Today is the Iraq war’s sixth anniversary.

Today marks the sixth Aniversary of the Iraq war. Whahoo! It's hard to believe that it's been 6 years since Bush lied to this nation and took us to war with Iraq.

This was a preventive war of choice, which is something this nation has rarely done, and it was based on “intelligence fixed around the policy.”

Since the invasion, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, over 4,000 U.S. servicemen and women and hundreds more from coalition countries have died (tens of thousands more physically and mentally wounded), over a 100,000 (or more) Iraqi civilians have parished and nearly 5 million have been displaced.

Yet the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other major American newspapers are ignoring the anniversary today. Only USA Today printed a story noting the anniversary of the invasion.

The Center for America's Progress blog Progress Report has more on the good, the bad, and the ugly of developments surrounding the Iraq war over the last year.

UpdateCheck out ThinkProgress's updated timeline of the Iraq war.

Obama sets out firm deadlines on Iraq

Today President Obama traveled to Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to announce his strategy for Iraq. President Obama said today that "This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant."

President Obama's strategy is to remove all combat troops from Iraq in 18 months, while leaving as many as 50,000 troops there in non-combat roles until the end of 2011. Now I was a lowly non-com in the Marines, so I don't claim to be some great strategy, but I do not get the 50,000 troops being left behind. The missions that get described when people are defending leaving 50,000 soldiers and Marines in Iraq, do not require that many soldiers.

The mission that gets described would only require 10,000 U.S. personnel with air support mostly coming from bases in neigboring countries.

During his speech, President Obama declared that:

"To achieve that goal [to remove combat troops from Iraq], we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists. We will help Iraq build new ties of trade and commerce with the world. And we will forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq that contributes to the peace and security of the region."

President Obama does seem to understand the quandaries that remain in Iraq. In today's speech he frankly described many of the challenges:

"Iraq is not yet secure, and there will be difficult days ahead. Violence will continue to be a part of life in Iraq. Too many fundamental political questions about Iraq’s future remain unresolved. Too many Iraqis are still displaced or destitute. Declining oil revenues will put an added strain on a government that has had difficulty delivering basic services. Not all of Iraq’s neighbors are contributing to its security. Some are working at times to undermine it. And even as Iraq’s government is on a surer footing, it is not yet a full partner – politically and economically – in the region, or with the international community."

President Obama also emphasized that the problems in Iraq will not be solved through military means. He stated that:

"critical recognition that the long-term solution in Iraq must be political – not military....The long-term success of the Iraqi nation will depend upon decisions made by Iraq’s leaders and the fortitude of the Iraqi people. Iraq is a sovereign country with legitimate institutions; America cannot – and should not – take their place."

Still he set an almost impossible goal when he declared that they will leave Iraq with Iraqi a "government that is just, representative, and accountable."

Watch President Obama speaking at Camp Lejeune:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

David Gregory had an initial take on MSNBC with retired General McCaffrey and retired Colonel Jacobs. The NBC reporter of course is a tool who has no idea what he is talking about when he speaks about the surge. Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks has a really good take on the situation. You can watch it here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here is another take on the plan from NBC:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why Israel Is Wrong

If you read this blog, you know I did not support Israel in their attack on Gaza. I thought that it was a despicable act, and was embarrassed by the U.S. Government support for this incursion. If there is one area where I will most disagree with President Obama is in regards to Israel. For while I fully support Israel has a right to exist, and should be protected, the actions towards Gaza had no basis in self-protection.

Now Henry Siegman has written a column for the London Review of Books that shows how the Israeli narrative of the lead-up to the Gaza War was just a pack of lies. These lies are ones that American media has largely bought, hook, line and sinker with little investigation or criticism. The U.S. was not alone as most western governments and most of the western media accepted the Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza.

Read the Full Column below:

Israel’s Lies
Henry Siegman

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.

I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue
the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing
Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.

The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov
Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

'What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?

Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam
rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that
they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:

A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.

It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.

These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’

It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian
state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.

In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or
agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s
declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel
with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.

Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.

They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.
Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never
find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.
If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and
Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their
country and their friends.’

Israeli Troops Have Begun to Withdraw From Gaza

Over the weekend, Israel declared a cease fire to its three-week offensive in Gaza. Hamas, in response, declared a week-long truce, purportedly the time it should take for Israeli troops to withdraw from Gaza. The Israeli military has even begun to withdraw some of its forces from the devastated Gaza Strip. The Hamas government’s ceasefire is predicated on Israeli forces leaving the strip in the next week, but so far no timetable has been set.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says the troops will withdraw “as soon as possible,” which likely doesn’t mean physically possible because all the troops could’ve easily left in the time since Olmert’s announcement if that was the case.

Rather, Olmert says the pullout will come when the situation is “stable.” This too provides little clue of the government’s intention, as arguably the situation between Israel and the Gaza Strip has not been stable in Israel’s 60-plus years of existence. Negotiations for a more permanent ceasefire in the strip will continue in Cairo.

The uncomfortable truth about this break in the violence though is that neither Israel nor Hamas "made any concessions, except to stop fighting temporarily."

Israel Announces Ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced a ceasefire in the Israeli assault on the population of the Gaza Strip, it began at midnight on Saturday, Israeli time.
This is not the deal that Eygpt, Turkey, and France were pushing; Israel will not withdraw their ground troops, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has threatened a renewal of attacks if Hamas fired more rockets at Israel.

Lets just remember that Hamas rockets have killed 4 Israelis during this conflict; Israeli forces have killed some 1205 Palestinians, many of them innocent civilians and others ordinary policemen.

By the way, before they ended their attack Israel shelled another U.N. installation.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon's rebuke of Israel for its attack on a UN warehouse, and on the split in the Israeli elite about whether

United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon's has rebuked Israel for its attack on a UN warehouse. He does not accept the Israeli claims that Hamas rocket fire was coming from the warehouse. Since I doubt UN personnel would allow Hamas to fire rockets from the warehouse, and there were both UN personnel and other aid groups in the area who have denied there was any fire coming from the warehouse, I think Israel is lying, and at some point they will claim it was an errant round that hit the warehouse, just as happened with the school.

The UN website also carries the angry secretary-general's protest.

No End in Sight as Gaza Toll Passes 900

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni again rejected the notion that the United Nations could urge her government to end its ongoing war on the Gaza Strip. Remember what a big deal it was when say Iraq would not follow United Nation's mandates, or Iran. This is always a big deal when it is someone the United States is in dispute with, but when it is Israel, then it is unimportant for the nation. Foreign Minister Livini flatly states that only Israel can decide when it will stop attacking Gaza, and killing civilians, no one else. With the death toll quietly passing 900 today, indications are that they don’t intend to decide to stop any time soon.

“If it takes time it takes time,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted, saying the war would continue until it manages to destroy every single tunnel on the Egypt-Gaza border and somehow brings the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which has continued daily since the invasion, to a halt.

Olmert did however make the unprecedented move of apologizing for every non-terrorist casualty caused by its military (well over a thousand by most reports): previously Israel has insisted that it was not in any way to blame for any of the people it killed or wounded.

On a somewhat more optimistic note, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who has been in hiding since the Israeli invasion began, expressed the group’s willingness to cooperate with any ceasefire initiative that would end the Israeli attacks and lead to an end to the blockade of the strip. As Olmert promises to show Gaza his “iron fist” there seems to be no one with both the inclination and the influence to make that happen in a timely fashion, however.

Olmert Brags About Embarrassing Rice in UN Gaza Vote

Proving that the U.S. is Israel's bitch, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke in detail about the events leading up to the US abstention from the United Nations Security Council’s vote on the Gaza Strip ceasefire.

“Early Friday morning the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it.” Olmert said. “I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.”

A beaming Olmert then described telling President Bush “the US cannot possibly vote in favor of this resolution,” and spoke with pride of how embarrassed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was at having to abstain from voting for a resolution she helped to organize and gather support for.

The US abstention shocked diplomats, and made it easier for Israel to dismiss the ceasefire out of hand. At the time of the vote Rice declared that the United States supported the draft but could not vote for it because of their “special relationship” with Israel.

Just days later Rice too was lashing out at the resolution as “unacceptable.”

Jimmy Carter: An Unnecessary War

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote an editorial for the Washington Post.

An Unnecessary War
By Jimmy CarterThursday, January 8, 2009; A15

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel's withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel's unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.

After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

Brief Pause in Gaza Attacks for Relief Supplies

Israel agreed on a brief suspension of the fighting for three hours today permit humanitarian relief goods to reach the beleaguered Gazan population. There is a chance that this will be repeated. It is a step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough.

This came the day after the Israelis shelled a United Nations school in Gaza, which killed over 40 Palestinians, most of them women and children, who had come for protection. The United Nations school was clearly marked, and GPS coordinates had been provided to the Israelis. This is a crime, not that I think the Israelis meant to attack the school, but this is what happens when you use war as your main tool. This has caused international pressure to increase on Israel.

Thus today there was a brief break to the violence in Gaza, which allowed for some relief supplies to reach Palestinian civilians who have been caught in the cross-fire.

Too bad it could not last, after the three hour lull Israeli strikes and Hamas rocket fire resumed.

Talk of a possible cease-fire continues.

Why I am Upset With Israel

Because this is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza.
You will hear from Israelis and those who support Israel that this is an assault on “Hamas targets”, or “terrorist infrastructure”. Israeli puppet George W. Bush of course has blamed it all on Hamas, but lets take a look. Here is a very quick - and by no means exhaustive - look at what the phrase terrorist infrastructure in fact really refers to.


Hospitals, ambulances and medical workers

The Guardian (5 January):

“…half of Gaza’s ambulances have already been destroyed…”

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (5 January):

"Israeli army firing on first response units in Gaza; Ambulances unable to reach
injured persons nor evacuate them from the scene of attacks to Gaza hospitals. Several ambulances have sustained direct artillery or helicopter fire, medical personnel have been killed, others critically injured. There is no possibility for the rapid evacuation of patients; those whose lives could have been saved are left to bleed to death.”

Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (5 January):

“The PRCS [Palestine Red Crescent Society] reported to PHR-Israel that they
have no way of dispatching ambulances without prior coordination since
ambulances that set out for evacuation duties at AlAtatra were fired at by apache helicopters. They appealed to PHR-Israel after attempts to coordinate passage via the ICRC have failed since yesterday. AlAwda hospital in Beit Lahiya also asked for our assistance since they must send out ambulances to AlAtatra and Tel Zaatar but cannot dispatch ambulances without being shot at. The hospital is urgently requesting coordination to enable evacuation…

According to our information, between 2 hours and 8-10 hours pass between a request by the ICRC for coordination until the Israeli authorities actually coordinate passage. In some cases teams waited for 24 hours for coordination”.

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (4 January):

“IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] also continued to target ambulance teams who attempt to collect the injured. At approximately 10:20am today, an Israeli plane fired a missile at an ambulance in the west of Beit Lahia, destroying it and injuring the three of its crew. Two of them sustained critical wounds.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“[Today, Israeli forces] targeted medical facilities and ambulances. A Civil Defense team was hit as it tried to fight a fire following the bombardment of a clinic… In yet another attack on an ambulance crew, an Israeli aircraft fired a guided missile at an ambulance in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City. The three crewmen were killed as a result.”

Ma’an news (5 January):

“Israeli forces fired in the immediate vicinity of three hospitals in the Gaza Strip on Monday, witnesses and medical personnel told Ma’an. The Al-Wafa Hospital eastern Gaza Strip received warning that they would be shelled, but the hosptial administration and staff refused to evacuate on account of the number of injured people being treated there. Some of the wounded have been injured so severely that they cannot be safely transferred.

At Ash-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes bombed the offices of the Health Committees, about 400 meters from Ash-Shifa hospital. Last week warplanes bombed the Ash-Shifa Mosque, which is part of the medical compound.

Israeli forces also shelled the parking lot of Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Spanish human rights worker at the hospital Alberto Arce reported, “Two consecutive shells just landed in the busy car park 15 meters from the entrance to the emergency room of the Al Awda hospital. The entrance of the emrgency rooml was damaged. At the time of the shelling Ambulances were bringing in the wounded that keep pouring in. Medical teams and facilities are being targeted. Nowhere is safe.”…

The international aid agency Oxfam has also reported that personnel working for its affiliates in Gaza have been killed, their ambulances coming under attack.”

Xinhua (4 January):

“Mo’aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that three more Palestinian paramedics were killed by Israeli airstrike on Sunday evening.

Hassanein said the three were rescuing the injured inside a house, which was damaged in southern Gaza City, where another airstrike took place, killing the paramedics.

Also on Sunday, another Palestinian paramedic was killed while Israeli warplane targeted an ambulance in west Gaza City.”

CBS news (5 January):

“[Norwegian doctor] Mads Gilbert came to Gaza last week to help out, he says, in a hospital [i.e. Al-Shifa hospital] that’s short of everything but misery. “They have no spare parts, they have no monitors. They have not enough blood pressure machines, they don’t have enough trolleys. They lack everything. And on top of this you have this huge disaster…

“More people will die who could have been saved,” he said. “We have to be even harder to select who we can treat and we have to put aside people who could otherwise die. That is the gruesome fact of the situation and we are not talking about the 17th century, we are talking about 2009.”

Amnesty International (29 December):

“The health sector in Gaza lacks equipment, medicine and expertise at the best of times and has been further depleted due to the prolonged Israeli blockade. It is now completely overwhelmed and unable to cope with the large number of casualties”.

IRIN news (31 December):

“One hundred and fifty patients were brought in at once,” said Khaled Abu-Najar, a staff nurse in Al-Shifa’s emergency room. “We lack beds, sterile gloves, sheets, scissors and gauze to treat patients.”

Gisha (4 January):

“Hospitals, including Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital, are struggling to function under 24-hour per day power outages…

According to Shifa Hospital, fuel reserves for back-up generators will run out by the end of the week. The generators are insufficient to heat the wards or properly operate oxygen machines. The hospital has had no electricity for the past 48 hours.”

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The health system is overwhelmed, having already been weakened by the 18-month blockade.”

Oxfam (4 January):

“A paramedic working for an Oxfam funded organisation was killed when an Israeli shell struck a civilian ambulance in Gaza today according to international agency Oxfam. The tragedy illustrates the deadly dangers faced by Palestinian civilians and aid worker said the agency.

Another paramedic lost his foot and a driver was injured in the same incident, which occurred when an ambulance belonging to Oxfam’s partner organisation, Union of Health Work Committees, was hit while trying to evacuate an injured person in the Beit Lahiya area, Oxfam said.”

Reuters (5 January):

“Bombs on Monday hit a hospital morgue where a family were mourning a paramedic killed in an airstrike on Sunday. Three people were killed and 17 wounded, medical workers said.

“We were sitting in the mourning tent when suddenly they bombed us, we ran to rush the casualties to hospitals but they bombed again,” Abdel-Dayem told Reuters.”

The Mirror (2 January):

“A children’s hospital was also damaged in yesterday’s blitz and a mosque and secondary school destroyed.”

John Ging, head of UNRWA (6 January):

“John Ging, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said he was “shocked” by “the brutality of the injuries” he had seen during a visit to the Shifa hospital in Gaza.

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.”

Mosques

The Guardian (4 January):

“The shells could not have fallen at a worse time. Yesterday’s afternoon prayers in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya were unusually busy because worshippers
had abandoned their evening prayers in the belief that if the Israelis planned to strike, they would do so at night.

But as the townspeople left the mosque at dusk, the explosions began, killing at least 12 people, six of whom were children.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (31 December):

“7 mosques have been destroyed”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“…In addition, IOF bombarded al-Khulafa’a al-Rashedin Mosque, al-Salam Mosque…”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (30 December):

“[Israeli forces] have increasingly bombarded civilian facilities, mosques and houses, without paying attention to the lives and safety of Palestinian civilians. Israel claims that such civilian facilities, mosques and houses were related to Hamas, but investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that IOF have used excessive lethal force and that the majority of the facilities that have been targeted are public and private property located in densely populated areas, making Palestinian civilians pay a heavy price from their lives and property.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (29 December):

“[O]n Sunday, 28 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded ‘Emad ‘Aqel Mosque in Block 4 in the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp. The mosque and a neighboring house belonging to Anwar Khalil Ba’lousha were destroyed. The house
was destroyed over the family, killing 5 of Ba’lousha’s female children:

Jawaher, 4; Dunia, 8; Samar, 12; Ikram, 14; and Tahreer, 17. Ba’lousha, his wife
and another three of their children were also wounded. Additionally, 17 civilians in neighboring houses, including 5 children, were wounded.”

Schools

Associated Press (4 January):

“An Israeli airstrike flattened one of Gaza’s best private educational institutions, the American International School, which had been attacked a year ago by Islamic militants.

The Israeli Army said the campus on a northern Gaza hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean Sea had been used as a launching base for rockets and was a legitimate target.

Most of the school’s buildings, which offered American-style curriculum in English for kindergarten through 12th grade, were destroyed by the strikes, which also killed the night watchman.”

UN OCHA (3 January):

“The American School north of Gaza was directly hit and almost completely
destroyed, with one school guard killed. In addition, at least three to five
schools were damaged by Israeli shelling of nearby targets.”

Ma’an news (6 January):

“Three Palestinians were killed overnight in an Israeli attack on a United Nations school that was housing people displaced by the violence in Gaza, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday.

In a statement circulated on Tuesday, UNRWA said that Israeli forces attacked the Asma Elementary School in Gaza City, which is currently sheltering 400 people who
fled their homes in the town of Beit Lahiy.

The school was clearly marked as a United Nations installation. The three men, 24-year-old Hussein Mahmoud Abed Al Malek Al Sultan, 19-year-old Abed Samir Ali Al Sultan, and 25-year-old Rawhi Jamal Ramadan Al Sultan, were killed at 11:30 last night. The three men, all from the same family, were killed as they left the school toilet at eleven thirty last night when the school compound took a direct hit.
The director of the UN general commissioner’s office in Gaza Adnan Abu Hasanah said that another UN facility, the Ash-Shouka School in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was also bombarded. At this time there were no details available about the
civilians who had taken shelter in the school…

Well before the current fighting, UNRWA said it had given to the Israeli authorities the GPS co-ordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including Asma Elementary
School.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“At approximately, 5:10pm [on 4 January] … the IOF shelled the courtyard of UNRWA’s Mustafa Hafez School in Khan Younis.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (30 Dec):

“…IOF have bombarded the campus of Islamic University, two schools…”

Associated Press (29 December):

“One strike destroyed a five-story building in the women’s wing at Islamic
University, one of the most prominent Hamas symbols in Gaza.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“IOF have continued to target civilian facilities, mosques, schools and houses,
with disregard to the lives of the Palestinian civilians.”

California Scholars for Academic Freedom (4 January):

“…[A]s educators in California institutions of higher learning, we are especially appalled at the destruction of educational institutions and student casualties.

On 27 December, Human Rights Watch reported that an Israeli air-to-ground missile struck a group of students leaving the Gaza Training College, adjacent to the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in downtown Gaza City, killing eight students and wounding 19 others. Two days later, on 29 December 2008, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, destroying the science laboratory block and destroying or damaging other blocks of buildings, including the library.

Although Israel has claimed that the science laboratory facilities were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons,” this claim has been denied by officials of the Islamic University, and according to the New York Times of 1 January 2009 Israel has not produced any evidence for its claim.”

Government Buildings and Civil Policemen

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The estimate on the total number of Hamas leaders’ houses targeted so far is 45.”

Palestinian Center for Human Rights (31 December):

“25 buildings of public buildings have been destroyed, including those of ministries, governorates, municipalities, the Palestinian Legislative Council, and 3 educational institutions…

IOF warplanes have destroyed most buildings of the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip, including those of ministries and security services…

The public institutions that have been bombarded are: the compound of ministries, the building of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the building of the cabinet in Gaza City; the buildings of the agricultural control department and the Municipality of Bani Suhaila in Khan Yunis; the buildings of Rafah Municipality and Governorate.”

B’Tselem (31 December):

“Another example [“of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army”] is yesterday’s bombing of the government offices. These offices included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction and Housing…

[A]s the entity effectively governing the Gaza Strip, it [i.e. Hamas] is also responsible for maintaining daily life. As such, it supervises the activity of all civilian frameworks in Gaza – among them the welfare, health, housing, and legal systems. Hamas must also ensure public order and safety by means of a police force. Therefore, even if Hamas is a “hostile entity” whose principle objective is to undermine the existence of the State of Israel, this does not lead to the conclusion that every act it carries out is
intended to harm Israel and that every government ministry is a legitimate target…An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.”

The Guardian (6 January):

“The head of the Shin Bet internal security service, Yuval Diskin, told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas was finding it increasingly difficult to govern with its leadership in hiding from Israeli rockets and much of its infrastructure blown to pieces.

He was backed by the chief of the general staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, who said “not much” remained of the Hamas government, and by the head of military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin. “Hamas has absorbed a very hard blow…

Its ability to govern has been harmed, its leaders have completely abandoned the population and are only worrying about themselves,” Yadlin told the cabinet.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“[On 2 January] IOF warplanes bombarded a police station at Bani Suhila intersection in the east of Khan Yunis. A passing Palestinian civilian was wounded and a secondary school in the area was damaged.”

UN (29 December):

“[On 27 December] an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) missile targeted a group of policemen standing in the street near the building of the Gaza governorate, immediately across the street from the UNRWA Gaza Training Center, which is located within the compound housing the main UNRWA office in the Gaza Strip. Eight UNRWA Gaza Training Center students between the ages of 18 and 20, who were standing nearby waiting for the UN buses to bring them home, were killed and 19 injured from the blast. Eight of the injured remain in hospital in critical conditions today. One of these critically injured students is unconscious with intracranial shrapnel and requires immediate transfer to an Israeli hospital for advanced central nervous system surgery.”

UN OCHA (28 December):

“Air-strike targets included civil police stations, military training bases and government buildings and installations. In one incident, at least 40 people were killed when an IAF plane fired an air-to-ground missile at the police headquarters in Gaza City during preparations for a graduation ceremony for regular civilian and traffic police. Other civilian casualties occurred among those living in residences within the vicinity of targeted buildings.”

UN OCHA (2 January):

“There has been significant destruction in the Gaza Strip, over 600 targets hit,
including roads, infrastructure, the Islamic university, government buildings, mosques and civil police stations”

UN OCHA (31 December):

“Air-strikes targeted a variety of public buildings, including mosques, civil police stations, universities and sports centres in addition to government buildings and military training bases.”

Associated Press (28 December):

“In all, more than 290 people — most of them Hamas [civil] policemen, but also
20 children — were killed in some 300 Israeli air attacks over two days.”

Human Rights Watch (30 December):

“Israel should not target individuals and institutions in Gaza solely because they are part of the Hamas-run political authority, including ordinary police…

Human Rights Watch noted that many of Israel’s airstrikes, especially during the first day, targeted police stations as well as security and militia installations controlled by Hamas. According to the Jerusalem Post, an attack on the police academy in Gaza City on December 27 killed at least 40, including dozens of cadets at their graduation ceremony as well as the chief of police, making it the single deadliest air attack of the campaign to date. Another attack, on a traffic police station in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, killed a by-stander, 12-year-old Camilia Ra`fat al-Burdini.

Under the laws of war, police and police stations are presumptively civilian unless the police are Hamas fighters or taking a direct part in the hostilities, or police stations are being used for military purposes.”

B’Tselem (31 December):

“…the military bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed, according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing
in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order…

[This is just one example] of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army… An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.”

Media

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (4 January):

“Israeli aircrafts also launched a series of air raids at civilian targets in Gaza City; including a print-house, the Al-Risala Newspaper’s office and the Al-Karama Charity, which cares for the orphans whose parents have been killed by the IOF.”

Associated Press (28 December):

“Palestinian sources reported early Sunday morning that IAF aircraft had targeted the Al Aqsa TV station used by Hamas.”

General Civilian Infrastructure

Oxfam (28 December):

“The bombing has caused severe damage to the civilian infrastructure in Gaza with many areas being left without water or electricity.”

John Ging, head of UNRWA (4 January):

“We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population… The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They’re trapped, they’re traumatised, they’re terrorised by this situation… The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them…

“The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed … Blowing up the Parliament building. That’s the Parliament of Palestine. That’s not a Hamas building. The President’s compound is for the President of Palestine.” (via Ben White)

UN OCHA (2 January):

“There has been extensive damage caused to thousands of houses all over the Gaza
Strip.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“At approximately 13:40 [on Friday 2 January] … IOF warplanes bombarded a civil
defense station at the beach. The station was destroyed, but no casualties were reported…

At approximately 16:20 also on Friday IOF warplanes started to bombard the remainders of Gaza International Airport in the east of Rafah. The bombardment continued sporadically until 00:45 on Saturday, 3 January 2009.”

Reuters (4 January):

“At least 42 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed on Sunday as Israeli shells slammed into houses and Gaza’s main shopping district, medical sources said.”

The Times (5 January):

“Nobody knows what kind of shell it was that hit Gaza City’s main vegetable market yesterday morning: the explosives were falling so thick and fast that it could have come from an Israeli naval vessel, an F16 fighter-bomber, an Apache helicopter gunship, an unmanned drone, an artillery cannon or a tank.

The results, however, were unmistakable. With Gaza’s ambulance service stretched far beyond its normal capacity, the first mangled bodies arrived in private cars as
locals scrambled to save the lives of the shoppers caught up in the carnage. The first to be carried in was a boy, his face masked in blood from a head wound, as medics hurried him into the overcrowded emergency rooms. The next car delivered a girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, her entrails blown out through a hole in her back by shrapnel.”

Ma’an news (6 January):

“Israeli artillery shelling killed four people and wounded 16 others in a market in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip late on Monday, witnesses told Al-Jazeera.
The killings bring the total number of Palestinians killed on Monday to 46. Israeli tanks reportedly fired three shells into the market.”

The Guardian (4 January):

“Among the targets so far have been the Gaza Interior Ministry, police stations, television stations, prisons and a five-storey building in the women’s wing of the Islamic University. Humanitarian organisations have criticised the Israelis for bombing a number of schools and a hospital.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“Since the beginning of the ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, Israel has claimed that it does not target civilian facilities. However, PCHR’s investigations refute these allegations, and prove that IOF, by explicit orders from their political and military leaders, have used excessive lethal force and that the majority of targets have been civilian and public facilities and private property that are located in the middle of overpopulated residential neighborhoods, endangering the lives and possessions of the civilian population.

Moreover, PCHR’s investigations affirm that all the casualties that have been caused during the last hours of IOF successive and intensive raids have been civilians.”

Children

AFP (5 January):

“Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza medical emergency services, told AFP the umber
of Palestinians killed since the Israeli operation was launched on December 27 was now 512, including 87 children.”

Save the Children (2 January):

“At least 13,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes in Gaza as the bombardment continues into its seventh day, Save the Children said today. More than half of those displaced people are children.”

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (5 January):

“Seventy-seven people have been killed in IOF’s attacks between 1pm yesterday and 2:30pm today. This includes 21 children and nine women.”

Sydney Morning Herald (6 January):

“On Monday [5 January], 20 children between the age of two and 15 were killed,
he [i.e. Dr Moaiya Hassanein of the Gaza Health Ministry] said.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (5 January):

“The Number of Palestinians Killed Rises to 372, Mostly Civilians, Including 75 Children and 16 Women … IOF have continued their offensive on the Gaza Strip for the 8th consecutive day, causing more deaths and casualties among Palestinian civilians, especially children.”

UN OCHA [.pdf] (31 December):

“At least 32 children were killed in the first 48 hours of airstrikes”.

Chris Hedges (16 December):

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

The statistics gathered on children - half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17 - are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.”

UNICEF (6 January):

“Ten days of aerial bombing on Gaza has caused extensive devastation throughout the territory and is threatening the health and welfare of many children. Most of Gaza is without electricity, and the situation is turning into a massive humanitarian crisis…

The hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed by casualties and are running low on medicines. More than half the population of Gaza is made up of children.”

Dominic Nutt of Save the Children (6 January):

“They don’t have any water most of the day, there is no electricity, they are freezing cold, the windows have to be left open to stop them smashing when the bombs fall.

“Children are at risk from hypothermia, they are malnourished, there is not enough food, the situation is getting desperate.”

Reuters (5 January):

“The situation has reached a critical level for children who are exposed to and experiencing violence, fear and uncertainty,” Save the Children emergency team
leader Annie Foster said.

Some families fear to leave their houses while others are being forced to flee them. The winter cold was also a danger to children as electricity cuts have mean many homes lack heating.

“Families must leave windows open at night so that they will not be broken by percussive shocks or flying debris from the ongoing bombardment. This means that children, the majority of them poor and malnourished, are essentially spending the night exposed to the elements”, Foster said.”

UNICEF (5 January):

“The humanitarian crisis caused by the current violence in Gaza is hitting children and women the most. Children form over half of Gaza’s population of nearly 1.5 million and are bearing the brunt of the conflict. Being the most vulnerable part of the population, children are the first to be psychologically distressed, the most in need of medical support and the most exposed to injuries among civilians in times of conflict…

As of 3 January 2009, 70 Palestinian children were killed and at least 650 injured, out of a tally of 550 deaths and 2800 injuries, according to data provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health…

The children in Gaza are currently deprived not only of the basic human rights any human being should enjoy but are also denied the fundamental rights specific to children, to which the signatories of the Convention of the Right of the Child are duty bound. These include the right of children to be protected from all forms of physical or mental violence and injury, and the right to education, development and access to healthcare services…

The intensity of the current violence renders impossible any action to relieve their plight.”

Norwegian volunteer doctor at Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Erik Fosse (5 January):

“The injured patients are mainly civilians, a lot of children with dreadful injuries. The injured patients are mainly civilians, a lot of children with dreadful injuries,” Dr. Erik Fosse told CNN on Monday, estimating that 20 percent of the more than 500 people dead were children…

Fosse said that he estimated that about 30 percent of the casualties at Shifa Hospital on Sunday were children, both among the dead and wounded…

“We were operating in the corridors, patients were lying everywhere, and people were dying before they got treatment,” he said.”

Civilian Population

Palestinian Center for Human Rights (27 December):

“The air strikes started at 11:25 local time, almost at the same time throughout
the Gaza Strip. This timing indicates that an Israeli decision was taken to cause maximum casualties in the climax of daily activities. It also explains the high number of victims killed or wounded in a few minutes on the bloodiest day during the 41 years of Israeli occupation. The timing of air strikes coincided with the end of the morning period and the beginning of the afternoon period at schools, many of which are located near police stations that were attacked. PCHR learnt that a number of children were killed or wounded while on their way to or back from schools, and hundreds of school children and civilians were treated from shocks. PCHR learnt also that dozens of the victims are unarmed civilians who were near the places that were attacked, the majority of which are located in civilian-populated areas.”

Ha’aretz (27 December):

“This was a massive attack much along the lines of what the Americans termed “shock and awe” during their invasion of Iraq in March 2003 … little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians.”

New York Times (January 5):

“The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas.

No rescuers came.

Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives’ house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run.

Eleven members of the extended Samouni family were killed and 26 wounded, according to witnesses and hospital officials, with five children age 4 and under among the dead.”

New York Times (January 4):

“In recent days, most of those arriving at Shifa [hospital] appeared to be civilians. On Sunday, there was no trace here of the dozens of Hamas fighters that the Israeli military said its ground forces had hit in the past few hours in exchanges of fire … at Shifa, most of the men who were wounded or killed seemed to have been hit along with relatives near their homes or on the road. Two young cousins and a 5-year-old boy from another family were killed by shrapnel as they played on the flat roofs of their apartment buildings.”

Scotsman (3 January):

“CIVILIANS make up about a quarter of the 400-plus people who have died in Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, UN officials said yesterday as the Israel-Hamas war entered its second week.

“Our best estimate is that 25 per cent (of the fatalities] were civilians, of whom a not insignificant number were women and children”.

Ha’aretz (5 January):

“At least 517 Palestinians have been killed at least a quarter of them civilians, a UN agency said. Forty-two, mostly civilians were killed on Sunday, a medical source said.”

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Maxwell Gaylard (5 January):

“Large numbers of people including many children are hungry, they are cold, they are without ready access to medical facilities, they are without access to electricity and running water, above all they are terrified. That by any measure is a humanitarian crisis…

There is an overall atmosphere of fear. More than half of the population are children. The spectre of internal displacement is emerging with growing numbers seeking shelter and already there are several thousand civilians in UNRWA’s seven shelters…

Electricity and communications are down over much of the Strip both on account of lack of fuel and damage to critical infrastructure. Over a million people are currently without power, and over a quarter million without running water, some for up to six days”.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes (5 January):

“The UN has said that there is an “a worsening and an increasingly alarming” humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, told reporters on Monday that officials believed as many as 25 per cent of the 548 people killed in the fighting were civilians and that Gaza’s health system, overwhelmed by the more than 2,500 injured, was “increasingly precarious”.

“This is, in our view, a humanitarian crisis,” Holmes said. “It’s very hard for me to see any other way you could describe it, given the conditions in which the population are living.”

Holmes added that “cluster munitions are being used”, and that it was “a fair presumption” that most of the civilians killed were women and children.”

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (31 December):

“Thousands of civilians, mainly those who reside in areas close to the Palestinian- Egyptian border, have fled from their houses in the wake of several raids launched by IOF on the southern Gaza Strip. A state of compulsory mass displacement of civilians has prevailed in the area…

According to what PCHR field workers have been able to document the IOF offensive has resulted in the following deaths and casualties:

334 Palestinians, including 121 civilians, have been killed throughout the Gaza Strip…

The number of civilian deaths does not include at least 165 civil police officers who were killed on the first day of the IOF offensive, when they were not engaged in any hostilities.”

[see B’Tselem and HRW reports linked above: civil policemen are not legitimate military targets]
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2 January):

“…the number of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the IOF offensive on the Gaza Strip has mounted to 375, mostly unarmed civilians, including 51 children and 14 women.”

CBS news (5 January):

“[Al-Shifa hospital’s] general manager, Hassan Khalaf, insists the majority of patients by far are civilians…

“The latest figure is, the total killed people is 543 at the moment, and well, about 30 percent of them are woman and children,” he said. “As regards injured there are 2,600 and 42 percent of them are women and children.”

Refugees’ International (6 January):

“The current conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is having a devastating
impact on civilians. An immediate ceasefire is essential.”

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (5 January):

“The heavy casualties suffered by innocent civilians, including many children, are heartbreaking … As a humanitarian agency which must deal with the repercussions of violence and persecution worldwide, UNHCR expresses its profound shock and sadness at the suffering and loss of life we are now seeing. I join Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in calling for an immediate cessation of all violence.”

UN human rights experts (2 January):

“The use of disproportionate force by Israel and the lack of regard for the life of civilians on both sides cannot be justified by the actions of the other party. They constitute clear violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law.

We are particularly concerned at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Norwegian volunteer doctor at the Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Mads Gilbert (5 January):

“…the large majority of the injured, the victims, are women, men and children civilians. Among the killed, 25% of the killed are children and women, and among the children, today it was, this morning it was 801 children either killed or injured”.

Gisha (4 January):

- 7 of 12 power lines damaged - 75% of Gaza’s electricity cut off.

- Gaza City, including Shifa Hospital, entirely without electricity.

- Over half a million residents cut off from water supply.

- Sewage spilling into streets, risk of more flooding.

- No fuel permitted into Gaza since start of military operation.

Gaza’s water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse following bombardments that have destroyed electricity lines and months of preventing fuel supplies needed to produce electricity, utility officials in Gaza warned today. 75% of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off, just as hospitals, water wells, and other humanitarian institutions most need electricity to treat casualties of the fighting and provide basic necessities to civilians.

UN OCHA (2 January):

“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is significant and cannot be understated. It follows what the UN had described as an 18 month long “human dignity crisis” in the Gaza Strip, entailing a massive destruction of livelihoods and a significant deterioration of infrastructure and basic services…

People are living in a state of fear and panic…

80% of the population cannot support themselves and are dependant on humanitarian assistance. This figure is increasing…

The utilities are barely functioning: the only electric power plant has shut down. Some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza do not have electricity at all due to the damage to fifteen electricity transformers during the air strikes. The water system provides running water once every 5-7 days and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage and is dumping 40 million litres of raw sewage into the sea daily. Fuel for heating, needed due to the cold weather, and cooking gas, are no longer available in the market.”

Amnesty International (5 December):

“The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is having ever more serious consequences on its population. In the past month the supply of humanitarian aid and basic necessities to Gaza has been reduced from a trickle to an intermittent drip…

As supplies are being further withheld, most mills have shut down because they have little or no grain. People who have long been deprived of many food items now cannot even find bread at times.

Reserves of food have long been depleted and the meagre quantities allowed into Gaza are not even enough to meet the immediate needs. Families never know if they will have food for their children the following day.

When people do have food, they generally have no cooking gas or electricity with which to cook it. Last week, less than 10 per cent of the weekly requirement of cooking gas was allowed into Gaza…

Shortages of fuel, electricity and spare parts are causing water and sanitation infrastructure and other crucial services to deteriorate a bit more every day. Eighty per cent of the wells are now only functioning at reduced capacity and water supply is only available for a few hours every few days…

Routine blackouts disrupt every aspect of life for everyone. Hospitals are struggling to power life-saving machinery and it is ever more difficult to maintain laundry and other essential services.”

UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness (5 January):

“It’s absolutely horrifying. The people of Gaza are terrorized. They’re traumatized. And they are trapped.”

UN OCHA (6 January):

“Thousands of people have fled their homes in search of security and essential infrastructure has been destroyed, or lacks the necessary fuel to operate at the required capacity. More than one million Gazans are without electricity or water…

Gaza’s water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse due to a lack of power and fuel…

Over 530,000 people (approximately 400,000 people in Gaza and North Gaza, 100,000 people in Rafah, and 30,000 people in the Middle Area) are entirely cut off from running water, and the rest are receiving water only intermittently (every few days)…

The sewage situation is becoming very dangerous, posing a serious risk of the spread of water-borne disease. Five of Gaza’s 37 waste water pumping stations were shut down due to a lack of electricity and sewage is now flooding into populated areas, farmland, and the sea. The remaining 32 stations are operating only partially and will shut down within three-to-four days without additional fuel supplies…

Seventy-five percent of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off. Since the ground operation, all of Gaza Governorate and most of North Gaza and the Middle Area are without electricity.”

IRIN news (5 January):

“The UN has warned that power networks were down in large parts of the Gaza Strip on 4 January, with hospitals relying on generators. Without power for pumps, 70 percent of Gazans are estimated to be without tap water…

“The water and sewage system in Gaza is collapsing, cutting people off from the water supply and causing sewage to flood the streets,” said Maher al-Najjar, deputy
director of Gaza’s water utility (CMWU). He also said 48 of Gaza’s 130 wells were not working at all due to lack of electricity and damage to pipes. “At least 45 other wells are operating only partially and will shut down within days without additional supplies of fuel and electricity,” al-Najjar said.”

Norwegian volunteer doctor, Dr. Mads Gilbert (6 January):

“We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children. A pregnant woman. I
have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Pass it on, send it around, shout it out. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are living in a history book now, all of us”,

and Dr. Gilbert again (5 January):

“We have been doing surgery around the clock. I just spoke to one of my colleagues … who had not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we’re running six/seven ORs 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 who … we had to amputate both legs and the arm, and the only crime they have done is being civilians, 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…

We came on New Year’s Eve in the morning - I’ve seen one military person among the… hundreds that we have seen and treated. So anybody who tries to portray this
as sort of a ‘clean’ war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza.”

As you can see, “Hamas targets” and “terrorist infrastructure” appears to be a technical referring to the entire Gaza Strip and everything and everyone located within it. That Israel employs this special definition is not particularly surprising. It has long since behaved as if, in Yaron London’s approving words, “the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad.” Thus, for example, earlier this year Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin claimed that Israeli forces had killed roughly 1,000 “terrorists” in Gaza over the past two years, thereby branding every Palestinian killed by the IDF in Gaza throughout 2006 and 2007 a “terrorist”, including, as B’Tselem pointed out, 152 minors, including 48 children under the age of 14, as well as “many men and women [who] were killed in Gaza who took no part in the hostilities”. Similarly, in December 2006 Ehud Olmert boasted that the IDF had killed “more than 400 members of terrorist organisations” in six months, a designation that included 206 civilian non-combatants.

So, as I say, it isn’t at all surprising to find Israel referring to hospitals, mosques, schools, residential homes, apartment blocks, shops, markets, women, children and civilians as “Hamas targets” and “terrorist infrastructure”.

What’s appalling is that – despite recognising Israel’s intensive propaganda drive – so many Western journalists and commentators have gone along with it.

President Bush is an Idiot

I know this is not news, but man the jerk is trying to drive the fact home in these final weeks. Case in point yesterday President Bush sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz for an exit interview in Iraq.

When Raddatz asked Bush about his legacy, Bush first boasted about 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. Which is not actually accurate, for his claimed job growth did not keep up with the growth of the population and ignores the fact that at the begining and end of his administration the economy shed millions of jobs. In this year alone there have been 1.9 million jobs lost.

With the interview taking place in Iraq, it was inevitable that the interview would turn to the catastrophe that is Iraq. Bush of coures is completely clueless when it comes to Iraq. He justified the war in Iraq by suggesting it had been al Qaeda’s home base. When Raddatz corrected him, Bush dismissively replied, "So what?"

Watch it here:


Bush continues his refusal to take any responsibility for the consequences of his decisions, in fact Bush suggests that al Qaeda came to Iraq by chance, which is simply ridiculous. Bush actually says in the interview that Iraq “turn[ed] out to have been” the place where they “were going to take their stand.”

This is stupid on many levels, first al Qaeda’s existence in Iraq is 100 percent attributable to Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Al Qaeda never existed there before, and in fact, Saddam Hussein viewed Osama bin Laden as a threat and refused to support him. Second, I wish one person would point out that the reason Osama bin Laden has called Iraq the central front of the war on terror, and why he would wish to keep it there was that it was thousands of miles away from his base of operations.

Also lets not forget that throughout the run-up to war, Bush repeatedly cited supposed links between al Qaeda and Iraq to drum up support for the U.S. invasion. When those links proved to be utterly false — and perhaps even willingly fabricated — Bush began insisting that al Qaeda had chosen Iraq as the “central front in the war on terror,” and so the United States was forced to stay there and respond. In the meantime, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed, 30,000 maimed, and nearly 100,000 Iraqis killed.

Bush also continued to dismiss the incident when Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush and shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Bush said that Zaidi’s actions were “bizarre” but had no larger significance:

Q Well, not to belabor the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

BUSH: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who — […] I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment. […] I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate. … That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did.

In the interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz yesterday, Bush laughed off Zaidi’s actions as “amusing.” “I don’t know what his beef is,” said Bush. “But whatever it is I’m sure somebody will hear it.”

Watch it here: