"Jews are effecting a holocaust in Gaza”
From Khalid Amayreh in Israel-occupied East Jerusalem 21 January, 2008

Palestinians and human rights organizations operating in the Occupied Palestinian territories have accused Israel of effecting a real holocaust against Gaza Strip’s estimated 1.5 million inhabitants following a decision by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to completely sever fuel and electricity supplies to the coastal territory.

Israel, which in 2005 withdrew its occupation troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, retained tight control of all Gaza’s border-crossings, reducing the small crowded territory to a huge detention camp.

Israel drastically stepped up its collective punishment of Gazans following Hamas’s takeover of the Strip in June 2006. The Israeli army, which exerts overwhelming influence on the Israeli political establishment, has also been carrying out nearly daily incursions and attacks inside Gaza resulting in the death and maiming of hundreds of Palestinians in recent weeks. It is widely believed that the vast bulk of the casualties are innocent civilians.

On Sunday, 20 January, more than 90% of Gazans spent the night in total darkness as Israel decided to halt vital fuel supplies, ostensibly to coerce the masses to rise up against Hamas which refuses to lend legitimacy to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

The nearly total shutdown of power plants is already causing catastrophic effects and paralyzing vital services all over the Gaza Strip.

Hospital sources reported many deaths caused by the stoppage of electricity supplies.

“Electricity-powered medical machines such as incubators, dialysis and artificial breathing machines as well as many other vital life-saving medical equipment are no longer functioning. This means certain death for patients,” said Omar al-Shawwa, a paramedic at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Al-Shifa hospital is the largest hospital in Gaza and it has been operating on an emergency footing for two years as the delivery of vital medical supplies continued to be restricted by the Israel.

“It is true the Jews are not sending our children to the ovens, but they are killing us using other means,” said a visibly depressed al Shawwa. “Maybe the Europeans and the Americans won’t believe it, but the truth is that the Jews are effecting a real holocaust against our people.”

TV cameras showed hair-raising scenes of dying Palestinian children whose survival depends on certain electricity-powered medical machines. In northern Gaza, a paralyzed child was fluctuating between life and death as members of his family alternately sought to keep him breathing using a manually-operated rubber pump.

Meanwhile, Palestinian and UN officials in Gaza have warned of an impending disaster affecting all walks of life in Gaza.

Hasan Abu Ramadan, a Palestinian economist, said the present humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip would be deepened by the ongoing Israeli blockade on fuel and food supplies. He warned that the Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep poverty to all out famine, disease and malnutrition.

Abu Ramadan noted that more than 80% of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants were surviving with the help of food aid from international organizations such as URWA.

Another urgent warning was issued by John King, Director of UNRWA operations in Gaza.

Speaking during an impromptu press conference in Gaza Sunday night, King urged the international community to intervene immediately to prevent an imminent humanitarian disaster from occurring.

King pointed out that innocent civilians were paying a heavy price as a result of the current conflict, saying that bakeries were stopping making bread and that hospitals were cold as electricity generators stopped due to fuel shortages.

“Medicine is not available, paper is not available, cement to build graves is not available, even coffins for the dead are not available. There is also a serious food shortage, and the prices of available food are very high.”

King said that everyone in Gaza now had a problem that was exacerbating as time passed. He argued that it was shameful that some circles, an obvious allusion to Israel and its allies, were making arguments about the situation in Gaza.

“I can’t describe in words what is happening in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, extreme right-wing circles in Israel have called on the Israeli government to annihilate Gazans.

In Jewish settlements in and around the West Bank town of Hebron, Jewish settlers were seen dancing in an apparent expression of joy over the tragedy in Gaza, with some of them of them shouting in Hebrew “death to the Arabs” and “Arabs to the Gas chambers.”

Earlier, settlers wielding automatic rifles attacked Palestinians and vandalized their property in Hebron in full view of Israeli occupation soldiers who looked on passively. At least 11 Palestinians were reported injured, with most of them suffering cuts and bruises and other minor injuries.

Since the beginning of 2008, the Israeli occupation army murdered as many as 40 Palestinians and injured hundreds, with many suffering permanent disabilities.

The often pornographic bloodshed prompted UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, John Dugard, to castigate Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

Dugard said Israel ought to have foreseen the loss of life and injury to many civilians when it targeted the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza earlier a few days ago.

The wanton killings, said Dugard, “raises very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law and its commitments to the peace process.”

He added that Israeli atrocities violated the strict prohibitions on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

End.
Original: http://annies-letters.blogspot.com/2008/01/jews-are-effecting-holocaust-in-gaza.html
Spanish translation: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=62168

So Many Tragedies in So Little Time
By Mohammed Omer - a photojournalist in Rafah. 20 January 2008

Where to start…, what to talk about…? The crippling electricity shortages, affecting hospitals as well as civilians? The air strikes & on-going, daily bombings by the Israeli army, their indiscriminate targeting of civilians and police stations…? Israel ’s non-accidental, enforced starvation of 1.5 million people by closing off ALL borders and not allowing in even UN aid, let alone basic medicinal, food, and construction needs…?

Shortages of fuel have re-surfaced in Gaza : most of Gaza has no electricity and even more importantly, the shortage of medicine in Palestinian hospitals continues to increase, with the Ministry of Health reporting a looming humanitarian catastrophe.

Or should I begin with the bomb which just hit a wedding close to the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City , with 15 apartment buildings within the bomb’s target range? One woman was killed and 47 others were injured –mostly children and women who had been inside their homes or playing on the street!! Scenes of children injured, bleeding and crying just moments after they had been enjoying a wedding celebration in a Gaza wedding hall…a horrific sight likely to go without mention of that in most news sources.

The injured were evacuated to Al Shifa hospital, where it was then hard to find enough beds and blankets for them, with children crammed three to four on a bed due to overcrowding.

Earlier Friday, Israel closed its border with the Gaza Strip to all traffic in what officials say is response to cross-border rocket fire, preventing even UN humanitarian supplies from getting in. The decision came after Israel vowed to broaden its military campaign against Gaza militants who have fired more than 110 home made rockets at southern Israel in the last three days resulting in the injury of two Israelis.

In contrast, 19 Palestinians were killed in one day last Wednesday during another Israeli attack, this one targeting the eastern part of Gaza City .

These are the latest attacks, but not the only: since the visit of US president and ‘peacemaker’, George Bush, within only 74 hours, Israel has killed 37 people and injured more than 90. Those numbers, which could again go up at any minute, were confirmed by Khaled Radi, the Ministry of Health spokesman in Gaza . Radi also said that Israel is using internationally illegal weapons, which makes it impossible for people to identify the bodies of their relatives as they have been destroyed to unrecognizable ends.

Among the tens killed were a 13 year old boy and his father and uncle, killed in what Israel claims was “a mistake”. Another Israeli attack killed a mother, Maryam Al Rahel, and her son, Mohammed, who were on a donkey cart when an Israeli warplane bombed them. Their bodies, like so many others, were rendered into small pieces of flesh, scattered everywhere!

An Even Blacker Night!

I and some journalist colleagues went to offer condolences to a journalist friend of ours for the death of his cousin as a result of medicine shortages on Wednesday. While on the way, there was a lot of shooting going on, from funerals and demonstrations. Later, as we were starting to drive off from our parking spot, Mohammed, another journalist, suggested waiting for a moment. But as others preferred to not wait around, we eventually left.

After we had gone just a few minutes down the road, we learned that the place where our car had been parked had just been bombed, targeting and killing two Palestinians, injuring another three. “It could have been us who were killed,” one of the journalists said to me. I answered: “Thanks to God, it wasn’t. But this is so sad; it must be terrible for their families, with children left behind and no one now to support them.”

Update on Killings

As predicted, the death toll has risen since I began this report: another two have been killed in northern Gaza , and another 4 badly injured. Israeli Ministry spokesman, Shlomo Dror says that: “It’s unacceptable that people in Sderot are living in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual.”

And I wonder, what exactly does he consider “life as usual”? For if he means it is normal that over 35 civilians should be killed in 4 days, an entire population should be on the verge of starvation and should be forced to shiver through winter nights without electricity or sufficient blankets, that hospitals and medical centers should be forced to shut down or operate at sub-par capability and without needed medicine, food, blankets, and even space,…the list goes on…well then yes, we are living life as usual.

http://rafah.virtualactivism.net/news/08/jan08.html