tagged w/ Robert Fisk
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Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for the health of Palestinians (especially in conditions of occupation, displacement or exile) based on principles of self-determination and social justice
you can donate a small amount of money on link above.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
MAP has launched an Emergency Appeal for Gaza: we desperately need your help. Please give what you can. In this critical time, it is essential that our appeal is seen by as many people as possible. Please pass on our website to all that you can. If you would like to hold a fundraiser for MAP then please contact us.
PLEASE DONATE NOW
Online (click button at top right of this page)
Call: 0207 226 4114
£2,489 - Buys a power generator that can help power a Gazan hospital or clinic. £165 - Covers the cost of comprehensive psychological and social support to a child in Gaza suffering behavioural and psychological problems.£20- Buys a hygiene kit that is desperately needed by displaced Gazan families.Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for the health of Palestinians (especially in... more
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Abbas to Tell Visiting U.S. Envoy: Israel Does Not Want Peace
By Reuters
January 28, 2009 "Reuters" -- - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Tuesday to take a tough stance in talks with Israel and said he would tell a U.S. envoy that
Israel's Gaza offensive proved it was not intent on peacemaking.
In his first news conference in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched its 22-day offensive on December 27 that killed some 1,300 people in Gaza, Abbas also said he would back international efforts to prosecute Israel for war crimes.
"We will do all we can to prove Israel committed crimes that would make your skin crawl," Abbas said, referring to the Geneva Conventions. "We want the world to give us justice for once.
"Israel does not want peace, otherwise it would not have done this. We need to understand this and tell it to those coming from Europe and America. Israel wants to waste time to strengthen facts on the ground with settlements and the wall."Abbas to Tell Visiting U.S. Envoy: Israel Does Not Want Peace
By Reuters
January... more
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US Aid: The Facts
Israel and the US have a long-established special relationship. The US was the first country to recognise the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Israel is considered America’s closest non-NATO ally in the Middle East, a region that is geopolitically crucial to the US.
The close relationship between the two states is reflected in the volume of aid Israel receives from the US. Since World War II Israel has been the largest overall recipient of US aid: from 1949-2006 Israel received more than $156 billion of direct US aid.
Until 2003, Israel received approximately one-third of the annual US foreign aid budget. In 2005, the US gave Israel more than $2.6 billion in aid, a budget exceeded only by US aid to Iraq. By comparison, Jordan received $683.6 million, Rwanda received $77 million, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories received $348.2 million.
In the past, a majority of the direct US aid to Israel was via US Economic Support Funds (ESF). The US publicly states that ESF are given in order to support stability in areas strategic to the US. However, the recipient government completely controls how it spends these funds.
The US also lends money to Israel, but these loans are frequently waived before any repayments are made. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has estimated that from 1974-2003 Israel benefited from more than $45 billion in waived loans from the US.
Direct US aid to Israel has significantly diminished since 1996 in order to reduce Israeli financial dependence on the US. Speaking to the US Congress in July 1996, Former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared, “We will begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to Israel.”
Political support
The US has a history of giving Israel direct political support. In 1972, the US prevented the adoption of UN resolution S/10784 paragraph 74, which condemned Israeli attacks against southern Lebanon and Syria. In order to do this, the US used its veto power in the Security Council for only the second time.
Since 1972, the US has used its veto power to prevent the adoption of 42 UN resolutions that condemned or severely criticized actions by the State of Israel. In 2006, for example, the US prevented the adoption of UN resolution S/878, which demanded a mutual ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
In 2002, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, stated that it was US policy to denounce all UN resolutions that criticized Israel without also condemning “terrorist groups.” This statement is now known as the Negroponte-doctrine.US Aid: The Facts
Israel and the US have a long-established special relationship.... more
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Ask President Obama to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The United States has the capacity to send immediate help to the region with the U.S. Naval ships USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort.Ask President Obama to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in... more
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Saudi patience is running out
By Turki al-Faisal
Published: January 22 2009 20:15 | Last updated: January 22 2009 20:15
Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. Two of the four Arab countries that have formal ties to Israel – Qatar and Mauritania – have suspended all relations and Jordan has recalled its ambassador.
America is not innocent in this calamity. Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region – from the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to the humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib – but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.
The incoming US administration will be inheriting a “basket full of snakes” in the region, but there are things that can be done to help calm them down. First, President Barack Obama must address the disaster in Gaza and its causes. Inevitably, he will condemn Hamas’s firing of rockets at Israel.Saudi patience is running out
By Turki al-Faisal
Published: January 22 2009 20:15 |... more
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The Israeli government's media operations are the most sophisticated in the region, and its extensively planned hasbara campaign of public advocacy swung into high gear almost as soon as the current offensive began.The Israeli government's media operations are the most sophisticated in the... more
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WatchfulNext Back Palestinian girls, who fled their homes with their families during Israel's offensive, look out of a window at a U.N. school in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip.WatchfulNext Back Palestinian girls, who fled their homes with their families during... more
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Israel likes to believe that its Defense Force is the world's most "moral" army, and it insisted throughout the recent Gaza war that great care was always taken to avoid inflicting civilian casualties. It may surprise and rile many Israelis, then, that their government is trying to protect its citizens from war crimes charges that could be filed in foreign courts over the conduct of hostilities in Gaza. Fearful that Israeli commanders could be targeted for arrest while traveling abroad as private citizens on business or vacation, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Tuesday ordered the Israeli media to refrain from revealing the names of any military personnel who took part in the 22-day offensive. Officers involved in the operation who want to travel abroad are now required to first check in with the office of the Judge Advocate, which will determine if the soldier is on a foreign watch list that might lead to his arrest.
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Is Israel Losing the Media War in Gaza?
Gaza’s Political Fallout: Israel’s Right Strenthened
Israel Weighs a War in Gaza
Israeli military experts insist that their forces are far more careful to avoid civilian casualties than, say, the U.S. military has been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the high civilian casualty toll in Gaza has put the Israeli military's conduct of operations there under scrutiny, and one senior U.N. official has suggested Israel may have committed "crimes against humanity" in the course of its campaign against Hamas militants hiding among Gaza's civilian population. Palestinian medical sources claim that over 300 children and 100 women were among Gaza's 1,200 fatalities. And the United Nations, Amnesty International, the International Committee for the Red Cross (I.C.R.C.), Human Right Watch, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have all been investigating allegations of conduct that violates the laws of war.Israel likes to believe that its Defense Force is the world's most... more
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Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in Gaza
Israel has refuted allegations of war atrocities in Gaza after Palestinian children described how their parents had been "executed" by Israeli troops.
One nine-year-old boy said his father had been shot dead in front of him despite surrendering to Israeli soldiers with his hands in the air.
Another youngster described witnessing the deaths of his mother, three brothers and uncle after the house they were in was shelled.
He said his mother and one of his siblings had been killed instantly, while the others bled to death over a period of days.
A psychiatrist treating children in the village of Zeitoun on the outskirts of Gaza City, where the alleged incidents took place, described the deaths as a "massacre".
Rawya Borno, a Jordanian doctor, said civilians, including children, were rounded up and killed by Israeli troops.
Israel has denied the claims, dismissing them as Hamas propaganda, but said that an investigation is being conducted into soldiers' conduct in the area.
In interviews with ITV News, Palestinians claimed that Israeli forces knowingly killed civilians in Zeitoun on the morning of Jan 14.
Abdullah Samouni, nine, described the moment his father was allegedly "executed" by Israeli soldiers.
Holding his arms in the air, he said: "He was surrendering like this. My father came out and they shot him right away."
A boy named Ahmed said he was trapped for days in the wreckage of the shelled Samouni family's house.
He said: "My mother was dead beside me, she was clutching my brother Nasser and they were dead. My brother Itzaq was bleeding for two days and then he died. My brother Izmael bled to death in one day. My uncle Talal was bleeding for two hours and he died. God bless them."
Dr Borno said: "It's a massacre. They collected them from their houses. They knew that they were civilians. They were children."Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in Gaza
Israel has refuted... more
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UN Special Rapporteur Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
By Press TV
There is more than enough evidence that Israel committed war crimes in its three week-long offensive into Gaza, says a UN investigator. Falk said Israel's actions against the besieged Gazans are reminiscent of "the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto" which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.
Israeli officials moved closer to being prosecuted for war crimes after Norwegian medics in Gaza found traces of depleted uranium on Gaza victims, suggesting that Israel used the illegal weapons in its war on the impoverished territory, which houses some 1.5 million Palestinians.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there is a "high risk of developing cancer from exposure to radiation emitted by ... depleted uranium weapons. This risk is assumed to be proportional to the dose received."
The Geneva Convention has classified depleted uranium ammunitions as 'illegal weapons of mass destruction' due to their high radioactivity and toxicity.
Israel faces potential war crimes charges over its excessive use of other controversial weapons on the densely-populated coastal strip.UN Special Rapporteur Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
By Press TV
There is more... more
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Zionism is an Incurable Disease of the Mind
By Zaid Nabulsi
To describe the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people with no proven historical link to the ancient Israelites - and whose great, great recorded ancestors have never set foot there - as some kind of a "return" to that land is indicative of a perverted misunderstanding and misapplication of the verb to "return" and can only be a result of a disease of the mind.Zionism is an Incurable Disease of the Mind
By Zaid Nabulsi
To describe the... more
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Unanimous Consent
When Israel acts, Congress applauds. No debate required.
By Glenn Greenwald
In most of the world, the Israeli attack on Gaza is viewed as an intensely controversial act and, more commonly, an excessive, unjustifiable, and brutal assault on a trapped civilian population. But not in the United States-at least not among America's political and opinion-making elite.Unanimous Consent
When Israel acts, Congress applauds. No debate required.
By... more
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Posturing and Laughter as Victims Rot
By Robert Fisk
The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert's shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert's right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany.
Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead. No wonder that in the streets of Beirut, shops were doing a flourishing trade in Palestinian scarves and flags. Even some of Palestine's most serious enemies in Lebanon wore the Palestinian keffiyeh in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Over and over again, Al-Jazeera television strapped headlines on to their news reports of Palestinians carrying the decomposing corpses of their dead: "More than 1,300 dead in Gaza, 400 of them women and children – Israeli dead in the war 13, three of them civilians." That, too, said it all.
All day, the Arabs also had to endure watching their own leaders primping and posing in front of the cameras at the Arab summit in Kuwait, where the kings and presidents who cPosturing and Laughter as Victims Rot
By Robert Fisk
The front page of the Beirut... more
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Robert Fisk has been covering the Middle East for over thirty years as a correspondent for The Independent. His father, a soldier in World War I, received a medal for fighting what was called the Great War for civilization. That war, in many ways, still rages. In his new collection of essays, The Age of the Warrior, Fisk outlines how America has adopted the civilizing mission of its imperial predecessors, believing that with bombs and tanks we can bring freedom and the rule of law to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Despite the failures of the war thus far, we seem unwilling to acknowledge that victory has slipped from our grasp. What Fisk calls the warrior ethos has come to define American military doctrine in the 21st century. It is belligerent and typifies the superpower’s need to project military strength. We globally dominate. And we can so we will. At least that has been the view for the last eight years. But the light is fading fast and our only option, Fisk says, is to withdraw our military forces from the Muslim world.Robert Fisk has been covering the Middle East for over thirty years as a correspondent... more
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GRITtv
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Reporter and historian Robert Fisk on why the Middle East, Israel/Palestine, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have disappeared from the Presidential campaigns. Has our political discourse been so diminished that voters no longer care?
Reporter and historian Robert Fisk on why the Middle East, Israel/Palestine, and the... more
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GRITtv
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added this
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3 years ago
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