Israeli Attacks / Eyewitness Accounts
Friday; Israel Carried Out 30 Air Strikes Against Gaza In Less Than 30 Minutes
The Israeli Army continued its escalation against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and carried out, early on Friday morning, more than 30 air strikes against different parts of the Gaza Strip in less than 30 minutes.
http://www.imemc.org/article/64568
The Israeli army continued it aggression and massive offensive against the civilians in the Gaza Strip, and bombarded on Thursday at night dozens of targets in the besieged coastal region killing three children and wounding several residents. 19 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday evening, and at least 180 have been injured. 23 Palestinians have been killed since last Saturday; most of the casualties are civilians, children and women.
A roundup of photos documenting Gaza under bombardment.
Israel moves troops toward Gaza; Barak wants 30,000 reservists
At least a dozen trucks carrying tanks, armored vehicles were seen late Thursday moving toward border area, while buses ferried soldiers; Barak asks government to okay reserves call-up ahead of possible ground invasion. IDF reservist: Time to do what must be done.
Pregnant woman, two children wounded in renewed Israeli raids on Gaza
A pregnant woman and two children were wounded in Gaza on Thursday in renewed Israeli shelling of the besieged enclave, medical sources said.
Photo of journalist carrying dead son in Gaza spurs online grief
The death of a journalist’s 11-month-old son in Gaza on Wednesday has prompted a flood of poignant messages online — and media speculation — when pictures of Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic video editor, showed him carrying the body of his dead son.
BBC staffer’s 11-month-old son killed in Gaza
The 11-month-old son of a BBC staffer was killed yesterday during an air strike by the Israeli army on the Gaza strip. Omar Misharawi, son of the BBC Arabic service’s picture editor, Jihad, is said to have died in hospital from shrapnel wounds (though some earlier reports wrongly stated it was from severe burns). His aunt was killed, and his brother and an uncle were critically injured. There is a picture here of Omar. His father told BBC Arabic: “Shrapnel hit our house. My sister-in-law was killed along with my son. And my brother and my other son were wounded. What did my son to to die like this? What was his mistake? What did he do?”
Israel bombs Interior Ministry building in Gaza City
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Israel bombed the civil affairs department of the Ministry of Interior in Gaza City early Friday morning after a night of heavy raids across the Gaza Strip. Emergency crews extinguished a huge blaze at the ministry in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood as ambulances transferred wounded Palestinians from residential buildings in the area. Ministry officials reassured citizens that more than 90 percent of personal files and papers were saved electronically and could still be accessed. The building contained 70 years of records of the Palestinian civil registry, the ministry said.
In Gaza, my son asks, what do the Israelis want from us?, Rami Almeghari
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada correspondent in Gaza, struggles to answer his son’s simple question.
Inciting war crimes: Israel minister says force Gaza population into Egypt, cut off water, electricity, Ali Abunimah
Katz, a member Netanyahu’s Likud Party, appears to be inciting war crimes of the kind Israel committed in Lebanon and previously in Gaza.
Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld: ‘If they dare to strike Tel Aviv… we’ll wipe the whole place out’, Philip Weiss
There is a famous knoll outside Sderot in southern Israel where reporters and other spectators of war gather to watch Israeli operations against Gaza—“we want to see fireworks,” as one young man explained this afternoon– and we had been there only ten minutes when Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesperson on security matters, arrived with a colleague. “There’s a strike, check it out,” he said proudly as a plume of smoke rose from Gaza City. “You can see it well in the setting sun.” Around us, photographers balanced long telephoto lenses on knees or tripods to make the golden shot of destruction about a dozen miles away. Four men seated under a fir tree guzzled bottles of beer.
Editor Note: Phil Weiss and Scott Roth are in southern Israel today, following the story of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Roth has been tweeting during the trip.
Gaza returns deadly rocket fire on Israel
Three Israelis killed by rocket fire on southern town, as wave of violence that has left 13 Palestinians dead continues.
For first time in over 20 years, siren heard in Tel Aviv metropolitan area; two rockets land in open areas shortly thereafter; two hours earlier, rocket lands in Rishon Lezion area; no injuries reported in either attack. Beersheba home sustains direct hit, none hurt. Three Kiryat Malachi residents killed in morning rocket attack.
Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai addresses Operation Pillar of Defense, says ‘top priority is to restore peace to south’
Who do you believe? An Israeli official’s denial or your own eyes?
Abu Ubaida: bombing Tel Rabii is just a “message” to the Israeli occupation
Abu Obeida, the Qassam Brigades’ spokesman, stressed that bombing the occupied city of Tel-Rabii (75 miles from the Gaza Strip) by two missiles was only a “message” to the occupation.
Thousands lay Ja’bari to rest
Thousands of people marched in the funeral procession of Hamas’s military commander Ahmed Al-Ja’bari, on Thursday including a number of Hamas leaders.
Gaza Interior Ministry confirms its readiness to secure back of resistance
The Ministry of Interior and National Security in Gaza confirmed that the security services would deal seriously with any attempt to tamper with internal security,”
Gaza hospitals struggle to cope
Israel’s campaign of air strikes on Gaza’s continued for a second night. The number of casualties is rising and Hamas’ retaliation is causing panic inside Israel. For the first time, rockets fired from Gaza have reached the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Air raid sirens sounded there for the first time in more than 20 years. Inside Gaza, the bombardment is causing so many injuries that hospital staff face being overwhelmed. And the return fire into Israel is also causing casualties. Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba reports from Gaza.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPCB1Gd-yU&feature=youtube_gdata
Morsi Warns Israel Against Attacking Egyptian Delegates Visiting Gaza
Egyptian President, Mohammad Morsi, warned Israel against attacking official Egyptian delegates who will be visiting the Gaza strip, on Friday, adding that the delegates will be carrying medical supplies to the coastal region.
An Israeli official says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Egypt that Israel would be prepared to suspend its military offensive in the Gaza Strip during the Egyptian prime minister’s visit there.
Egypt’s Islamist president has ordered his prime minister to lead a senior delegation to Gaza in a show of support for the coastal strip’s Hamas rulers in the face of Israel’s offensive.
Netanyahu Seeks International Support For Offensive
Israeli TV, Channel 10, reported that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is holding talks with different world leaders, including U.S. President, Barack Obama, to ensure international support as Israel widens and intensifies its escalation against the Gaza Strip.
As the political and security leadership in Tel Aviv continue their assessment of the recent military escalation against the Gaza Strip, the Speaker of the Knesset has said that he supports the concept of dialogue with the Islamic Resistance Movement in Gaza. Seven Palestinians have been killed, and dozens more have been wounded, in Israeli attacks against Gaza over the past few days.
The price of Israeli currency, shekel, and the Israeli bourse have registered a sharp decline, following the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the resistance’s responses.
Mass rallies in refugee camps in Lebanon to denounce aggression on Gaza
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon organized mass rallies to denounce the assassination of the Commander in “Al-Qassam Brigades” in Gaza, Ahmed Jabari, by the Israeli occupation.
GAZA (Reuters) – Egypt’s prime minister prepared to visit the Gaza Strip on Friday in an unprecedented display of solidarity with Hamas militants embroiled in a new escalation of conflict with Israel that risks spiraling into all-out war. Two rockets from Gaza crashed near Tel Aviv in the first such attack on Israel’s commercial capital for 20 years. One fell into the Mediterranean Sea and the other in an uninhabited part of one of the Tel Aviv suburbs south of the city.
Dr. Yasser Ali Spokesman for the Egyptian Presidency said that President Mohamed Morsi, has commissioned the PM Hisham Qandil to go to the Gaza Strip on Friday at the head of a high-level delegation.
Massive rally in Istanbul against Israel’s military attacks on Gaza
Hundreds of Turkish citizens on Wednesday evening flocked into the open square opposite the Sultan Mohamed Al-Fateh Mosque in Istanbul city to protest Israel’s military aggression against Gaza.
The head of the National Association to support Arab resistance stated that the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari on Wednesday represents a serious Israeli escalation that requires a strong response.
A London based organization calls on Egypt to defend Gaza
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain called on the Egyptian government and people to “take urgent action to defend by all means possible the residents of the Gaza Strip.
Emergency actions for Gaza are being called this week in more than 100 places around the world, from Israeli consulates to public parks to university campuses.
BDS Movement: Stop a new Israeli massacre in Gaza — boycott Israel now!
Occupied Palestine, 15 November 2012 – On November 8, Israel carried out an attack on civilians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, shooting 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa while he played football with friends. By November 14, Israel had intensified its attacks on Gaza and begun to implement an intensive plan of aggression that at the time of writing has killed at least 15 Palestinians, including at least 6 children, and injured over 150, predominantly civilians.
When a rocket crashed into a building in Kiryat Malachi, or City of Angels, on Thursday morning, it took the first Israeli casualties in this round of violence.
Fox News on Gaza, As’ad AbuKhalil
If Israeli bombs are not incinerating children in Gaza, one would have found Fox News coverage of Gaza to be rather comical. The correspondent today was trying hard to transmit a fake sense of panic among all Israelis. He was screaming: missiles are falling indiscriminately everywhere, he said. And then added: and there is total destruction. This air-conditioner in this room is now totally gone. Such is the power of the Gaza missiles on Israel.
How Israel shattered Gaza truce leading to escalating death and tragedy: a timeline, Ali Abunimah
Israel’s narrative that it’s “responding” to rocket fire is false.
In a new low for the BBC’s objectively pro-Israel coverage, the British state broadcaster seems to be doing its best to downplay the murder by Israel of family members of one of its own cameramen.
Mohamed Morsi’s approach to Gaza air strikes falls short for many Egyptians, Abdel-Rahman Hussein
Egypt’s president is taking a diplomatic route over Israeli assault, but response is unlikely to placate anger at home. There will be no call to arms to support fallen brothers in Gaza. Instead, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government has adopted a more prosaic approach to the Israeli offensive on Gaza, centred on diplomatic avenues and multilateral efforts. Usually slow to react in a crisis, this time the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, responded quickly with a series of diplomatic gestures. He recalled Egypt’s ambassador from Tel Aviv, had the foreign minister summon Israel’s ambassador to Cairo to hand him a letter of protest, instructed Egypt’s UN envoy to call for an emergency session of the UN security council and urged the Arab League to convene immediately. Morsi also delegated his prime minister, Hisham Qandil, to make a one-day visit to Gaza on Friday.
“Meanwhile, most US media outlets are petrified of straying too far from pro-Israel orthodoxies. Time’s Middle East correspondent Rania Abouzeid noted this morning on Twitter the typical template: “Just read report in major US paper about Gaza/Israel that put Israeli dead in 1st sentence. Palestinian in 6th paragraph.” Or just considerthe BBC’s headline. Worse, this morning’s New York Times editorial self-consciously drapes itself with pro-Israel caveats and completely ignores the extensive civilian deaths in Gaza before identifying this as one of the only flaws it could find with the lethal Israeli assault: “The action also threatens to divert attention from what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described as Israel’s biggest security threat: Iran’s nuclear program.” In what I know will be a fruitless attempt to avoid having this discussion subsumed by that tired script: I will recommend several outstanding, truly must-read pieces written by others over the last 24 hours in lieu of my own reciting of the various arguments. Begin with this article by Yousef Munayyer in the Daily Beast setting the crucial context for the rocket attacks from Gaza; then read this Daily Beast news-breaking account from Gershon Baskin, who details how the provocations from the Israelis were geared toward disrupting an imminent peace deal with Hamas (“The assassination of Jaabari was a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of a long term ceasefire”); also vital is this time-line of events leading up to the rocket attacks from Gaza, with ample documentation from Ali Abunimah; and finally, there is this very succinct but poignant summary of what Israel has done over the last three weeks.”
America is a partner in Israel’s wars
On 15 November, 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) National Council, a body representing all Palestinians, declared an independent Palestinian state. The gesture did not change life for Palestinians under occupation or in exile, but that wasn’t the intention. The pronouncement was sugar coating major, unreciprocated political concessions, for the declaration also endorsed Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and gave implicit recognition to Israel. Thus, US conditions to open communication channels between the PLO and Israel were complied with. Why did these UN resolutions become so critical in America’s political lexis? More than a decade earlier, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had bestowed on Israel special powers over US policy in the Middle East. In 1975, he pledged that there would be no negotiation with the PLO as long as it did not recognise Israel and accept UN Resolutions 242 and 338.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/4634-america-is-a-partner-in-israels-wars
Israeli-Palestinian violence threatens US-Egypt ties
Washington puts onus on Hamas; Cairo denounces Israel’s ‘unacceptable aggression’
Indeed no one cares about Gaza. Since Hamas rockets launched into the Southern Tel Aviv region earlier this evening, Israel has hit and taken out 80 targets in Gaza. While the martyred, the dead of the coastal Mediterranean Strip, are carried into al-Sheefa Hospital and mourned with the blares of gunshots busting into the air, mere Kilometers away Israeli life continues. “I want to live quietly,” said Ariel Siegal, 33, from a kibbutz just outside of Sderot, Hamas’s bulls eye zone. But Siegal continued by expressing a palpable lack of concern for Palestinians in Gaza, “I don’t know what’s going on with them. I suppose what they cook they will eat.” Siegal is like many Israelis in the Southern region who live with continuous warning of rockets, yet still carry on normal life. On Thursday November 15, 2012 Siegal went to work at a computer store in Kiyrat Gan, while his wife and child left for the north. The night before, when the sirens alarmed of incoming rockets, he jumped into the protective bomb shelter that comprises one room of his home. “I am not afraid,” he said, “but my wife is.”
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/what-comes-after-cast-lead-is-worse.html
Israel’s assault on Gaza raises doubts that it has any interest in finding the lasting peace settlement it proclaims to want. Does the campaign have an alternative objective as part of a strategy to engineer a strike on Iran?, It’s probably the world’s most tragic never-ending story.For almost 65 years now, Israel has been bombing, maiming and humiliating the Palestinians, bulldozing their homes and placing Gaza in lock-down mode turning it into the world’s largest concentration camp., In the latest outbreak of violence this week both sides are accusing the other, “You started it!”Who knows? At this stage, does it really matter anymore who started the violence?
News from the West Bank
Occupation to evacuate a Jerusalemite village for building landfill
The Israeli Haaretz newspaper revealed in its Tuesday edition that the Jerusalem municipality initially approved a plan to evict some 120 Bedouins from their east Jerusalem village.
Two Palestinians arrested in Jerusalem clashes
Two Palestinians were arrested after violent clashes between Israeli occupation forces and young men near Qalandiya refugee camp north of occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday.
IOA prevents prisoner Abbas Sayed’s wife from visiting him since 4 years
A Palestinian human rights center condemned the occupation authorities’ continuous prevention of the wife of the prisoner and leader Abbas al-Sayed from visiting her husband.
Brown Univ committee recommends considering divestment from companies that profit from Israeli occupation, Adam Horowitz
Brown University SJP sent out the following press release today: (Providence, RI – November 14, 2012) — The Brown Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies (ACCRIP) has asked the Brown Corporation to consider divestment from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. On Monday, ACCRIP sent a letter to Brown University President Christina Paxson.
Jordan’s Islamist-led opposition looked to harness growing popular anger with the government, vowing Thursday to keep up a wave of demonstrations this week that have rattled the U.S.-allied kingdom.
Israel: a Non-nuclear Weapons State?, Stuart Littlewood
Tired of listening to Agent Cameron and his foreign secretary William Hague trying to pick a fight with Iran and ratcheting up sanctions aimed at ruining that country’s economy and hurting innocent Iranian women and children, I asked my MP, Henry Bellingham, to table the following written Parliamentary Question (PQ): “Israel refuses (unlike Iran) to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programme to international inspection. It has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Israeli regime continues to defy international law and UN resolutions with its illegal occupation, ongoing confiscation of Palestinian lands, destruction of homes, arrest and imprisonment of civilians, its inhuman blockade of Gaza and many other crimes against humanity – including lethal assaults on peaceful shipping on the high seas bringing humanitarian aid. Instead of rewarding Israel with pledges of everlasting protection and special trade agreements, should not Britain and the international community now discharge their obligation to make Israel accountable?”
“Dead mothers, teachers and babies in Gaza yet media overwhelmingly focuses on rocket fire into Israel”
Of course. The media is lousy with people who view the world through the lens of western Imperialism and with zionists, so what else can one expect?
Here’s the view from the USA: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/santorum-obama-support-israel/2012/11/15/id/464365?s=al&promo_code=10C1E-1#
This is the less coded version of what’s going on in Gaza that US mainstream media is blaring to Obamaland, as distinguished from Mittland. In the end, it’s de facto all America, and hence, de facto dead Arab kids, babies, etc.
The MSM count how many rockets are fired at Israel but have no detail on how many bombs are dropped on Gaza.
This is the IDF narrative par excellence.