Iran to hold rallies in support of Gazans

Iranians will stage rallies across the country after Friday prayers in condemnation of Israel's heavy offensive against the Gaza Strip.

The demonstrations are to voice support for the people of Gaza who are under Israeli attacks and will be held after Friday Prayers in the capital, Tehran, and throughout other cities.

The Gaza Strip is experiencing massive Israeli airstrikes since Saturday, with 399 Palestinians killed and 1,925 others injured.

Israeli officials say the operation, which has caused a heavy civilian toll, is aimed at ousting the elected government of Hamas from Gaza.

Palestinian resistance fighters have responded to Israel's airstrikes by firing mortar shells and rockets into Israeli occupied territories. Six Israelis have been killed and 16 others have been injured since Saturday.

Israel has also deployed tanks and troops along the border for a possible ground offensive.

Iran along with the international community has condemned Israel's onslaught against Gaza, urging the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the UN Human Rights Council to take appropriate measures to stop the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Source: Press TV

PFLP: Israeli crimes beyond Nazism

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has drawn a parallel between the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and 'Nazi' atrocities.

"What is going on in Gaza is an unprecedented genocide. It is even worse than Nazi crimes," the PFLP representative in Spain was quoted by IRIB as saying.

The Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have entered the sixth day as international calls for an end to the crisis grow. Tel Aviv, however, has repeatedly rejected calls for a truce with Hamas.

Four hundred Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,938 others including women and children have been wounded since Saturday.

Meanwhile, Israeli military says the preparations for ground operations are complete, as its tanks and troops have massed along the besieged Palestinian territory.

Hamas, however, has warned Israel against any ground operation, saying Gazans have prepared a 'surprise' for Israelis in the event of a ground incursion.

"Israel will embark on a veritable adventure if it decides to invade Gaza," Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said on Thursday.

Source: Press TV

'Fatah marks Hamas targets for Israel'

Hamas has accused Mahmoud Abbas' senior aides of spying for Israel in recent Israeli raids on the Gaza strip, The Independent says.

Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, on a movement's website and in remarks broadcasted on al-Jazeera, said that Fatah had formed a cell with the purpose of contacting various Fatah followers in Gaza to collect information on secret Hamas locations and on the whereabouts of the leadership.”

The cell was under the leadership of a senior Abbas adviser, Tayeb Abdul-Rahim, and information gathered would be passed on to Israel 'through the channels of security co-operation with the enemy,' The Independent quoted Barhoum as saying.

According to the reports, Hamas said that the former Fatah leader in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, whose forces were defeated by Hamas in June 2007, met Israeli intelligence officials several weeks ago to discuss Israeli plans for a strike on Gaza.

Fatah leaders have denied the accusations.

Source: Press TV

'Israeli attacks, holocaust of Gazans'

Turkey and Syria have described the Israeli campaign against Gazans as a 'holocaust', calling for an immediate end to the 'massacre'.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday to discuss ways to stop the "massacre committed by Israel'' on Gaza Palestinians.

Following the meeting the two leaders jointly said that it was "essential that Arab and Islamic countries intervene to force Israel to immediately halt this holocaust against an unarmed population," the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.

More than 399 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli attacks against Gaza - now on its sixth day -, and some 1,925 others are reported wounded.

Abandoning mediation between Tel Aviv and Damascus following the Israeli onslaught, Erdogan began a four-nation tour of the region to discuss ways to halt Israel's attacks that have killed and wounded more than 2300 Palestinians since Saturday.

The Turkish premier's tour will next take him to Egypt on Thursday and Saudi Arabia on Friday.

Meanwhile, a draft proposal for condemning the Israeli campaign on the Gaza Strip was reject by the United Nations Security Council, despite international calls for a UNSC resolution on the issue.

Source: Press TV

UNSC fails to pass anti-Israel resolution, AGAIN!

The UN Security Council has declined to issue a resolution censuring the Israeli blitz on Gaza despite global calls for an end to the assault.

The draft resolution put forth by Libya, representing the 22 nations in the Arab League, was swiftly rejected in the course of an emergency session held on Wednesday, AP reported.

The US, a permanent UNSC member holding veto power, has been quick to remove the circulated draft on accounts that it was 'unbalanced' as it did not condemn the Palestinian Hamas.

The Palestinian UN observer, Riyad Mansour said that the Arab nations need to work continually to pass a mandatory resolution "that would condemn the crimes committed by Israel and stop the military aggression, and provide protection for the Palestinians and lift the siege."

"We face a very dangerous crossroads in the Middle East as a direct consequence of this Israeli aggression ... (which) is threatening the life and prosperity of 1.5 million Palestinian and also threatens to undermine the peace efforts," He added.

Washington used its veto power on Sunday to block a resolution calling for an end to the massive ongoing Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip. Following the veto, the council issues a 'non-binding' statement that calls on Israel to voluntarily bring all its military activities in the besieged region to an immediate end.

More than 399 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli attacks against Gaza on Saturday, and some 1,925 others are reported wounded.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, at least 25 percent of Palestinians killed during Israel's onslaught on the Gaza Strip have been civilians.

Source: Press TV

The world must say NO to Jewish Nazism before it's too late

WRITTEN BY KHALID AMAYREH

The genocidal Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is strikingly similar to the German blitz in the initial stage of the Second World War. The pretexts are nearly the same and the behaviors of both Nazi and Israeli political and military leadership are nearly identical.

And as the German Nazis sought to justify their blitz against their neighbors to the east, using a plethora of carefully concocted lies and pretexts, Israel is doing virtually the same thing.

However, unlike the Nazis whose naked aggression was widely condemned around the world, the ongoing Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip is being condoned, even celebrated, by a huge media network throughout the western world from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Today, Israel is decapitating Gaza while claiming that it is only fighting Hamas. The Israeli air force is targeting and destroying schools, mosques, private homes, charities, public buildings, drug stores, colleges and universities, all under the false pretext of fighting Hamas.

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinian people as is obvious from the fact that the bulk of the victims are innocent civilians.

And like all criminals, Israel is resorting to the fabrication of lies and half-truths to justify its genocidal blitz against an essentially unprotected people.

Many, probably most Jews in Israel and around the world, are bragging about the “heroic” Israeli army and its “achievements” against Hamas. Some Jews have described the slaughter as the “best Hanukah present ever.”

Well, I don’t really see any heroism in using state-of-the-art machines of death, such as the F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters and laser-guided bunker buster bombs against a people who don’t posses an army or an air force or anti-aircraft defenses.

There is no heroism, but sheer cowardice, in launching these deadly bombs at unprotected civilian buildings just as there was no heroism in the targeting of unarmed civilians by the Nazi war machines.

For sure, even the weakest air force in the world could bomb and destroy unprotected buildings and kill as many civilians as seen fit by morbid minds of Ehud Barak’s ilk.

In short, the Israeli onslaught against a people who don’t possess the means to defend themselves and can’t protect their children from Israeli brutality is an act of sheer cowardice. It can be compared with the Nazi SS strafing Jewish protesters with machine gunfire.

Israel and her mouthpieces in the West claim that Israeli army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by any standard of objective analysis, is merely reacting to Palestinian projectiles fired from Gaza onto Israeli settlements outside Gaza.

Well, this is only a pretext for too many reasons:

The so-called Qassam projectiles are symbolic and nearly innocuous weapons that make more noise than damage. During the past eight years, less than two dozen Israelis were killed by these projectiles. In the meantime, thousands of Palestinians, mainly children and other innocent civilians, were annihilated by the indiscriminate Israeli death machine. These are war crimes because even in war, there is proportionality and using excessive force, mainly against civilians, in reaction to minor provocation puts Israel on equal footing with Nazi barbarianism.

There are those who would argue that Israel has the right and duty to defend its citizens. Well, this is not the real issue, because one could argue that even the worst state in the world has the right to defend its citizens.

But Israel has been savaging an entire people by imposing a Nazi-like siege upon them on no other account than to punish them for electing a government that both Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, didn’t like.

In short, Israel has been effectively telling the Palestinians, in word as well as in deed, that they face two choices: either to starve to death, or be exterminated by the Israeli war machine. In other words, the Palestinians must die if they resist and die if they don’t. This is while the Israeli hasbara (propaganda) machine keeps telling the world that Israel is only fighting Hamas and defending its citizens.

Well, Hamas may not be completely blameless in a certain sense. However, it is imperative to remind the world that the Islamic movement repeatedly voiced its willingness to stop the firing of “all” projectiles from the Gaza Strip if only Israel would reciprocate and lift the Nazi-like siege.

And as we all know, Israel consistently refused, insisting rather arrogantly that it had the right to kill the Palestinians and invade their territories whenever it deemed fit.

Needless to say, this is exactly the same sort of arrogance, insolence and bellicosity that characterized Nazi behavior.

A few days ago, Israeli analysts described the genocidal onslaught against Gaza as the Israeli version of the American “shock-and–awe bombing” at the beginning of the American invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Shock and awe against a thoroughly tormented and completely savaged people who have been through a hateful blockade, unprecedented in its cruelty and wickedness.

I can’t understand why Jews are behaving the way they are. Do the scenes of havoc and destruction and death in the streets and refugee camps of Gaza give them self-confidence? Do they enjoy watching Palestinian kids mutilated to smithereens by these hellish missiles launched at apartment buildings and homes from high altitude?

Does it make them feel that they are finally defeating Hitler?

I am asking these questions because I have seen Jews dancing and celebrating rather joyfully the carnage in Gaza. Indeed, a fleeting glance at the Israeli media these days reveals a sick and cannibalistic society that is as bestial as Nazi Germany was during the holocaust.

Perhaps I am doing some injustice to the Germans. After all, the Germans were living under a hateful and tyrannical dictatorship that would have brutally crushed any protests by conscientious citizens.

But, unlike Nazi Germany, Israel claims to be “a light upon the nations,” “the only democracy in the Middle East” and a civilized western nation.

Well, if such is the behavior of “democratic” Israel, just imagine how the Jewish state would behave once the terrorist entity fell in the hands of manifestly fascist forces and parties.

I have repeatedly warned in my writings that Israel is capable of committing a genocide or a holocaust against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the Middle East.

My warnings are not empty propaganda aimed at besmirching Israel’s image. Likewise, they are not motivated by anti-Semitism or hatred for the Jewish people, many of whom I respect and admire.

But the shocking pornographic slaughter in Gaza should be viewed as a clarion vindication of my warnings. Israel simply represents the Nazis of our time.

I know that many people around the world, especially in the West, realize the veracity of the analogy deep in their hearts. But they are afraid to call the spade a spade lest they be tarnished and hounded and harassed by the powerful Jewish media which more or less controls the public discourse in many western nations.

But the timidity of these cowards will not help them. Today, the Palestinians are the victims. But, surely, tomorrow will bring with it more victims, and Europeans and Americans in particular will not be immune.

Their lives may not be under an immediate threat now. But their freedoms certainly are.

Let us remember on this somber occasion the words of Martin Niemoller who lamented the bankruptcy of German intellectuals in the few years preceding the Second World War.

In Germany, they came first for the Communists,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then...they came for me...And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

For God’s sake, let us learn from history, because today’s Israel is strikingly similar to 1936’s Germany.

Please, say No to Jewish Nazism before it is too late.

Mr Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

WRITTEN BY Franklin Lamb in Beirut (Illustration by Carlos Latuff)

"I'm not calling for a coup d'etat, but go talk to your leaders and tell them you do not accept what is happening in Gaza".

– Hezbollah Sec-Gen Hasan Nasrallah calling for Egyptians "in millions" to demonstrate their support for opening the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt, 28 December 2008

"...it is essential if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law." (Preamble) - Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10, 1948

Giggling like smitten teenagers, exchanging Channakah and Eid greetings (neither acknowledges the more Shi'a associated Ashoura) Hosni Mubarak and Tzipi Livni 'hooked up' this past week in Cairo to discuss Gaza.

Both spoke of their desire to see Corporal Shalit returned safely. Both knew Israel's former Mossad operative, current Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister wannabee had a permission slip from the Bush Administration for all-out war against the Palestinians in the 25 by 6 mile territorial snippet along the Eastern Mediterranean. When the correct photo-op was selected for public distribution, it showed a concerned and dour Egyptian President brooding with arching brow.

The duo focused on 'diplomatic logistics and cover' and the urgency to crush Hamas. They appeared oblivious to all who happened to be in the vicinity of American rockets and bombs or institutions leveled by waves of F-16 fighter jets and missiles kept in ready use from the $ 200 million worth of spare parts supplied by US taxpayers from 200l-2006, as well as 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel , and thousands of TOW, Hellfire and "bunker buster" bombs and missiles, freed up for delivery to Israel last year when the Bush administration signed a $ 1.3 billion contract with Raytheon.

What was not on the agenda was what both knew but ignored. The fate of 1.5 million people, one of the highest population densities in the world with nearly 60% of its population 16 years or younger and nearly 75% of whom are malnourished, and according to one recent estimate by the World Health Organization, 46% of whom are afflicted with acute anemia, with 30% suffering from stunted growth as a result of chronic malnutrition and who would need an escape via Rafah.

One wonders if the dynamic duo discussed the fact that 10% of these children have permanent brain damage or that eighty-two percent are afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder; the great majority of them having witnessed death first-hand or that more than eighty percent of the population as a whole is dependent on food aid? Were Mubrak and Livni aware of reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children?

The UN and eyewitnesses such as members of the Free Gaza Project report that unemployment is rampant upwards of 60% with most Gazans subsisting on less than $2 a day.

Shooting fish in a barrel
Even a cursory examination of the events which began on December 27, 2008 require that Mohammad Hosni Mubarak be added as an accomplice to the pending International Criminal Court (ICC) case concerning international crimes being committed by Israel with American weapons.

HOKOK, the Beirut- and Washington DC-based International Coalition against Impunity, which filed a case against Israeli political leaders regarding Israeli crimes committed in Gaza with the International Criminal Court at The Hague on December 10, 2008, will send international lawyers back to the ICC on January 15, 2009, to amend its complaint under the Rome Statute and indict Egypt's Mubarak among the Defendants.

To his great credit, Professor Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, has joined HOKOK's call for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli violations and determine whether the Israeli leaders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.

The Case against Mohammad Hosni Mubarak
Mubarak knew that Gazans would need a safety valve, an escape route from the coming carnage, which according to the Washington-based Council for the National Interest (CNI), appears to be another Sharpeville Massacre. CNI points out that "Nearly fifty years ago, the South African regime attacked a crowd protesting the conditions in the Bantustan of Sharpeville and in a matter of minutes killed some 69 black South Africans. Eventually, after world reaction to this "incident," sanctions were imposed and they led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. Using American weapons, Israel has just indiscriminately killed more than four times that number in Gaza. In 1960 there were 20 million black South Africans and today there are only one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza. So the first two days of the American-supported Israeli attempt to wipe out Hamas is sixty times as criminal as the Sharpeville massacre.

Mubarak's actions make him complicit in International Crimes outlawed by Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide by assisting in the killing members of a specific ethnic group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

By sealing its border with Gaza and forcing back many Palestinians at gunpoint who were trying to escape the slaughter, Mubarak violates basic Islamic, Christian and Judaic morality that requires that he open the cork of the bottle and let these men, women and children live. So does international law. Otherwise he is actively responsible and complicit in Israel's project of creating a situation where Palestinians, in Rafael Eitan's infamous phrase, "will only be able to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."

By denying the possibility of a broad range of necessities food, cooking or heating oil, water, electricity, shelter, medicines, for a population unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation, and locking them inside Gaza in a blazing holocaust, amidst millions of gallons of untreated sewage is criminal conduct: Moubarak is complicit.

Oh mightiest Pharaoh, Let my People go!
By forcing Palestinians from Gaza back into killing fields and subjecting them to massive collective punishment, Mubarak is in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

On Monday morning, Israeli planes bombed a mosque. The house next to the mosque collapsed and inside, five sisters aged 2 to 10 years old were killed. Mubarak is helping Israel turn Gaza into a modern version of the Warsaw ghetto.

By slamming and sealing the life saving escape route Mubarak signs on to the effects of the scorn of international revulsion, the genocide, the political objective, the empirical objectives of Western dominance of the Middle East for a Greater Israel alongside an Egyptian Kingdom, the religious fanaticism, the psychopathology and the indiscriminate brutality and ruthlessness.

Mubarak's actions make him complicit in International Crimes outlawed by Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide by assisting in the killing members of a specific ethnic group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Some believe Egypt's President went further. London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi quote sources who say Egyptian intelligence minister deliberately misled the Palestinian organization about IDF intentions. Hamas sources say this is why movement's compounds were not evacuated: "Egypt collaborated with Israel in its Gaza attack and lulled Hamas into thinking the Israel Defense Forces would not attack Gaza", Al Quda al-Arabi claimed The report, based on Arab diplomatic sources, claims that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman told a number of Arab leaders that Israel was intending to attack the Gaza Strip in a limited manner in order to pressure the Palestinian organization into agreeing to a renewed ceasefire.

Hamas sources close to former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar also reported that Egypt told Hamas on Friday evening that Israel had agreed to begin negotiations about a potential ceasefire and would not attack Gaza before Cairo had attempted to settle the issue.

These sources noted that, in general, Hamas' internal ministry orders the evacuation of its security compounds following any Israeli threat of operative action. They had not done so this time based on Egypt's assurance that Israel wouldn't attack and based on the assumption that an IDF attack would not be launched on Saturday.

Colluding with Israel, the Bush administration and the Palestinian Authority in this aggression toward the Palestinians of Gaza, Mubarak reminds one of the Jews who served the Nazis as capos inside the ghettos of German controlled Europe during World War II, their baksheesh being that that they will be the last to be destroyed.

Hasan Nasrallah has reminded the Egyptian people of their duty, and once it becomes widely known that Mubarak cooperated with Israel as an adjunct of its colonial army in the assault against Gaza he may be deposed as un-redeemable. Rejecting the Resistance to Zionism, Mubarak invites Revolution.

UPDATE: Lebanon reacts to the Gaza Massacre
Lebanon has witnessed no fewer than 30 demonstrations and day and night student vigils against the Gaza slaughter during the past 72 hours. Tens of thousands of people massed in the southern suburbs of Beirut and packed the surrounding streets for a Hezbollah-led protest rally yesterday, calling for support for Gaza as it underwent its third day of Israeli attacks. Three more demonstrations are planned for this evening.

Sunday saw a joint Fatah-Hamas demonstration which included Osama Hamdan and Fatah's Abass Zaki outside the UN HQ known as ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia). Hezbollah plans daily demonstrations until Gaza is free according to its Media Office.
All alongside countless smaller manifestations composed of smaller groups, boy and girl scouts from various confessions, individuals, shopkeepers, and increased attendance in Mosques and Churches, some of the latter ringing bells, throughout Lebanon.

The sewage and rain flooded alleys of Beirut's Palestinian Refugee Camps, Shatila, Burj Burajneh and the smaller Mar Elias Camp, are filled with equally steadfast refugees in support of their countrymen to the south.

Franklin Lamb, currently based in Beirut, drafted, for HOKOK, the International Coalition against Impunity, its Complaint/Submission filed, on December 10, 2008, the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the Internationally Criminal Court in The Hague. The Case charges Israel with continuing Rome Statue International crimes in Gaza and throughout Occupied Palestine. In January 2009 HOKOK will petition the ICC to include Mohammad Hosni Mubarak as an additional defendant in the Case.
Lamb can be reached at: fplamb@sabrashatila.org.