Israel has prevented journalists from traveling into Gaza to report on the horrors unfolding there. And yet despite this effort, they have finally broken through.
Watch this deeply disturbing video of Israeli broadcaster Shlomi Eldar holding a cell phone on air with a Palestinian doctor crying in shock. Reuters explains what's taking place:
The telephone calls created extraordinary scenes during evening news broadcasts as the doctor, a Hebrew-speaking physician who spoke regularly on Israeli television, said three of his children were killed in a tank strike and others were wounded.
"My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled," he said in a voice shaking with emotion. "I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?"
With Israeli journalists unable to report from the Gaza Strip independently, Aboul Aish acted as a Hebrew-speaking witness who told of the Palestinian civilians' suffering under fire during Israel's three-week-old offensive there.
The deaths of more than 1,150 Palestinians, some 700 of them civilians by one independent count, have left the Israeli public largely unmoved. An overwhelming majority backs a war to end Hamas rocket fire that, before the offensive, had killed 18 people and disrupted life in southern towns over recent years.
Channel 10 correspondent Shlomi Eldar, who said he had planned a live on-air interview with Aboul Aish on Friday evening, produced a mobile phone in the studio, letting viewers here the voice of Aboul Aish: "My God, my girls, Shlomi," he said. "Can't anybody get to us, please?" Eldar told his audience: "They have killed his family".
He said three of Aboul Aish's children were killed and two were seriously wounded. Building up the sense of drama, cameras followed him as he left the studio, saying he would try to help arrange for their transfer for treatment, and safety, in Israel.
Surviving members of the family were later shown being transferred to Israeli ambulances and taken out of Gaza. Aid agencies have complained that Israel has not done enough to help Gaza's hospitals and allow the transfer of some wounded people.
Aboul Aish's brother was also wounded and Eldar said two of his brother's children had also been killed in the incident.
The Israeli army said troops fired on Aboul Aish's house because a sniper had fired on soldiers from the building.
Aboul Aish responded: "All that was ever fired out of our house was love, hugs and acts of peace, nothing else, ever."
Is it possible that 92% of Israeli Jews will continue to "justify the air force's attacks
in Gaza despite the suffering of the civilian population in the Strip
and the damage they cause to infrastructure" after watching this video?
(Update: There is an post on this story over on Daily Kos, which includes more on the story and a translated transcript of the video. Richard Silverstein has a good post on the story here.)
Is it possible? Hey, its all Hamas' fault. With that rational, they can shut out everything else.
Kudos to the correspondent, though. I bet he'll be getting tons of hate mail.
The main's wail is the most heart-rending thing I've ever heard.
Lord have mercy.
What exactly is taking place in the video? There was no live conversation, am I correct? The man's family had already been killed. Yet the journalist is holding a cell-phone, presumably for dramatic effect? And then, "building up the sense of drama, cameras followed him as left the studio, saying he would try to help arrange for [the survivors] transfer for treatment, and safety, in Israel." And now for a word from our sponsors.
We just watched what is essentially a snuff film. Pornography from the masters of the art.
This is absolutely heart breaking. The anchor on TV and the reporter who talked to the doctor were visibly shaken. One does not need to know hebrew to hear the anguish. Several children dead, others wounded, possibly fatally. An entire family wiped out (reminds me of one of the pro-israel demonstrators interviewed by max Blumenthal: "They should all be wiped out", she said. In the video we can hear what this means. Something tells me that demonstrator would still not be moved…)
Could it be that israelis hearts have turned to stone and we didn't realize? and what of their army of apologizers? Tom friedman, Jeff Goldberg, Martyn Indyk, Richard Haas, Abe Foxman, all the rest?
So now we do know what it took to cleanse native people from their lands. What justifications the Hutus had in Rwanda as they wielded their machettes. What grim determination to "finish the job". What we never could have believed – in our wildest dreams – is that Jews could do it too. Worse yet, that it would be a majority of israelis and no small number of jews around the world.
This is one of the poems of Frederick Ruckert that Gustav Mahler set. It is called Kindertotenlieder or lament of a child's death. Very moving, we should all listen and be sad.
1. "Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n"
"Now the sun will rise as brightly as if nothing terrible had happened during the night. The awful thing happened only to me, but the sun shines equally on everyone. You must fold the night into yourself, and immerse it in eternal light. A little star went out in my heaven! Greetings to the joyful light of the world."
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_israel_lobby_takes_off_the_gloves
High Life
The Israel Lobby Takes Off the Gloves
Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos on January 16, 2009
So what’s a few hundred dead Palestinian children when Tzipi and Ehud have gained eight to ten points in the polls? They were terrorist babies, anyway. So what if the Egyptians and Saudis are ignoring them while spending millions on hookers, palaces and yachts? The Gazans don’t deserve such goodies, certainly not palaces on the Riviera. My favourite is Yigal Palmor, an Israeli spokesman, who took umbrage when Cardinal Renato Martino, a high-ranking Vatican official, compared Gaza to a concentration camp. The Israeli whined that World War II imagery was below the belt. I suppose the Cardinal should have called it a beach resort. Oy veh, one can’t trust these Wops, they’re all a bunch of anti-Semites!
Cue Witty saying both sides are equally suffering and equal to blame. Equal equal equal
Yep, no doubt that journalist is a day-um arab lover.
D., this was a live call on the correspondent's cell phone (put on loudspeaker) and obviously totally unplanned.
the doctor called his contact immediately after the shelling, so it was kind of live. apparently the attack happened minutes before he was scheduled for a call-in with the tv station.
It is heartbreaking. A person who can stay unmoved by this…
Nazi filth.
There is no other description of Israel needed.
Destroy them,just as we did the nazis and the cycle will end.
"Perhaps the only thing we can do is send help, anyone hearing us, seeing us…" The correspondent asked the doctor his location, the nearest cross streets, and asked "anyone watching that intersection, anyone watching our broadcast from the Red Cross, please intervene, there is a possibility of treating them…"
You do what you can to help. And you refuse to do harm. You know no Hebrew, yet you are experts on Israel. Do you know HOW MANY Israelis understood EVERY WORD that doctor said in Arabic? Do you know how hard it is to stop a war?
"D., this was a live call on the correspondent's cell phone (put on loudspeaker) and obviously totally unplanned."
Thanks. I'm relieved to hear that. It's just that I didn't get the impression that he was replying to the phone, but I stand corrected.
Eurosabra: "You do what you can to help."
which may include lot of hasbarizing on American internet sites.
You know no Hebrew, yet you are experts on Israel.
Excuse me, motherfucker, who are you talking to?
I don't have to surrender to Hamas just because you don't want Israel to exist. Someone has to be a thorn in your side, a reminder that some of us have always lived with Palestinians, have helped Palestinians, protested against every war, never voted for a mainstream Zionist party, but are still Zionists because the alternative is worse. I would happily be governed by Hadash, Balad, or even Ta'al, the Islamists, because they are Israeli Palestinians and their goals have been moderated by decades of a common life, a concession to reality. Hamas still dwells in the realm of absolutes and Jihad, and nothing in their discourse or behavior indicates that they are fit to replace the State of Israel. Sorry. They will be resisted, even by those who desire Israel as a "state of all its citizens"
If Eurosabra is a hasbara he's doing a bad job of it. He makes Israel's apologists sound half-mad and murderous. Maybe he's actually a Hamas plant?
Leila Abu-Saba,
"He makes Israel's apologists sound half-mad and murderous."
Isn't that what they all sound like?
If you look at the comments on the youtube video, the Isreael-Firsters are using the "human shield" propaganda.
"Hamas gunmen were using the civilians in the building as human shields."
I saw this video yesterday. Ah, so, 1200 people killed, and some Israeli TV station broadcasts a live conversation with a Palestinian victim wailing his heart out over his dead children. Israelis discover Palestinians mourn their loved ones. Israelis turn the tragedy of a Palestinian family — one among thousands affected by the genocidal war against Palestinians — into a "demonstration" of their "humanity". Do not worry, this is of hasbara value. That is why it was aired on Israeli TV. No other reason. The humane Israelis are visibly "shaken" by what they are hearing. Who can blame them, then? It is "clear" that they did not want this to happen. It is clear that Hamas caused all this. It is clear that Hamas does not care one iota about this man and his family while Israelis do. Ah, the irony, they will say. The irony, I would say, is that Israelis can think that they can slaughter and then apologize or pretend to be shaken, and get out of it with a good many hasbara points. Sure they would think that way, after all, the world has given them, and their hasbara, a blank cheque for decades. zionist propagandists will now argue that Hamas is responsible for this man's suffering, and not only that, but also will ask whether Palestinians would have acted the same way as these Israelis did if they had come across a Jew who has lost loved ones to Palestinian rockets. Never mind the facts; never mind that Palestinian rockets have so far killed 3 civilians in this entire war, and about the same number over the past 2 years during which Gaza was brought to the brink of starvation. Never mind the facts. Never mind anything else. Never mind that Israelis kill and then attend the funeral. Never mind all that. Israelis have passed the test. They can now be said to be "humane."
Israel will wait until Obama's Inauguration Day to begin cease-fire.
New Administration will then proceed to milk this 'amazing success' for next four years as a perfect fallback. Oh, and let's not forget upcoming deluge, photos of smiling Sec Hillary and her Magic Five, working hard to make world a better place.
Another angle:
Eurosabra:
Hamas still dwells in the realm of absolutes and Jihad, and nothing in their discourse or behavior indicates that they are fit to replace the State of Israel.
You know this not to be true. The June-November truce was reasonably upheld by Hamas. And whatever their stated ideology may be, they have not imposed Sharia. In fact, the only music school in Gaza was established under Hamas (and destroyed in a recent Israeli attack).
As for discourses, let's not forget that Likud is ahead in the polls for the upcoming Israeli election. And the Likud charter flatly rejects a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
Re: Eurosabra and his bullshit dichotomy, "It's either Zionist genocide or Hamas!"
If Israel were interested in peace, and not just a peace process, the colonization of the West Bank would've ended many years ago, and there'd be no chance of Hamas governing any Israelis and probably not Palestinians, either. There would be a state for Palestinians, and it would be governed by more moderate parties.
But instead we have the war criminals and fools, bloody fanged, marching proudly towards oblivion and the eventual certainty of a democratic Palestine from the river to the sea.
Then they'll reap what they've sown, the selfish schmucks. Keep that European passport handy, sabra.
Oh the funny stuff that comes out of the Israeli terrorist forces and terrorist government hasbara offices !!!
They just admitted that 2 soldiers and 2 officers from the Paratroopers' unit got seriously injured (this is just what they admit — what they don't admit is even more disastrous and humungous), and said that they, like all the others killed so far, could have been victims of "friendly fire."
Ha'aretz:
"The IDF is currently checking the circumstances the incident, and weighing the possibility that it was another case of friendly fire. If the four wounded troops were in fact hit by friendly fire, it would represent the fourth such incident since Operation Cast Lead began on December 27. "
Of course. Things got so busy down there that they started shooting each other up.
Yup:
"Things got so busy down there that they started shooting each other up."
I meant things got so BORING.
My Zionism is not a genocide. Some of us are "natives" and have always lived among "natives", it is a long story, but even Fateh has made some noises about long-settled Jews being acceptable.
The truce was made moot by the tunnel towards Israel, and the longer-range rockets, because it changed the strategic calculus. The Lebanese could, if they wanted, have stopped at the border. They chose not to, even though they have the excuse of UN425. Hamas, for some reason, wanted to carry the war to Israel. That reason is Palestine in place of Israel, and Jihad. Hamas has no excuse for halting at the border among its own people.
Oslo was a disaster, for various reasons. The settlements on the West Bank spine were often built on Jordanian state land, and if "apartheid" were the goal, they could have remained in splendid isolation, supplied from Israel, linked to Israel, a curiosity for the villagers in the valley below. Instead they stole water, land, harassed farmers, instead of simply becoming bedroom communities. Oddly, because of the status of Jerusalem, a Palestinian with a Jerusalem ID could even move into a Jerusalem-area settlement, and since the rise of the Wall, the Arab population of the city has grown as Jerusalem Palestinians "pull in" their West Bank relatives. Unanticipated consequences leading to a common life.
The "oblivion" risks being an oblivion of the entire Levantine world, Croatia is a nasty precedent, the US does not like seeing its allies overrun. A nuke on Israel kills the Palestinians as well, destroying their vehicles and electricity, collapsing the distribution of food and medicine, poisoning the air and water. The splinter groups of the Palestinian left, those most capable of building a democratic state, compete with the Islamists to make car bombs, to defend their nationalist legitimacy. If there will be a Palestine, it will be democratic, otherwise there will be no Palestine. A slice of the cake for everyone, or no cake at all. South Africa, not French Algeria. Or we'll kill each other. Even the Lebanese made peace with each other, after a fashion.
I am not afraid of Palestinians, I am afraid of Hamas. But I would vote for Balad in a heartbeat. With enough equality and democracy, it would not matter what the state is called. But utopia is not yet here.
"Perhaps the only thing we can do is send help, anyone hearing us, seeing us…" The correspondent asked the doctor his location, the nearest cross streets, and asked "anyone watching that intersection, anyone watching our broadcast from the Red Cross, please intervene, there is a possibility of treating them…"
It's a glowing testament to the sharp character of the zionist mind that it occurred to me that the IDF would have no problem using the correspondent's request for the grieving doctor's coordinates to obliterate that particular intersection. The doctor is provoking terrorism by broadcasting his anti-Israel sentiment to the world, after all. And if I were the doctor, I'd be finding somewhere else to be after I got off the phone.
Eurosabra's post above is both prescient and thought provoking.
"…if "apartheid" were the goal, they could have remained in splendid isolation, supplied from Israel, linked to Israel, a curiosity for the villagers in the valley below. Instead they stole water, land, harassed farmers, instead of simply becoming bedroom communities."
Who stole water and harassed farmers? I'm a little bit confused here. I could use some clarification if you don't mind.
"The truce was made moot by the tunnel towards Israel, and the longer-range rockets, because it changed the strategic calculus."
LOL! In that case than there's even more reason for you to stop being delusional and recognize that Israel did the same – and even before Hamas – by planning and preparing for the invasion of Gaza during the cease fire and even before those foot-long plastic missiles that look like they came out of a Kracker Jack box were frightening some Israelis.
If you did eally believe that Hamas broke the truce than you'd have to be an idiot.
But IMHO I think it's more a case of "stupid goy – those morons will believe any old bullshit I tell 'em", or something like that. Mainly because you do sound sound intelligent and knowledgeable about Palestinian culture and the conflict generally. More than most people on this board, so I can understand – while not condoning -pushing something like that when the end goal is so obviously a moral imperative. But it's unbecoming of your undoubted qualitative analysis to suggest that Hamas broke the truce when so much evidence shows how ridiculous that assertion is.
Even if those stupid goy do swallow it….
zionist hasbara agents are at work, folks. Yediot Ahronot is reporting Israeli terrorist forces' allegations that the house of the doctor was targeted because there was "sniper" far from there. are there any limits to how low zionist terrorists can stoop to justify their genocidal mania?