help will never be forgotten.
"Israel is responsible for its own actions and it is very clear to us that there are a lot of actions in this conflict that will need to be fully investigated independently and internationally."Those who have been killed and injured, those who are innocent, deserve accountability."Peter Splinter, Amnesty International's representative at the United Nations in Geneva, backed the call for an investigation, saying "there must be a full accountability for war crimes".
"Evidence of war crimes is presenting itself each day," he told Al Jazeera.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a former UN secretary-general, added his perspective on the situation, saying the assault on Gaza "is a present the Israelis gave to the fundamentalists".
"It will reinforce extremists, fundamentalists, all over Arab countries and even inside Israel," he said.


Source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/2009112152635783968.html
And here,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054843.html

Just Rice?!

Israel's Olmert: Rice embarrassed over UN vote

JERUSALEM – Israel's prime minister said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was embarrassed by orders to abstain from voting last week on a U.N. truce resolution for Gaza that she helped arrange.
Israel had argued that the Security Council measure calling for a halt to the Gaza fighting — which passed Thursday in a 14-0 vote with the U.S. abstaining — was unworkable because it did not guarantee Israel's security.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he called President George W. Bush to seek an abstention from the U.S., a key Israeli ally at the United Nations.
"I said: 'Get me President Bush on the phone,'" Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. "They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care: 'I need to talk to him now.' He got off the podium and spoke to me."
Olmert said he argued that the United States should not vote in favor, and the president then called Rice and told her not to do so.
"She was left pretty embarrassed," Olmert said.
A senior U.S. official in Washington disputed the account.
"The plan had been all along, as agreed by the secretary and the president, that if all of the pieces fell into place, we would abstain," the official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
"The government of Israel does not make policy for the United States," the official added.
The approved resolution called for "an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."
Rice said later that the United States "fully supports" the resolution but abstained because it "thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation," referring to an Egyptian-French initiative aimed at achieving a cease-fire.
Still, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said he was surprised by the U.S. abstention.
"We were told that the Americans were going to vote in favor," he said Friday, a day after the vote.
But when Rice came in to the Security Council chamber, she informed the Saudi foreign minister with an apology that she would abstain and would clarify later that the U.S. supported the resolution nonetheless, according to Malki.
"What happened in the last 10 or 15 minutes, what kind of pressure she received, from whom, this is really something that maybe we will know about later," he said.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_us_rice

İf some countries do as they have been told 'even if they don't like and consider it not in their benefits ! ',and try to find themselves some excuses.
What is the USA government excuse ?!
Not powerful enough ?
Not strong enough ?

Just a question coming into my mind to our Americas friends out there...
Guys,Who is making the decisions for you ?!

Denial as usual ! Phosphorus Shells !

Denial as usual !
İsreal deny,what we already see with our eyes,what we hear with our ears,what is everyone screaming about..''it's happening ..it's happening..help those people !''
Maybe they can convince the world it is just fireworks?!
But would we/you believe it with comfortable conscious?!
İ know many politicians will....!
But how about you ?!

Israel denies banned weapons use



Medics in Gaza say latest casualties include at least 60 people affected by suspected phosphorus shells fired illegally near civilian areas.
An Israeli army spokeswoman strongly denied the report, saying all its munitions complied with the law.
An Israeli spokesman also denied Human Rights Watch allegations of multiple use of white phosphorus in the bombing.
Phosphorus shells are allowed to make smoke in battlefields. Their use where civilian may be harmed is prohibited.

Palestinian medics in Khan Younis said the Israelis fired phosphorus shells at Khouza, east of the southern city, killing a woman and causing at least 60 people to suffer gas inhalation and burns.
"These people were burned over their bodies in a way that can only be caused by white phosphorus," said Dr Yousef Abu Rish.
Human Rights Watch said its researches observed multiple shell-bursts of white phosphorus on 9 and 10 January near Gaza City and Jabaliya refugee camp.
There is no way to independently explain the contradiction between the Israeli military's denial and claims by Dr Abu Rish as well as other Palestinian doctors and HRW.
Israel has prevented international journalists from entering the Gaza Strip during its bombardment.
Horrific burns
HRW cited numerous photos and video of the Israeli bombardment appearing to show the characteristic outline of white phosphorus shells.
It acknowledged the weapons appeared to have been used legally to make smoke screens to hide troop movements, but warned of the risk to Palestinian civilians.
"White phosphorus can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin," said Human Rights Watch analyst Marc Garlasco.
The Israeli army said operational secrecy prevented disclosure of its weaponry, but emphasised it "only employs weapons permitted by international law".
White phosphorus sticks to human skin and will burn right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds which are slow to heal.
The international convention on the use of incendiary weapons says it should not be used where civilians are concentrated.
Controversial use
The US military in Iraq admitted using white phosphorus as a weapon in the assault on Falluja in 2004 - after initial denials, although it insisted the use was legal.
Afterwards, officials for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons stressed white phosphorus use was permissible only if it was to produce smoke.
However, if its "toxic or caustic properties" are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, it would be considered a chemical rather than incendiary weapon and therefore would be banned.
The Israeli military has used phosphorus shells in the past, during its bombardment of Lebanon in 2006.
Minister Jacob Edery told the Israeli parliament after the 2006 war: "The [Israeli Defence Forces] holds phosphorus munitions in different forms... [and] made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground."
The Israeli military was strongly criticised for some of its tactics in 2006, including the widespread use of cluster munitions in the final hours before a ceasefire came into effect.



Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7823078.stm

İsrael.....UN !

No Comment !

Powerful UN!

Israel, Hamas brush off U.N. cease-fire resolution

A Palestinian inspects rubble Friday after an overnight airstrike in Rafah in southern Gaza.

GAZA CITY, Gaza (CNN) -- Israel continued its offensive in Gaza on Friday, hitting more than 70 targets, despite the U.N. Security Council's call for an immediate cease-fire.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel was disregarding the U.N. vote because the resolution will not be heeded by "murderous" Palestinian groups. The firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday, he said, "proves the U.N. resolution is not practical."
"The state of Israel has never agreed that any outside body would determine its right to defend the security of its citizens. The [Israel Defense Forces] will continue operations in order to defend Israeli citizens and will carry out the missions with which it has been assigned in the operation," Olmert said.
The Cabinet also decided to continue humanitarian activity in Gaza and keep up efforts "to prevent the smuggling of war materiel into the Gaza Strip."
The Cabinet was briefed on meetings that Israeli Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad had with Egyptian officials over a proposed Egyptian-French truce plan.
Hamas also rejected the resolution, the Paris, France, daily newspaper Le Figaro reported.
The resolution "does not serve our interests nor that of the people of Palestine," said Hamas official Raafat Morra, speaking from Lebanon. "It does not take into account the aspirations and the principal objectives of the Palestinian people."
At least 792 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its air and ground assault, a U.N. official said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry. See images from the offensive »
The official said the Health Ministry is reporting that about 3,200 Palestinians have been wounded in the past two weeks.
Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers, have also have so far been killed, IDF said. One soldier was moderately wounded and two others were lightly wounded during the day, but no deaths were reported Friday.
Israel has repeatedly defended its offensive, which it says is meant to stop Hamas militants from continuing to use the territory to lob rockets into southern Israel.

The Security Council called overwhelmingly for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza late Thursday, expressing "grave concern" at a mounting humanitarian crisis and heavy civilian casualties in the Palestinian territory.
Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favor of Resolution 1860, with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abstaining from the vote on behalf of the United States. Rice said the United States prefers to wait on the results of ongoing Egyptian-brokered talks in Cairo between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The resolution "stresses the urgency of, and calls for, an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire which will lead to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."
Although the resolution does not mention Hamas by name, it does condemn "all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
A resolution from the council, particularly one that passes with such large support, can put international pressure on parties involved in a conflict. But they are in no way binding, and many in the past have been ignored by warring factions.
The IDF said aircraft attacked more than 70 targets in Gaza identified as terrorist sites as Israel's offensive against Hamas stretched into its 14th day

The IDF said its ground forces found a "rigged house containing a number of land mines" and struck "terror operatives who fired anti-tank rockets at them."
"In addition, the house used by terrorists that shot and killed Sgt. Amit Robinson yesterday was shot at by IDF forces today," the military said. The 70 targets included 20 "terror operatives," rocket launching areas, three houses of Hamas operatives that had been used to store weapons, two weapons smuggling tunnels and "a vehicle with armed terror operatives."
Israel said that its naval forces hit "at least ten armed terror operatives" Thursday night and "they continued assisting the ground forces throughout the night."
One location hit by Israeli missiles was a house in northern Gaza where six people were killed early Friday, the Ramattan News Agency in Gaza City reported.
In another attack, Israeli helicopters obliterated the house of a Hamas military commander in northern Gaza City on Friday, sources in the Hamas movement said.
Aqsa TV identified the man as Abu Farouk Dababesh. The Hamas sources said Dababesh's house was among 15 houses targeted by Israel on Friday.
Palestinian medical sources said 22 Palestinians were killed Friday.
The IDF said its missiles hit five Gaza sites where Hamas was launching rockets into Israel Friday morning, including one that was adjacent to a mosque.
The Israeli military said more than 30 rockets from Gaza landed in southern Israel on Friday, including two Grad missiles that fell on Beer Sheva. Two rockets hit Ashkelon and one landed at Ashdod. No damage or injuries were reported, the IDF said.
Israel took steps before Friday prayers to head off any possible violence in Jerusalem. West Bank entries into Israel have been halted through Saturday night and men younger than 50 were banned from entering Jerusalem mosques.
Also Friday, the U.N. said it would resume its suspended aid operations in Gaza.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees suspended food delivery operations Thursday to 750,000 Palestinian refugees after strikes by Israel killed one of its drivers and wounded another. The U.N. said the aid workers "had received Israeli clearance."
U.N. officials attended a high-level meeting at the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on Friday. There, "the U.N. received credible assurances that the security of U.N. personnel, installations and humanitarian operations would be fully respected," a U.N. statement said.



Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/09/israel.gaza/index.html?eref=onion

War Crime...And ? !

Gaza bombing witnesses describe horror of Israeli strike

When the first accounts emerged this week of what the Israeli armed forces did to the extended Samouni clan in Gaza they were initially lost in an already crowded chorus of civilian suffering.

Palestinians mourners carry the bodies of three toddlers, Ahmed, Mohamed, and Issa Samouni in Zeitoun

But as more survivors surfaced to give largely consistent testimony the horrific realisation emerged what happened to the Samouni family could constitute war crimes by Israel.
Israel is barring foreign journalists from Gaza so it is difficult to verify completely the survivors' accounts about an incident that left up to 70 civilians dead.
They contain allegations that Israeli forces shelled a building where they had previously put a large number of civilians, killed a child in cold blood, used human shields and failed to provide proper treatment to survivors.
Even though they were nearby, Israeli soldiers were found not to have taken action to help four children who spent 48 hours clinging to what the ambulance crew believed to be their mothers' corpses.
The Gazan town of Zeitoun has been home to the Samouni clan for generations but its location in the sandy southern approaches to Gaza City made it a strategic target for Israel on the first night of their ground offensive.
After Israeli tanks and infantry rolled through the Gaza perimeter fence on last Saturday night one of the units headed straight to Zeitoun.
Known to be an area where Hamas militants have been active, Israeli commanders wanted to make sure they took the town as part of a strategy of encircling Gaza City and cutting it off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Surviving members of the Samouni family said that at around dawn on Sunday Israeli soldiers arrived in large numbers, knocking on doors and detaining men of fighting age.
Meysa Samouni, 19, described how the Israeli soldiers had "blackened'' their faces for night combat.
The troops went from house to house detaining younger men and then crowding a large number, mostly women and children, into a building owned by Wael Samouni.
Described by Meysa as a "warehouse'', up to 110 members of the Samouni family were forced inside without running water or food.
Conditions grew more dire and tensions rose so by dawn on Monday Rashed Samouni, 41, Meysa's father-in-law and two other men prepared to leave to go in search for missing family members and supplies.
As they left the door of the warehouse they were hit by a barrage.
"My husband went over to them to help, and then a shell or missile was fired onto the roof of the warehouse,'' Meysa said. "Based on the intensity of the strike, I think it was a missile from an F-16.
"When the missile stuck, I lay down with my daughter under me. Everything filled up with smoke and dust, and I heard screams and crying.
"After the smoke and dust cleared a bit, I looked around and saw twenty to thirty people who were dead, and about twenty who were wounded.
"The persons killed around me were my husband, who was hit in the back, my father-in-law, who was hit in the head and whose brain was on the floor, my mother-in-law Rabab, my father-in-law's brother Talal, and his wife Rhama Muhammad a-Samuni, 45, Talal's son's wife, Maha Muhammad a-Samuni, 19, and her son, Muhammad Hamli a-Samuni, 5 months, whose whole brain was outside his body, Razqa Muhammad a-Samuni, 50, Hanan Khamis a-Samuni, 30, and Hamdi Majid a-Samuni, 22.'' She said she tended to her nine month old daughter, Jumana, whose thumb and two fingers had been cut off one hand.
According to her count up to 30 died in the building but other witnesses suggest the death toll among the 110 crowded inside was higher.
Meysa said survivors and walking wounded eventually emerged and found some Israeli soldiers who took two of the male survivors and let the rest pass. She believed the men were to be used as human shields.
According to Majed Samouni, a 42-year-old farmer, he was corralled into another house in Zeitoun on Sunday by Israeli soldiers.
He alleged when Israeli soldiers went from house to house rounding up members of his family a cousin Atiyeh Samouni, 43, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he opened the door to his house.
Majed also alleged Israeli soldiers shot Atiyeh's two-year-old son, Ahmad, in cold blood.
Majed said 80 Samouni family members ended up crowded in his two-storey house before they too fled after the barrage early on Monday morning.
There were other allegations that Israeli soldiers picked off at least one member of the Samouni family as they fled.
By midday on Monday the first Samouni survivors got to Shifa hospital in Gaza City carrying mortally wounded children.
By Tuesday the mortuary had records of ten Samounis having died including three infants who were buried in funeral in Gaza City. A photograph of the funeral appeared on the front of the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
But the number of Samounis who had died but still lay in Zeitoun was unknown. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the local Palestinian Red Crescent twice tried to reach Zeitoun but it was too dangerous.
On Wednesday the ambulances were finally given permission by Israel but with Israeli earth berms on the roads and war damage it was difficult and dangerous for them to search Zeitoun properly.
Around 15 wounded were found including four traumatised children next to what ambulance crew took to be the corpses of their mothers.
The fact Israeli soldiers were within a hundred yards of the children but did not help them led to the ICRC to issue an uncharacteristically strong condemnation pointing out failing to help wounded violates the rules of war.
"The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded,'' the statement said.
"It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.'' And it demanded full access to Zeitoun to recover wounded civilians it believes are still there.
Israel has so far refused permission for the ambulances to carry out a full sweep.
Last night an Israeli army spokesman said an initial internal investigation had found no evidence Israeli armed forces had done anything wrong during combat around the Samouni family homes in Zeitoun.
He denied the army massed civilians in specific locations and said there was no record of a “specific attack on a specific target’’ in the area last Monday.
“This does not rule out exchanges of fire but it does rule out targeting of a specific building,’’ he said.



Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4209550/Gaza-bombing-witnesses-describe-horror-of-Israeli-strike.html

Wondering...Why The Palestinians complain !

As if saying....even its destroyed....its still ours...our place,our land ! A Palestinian man places a green Hamas flag on the rubble of a destroyed mosque after an Israeli air strike in Gaza

Mark Steel: So what have the Palestinians got to complain about?

To portray this as a conflict between equals requires some imagination
Wednesday, 31 December 2008

When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like "Visual Carnage Responsibility Back To Front Upside Down Massacre Disorder".
For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible."
Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she'd say: "I strongly condemn the people who've been stabbed, and until they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides and bleeding, there is no hope for peace."
The Israeli government suffers terribly from this confusion. They probably have adverts on Israeli television in which a man falls off a ladder and screams, "Eeeeugh", then a voice says, "Have you caused an accident at work in the last 12 months?" and the bloke who pushed him gets £3,000.
The gap between the might of Israel's F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters, and the Palestinians' catapulty thing is so ridiculous that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides requires the imagination of a children's story writer.
The reporter on News at Ten said the rockets "may be ineffective, but they ARE symbolic." So they might not have weapons but they have got symbolism, the canny brutes.
It's no wonder the Israeli Air Force had to demolish a few housing estates, otherwise Hamas might have tried to mock Israel through a performance of expressive dance.
The rockets may be unable to to kill on the scale of the Israeli Air Force, said one spokesman, but they are "intended to kill".
Maybe he went on: "And we have evidence that Hamas supporters have dreams, and that in these dreams bad things happen to Israeli citizens, they burst, or turn into cactus, or run through Woolworths naked, so it's not important whether it can happen, what matters is that they WANT it to happen, so we blew up their university."
Or there's the outrage that Hamas has been supported by Iran. Well that's just breaking the rules. Because say what you will about the Israelis, they get no arms supplies or funding or political support from a country that's more powerful than them, they just go their own way and make all their weapons in an arts and crafts workshop in Jerusalem.
But mostly the Israelis justify themselves with a disappointing lack of imagination, such as the line that they had to destroy an ambulance because Hamas cynically put their weapons inside ambulances.
They should be more creative, and say Hamas were planning to aim the flashing blue light at Israeli epileptics in an attempt to make them go into a fit, get dizzy and wander off into Syria where they would be captured.
But they prefer a direct approach, such as the statement from Ofer Schmerling, an Israeli Civil Defence official who said on al-Jazeera, "I shall play music and celebrate what the Israeli Air Force is doing."
Maybe they could turn it into a huge nationalfestival, with decorations and mince pies and shops playing "I Wish We Could Bomb Gaza Every Day".
In a similar tone Dov Weisglas, Ariel Sharon's chief of staff, referred to the siege of Gaza that preceded this bombing, a siege in which the Israelis prevented the population from receiving essential supplies of food, medicine, electricity and water, by saying, "We put them on a diet."
It's the arrogance of the East End gangster, so it wouldn't be out of character if the Israeli Prime Minister's press conference began: "Oh dear or dear. It looks like those Palestinians have had a little, er, accident. All their buildings have been knocked down – they want to be more careful, hee hee."
And almost certainly one of the reasons this is happening now is because the government wants to appear hard as it wants to win an election. Maybe with typical Israeli frankness they'll show a party political broadcast in which Ehud Olmert says, "This is why I think you should vote for me", then shows film of Gaza and yells: "Wa-hey, that bloke in the corner is on FIRE."
And Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues, and the specially appointed Middle East Peace Envoy, could then all shake their heads and say: "Disgraceful. The way he's flapping around like that could cause someone to have a nasty accident."

Source:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-so-what-have-the-palestinians-got-to-complain-about-1218135.html

We Ask !

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask
Wednesday, 7 January 2009

A child injured in the Israeli bombardment of a UN school yesterday is taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.
I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.
The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.
Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.
And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.
Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

Source:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

UNRWA,Red Cross

By what law they have been targeted ?!!!


A Palestinian boy mourns over the bodies of 42 people who were killed yesterday in an Israeli attack on a U.N.-run school building, on Jan. 7 in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza


Israeli troops kill U.N. truck driver at Gaza crossing


JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers opened fire Thursday on a truck attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Gaza Strip, killing one United Nations-contracted driver and seriously wounding another, U.N. officials said.
The shooting occurred at the Erez checkpoint, the main entrance used by relief agencies to funnel badly needed food and medical supplies into Gaza, where Israel is waging a devastating, 13-day-long military campaign against the militant Islamic group Hamas.
U.N. officials said that they had contracted the truck to deliver supplies into Gaza, and that the Israeli military had approved the delivery. But Israeli ground troops, which control the Erez checkpoint, fired on the truck. It wasn’t clear what caused the Israeli soldiers to open fire, and Israeli military officials weren't immediately available for comment.
Relief officials said that as a result of the shooting, Israel closed the Erez checkpoint. It was unclear whether any relief trucks would be allowed to enter Gaza on Thursday, despite what humanitarian agencies describe as a worsening humanitarian crisis.
"It's a tragic example of how impossible it’s becoming to deliver assistance here," John Ging, the top U.N. refugee official in Gaza, told the Al Jazeera television network. "We cannot continue in these circumstances where aid workers…are being killed and injured, even when they are in direct coordination with the Israeli liaison people, who are supposed to ensure their safety."
It was at least the second time in recent days that Palestinian relief workers contracted by the U.N. had been killed. On Monday, Israeli shells landed near the parking lot of a Palestinian company contracted by the U.N. World Food Program to deliver food supplies in Gaza. Two employees were killed and three severely wounded, according to WFP spokeswomen Barbara Conte, who said that the relief workers were not the target of the Israeli strike.
Nearly 700 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the conflict began, including a rapidly rising number of women and children, and nearly 3,000 have been wounded, according to Gaza health officials.
Israel planned to observe another three-hour pause in fighting Thursday afternoon to allow besieged Gaza residents — most of whom are running out of food and have had their water and electricity sources cut off due to the fighting — to emerge from their homes and collect food, cooking gas, blankets and other supplies.
But in the hours before the pause, Israeli forces continued to pound the narrow coastal territory, bombarding approximately 60 targets overnight including the homes of two leading Hamas militants.
An Israeli soldier was killed and another lightly wounded when militants fired on their brigade with an anti-tank missile during a firefight Thursday morning in central Gaza. The death marked the seventh military fatality since Israel sent ground forces into Gaza five days ago.
Also Thursday, a burst of rockets from southern Lebanon landed in northern Israel, but the Israeli military said it did not consider the attack a sign that the war in Gaza could expand.
At least three rockets landed near the Israeli town of Nahariya — one of them lightly injuring two women in a nursing home — and the Israeli military fired a volley of artillery shells back across the border in response.
The Israeli military downplayed the incident, calling it "an isolated event."
"We don’t expect there to be more" rocket fire from Lebanon, Major Avital Leibovich said.
No Lebanese group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 during which it lobbed more than 3,000 Russian-made Katyusha rockets into northern Israel, has condemned the war on Hamas but so far stayed on the sidelines of the conflict. Smaller pro-Palestinian militant groups in Lebanon also possess rockets.
Special correspondent Ahmed Abu Hamda contributed to this report from Gaza City.

Source:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/59250.html

“This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population”

Dr. Mads Gilbert, Gaza, Dr . Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population.




“Just a little bit more than an hour ago the Israelis bombed the central fruit market in Gaza city and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed. At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. So this is really like speaking from the dumps of Inferno, it’s like hell here now, and it’s been bombing all night. Until now close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2,500 of which 50% are children and women.Are your hospitals reaching capacity? Can you deal with these people?We have been doing surgery around the clock. I have just talked with one of my colleagues in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), he's not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we are running 6 - 7 Ors (Operating Rooms) and there are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world… children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child that we had to amputate both legs and an arm. And their only crime is being civilians and Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs; the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately, this cannot go on, it’s a disaster.You’ve talked about the civilians, the women, the children, the men who aren’t involved in this, but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?To be honest, we came on New Year’s Eve in the morning. I’ve seen one military person among the tenths… I mean hundreds that we’ve seen and treated, so anybody who tries to portrait this as a totally clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza, and we can prove that with numbers. And you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years, it’s a very young population, and 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere, because they cannot flee like other populations can in war time, because they are fenced in and they are in a cage, so they’re bombing 1.5 million people in a cage… young people, poor people and, you know, you cannot separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation.”

Source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21654.htm

How Can You Be İn Silnce ?!

İ came through this...and least i can do is publishing it here !
Not nice pictures yes,heart breaking ones...yes
Wish if we don't see them...also yes.
But you know...its not part of some horror movie,not some old history,we try to forget,and give excuses that,they were some barbaric times.
İts something happening these days,actually now,today,and yesterday
İts something these people living,and cant escape it.
So,can we really find it in our consciousness to just skip an eye ?!

Source:
http://www.elfarra.org/gallery/gaza.htm

I saw the images and they were disturbing. Images are of the Israeli assault against civilians in Gaza. I did not imagine things in Gaza are going as they are; therefore I forwarded it on to you so that you witness the crimes against humanity that the Israelis carry out.

Israeli air strikes hit civilian homes, and left women and kids without shelte

A Palestinian civilian, a victim as Israelis bomb his home leaving him with permanent disability

Paramedics attempt to rescue a family as their house is targeted by the Israeli air force

Again, paramedics try and evacuate a group of civilians from an area that was bombed

A ten year old child is killed when Israeli war planes target his home

A child less than 5 months old is killed in his home. Is he the terrorist or is the one that killed him the terrorist? Mohamed was the only son for his parents who were suffering infertility problems for five years. They are without kids again.

In three days, the Israeli army has killed more than 350 people in Gaza, 65 of them are children, and about 200 are civilians

Now they are 666 died and about 3100 injured

Where to go ?!

That was a scream from a Palestinie woman...
Where to go?!
Where to go ?!
They have destroyed our houses,they have destroyed everything
Where will we go ?!
Then this.....!

Scores killed as Gaza school hit

Israeli strikes have killed at least 40 people who took refuge inside a UN school in the Gaza Strip, medics have said.

The strike on Tuesday hit a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, in the northern town of Jabaliya.
Medical sources at two Gaza hospitals said two tank shells exploded outside the school, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from the Israeli attacks.
The toll quickly rose as rescuers struggled through the rubble.
In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.
Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of Jabalya refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said three artillery shells landed near the school where 350 people were taking shelter.Ging said Unrwa regularly provided the Israeli army with exact geographical coordinates of its facilities and the school was in a built-up area.
"Of course it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.
"The initial findings... are that there was hostile fire at one of our units from the UN facility," Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, said.
"Our unit responded. Then there were explosions out of proportion to the ordnance we used," he said.Avital Liebowitz, an Israeli military spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that Hamas had "booby-trapped" installations in Gaza and Israel had no choice but to retaliate.
"This is how it is in wars, we did not choose to be in a war. However, Hamas chose to target Israelis, we did not force them to do anything, and Hamas chose terror."

But Azmi Bishara, a former Arab member of the Israeli Knesst, told Al Jazeera that Hamas' rockets were a "protest shout" against a "an occupying power".

"They are weapons of the poor, used to express their will.

"Israel would say, "what would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act".

"But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country, a colonial country and the people of Gaza are under siege."
Earlier in the day, two people were killed when an artillery shell hit a school in the southern town of Khan Yunis and three people were killed in an air strike on a school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, medics said.
More than 640 people have been killed and 2,800 others wounded in the 11-day operation, most of them civilians.Widening the operation
The Israeli military also appears to be broadening its assault on the Gaza Strip as heavy artillery fire is reported from the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks have moved into Khan Younis, the second biggest urban area in the Strip after Gaza City, in what seems to be an attempt to isolate it from Rafah.
Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said Khan Younis is strategically significant on several levels - including that Palestinian fighters can fire missiles into Israeli territory from there.
He stressed reporting teams cannot confirm the reports as they are unable to reach the south from Gaza City in the north because the Strip has been effectively dissected by a column of Israel troops.
Mohyeldin also said Palestinian factions had reported that the Israeli navy was attempting to land near the central coastal city of Deir al-Balah – the scene of more intense fighting - on Tuesday.
"There was very intense shelling overnight and people woke to the presence of ground forces in and around Khan Younis this morning," he said.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 wounded in battles around Gaza City on Monday night, the Israeli military said early on Tuesday, bringing the Israeli death toll to eight.
Nowhere to hide
Fierce clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters were also reported in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and two black plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the area.
Fares Akram, a Gaza city resident, told Al Jazeera there was "no safe place in Gaza" as "the Israeli war planes don't stop dropping bombs and firing missiles into Gaza".
Akram says his wife, who is nine-months pregnant, is living in fear of going into labour both because of how dangerous it is to leave their home and because "she knows hospitals in Gaza are in chaos".
He said that while Gazans appreciated demonstrations staged across the Arab world in protest at Israel's actions in the Strip, most believe that while the US backs the Israeli offensive the assault will continue.
In addition, the humanitarian situation in Gaza – already poor following the 18-month Israeli blockade of the strip that left the territory desperately short of fuel, food and medical supplies – is worsening.
John Ging, the head of Unrwa, said he was "shocked" by "the brutality of the injuries" he had seen during a visit to the Shifa hospital in Gaza.
'Absence of accountability'
He said: "There are very real shortages of medicine. This hospital has not had electricity for four days. If the generators go down, those in intensive care will die. This is a horrific tragedy here, and it is getting worse by the moment.
Ging described the situation as "the consequences of political failure and complete absence of accountability for this military action" and appealed for political leaders in the region and around the world to "take on the responsibility".
A number of diplomatic initiatives are under way in the region, with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, visiting Israel and Syria on Tuesday for talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire.
Sarkozy, speaking with Bashar al-Assad, his Syrian counterpart, called on Syria to use its weight to influence Hamas.
"Syria needs to apply its weight to both sides, but in particular to Hamas that the missile attacks stop,” he said in the Syrian capital, Damascus. "Syria has to convince Hamas to make a choice for peace, reason and logic and that they themselves become the agent of reconciling Palestinians. We have to get to the point where we can solve this problem. "There are still a few hours left for us to carry on talking, but I am convinced if both sides are prepared to take the first step, the fighting can stop. The images we have seen are unbearable for all of us. "It is up to each side to make the first step, with help from Europe, Turkey and Egypt... to escape the spiral of violence and replace it with a spiral of peace."
Israel launched its offensive on the Strip after a fragile six-month ceasefire with Hamas – the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza – ended on December 19.
Both sides blame each other for the failure of the ceasefire, with Israel saying Palestinian fighters breached the truce by firing rockets into southern Israel.
Hamas, and other Palestinian groups, say the truce could not be extended because Israel failed to lift its crippling siege of the Strip.

Source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/2009169564177230.html