Adam Horowitz writes:
Collective punishment is defined as, "the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behaviour of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions." This action is considered a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
What then will be the Israeli accountability for the destruction of Gaza? Amira Hass refers to Gaza City as "Little Baghdad", quoting a resident. It is clear that the 2003 US "shock & awe" campaign in Iraq has become the currently-accepted shorthand for nearly-unspeakable terror rained from the sky. It's worth quoting Hass's informant Abu Muhammad in Gaza City at length:
Abu Muhammad was 200 meters from the hospital, when an awful sound was heard: Three large police centers which were bombed, were located close to the hospital. "Within seconds, this was a little Baghdad, bombs everywhere, smoke, fire, people not knowing where to hide. Fear everywhere, and rage and hatred," he said.
He himself ran to his daughters' school, like tens of thousands of other parents in the Strip. From 11:25 until 11:30, as some 50 warplanes bombed their targets, hundreds of thousands of children were in the streets. Some were coming from the first shift of classes, others were going to the second. "In the schoolyard I saw 500 frightened girls, crying. They did not know me, but clung to me," Abu Muhammad related.
Hass also quotes Dr. Haidar Eid, a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University: "To pick a time like this, 11:30 [A.M.], to bomb in
the hearts of cities, this is terrible. This choice was intended to
cause as large a massacre as possible."
I do not want to believe that Israel
would intentionally carry out an air campaign to massacre innocents,
and I would be willing to read this charge from Dr. Eid as the
understandable belief of a person under siege, shell shocked from the
horrible events of the day. That was until I read this from GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant, one of the key figures in the Israeli operation: "In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the
Israel Defense Forces will try to "send Gaza decades into the past" in
terms of weapon capabilities while achieving "the maximum number of
enemy casualties and keeping Israel Defense Forces casualties at a
minimum."
Who are the "enemies" in Major General Galant's calculations? Abu Muhammad's daughters? Hamas gunmen? Is it possible to differentiate from 30,000 feet?
Like Lebanon, it became military, not just civil disturbance, even as the militants promoted the fantasy that a little shelling of civilians is somehow acceptable resistance.
Its a fucked up situation, made that way by non-acceptance.
What is occurring sucks. But, the silence of dissenters (the enabling BY dissenters) when Hamas resumed shelling civilians was acquiescent in criminality.
U.N.'s Christopher Gunness says attacks in Gaza are not in Israel's interest
"We have a good working relationship with Israelis on the ground," he said. "But at the political level, it seems that there is some kind of determination that there should be no development, there should be no prosperity inside Gaza."
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/28/gaza.humanitarian/index.html
Nasrallah just spoke on TV, and it seems things are headed towards major escalation. He warned the Egyptian authorities, in very harsh words, to open the border permanently, and in case they refused to do so, he urged millions of Egyptians to storm the border and open it by force from the Egyptian side. His call for grassroots action will probably be heeded. So for everybody's sake, Mubarak's filthy zionist regime better cooperate. Anyway, there will be another massive protest here in Beirut, at 3 pm tomorrow.
Btw, Nasrallah said that there is a good chance that Israel might take the opportunity to invade Lebanon, and that Hezbollah fighters have been put on high alert as a result. Indeed, the timing of the mysterious 8 rockets that were discovered in southern Lebanon that were "timed" to be fired on Israel, is suspect, to say the least. In all possibility, it was the work of zionist agents/proxies. It has been done before, after all. Notably during prior to the 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon.
BTW, they have started bombing Mosques as well as houses and residential buildings. They destroyed a Mosque in its entirety, and have bombed a few others, partially destroying them. I just heard on the news that Israel is bombing the Egyptian-Gaza border fence. If so, then that speaks volumes for what Israel is hoping to achieve from this campaign. It seems that it is implementing ethnic cleansing. Certainly, its starvation policies, together with what is happening over the past 2 days, fit in with that idea. I also heard that a prominent Egyptian officer on the Egyptian-Gaza border had been killed in an Israeli strike. I don't know how accurate these two pieces of news are , as of yet. But if true, then it's pretty damning circumstantial evidence that Israel is planning the depopulation of Gaza.
PALESTINIAN SOURCES ARE NOW REPORTING THAT GILAD SHALIT HAS BEEN INJURED IN ONE OF THE ISRAELI AIR STRIKES. Give it to israel to do what the "terrorists" did not do to its soldiers.
Oh, yeah, how could we forget. Now it's universities' turn.
There are terrorist universities, didn't you know?
At the Islamic university of Gaza female students are beaten by "supervisors" for dressing immodestly or speaking out of turn.
I say keep bombing it.
Don't orthodox jews do the same thing to women dressed 'inappropriately'? Yeah they do.
Moron.