Today I end my support of Israel By Chilean Jew Like davidminzer, I'm Jewish and descendant of holocaust survivors. Moreover, I've been a Zionist all of my life. I went to a Zionist school, I was active in Zionist youth groups. I've always been a fervent supporter of Israel as a refuge for Jews around the world who seek a place to exercise their traditions and embrace their identity in peace. I sang the Israeli anthem in the train rails of Aushwitz-Birkenau and I pledged to fight every day of my life to make sure the savage crimes that had taken place there would never happen again. Every year I pledged: Never Again. Remember and Never forget. Well, I haven't forgotten. And so to honor that pledge, to honor the memory of my family members who died in those death camps and because “there comes a time when silence is betrayal”, today I finally and publicly end my support for the state of Israel. I do this with great pain in my heart, but nonetheless with the overwhelming conviction that it is the only right thing to do. I was patient: I tolerated the destruction of the Oslo process by refusing to end or slow down the constant and criminal construction of settlements. I held my nose and stood my ground when Barak killed the final status negotiations at Taba in 2001. I even remained loyal after Sharon's massacres in the West Bank, the brutal Annexation wall, the illegal “selective assassinations” and Olmert's war crimes in Lebanon. I had to defend Israel and Israelis with my friends and others who demanded I be consistent with my progressive views and oppose a country that was responsible for horrible crimes against innocent human beings. “Israelis are scared, they are traumatized, you have to understand...”, “Israel is responding to attacks on itself, tell me one other country that wouldn't respond when attacked...”, I demanded understanding, I pleaded for a fair and comparative analysis. Enough. I'm done justifying crimes against humanity by a country that claims to be an illuminated Western democracy. I'm done defending a country that is unwilling to grant self-determination to a neighboring people because it won't let go of a few settlements and divide a city. I'm done tolerating the slaughtering of innocent kids, the murderous and barbaric occupation of an impoverished people, the utter disregard for human life. If they think their daily peace of mind is worth the lives of hundreds of innocent people. If they think the best way to go right now would be to vote for Netanyahu (who is so far winning in the polls). If they won't bat an eye before keeping millions without electricity or water, before bombing civilian neighborhoods at exactly the time when kids are leaving schools, before breaking every standard of international law or moral decency. I refuse to accept that. It's time for every true progressive in this country and around the world to do the only thing that our consciences should allow us to do, the only thing that can keep us consistent with our supposed beliefs that human life is precious and that unnecessary violence is always criminal, barbarous and unacceptable. We must demand that Israel stop violence and immediately put an end to its colonialist-military occupation of Palestine. And until they do so, we must organize and do everything we can to make sure our money is not financing mass murder and oppression. It is time for the progressive movement to demand immediate divestment from Israel, just like we divested from other oppressive states like South Africa. The only reason not to do so is willful hypocrisy. And I don't know about you, but I'm done being a hypocrite. Unnecessary murder of innocents is always wrong. Selfish and unjustifiable occupation is always wrong. Inaction in the face of massive suffering and injustice is always wrong. It is thus our responsibility to make sure Obama and the rest of our leaders understand that this time we will be relentless, this time we mean business and this time we will honor our pledges. Never Again! Divest Now! Peace, Salaam, Shalom -http://chilean-jew.dailykos.com/ The amount of death and destruction is inconceivable By Safa Joudeh It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn't understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzpi Livni's statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all. What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I'm in the middle of it and a few hours have already passed. Six locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza City. The images are probably not broadcasted on US news channels. There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men were still alive, someone lifts a hand, and another raises his head. They probably died within moments because their bodies were burned, most had lost limbs, some of their guts were hanging out and they were all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home which is close to the two largest universities in Gaza, a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students. They'd been warned not to stand in groups as it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. Seven were killed, four students and three of our neighbors' kids, young men who were from the Rayes family and were best friends. As I'm writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside; I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the three Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now they are sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14-year-old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends lying in the street after they were killed. He hasn't spoken a word since. What did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mean when he stated that we the people of Gaza weren't the enemy, that it was Hamas which was the target. Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out our state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured, Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike, three schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls' bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other. In all the locations, people are going through the dead, terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren't working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the ground, weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanish after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings. And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It's truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor, side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren't life-threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window and she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home; too many others needed more urgent medical attention. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia. More than 200 people dead in today's air raids. That means more than 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow, probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -- actually all of us -- would gladly have had Hamas forever sign off every last basic right we've been calling for the last few months if it could have stopped this from ever having happened. The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is OK, but two of my uncles' homes were damaged, We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fates have already been sealed. – Safa Joudeh is a master's candidate in public policy at Stony Brook University in the US. She returned to Gaza in September 2007 where she currently works as a freelance journalist. http://electronicintifada.net Bombing of Gaza I was sitting in the living room with my family trying to figure out what to do today for lunch, it's our main meal. What to cook and whether we have enough to eat. There was no rice so I wanted to have lentil soup and my wife said “No, there's no lentils in the market.” We were discussing this when suddenly the whole thing erupted. Suddenly there was a big explosion. The bombing went on for about 10 minutes. It was like an earthquake on top of your head. The windows were shaking and squeaking. My 10-year-old was terrified, he was jumping from one place to another trying to hide. I held him tight to my chest and tried to give him some security and reassure him. My 12-year-old was panicking and began laughing hysterically, it's not normal. I held her hand and calmed her and told her she would be safe. My wife was panicking. She was running around the apartment looking for somewhere to hide. We live on the ground floor so we headed to the basement. The child of one of our relatives, who lives in our building, finally came home from school. We hadn't been able to find her. All the phone connections were jammed. She came home and she was in a very serious state of shock. She was pale and trembling and she was describing dead bodies in the streets Right now I feel very anxious about what's going to happen. I'm worried about how many more people are going to die. – Dr Eyad Al Serraj, practicing psychologist in Gaza City. http://www.counterpunch.org The rains of death We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. My parents live in the the city center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. Over 50 “targets”by 60 warplanes, read the headlines in Haaretz. And over 220 killed- in broad daylight; in the after-school rush. Like a movie tagline. Or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore: 50 targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, 1 day. All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box. “There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up.” Gaza's air is saturated with the smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs-in a cage, no less, would create an outcry. My father just called to inform me he was OK – after warplanes bombed the Islamic University there, considered to be the Strip's premiere academic institution. A little later I called my mother, only to hear her crying on the phone. “The planes are overhead” she cried “the planes are overhead”. I tried to calm her down- planes overhead mean the “target” is further away. But in such moments of intense fear, there is no room for rationality and logic.There is you, and there are war planes; and nothing in between, besides orders and a video game screen.Her panic subsided slightly...”ok ok your father says it was the navy gunships...they hit the pier...the poor fishermen, its not like its even a real pier... its just the pier, just the pier...” She tried to convince my father not to go out to the mosque today. But he did. Most people stayed indoors. – Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian journalist in the US http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/ Not Iran. Israel is the threat Outrageous! Israel's attack on the poor Palestinians is cold-blooded murder, genocide and the most despicable form of terrorism. With the passage of time, Israel has only gone from bad to worse. Israel's attacks have intensified; it doesn't hesitate to attack any country, doesn't respect any country's sovereignty, and is a plain bully. Apart from the genocide it regularly carries out in Occupied Palestine, it has attacked Syria and Lebanon in the recent past. The country has no regard for its neighbors and does nothing to improve relations with them. No, it's not Iran that's a threat to the world. It's Israel. – saudilives.blogspot.com My uncle martyred My step-mother's brother, Ahmad, was murdered today by the Zionist regime. May Allah accept his Shahada and make him amongst the Shuhada' (martyrs) in Jannah (paradise) Amin! I ask that everyone make Du'a for the rest of his family. Currently my uncles and aunts as well as cousins are struggling for the basic necessities. Alhamdulillah, we have been able to get them money in recent months so they have the finances, but the problem is access to goods. I can't even imagine the struggle for others who do not have a family like ours to send them money. These other families are the majority of Gazans. Make sincere Du'a for them please. – Abul Layth http://www.concernedmuslim.com __
