Middle East Watch

475 Article

• In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

  23 January 2009, by Patrick Cockburn

  I was watching the superb animated documentary Waltz with Bashir about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It culminates in the massacre of some 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in south Beirut by Christian militiamen introduced there by the Israeli army which observed the butchery from close range.
  In the last few minutes the film switches from animation to graphic news footage showing Palestinian women screaming with grief and horror as they discover the (…)

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• UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto

  24 January 2009,

  There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday.
  The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
  Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence (…)

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• Offensive à Gaza : brochure ultra nationaliste du rabbinat militaire

  26 janvier 2009,

  Le rabbinat de l’armée israélienne a distribué aux soldats durant l’offensive "Plomb durci" une brochure appelant au nom de la Bible "à ne pas avoir pitié" des ennemis d’Israël, a révélé lundi une organisation de défense des droits de l’Homme en Israël. "Avoir pitié envers un ennemi cruel revient à se montrer cruel envers nos justes soldats (...) Nous sommes en guerre contre des assassins. A la guerre comme à la guerre", est-il écrit dans la brochure. Le texte cite longuement des (…)

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• Gaza : Israël prépare sa défense contre des accusations de crimes de guerre

  24 janvier 2009,

  Moins d’une semaine après la fin de l’offensive israélienne contre la bande de Gaza, le ministre de la justice de l’Autorité palestinienne, Ali Kasham, a rencontré, jeudi 22 janvier à La Haye, le procureur de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI), Luis Moreno Ocampo. Le ministre palestinien a déposé une déclaration de compétence auprès du greffe de la juridiction.
  Chargée de poursuivre les responsables de génocide, crimes contre l’humanité et crimes de guerre, la Cour ne peut poursuivre que (…)

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• Yonatan Mendel reacts to events in Ghaza

  15 January 2009, by Yonatan Mendel

  It’s very frustrating to see Israeli society recruited so calmly and easily to war. Hardly anyone has dared to mention the connection between the decision to go to war and the fact that we are only a few weeks away from an election. Kadima (Tzipi Livni’s party) and Labour (Ehud Barak’s) were doing very badly in the polls. Now that they have killed more than 1000 Palestinians (250 on the first day ­ the highest number in 41 years of occupation) they are both doing very well. Barak was (…)

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• Rashid Khalidi reacts to events in Gaza

  15 January 2009, by Rashid Khalidi

  It is commonplace to talk about the ’fog of war’, but war can also clarify things. The war in Gaza has pointed up the Israeli security establishment’s belief in force as a means of imposing ’solutions’ which result in massive Arab civilian suffering and solve nothing. It has also laid bare the feebleness of the Arab states, and their inability to protect Palestinian civilians from the Israeli military, to the despair and fury of their citizens. Almost from the moment the war began, America’s (…)

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• Israel’s Lies

  15 January 2009, by Henry Siegman

  Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an (…)

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• Gaza - La BBC refuse de diffuser un appel pour les victimes

  24 janvier 2009,

  Le gouvernement britannique a fait pression samedi sur la BBC pour qu’elle revienne sur son refus de diffuser un appel d’une ONG humanitaire pour les victimes de la guerre dans la bande de Gaza. Selon la télévision publique britannique, la diffusion de l’appel du Comité pour les catastrophes d’urgence (DEC, qui chapeaute 13 ONG) porterait atteinte à l’impartialité de sa couverture des événements. "La chose la plus importante que nous pouvons faire pour tous ceux qui souffrent est de (…)

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• Robert Fisk: So far, Obama’s missed the point on Gaza...

  22 January 2009, by Robert Fisk

  It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn’t the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.
  There was the phone call (…)

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• A Gaza, des habitants racontent l’acharnement de l’armée israélienne sur des civils

  23 janvier 2009, par Michel Bôle-Richard

  Au sud de Zeitoun, faubourg oriental de la ville de Gaza, le quartier habité par le clan Samouni n’est plus qu’un cimetière de ruines. Seules quelques maisons sont encore debout. Vingt et une habitations et une mosquée ont été réduites à l’état de carcasses de béton et de ferraille. Tsahal est passé par là.
  Moussa Samouni, 19 ans, raconte : "Lors de l’offensive terrestre le 4 janvier, les hélicoptères ont déposé les parachutistes sur les toits. Ensuite, ils ont fait sortir tout le monde et (…)

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