Hi all. I was wondering if anyone has taken the time to study Benjamin Netanyahus chart from an Ea perspective or if anyone is interested in doing so.
I feel such a strong sense of evil about this man. I always have. When he was last elected prime minister it gave me the chiils. When he was in power before, in the 90's I had such a strong sense of uneasyness about him.. When I look at him I see darkness. When he speaks, I hear lies.
This current murder of innocent civilians in Gaza is haunting me. The situation that these people are in are like animals in a cage that are indiscriminately being destroyed. If you search online you will find heartbreaking and horrifying photos of children blown apart. Every day he murders and blames someone else for it. He has blatently stated that he has no intention of creating peace ever. If I was Jewish I would be haunted and ashamed and horrified of this man as some sort of 'leader' of my country. To me all I see is a propagandist warmonger using false nationalistic phrases to justify murder. I just simply see a mass murderer hiding behind the throne of power he sits upon. I see an air of superiority with regard to Barack Obama based on race and white supremacy. He has no accountability for his actions. He can do whatever he wants, mock and insult Obama and Kerry and have zero consequences. It is truly insane to me. It feels like he is of the same evil fabric as Cheney Bush, Rumsfeld and all the right wing warmongers of the world. We cannot live in a world where one race of humans is allowed to destroy another. I can't believe a leader of a people that was systematically slaughtered is doing the same to another group of people. I am terrified of the karma he is bringing upon his own country and of the world.
I was hoping someone could shed some EA light on this frightening soul and his true agenda.
His birth data according to astrotheme is October 21, 1949. 10:16 am ,Tel Aviv, Israel.
God Bless,
Sunyata
Hi Sunyata,
Posting the war criminals birth chart in case others wish to comment. One symbol to focus on is his natal Lucifer in Aries in the 4th House which squares his natal Uranus in Cancer in the 7th.
God Bless, Rad
Hi Rad and Sunyata,
I do not know much about Netanyahu personally as I don´t watch much T.V. but regarding potential symbols in his chart it seems that with Pluto/Mars New phase conjunction in the 9th house in Leo, that he can be extremely attached to his core life philosophy and belief system and therefore religion. With the new phase conjunction he may have the intense desire to push his beliefs no matter what opposes him. Being in Leo he can feel from the inside and assert himself as if though he was at the top of the pyramid of power and the supreme leader of the Israeli people, or others in general.
With the South node of the Moon in the Tenth in Libra conjunct the Moon, Neptune and Mercury and this stellium squaring Jupiter in the Second in Capricorn, this can reflect a Soul who is basically trying to please those in power and positions of authority that he associates with by being a "good boy". He may try to be liked and have a very poor sense of self worth on his own without the approval of others. It´s possible to have had a leadership and/or sacrificial role in the past with these symbols and in this life may be setting himself up for a fall from grace as a re-live situation, in order to humble the soul and ego from it´s false sense of grandeur and superiority.
With the North Node in the 4th in Aries, ruled by Mars in Leo in the Ninth he may feel the need to have to fight for his home, for his security, family and for his country. He can be doing this by pushing his beliefs and fighting for them with all he´s got. Lucifer in the Fourth house in Aries seems to be in this case, a distorted self righteousness relative to killing anyone for his and his fellow countrymen´s security needs.
What is interesting is that his Pluto Polarity Point, in Aquarius in the Third, points to him being objective about the way he expresses his beliefs and how he asserts his will according to those same beliefs and points to the need to take into consideration the view-points of others. To accept the opinions and views of others as being just as important as his own. With the Polarity point in the Third house and the North Node of the Moon in the Fourth house this also seems to correlate, in his case, to the need to learn to share and get along with siblings, colleagues and neighbours. All of these symbols are given even more strength and intensity with the Sun being in Libra in the Eleventh house. Showing that in the current life, his purpose is to express himself objectively and fairly for all those involved.
Transiting Saturn currently squaring his Pluto and then his Mars is what seems to be bringing all of these issues with the killing of children into the worlds awareness and will hopefully also correlate to a shift in policies in order to stop what is happening. The Saturn transit will correlate to him having to adjust the way he does what he is doing, in some critical and crucial ways, as he has already attracted too much attention to have this swept under the carpet.
Another very interesting transit is Uranus right on his North Node in Aries in the Fourth house. It can be an acceleration of his personal growth through a potential agenda of his and his elitist associates to conquer more land. These symbols may also correlate to this situation getting out of hand and blowing up in his face. What it correlates to on an EA level is the acceleration of his emotional evolution through developing objectivity.
That´s all I can look into at the moment, let´s hope that the Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian/Arab people around the world can all desire and commit to peace. It´s the only way I can think of peace occurring, if one or both sides simply stops fighting.
All the best
Thanks for all that Skywalker. I see the worst possible self delusional ego power tripping from his Pluto in Leo in the 8th and as it is conjunct mars in Leo in the 9th, he is exhibiting the worst aspects of self righteousness. It seems like there is a continuous feedback loop for his ego to be stroked via a delusional belief that he is on a 'higher mission'. With his Mars being the ruler of his N Node in Aries in the 4th, and the Nodes being square Jupiter in Capricorn in the 2nd, this false belief that he is on a higher mission is connected to a previous life where he was , I believe, in a similar situation as a 'leader' of another nation, protecting his homeland. In this life his status as Israeli Prime Minister and the fundamentalist belief of the right of Jews to claim the holy land, which correlates to the end times where God gives Israel to the Jews, he again is repeating a similar mission .... in his mind. There is a great sense of delusion that he brought with him with his S Node conjunct Neptune, Moon and Mercury in the 10th in Libra and the ruler of Libra, Venus, is in Sag conjunct Chiron in the first.... again playing into the feedback loop of his self righteous ego.... literally it seems as if he is above the law because of his belief of his higher purpose.
The N Node in the 4th correlates also to the idea of "The Homeland" which is what Israel is to him. Its as if Israel is his and he is Israel. His souls connection to the idea that he must be the sole protector and lord of Israel is immense, fed through an incredible ego. The Lucifer in Aries the 4th squaring Uranus in Cancer the 7th connects again to his leadership role of the society of Israel and as protector of the homeland and with the ruler Mars in Leo the 9th, the threat or insult that anyone shows to him or 'his people' is met with total disproportionate force because of his belief in a hierarchy of human beings with Jews being chosen by god. It is like being bitten by an ant and then being so outraged and insulted that you hunt down the ant hole and pour gasoline down the hole to destroy the entire colony. This is completely childish and ego driven such as, "How dare this inferior species touch me, does he not know who I am?" This is how Netanyahu views the Palestinian people, as a lower species of human who are insulting his higher and 'chosen by God' Israelis. This is why Hamas can launch a rocket which lands on nowhere and Netanyahu responds with killing 1,000 civilians and destroying homes and hospitals and infrastructure. Every Palestinian, weather they support Hamas or not, is worth nothing because they are are all the same, inferior. His 'kindness' is telling them that he is going to blow them up 3 minutes before he does. Of course all right wingers cheer this nicety.
This is what I see from my intuition of staring at the symbols and the chart. I don't know if I got all the symbolism in the chart right. Please correct my mistakes. These are just my initial instincts/thoughts. I want to spend more time on the chart and expand my thoughts and clarify my sentences better but I can't at the moment because of an intense work schedule and exhaustion. I have been waking up in the middle of the night horrified by this and not being able to fall back asleep.
I would love to know what you see in his past lives and if I am correct that he has been in a similar situation before.
Also skywalker interpreted with Pluto in the 9th and I did with Pluto in the 8th. It seems to be right on the cusp but can you confirm from your program?
Thank you Skywalker for your interpretations, they were very helpful in getting me started.
I stepped away and started thinking about his past life that connects to this one and originally when I wrote homeland I thought of Germany but with all the Libra/Aries this correlates to the Roman Empire, correct? Which makes sense since his #1 supporter is the current Roman Empire, USA. I also have a sense that if he was connected to the Roman Empire he was involved himself in the same viscous persecution. I cant see in the chart what, but my intuition says persecution of Christians or pagans..... I also intuitively have a sense that he may have been involved in the council of nicea, the forming of the bible as we know it at that time, or the enforcement of persecution of those who taught alternative Gnostic gospels. Something also is making me see the persecution of Christ, the flogging..
Saturn in Virgo in the 9th square Venus/Chiron Sag 12/1.... what is that?
God Bless,
Sunyata
Hi Sunyata,
Regarding Pluto being in the 8th, I had used the Placidus house system by mistake but his Pluto falls exactly on the cusp of the 9th house.
In agree with what you say about the power trips, his idea of the homeland, superior religion with chosen people, delusional self righteousness and a possible past life leadership role also based on the same themes which he is re-living.
That Saturn in Virgo in the 9th house square Venus/Chiron/ASC seems to correlate to me, with the inner need to be utterly honest with himself and others. It can correlate with an inferiority complex which he is trying to compensate for by pressing his beliefs of a religious nature and possibly seeing himself as some kind of messiah. This aspect can also correlate to him actually needing to honestly define what to believe and what not to believe as his beliefs may not pass real scrutiny. This signature can also correlate to, relative to his Pluto/Mars, a subconscious desire for vengeance, where he believes he has the God given right to judge others and sadistically make them pay. This stemming from an inferiority complex and sense of inner and outer inadequacy that can be blamed on those who he feels persecuted him or others he considered his people.
The Jupiter squares and skipped steps seem to correlate to me, in his particular case, to an innate greed in order to compensate for and satisfy his hunger for power and his internal sense of inadequacy. Jupiter in the 2nd is ruled by Saturn in Virgo in the Ninth house. This to me, in his case, seems to correlate with, amongst other things, him choosing to see and believe what he wants to in order to keep on accumulating resources and wealth.
Sunyata don´t work yourself up over Souls like this, he is a pig and sick to the core like so many others who require the same quality a sick pig needs, in order to be in a position of power in this distorted patriarchal world. I don´t say this in a judgemental tone as even Souls like this one have their place in existence but, to remind you and others that this is to be expected from certain Souls, just like one would expect a pig to be a pig.
Look at the darkness in his energy and eyes, I actually feel compassion for his Soul as those that suffer because of his policies are not nearly as dark as he is on the inside.
All the best
On the Lucifer in Aries in the 4th house squaring Uranus in Cancer in the 7th... I am picking through the lucifer thread re-reading the archetypes...re-posting from that thread some highlights...
Aries
Do you mean the bully syndrome"? "¬Yes." "¬Absolutely." "¬It could," "¬for example," "¬create a false sense of self-importance." "¬We can certainly see this implicated through Mr." "¬Bush," "¬with a first house Pluto and Lucifer transiting his first house." "¬He clearly thinks of himself as more important than he actually is." "¬That's why one thing the media does do once in a while is say," ""¬Hey," "¬look how arrogant this creep is."" "¬Look at the little snicker on his face," "¬the superior arrogance." "¬I'm going to leave Bush alone right now." "¬
How else could it manifest through Aries"? "¬Bully syndrome" "¬-" "¬yes." "¬Arrogance and power" "¬-" "¬yes." "¬Thinking one's more self-important" "¬-" "¬yes."
Because the higher octave of Aries is Scorpio--manipulation." "¬What's the antidote through the Libra polarity point"? "¬The antidote is to realize that other people's needs and realities are as equally important as one's own." "¬It's changing from a consciousness of using people for one's own purposes," "¬to a consciousness of giving to someone in accordance with what the person actually needs instead of the delusion:" ""¬I'm giving to you because here's what you need and I know it." "¬I think I know what you need."" "¬
Libra
"¬Another classic way that Lucifer manifests through Libra--and this is something that any of us need to be careful of--is through what we call the silver-tongued-devil types of this world." "¬You know," "¬the real smooth talkers with all the charm," "¬who try to ensnare you or hook you in some fashion." "¬This is the type that says," ""¬I know what you need." "¬Believe me," "¬trust me." "¬I know what you need."" "¬You've probably all run into those types in your life." "¬And," "¬they deliver themselves with such great sincerity," "¬and such magnificent charm," "¬and," "¬of course," "¬we want to get sucked into that." "¬It's what we call the silver-tongued-devil problem." "¬Through Lucifer in Libra," "¬the archetype of the silver-tongued-devil or the susceptibility to that archetype can occur." "¬
For those who have been subjected to that kind of person--whether you're male or female makes no difference--how many of you indeed experienced that they did know what you needed"? "¬Or," "¬was there," "¬in fact," "¬another agenda going on"? ("¬No one responded")"¬." "¬Examples are:" "¬Jim Jones" ("¬Pluto in" "¬7th"); "¬Rajneesh" ("¬4" "¬or" "¬5" "¬planets in Capricorn in the" "¬7th"); "¬Claire Prophet"; "¬J.Z." "¬Knight" ("¬dominant" "¬7th house")"¬." "¬
Aquarius
" "¬Contagion is an Aquarius phenomenon." "¬Behavioral contagion." "¬Or," "¬the contagion of disease." "¬That's an Aquarius phenomenon." "¬An example is the" "¬1920s when Hitler came to power." "¬We had Uranus transiting Pisces," "¬so he created a behavioral contagion by creating and persecuting a group of people" ("¬Uranus"); "¬and you saw the contagion of behavior.
" "¬If you link to the group problem," "¬typically," "¬Lucifer in Aquarius is going to manifest in this group or this group," "¬as we're right and they're wrong," "¬which turns this group upon that group." "¬The whole polarity point of Leo means what"? "¬To honor the individual realities of all groups." "¬There's no one more right or wrong.
Lucifer is also opposing his natal Mercury in Libra in the 10th which is forms a stellium with Neptune, the South Node, and the Moon ... these all reinforcing the silver tongue devil manipulating, via delusional lies, the masses using the inherent insecurity of protecting the homeland, and using that as an excuse to blow up anyone that he decides is a threat......there is an incredible feedback loop as he has extremely high approval ratings just as warmonger bush did from the masses after he killed 1 million Iraqis via 9-11.
I dont know how this ends. War Criminals that have public support and use their country's fear and insecurity to justify mass murder is the most frightening kind of leadership that exists because the masses, for a long time, believe their leader, believe that the leader is protecting them when in fact he is just using them.
What is also scary to me is that the United States congress and senate fumble and fawn over each other to rush to support Israel and it is not about supporting Israel, it is about weather or not you choose to support a war criminal or not. There are different types of leaders and Netanyahu is like if Dick Cheney was president, which he practically was like the puppet master where Bush was just the puppet. The US funds the murder and then funds the cleanup of the infrastructure of gaza. Taxpayers are paying for this. And it is all based on fear that if you dont say you support Israel then you are just an absolutely evil human. I support Israel and I support Palestine. I support human beings and their god given right to exist. I do not support evil Warmongers and I dont support Hamas' militantancy. But the use of force by Netanyahu is so outrageous and vile that it cant be anything more than pure evil to me. And I feel horrible for the karma of Israel that is being created through this vile soul. If a congressman or senator could stand up and say "I support Israel but I do not support this disproportionate use of violence"... even that would be a beginning.
And on all the right wing shows its about Israels right to defend itself.... well yes defend yourself with your Iron Dome or whatever but is mass murder self defense or is it mass murder? Can we not see the difference?
And "Hamas says they want to destroy Israel"... yes but Israel IS ACTUALLY DOING IT! Do we not see this?
It is all right wing propaganda... always....fundamentalist and right wing propaganda....
The only way to stop this is to just continue to expose the lie that he is. Slowly more and more people see the reality of his soul and then things change.
One more thing about Netanyahu was the headline today "Netanyahu Tells U.S. 'Not To Ever Second Guess Me Again' On Hamas"
And one more thing from today UN Officials Debunk Israeli lies : No weapons found in UN school
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcJ6vOidDmc
Remember UN weapon inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq either. But that didnt stop CheneyBushRumsfeld from killing 1 million humans to accomplish their agenda.
Thanks Skywalker, I get worked up because I feel like I have suffered under these types of ignorant monsters before and because they are inhuman and dark. I cant feel compassion for him. Right now I am feeling compassion for the children that he has blown apart and for the mothers and fathers weeping over the bodies of their dead children.
Thank you for all your insight as well. It is very helpful.
God Bless,
Sunyata
Children of Gaza face struggle to conquer war trauma
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, August 3, 2014 10:11 EDT
Ask any child in Gaza to do a drawing and the resulting picture is likely to be a house being bombed by a fighter plane.
In the strife-torn Palestinian enclave, thousands of children are suffering from the trauma of war but resources to help them are scarce.
At a school in the northern town of Jabalia which has been converted into a refuge, specialist teachers hand out paper and coloured crayons to a motley band of shaken up children, asking them to draw whatever is in their head.
Jamal Diab, a nine-year old with red flecks in his brown hair, draws his dead grandfather. Under the drawing, he writes in Arabic: "I am sad because of the martyrs."
"A few days ago, aircraft bombarded our house. We had to leave quickly and leave everything behind. It was dangerous," the lad breathes timidly as he shows his drawing.
Tiny seven-year old Bara Marouf shows a drawing of his grandfather without any legs. He was seriously wounded in an air strike.
In the classroom, the same sketch comes up repeatedly: an aircraft filling the sky and bombarding a house, subtitled with the caption "I want to go home".
"Who is afraid of aircraft?" the teacher asks the children sitting in a circle on a mat.
Immediately little hands push towards the sky and high-pitched voices clamour: "Me", "me", "me".
"Me, I'm afraid of missiles and planes. Half our house was destroyed. We left it to come here," explains Itimad Subh, an 11-year-old girl with sparkling eyes.
- "˜They blame themselves' -
According to the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, about 300 children have been killed since the start on July 8 of Israel's offensive against Hamas militants firing rockets into the Jewish state.
Those who are still alive try not to internalise too much the violence they have experienced, seen and heard.
Inside the school, groups of youths attend half-hour sessions one after the other.
The two teachers, patient and exhausted, their faces enclosed in a tight veil, ask the children to jump on the spot and call out, then to wave their arms like someone disco dancing, to expel accumulated black thoughts, frustration and stress.
"The children have all lived extreme experiences," says Dr. Iyad Zaqut, a psychiatrist who manages the United Nations community mental health programmes in the Gaza Strip.
"It is very difficult for children to grasp what is happening, why their life is at risk, why they have to leave their homes, why they have to resettle, why they witness very traumatising scenes," Zaqut said.
"To prevent children from processing and thinking about all these issues, we try to distract them, to help them live some joy, to have a little fun inside the shelter.
"Generally, when they are exposed to traumatic events, the way they perceive the incident can be very distorted, they might blame themselves, they might blame their neighbours and this blaming is very harmful," the psychiatrist said.
"We try to reprocess these distorted ideas," he explained, noting that he has diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress and adolescent depression.
- No therapy in wartime -
But it is hard to make much progress with the therapy.
In the Gaza Strip, 460,000 people - more than a quarter of the population - have been displaced by the fighting and have gone to stay with relatives or found refuge at UN shelters.
Fewer than 100 specialist teachers are "treating" more than 100,000 children.
Only in exceptional cases do the children have access to one-on-one meetings with psychologists and psychiatrists. And even fewer get a follow up.
Gaza has been in the firing line of military operations in 2008-2009 and again in 2012 but the consequences have been greater during this current war between Israel and Hamas.
UNICEF estimates that 326,000 minors in Gaza are in need of psychological help.
The children and adolescents sheltering in the UN centres can at least attend the group classes but hundreds of thousands of others affected by the war are left to wander unhelped through devastated neighbourhoods.
If you can deal with it click this link to see the horror of the children being killed by Netanyahu: WARNING THESE IMAGES ARE AS EVIL AS THEY ARE GRUESOME.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEVxx9Td5TnRkApM1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--?_adv_prop=image&fr=moz35&sz=all&va=palestinian+children+being+bombed+israel
Holocaust Survivor Mourns What Israel Has Become
Please listen and watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IynADeLxfCU&list=PLTpcK80irdQjmxQw_hE7Gm02k-JuBQ9wS
Thank you for posting that video, Rad. It seems more people are speaking out against this kind of brutality than I can ever remember. The vast amount of information available to us online I think is contributing to a new awareness of the situation. Of course right wingers are still rabid but at least the opposition to this kind of brutality can unite in ways that it couldn't before due to public access of information.
Are you able to comment on the symbols in the chart of Netanyahu and/or provide any insight/feedback into the interpretations that Skywalker and I have come up with?
Skywalker,
What you posted about his current transits seems really right on. The democratic blogs are on fire and international media are really beginning to pick up the reality of this ....American Corporate Media may soon have no choice but to begin to pick up on it too.
Thank you so much.
God Bless,
Sunyata
The Hateful Likud Charter Calls for Destruction of Any Palestinian State
By Jonathan Weiler
Since virtually every comment on Hamas in American media includes the assertion that the group's Charter rejects Israel's right to exist, it's worth noting the following from the Likud Platform of 1999:
a. "The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel."
b. "Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel.
The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem"
c. "The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river."
d. "The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
There have been some updates to the platform more recently, reflecting Israel's withdrawal of settlements from Gaza in 2005. But the Likud Party has *never* in its statements of principles, accepted a Palestinian State. Its electoral partner, Yisrael Beitenu, has likewise categorically rejected the possibility of an independent Palestinian State, insisting that the idea is nothing more than a ploy to facilitate the destruction of Israel.
The Hamas charter, of course, does more than just reject Israel as a sovereign political entity. It's a vile document that echoes some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes of the modern era. But on the central question of one side denying the other's legitimacy - it's hard to ignore the symmetry between Likud - the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - and Hamas.
Some defenders of Israel become indignant at the mention of these realities as scurrilous and spurious because the Likud platform quoted above is just an "old" statement of principles not reflective of the Party's actions in power. But by that logic, the Hamas Charter, written over 25 years ago, cannot be said to be the sole controlling document of that organization, since much more recent statements and actions by its leadership have, at least some times, included an expressed willingness to pursue a long-term agreement with Israel. Furthermore, Hamas also agreed to join the Palestinian Authority in a unity government that accepts all previous PA agreements with Israel.
Too much political discussion in the United States about Israel/Palestine proceeds from the premise that Palestinians have no other interest than to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea. Therefore, it is said, well-intentioned Israel has no viable negotiating partner for peace. The political reality on the ground does not conform to such a simple-minded tale of good vs. evil. Israeli hardliners in power have repeatedly rejected any basis for a viable Palestinian state. Indeed, Prime Minister Netanyahu's qualified statement in support of a two-state solution in 2009 - which his American apologists repeatedly invoke to demonstrate his "moderate" bona fides - was characterized by a member of his own cabinet as "the spin of our lives." In fact. Likud leaders have said unequivocally that no two-state deal is possible. And just three weeks ago, speaking at a press conference, Netanyahu said:
"I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan."
As David Horovitz wrote in The Times of Israel:
"He wasn't saying that he doesn't support a two-state solution. He was saying that it's impossible. This was not a new, dramatic change of stance by the prime minister. It was a new, dramatic exposition of his long-held stance."
In other words, no independent Palestinian state. Period. Ever.
Arab leaders are accused *all the time* of making one set of (conciliatory) statements in front of some audiences in English, while revealing their (true) rejectionist feelings in front of others, in Arabic. To the extent that this is true, one could certainly say the same about Netanyahu - relatively conciliatory and reasonable-sounding statements for international audiences. And altogether different rhetoric for internal consumption. Bibi is, after all, a master - like many politicians - at speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
Since Palestine does not exist as a recognized independent state, there is no need for Israel's rejectionists to call for Palestine's "destruction." But the consistent avowals of Israeli leaders - and the plain language of the party platforms that express their parties' core beliefs - to prevent such a state from coming into being is not substantively different from the expressed desire of the Hamas Charter to reject Israel's existence.
The beginnings of a more fair and balanced appreciation of the conflict would start with that acknowledgment.
.......
Netanyahu boasting about Manipulating America and derailing Oslo peace process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TG0vdzrmt4#t=504
juancole.com
UN outraged over new deadly Israeli strike on Gaza school
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, August 3, 2014 17:24 EDT
The UN expressed outrage after another deadly strike on one of its schools Sunday as Israel began pulling some troops back from Gaza in a step towards unilateral withdrawal.
The strike killed 10 people at a school in the southern city of Rafah where around 3,000 Palestinians made homeless by the violence had been sheltering, in the third such incident in 10 days.
Washington said it was "appalled" and called for a "full and prompt" investigation.
"Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties," US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Israel's military, hours after the attack, confirmed it had targeted three Islamic Jihad militants on a motorbike "in vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah. The IDF is reviewing the consequences of this strike."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the attack "a moral outrage and a criminal act."
"This madness must stop," he said.
The strike came as Palestinian factions gathered for truce talks with Egypt in Cairo and world powers voiced increasingly urgent calls for both sides to cease fire.
"The bloodshed needs to stop," said a statement signed by the European Union and the European Commission presidents on behalf of the bloc's 28 members.
"We deplore the terrible loss of lives, including innocent women and children," it said, condemning the "intolerable violence" in Gaza as Israel presses its assault aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond demanded an unconditional ceasefire to resolve the "intolerable" situation for civilians.
And in Cairo, China's top diplomat Wang Yi demanded both sides in the conflict which erupted on July 8 "immediately" halt their fire.
But there was little respite on the ground, where more than 71 people were killed in Rafah alone as more bloodshed sent the death toll soaring over 1,800.
- Hospitals in crisis -
At the school, an AFP correspondent witnessed scenes of chaos, as adults sprinted frantically away through pools of blood, young children clutched in their arms.
With hospitals and clinics under increasing pressure, Gaza's medical services have reached the brink of collapse, the UN warned.
Rafah's main Najjar hospital is closed after being hit and only two clinics were functioning, with medics rapidly running out of space.
In one, an AFP correspondent saw the bodies of four small children packed into an ice cream freezer.
Also Sunday, an Israeli air strike on northern Gaza killed at least seven people and wounded 15, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Intensive international attempts to broker a diplomatic end to the fighting have so far proved fruitless, but efforts are continuing with a Palestinian delegation in Cairo for talks with US and Egyptian officials.
Israel's security cabinet decided not to send a representative.
The Palestinians, who met Sunday to hammer out a common position, want "a ceasefire; Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza; the end of the siege of Gaza and opening its border crossings," said Maher al-Taher, a member of the delegation.
- Unilateral withdrawal? -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late on Saturday: "We will take as much time as necessary, and will exert as much force as needed.
"I don't plan on saying when we'll finish, we have no obligations apart from our security interests," he said in a speech seen as being the harbinger of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal.
"Israel has taken the initiative into its hands," wrote Sima Kadmon in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot.
"It will decide when and how to act, with what degree of force and against which targets"¦ in other words: unilateral withdrawal of the IDF and a return to the same simple formula of "˜quiet will be met with quiet'," she wrote.
Earlier Sunday, the army confirmed it had begun withdrawing some troops from Gaza.
"We are removing some (forces)," Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told AFP, saying troops were "extremely close" to completing a mission to destroy a network of attack tunnels.
"We are redeploying within the Gaza Strip, taking out other positions," he said, indicating the military was "changing gear".
Witnesses had on Saturday reported seeing troops leave Beit Lahiya and Al-Atatra in the north as well as from villages east of Khan Yunis in the south.
On Sunday, AFP correspondents reported around 100 tanks gathering in the border area outside Gaza where they had not been before, having just pulled out, while others were seen driving away from the border.
- Soldier declared dead -
Meanwhile, Israel said that a soldier believed snatched by militants in Gaza on August 1 was dead.
Analysis of remains found in a tunnel near Rafah showed that they contained the DNA of 23-year-old Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, the army said.
His suspected kidnapping had triggered a brutal Israeli assault on Rafah and the surrounding area which medics said killed more than 200 people in just 26 hours.
Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades acknowledged its militants had staged an ambush in which two other Israeli soldiers were killed, but denied holding Goldin.
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Rafah residents count human cost of Israeli offensive
Southern Gaza city has been hit by some of the heaviest bombing, culminated in a deadly air strike on an UNWRA school
Jason Burke in Rafah
The Guardian, Sunday 3 August 2014 18.19 BST
It was, for the 27th day of a war, a very normal scene. Outside the Anas Ibn Malik boys preparatory school in the centre of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a group of children bought sweets and biscuits from local hawkers. Adults discussed "the situation". The school caretaker stood talking to a friend.
Then, some time between 10.30 and 10.50, something struck the metalled road directly opposite the open gates and exploded, hurling shards of red-hot shrapnel and concrete.
Fatih Firdbari, 30, was leaning against a friend's battered tuk-tuk, a small truck.
"There was a big bang. I felt nothing at first and then I fell down. I looked around and saw people lying on the ground. I saw I was wounded in the calf," said Firdbari, a farmer who had fled his land close to the nearby border crossing with Egypt in the early days of the latest war between Hamas and Israel.
There was a moment's stunned silence, and then screaming, witnesses said. Just inside the school, where more than 3,000 people have been sheltering under the protection of UN flags during intense bombardment and clashes in recent days, 20-year-old Mohammed Bahabsa writhed on the ground, hit in the back and arm. Though wounded himself, the father of seven-year-old Sabir Kershif picked up his unconscious son, who was bleeding from a head wound.
Mohammed Abu Adwan, 15, had been sitting on a bench with his friend Moaz Abu Ras.
"Suddenly there was an explosion. It came from nowhere," he said.
An hour later, the extent of the carnage became clear. As casualties from a second incident elsewhere in Rafah arriving at the tiny 20-bed Kuwaiti clinic to be treated in a makeshift emergency ward set up in its carpark, relatives began coming to collect their dead. Ten people had been killed and at least 30 injured.
They included Ahmed Abu Harba, 13, and Yusef Iskaafia, 10, who lived near the school and had been selling biscuits there.
Iskaafia was carried into his home by midday, borne by relatives down the deserted street, wrapped in a white shroud, his pale, unscarred face visible between folds in the white, blood-flecked cloth. He would be buried within hours.
"He was just a normal kid, from a good family. He had no idea what was going on," a neighbour said.
Quite where the projectile had come from is impossible to say without detailed ballistic analysis. The hole it left, between eight and ten metres from the school gates, was very narrow and very deep.
The air strike was the third time in 10 days that a UN school had been hit and came four days after Israeli tank shells hit a school in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, killing 16 people. Seven UN facilities have been struck during the conflict.
An Israeli military spokesman said the incident was under review, but "we were targetting terrorists on a motorbike near the school and did identify a successful hit on a motorbike".
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, condemned a "criminal act and moral outrage".
Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, simply told reporters: "It is believed that there was an air strike that hit outside the gate of an UNRWA school, a designated shelter "¦ There were multiple dead and injuries inside and outside the school."
Rafah has been hit hard in recent days. It was near the city, on the Egyptian border, that two Israeli soldiers were killed and one thought captured immediately after a brief truce had come into effect on Friday morning. The soldier has now been declared killed in action, but the clash, which came as Israeli troops tried to clear one of the cross-border tunnels built by Hamas, prompted some of the heaviest bombing of the conflict so far.
Now the streets are empty but for mounds of uncollected rubbish, shattered glass and dead animals. The 19-mile (30km) drive to Rafah from Gaza City traverses a wilderness of deserted homes, burning factories, pockmarked apartment blocks and mosques with gaping holes punched through concrete walls by tank shells.
A lone man waves desperately to flag down one of the rare passing cars, but none stop. Another whips a donkey to force a last effort from the exhausted beast. Drones are audible overhead and tanks kick up dust on the low horizon to the east.
Local officials estimate that at least 180 people in and around Rafah have been killed since the latest ceasefire collapsed. After one of the most lethal days of the conflict so far, the total for Gaza is now more than 1,800, they said. Israeli officials say nearly half of the casualties are combatants from Hamas or other factions. The UN say two thirds are civilians, local NGOs say four-fifths.
In one strike early on Sunday morning, 10 members of the al'Ghoul family died when their house down a narrow alley was obliterated. The dead included a new-born, six children under eight and three adults, Yusuf al'Ghoul, a relative and neighbour, said.
"They were sleeping," he told the Guardian.
The main hospital in Rafah was evacuated on Friday because of shelling. The two remaining facilities - the Kuwaiti clinic and a small maternity hospital - are overwhelmed. With insufficient mortuary space, the body of one child was stored in an ice-cream freezer. Others lay on the floor of a storeroom.
Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Abu Adwan, who had been buying sweets with his friend Moath when the blast occurred, was curled in a semi-foetal position on a plastic chair in a corridor, half naked and wrapped in a soiled hospital blanket. Moath was dead, he said quietly, though his friend's name is yet to feature on any casualty lists.
On the floor a classroom in the school, the mother of seven-year-old Saqir Kershif, whom she had last seen bleeding heavily in the arms of his injured father, sobbed steadily. Her uncle had telephoned her to say he could not find either her son or her husband at the city's clinics.
"Where can we go if they cannot protect us? Why did they tell us the UN school would be safe? We could have stayed and died at home," said Hasna, 22.
Hi Sunyata,
I will be happy to read through what both you and Skywalker have written about the war criminal's chart tomorrow: Tuesday.
God Bless, Rad
Nicaragua President Says Pope Francis Should Cast Out Netanyahu's Demons
Global Vision
August 4, 2014 6:30
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has some words for Israel's Prime Minister
Israeli PM is apparently possessed by the devil, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said, urging Pope Francis to cast out his demons. Ortega also called on the international community to impose sanctions on Israel for the military action in Gaza.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be possessed by the devil, he needs Pope Francis to exorcise it, to become appeased," Ortega was quoted by Globovision as saying.
"Why doesn't anyone condemn or sanction the state of Israel?" wondered the president of Nicaragua. In his opinion, Palestine is the victim of "madness" on the part of the Israeli leader, who seeks to "annihilate the Palestinian people."
For Ortega, Israel is "committing genocide" in the Gaza Strip, a crime so "terrible that it is only comparable to the crimes of the Nazis."
Pope Francis met with Netanyahu back in June and had a tense exchange over what language Jesus may have spoken. Netanyahu claims Jesus spoke Hebrew but Pope Francis rebutted claiming "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew." Who knows if Francis is up to the task but at this point, I'm willing to try anything to end the violence in the Gaza Strip.
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Turkey PM slams Israel for "˜Hitler-like fascism'
Published time: August 01, 2014 03:37
RT
In its military campaign in Gaza and genocide against Palestinians, Israel is demonstrating a "Hitler-like fascism," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan stated in one of the strongest-worded attacks on the Israeli state.
"If you support this cruelty, this genocide, this Hitler-like fascism and child murderer regime, take your award back," Erdogan said in the eastern province of Van, referring to an award he had received from American Jewish Congress in 2004.
The organization's head, Jack Rosen, earlier this week, wrote an open letter to Erdogan asking him to return the honor as a consequence for his "dangerous rhetoric" that promotes violence against the Jewish people.
"What is the difference between Israeli actions and those of the Nazis and Hitler?" Erdogan asked the audience on Thursday. "How can you explain what the Israeli state has been doing in Gaza, Palestine, if not genocide?" he said, as reported by Arabnews. "This is racism. This is fascism. This is keeping Hitler's spirit alive."
Referring to the sanctuary given to Jews by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century when they were banished from Spain, Erdogan wondered: "Who stood up for Jews at a time when they were expelled from their home countries? It was our ancestors, it was the Ottomans."
"Aren't you embarrassed? How immoral you are.... It is us who protects the Jews on our soil and lets them live safely."
Earlier Serdar Kılıç, Turkey's ambassador to US, responded to Rosen's request saying that "in view of the foregoing as well as the regrettable stance adopted by the present leadership of the American Jewish Congress vis-a-vis the recent attacks on the innocent civilians in Gaza, Prime Minister Erdogan will be glad to return the award given in 2004," Dailysabah quotes.
A displaced Palestinian taking shelter at a UN school receives treatment at the Kamal Edwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip early on July 31, 2014 (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)
The ambassador added that Turkish PM should not be expected "to turn a blind eye" to Israeli "occupation, blockade and destruction."
In 2004, the Turkish premier received a Profile of Courage award from the New York-based American Jewish Congress for his efforts to seek peace in the Middle East.
"Attempts to depict Prime Minister Erdogan's legitimate criticisms of Israeli government attacks on civilians as expressions of anti-Semitism is an obvious distortion and an effort to cover up the historical wrongdoings of the Israeli government," the response read.
On Monday, Erdogan told the Daily Sabah that he spoke with Turkey's "Jewish citizens' leaders" and stated that they should "adopt a firm stance and release a statement against the Israeli government." He urged them to criticize "Israeli aggression," telling the community that the Israeli government "abuses all Jewish people around the world for its fraudulent policies."
It was not the first time that Erdogan resorted to harsh criticism of Israeli actions. Earlier this month while campaigning in Ordu province, he was quoted by Hurriyet Daily News as saying, "Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism"¦Terrorist state Israel has attacked Gaza once again, hitting innocent children who were playing on a beach."
The rhetoric of the Turkish Prime Minister in comparison of Israel's offensive in Gaza to the Nazis was "anti-Semitic in tone," the Israeli PM said earlier this month.
A Palestinian shouts slogans as firefighters try to extinguish the flames in a van, that was reportedly targeted by an Israeli military strike, in Gaza City on July 31, 2014. (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)
"I heard the things the prime minister of Turkey said, words of the utmost gravity," Benjamin Netanyahu said. "I told [US Secretary of State] John Kerry, [these are] anti-Semitic statements, they have an anti-Semitic tone."
Public opinion in Turkey seems to have been fueled by Erdogan's anti-Israeli statements. This month, Tel Aviv decided to reduce its diplomatic delegation in Turkey to the "minimum required" after violent pro-Palestinian protests at the Israeli diplomatic missions in Turkey were dispersed by police using tear gas.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry blamed the Turkish authorities for failing to provide protection for its diplomatic staff, calling it a "blatant breach of diplomatic regulations." It also said that envoys' families are being repatriated in light of the violence caused by the Israeli military operation in Gaza. The Foreign Ministry also advised Israelis against "non-essential" travel to Turkey.
Relations between Israel and Turkey hit a low note with Erdogan heading the Turkish government. Most notably, the relations deteriorated after the 2008-09 Gaza War and the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, in which eight Turkish nationals were killed as the ship tried to penetrate Israeli blockade of Gaza. In March 2013, Israel apologized for the incident.
The presidential election in Turkey is scheduled to take place on August 10. The two other main presidential contenders Ekmeleddin Ä°hsanoÄŸlu and Selahattin DemirtaÅŸ have condemned Israel but have restrained their language.
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Bolivia declares Israel "˜terrorist state', scraps visa exemption agreement
Published time: July 30, 2014 21:58
RT
Bolivia has declared Israel to be a "terrorist state" and renounced a visa exemption agreement with the country in protest over the ongoing Israeli military offense in Gaza which already killed more than 1,300 dead and left over 7,000 wounded.
Canceling the 1972 agreement which allowed Israelis to travel freely to Bolivia "means, in other words, we are declaring (Israel) a terrorist state," the country's President Evo Morales announced.
Morales explained that Operation Protective edge clearly shows that "Israel is not a guarantor of the principles of respect for life and the elementary precepts of rights that govern the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of our international community."
The announcement came after a cabinet meeting of the government of Evo Morales which decided that; "The Bolivian state and people have made a firm decision to terminate the agreement on visas to Israel, from August 17, 1972, signed under a regime of dictatorship in Bolivia and that allowed Israeli citizens to enter Bolivia freely without even entry visa."
Earlier in July, Morales filed a request with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prosecute Israel for "crimes against humanity."
Other Latin American countries including Chile and El Salvador recalled their ambassadors in Israel on Tuesday for consultations due to the increased violence in the Gaza Strip against civilians. The move follows similar actions by Ecuador, Brazil and Peru who have also recalled their ambassadors.
Palestinians carry the body of a local Palestinian journalist, whom medics said was killed by Israeli shelling near a market in Shejaia, as smoke rises in the east of Gaza City July 30, 2014. (Reuters/Ashraf Amrah)
Bolivia broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 over a previous military operation in Gaza.
Just on Wednesday morning shelling of a UN School in Gaza, left at least 20 dead. The incident has brought worldwide condemnation.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned a deadly attack by Israel against a UN school in the besieged Gaza Strip.
"It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable. And it demands accountability and justice," said the UN chief in Costa Rica on Wednesday.
The IDF military campaign which began July 8, so far has left more than 1,300 dead and over 7,000 wounded.
Hi Sunyata,
What both you and Skywalker have written, EA analyzed, in the war criminal chart is accurate. A couple of things that support both of what you are saying about him are that he does not want a two state reality with Palestine, and does all that he can to undermine whatever 'peace process' that would lead to that. As an example of that he compulsion to keep creating yet more residential housing projects in areas that are in dispute with the Palestinians, and of which are in total violation of the United Nations resolutions that have been passed to prohibit doing so.
Another one that is simply the evil of now wanting to pass new laws within Israel that only allow Jews to be actual citizens of Israel to the exclusion of all other peoples, and their religions. This, to me, is a kind of apartheid. Both these examples reflects his Lucifer/N.Node in Aries in his 4th House, with Lucifer squaring Uranus in Cancer as well.
The current Uranus transit on his N.Node certainly correlate with the massive trauma he has now created in Gaza and Palestine which has evilly included the bombing of 'shelters', including the United Nations schools/ shelters, that have thus killed 1400 innocent people and CHILDREN. This is also seen in the Pluto transit squaring his Nodes. The opposite points in the 10th House correlate, now, to most of the world turning against Israel, and the war criminal himself, even as the USA sustains it's delusions about the actual reality being created by the war criminal's Israel.
U.N. Reports Dire Impact on Children in Gaza Strip
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
AUG. 5, 2014
IHT
GENEVA - As a 72-hour cease-fire took hold in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations official said Tuesday that Israel's nearly monthlong offensive against Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that runs Gaza, had had a "catastrophic and tragic impact" on children in the territory and that reconstruction would require many hundreds of millions of dollars.
The conflict has killed 408 children and injured 2,502, Pernille Ironside, the head of the Unicef office in Gaza, said, briefing reporters in Geneva by telephone. About 373,000 children have had traumatic experiences and need psychosocial support, she said.
"There isn't a single family in Gaza which hasn't been touched by direct loss," Ms. Ironside said. "The impact that has on the ability of children to cope cannot be overstated."
The weaponry used in the assault on Gaza caused amputations and maiming, she added. "This happened before the eyes of children," she said. "They have seen their friends and their parents die."
The United Nations and other humanitarian agencies are at the limit of their ability to cope with the fallout from the assault, which Ms. Ironside said had far surpassed the combined impact of two previous conflicts, in 2008-09 and in 2012. About 270,000 people have sought shelter at around 90 centers run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and at least 200,000 others have taken refuge with family members, friends or neighbors.
The damage inflicted on Gaza's power and water infrastructure has led to acute shortages of clean water for several weeks. What is available is used only for drinking and is not sufficient for basic hygiene, Ms. Ironside said, giving rise to scabies and other contagious diseases.
Shelling and bombing have damaged 142 schools - 89 of them run by the United Nations - , and multiple strikes on Gaza's sole power plant and other infrastructure have left it beyond repair, Ms. Ironside said. The cost of reconstruction will run to "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars," she said.
But stringent Israeli controls on goods going into Gaza severely constrained past efforts at rebuilding, Ms. Ironside said. She urged an end to Israel's blockade. "The international community cannot accept the rebuilding of Gaza on the same terms as before," she said.
SPIEGEL ONLINE
08/05/2014 05:13 PM
Gaza Crisis: 'The Real Danger to Israel Comes from Within'
Interview Conducted by Julia Amalia Heyer
Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, but left behind death and destruction. Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz tells SPIEGEL that her country is gripped by fear and is becoming increasingly suspicious of democracy.
SPIEGEL: There was widespread support in Israel for the operation in the Gaza Strip, despite the huge numbers of civilian casualties and the deaths of hundreds of children. Why is that?
Illouz: Where you see human beings, Israelis see enemies. In front of enemies, you close ranks, you unite in fear for your life, and you do not ponder about the fragility of the other. Israel has a split, schizophrenic self-awareness: It cultivates its strength and yet cannot stop seeing itself as weak and threatened. Moreover, both the fact that Hamas holds a radical Islamist and anti-Semitic ideology and the fact that there is rabid anti-Arab racism in Israel explain why Israelis see Gaza as a bastion of potential or real terrorists. It is difficult to have compassion for a population seen as as threatening the heart of your society.
SPIEGEL: Is that also a function of the fact that Israeli society has become increasingly militaristic?
Illouz: Israel is a colonial military power, a militarized society and a democracy all folded into one. The army, for example, controls the Palestinians through a wide network of colonial tools, such as checkpoints, military courts (governed by a legal system different from the Israeli system), the arbitrary granting of work permits, house demolitions and economic sanctions. It is a militarized civil society because almost every family has a father, son or brother in the army and because the military plays an enormous role in the ordinary mentality of ordinary Israelis and is crucial in both political decisions and in the public sphere. In fact, I would say that "security" is the paramount concept guiding Israeli society and politics. But it is also a democracy, which grants rights to gays and makes it possible for a citizen to sue the state.
SPIEGEL: Still, many would say that Israel has gone too far in this war with Hamas.
Illouz: I think Israelis have lost what we can call a "humanitarian sensibility," the capacity to identify with the suffering of a distant other. In Israel, there has been a change in perception of the "Palestinian other." The Palestinian has become a true enemy in the perception of Israelis, in the sense that "they are there" and "we are here." They ceased having a face and even a name.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for the shift?
Illouz: Israelis and Palestinians used to be mixed. They worked as construction workers and as cheap, underpaid labor. Then the wall was built. Then the road blocks came, which hampered the Palestinians' freedom of movement. The massive reduction in work permits followed. And in a few years Palestinians disappeared from Israeli society. The Second Intifada put the nail in that coffin, so to speak. The nature of Israeli leadership has also changed. The messianic right has progressively gained power in Israel. It used to be marginal and illegitimate; it is now increasingly mainstream. This radical right sits in Parliament, controls budgets and has changed the nature of discourse. Many Israelis do not understand the radical nature of the right in Israel. It successfully disguises itself as "patriotic" or "Jewish."
SPIEGEL: Why is the right so strong at the moment even though there are far fewer terror attacks in Israel than there used to be?
Illouz: Entire generations have been raised with the territories, with Israel being a colonial power. They do not know anything else. You have the settlements which are highly ideological. They expanded and entered Israeli mainstream political life. Settlements were strengthened by systematic government policies: They got tax breaks; they had soldiers to protect them; they built roads and infrastructure which are much better than those inside the country. There are entire segments of the population that have never met a secular person and have been educated religiously. Some of these religious segments are also very nationalist. The reality we are faced with in Israel is that we must choose between liberalism and Jewishness, and if we choose Jewishness, we are condemned to become a religious Sparta which will not be sustainable. Whereas in the 1960s, you could be both socialist and Zionist, today it is not possible because of the policies and identity of Israel. Then you have the role which Jews who live outside Israel play in Israel. Many of these Jews have very right-wing views and contribute money to newspapers, think tanks and religious institutions inside Israel. Let's face it: the right has been more systematic and more mobilized, both inside and outside Israel.
SPIEGEL: Do Jews in the Diaspora see Israel differently than do Jews in Israel?
Illouz: Diaspora Jews have been shaped by the memory of the Shoah. They often live in societies in which their own democratic rights are guaranteed. Sometimes they are under the assault of anti-Semitism and thus feel an urge to reinforce Jewish identity. They do not understand the distress of Israelis who see democracy progressively eaten away by dark forces. Today, Diaspora Jews and Jews in Israel do not have the same interests anymore.
SPIEGEL: What will happen if democratic principles continue to erode?
Illouz: One or two years ago, the newspaper Haaretz conducted a poll which found that 40 percent of the people said they were considering leaving Israel. I don't know the actual numbers, but I have never heard as much alienation from Israel as during this period. The people who live in secular Tel Aviv have much less in common with their religious counterparts in Jerusalem than they do with people living in Berlin.
SPIEGEL: You describe a fearful, anxious country.
Illouz: Fear is deeply engrained in Israeli society. Fear of the Shoah, fear of anti-Semitism, fear of Islam, fear of Europeans, fear of terror, fear of extermination. You name it. And fear generates a very particular type of thinking, which I would call "catastrophalist." You always think about the worst case scenario, not about a normal course of events. In catastrophalist scenarios, you become allowed to breach many more moral norms than if you imagined a normal course of events.
SPIEGEL: This differing perception of threats and conflict is problematic. Whereas Israel sees itself as the victim, the rest of the world is increasingly seeing the country as a violent occupying power.
Illouz: Imagine that you were a girl raised by a very brutal father. You would develop a "healthy" suspicion of men and would become very cautious. If you were to live for a time in an environment of good and nurturing men, your suspicions would relax. But if you lived in an environment in which some men were very brutal and some were not, your healthy suspicion would turn into an obsessive incapacity to differentiate between different types of men, the brutal and the caring. That is the historical trauma of the consciousness that Jews live with. The Israeli psyche has become incapable of making these distinctions.
SPIEGEL: Does this fear justify the kind of brutal violence that has been visited upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip?
Illouz: Of course it doesn't. I'm only saying that fear is central to the Israeli psyche. These fears are cynically used by leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He makes Israelis believe that they all want to destroy us. Hamas wants to destroy us, the UN wants to destroy us, al-Qaida and Iran want to destroy us. ISIS wants to destroy us. The European anti-Semites want to destroy us. This is basically the filter through which a conflict with Hamas is interpreted by the ordinary Israeli. Another dimension of this prism is that "they" are not human beings. Palestinians are dehumanized because they put their soldiers amongst civilians, send their children to fight, spend and waste their money on building deadly tunnels rather than on building up their own society. Along with the dehumanization of the other, Israelis have a strong sense of their own moral superiority. "We ask people to get out of their houses; we call them on the phone to make sure civilians are evacuated. We behave humanly," the Israeli thinks. An army with good manners.
SPIEGEL: And nevertheless, civilians have been the primary victims, with schools, housing complexes and hospitals being bombed.
Illouz: Yes, despite this, many Israelis still hold on the view they are morally superior. They judge by the intention, whereas the world judges by the consequences.
SPIEGEL: Still, an enormous wave of hatred has become visible in Israel in recent weeks. And it's not only directed at the Palestinians, but also at segments of Israeli society.
Illouz: Some basic norms of speech have been breached by some rabbis and Knesset members, who feel no qualms expressing hatred for Arabs in ways that provide legitimation to hatred. This is very worrisome. It happened because entire generations have been raised believing in religious and ultra-nationalist views. I don't think that there is more hatred in Israel than in some racist pockets of German or French society. But when some Palestinians recently sang in the streets of Paris "Death to the Jews," the reaction of the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls was swift and clear. The authorities sent a strong message that there are forms of speech and forms of belief that are inadmissible. What is lacking in Israeli society is that kind of very strong moral normative claim coming from its leaders.
SPIEGEL: How do you explain this paradox -- the hate on the one hand and Israel's emphasis on its liberal values on the other?
Illouz: Israel started as a modern nation. It derived its legitimacy from the fact that it had democratic institutions. But it was also building highly anti-modern institutions in wanting to create a Jewish democracy by giving power to rabbis, in creating deep ethnic inequalities between different ethnic groups such Jews of Arab countries vs. Jews of European descent; Arabs vs. Jews; Jews vs. non-Jews. It thus blocked universalist thinking.
SPIEGEL: Would you say that the Jewish character of the country has subsumed the democratic character?
Illouz: Yes, definitely. We are at the point where it has become clear that Jewishness has hijacked democracy and its contents. It happened increasingly when the school curriculum started getting changed and emphasizing more Jewish content and less universal content; when the Ministry of the Interior expelled foreign workers because Shas party members were afraid non-Jews would inter-marry with Jews; when human rights are thought of as being left-wing only because human rights presuppose that Jews and non-Jews are equal.
SPIEGEL: That doesn't sound particularly encouraging.
Illouz: The only response is to create a vast camp of people who defend democracy. The right-left divide is no longer important. There is something more urgent right now: the defense of democracy. The voice of the extreme right is much louder and clearer than it was before. That's what's new: a racist right that is not ashamed of itself, that persecutes dissenters and even people who dare express compassion for the other side. The real danger to Israel and its sustainability comes from within. The fascist and racist elements are no less a security threat than the outside enemies.
SPIEGEL: Israeli enemies have also accused the country of no longer being democratic. Does that bother you?
Illouz: With all my critique and occasional disgust at Israeli arrogance, I am also puzzled that Israel is indeed singled out. Look at what happens in Syria or in Nigeria or Iraq. Why isn't the world demonstrating in the streets in the same way it is doing for Israel? America has also a shocking record outside its own borders. Where are the intellectuals who are going to boycott America? Where are they?
SPIEGEL: Do you support the military operation in the Gaza Strip?
Illouz: No, I don't. I'm not a pacifist in the sense that I do not think that military operations are always wrong. But I'm not in favor of this operation because there was no political process beforehand. Netanyahu gave such obvious sings that he was not interested in a political process. Instead, Netanyahu constantly undermined Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. I refuse categorically the idea that our only relationship with the Palestinians is a military one. We are in a march of folly. There is an increasingly large group of people who really think that they can subdue the Palestinian population and sustain a regime where Israel keeps dominating them.
SPIEGEL: Is that not the consequence of 47 years of occupation, this feeling of not having to make any more concessions?
Illouz: Israelis pay a price, but we are not really aware of it. We don't know how it feels to live in a peaceful society, devoted exclusively to culture, education and improving the living conditions of everyone. People don't make a connection between the bad living conditions they have and the amount of resources invested in the settlements and in the army. In psychology, they call it dissociation. Israeli society has become very insensitive. Not only to the suffering of others, but also to its own suffering.
Hi Rad,
Are the past life symbols in his chart connected to the Roman Empire and persecution of certain groups like pagans or gnostics?
Thanks,
Sunyata
Hi Sunyata,
Yes ..........
God Bless, Rad
The Washington Times
Netanyahu asks U.S. to help Israel avoid war crime charge at ICC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached out to the United States for help with the public relations battle that's accompanying the trade of rocket fire with Hamas, and asked lawmakers to counter claims that the Jewish nation is committing war crimes when bombing Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu said his military has gone to "extraordinary measures" to try and avoid killing civilians in the monthlong trade of fire with the terrorist group Hamas, the New York Post reported. But Hamas and supporters of the terror organization have similarly gone to great lengths to showcase to the world the innocent civilians, including women and children, who have been killed by Israeli fire.
Israeli authorities, meanwhile, and Western intelligence both claim that Hamas is purposely firing rockets from civilian sectors and storing weapons in the likes of schools and medical facilities in order to put civilians in the line of fire - and win the sympathy of the world.
Mr. Netanyahu met with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers, including Rep. Steve Israel, to discuss some of the recent combat operations and to ask for assistance in staying out of the International Criminal Court, the New York Post reported. His request came as several Palestinian leaders met with ICC officials to speak about joining the international body.
"The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that this strategy of going to the ICC does not succeed," Mr. Israel said in a telephone interview with the New York Post from Tel Aviv. "Netanyahu wants the U.S. to use all the tools that we have at our disposal to, number one, make sure the world knows that war crimes were not committed by Israel - they were committed by Hamas. And that Israel should not be held to a double standard."
Mr. Israel added, the New York Post reported: "It's Hamas that embedded its rockets in hospitals and in homes. And now there are some in the international community who want to investigate the Israelis for the war crime of simply defending themselves."
The international criminal court can investigate potential crimes in Gaza
The United Nations general assembly's decision to grant Palestine observer-state status means the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate allegations of crimes
Kirsty Brimelow QC
theguardian.com, Friday 8 August 2014 23.17 BST
In his opinion piece dated 7 August 2014, Joshua Rozenberg criticised the Bar Human Rights Committee's letter to the ICC prosecutor, which urged her to investigate evidence of serious crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed in Gaza, as "naive" and "misleading".
He accuses BHRC of failing to present opposing views to its own position that a 2009 declaration submitted by the Government of Palestine, accepting the jurisdiction of the court, provides the prosecutor with the jurisdictional basis to initiate an investigation. In particular, BHRC is criticised for not highlighting that "one international lawyer disagreed" with our position, arguing that a 2012 decision of the prosecutor "formally rejected" the 2009 declaration.
Neither Rozenberg's opinion piece nor academic he relies upon, Kevin Heller, cite the text of the 2012 decision in support of their positions. This is hardly surprising given that the decision does not in fact "formally reject" the 2009 declaration.
Instead, the 2012 decision asserts that the prosecutor does not have the authority to determine whether Palestine is a "state" for the purposes of submitting a declaration to the ICC, it being "for the relevant bodies at the United Nations or the [ICC] assembly of states parties to make th[at] legal determination."
The 2012 decision underscores that the Prosecutor "could in the future consider allegations of crimes committed in Palestine, should competence organs of the Untied Nations or eventually the assembly of states parties resolve the legal issue relevant to an assessment of article 12".
As BHRC highlights in our letter, insofar as any doubts may have previously existed regarding Palestine's status, those have since been resolved by the United Nations general assembly when it granted Palestine observer-state status. Contrary to Rozenberg's representation of the UN General Assembly decision, the UN did not determine that Palestine was not a State prior to that date. And indeed, as Kevin Heller has himself made clear, "the ICC did not have to wait for the UNGA to upgrade Palestine's status; it could - and should - have recognized Palestine long before now."
In those circumstances, as BHRC and numerous other lawyers have argued , the 2009 declaration provides a jurisdictional basis for the prosecutor to "consider allegations of crimes committed in Palestine", in the absence of Palestinian ratification of the Rome Statute: there is no legal requirement for a further declaration in order for an investigation to be initiated.
Given the text of the 2012 decision, the prosecutor's short announcement on 5 August 2014 imposing yet another procedural obstacle to the investigation of such serious crimes is deeply disappointing. BHRC and the legal community look forward to reading a reasoned legal explanation of her position.
In the meantime, BHRC continues strongly to encourage Palestine's ratification of the Rome Statute as the most straightforward basis for ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory. The news on this front is cautiously encouraging. However, the political pressure being placed on Palestine - including by the British and American governments - and the threats of serious political consequences if it does ratify or submit another declaration undermine Rozenberg's assertion that this action is "an easy answer". Naivety would be to place faith in the politics and not to advance a distinct urgent legal solution for victims of Gaza.
Kirsty Brimelow QC is chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee, which is the international human rights arm of the Bar of England and Wales as distinct to being part of the Bar Council. It was founded in 1991.
The movement that dare not speak its name in Israel
By Giles Fraser, The Guardian
Wednesday, August 6, 2014 21:31 EDT
Vocal opposition to the Gaza war faces overwhelming public support and almost universal scorn for attempts to make peace
Gideon Levy doesn't want to meet in a coffee bar in Tel Aviv. He is fed up with being hassled in public and spat at, with people not willing to share the table next to him in restaurants. And now he is fed up with the constant presence of his bodyguards, not least because they too have started giving him a hard time about his political views. So he doesn't go out much any more and we sit in the calm of his living room, a few hundred yards from the Yitzhak Rabin Centre. Rabin's assassination by a rightwing Orthodox Jew in 1995 is itself a sobering reminder of the personal cost of peacemaking in Israel.
In his column in Haaretz, Levy has long since banged the drum for greater Israeli empathy towards the suffering of the Palestinians. He is a well known commentator on the left, and one of the few prepared to stick his head above the parapet. Consequently, he is no stranger to opposition from the right. But this time it is different. Yariv Levin, coalition chairman of the Likud-Beytenu faction in the Knesset, recently called for him to be put on trial for treason - a crime which, during wartime, is punishable by death.
"It is time we stop regarding despicable phenomena like this with tolerance," Levin said of Levy. Soon after that interview Eldad Yaniv, a former political adviser to ex-prime minister Ehud Barack, wrote on his Facebook page: "The late Gideon Levy. Get used to it."
Levy's unpardonable crime is vocal opposition to the war and to the bombing of Gaza. According to recent polls support for the military operation in Gaza among the Jewish Israeli public stands somewhere between 87% (Channel 10 News) and 95% (Israel Democracy Institute). Even those who are secretly against the war are cautious about voicing their opinion openly.
Thus public opinion went ballistic when Levy attacked those who were bombing Gaza by inverting the well known Hebrew phrase "Hatovim La tayyis" - which means: the best ones go to the air force - by writing "Haraim La tayyis": the worst ones go to the air force. Even in a time of peace this would be seen as a provocative statement, a heresy against what Levy sees as Israel's real religion: military security. But in its current mood, this is not the sort of thing that you can easily say out loud.
Even Peace Now, the backbone of the Israeli peace movement, has been remarkably guarded, carefully avoiding official participation in public demonstrations. Peace Now was founded in 1978 by former members of the military who came out strongly in favour of peace with Egypt. It helped mobilise 10% of the Israeli public - some 400,000 people - to turn out against the 1982 war in Lebanon. But this time it is a shadow of its former self.
"What is different this time is the anti-democratic spirit. Zero tolerance of any kind of criticism, opposition to any kind of sympathy with the Palestinians," says Levy. "You shouldn't be surprised that the 95% [are in favour of the war], you should be surprised at the 5%. This is almost a miracle. The media has an enormous role. Given the decades of demonisation of the Palestinians, the incitement and hatred, don't be surprised the Israeli people are where they are."
"So what's the point of a peace movement if it refuses to condemn a war like this?" I ask Mossi Raz, former general secretary of Peace Now. Some people have demonstrated, he assures me; 6,000 came out on the streets the Saturday before last (and were taunted as "dirty Israelis" by the rightwing counter demonstration). And in the circumstances, 6,000 feels like quite an achievement. But he admits that the mainstream protest movements and parties of the left all fall pretty silent when the sirens start to wail.
"People tend to demonstrate only after the war is over," Raz explains. And he expects the same to happen again this time. During the early part of the 1982 war, before the large turnouts, polls gave military action 86% support. But during a time of war, opposition is seen as disloyalty, as siding with the enemy. People will protest at the government but not the military. I raise an eyebrow about the idea of only protesting against a war when it is over. He nods with a certain exasperation and asks me, as a joke: "So, shall we go out now and protest the Falklands war?"
Amos Oz, Israel's great literary conscience, explains to me that the peace movement was dealt a harsh blow eight years ago when Ariel Sharon pulled the army and the settlers out of Gaza only for the situation to get worse. "Since then there have been 10,000 rockets fired from the Gaza strip." Middle-of-the-road Israelis have lost faith in the idea that you could swap land for peace. For him, the current military operation is "excessive but justified" and he is scornful of the high-minded European reaction. "That's the problem with Europeans. They launch a petition and then go and sleep and feel good about themselves," something he explains with reference to European history. I feel he is having a go at me. And I know he is laid up in bed with a bad knee. So I don't rise to the bait.
He continues: "The history of warfare in the 20th century has made Europeans see things in black and white, like a Hollywood movie, with good guys and bad guys. But it's more complicated than that." Yes, he condemns the Netanyahu government and the catalogue of inaction and missed opportunities. Yes, the operation in Gaza has been disproportionate. "From one perspective it looks like a David and Goliath story, with Israel being the ruthless Goliath and the Palestinians being the poor little David. But if you see the conflict as between Israel and the whole of the rest of the Arab world, who then is David and who is Goliath?"
I attempt to shift Oz off this well-trodden ground by talking about Israeli poetry, trying to come at things sideways. I tell him I have always loved that Yehuda Amichai poem "From the place where we are right, flowers will not grow in the spring." He agrees. It's a wonderful poem. "All married couples should have that poem above their bed," he says. And then he says something that feels to me like a real shift in his position. Previously he has described the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a Sophoclean tragedy over land in which both sides have a claim to right on their side; as a battle, as he put it of "right versus right". But now, he says, this is a battle of "wrong versus wrong". No one is in the right any more. It is a very statesmanlike form of opposition. But it is hardly emphatic.
"Amos Oz is not yet in a position to admit entire Israeli guilt," Levy explains. "He is a real man of peace but he grew up in a different generation, the generation before me. He grew up in this weak state, struggling to survive, created out of nothing. This is his background."
This sort of self-critical vigilance is rare but understandable given the sort of reporting that goes on in themainstream media in Israel. Most newspapers and TV channels are simply cheerleaders for the government line, offering a constant diet of fear and fallen heroes, with little evidence of any of the atrocities going on in Gaza. The problem is, ordinary Israelis have little idea what has been going on. I know so much more about what is happening in Gaza when I'm sitting in London than I do in Tel Aviv. Under this level of information manipulation, how can ordinary Israelis be expected to be critical?
Later I gather for a drink at a friend's flat in Tel Aviv with a group of late 20s/early 30s, broadly leftwing activists, NGO types that I was expecting would share my exasperation. And I make a mistake, assuming too much common ground. I ask whether their fear of rockets is properly calibrated to reality, given that people are so much more likely to die in a car accident in Israel than at the hands of Hamas. And there is an awkward reaction. The question was insensitive. They have loved ones in uniform in Gaza. And I really do understand that. But suddenly I feel like an outsider. I haven't appreciated that this threat is existential, they say. "People leave their liberalism at the green line [the 1967 border]," Levy had warned me earlier. "The young people are the worst. More ignorant. More brainwashed. They have never met a Palestinian in their lives".
That is emphatically not true of this group. But even here, the mood for social justice does not seem to connect poverty in Israel with the vast financial cost of occupation, let alone allowing empathy with the Palestinian predicament. If I'm not with them I'm against them. I am made to feel a little like an apologist for Hamas. A thought dawns in my head: perhaps I too ought to shut up and keep the evening sweet. Of all the things seen on my trip, this was the most depressing conversation of them all.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Renewal of Warfare, a Family in Mourning
By JODI RUDOREN and FARES AKRAM
AUG. 8, 2014
IHT
GAZA CITY - Sabah Dawawsa was in the kitchen Friday morning, frying the chicken livers her 10-year-old son, Ibrahim, had requested for the after-prayer meal. With Palestinian rockets having resumed at the 8 a.m. expiration of a 72-hour cease-fire, followed by Israeli airstrikes, Ms. Dawawsa said she had told Ibrahim to stay inside, in their house in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
Around 11 a.m., right as she realized that he had nonetheless gone to play at the mosque under construction down the street, Ms. Dawawsa heard the drone drop the missile.
It killed Ibrahim, leaving a pool of blood from his skull next to a crushed SuperCola can and an abandoned flip-flop. Two other boys were wounded.
"What shall I say? It was only a few minutes after he went out," Ms. Dawawsa, 37, wailed as she clutched a picture of her son at 5 years old in a camouflage outfit. "It was only minutes, only minutes."
Hundreds of mourners gathered at another nearby mosque to pray over the body of the first casualty in the latest chapter of the monthlong battle that has claimed the lives of nearly 1,900 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, and, on the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and three civilians. The renewed violence came as an Israeli delegation left Cairo, where talks toward a more durable truce had made dubious progress.
Leaders of Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates Gaza, had warned on Thursday that they would resume the battle if their demands to open border crossings, remove Israeli restrictions on trade and, especially, build their own seaport on the Mediterranean were not met. Israel had promised to return fire with fire. Both kept their word.
Gaza militants launched a rocket toward southern Israel exactly at 8 a.m. - it was intercepted over Ashkelon - and followed with about 40 others by midday, according to the Israeli military. Israel, in turn, fired artillery shells at Gaza's already destroyed northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, dropped at least one bomb from an F-16, and struck a home in Gaza City belonging to a Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, and hit other targets in Gaza City, Jabaliya, Rafah and Khan Younis, killing four people in addition to Ibrahim before 8 p.m., Palestinian health officials and witnesses said.
"I was happy for the last three days - today I felt sick because the cease-fire ended," said Amal al-Masri, 45, who bought a small bag of green grapes at the Jabaliya refugee camp to share among 30 relatives whose home in Beit Hanoun had been flattened. "We lost everything. If an earthquake happened here, it would be better.
"I don't want the war to resume," she added, "but who's going to bring back our rights? This is the only way."
The Toll in Gaza and Israel, Day by Day
As news spread that the cease-fire was over, many shops remained open, and cars and people were on the streets of Gaza City. Groups of teenagers roamed and men sat smoking on the sidewalks. In the Jabaliya camp, a man exercised seven camels on a leash, and young boys toted cartons of supplies on their heads back to the school where their families have been sheltering for weeks.
Heading north, it grew quieter. In Beit Hanoun, a ghost town of felled concrete buildings, Anas Kaferna, 25, and his sister and brother were tying thin mattresses and blankets atop a fading silver sedan. "I don't want to be the last one in the town," he said.
Since the first attack on Beit Hanoun weeks ago, Mr. Kaferna said they had been staying at the maternity hospital where he worked as a security guard, though it was also pocked by shelling. Now they were bound for Gaza City, though uncertain where they would stay. "It seems the situation will get harder," he said. "Maybe yes and maybe no. I don't understand politics."
Back at the Jabaliya market, Amir el-Fassis, 17, and Muhammad Bahtini, 21, said they were awoken by a drone strike the Israelis refer to as a "knock on the door," warning of a larger bombing to follow. It hit a six-story apartment building under construction next to their home, they said. They evacuated, but waited in a growing crowd nearby to see what would happen next.
"They are peaceful people, they sell tomatoes in the market," Mr. Bahtini said of the Sherafi family, who own the apartment building and live on its ground floor. "When it is down, we will say, "˜May God get us revenge.'
"We have suffered, but we can endure for the sake of having a rest forever after that," he added, invoking an Egyptian proverb, heard frequently around Gaza this week, that means, "Either we live in happiness or all of us die."
Zuheir Dawawsa, 19, one of Ibrahim's brothers, said he, too, was awoken by the too-familiar sound of a drone. He ran to the construction site where, three months ago, work began on a 13,000-square-foot mosque, called Al Nour, to replace the one destroyed by an Israeli strike during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9.
Neighborhood children told him that his brother had been among the boys playing there when it was hit. Then a youth approached with Ibrahim in his arms.
Cross-border strikes between Israel and militants from Gaza resumed after a three-day cease-fire expired.
Video Credit By Christian Roman on Publish Date August 8, 2014. Image CreditHatem Moussa/Associated Press
"His skull was open," said Mr. Dawawsa, who was wearing a T-shirt that said, "Nothing Is Impossible," and could hardly speak. "He was already dead."
Family members and neighbors said Ibrahim was an energetic boy, nicknamed Barhoum, who loved his PlayStation and soccer, like so many others. He was the second-youngest of eight children from his father's two wives, and slept on a mattress in the spacious second-floor salon where his mother sat mourning on Friday. "He was a good heart," said a sister, Raghda, cradling her own 7-month-old daughter. "He was always giving what was in his hand to others."
Photographs of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, hung above the women's heads. In the next room was a map of British Mandate Palestine, with cities and villages labeled in Arabic. Outside, the house's stone wall bore a painted mural of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City.
At the construction site, men and boys pointed up at the place where the missile had shaved off a concrete pylon and sundered the wooden scaffold before, apparently, hitting Ibrahim in the head. They had found several pieces of jagged-edge metal shrapnel.
The neighborhood leader, Nasser Abu Raid al-Ghoul, 60, said he was among about 30 men in the temporary mosque next to the site, reading the Quran in preparation for the midday prayer, when the missile hit. They first saw the two wounded boys, and 10 minutes later found Ibrahim's bloodied body under the debris.
"What, the boy was shelling Israel with this wood?" said a scowling neighbor, Mahmoud el-Amoudi, 31, pointing to two-by-fours from the scaffold. "I'm sure Israel will say he killed himself.
"Where is Barack Obama? Where is Human Rights Watch? Where is the free world, just crying on TV?"
********************
Gaza crisis: a closer look at Israeli strikes on UNRWA schools
Raya Jalabi, Tom McCarthy and Nadja Popovich
Friday 8 August 2014 19.31 BST
The Guardian
As the conflict in Gaza deepened, tens of thousands - and then hundreds of thousands - of Palestinians were forced out of their homes and into shelters operated by the United Nations. Dozens of UN-operated schools were converted for the purpose. Eventually, almost 270,000 internally displaced people were crowded into 90 shelters in Gaza.
In the last two weeks of the fighting before this week's ceasefire, UN schools began to come under fire. Six schools in all were hit. Hundreds of Palestinians at the schools were wounded and at least 47 were killed. A disproportionate number of those hurt were children or women. Of the 485,000 internally displaced, many had sought shelter in the schools after being warned by the Israeli military to leave their homes.
Drawing on on-the-ground reports and statements by the United Nations and Israel Defense Forces, the Guardian has compiled a list of the UN school strikes and descriptions of the circumstances of each strike. The numbers of dead and wounded were gathered from Guardian reports, the United Nations, the Gaza Ministry of Health, the New York Times and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
Overview
Reports from the scenes and other evidence indicate that the source of the fire in each case was Israeli, although in at least one case the Israeli military initially suggested that errant Hamas rocket fire was responsible. In multiple cases, the Israeli army said it was returning fire that had come from the vicinity of the schools. UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, said it had informed the Israeli military of the locations of the schools repeatedly, in one case 33 times.
The repeated strikes on the schools drew increasingly shocked responses from the United Nations and governments around the world. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, called the last school strike, in Rafah on 3 August, a "moral outrage" and a "criminal act". The White House said it was "extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in UN-designated shelters in Gaza".
"I can assure you unequivocally that the IDF does not target civilians," the IDF spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said in an email to the Guardian. "Hamas chooses where these battles are conducted and, despite Israel's best efforts to prevent civilian casualties, Hamas is ultimately responsible for the tragic loss of civilian life. Specifically in the case of UN facilities, it is important to note the repeated abuse of UN facilities by Hamas, namely with at least three cases of munitions storage within such facilities.
"All of these incidents are under review, as part of the thorough internal investigation the IDF is conducting."
Gaza schools interactive Graphic: Nadja Popovich/Guardian
The UN secretary general on Wednesday called for a "swift investigation" into the attacks on UN facilities in Gaza. As fighting resumed on Friday, residents are returning to UN shelters. UNRWA says more than 220,000 people have registered in 89 shelters since the ceasefire ended.
We will update this article as further information comes to light.
For more more detail on the chart above, we have broken out each incident below, with added information and comments from the IDF, UN and US leaders on individual strikes.
Maghazi Prep School A & B
Date: 21 July 2014
Dead: 0 reported casualties
Wounded: 1 child
Sheltering: Approximately 1,000 internally displaced people prior to the first attack
What happened: At approximately 4.55pm, the school was struck by explosive ordnance "believed to have been fired by Israeli forces." - UNRWA statement
Comment: "UNRWA condemns in the strongest possible terms the shelling of one of its schools in the central area of Gaza." - UNRWA statement
IDF comment: "We are carefully reviewing all of these incidents."
Maghazi Prep School A & B
Date: 22 July 2014
Dead: 0
Wounded: 0
Sheltering: Approximately 1,000 internally displaced people prior to the first attack
What happened: At about 10.30am, as UNRWA officials at the school investigated the 21 July incident, "there was further shelling of the school, seriously endangering the lives of UN humanitarian workers and displaced civilians." - UNRWA statement
Comment: "This is a serious violation of United Nations' premises that could have had far-reaching human consequences." - Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner-general of UNRWA
IDF comment: "We are carefully reviewing all of these incidents."
Deir al-Balah Preparatory Girls School C
Date: 23 July 2014
Dead: 0
Wounded: 5
Sheltering: Approximately 1,500 internally displaced people
What happened: the school was reportedly struck at 7.45am
Comment: "This is the second time in three days that an UNRWA school has taken a direct hit from Israeli shelling and we again condemn this in the strongest possible terms." - UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness
IDF comment: "We are carefully reviewing all of these incidents."
Beit Hanoun Elementary Co-ed School A & D
Date: 24 July 2014
Dead: 15*
Wounded: 200, mostly women and children
Sheltering: Approximately 1,500 internally displaced people
What happened: According to survivors, at about 2.50pm, as the playground was crowded with families waiting to be ferried to safety, one shell landed in the schoolyard, followed by several more rounds that hit the upper storeys of the building.
Comment: "Today's attack underscores the imperative for the killing to stop and to stop now." - UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon
IDF comment: The Israeli military first claimed, in a text sent to journalists, that the school could have been hit by Hamas missiles that fell short, reported the Guardian's Peter Beaumont.
IDF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner later said in an email to the Guardian: "In the matter of the Beit Hanoun school, the IDF encountered heavy fire in vicinity of the school, including anti-tank missile. We later determined that an errant mortar did indeed land in the empty courtyard of the school, backing this up with video evidence."
Additional: The Guardian's Peter Beaumont reported from the scene: "There was no visible evidence of debris from broken Palestinian rockets in the school. The injuries and the number of fatalities were consistent with a powerful explosion that sent shrapnel tearing through the air, in some cases causing traumatic amputations. The surrounding neighbourhood bore evidence of multiple Israeli attacks, including smoke from numerous artillery rounds and air strikes. One building was entirely engulfed by flames."
* We chose to use the number from the Guardian report, as the numbers of reported dead varied between 11 and 15.
Zaitoun Preparatory Girls School B
Date: 29 July 2014
Dead: 0
Wounded: 8
Sheltering: Approximately 2,200 internally displaced people
What happened: the school was reportedly struck
IDF comment: "We are carefully reviewing all of these incidents."
UNRWA Jabaliya school attack UNRWA Jabaliya Girls Elementary School after 30 July attack by Israeli strike. Photograph: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA
Jabaliya Elementary Girls School A & B
Date: 30 July 2014
Dead: 21**
Wounded: more than 100, including women and children
Sheltering: Approximately 3,200 internally displaced people
What happened: School in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells during a night of relentless bombardment across Gaza.
Comment:
"Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children. I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms." - UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon
"The shelling of a UN facility, that is housing innocent civilians who are fleeing violence, is totally unacceptable and totally indefensible." - White House spokesman Josh Earnest
"The world stands disgraced" - Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner-general of UNRWA
IDF Comment: "Regarding the UNRWA facility in Jabaliya, we have determined that an exchange of fire, including mortar fire, did indeed take place in the vicinity of the school."
Additional:
"All available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause - Ban Ki-moon
Damage "likely to have come from heavy artillery not designed for precision use "¦ [the IDF] provided no evidence of [militant] activity and no explanation for the strike beyond saying that Palestinian militants were firing about 200 yards away." - New York Times investigation.
**This New York Times investigation published several days after the strike occurred found the number of dead to be greater than that previously reported. We elected to use this number.
Rafah Boys Preparatory School A
Date: 3 August 2014
Dead: 11, "five were children between 3 and 15 years old"
Wounded: 27
Sheltering almost 3,000 internally displaced people
What happened: A projectile struck the ground 8-10 metres from open school gates at about 10.50am. Witnesses at the scene less than an hour after the explosion claimed it had been fired from one of the many unmanned Israeli drones. UN officials in Gaza described a "shelling incident" or an air strike.
Comment:
"The attack is yet another gross violation of international humanitarian law, which clearly requires protection by both parties of Palestinian civilians, UN staff and UN premises, among other civilian facilities. United Nations shelters must be safe zones not combat zones. The Israel Defence Forces have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites. This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable. It is a moral outrage and a criminal act." - UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon
IDF comment: "In the Rafah School incident, the IDF targeted three Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants on a motorbike outside of the school. The targeted strike did indeed neutralise the militants on the targeted motorbike."
Irish senator blasts Israel as "˜right-wing regime' committing "˜criminal' acts in epic rant
By David Ferguson
RawStory
Saturday, August 9, 2014 11:17 EDT
In the video embedded below, openly gay Irish senator and international human rights activist David Norris spoke frankly about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. In his speech, Norris abandoned the normal Pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine dichotomy and attempted to address the changes in direction of Israel's rulers.
Norris said that over time, Israel has fundamentally shifted its social and political orientation.
"I am not anti-Israeli, I am not anti-Semitic. I supported the state of Israel. In the forty years I have known the state of Israel and sometimes had a home there I've seen it completely changed," he said.
"It changed from a left-wing socially directed country, to an extreme right-wing regime, that is behaving in the most criminal fashion and defying the world. Using - unscrupulously using - the Holocaust to justify what they are doing and it is time that rag was torn away from them," Norris continued.
He ended his speech by saying, "I am with human rights whether they are, Israeli, gay, women, black, whatever they are. I am not changing my position. I am not anti-Israel I am not anti-Semitic but I am pro human rights for every human."
Watch the video, embedded below via YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keS-LDl_ewA
Israel furious as UN Human Rights Council unveils Gaza probe team
By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, August 12, 2014 12:20 EDT
Israel lashed out on Tuesday after the UN Human Rights Council named the man who will be running an inquiry into its Gaza offensive.
Canadian international lawyer William Schabas, who will head the commission, is widely regarded in Israel as being hostile to the Jewish state over reported calls to bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court.
"This commission's anti-Israeli conclusions have already been written, all it needs is a signature," railed foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
"For this commission the important thing is not human rights but the rights of terrorist organisations like Hamas," he told AFP.
But in a series of interviews with the Israeli media, Schabas defended himself against allegations of bias against the Jewish state.
"I've frequently lectured in Israel, at universities in Israel, I'm a member of the editorial board of the Israel law review, I wouldn't do those things if I was anti-Israel," he told public radio.
He challenged Palmor's assertion that the commission's findings were a foregone conclusion.
"As far as I'm concerned they're not written at all, that's the whole point of an investigation," he told the radio.
"Many of the questions we have to examine will deal with very precise matters on which the generalities about the conflict don't provide any insight.
"When we look at specific incidents in which"¦ civilians were killed during the conflict, there are issues about targeting, about proportionality, each one of these has to be examined specifically."
In a second interview with Israel's army radio, he said that he would also be looking into the actions of Palestinian militants.
"The mandate that the commission has been given doesn't specify this and I think a reasonable interpretation would be that mandate requires you to look at both sides," he said.
He said the commission's findings are to be published in March 2015.
Israel has long had stormy relations with the UNHRC.
In January 2012, it became the first country to refuse to attend a periodic review of its human rights record.
And two months later, it cut all ties with the Geneva-based council after it announced an inquiry into how West Bank settlements may be infringing on Palestinians rights.
Israel has accused the UNHRC of routinely singling it out at its annual meetings, as well as passing a number of anti-Israel resolutions.
HOLY CRAP...Obama halts hellfire missiles to Israel
Daily KOS
This reporting, which appeared last night, by Adam Montous at the WSJ is breathtaking. This article is such a blockbuster in that it has about a billion things that expose the utter disfunctionality of the US-Israel relationship and the utter contempt Obama, Netanyahu, and their respective administration have towards each other. The utter and complete entitlement of Netanyahu is jaw-dropping.
The relevant parts below, but you should really read the whole article cause its so shocking:
U.S. officials said Mr. Obama had a particularly combative phone call on Wednesday with Mr. Netanyahu, who they say has pushed the administration aside but wants it to provide Israel with security assurances in exchange for signing onto a long-term deal.
Today, many administration officials say the Gaza conflict-the third between Israel and Hamas in under six years-has persuaded them that Mr. Netanyahu and his national security team are both reckless and untrustworthy
A senior Obama administration official said the White House didn't intend to get into a "tit for tat" with the Israelis when the war broke out in Gaza. "We have many, many friends around the world. The United States is their strongest friend," the official said. "The notion that they are playing the United States, or that they're manipulating us publicly, completely miscalculates their place in the world."
A senior Obama administration official said the weapons transfers shouldn't have been a routine "check-the-box approval" process, given the context. The official said the decision to scrutinize future transfers at the highest levels amounted to "the United States saying 'The buck stops here. Wait a second"¦It's not OK anymore.' "
The last straw for many U.S. diplomats came on Aug. 2 when they say Israeli officials leaked to the media that Mr. Netanyahu had told the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, that the Obama administration was "not to ever second-guess me again" about how to deal with Hamas.
The White House and State Department have sought to regain greater control over U.S.-Israeli policy. They decided to require White House and State Department approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel, officials say.
Instead of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case is now subject to review-slowing the approval process and signaling to Israel that military assistance once taken for granted is now under closer scrutiny.
http://online.wsj.com/...
So here's what we know:
-Israel goes around the WH to DOD for military equipment, which infuriates the WH and made them halt a new batch of hellfire missiles and make every other request go through the WH.
-WH is no longer worrying about airing dirty laundry cause they're mainly responsible for the leaks in that article, and they must be pissed. The SRA saying that Israel needs to know its place in the world is correct but should be said on the record.
-Netanyahu took a draft proposal from Kerry that was meant for him to look and relay back to Kerry what he disagreed with and brought it directly to a vote to his cabinet. They all voted it down and bad mouthed Kerry in press. This was a tipping point for the WH.
-This all culminated in a combative phone call between Obama and Netanyahu last night.
-Lastly, and unfortunately, the WH is still not willing to bring these breaches of trust directly out into the open. So long as Israel is not challenged in the court of public opinion, they'll continue to use congress to squeeze the WH.
-Lastly, the contrast between this episode and Hillary's Atlantic interview is amazing. Its no wonder the Israeli official quoted in the article says all they have to do is wait out Obama for 2 years.
Rad, I have been posting some articles I find relevant to Netanyahu. Let me know if it is ok or not or if you want to be in charge of this. I don't want to interrupt any flow you have with this or any of the other threads.
Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
AUG. 14, 2014
IHT
JERUSALEM - The fighting is barely over in the latest Gaza war, with a five-day cease-fire taking hold on Thursday, but attention has already shifted to the legal battlefield as Israel gears up to defend itself against international allegations of possible war crimes in the monthlong conflict.
Israel has excoriated the United Nations Human Rights Council over the appointment of Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian expert in international law, to head the council's commission of inquiry for Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip.
The broader struggle will be over what some experts describe as Israel's "creative" interpretation of international law for dealing with asymmetric warfare in an urban environment. More than 1,900 Palestinians were killed in the recent fighting, a majority of them believed to be civilians, while on the Israeli side 64 soldiers and three civilians were killed.
Israeli leaders view the Human Rights Council as hopelessly biased against Israel and say statements made in the past by Professor Schabas rule him out as a fair adjudicator. In one prime example, Professor Schabas was filmed in New York almost two years ago saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was his "favorite" to be in the dock at the International Criminal Court.
The damage to Gaza's infrastructure from the current conflict is already more severe than the destruction caused by either of the last two Gaza wars.
OPEN Interactive Map
"The report of this committee has already been written," Mr. Netanyahu said this week. "They have nothing to look for here. They should visit Damascus, Baghdad and Tripoli."
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Hamas of a "double war crime" for targeting Israeli civilians with its rockets and, he says, using Gaza's civilians as a human shield for its activities.
Yuval Steinitz, Israel's minister for strategic affairs, said that paradoxically, the only way Professor Schabas could prove he was worthy of the job would be by resigning from it.
Responding to the accusations by telephone from London, Professor Schabas said Thursday: "Everybody in the world has opinions about Israel and Palestine. I certainly do."
He added: "I was recruited for my expertise. I leave my own personal views at the door, as a judge does."
Rejecting assertions that he is "anti-Israeli," he said he had lectured in Israel often and was on the board of the Israel Law Review. "I don't think everyone in Israel agrees," he said. "I would fit in well there."
A similar Human Rights Council inquiry into the 2008-9 war in Gaza led to the Goldstone Report. Named for Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who led that inquiry, the report said it found evidence of potential war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. It accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy, a blow that Mr. Netanyahu once described as a strategic challenge.
Mr. Goldstone later retracted that central accusation, writing in The Washington Post, after Israeli investigators presented counterevidence, "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." Other members of the Goldstone panel stood by the report.
In Israel's latest aerial and ground campaign, several episodes already stand out as likely focuses of international attention, including several deadly Israeli strikes at or near United Nations schools in Gaza where thousands of civilians were taking refuge, actions that the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has denounced as "outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable."
Critics have also pointed to the Israeli military's policy of bombing family homes it said were being used by Hamas operatives or other groups as "command and control centers" or for weapons storage, causing heavy casualties among civilians, including many minors and women, despite a system of issuing prior warnings. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, asserted in a recent report that the practice violated the international legal principles of distinction and proportionality, calling into question the clear military nature of the targets and whether the military gains were significant enough to justify the deaths of civilians.
And questions have been raised about a particularly aggressive and deadly Israeli assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Aug. 1 as Israeli forces pursued a Hamas squad they believed had captured a soldier. Prof. Emanuel Gross, an Israeli expert in military law and a former military judge, said in a recent interview that the firepower used in Rafah to try to return one soldier did not seem justified, morally or legally, and appeared to be "disproportionate." (The soldier was later declared killed in action.)
In a move that some Israelis hope will take the wind out of the Human Rights Council inquiry and other potential ones by outside groups, Israel's attorney general and the military advocate general are setting up an independent mechanism for investigating the events in Gaza, and the state comptroller also plans an inquiry.
But the Israeli military is not waiting. Lt. Col. Eran Shamir-Borer, head of the strategic affairs branch in the international law department at the Military Advocate General's Corps, said in an interview that a recently established military committee of fact-finding teams, independent of the chain of command and made up largely of reservists, is already investigating certain cases and could have some preliminary findings as early as Friday.
Speaking at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Colonel Shamir-Borer said that since Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon, the army's legal counselors have become more involved in operational activity before and during military campaigns, as well as in the aftermath, training commanders, reviewing planned targets and deploying to the Gaza border to work with commanders at the division level during the recent conflict.
"We know the law very well," Colonel Shamir-Borer said, "but it is always more complex than in the textbooks."
"The modus operandi of our enemy," he said, referring to Hamas, "is by definition defying the laws of armed conflict."
Colonel Shamir-Borer said that the planned bombing of homes was reviewed house by house, based on intelligence and other considerations, and guidelines were set for some of the attacks, for example, determining that they could be carried out only at night, or with a drone to check that the residents had evacuated.
Individual cases where many family members were nevertheless killed, such as a July 13 airstrike on a home that killed 18 members of the Batsh family and severely wounded Tayseer al-Batsh, the Hamas police chief in Gaza, are now being examined. In each case the teams will decide if a criminal investigation is warranted. At this stage, the policy of targeting houses is not under review.
Colonel Shamir-Borer said his department had invited nongovernment organizations to submit complaints and had also approached them.
"You know the international community is going to raise allegations," he said. "You need answers."
Israel bans national service with human rights group B'Tselem in Gaza row
Young barred from serving in organisation as alternative to military service after it is accused of 'incitement against IDF'
Orlando Crowcroft in Jerusalem
theguardian.com, Friday 15 August 2014 12.51 BST
Israel has banned young people from serving with one of its most prominent human rights groups because of its opposition to the war in Gaza. B'Tselem, which campaigns against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, was informed on Wednesday night that it has been blacklisted as a civilian alternative to military service.
The director of the body responsible for non-military options for Israelis who don't want to serve in the IDF, Sar-Shalom Jerbi, told Channel 2 TV that B'Tselem had: "crossed the line in wartime (by) campaigning and inciting against the state of Israel and the Israel Defence Force, which is the most moral of armies."
Hagai el-Ad, executive director at B'Tselem, said that the move was the latest in a campaign of intimidation and threats against the organisation over the last three weeks, during which it has voiced vociferous opposition to the war in Gaza. It had tried to have the names of Palestinian children aired on state TV during Operation Protective Edge, but was denied. Its appeal to the high court of justice was rejected on Tuesday.
"The level of intimidation and the broadness of attacks on the organisation over the past three weeks is unprecedented in the 25-year history of B'Tselem," Ad said, citing death threats and attempts to violently attack employees, as well as an organised internet campaign against the group.
He said it was a trend that could apply more generally to Israeli society over the past month, where groups of rightwing Jews and ultra-nationalists have attacked peace rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and there has been a surge in racism against Arabs in Israel.
"Until this day Arabs in Jerusalem are afraid of gang violence against them on the streets of this city. This has never happened before, and still remains the situation in Jerusalem," he said.
B'Tselem has called on Uri Orbach, the government minister in charge of the authority for national civic service and a member of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, that is in coalition with Binyamin Netanyahu, to overturn the decision, but the minister seemed to rule that out in a statement, published by Reuters.
"Israel is in the midst of a difficult military and diplomatic campaign against terrorists. An organisation that works to prove allegations that Israel is committing war crimes should be so good as to do so with its own resources and not with civilian national service volunteers and state funds," he said.
Ad would not speculate on how the disqualification would affect B'Tselem going forward - the authority revealed that the group only has one civilian volunteer - as the organisation intends to fight the decision.
All Israeli citizens have to carry out three years conscription when they turn 18, and all but a handful of young people choose to serve in the IDF. However, the Israeli government has been increasing alternatives to military service to accommodate Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis, as well as pacifists.
Gaza counts the cost of war: 'Whole families smashed under the rubble'
Harriet Sherwood in Gaza
Friday 15 August 2014 10.35 BST
The Guardian
At least 59 Palestinian families suffered multiple casualties over four weeks of Israeli bombardment in Gaza, according to data collated by the Guardian. The youngest casualty was 10-day old Hala Abu Madi, who died on 2 August; the oldest was Abdel al-Masri, aged 97, who was killed on 3 August.
The figures are based on data from three independent Palestinian human rights organisations - the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan, both based in Gaza, and the West Bank-based Al-Haq; the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem; and the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
However, it is almost certainly an incomplete picture. Systematic identification of bodies and logging of data have been hampered by the sheer scale of the casualties in Gaza - about 2,000 killed in total, and 10,000 wounded - types of injuries, and the need for swift burial.
Among families in which four or more people died, 479 people were killed in total, including 212 children under the age of 18, and 15 people aged 60 and over. The deadliest day was 30 July, when 95 members of 10 families were killed. On 20 July, 65 members of 10 families died, and on 21 July, 71 members of six families were killed.
The Guardian has interviewed six families who suffered multiple casualties. In each case, relatives say there was no warning of attack, and all deny any connection with militant organisations in Gaza.
However, in many cases there may have been a military target among the dead. But the number of women and children killed in such attacks has led human rights organisations and international observers to question whether Israel's use of force was proportionate and in keeping with the obligation under international law to protect civilians in war.
Hamdi Shaqqura, of the PCHR, said: "What has been significant about this onslaught is the deliberate attacks on families - whole families have been smashed under the rubble. We have documented 134 families, in which two or more members have been hit by Israeli forces - a total of 750 people.
"No justification can be accepted in targeting civilians, even if there is a security threat [in the vicinity]. Israel's excessive use of force is contrary to international law on two counts - the principle of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants, and the principle of proportionality, under which attacks must be proportionate to threat."
The Israel Defence Forces did not respond to questions specifically about the six families interviewed by the Guardian. However, in a general statement it said: "As an absolute rule, the IDF never targets civilians, under any circumstance. On the contrary, the IDF takes globally unprecedented steps to limit civilian harm, despite fighting a terrorist organisation that exploits its civilians as human shields and callously embeds its terror infrastructure within the urban environment, including in schools, homes, hospitals and mosques.
"While Hamas indiscriminately targets Israelis, the IDF considers any civilian loss deeply tragic and regrettable and it goes without saying that the IDF categorically and emphatically rejects in the strongest terms any assertion of targeting families. Indeed, tactics such as the "˜knock on roof' warning procedure are specifically designed to prevent harming civilians whilst striking legitimate and dangerous terror targets that pose an imminent threat to the security of the state of Israel. Over the course of this operation the IDF made over 400,000 warnings in its attempt to limit civilian casualties."
16 July, Gaza City: Al-Bakr family, four dead
It was one of the most shocking moments of the Gaza war: four boys killed while playing on a beach. As well as the deaths of Ismail, 10, Ehad, 9, Zakaria, 10 and Mohamed, 11, several other children were injured. The event was witnessed by international journalists at a nearby hotel.
Mohamed Bakr, Ismail's father, said his son had quit school to earn money serving tea to fishermen at the port. But a combination of war and Ramadan meant there were no fishermen, and no tea to serve. Instead the child - one of 10 siblings - went to play on the beach with some cousins.
Salwa al-Bakr with her son Sayed. The family lost their son Mohamed during the air strike on Gaza City's beach. Salwa al-Bakr with her son Sayed. The family lost their son Mohamed during the air strike on Gaza City's beach.
"I was sleeping when some nephews ran to tell us the TV news said four children had been killed on the beach. I was counting my children, and shouting "˜where is Ismail?'" Mohamed rushed to al-Shifa hospital and found Ismail in the morgue. "Part of his brain was outside his head and his back was burnt. But there were only small marks on his face. It was chaos in the morgue and I thought only my son was dead. But then I saw my brothers screaming."
Some of Ismail's siblings had reached the morgue before their father. "They saw him. All the children are afraid to go outside now."
Twelve-year-old Sayed, the brother of one of the dead boys, also called Mohamed, was on the beach. Despite injuries, he ran home, screaming that his brother had been killed. "I didn't believe him," said the boys' mother, Salwa. "Why were they targeted? Did they have weapons? They were playing."
Sayed is now deeply traumatised, but has had no psychological help. "I don't want Jewish mothers to feel the pain I feel," said Salwa. "I don't know what they are thinking."
19 July, Beit Hanoun: Abu Jarad family, eight dead
The Abu Jarads had just finished iftar, the meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast, when two shells ripped into the building that was home to the large extended family.
One shell hit the flat of Alian Abu Jarad, 62, then a second blasted into his nephew's home. In the black chaos that ensued, Alian rushed out of his house and scrambled up the stairs to find a scene of horror. Three adults, three infants and two teenage girls had been torn to pieces.
Alian pulled the limp, bloody corpse of five-month old Moussa from the rubble and staggered down the stairs with the dead baby in his arms. "All the neighbours came to help," he later said, standing amid rubble. A pair of child-sized jogging pants, a pillow, shredded curtains and scraps of paper poked out from lumps of masonry and jagged shrapnel in the first-floor room. "There was no warning," said Alian; no leaflets were dropped telling the families to evacuate the neighbourhood, no phone calls or text messages were received.
"Suddenly - boom," he said. "There are no fighters here. No one is connected to any political faction. We have a brick factory - we are only concerned with our business. We are civilians. I never thought we'd face this. But now we have to deal with it. What else is there to do?"
His brother, Issa, added: "Palestinian people are not terrorists and criminals. We just want freedom and dignity."
After the shelling, the homeless family scattered to five different UN shelters. Alian did not know if they would rebuild the property, which overlooks the family orchards of citrus and olive trees. "For now, we don't want to come back," he said.
21 July, Rafah: Siyyam family, 11 dead
Nabil Siyyam, 33, wept as he recalled the morning he lost his wife and four children, along with his left arm. A fifth child was in a critical condition in an Egyptian hospital. Nabil pulled up his shirt to reveal shrapnel wounds over his torso.
At 6am, there were several air strikes near the house, and the family decided to leave, fearing their home was at risk. Grandparents Mahrous and Dalal quickly rounded up the extended family and herded them into the road. Two drone missiles hit the group, killing 11 and injuring nine. Nabil Siyyam lost his wife and four children, along with his left arm. 'I saw my daughter cut into two.'
"The air was full of dust, I couldn't see anything," said Nabil. "I felt my arm hanging by skin, and I was bleeding from the chest." When the air cleared, "I saw my daughter cut into two. I saw my baby thrown 10 metres from her mother. The drones were still in the sky."
He said there was no warning and no reason for the strike. "They have the technology to watch us - they could see there were women and children."
From a deep pocket in his robe, Mahrous pulled a handwritten list of the names, birth dates and identity numbers of those killed. At 67, he and Dalal have become substitute parents for baby Mayar, who was in a cast from her armpits to her toes and had lost her mother, father and siblings.
Dalal, left, and Mahrous with their injured 16-month-old granddaughter Mayar in their flat in Rafah. The 67-year-old grandparents are now in effect the child's parents as she lost her mother, father and siblings. Four more members of the family were killed in another air strike the following day. Dalal, left, and Mahrous with their injured 16-month-old granddaughter Mayar in their flat in Rafah. The 67-year-old grandparents are now in effect the child's parents as she lost her mother, father and siblings. Four more members of the family were killed in another air strike the following day.
Four more members of the Siyyam family were killed in a separate air strike the following day.
21 July, Gaza City: Al-Qassas family, nine dead
Shadia al-Qassas took a crumpled photograph out of her bag, all she had left as mementoes of her two daughters. Lamiya, 13, and Nisma, 12, were killed along with seven other members of the family as they prepared pizza on the balcony of a relative's house.
Shadia, her husband and seven children had left their own home after Israeli troops dropped leaflets in the neighbourhood, warning residents to evacuate ahead of the ground invasion of Gaza. They trudged through the streets to what they believed was a safer area; at about 4pm the next day their new home was shelled.
"There were 30 people in the house when it was hit," she said, wiping away tears with the corner of her hijab. "I saw my daughters brought out on stretchers. They were cut into pieces. We couldn't recognise their face, just their clothes. We buried nine bodies in one grave because we couldn't separate the pieces."
Shadia and Iyad al-Qassas lost two daughters. 'They were cut into pieces. We couldn't recognise their face, just their clothes,' said Shadia. 'Most of the dead in this war are civilians.' Shadia and Iyad al-Qassas lost two daughters. "˜They were cut into pieces. We couldn't recognise their face, just their clothes,' said Shadia. "˜Most of the dead in this war are civilians.'
Her five surviving younger children "talk about their sisters all the time. They always want to be close to us; they freak out every time they hear a boom."
She describes Lamiya and Nisma as "very sweet, they liked school and helped me in the house with the younger ones." Lamiya wanted to be a teacher, and Nisma a hairdresser, she said.
"I don't know why the house was hit. My father is old, my brothers drive trucks." Her husband, Iyad, has a cart selling liver sandwiches.
Israel, she said, did not care about killing children. "Most of the dead in this war are civilians - children and women."
On the heavily damaged top floor of the house, a relative points to the spot where the girls were squatting, kneading dough for pizza. His wife and four daughters were also among the dead.
23 July, Khan Younis: Abu Jame family, 26 dead
Bassem Abu Jame had just sat down to eat with his pregnant wife, Yasmin, and their three young children - Batol, four, Suhaila, three, and 18-month-old Besan - when the extended family's six-flat home was pulverised in an air strike.
"I had one mouthful, and the explosion came before the second," he said, standing on crutches amid the ruins. "I hit a wall and lost consciousness. I woke up the next day with no idea what had happened to my wife and children."
Bassem Abu Jame lost all his family when his home was destroyed in an air strike. He also lost all his possessions, even family photos and his identity card. 'We will never recover from this. The scar will be there for ever.' Bassem Abu Jame lost all his family when his home was destroyed in an air strike. He also lost all his possessions, even family photos and his identity card. "˜We will never recover from this. The scar will be there for ever.'
They were dead, along with two dozen others including his mother - 26 people in total. Three people survived the blast: Bassem, whose leg was broken in three places, his brother Hussein, and a three-year-old nephew.
He said there was no warning, and he had no idea why the house was targeted. One of the dead was reported to be a Hamas-employed policeman, but Bassem insisted that he and his brothers were vegetable-sellers. "We are not affiliated with any faction," he said.
As well as his immediate family, Bassem said he had lost everything he owned, including photographs of his loved ones. "All my documents, my identity papers, money, pictures - it's all gone," he said gesturing towards a huge crater left by the blast.
"We will never recover from this. It's like a wound - it might heal, but the scar will be there for ever."
26 July, Khan Younis: Al-Najjar family, 38 dead (in total)
Before this war, the Najjar family was one of the biggest in Khan Younis, with several branches spread across homes in the area. But in four separate strikes, their number has been reduced by 38. At one attack, on 26 July, seven members of the family, including two children aged three and two, were killed in a huge blast in the middle of the night. "I was sleeping when the explosion came," said Salah al-Najjar. Clambering over broken glass and fallen masonry to reach his brother's house next door, Salah heard his nephew calling for help. "I couldn't see him because of the dust and the dark."
Other relatives rushed to help. "It took us two hours working with our hands to get three survivors out," he said. "The fourth was very deep down. He had to wait until the bulldozer came."
Salah al-Najjar, who dug into the rubble with his hands for two hours to rescue some of his brother's family when their home was hit. Seven members of the family were killed. Salah al-Najjar, who dug into the rubble with his hands for two hours to rescue some of his brother's family when their home was hit.
Salah said there was no warning. "If there had been, we would have left. Our neighbourhood is very quiet. We are farmers. Nothing happens here - usually." Asked why he thought the house had been targeted, he said: "This is the question we need an answer to. Please tell us."
In an adjacent house, Nafisa al-Najjar, 45, who survived the blast, was wrapped in a blue-checked cloth on a narrow bed. In the moments following the explosion, she could feel the building collapsing around her and feared being buried alive. Her pelvis and several ribs were broken.
Nafisa's 10-year-old daughter Nama'a, who escaped with barely a bruise, was crouched at the bedside. "Her cousins ask her to go out and play, but she wants to stay near me all the time," said Nafisa.
"I'm really shocked that we were targeted. Relatives wanted to come to our house because they thought it was safe. What are my husband and children guilty of?"
Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic.
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE and ANNE BARNARD
AUG. 15, 2014
IHT
THE HAGUE - In 1943, Henk Zanoli took a dangerous train trip, slipping past Nazi guards and checkpoints to smuggle a Jewish boy from Amsterdam to the Dutch village of Eemnes. There, the Zanoli family, already under suspicion for resisting the Nazi occupation, hid the boy in their home for two years. The boy would be the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Seventy-one years later, on July 20, an Israeli airstrike flattened a house in the Gaza Strip, killing six of Mr. Zanoli's relatives by marriage. His grandniece, a Dutch diplomat, is married to a Palestinian economist, Ismail Ziadah, who lost three brothers, a sister-in-law, a nephew and his father's first wife in the attack.
On Thursday, Mr. Zanoli, 91, whose father died in a Nazi camp, went to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague and returned a medal he received honoring him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations - non-Jews honored by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust. In an anguished letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, he described the terrible price his family had paid for opposing Nazi tyranny.
"My sister lost her husband, who was executed in the dunes of The Hague for his involvement in the resistance," he wrote. "My brother lost his Jewish fiancée who was deported, never to return."
Mr. Zanoli continued, "Against this background, it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel."
His act crystallizes the moral debate over Israel's military air and ground assault in the Gaza Strip, in which about 2,000 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed. Israel says the strikes are aimed at Hamas militants who fire rockets at Israeli cities and have dug a secret network of tunnels into Israel.
Mr. Zanoli transformed over the decades from a champion to a critic of the Israeli state, mirroring a larger shift in Europe, where anguish over the slaughter of six million European Jews led many to support the founding of Israel in 1948 as a haven for Jews worldwide.
But in the years since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 war, Europeans have become more critical. Israel blames anti-Semitism, which has grown in Europe with the rise of right-wing politicians. Some European protests against Israeli military action have been marred in recent weeks by open anti-Semitism, blurring the line between criticism of Israeli policy and hate speech against Jews. But many other critics, like Mr. Zanoli, say their objection to Israeli policy is not anti-Jewish but consistent with the humanitarian principles that led them to condemn the Holocaust and support the founding of a Jewish state.
"I gave back my medal because I didn't agree with what the state of Israel is doing to my family and to the Palestinians on the whole," Mr. Zanoli said in an interview Friday in his spare but elegant apartment, adding that his decision was a statement "only against the state of Israel, not the Israeli people."
"Jews were our friends," said Mr. Zanoli, a retired lawyer who uses a motorized scooter but remains erect and regal, much as he appears in a yellowing 1940s photograph archived at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Mr. Zanoli said he had never publicly criticized Israel "until I heard that my family was the victim."
In Gaza, Mr. Zanoli's in-laws say his gesture is a fitting response to the losses of their family and others who have lost multiple relatives in strikes on homes. Those in-laws include Hassan al-Zeyada, a psychological trauma counselor who is an older brother of Ismail Ziadah. Their mother, Muftiyah, 70, was the oldest family member to die in the bombing.
Like Mr. Zanoli, Dr. Zeyada, 50, who works to treat the many Palestinians in Gaza traumatized by war and displacement, has given much thought to the fact that Israel was founded after the Holocaust, one of history's greatest collective traumas.
Dr. Zeyada, who transliterates his family name differently from his brother, said Friday that he admired Mr. Zanoli and his family for their struggle in World War II against "discrimination and oppression in general and against the Jews in particular."
"For them," he added, "it's something painful that the people you defended and struggled for turn into aggressors."
Document: Award Returned "˜With Great Sorrow'
In a letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, Henk Zanoli returned his medal as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
OPEN Document: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/16/world/middleeast/16dutchman-letter.html
Dr. Zeyada said last month that none of his family members were militants. Israel says that it takes precautions to avoid killing civilians, and that Hamas purposely increases civilian casualties by operating in residential neighborhoods. It has offered no information on whether the Zeyada family home was hit purposely, and if so, what the target was and whether it justified a strike that killed six civilians. The military told the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported Mr. Zanoli's decision, only that it was investigating "all irregular incidents."
At Yad Vashem, where a leafy garden commemorates the 25,000 people named Righteous Among the Nations, a spokeswoman said Friday that Mr. Zanoli's renunciation of the prize was "his decision," but "we regret it."
More than 5,000 Dutch have received the honor; only Poles have been honored more.
In 1943, Mr. Zanoli's father was detained by the Nazis for his work in the Dutch underground resistance movement. Soon after, according to Yad Vashem's citation, also awarded posthumously to Mr. Zanoli's mother, Jans, Mr. Zanoli traveled to Amsterdam to get Elchanan Pinto, 11, an Orthodox Jewish boy whose parents and siblings would all die in the death camps.
"Jans Zanoli knew very well the risks involved by then in hiding a Jewish youngster in her home, but felt the moral obligation to do so," the citation reads. "Elchanan found a warm and loving home with them."
After the Allied victory in 1945, an uncle of Elchanan's took him to a Jewish orphanage. In 1951, the citation says, Elchanan immigrated to Israel, where he changed his last name to Hameiri. An Elchanan Hameiri is listed in phone directories as living in Israel, but could not be reached on Friday.
In his letter to the Israeli ambassador, Mr. Zanoli noted that among the bereaved were "the great-great grandchildren of my mother."
He relinquished the honor "with great sorrow," he wrote, because keeping an honor from Israel's government would be "an insult to the memory of my courageous mother" and to his Gaza family.
He added that his family had "strongly supported the Jewish people" in their quest for "a national home," but that he had gradually come to believe that "the Zionist project" had "a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews."
He referred to the displacement of Palestinians - including members of the Ziadah family - during the war over Israel's founding as "ethnic cleansing" and said Israel "continues to suppress" and occupy Palestinian areas. Israel still occupies the West Bank; it pulled troops out of Gaza in 2005 but retains control over its seafront, airspace and most of its borders.
Israel says it maintains control to curb Palestinian militants like those with Hamas, which in the past has killed several hundred Israelis in suicide bombings. Palestinians see the continuing conflict as a struggle for self-determination - they use Mr. Zanoli's word for his anti-Nazi work, resistance - and say Israel is obstructing the establishment of a Palestinian state with policies like settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Mr. Zanoli said he could envision a situation in which he would take the medal back.
"The only way out of the quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into is by granting all living under the control of the State of Israel the same political rights and social and economic rights and opportunities," he wrote. "Although this will result in a state no longer exclusively Jewish it will be a state with a level of righteousness on the basis of which I could accept the title of "˜Righteous among the Nations' you awarded to my mother and me."
In that event, he concluded, "be sure to contact me or my descendants."
Hague court under western pressure not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry
Potential ICC investigation into actions of both the IDF and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
theguardian.com, Monday 18 August 2014 08.00 BST
The international criminal court has persistently avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of US and other western pressure, former court officials and lawyers claim.
In recent days, a potential ICC investigation into the actions of both the Israel Defence Forces and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield and a key negotiating issue at ceasefire talks in Cairo. But the question of whether the ICC could or should mount an investigation has also divided the Hague-based court itself.
An ICC investigation could have a far-reaching impact. It would not just examine alleged war crimes by the Israeli military, Hamas and other Islamist militants in the course of recent fighting in Gaza that left about 2,000 people dead, including women and children. It could also address the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, for which the Israeli leadership would be responsible.
The ICC's founding charter, the 1998 Rome statute (pdf), describes as a war crime "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".
Also at stake is the future of the ICC itself, an experiment in international justice that occupies a fragile position with no superpower backing. Russia, China and India have refused to sign up to it. The US and Israel signed the accord in 2000 but later withdrew.
Some international lawyers argue that by trying to duck an investigation, the ICC is not living up to the ideals expressed in the Rome statute that "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished".
John Dugard, a professor of international law at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, and a longstanding critic of Israel's human rights record, said: "I think the prosecutor could easily exercise jurisdiction. Law is a choice. There are competing legal arguments, but she should look at the preamble to the ICC statute which says the purpose of the court is to prevent impunity."
In an exchange of letters in the last few days, lawyers for the Palestinians have insisted that the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has all the legal authority she needs to launch an investigation, based on a Palestinian request in 2009. However, Bensouda is insisting on a new Palestinian declaration, which would require achieving elusive consensus among political factions such as Hamas, who would face scrutiny themselves alongside the Israeli government. There is strong US and Israeli pressure on the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, not to pursue an ICC investigation.
Western pressure on the ICC to stay away from the issue has caused deep rifts within the prosecutor's office. Some former officials say the Palestinians were misled in 2009 into thinking their request for a war crimes investigation - in the wake of an earlier Israeli offensive on Gaza, named Cast Lead - would remain open pending confirmation of statehood. That confirmation came in November 2012 when the UN general assembly (UNGA) voted to award Palestine the status of non-member observer state, but no investigation was launched.
Bensouda initially appeared open to reviewing the standing Palestinian request, but the following year issued a controversial statement (pdf) saying the UNGA vote made no difference to the "legal invalidity" of the 2009 request.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was prosecutor at the time of the Palestinian 2009 declaration, backed Bensouda, saying in an email to the Guardian: "If Palestine wants to accept jurisdiction, it has to submit a new declaration."
But another former official from the ICC prosecutor's office who dealt with the Palestinian declaration strongly disagreed. "They are trying to hiding behind legal jargon to disguise what is a political decision, to rule out competence and not get involved," the official said.
Dugard said Bensouda was under heavy pressure from the US and its European allies. "For her it's a hard choice and she's not prepared to make it," he argued. "But this affects the credibility of the ICC. Africans complain that she doesn't hesitate to open an investigation on their continent."
Moreno Ocampo took three years to make a decision on the status of the 2009 Palestinian request for an investigation, during which time he was lobbied by the US and Israel to keep away. According to a book on the ICC published this year, American officials warned the prosecutor that the future of the court was in the balance.
According to the book, Rough Justice: the International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, by David Bosco, the Americans suggested that a Palestine investigation "might be too much political weight for the institution to bear. They made clear that proceeding with the case would be a major blow to the institution."
Although the US does not provide funding for the ICC, "Washington's enormous diplomatic, economic and military power can be a huge boon for the court when it periodically deployed in support of the court's work," writes Bosco, an assistant professor of international politics at American University.
In his book, Bosco reports that Israeli officials held several unpublicised meetings with Moreno Ocampo in The Hague, including a dinner at the Israeli ambassador's residence, to lobby against an investigation.
A former ICC official who was involved in the Palestinian dossier said: "It was clear from the beginning that Moreno Ocampo did not want to get involved. He said that the Palestinians were not really willing to launch the investigation, but it was clear they were serious. They sent a delegation with two ministers and supporting lawyers in August 2010 who stayed for two days to discuss their request. But Moreno Ocampo was aware that any involvement would spoil his efforts to get closer to the US."
Moreno Ocampo denied that he had been influenced by US pressure. "I was very firm on treating this issue impartially, but at the same time respecting the legal limits," he said in an email on Sunday. "I heard all the arguments. I received different Oxford professors who were explaining the different and many times opposing arguments, and I concluded that the process should "¦ go first to the UN. They should decide what entity should be considered a state."
He added: "Palestine was using the threat to accept jurisdiction to negotiate with Israel. Someone said that if you have nine enemies surrounding you and one bullet, you don't shoot, you try to use your bullet to create leverage."
A spokeswoman for his successor, Fatou Bensouda, rejected allegations of bias in the prosecutor's choice of investigations. "The ICC is guided by the Rome statute and nothing else," she said. "Strict rules about jurisdiction, about where and when ICC can intervene should be not be deliberately misrepresented "¦ Geographical and political consideration will thus never form part of any decision making by the office."
The French lawyer representing the Palestinians, Gilles Devers, argued that it was for the court's preliminary chamber, not the ICC's prosecutor, to decide on the court's jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories. Devers said negotiations were continuing among the Palestinian parties on whether to file a new request for an investigation, even though he believed it to be unnecessary in legal terms. Ultimately, he said, the outcome would be determinedly politically.
"There is enormous pressure not to proceed with an investigation. This pressure has been exerted on Fatah and Hamas, but also on the office of the prosecutor," Devers said. "In both cases, it takes the form of threats to the financial subsidies, to Palestine and to the international criminal court."
Among the biggest contributors to the ICC budget are the UK and France, which have both sought to persuade the Palestinians to forego a war crimes investigation.
Living with loss in Gaza - in pictures
Guardian photographer Sean Smith documents bereaved and wounded Palestinians trying to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the conflict with Israel
Sean Smith
theguardian.com, Tuesday 12 August 2014 16.41 BST
Click to view: http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/aug/12/living-with-loss-in-gaza-in-pictures
U.S. accuses Israel of targeting relatives of kidnapped and murdered Palestinian 16-year-old
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, August 21, 2014 5:26 EDT
The United States on Wednesday charged Israel had targeted members of a Palestinian family whose teenaged son was kidnapped and killed in July along with two cousins, who are US citizens.
Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in annexed east Jerusalem plunged to a new low on July 2 when 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder was snatched from an east Jerusalem street and later found burned alive.
Israeli police arrested six alleged Jewish extremists as suspects and on July 17 charged three, freeing the others.
The death of the Palestinian teen - thought likely in retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Israeli Students in late June - sparked rioting and helped unleash the conflict under way in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Three days after his death, on July 5, the United States slammed Israel's arrest of a 15-year-old cousin, Tarek Abu Khder, 15, a US citizen. He was beaten in detention and has since been freed and returned to Florida.
On July 28, another cousin of Abu Khder, also American, was arrested in Israel as well, the State Department said Wednesday.
Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf identified him as "Mohammed Abou Khdeir," which would mean his name is the same as his murdered cousin's.
"We can confirm that Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a US citizen, was arrested on July 28. The US consulate general in Jerusalem is providing consular assistance. A consular official visited him on August 14th. The consulate is also in contact with Mr. Khdeir's family and his lawyer," Harf said.
Yet "we are concerned that the US consulate general in Jerusalem was not notified of his arrest by the government of Israel.
And "we are also concerned about the fact that members of the Khdeir family appeared to be singled out for arrest by the Israeli authorities," Harf added.
SPIEGEL ONLINE
08/21/2014 10:02 AM
The Unprotected: A Gaza Family Destroyed by Israeli Bombs
By Julia Amalia Heyer and Juliane von Mittelstaedt
For an entire week, eight people -- women, children and an elderly man -- were trapped in their house in Gaza. They couldn't leave and nobody could help. An hour before the cease-fire, the family was wiped out by Israeli bombs.
Zaki Wahdan is looking for a head. Or a body. The remains of eight people that have to be here. The two small brothers, the grandparents, the mother, the two sisters and the little niece. So far he has found only 13 legs, with small and large feet. But how can he identify them with these feet, blackened as they are with dirt and blood?
He is standing on the rubble of his parents' house and walks around the perimeter of what was once the living room. They have to be here beneath him, underneath shredded mattresses, clothing, a child's bicycle and tons of concrete. They are so close, yet Zaki can't get to them. Had he not been detained by the Israeli military, he too would have ended up in this concrete tomb.
Zaki and his older brothers come to this mountain of concrete and rubble every day. According to Islamic tradition, the bodies must be buried as quickly as possible. But now they've been here almost two weeks; the site smells of death and there are flies buzzing around. Zaki walks across the rubble and doesn't know what to do. With a broad, good-natured face, he seems like an overgrown child. At 19, he is now the youngest son once again. But what does it mean to be a son when you no longer have any parents or grandparents?
Zaki pulls on iron bars and shakes chunks of concrete. Should he dig with his hands? A hopeless prospect. They really need a backhoe, but they are all being used elsewhere. Entire blocks have disappeared in Beit Hanoun, in the far northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip. Everything was leveled where the Wahdan family lived. The extended family owned 14 buildings, with 200 people living in them four weeks ago. Now there is nothing left but a single pile of rubble. Behind it is wasteland and the border with Israel is only a kilometer away. Beit Hanoun juts into Israel like a finger, and the Al-Burrah neighborhood, where the Wahdan family lived, is the fingertip.
Beit Hanoun's 50,000 residents have long been accustomed to Israeli tanks driving through their town. But now it has become one of the worst battlefields of this war. Some 91 people have died here, including 23 children and 22 women. And eight members of the Wahdan family.
Disproportionate Violence?
According to the United Nations, 85 percent of the dead in the Gaza Strip are civilians, while Israel puts the number at no more than 60 percent. But what do such numbers really tell us?
The case of the Wahdan family is only a footnote in this war, in which more than 2,000 people have died. But it also exemplifies how innocent civilians became victims of the conflict. The fate of the Wahdan family helps provide answers to the question many are talking about, over whether this war was commensurate.
SPIEGEL spoke with family members, with the family's friends and neighbors, with Palestinian human rights activists and with a colonel in the Israeli army. They all confirmed many details; only the army was unwilling to comment specifically on the case. Based on these statements, and with the help of chat histories, it is possible to reconstruct the last days of the eight people who died in Beit Hanoun.
The resulting image reveals that the Israeli army -- apparently knowingly -- accepted that the Wahdan family would die in this war. The family's house was bombed, even though the Israeli military must have known that an old man, three children and four women were inside. They died because they were unable to flee -- because they were prisoners in their own home.
Mistakes happen in war, and civilian deaths are often unintentional. Perhaps someone made a mistake when he dropped the bomb. But can eight deaths simply be nothing but a mistake? At what point do such incidents become acts of negligence? And when do they become war crimes?
July 8 -- THE WAR BEGINS
Most members of the Wahdan family left their houses before the operation, known in Israel as "Protective Edge," began. The situation had become turbulent, and the army was firing from the border. But Zaki's grandparents, like many Palestinians, were unwilling to leave the home where they had lived for decades. It was their most important asset, a white, three-story dwelling with plenty of room for an extended family. Behind it was a garden with olive trees and beehives.
Besides, nothing had ever happened before; the Wahdans had remained in their house during the two previous wars in Gaza. They felt safe, precisely because they were so close to the border. They were constantly under observation from the Israeli side, and drones circled in the air above them. No missiles were being fired from the Al-Burrah neighborhood where they lived. The Wahdans believed that the soldiers knew that they were peaceful people, that they were more interested in their orange trees than politics, and that they were beekeepers and construction workers, most of them unemployed. They were a family of men for whom even the small Gaza Strip was too big, which is why they rarely left Beit Hanoun.
But everything changed when the war began on July 8. On the first day, Hamas fired at least 158 rockets at Israel, and the Israelis attacked 223 targets in Gaza. Bombs were falling on Beit Hanoun every day and the neighborhood was also under artillery fire. The Wahdan family members who had stayed realized that it was now too dangerous to leave the house. Besides, they had nowhere else to go. All of Gaza was being bombed, and no place was safe.
There were 15 people in the house at the time: grandfather Zaki and his wife Suad, both in their mid-60s; father Hatim, 51, mother Bagdat, 50, and six of their sons: the two youngest children, Hussein, 10, and Ahmed, 14, as well as Zaki, 19, Mohammed, 20, Bahjat, 29, Rami, 30. And the daughter Sumoud, 22 with her one-and-a-half-year-old Ghina. Two of the father's brothers were also there.
The last family member to enter the house was Zaki's sister Zeinab, 27. She worked as a medical technologist at the nearby hospital in Beit Hanoun, where she had spent three days caring for the wounded and testing blood samples. Now she had come home to shower and get some rest. As one of the few family members with a steady income, Zeinab was paying for her father's cancer drugs. She dreamed of leaving Gaza and going to Egypt to earn a master's degree. She loved Arab pop music and Turkish TV series. She also loved her brother Zaki, who lived at home, occasionally working in construction and sometimes receiving money from their father.
Zaki and Zeinab, the two siblings, were similar -- both unmarried, happy and with a zest for life. They had grown up in Gaza and lived through two wars, and yet nothing had prepared them for what happened next.
July 17-- THE GROUND OFFENSIVE
On the evening of July 17, Zaki and his brother Ahmed were watching Al Aqsa TV, the Hamas station. Although the brothers were not Hamas followers, Al Aqsa was the only station that aired 24-hour reports on the fighting, funerals and destroyed buildings. Little Ahmed, as his brother would later remember, said: At some point, you'll be pulling me out of the rubble. And then he started crying. Soon afterwards, Israel announced that the ground offensive had begun. A Hamas spokesman went on Al Aqsa TV to declare that the soldiers would not set foot in Gaza.
The tanks rolled toward Al-Burrah the next evening, where the army suspected there were tunnels leading underneath the border. The soldiers had dropped flyers in advance and now they were using loudspeakers to order residents to leave. People quickly ran away, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But the fighting had already begun around the Wahdans' house. It was too late. They had missed their last chance to flee.
The family called the International Committee of the Red Cross, says Zaki. The Red Cross, they knew, could help coordinate their evacuation with the Israeli army. The family was unaware that their neighborhood was now in a closed military zone. Dozens of Hamas fighters would be killed there in the next few days, as would three Israeli soldiers. This likely explains why the Wahdans could not be evacuated, surviving family members believe. The Red Cross has a policy of not commenting on individual cases.
At 10:34 p.m., Zeinab Wahdan, the eldest daughter, received the following text message from her best friend, Doha Atala, 26: Are you okay? Where are you now?
Zeinab replied: I'm in the shit. They've come in now.
Doha: Why didn't you leave the house? Is it true that tanks are shooting nearby? Zeinab responded immediately. It would be her last response for the next six days: Yes, it's close. We didn't leave the house. How could we? They're bombing like crazy. I've had enough. They should stop. How are you?
'Must We Begin to Pray?'
Doha wrote: We're in better shape. I heard that all of Beit Hanoun has taken refuge in the schools.
In that same night, just before dawn, Israeli soldiers blew a hole into the garden wall and then broke down the front door. They shouted in Arabic: Everyone come here! Anyone hiding in the house will be shot!
When questioned by SPIEGEL, the Israeli army colonel in command at Beit Hanoun confirmed that the soldiers had taken control of buildings in various neighborhoods. "From the moment we entered Al-Burrah, we also went into houses." The soldiers used the houses as their base, often staying there for several days. According to the Israeli colonel, they are not supposed to occupy houses with civilians in them, especially for longer periods of time. "But it can happen," he added.
Two weeks later, 19-year-old Zaki recounted what happened in the house on that first day. His brothers corrected him, sometimes adding details to his story.
The soldiers grabbed the grandfather and used him as a human shield, pushing him from room to room, resting their M-16 assault rifles on his shoulder as they searched for fighters and weapons. They found nothing, Zaki and his brothers say. The men in the family were searched, bound and blindfolded and their mobile phones were confiscated. Only Zeinab, the sister, managed to hide her phone, which would be the family's only connection to the outside world over the next six days. The Wahdans were now prisoners in their own home, and there was shooting all around them.
According to Zaki, the family was ordered to remain in the entrance hall, where there was nothing but an old carpet on the floor. Verse 255 from the second Sura of the Koran, meant to protect the house and its occupants, was hanging on the wall. The soldiers slept on mattresses in the living room, their M-16s by their sides. Snipers were positioned on the roof. The men smashed windows and doors and broke holes through the walls so that they could move from one house to the next.
On that same afternoon, all the adult men except the grandfather were taken to Israel for interrogation. According to Zaki, the seven blindfolded men were loaded into an armored vehicle at 2 p.m. They were taken to the prison in Ashkelon, 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of Gaza. The Israeli army confirms that dozens of men from Al-Burrah were questioned in Israel, but it is unwilling to comment on individual cases.
The others remained behind. Zaki and Zeinab had now been separated. They didn't know they would never see each other again.
Zeinab wrote on her Facebook page: God have mercy!
July 20 -- IMPRISONMENT
Zaki was questioned for eight hours in Ashkelon. Was he a member of Hamas? Did he know where the tunnels were? The Israeli who interrogated him called himself Abu Daoud. He spoke Arabic, knew a lot about Islam and treated Zaki well, although the handcuffs were painful. The prisoners were given sandwiches and water. On the third day, having found nothing incriminating, the soldiers sent the Wahdans back to Gaza. Zaki, his brother, his father and his uncles returned to Gaza through the Erez border crossing. They wanted to return to their home, but Palestinians they met in Erez said: Are you crazy? No one reaches Beit Hanoun alive.
They went to stay with relatives in Gaza City instead. Zaki tried to reach his sister Zeinab, who had stayed in the house, but she had switched off her mobile phone. When she contacted her brother the next day, she said that the soldiers were still there, and that the family members had nothing left to drink because their water tank had been destroyed.
Zeinab called whenever she could, from the bathroom, or when she was cooking, which the soldiers only allowed in the first few days. She was afraid that they would confiscate her mobile phone, or that the battery would die, since the electricity had gone out. She kept their conversations to less than a minute, and then she would immediately switch off the phone.
On July 24, 16 people died when the army fired mortar shells at the United Nations school in Beit Hanoun. Tanks advanced into the center of the town, where soldiers searched the town hall, destroyed computers, ripped out the hard drives and took them along.
What happened in the Wahdan house during those days can only be reconstructed through Zeinab's calls and her posts on Facebook.
On the day the UN school was hit, Zeinab wrote on Facebook: We have been locked in with the Israeli army for the last five days. Pray to God that it will end soon.
Her friend Doha asked: Why didn't you leave, like everyone else?
Zeinab replied: We couldn't leave. We are the only ones here.
Doha wrote: Don't let them see they you have a mobile phone. Take care of yourself, and try to reach the Red Cross.
Zeinab was distraught, says Zaki. Her voice sounded weaker each time he spoke with her. Once, she said to him: "We are waiting until it's our turn to die."
At 1:46 p.m., Doha wrote: Zeinab, where are you? Everyone is looking for you! I'm worried. Please turn on your phone!
'No One Is Helping Us'
A little over an hour later, Zeinab replied: We're locked in. It's terrible. I can't leave the phone on. I can't have the phone with me anymore.
Doha replied: Be careful and watch yourself! Don't be afraid!
At 4:32 the next day, Doha wrote: Zeinab, where are you?
Her friend replied an hour-and-a-half later: Don't worry, I'm still alive. We have now been locked in for a week. It's exasperating. Not even the Red Cross is helping us.
Doha asked: Do you have food and something to drink? I'm so worried.
Zeinab replied: No water, no electricity. No one is helping us.
The soldiers left the house on the morning of the sixth day, July 25. Soon afterwards, the grandfather called the mayor of Beit Hanoun, Mohammed Nasiq al-Kafarna. He is a professor of Arabic and a member of Hamas, but he is popular, even among those who oppose the Islamists. Kafarna remembers that the grandfather said to him: "Please get us out of here. We are desperate." The mayor promised to help, but he also said that coordinating with the Israeli army could take some time. His assistant called the UN office in Gaza, which promised to contact the Israelis, he says. In the end, says Kafarna, the UN worker promised that they would evacuate the Wahdans by the breaking of the fast that evening. The UN is not commenting on the case. It had thousands of similar inquiries within just a few days.
But nothing happened. When the time to break the fast began, Zaki's mother called the mayor from the house and asked: "Must we abandon all hope and begin to pray?"
At 7 p.m., Zeinab called her eldest brother Rami for the last time. He remembers that she told him that the soldiers had instructed the family to remain in the house, and had assured them they would be safe there. But then, says the brother, Zeinab added: It's even more dangerous, now that the soldiers are gone. This is the brothers' account. There is no one left who was witness to his words.
July 26 -- THE BOMBARDMENT
A 12-hour cease-fire was to begin the next morning at 8 a.m. The brothers say that they started for the house early in the morning and that they called Zeinab for the last time at shortly after 7 a.m. to say that they were on their way.
When they got to Al-Burrah, it was very quiet and they were the only ones there. There was a burnt smell in the air and dust was settling. When they reached the spot where the house had been, there was nothing left.
But where were the eight people who had been inside?
They had hoped that the soldiers had taken Zeinab and the others to Israel with them, says Zaki. They knew that it was a naïve hope, and yet it was the only one they had. The soldiers couldn't possibly have left them in the house, they thought.
That was when they found the feet.
It wasn't until later that they saw what had happened in the one hour between 7 and 8 a.m. During the war, Beit Hanoun was filmed more than any other place with many broadcasters having set up their cameras on a hill near Sderot, a town on the Israeli side of the border. From there, the Wahdans' houses could easily be made out two kilometers away. The Al-Arabiya network also had a camera set up on the hill that morning.
The brothers keep playing one of Al-Arabiya's videos on their mobile phone as they tell the story. There is a time stamp in the upper corner of the video. The first aerial attack on the Wahdan houses began at 7:02 a.m., and the last explosion could be seen at 7:53, creating a giant cloud of smoke and dust. The entire group of houses was destroyed in less than an hour. The cease-fire began seven minutes later.
The video shows what happened, but it doesn't explain why the Israeli air force bombed the Wahdans nor does it say why Zaki lost half his family. He has no answers, which is perhaps the worst feeling of all.
But there could be an explanation. It has to do with the location of the house, in the northeastern corner of Gaza, an area that now looks as if it had been struck by an earthquake. The devastation stretches from the house into the center of Beit Hanoun, where three quarters of the buildings are uninhabitable and 30,000 people are now homeless. Satellite images show that entire communities along the border were systematically flattened.
Three weeks later, the colonel says that he is sad that the neighborhood was destroyed. "But we had no choice," he adds, noting that there were tunnels, booby traps and arms caches everywhere. Of course, he points out, the Israelis would not intentionally bomb civilians. And yet mistakes can happen, he admits.
Four More Graves
Still, it would have taken Hamas decades to build tunnels underneath all of the blocks of houses that were destroyed. It seems more likely that one reason Israel unleashed such a massive bombardment on Beit Hanoun before the cease-fire was to make it permanently uninhabitable -- and to expand its security zone.
It looks as though the eight people died simply because they were in the way.
In her last note to her friend Zeinab, at 7 p.m. on July 27, Doha Atala wrote: Is the army in your house? I'm so worried. Where are you?
When there was no response from Zeinab, Atala called her friend's father. He told her that the house was gone, and that they had found Zeinab's leg, which they had recognized by a birthmark on her instep.
The brothers took the legs to the cemetery in Beit Lahia, a sandy strip of wasteland lined with dozens of fresh graves and mountains of garbage. They dug just one grave for eight people, placed the legs inside and marked the spot with a piece of concrete and a plastic bottle. In the days following, they returned to the cemetery several times, bringing more limbs, skin and flesh.
But that doesn't mark the end of the story of the Wahdans. Four more graves had to be dug.
August 3 -- THE SECOND ATTACK
After the brothers had been in Gaza City for several days, they moved to a UN school in Jabalia. But it was too crowded there, so the family rented a house nearby. It was little more than a shack, but 35 to 40 people, mostly women and some 13 children, stayed there.
Zaki says that he woke up shortly after midnight on Aug. 3. There was electricity again, and he wanted to turn on the fan and charge his mobile phone. A rocket struck the building at that very moment. The explosion ripped his father to shreds, and his uncle's legs were so severely damaged that they had to be amputated. A second rocket struck the room where the women were sleeping. Zaki's sister-in-law Jamila and her three-year-old daughter Nour were killed, as was another sister-in-law, Sanoura. Twelve people were injured, including five children.
Zaki had survived a second time.
Israel withdrew its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on the same day, Aug. 3. The war wasn't over yet, but it was subsiding.
The seriously injured children were taken to the Al-Shifa Hospital: 14-month-old Raiqa, 18-month-old Mohammed and Omar, 3. The boys each have a huge scar from their chest to their hip. Mohammed's face is burned, he receives infusions through a catheter in his arm, and his legs are bandaged. The children lie there rigidly, and occasionally they suddenly start screaming.
The army is unable to comment on the case, but the Israeli colonel confirms that Hamas did not fire any rockets from the refugee camp where the house was. Why was the family suddenly attacked?
There is nothing but speculation at the moment. Perhaps militants had been hiding there a few days earlier? Or perhaps the drone pilots had mistaken the sacks of rice and flour and canisters of oil and water that the Wahdans had carried into the house for bomb-making materials? But shouldn't the drone pilot have noticed that there were children in the house?
Perhaps someone merely made a mistake when he fired the rocket at the house in Jabalia. Perhaps the second attack was nothing but bad luck. But what about the first attack, on the house in Al-Burrah?
Can the bombing of a house in which there were eight people even be called a mistake, eight people that the army must have known about, because soldiers had stayed in the house for several days?
Life in the Staircase
"The army made no effort to protect the Wahdan family," says Mahmoud Abu Rahma of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. He has documented the family's case. Abu Rahma criticizes both Israel and Hamas, and although, as a Palestinian, he is not neutral in this conflict, he is politically independent. "There were hundreds of such cases in this war," he says, "but the deaths of these eight people in Beit Hanoun is one of the clearest cases. It may amount to a war crime."
He now intends to collect further evidence, but he already knows that it won't be much use. After the war five-and-a-half years ago, the Palestinians filed hundreds of criminal complaints and the UN also found evidence that the Israeli army had committed war crimes. But no one was truly held accountable. Only one soldier was sentenced to a prison term, of seven months, for stealing a credit card and using it to withdraw cash.
The Wahdans are now living on the staircase landing of a UN school in Jabalia, where 1,500 people are housed. There are foam mattresses on the floor and they have hung up a sheet to provide some privacy.
Before their father was killed by the rocket, the brothers relate, he said that he wouldn't rebuild the house in Al-Burrah because it was too dangerous there now. Zaki doesn't know what will happen next. He says that he can still see the image of his dead father in front of his eyes. He has trouble sleeping, and he is apathetic and furious at the same time. "This war did nothing for us. All this destruction here, and we're supposed to be the winners? No, perhaps Hamas won, but our family has been destroyed."
At the top of Zeinab's Facebook timeline, there is now a message from a friend. It hurts so much that you're gone, he writes. Enjoy paradise!
Gaza counts cost of war as more than 360 factories destroyed or damaged
Thousands of acres of farmland and cattle also wiped out with damage estimated at three times that of 2008-9 conflict
Harriet Sherwood in Gaza
theguardian.com, Friday 22 August 2014 10.17 BST
Gaza's economy will take years to recover from the devastating impact of the war, in which more than 360 factories have been destroyed or badly damaged and thousands of acres of farmland ruined by tanks, shelling and air strikes, according to analysts.
Israeli air strikes on Gaza have resumed since a temporary ceasefire brokedown on Tuesday after rockets were fired from Gaza. The Israeli Defence Force said it launched air stikes on 20 sites on Friday morning and Gaza health officials said two Palestinians were killed in an attack on a farm.
Almost 10% of Gaza's factories have been put out of action, said the Palestinian Federation of Industries. Most other industrial plants have halted production during the conflict, causing losses estimated at more than $70m (£42m), said the union of Palestinian industries. The UN's food and agriculture organisation (FAO) said about 42,000 acres of croplands had sustained substantial direct damage and half of Gaza's poultry stock has been lost due to direct hits or lack of care as access to farmlands along the border with Israel became impossible.
More than 9% of the annual fishing catch was lost between 9 July and 10 August, it added.
"The initial indications are that economic damage caused by the war is three times that of the 2008-9 conflict," said Gaza-based economist Omar Shaban, referring to the Israeli military operation, codenamed Cast Lead. "It's huge."
Unemployment would increase from the prewar rate of 40%, a result of factory destruction, he said. "Recovery will depend on the terms of the ceasefire agreement - whether the siege is lifted, and how quickly. But it will take a minimum of two to three years even if it is lifted."
Gaza's biggest factory, al Awda in Deir al-Balah, which made biscuits, juice and ice-cream, was destroyed after days of air strikes and shelling last month, which caused a massive fire. Its entire stock of raw ingredients was lost and valuable hi-tech machinery damaged beyond repair. The factory employed 450 people.
"This is a war on our economy," said owner Mohammed al-Telbani. "I started at ground zero, spent 45 years building this business and now it's gone."
Manal Hassan, the factory's manager, estimated the losses at $30m. "We kept a very large stock because of the difficulties of getting raw materials and spare parts into Gaza, so we had enough to keep production going for a year," she said. "This was a factory for making biscuits and ice-cream, not guns. There were no rockets fired in this area."
At the Nadi family farm in Beit Hanoun, Mahmoud Nadi said almost half the stock of 370 dairy cows had been killed in shelling from tanks positioned inside the border and air strikes. The family, which has farmed in the area for 15 years, fled to UN shelters in Jabaliya when the Israeli ground invasion started.
"When we came back, there were dead cows everywhere. We could hardly reach them because of the smell," he said. The milk yield from the remaining stock had plummeted due to the animals' trauma, he added.
In Beit Lahiya, camel farmer Zaid Hamad Ermelat returned to his land last week to find 20 animals - worth $2,800 a head - had been shot by ground forces. Their decomposing carcasses remained on the ground amid spent bullet casings from M16 rifles.
"This is our only income, supporting 17 members of the family," said the 71-year-old Bedouin, who came to Gaza as a refugee during the 1948 war. Asked what he would do to earn a living, he shrugged he would try to find work as a farm labourer.
In a nearby field, peppers were shrivelled on plants as farmers have been unable to harvest crops during the war.
At a cluster of farms in Juha Deek, nearly a mile from the border, almost every house, store and animal pen was wrecked, fruit and olive trees snapped or uprooted and cattle, sheep and goats killed by shrapnel, bullets or starvation as families fled for safety.
"How do I feel? Look at this," said Ahmed Abu Sayed, 22, gesturing at a view of destroyed buildings and tank-churned land. "This tells you how I feel."
The FAO said it would distribute enough fodder to feed 55,000 sheep and goats for 45 days once a permanent ceasefire had been established.
Hamas declares support for Palestinian bid to join international criminal court
Hamas says it will support proposal that could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations
Staff and agencies
theguardian.com, Saturday 23 August 2014 12.31 BST
Hamas has signed a pledge to back any Palestinian bid to join the international criminal court, a move which could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations.
The decision revealed by two senior Hamas officials on Saturday would help a bid led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the court, a step that would transform his relations with Israel from tense to openly hostile and could also strain his ties with the United States.
Abbas has said he will not make any decision on a bid without the written backing of all Palestinian factions. Last month, he obtained such support from all factions in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The move by Hamas, which is not a PLO member, came after almost seven weeks of a cross-border war with Israel and several failed ceasefire efforts.
More than 2,090 Palestinians have been killed since fighting began on 8 July, including around 500 children, and about 100,000 Gazans have been left homeless, according to United Nations figures and Palestinian officials. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and four civilians, including a four-year-old boy killed by a mortar shell on Friday.
During the war, Gaza militants have fired more than 3,800 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, while Israel has launched about 5,000 air strikes at Gaza, the military said. Israel has said it has targeted sites linked to militants. UN and Palestinian officials say three-quarters of those killed in Gaza have been civilians.
On Saturday, an air strike on a house in central Gaza killed two women, two children and a man, according to medics at the Red Crescent. Six strikes also hit a house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza, causing severe damage and wounding at least five people, Gaza police said.
Since the start of the Gaza war, Abbas has come under growing domestic pressure to pave the way for a possible war crimes investigation of Israel. Last month, he told senior PLO officials and leaders of smaller political groups he would only go ahead if Hamas supported the bid.
If Abbas were to turn to the court, Hamas could be investigated for indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel since 2000. Israel could come under scrutiny for its actions in the current Gaza war as well as decades of settlement building on war-won lands the Palestinians seek for a state.
Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said on Saturday that Hamas was not concerned about becoming a target of a war crimes investigation and urged Abbas to act "as soon as possible".
"We are under occupation, under daily attack and our fighters are defending their people," he said in a phone interview from Qatar. "These rockets are meant to stop Israeli attacks and it is well known that Israel initiated this war and previous wars."
But it is uncertain whether such arguments would hold up in court. After the last major round of Israel-Hamas fighting more than five years ago, a UN fact-finding team said both Israel and Hamas violated the rules of war by targeting civilians.
The Hamas decision to back a court bid came after meetings on Thursday and Friday in Qatar between Abbas and the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader who participated in the meetings, wrote on his Facebook page early on Saturday that "Hamas has signed the paper" of support that Abbas had requested. Abu Marzouk's post was also reported on Hamas news websites.
There was no comment from Abbas aides.
A senior Palestinian official has said Abbas was expected to wait for the findings of a UN-appointed commission of inquiry into possible Gaza war crimes due by March before turning to the court.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations with reporters.
The office of Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, declined to comment. Israel opposes involving the court, arguing that Israel and the Palestinians should deal with any issues directly.
Israel Claims Nearly 1,000 Acres of West Bank Land Near Bethlehem
By ISABEL KERSHNER
AUG. 31, 2014
IHT
JERUSALEM - Israel laid claim on Sunday to nearly 1,000 acres of West Bank land in a Jewish settlement bloc near Bethlehem - a step that could herald significant Israeli construction in the area - defying Palestinian demands for a halt in settlement expansion.
Peace Now, an Israeli group that opposes the construction of settlements in the West Bank, said that the action on Sunday might be the largest single appropriation of West Bank land in decades and that it could "dramatically change the reality" in the area.
Palestinians aspire to form a state in the lands that Israel conquered in 1967.
Israeli officials said the political directive to expedite a survey of the status of the land came after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in June while hitchhiking in that area. In July, the Israeli authorities arrested a Palestinian who was accused of being the prime mover in the kidnapping and killing of the teenagers. The timing of the land appropriation suggested that it was meant as a kind of compensation for the settlers and punishment for the Palestinians.
The land, which is near the small Jewish settlement of Gvaot in the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, has now officially been declared "state land," as opposed to land privately owned by Palestinians, clearing the way for the potential approval of Israeli building plans there.
But the mayor of the nearby Palestinian town of Surif, Ahmad Lafi, said the land belonged to Palestinian families. He told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli Army forces and personnel posted orders early Sunday announcing the seizure of land that was planted with olive and forest trees in Surif and the nearby villages of Al-Jaba'a and Wadi Fukin.
Interested parties have 45 days in which to register objections.
The kidnapping of the teenagers prompted an Israeli military clampdown in the West Bank against Hamas, the Islamic group that dominates Gaza and that Israel said was behind the abductions. The subsequent tensions along the Israel-Gaza border erupted into a 50-day war that ended last week with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.
The land appropriation has quickly turned attention back to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and exposed the contradictory visions in the Israeli government that hamper the prospects of any broader Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the announcement and called for a reversal of the land claim, saying that it would "further deteriorate the situation."
Though Israel says that it intends to keep the Etzion settlement bloc under any permanent agreement with the Palestinians and that most recent peace plans have involved land swaps, most countries consider Israeli settlements to be a violation of international law. The continued construction has also been a constant source of tension between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its most important Western allies.
A State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the United States urged Israel to reverse its decision, calling it "counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians."
The last round of American-brokered peace talks broke down in April. Israel suspended the troubled talks after Mr. Abbas forged a reconciliation pact with the Palestinian Authority's rival, Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist. American officials also said that Israel's repeated announcements of new settlement construction contributed to the collapse of the talks.
Yair Lapid, Israel's finance minister, who has spoken out in favor of a new diplomatic process, told reporters on Sunday that he "was not aware of the decision" about the land around Gvaot and had instructed his team to look into it. "We are against any swift changes in the West Bank right now because we need to go back to some kind of process there," he said.
But Yariv Oppenheimer, general director of Peace Now, said that instead of strengthening the Palestinian moderates, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel "turns his back on the Palestinian Authority and sticks a political knife in the back" of Mr. Abbas, referring to the latest land appropriation.
"Since the 1980s, we don't remember a declaration of such dimensions," Mr. Oppenheimer told Israel Radio.
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US urges Israel to reverse appropriation of land for West Bank settlement
Israel has claimed almost 1,000 acres near Bethlehem, in a move Palestinians say will only increase tension
Reuters in Jerusalem
theguardian.com, Monday 1 September 2014 00.43 BST
The United States has criticised Israel's announcement of a land appropriation for possible settlement construction in the occupied West Bank as "counterproductive" to peace efforts, and urged the Israeli government to reverse the decision.
Israel laid claim to nearly 1,000 acres (400 hectares) in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move which an anti-settlement group termed the biggest appropriation in 30 years and a Palestinian official said would cause only more friction after the Gaza war.
"We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity," a State Department official said. "This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue is counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians."
"We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision," the official said in Washington.
Israel Radio said the step was taken in response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers by Hamas militants in the area in June, one of the sparks for the seven-week war in Gaza that left more than 2,000 people dead.
The notice published on Sunday by the Israeli military gave no reason for the land appropriation decision.
Peace Now, which opposes Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, said the appropriation was meant to turn a site where 10 families now live adjacent to a Jewish seminary into a permanent settlement.
Construction of a major settlement at the location, known as Gevaot, has been mooted by Israel since 2000. Last year the government invited bids for the building of 1,000 housing units at the site.
A local Palestinian mayor said Palestinians owned the tracts and harvested olive trees on them.
Israel has come under intense international criticism over its settlement activities, which most countries regard as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state in any future peace deal.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, called on Israel to cancel the appropriation. "This decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza," Abu Rdainah said.
The Obama administration has been at odds with Netanyahu over settlements since taking office in 2009.
After the collapse of the last round of US-brokered peace talks, US officials cited settlement construction as one of the main reasons for the breakdown, while also faulting the Palestinians for signing a series of international treaties and conventions.
Israel has said construction at Gevaot would not constitute the establishment of a new settlement because the site is officially designated a neighbourhood of an existing one, Alon Shvut, several kilometres down the road.
Some 500,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory the Jewish state captured in the 1967 war.
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Israeli leaders are rarely popular once the fighting ends. Binyamin Netanyahu is no exception
The aftermath of a conflict often cuts the careers of prime ministers short. In Netanyahu's case, though, there is no alternative
Anshel Pfeffer
theguardian.com, Thursday 28 August 2014 16.33 BST
At the height of Israel's first Lebanon war in 1982, Amiram Nir, the Israeli officer and journalist who went on to serve as the prime minister's counter-terrorism adviser and later died in a mysterious plane crash, coined the phrase: "Quiet, we're shooting." Nearly all of Israel's normally feisty and irreverent media observe this rule at times of war or during a major military operation. While soldiers are falling on the battlefield, criticism of the government is largely muted. Public opinion likewise falls in line and the prime minister and other civilian and military leaders receive levels of approval in the polls they could only dream of during peacetime.
It all ends come the ceasefire or when an operation gets bogged down into a lengthy war of attrition. Israelis have extremely high expectations, bordering on the unrealistic, from their army and intelligence services and for more than four decades have punished the politicians for any perceived shortcomings - as prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is learning now. He has taken a nose dive in the latest polls and received a bashing from the Israeli media over the past couple of days.
Only three weeks ago, 77% of Israelis responded to a poll commissioned by Haaretz saying they were satisfied with the way Netanyahu was conducting the Gaza offensive. A day after Tuesday night's ceasefire he had already lost a third of that and was down to 50%. In another poll carried out for Channel 2 Netanyahu's fall was even more dramatic, his approval rating descending in the space of a month from a high of 82% to only 32% this week. He is not the first Israeli leader to suffer such a reversal.
Israel successfully fought off a surprise attack on two fronts from Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, but public anger over the intelligence failure forced both Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan to resign and set the scene for the end of the labour movement's 29 years in power. In 1982 the army dislodged the Palestine Liberation Organisation from its bases but the continued blood-letting led to Menachem Begin's resignation and total withdrawal from public life, as well as an end to the first period of the Likud party's dominance in Israeli politics. During both these wars the leadership enjoyed wide support from media and public, only to plunge into a trough in the aftermath.
Military setbacks were never the sole reason for changes in political fortunes; financial crises and corruption scandals played a major part as well. But the anticlimax, following the euphorically high ratings while the guns are blazing, sets in motion an immediate and steep decline. Israel's previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was ultimately brought down by allegations of bribe-taking, but it was the second Lebanon war, perceived by most Israelis as ending in a stalemate with Hezbollah, which cast a permanent pall over the rest of his term.
It isn't a phenomenon unique to Israel. Winston Churchill's landslide defeat in the 1945 general election, less than two months after VE Day remains the prime historical example of the way a wartime leader can swiftly lose public support. George Bush also failed to win a second term in 1992 despite the success of the first Gulf war. In Israel, however, with its frequent bouts of warfare, it has become a pattern.
In addition to the dire polls, the Israeli media, largely supportive of Netanyahu throughout the 50-day military operation, have also piled in, with commentators on just about every channel and newspaper (with the exception of the Israel Hayom freesheet owned by Netanyahu's American backer and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson) excoriating the prime minister for having lost the initiative throughout, allowing Hamas to dictate nearly every stage of the crisis and finally accepting a ceasefire agreement which contains no assurances against future rocket launches from Gaza or mention of a demilitarisation of the Palestinian organisations - a demand repeatedly raised by Netanyahu throughout the crisis.
Westerners viewing the conflict through the prism of international media may be surprised that the heavy toll in Palestinian casualties and destruction of thousands of buildings in Gaza barely features in local criticism of the government. Many observers have also noted quite correctly that if any side has come off worse in the confrontation, it was Hamas, which for all the devastation in Gaza has achieved none of its demands save for a return to the agreements achieved in 2012 and a vague commitment to address its demands in a further round of talks next month. But that is not the Israeli perspective.
The majority of Israelis feel their army acted with restraint and that the blame for civilian casualties lies squarely with Hamas which launched its rockets from heavily built-up areas. They do blame Netanyahu, however, for not using the military might at his disposal to achieve either the toppling of the Hamas government in Gaza or extracting firm commitments to dismantle its rocket arsenal. As Israelis see it, life in much of their country was brought to a standstill for seven weeks, residents of the kibbutzim around Gaza were forced to flee and 71 soldiers and civilians were killed for no gain. Now they're back where it all started, with no guarantee that another round won't take place very soon. They see no one else to blame for that except the prime minister. He had their support while the fighting was ongoing - now that he failed to deliver any tangible result, he has lost it.
This doesn't spell political demise for him quite yet. The ray of light for Netanyahu in the polls is that there is still no alternative on the horizon to his premiership. In the Haaretz poll 42% of Israelis still see him as the most suitable candidate for the job. His closest rival, Labor's lacklustre leader Yitzhak Herzog, polled only 12%, while his challengers from the far-right, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett, each received 11% and are deemed as too extreme by three-quarters of the electorate.
Most Israelis don't love or revere Netanyahu and are deeply disappointed with the outcome of his war. If there was on the horizon a leader they felt was competent enough to replace him, he or she would have a good chance in the next elections. But for now there is no one.
Steve Bell on Binyamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin - cartoon
Steve Bell
The Guardian, Monday 1 September 2014 23.44 BST
Israel to build 283 homes on West Bank
Publication of tenders for new settlement follows announcement of Israel's biggest land grab in West Bank since 1980s
Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem
theguardian.com, Friday 5 September 2014 12.01 BST
Israel has published tenders to build 283 homes in a West Bank settlement, days after announcing its biggest land grab on occupied Palestinian territory for three decades.
The expansion of the Elkana settlement, in the north-west of the West Bank, was approved in January and the tenders were published on Thursday, Israel's land authority said.
It came after Israel announced its biggest land grab in the West Bank since the 1980s, saying it planned to expropriate 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in the south of the territory, between Bethlehem and Hebron.
That move drew international condemnation, even from its staunch ally, the US, and some Israeli cabinet ministers.
The US state department urged Israel to reverse its decision while the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he was alarmed by Israel's plans.
Israel's settlement-building, which is illegal under international law, is seen as an obstacle to any lasting peace with the Palestinians, who want their future state to be on land, much of which Israel has annexed or built settlements on.
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Revert green light for new West Bank settlement, Kerry tells Netanyahu
US secretary of state calls Israel's prime minister amid mounting international and internal criticism of land appropriation
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 September 2014 15.21 BST
John Kerry has called the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, amid a US effort to persuade Israel to reverse the go-ahead for the largest appropriation of land on the occupied West Bank since the 1980s.
The secretary of state's call followed the disclosure that the US had officially requested Israel to reverse the decision, amid mounting criticism of the move both internationally and within Netanyahu's own cabinet.
Kerry is preparing to meet Palestinian negotiators seeking a firm deadline for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories to the pre-1967 borders. Failing that, Palestinian officials have warned they will seek a UN resolution setting a three-year deadline for the end of the occupation.
The talks will be Kerry's first face-to-face discussions with Palestinian negotiators since Washington found itself sidelined from ceasefire talks in July when Kerry - the top US diplomat - failed to broker a truce in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
The announcement on Sunday that the land in the Gush Etzion settlement block near Bethlehem would be expropriated - the first step towards building a significant new settlement there - has seen strong protests from the UK and European governments including France and Spain, and from Italian foreign minister Federica Mogherini, who was just appointed the EU's next foreign minister.
The move has been widely interpreted by Israeli analysts as a political gesture designed to shore up support for Netanyahu on the right wing, which has criticised him for his handling of the war in Gaza.
For his part, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said if there is no progress on peace negotiations to settle the borders of a future Palestinian state, Palestinians will push forward with unilateral steps towards recognition and have threatened to pursue Israel for war crimes in the international criminal court - both moves opposed by the US.
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Huge new Israeli settlement in West Bank condemned by US and UK
British foreign secretary urges Israel to reverse decision to seize 990 acres of Palestinian land near Gvaot to create new city
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Monday 1 September 2014 16.30 BST
The UK and US governments have criticised, in unusually strong language, Israel's decision to approve one of the largest appropriations of Palestinian land for settlement in recent decades.
The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said he deplored the move as "particularly ill-judged".
However, Israel's economics minister, Naftali Bennett, who visited the Gush Etzion settlement in the occupied West Bank on Monday, applauded Sunday's decision as an "appropriate Zionist response to murder". Bennett said: "What we did yesterday was a display of Zionism. Building is our answer to murder."
The settlement affects nearly 400 hectares (1,000 acres) at Gvaot near Bethlehem, which have been designated as state land, as opposed to land privately owned by Palestinians, clearing the way for the potential Israeli building.
Israel's announcement comes after an apparently concerted effort by some of its officials and politicians to use the kidnap and murder of three religious students earlier this summer to justify the expropriation.
The direct link between the murder of the three students, which shocked Israeli society, and the announcement suggests the move was designed in part as a punitive measure.
Israel's decision has been condemned by senior Palestinian government figures and Israel's chief negotiator in the stalled peace process, the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, who said the decision would damage Israel's security in the long run. "The decision was incorrect," Livni told Israel Radio News. "It was a decision that weakens Israel and damages its security."
Settler representatives said they hoped to expand around Gush Etzion to create a contiguous new city for thousands.
Explaining the decision on Sunday, the Co-ordination of Government Activities in the Territories said there was no Palestinian claim on the area but that protesters could register their opposition within 45 days. Local Palestinians, including the mayor of nearby Surif, Ahmad Lafi, insist the land belongs to Palestinian families.
According to a report released by the PLO's negotiations affairs department: "The illegal settlement of Gvaot was established in 1984 as a military base. It was later transferred to a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) and currently is inhabited by 16 families. The recent Israeli confiscation would allow for the illegal settlements to grow to the size of a city. It aims at linking the illegal settlement with the green line, grabbing more Palestinian land so as to facilitate future annexation."
Settlers and their supporters in the Israeli government have long sought to build on the land around Gvaot, currently the site of a small settlement. They claim there is an Israeli consensus that in any future peace deal, the settlements around Gush Etzion would be annexed to Israel.
That position is rejected by Palestinians and many in the international community, including the US. "We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity," the US official told Reuters on Sunday night.
"This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, is counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians. "We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision," the official said.
Hammond used even stronger language on Monday, saying the decision threatened to damage Israel's standing in the international community. "Our position on settlements is clear," Hammond said. "They are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and take us further away from a two-state solution at a time when negotiations to achieve this objective urgently need to be resumed."
The kidnap and murder of the three teenagers, blamed by the Israeli government on Hamas, has now been used to justify mass arrests on the West Bank, as a contributory cause to the recent 50-day war in Gaza, and now one of the largest appropriations of land for settlement building in recent memory. Some Israeli critics of Binyamin Netanyahu's government have suggested the announcement was a response to the significant pressure applied to Netanyahu from the extreme rightwing elements of his coalition.
Netanyahu has faced strong criticism from within his own cabinet - not least from Bennett - and the Israeli media for agreeing a ceasefire with Hamas, they have argued, without enough gains.
New Emblem of an Elemental Conflict: Seized West Bank Land
By ISABEL KERSHNER
SEPT. 9, 2014
IHT
WADI FUKIN, West Bank - At the edge of this small Palestinian village, an asphalt road turns into a dirt path that winds through a fertile valley where natural springs irrigate lush plots planted with a rich ratatouille of vegetables, as well as orchards and vines. Goats graze on the steep, rocky slopes, some bare and rugged, others planted with olive and almond trees and pines.
The veneer of pastoral serenity was shattered just over a week ago when a new crop suddenly dotted the hillsides: dozens of bright yellow plastic boards tied to metal stakes, printed with the logo of the Israeli military's Civil Administration and in large, red Hebrew letters the words "State Lands - No Trespassing."
The same warning appeared less prominently in small, black Arabic letters, as if to minimize the potential impact of a move that local Jewish settler leaders said could herald a new Jewish city in the area. Palestinians and anti-settlement groups like Peace Now described the action as possibly the biggest land grab in the occupied West Bank in 30 years.
The signs accompanied Israel's formal declaration that it was laying claim to nearly 1,000 acres of territory in this area of the West Bank, prompting a storm of international criticism and a blunt call from the United States to reverse the decision. Wadi Fukin and four other villages directly affected by the announcement - Surif, Hussan, Jaba'a and Nahalin - instantly became the latest symbols of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, pared down to the elemental struggle over the land.
Ahmad Sokar, the head of Wadi Fukin's village council, said the signs appeared "to the north, south, east and west" of the village of 1,300 residents, who, he added, fear that they will find their community surrounded "like an island."
It may be years before any settlement construction can take place. Palestinians with claims to the land were given 45 days to register objections. Village leaders and farmers are now poring over maps, meeting with lawyers and gathering documents for what is likely to be a lengthy appeals process in the Israeli courts.
But the episode has again illustrated the distance between the Israelis and the Palestinians months after the breakdown of American-brokered talks meant to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and after a bloody war between Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that rules Gaza, and Israel.
When it comes to the basic question of who owns the land, the sides lack any common language.
"The concept of land for the Palestinians is not like in the West," said Ata Munasra, a local tour guide. "It is part of your culture, your heritage, your existence. You can't just move from here to there." He added that when it came to the laws governing the land, "Israel picks and chooses what suits it."
And villagers said the international condemnations had not yet influenced anything on the ground.
"It's like cat and mouse," said Abdel Hakim Munasra, a relative of Ata Munasra and the secretary of the village council. "The settlements creep across the land gradually. They start small and expand."
The Palestinians and most of the world consider all Jewish settlement in the occupied territories illegal. Israelis said the choice of the 1,000 acres seemed to have been calibrated to cause the least physical damage to the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state, though Palestinians point out that it was made unilaterally.
The newly declared state land lies in what the Israelis call Gush Etzion, or the Etzion settlement bloc, south of Jerusalem. Israel says it intends to keep the bloc, which is part of the 60 percent of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control, under any permanent agreement with the Palestinians - though negotiations for a state would require the Palestinians to agree and Israel to offer a land swap in return.
The pre-1967 armistice line between the West Bank and Israel runs just to the west of Wadi Fukin. To the east is Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox, urban Jewish settlement of up to 50,000 residents that Israel expects to include within its eventual borders.
But precisely as President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is demanding a definition of the borders of his future state, the Israeli move blurs the boundary. While Palestinian negotiators have agreed in principle to minor adjustments and land swaps along the 1967 lines, Xavier Abu Eid of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Negotiation Affairs Department said the Palestinians "have never accepted the idea of settlement blocs" as unilaterally defined by Israel.
Most of the elongated tracts of newly appropriated land run adjacent to the 1967 line, stretching between the Palestinian villages, with a finger extending inward toward Gvaot, a tiny Israeli settlement of a few families in temporary homes. Dror Etkes, an Israeli expert on West Bank land issues who advocates on behalf of the Palestinians, said the intention was "to fill in the gap," consolidating the connection between Gush Etzion and Israel.
Defenders of the Israeli policy say that the newly declared state land was never privately owned, and that it was land whose status was to be determined.
They also say that Gush Etzion has historic value for Israelis: Jews lived there until 1948 and returned after Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. It is also the area where Palestinian militants kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers in June. The land declaration came as compensation for the settlers and was a punishment for the Palestinians at a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was under political pressure over the war in Gaza.
When Israel took over the West Bank in 1967, only one-third of the territory was recorded in the area's land registry, adding to the legal ambiguity, Israelis said. Israel froze the registration process, and in the 1980s it began appropriating plots that had not been cultivated in three years, or were less than half cultivated, based on what Mr. Etkes described as "a manipulative interpretation of Ottoman law."
Mr. Etkes said that only small parts of the newly declared state lands were cultivated, though he cautioned that construction in the area would be likely to choke the intensively cultivated parts.
In Wadi Fukin, villagers said that a large part of the appropriated land was owned by five extended families, and that some of it was planted with cereals for grazing.
Proving ownership will be difficult for most, unless they can produce Turkish land deeds, experts said. Mr. Munasra, the council secretary, said he owned an acre of land planted with olive saplings that was included in the appropriation. He said that he had tax receipts from the period of the British Mandate, and that the land was in the name of his grandfather, who died in 1970.
On a recent weekday, only an insistent drill from a distant construction site broke the silence in the valley. The apartment blocks of Beitar Illit spilled down a ridge above the farmland.
Maher Taher Sokar, a farmer, was sitting barefoot under an old mulberry tree, his work pants rolled up. He said he had fought in the Israeli courts to prove his ownership of more than 85 acres of land on a nearby mountain that is planted with wheat and olive trees. Once, he said, he waited two years for a signature from an Israeli official at the Civil Administration headquarters. He won the case in 2011, he said, after a 16-year legal battle.
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Thousands of Migrants Forced to Leave Israel, Rights Group Says
By ISABEL KERSHNER
SEPT. 9, 2014
IHT
JERUSALEM - Thousands of Sudanese migrants to Israel and hundreds of Eritreans have returned to their home countries this year as a result of an Israeli policy that amounts to "unlawful coercion," Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The group said the migrants had been left few other options even though they were at risk of imprisonment or abuse at the hands of repressive governments back home, and despite protections Israel is obligated to provide under international treaties.
The New York-based group said in its report that it had documented seven cases in which citizens of Sudan were detained and interrogated in the capital, Khartoum, on their return.
While four of the seven were released after short periods, the report said, one was tortured, a second was put in solitary confinement and a third was charged with treason for visiting Israel, which does not maintain diplomatic relations with Sudan. The group said that under Sudanese law it is a crime to visit Israel, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and that at least 6,400 Sudanese had returned between January 2013 and the end of June 2014.
The report also said 367 Eritreans had returned home after reaching Israel, but neither Human Rights Watch nor the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Israel had any confirmed information about them.
Human Rights Watch said the decision by asylum seekers to leave Israel could not be considered voluntary because of the circumstances surrounding their departures. In many cases, migrants were offered a choice between going home - or in some cases, to a third country - or facing the threat of "indefinite detention" in a semi-open but remote facility in the Negev Desert that does not allow them to work.
"International law is clear that when Israel threatens Eritreans and Sudanese with lifelong detention, they aren't freely deciding to leave Israel and risk harm back home," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report.
Israeli human rights groups have been raising similar concerns in recent months.
Mr. Simpson said it was not possible to determine whether any of the 6,700 migrants had left for other, personal reasons, as they were not interviewed on departure. But he said the more likely explanation was that they were coerced into leaving because of the pressure created by Israel's policies.
Israel strongly contested that assessment, saying it encourages repatriation or departure to a third country but does not compel asylum seekers to do so.
"There are very many baseless accusations against the state, just as these organizations criticize every one of the Western countries because of the way they deal with illegal infiltration," Gideon Saar, Israel's interior minister, told Israel Radio. "As a country, we first of all act according to the law and with every step we act in consultation with the attorney general and according to his opinion."
The Interior Ministry said the Human Rights Watch report was an attempt to influence Israel's Supreme Court, which is expected to rule soon on a petition against a recent amendment to Israel's law guiding illegal entry to the country.
Israel's perception of the African migrants, whom it routinely refers to as "infiltrators" or economic migrants, sharply differs from that held by many nongovernmental organizations and refugee advocacy groups, who view them as asylum seekers fleeing conflict zones or persecution.
"Israel does not forcibly deport these people," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister's office. "They have the possibility to be in Israel safely and to have all their humanitarian needs met."
He added, "The overwhelming majority of these people are illegal job seekers and are not coming here for refugee reasons."
Israeli officials say the government offers refugees willing to leave $3,500.
Walpurga Englbrecht, the representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Israel, said Israel might be breaching international conventions that prohibit the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to an environment in which they are at risk of persecution or degrading treatment.
The conditions in the Holot facility in the Negev Desert, she added, "restrict the freedom of movement of Eritrean and Sudanese residents to a substantial degree, not necessarily in line with international human rights law."
Alarmed by an influx of about 60,000 Africans since 2005, the vast majority of them Sudanese or Eritreans who crossed the border from Egypt, and after protests by the residents of south Tel Aviv, where the new arrivals were concentrated, Israel announced in 2012 that it was stepping up efforts to deter, detain and deport the migrants. Measures that include the construction of a steel barrier along Israel's border with Egypt have since cut the flow of African migrants to almost zero.
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Gove says boycott of Israeli goods is sign of 'resurgent antisemitism'
Tory chief whip attacks protesters response to Gaza conflict and comparisons between Israel's actions and Nazi war crimes
Rowena Mason, political correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 9 September 2014 21.00 BST
Protesters who are boycotting Israeli goods over Gaza need to be reminded that the Nazi campaign against Jewish goods ended with a campaign against Jewish lives, senior Tory Michael Gove has said.
Warning of a "resurgent, mutating, lethal virus of antisemitism", the Conservative chief whip also claimed those who compare Israel's actions to Nazi war crimes are engaging in a form of Holocaust denial.
Gove made his intervention in a speech at the Holocaust Education Trust on Tuesday night, in response to findings that there had been a fivefold increase in antisemitic incidents in the wake of Israel's latest conflict with Hamas.
Israel's actions in Gaza provoked an international outcry, with the UN condemning the shelling of a school as "a moral outrage" and the US calling it disgraceful. There are several campaigns that urge people to shun Israeli produce, including Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
But Gove criticised the boycotts of Israeli goods and warned too many people are now conflating legitimate criticism of Israel's general policies with straightforward antisemitism.
He said a line has been crossed when banners at pro-Palestinian rallies carry slogans such as "Stop Doing What Hitler Did To You" or "Gaza is a Concentration Camp". Lord Prescott, the Labour peer and former deputy prime minister, is among those who have previously been criticised for comparing Gaza to a concentration camp.
Citing a historian, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, Gove said there appeared among some opponents of Israel's actions to be a "deliberate attempt to devalue the unique significance of the Holocaust, and so remove the stigma from antisemitism".
"And even as this relativisation, trivialisation and perversion of the Holocaust goes on so prejudice towards the Jewish people grows," Gove said.
"The Tricycle theatre attempts to turn away donations which support the Jewish Film Festival because the money is Israeli and therefore tainted. In our supermarkets our citizens mount boycotts of Israeli produce, some going so far as to ransack the shelves, scatter goods and render them unsaleable. In some supermarkets the conflation of anti-Israeli agitation and straightforward antisemitism has resulted in kosher goods being withdrawn.
"We need to speak out against this prejudice. We need to remind people that what began with a campaign against Jewish goods in the past ended with a campaign against Jewish lives. We need to spell out that this sort of prejudice starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews. We need to stand united against hate. Now more than ever."
Gove listed a number of antisemitic incidents that have occurred across Europe over the past few months, calling on people to "remember where this leads". There has been "insufficient indignation" about growing anti-Jewish prejudice, he argued.
"In France, in July of this year more than 100 Jewish citizens had to be rescued from one synagogue and another was firebombed. The leader of an antisemitic party - the Front National - is France's most popular politician. Heroes of popular culture, like the comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, try to make hatred of Jews a badge of radical chic," he said.
"The virus is spreading across other European nations. In Germany, Molotov cocktails were lobbed at one synagogue. In Belgium, a cafe displays a sign saying 'dogs are allowed but Jews are not', while a doctor refuses to treat Jewish patients. And in May of this year four people visiting the Jewish museum in Brussels were killed by a jihadist terrorist."
Arguing that the UK and Israel have a common cause, Gove said: "We know that the jihadist terrorists responsible for horrific violence across the Middle East are targeting not just Jews and Israelis but all of us in the west.
"They hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people's home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is - free, democratic, liberal and western. We need to remind ourselves that defending Israel's right to exist is defending our common humanity. Now more than ever."
On Monday, David Cameron spoke out in parliament about his deep concerns about "growing reports of antisemitism on our streets in Britain".
The prime minister said: "Let me be clear, we must not tolerate this in our country. There can never be any excuse for antisemitism, and no disagreements on politics or policy should ever be allowed to justify racism, prejudice or extremism in any form."
Cameron has always said his belief in Israel is unbreakable and he has strongly supported the state's right to defend itself against the rocket attacks of Hamas. However, he said the UN was right to speak out against Israel's school strike and last week condemned the country's appropriation of 1,000 acres of Palestinian territory as "utterly deplorable".
Israel, Facing Criticism, to Investigate Possible Military Misconduct in Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
SEPT. 10, 2014
IHT
TEL AVIV - Israel on Wednesday announced it had begun criminal investigations into five instances of possible military misconduct in the 50-day Gaza war, an implicit acknowledgment of sensitivity to the widespread criticism, even among allies like the United States, that Israeli forces had used excessive firepower in a number of highly publicized assaults in the Palestinian territory.
The announcement, conveyed at a briefing by the Israeli military, came only two weeks after a cease-fire in the conflict, an unusually speedy response. But critics, including human rights advocates in Israel, said it remained to be seen whether the investigations would yield significant criminal indictments and punishments.
Some said the timing of the inquiries appeared to be an attempt by the Israeli government to pre-empt the impact of international investigations into allegations of possible Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza. They also pointed out that the cases, opened by Israel's Military Advocate General Corps, included obvious episodes that had already drawn condemnation.
One prominent Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, refused to participate in the investigations and said history showed that the Israeli military could not possibly conduct a credible prosecution of itself.
"Based on past experience, we can only regretfully say that Israeli law enforcement authorities are unable and unwilling to investigate allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law committed during fighting in Gaza," the organization said in a statement. "Should the existing whitewashing mechanism be replaced with an independent investigative body, we would gladly cooperate with it."
Even so, Israel's inquiries into possible criminal misconduct by its own soldiers stood in sharp contrast to what has happened in Gaza, where Hamas, the dominant militant force, has no such judicial process and has been widely criticized for summarily executing suspected Palestinian collaborators with Israel.
The most prominent of the five military cases have already been the subject of international censure: an Israeli strike that resulted in the death of 16 civilians sheltering at a United Nations school in Beit Hanoun and the killing of four boys on a Gaza beach.
The three other cases, as conveyed by an Israeli military official giving the briefing, involve a Palestinian teenager, Ahmed Abu Raida, who said he was mistreated while in detention and forced to guide Israeli soldiers, with the decision to investigate largely based on the youth's allegations as reported in The New York Times; a Palestinian woman who was shot to death after she had informed Israeli forces of her movements and received their consent; and a soldier who is alleged to have stolen money from a private home.
Of 44 cases initially referred to army fact-finding teams for preliminary examination, seven have been closed, including one involving the death of eight members of a family when their home was struck on July 8, the first day of the Israeli air campaign, and others are pending.
A further 55 episodes are to be referred to the fact-finding teams next week, according to a senior Israeli official, who briefed reporters at military headquarters here and spoke on the condition of anonymity under the Israeli military protocol.
The swiftness of the self-investigation by the military and the publicity about it appeared partly intended to get ahead of an investigation commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council into allegations of possible war crimes. The Israeli government has said it will not cooperate with the United Nations mission, asserting that its mandate is biased against Israel.
The investigation process may also be intended to counter threats by the Palestinian leadership to join the International Criminal Court for the purpose of holding Israel accountable for its actions as an occupying power. The court generally only investigates cases where the country involved is unwilling or unable to investigate itself.
More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli air and ground operation, up to three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations and other monitoring groups.
The Israeli authorities assert that up to half the casualties were probably combatants. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed.
Israel said its campaign was aimed at halting rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal territory, which is dominated by Hamas, and at destroying a network of tunnels, more than a dozen of them leading into Israeli territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has rejected criticism of its military's self-accountability and asserted that justice and due process are built into Israel's democratic system. He has repeatedly accused Hamas of committing a "double war crime" for indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets against Israeli towns and cities, and for operating from within heavily populated areas of Gaza, using its own civilians, in Mr. Netanyahu's words, as a "human shield."
Still, the Israeli Army's legal counselors have acknowledged the international scrutiny on Israel's military behavior. They say they have become more involved in recent years in operational activity before and during military attacks on Gaza, as well as in the aftermath. The counselors have trained commanders, reviewed planned targets and deployed to the Gaza border to work with commanders at the division level during the recent conflict.
The recently established military committee of fact-finding teams, independent of the military's chain of command and made up largely of reservists, began investigating certain "exceptional" cases.
Previous experience appears to have shown, in Israel's view, the importance of speedy investigations. A Human Rights Council inquiry into the 2008-9 war in Gaza led to the Goldstone Report. Named for Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who led that inquiry, the report found evidence of potential war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. It accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy.
Mr. Goldstone later sought to retract that accusation, writing in The Washington Post, after Israeli investigators presented contradictory evidence, "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." Other members of the Goldstone panel stood by the report.
An Israeli public commission that examined the mechanisms for dealing with claims of violations of the laws of armed conflict, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, concluded last year that the Israeli military's system generally complied with international law. But it recommended expediting the process of deciding when to open criminal investigations.
Some circumstances, like the mistreatment of detainees, "requires immediate examination," the military official told reporters on Wednesday.
Critics have called into question the military's ability to investigate itself. B'Tselem and another Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, described the military law enforcement system as "a complete failure" in a statement this week.
After the 2008-9 war in Gaza, in which up to 1,400 Palestinians were killed, more than 50 cases out of 400 that were examined were referred to the military police for criminal investigation. Three investigations ended with indictments, according to the military. B'Tselem noted that the harshest sentence was given to a soldier who had stolen a credit card.
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Israeli Officer Charged in Assault
By ISABEL KERSHNER
SEPT. 10, 2014
IHT
JERUSALEM - A border police officer has been charged with assault after he was filmed beating a Palestinian-American teenager on the edges of a violent riot in East Jerusalem in July, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said Wednesday in a statement.
Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, from Tampa, Fla., was spending the summer with relatives in Shuafat. He got caught up in violence that broke out after the grisly killing of his cousin Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, by Jewish extremists in revenge for the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths by Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
The footage of Tariq's beating spread worldwide, prompting international outrage and a call by the State Department for a speedy and credible inquiry.
Click to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Aaj0YM45t4
The officer, who was not named, chased Tariq, who was "masked, with a kaffiyeh wrapped around his head, and holding a wooden slingshot," according to the statement. After the youth was on the ground, and was not resisting arrest, the officer kicked and punched him in the head, face and upper body, the statement added.
Tariq, who was hospitalized and has since returned to the United States, said that he had only been watching the clashes. Several other members of the Abu Khdeir clan have since been detained by the Israeli authorities.
Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories
Innocent people under military rule exposed to surveillance by Israel, say 43 ex-members of Unit 8200, including reservists
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Friday 12 September 2014 10.44 BST
Forty-three veterans of one of Israel's most secretive military intelligence units - many of them still active reservists - have signed a public letter refusing to serve in operations involving the occupied Palestinian territories because of the widespread surveillance of innocent residents.
The signatories include officers, former instructors and senior NCOs from the country's equivalent of America's NSA or Britain's GCHQ, known as Unit 8200 - or in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim.
They allege that the "all-encompassing" intelligence the unit gathers on Palestinians - much of it concerning innocent people - is used for "political persecution" and to create divisions in Palestinian society.
The largest intelligence unit in the Israeli military, Unit 8200 intercepts electronic communications including email, phone calls and social media in addition to targeting military and diplomatic traffic.
The signatories say, however, that a large part of their work was unrelated to Israel's security or defence, but appeared designed to perpetuate the occupation by "infiltrating" and "controlling" all aspects of Palestinian life.
Written in uncompromising language the letter states: "We, veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories."
They add: "The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself. In many cases, intelligence prevents defendants from receiving a fair trial in military courts, as the evidence against them is not revealed."
Accompanying the letter - published in the Israeli media on Friday, and organised several months before the recent Gaza war - are a series of testimonies provided by the signatories to Yedioth Ahronoth and shared with the Guardian.
A common complaint, made in both the testimonies and in interviews given by some of the signatories, including to the Guardian this week, is that some of the activities the soldiers were asked to engage in had more in common with the intelligence services of oppressive regimes than of a democracy.
Among allegations made in the statements are that:
"¢ A significant proportion of the unit's Palestinian objectives "are innocent people unconnected to any military activity. They interest the unit for other reasons, usually without having the slightest idea that they're intelligence targets." According to the testimonies those targets were not treated any differently from terrorists.
"¢ Personnel were instructed to keep any damaging details of Palestinians' lives they came across, including information on sexual preferences, infidelities, financial problems or family illnesses that could be "used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator".
"¢ Former members claim some intelligence gathered by the unit was not collected in the service of the Israeli state but in pursuit of the "agendas" of individual Israeli politicians. In one incident, for which no details have been provided, one signatory recalls: "Regarding one project in particular, many of us were shocked as we were exposed to it. Clearly it was not something we as soldiers were supposed to do. The information was almost directly transferred to political players and not to other sections of the security system."
"¢ Unit members swapped intercepts they gathered involving "sex talk" for their own entertainment.
The letter has been sent to the chief of staff of Israel's armed forces and also the head of military intelligence.
Unit 8200 is one of the most prestigious in the Israeli public's mind, with many who serve in it going on to high-flying jobs after their military service, many in Israel's hi-tech sector.
According to an article this year in Haaretz, former unit members include a supreme court justice, the director general of the finance ministry, an internationally successful author, the chief executive of one of Israel's largest accountancy firms and the economy ministry's chief scientist.
Operating a signals interception base, the unit is also at the front of Israel's cyberwar capabilities. According to some reports - never confirmed - it was involved in developing the Stuxnet virus used to attack Iran's nuclear programme.
Most of those who signed the letter have served in the unit in the last decade - as recently as three years ago in full-time military service - with the majority still on the active reserve list, meaning they can be called up at any time.
All of those who spoke to the Guardian said they were "highly motivated" to join the unit and had volunteered to serve extra time in it beyond their national service.
Although there have been "refusenik" letters before - most famously more than a decade ago when a group of reserve pilots refused to participate in targeted assassinations - such detailed complaints from within Israel's intelligence services are highly unusual.
Three of those involved, two sergeants and a captain who gave interviews to the Guardian and a handful of other foreign media before the letter was released this week, were at pains to make clear they were not interested in disclosing state secrets. They had engaged a high-profile lawyer to avoid breaking Israeli law - including by identifying themselves in public. Copies of the letter sent to their unit commander, however, use their full names.
Those involved told the Guardian they were proud of some of the work they had done, which they believed had contributed to Israel's security.
In their interviews, they described a culture of impunity where soldiers were actively discouraged in training lessons from questioning the legality of orders, and of being deliberately misled by commanders about the circumstances of a case in which one member of their unit refused to cooperate in the bombing of a building with civilians in it in retaliation for an attack in Israel.
They added that there were in effect "no rules" governing which Palestinians could be targeted and that the only restraint on their intelligence gathering in the occupied territories was "resources".
"In intelligence - in Israel intelligence regarding Palestinians - they don't really have rights," said Nadav, 26, a sergeant, who is now a philosophy and literature student in Tel Aviv. "Nobody asks that question. It's not [like] Israeli citizens, where if you want to gather information about them you need to go to court."
He said: "The intelligence gathering about Palestinians is not clean. When you rule a population that does not have political rights, laws like we have, [then] the nature of this regime of ruling over people, especially when you do it for many years, [is that] it forces you to take control or infiltrate every aspect of their life."
"D", a 29-year-old captain who served for eight years, added: "[That] question is one of the messages that we feel it is very important to get across mostly to the Israeli public.
"That is a very common misconception about intelligence "¦ when we were enlisting in the military [we thought] our job is going to be minimising violence, minimising loss of lives, and that made the moral side of it feel much easier."
He added: "What the IDF does in the occupied territories is rule another people. One of the things you need to do is defend yourself from them, but you also need to oppress the population.
"You need to weaken the politics. You need to strengthen and deepen your control of Palestinian society so that the [Israeli] state can remain [there] in the long term. We can't talk about specifics "¦ [but] intelligence is used to apply pressure to people to make them cooperate with Israel.
"It's important to say, the reason I decided to refuse - and I decided to refuse long before the recent [Gaza] operation. It was when I realised that what I was doing was the same job that the intelligence services of every undemocratic regime are doing.
"This realisation was what made me [realise] personally that I'm part of this large mechanism that is trying to defend or perpetuate its presence in the occupied territories."
The last major refusenik episode in Israel to grab the public's attention was in 2002 when 27 reserve pilots published a letter refusing to fly assassination sorties over Gaza after 14 civilians, including children, were killed alongside Salah Shehade, the leader of Hamas's military wing, in a bombing.
Nadav made a reference to the killing - and the outcry that surrounded it. "When you look at what happened this summer, when building after building were destroyed and the inhabitants and hundreds of innocent people were killed and no one raised an eyebrow, as opposed to just one decade ago when the killing of a family of a commander of Hamas shocked people. It was a huge story in Israel."
Replying to the refusenik letter and the allegations, a spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces criticised the soldiers for making their complaints public, and attempted to cast doubt on the claims.
"The intelligence corps has no record that the specific violations in the letter ever took place. Immediately turning to the press instead of to their officers or relevant authorities is suspicious and raises doubts as to the seriousness of the claims.
"Regarding claims of harm caused to civilians, the IDF maintains a rigorous process which takes into account civilian presence before authorising strikes against targets."
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"˜Any Palestinian is exposed to monitoring by the Israeli Big Brother'
Testimonies from people who worked in the Israeli Intelligence Corps tell of a system where there were no boundaries
The Guardian, Friday 12 September 2014 10.01 BST
"˜Our work has serious impact on the lives of many people'
I enlisted into the Intelligence Corps with a clear understanding that regarding anything that involves the Palestinian arena, I will engage in self-defence. Throughout my service in my unit I did and encountered things that seemed irrelevant from a security standpoint, and I did not have a clear conscience participating in such activities. Contrary to my expectations, our database included not only security-related intelligence but also personal and political information. That is to say, on a personal level, there is no respect for Palestinian privacy.
From a political standpoint, information is collected that can serve to manipulate Israeli, Palestinian and international politics.
Although ours is not actual field work, it has serious impact on the lives of many people, and this is something that I think soldiers in the unit forget when everyone just does their part. Since we're so focused on not missing any important developments, we always prefer to assume the worst. For example, if anyone is suspected, even very faintly, it is possible that the stain will never fade, and that person will suffer sanctions as a result.
Our daily service dulls everyone's sensitivity and this is reflected, for example, in running jokes about very personal things that come up in our intelligence material. Or, for instance, in the expression "blood on the headset", or X's marked on our headsets after assassinations.
"˜I realised the job I had done was that of the oppressor'
After my discharge from the Intelligence Corps, I had a moment of shock while watching the film The Lives of Others, about the secret police in East Germany.
On the one hand, I felt solidarity with the victims, with the oppressed people who were denied such basic rights as I take for granted to be mine. On the other hand, I realised that the job I had done during my military service was that of the oppressor.
My first reaction as a discharged soldier was that we do the same things, only much more efficiently.
"˜The attitude was "Why not? We can, so let's do it."'
I knew people in the unit and I heard good things about it, but I didn't do anything special to enlist into this particular unit. I knew it was a good job with high-quality people, bearing a lot of responsibility, and it sounded good. From the first day of the course one is made to feel really important, and that you're going to be exposed to interesting classified things, and to have a lot of responsibility.
I assumed a role in which people are called "targets", and those people who really interest us are in no sense terrorists, but rather generally normative people - who interest us because of their roles, so that we can obtain more intelligence and achieve greater access. We take advantage of the capabilities that we have over these people in order to put ourselves at ease. We take advantage of the impact that we have on their lives. Sometimes it involves truly harming a person's life, or their soul. I mean extortion whereby they must hide things from people around them. It can really screw up their lives. It made me feel omnipotent.
When I began this job I was surprised by the extent of my responsibility. I felt I had a say about important things. I could initiate things that would impact the lives of Palestinians - I could urge my unit to take all kinds of measures. The attitude was "Why not? We can, so let's do it." I thought that what I was able to do was crazy. We were the bosses.
They really relied on our judgment calls. I had access to many systems and capabilities, and I felt it was too much. No boundaries were set for us, for both passive activities such as gathering intelligence, and for active initiatives that had an impact on people's lives.
If anyone interests us, we'd collect information on his or her economic situation and mental state. Then we would plan how we can perform an operation around this individual, in order to turn them into a collaborator or something of the sort.
But I was uncomfortable with this, so I chose to disconnect from it. To clock in my hours, and check out.
There are always two unit representatives in the field, one at the West Bank division HQ and one in Gaza. We would take turns, and what I recall most about this are the assassination missions. We would collect intelligence for the operation, incriminate the person, and pass on the information to the Israeli Air Force.
Once when I was the unit representative, there was someone suspicious next to a weapons warehouse in Gaza and we thought he was our target. It had taken us a long time to find him. Judging by his location, the time and similar data, we concluded it was him. After we assassinated him it turned out that he was a kid. My job there was supposedly technical. The atmosphere was that of an office job. In real time you can see maps and images from the helicopter, but you're sitting in an office so it's very easy to feel detached and distance yourself. Nor was it my job to ask questions. I was told what was needed and that's what I did. I remember an image on the screen of him in an orchard, and the explosion on the screen, the smoke clearing and his mother running to him, at which point we could see he was a child. The body was small. We realised we had screwed up. It got quiet and uncomfortable. Then we needed to carry on as there were other things to do, though the mood was grim. I don't know of any investigation of what had happened, or if it was reviewed at a later date.
"˜We knew the medical conditions of our targets'
When I enlisted into the intelligence unit, I thought I would deal with prevention of terrorism and do whatever was necessary to protect national security. Throughout my service, I discovered that many Israeli initiatives within the Palestinian arena are directed at things that are not related to intelligence. I worked a lot on gathering information on political issues. Some could be seen as related to objectives that serve security needs, such as the suppression of Hamas institutions, while others could not. Some were political objectives that did not even fall within the Israeli consensus, such as strengthening Israel's stance at the expense of the Palestinian position. Such objectives do not serve the security system but rather agendas of certain politicians.
I had a really hard time with some of the things we did, as did the people who were with me in my section. Regarding one project in particular, many of us were shocked as we were exposed to it. Clearly it was not something we as soldiers were supposed to do. The information was almost directly transferred to political players and not to other sections of the security system. This made it clear to me that we were dealing with information that was hardly connected to security needs.
We knew the detailed medical conditions of some of our targets, and our goals developed around them. I'm not sure what was done with this information. I felt bad knowing each of their precise problems, and that we would talk and laugh about this information freely. Or, for instance, that we knew exactly who was cheating on their wife, with whom, and how often.
"˜I collected information on people who were completely innocent'
As a soldier in Unit 8200, I collected information on people accused of either attacking Israelis, trying to attack Israelis, desiring to harm Israelis, and considering attacking Israelis. I also collected information on people who were completely innocent, and whose only crime was that they interested the Israeli security system for various reasons. For reasons they had absolutely no way of knowing. All Palestinians are exposed to non-stop monitoring without any legal protection. Junior soldiers can decide when someone is a target for the collection of information. There is no procedure in place to determine whether the violation of the individual's rights is necessarily justifiable. The notion of rights for Palestinians does not exist at all. Not even as an idea to be disregarded.
Any Palestinian may be targeted and may suffer from sanctions such as the denial of permits, harassment, extortion, or even direct physical injury. Such instances might occur if the individual is of any interest to the system for any reason. Be it indirect relations with hostile individuals, physical proximity to intelligence targets, or connections to topics that interest 8200 as a technological unit. Any information that might enable extortion of an individual is considered relevant information. Whether said individual is of a certain sexual orientation, cheating on his wife, or in need of treatment in Israel or the West Bank - he is a target for blackmail.
Throughout the duration of my service no one in my unit ever asked, at least not out loud, if there is anything wrong with this well-oiled system - whether the transformation of any individual into a target is a legitimate act.
When I joined Unit 8200 I was highly motivated. I passed a course and became an Arabic translator. There were things that I felt uncomfortable with in the work framework, though the importance of my role and our missions within the unit in which I served overshadowed these feelings.
One of those moments in which things began to change occurred during the first war in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead. I was then at the peak of my service, as an experienced translator in a base which was responsible for the Palestinian arena.
Upon the start of the operation something seemed wrong to me. Instead of attacking rocket and weapons caches in the Gaza Strip, as a preparatory defence measure for the campaign against Hamas, the Israeli Air Force attacked a parade of police officers. The assault killed 89 policemen. I was a simple soldier, but I wanted to pass my opinion up the chain of command that this action was morally unsound and problematic. Not only as regards the attack on the police officers. Those were precious hours in which we should have been doing our jobs preventing the launching of rockets against Israeli civilians, and this did not serve that purpose. The home front was exposed to volleys of rockets without taking care of them in advance, as should have been done, and as we were told that should happen. The officer in charge agreed to pass on my remarks, but I never received an answer.
Throughout the operation I accompanied different teams engaged in collecting and translating intelligence on targets in the Gaza Strip - on both weapons and humans. I remember the overwhelming silence in the rooms from which we worked, seconds after the air force bombed those targets. A tense silence, hopeful of causing harm. When an attack was identified or executed, cheering and applause filled the room. X's were marked on headsets. X's were marked on the facial composite sketches that adorned the walls of the rooms. No one asked about "collateral damage." I felt bad - it was very difficult to realise that no one was interested in who else had been hit. Throughout the campaign, hundreds of civilians were killed - men, women, and children, collateral damage. No one stopped to ask whether the targets we collect for the air force justify the destruction of the lives of about one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
On 1 January, the air force attacked the home of Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader in Gaza. Eighteen civilians were killed in the assault on his home, most of whom were members of his family. The following day senior leaders of Hamas' military wing were targeted. When the air force reported the people harmed, tension filled the room in anticipation of finding out whether the people injured were the targeted objectives of the attack. When it became clear that they were other unrelated persons, cries of disappointment were heard. Not because people had been killed arbitrarily, but because they weren't the people we were looking for.
It's hard for me to imagine what my base would have looked like during the recent Operation Protective Edge. Probably just as it had in the past, only much more pronounced.
That was the peak of my service within the Israeli army. The period during which I collected information on people who were accused of attacking Israelis, trying to attack Israelis, the desire to harm Israelis, thinking of attacking Israelis, in addition to collecting information on completely innocent people, whose only crime was that they interested the Israeli defence establishment for various reasons. Reasons they have no way of knowing. If you're homosexual and know someone who knows a wanted person - and we need to know about it - Israel will make your life miserable. If you need emergency medical treatment in Israel, the West Bank or abroad - we searched for you. The state of Israel will allow you to die before we let you leave for treatment without giving information on your wanted cousin. If you interest Unit 8200 as a technological unit, and don't have anything to do with any hostile activity, you're an objective.
Any such case, in which you "fish out" an innocent person from whom information might be squeezed, or who could be recruited as a collaborator, was like striking gold for us and for Israel's entire intelligence community. As such, Palestinians who are not related to or involved in fighting Israel are objectives. Thus, in terms of intelligence (aside from the physical blockade of the Gaza Strip), Gazan citizens are no different from their brethren in the West Bank - despite the "disengagement", so to speak. During my training course in preparation for my service in this assigned role, we actually learned to memorise and filter different words for "gay", in Arabic.
Any Palestinian is exposed to non-stop monitoring by the Israeli Big Brother, without legal protection, and with no way of knowing when they too would become an objective - targeted for harassment, extortion, or physical injury. Junior soldiers can decide anyone is a target for the collection of information. There is no procedure in place to determine whether the violation of the individual's rights is necessarily justifiable. The notion of rights for Palestinians does not exist at all. Throughout the duration of my service no one in my unit ever asked, at least not out loud, if there is anything wrong with this well-oiled system - whether the transformation of any individual into a target is a legitimate act.
At the conclusion of my service in the army I was a commander and instructor for several months, teaching youth who had graduated from high school and were being prepared to serve as translators for the Intelligence Corps. I repeatedly tried to raise these questions with them: is it legitimate to deem as a target any person who interests the Israeli security system, for whatever reason? The answer I received, time and again, was yes. Today I believe the answer is no.
"˜The fact people were innocent was not all relevant'
I was a course instructor for soldiers assigned to the Palestinian arena. As the course was being organised we would go to some storeroom full of "booty" and receive uniforms, weapon parts, exploded grenades, flags of Palestine, Fatah and Hamas. Personal family items like photos of children, watches, family photos, medals, football trophies, books, Qurans, jewellery - Palestinian "memorabilia." I don't know for sure, but I realised that all these things came from arrest missions, either from people's homes or from people who were killed. It is all just piled up. We were taken to this storeroom and told to take whatever we pleased, signing the stuff out afterwards. I took some flags and uniforms. At the end of the course we didn't even return them. I still have them signed out.
We took all the stuff to the classrooms and hung it up on the walls for display. The idea was to "poison" the students. At the beginning of the course they have no idea to which arena they'll be assigned. So on the morning when they receive their assignments they enter the class and we motivate them with the items hanging on the walls, among other things. We didn't exactly explain what they were; we just said "booty." There is not much talk about it. It arouses their curiosity and amuses them.
Towards the end of the course one of the participants dressed as a Hamas fighter, in uniform, to entertain everyone. There is also something called a "demonstration." Everyone puts on those uniforms and headbands, takes up the flags and stages a demonstration. It's done in the auditorium for the all the other course participants. It's the entertainment event of the entire course. Everyone is seated and the class gets on stage and begins to shout all sorts of stuff. The highlight of the Palestinian-arena track was to put on a demonstration. When I was a course participant we yelled: "Enough with Palestine, we want to relocate to Australia!" When I was an instructor a talk show was staged, with characters, I don't recall exactly.
Along with the weekly quiz there is something called "bonus" - all sorts of funny stuff. Sometimes funny conversations are played that we heard by mistake and kept. These are unimportant things, useless intelligence-wise, but they are kept because they are funny, and held on to for years. For example "women talk." These are women's conversations, 99% private nonsense. Or all sorts of conversations about very private matters, including yelling, crying, fighting and cursing.
As an instructor I gave a class called Morality and Intelligence, which I had also participated in as a student. The Lieutenant A affair was a major part of this class. As an instructor I had access to the army's inquiry into this affair. In hindsight I discovered that it had been a fake inquiry. The report said the objective of that operation was to demolish a building empty of people, and that Lieutenant A's job was to make sure the building was indeed empty - when in fact the contrary was true. The objective was to bomb a building containing innocent people, and the lieutenant was supposed to inform the unit when they were inside.
We discussed this affair in class. Everyone said what they would have done in A's stead. The conclusion was that he meant well but did not do the right thing. He should have clearly stated his fears. Now I know what really went on, and that in hindsight this whole discussion was ridiculous. Anyway, the only conclusion reached was that in this unit there is no such thing as an illegal order. It is not we who decide what is moral and what isn't. Nowadays I realise that this is what the bombing pilot says too: "It's not for me to say what is moral and what isn't." Everyone passes the responsibility on to others.
After deliberating a bit, as that was the method of the class, the final message was: "Do what you're told." We also talked about what is done with information on a target's sexual preferences. Here, too, there was some would-be deliberation, but the message was that there is no problem with this issue. As an instructor I said that one should apply one's own judgment and not always pass on such information. I did not feel I could express a stronger message. Anyway, class consensus was that this did not pose a problem.
I was once made to listen to a talk that an Israeli security officer had with a Palestinian who he tried to recruit. It's an excellent talk for instruction and learning. It was used by the unit for some years. There's a point where he says, "Your wife's brother has cancer." The Palestinian answers, "So?" And he says, "Well, you know "¦" and they go on to speak about something else, and the Israeli keeps going back to the cancer issue. He said something like "Our hospitals are good" and he was clearly offering something to the Palestinian, or threatening him.
Palestinians' sex talks were always a hot item to pass on from one person in the unit to the other, for a good laugh. One person would call over another to come listen. Or some other entertaining talks. For example, "funny" medical conditions like haemorrhoids. It's part of the unit's morale. You also pass on photos for laughs that belong to targets, or just to Palestinians. Just photos, family photos, and the guys have a laugh when the children are ugly. There are also private photos, for example, that couples took for one another. At some point I distanced myself from this stuff. I told my friends this was wrong, but they all said it wouldn't hurt anyone. Our superiors knew about it, no question about that. I would not even say they looked away, because it was obvious that it was OK and that there was no problem. If there was a problem it would only be for wasting work time, focusing on nonsense.
The Israeli public thinks that intelligence work is only against terrorism, but a significant part of our objectives are innocent people, not at all connected to any military activity. They interest the unit for other reasons, usually without having the slightest idea that they're intelligence targets. They cannot begin to guess for what reasons they interest the unit. We did not treat those targets any differently than we did terrorists. The fact that they were innocent was not at all relevant as far as we were concerned with regard to how we treated them.
Something I had a really hard time with was that all kinds of personal data was stored in the unit, such that could be used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator. At the base we were told that if we find out some "juicy" detail about them, that it's important to document it. Examples of this were a difficult financial situation, sexual preferences, a person's chronic illness or that of a relative, and necessary medical treatment.
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Israel's Unit 8200 refuseniks: "˜you can't run from responsibility'
Transcript of interview with three members of Unit 8200 in which they explain why they refuse to work in Palestinian territories
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Friday 12 September 2014 10.01 BST
Three signatories of the Israeli military intelligence refusenik letter agreed to be interviewed by the Guardian to discuss what motivated their concerns. They are all members of Unit 8200 - known in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim - Israel's largest signals intelligence gathering unit, active both abroad and in the Palestinian territories.
All three are now on the active reserve list and have said they will not do reserve service relating to the occupied Palestinian territories. Of the three, "A", aged 32, and Nadav, 26, are sergeants, while "D", 29, is a captain.
By agreement with the letter's signatories, material relating to specific claims regarding the unit was provided in statements that they chose to disclose to the Israeli military censor. In face-to-face interviews they agreed to discuss what motivated them to sign the letter, declining to discuss specifics.
Below is a transcript of the Guardian's interview conducted earlier this week in collaboration with several other media outlets. It has been lightly edited for repetition, brevity and sense. Two minor amendments were made at the request of the soldiers to clarify meaning.
How did you organise the letter?
D: For a couple of months friends [have been] joining and [it's been] growing slowly "¦ most of them are still active. We've been thinking about it for maybe a year.
It was a difficult dilemma. We were worried that this action would be seen only as a response to the war in Gaza and it is important to us to make it clear this is about the "˜normal' situation [of the occupation].
A: We didn't want it to be interpreted only in this context. We decided before the recent war to do this. For me there wasn't any particular trigger. It was a long process of realising "¦
When people talk about the role that intelligence services play in non-democratic regimes usually their hair stands on their back a bit and they shudder.
And that's not the way I thought about the military service that I did [at first]. It was a gradual realisation that this was me [as well]. That I was playing that role. That made me see in a different light what I've done and take this action.
I still feel very committed to how I was raised, and that's what makes it so difficult. I still feel part of [Israeli] society.
N: I think because we are part of [Israeli] society is the reason [that] we are doing it. It is not an act against everything that is done "¦
A: We feel it as an act of taking responsibility for the things we take part in. But we also see it as part of a deep concern for the society we live in. We're not trying to break away from it or anything like that.
Maybe you can say something about yourselves?
D: I currently live in Jerusalem. I'm a student. I'm doing a master's in computers. I joined the military in 2003. I stayed until 2011. I was an officer. An intelligence officer. And I stayed for a couple of years extra. I was a team leader, then a section leader. A captain.
A: I was enlisted in 2001 after half a year of pre-military courses which I volunteered for. Afterwards I also stayed on for an extra period. I volunteered to become an instructor and then a team leader. Full time I was [there] five years. Since then I've been a student also in the Hebrew University. Now I live in Tel Aviv and my wife and I are expecting our first daughter. I'm studying maths.
N: I enlisted in 2007. I was in the army for almost four years. I was also an instructor. I finished the military in 2010. Now I live in Tel Aviv. I'm a student in the Open University and I'm studying literature and philosophy.
When you think about intelligence work, people think about it as "clean" because it's not about running after people in alleys of refugee camps and shooting at protesters. What's not "clean" about intelligence work that you wouldn't want to be involved in?
N: The intelligence gathering on Palestinians is not clean in that sense. When you rule a population "¦ they don't have political rights, laws like we have. The nature of this regime of ruling over people, especially when you do it for many years, it forces you to take control, infiltrate every aspect of their life.
D: [This is] one of the messages we feel it is very important to get across mostly to the Israeli public because that is a very common misconception about what's intelligence and I can say for myself and for many of the participants - refuseniks in our letter - that this is something [we also felt] when we were enlisting in the military. Not being aware of the conflict as much as we are aware of it today "¦ [believing] our job was going to be minimising violence, minimising loss of lives. That made the moral side of it feel - be - much easier.
A: I distinctly remember before I was recruited, I felt very fortunate that I had this job that was so clean of moral dilemmas. [Because] our job was to make the work smarter. We were supposed to minimise the casualties both fighting terrorism. And when Israel is forced to strike back, we would be able to make sure only the bad guys get killed. And I think recent events "¦ but this is not just about the recent war [in Gaza] "¦ our experience after the past 10 years have made us see this is simplistic.
N: In the last month there were two occasions of this in newspapers that reflect this [point] exactly. There was a [Palestinian] parliament member in Ramallah. The army told her she had to move to Jericho because she was supporting demonstrations. That's just one example of the things intelligence does that is not really to do with terrorism or anything like that.
D: A significant part of what the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] does is not the "title" [ie defence]. The "title" of what the IDF does in the occupied territories is ruling another people. One of the things you need to do is defend yourself from them, but you also need to oppress the population. You need to weaken the politics, you need to strengthen and deepen your control of Palestinian society so that the [Israeli] state can remain [there] in the long term "¦ We realised that that's the job of the intelligence.
Was there work they did not object to?
D: I think a lot of what the unit does, doesn't have anything to do with Palestinians, we're not only not against that, we're all in favour, we think it is the right and duty of the state of Israel to defend its citizens. We took that very seriously while we were in the unit and we still take it seriously. That's what makes this decision much more difficult because it's not a black and white situation.
Did you feel your were violating people's rights?
N: Definitely. In Israeli intelligence regarding Palestinians, they don't really have rights. Nobody asks that question. It's not [like] Israeli citizens, where if you want to gather information about them you need to go to court.
A: The only limitation is the limitation of resources. There's no procedural questions regarding who can and cannot be surveilled. Everybody is fair game.
N: An 18-year-old soldier who thinks: "We need to gather information on this or that person" - that 18-year-old kid [in Unit 8200] is the one that decides.
A: It is well known that the intelligence is used. People are arrested in the Palestinian territories. Sometimes without trial. And even when they are taken to trial it's often with evidence that can't be exposed [in court] because it is classified. And the intelligence is used to apply pressure to people, to make them cooperate with Israel. These are all things that are known.
It's no secret that Israeli intelligence is producing the target database that is used in the air strikes "¦
There was a big media outcry after [Hamas military leader] Salah Shehade was assassinated [in 2002] and 14 members of his family were killed. There was a big story around that and the commander of the air force then - Dan Halutz - said to the pilots: "You did well." You're not responsible. Your job is to deliver the ammunition to the target in the most professional and accurate way you can, and you did that and your hands are clean.
D: And you don't see the big picture "¦
A: The question [is] who does see the big picture? Who does provide this information to these pilots? And the answer is clear [ie Unit 8200]. [There was] a famous incident. It was when "Lieutenant Alif" [Lieutenant A, a former member of their unit] refused to pass on information regarding the capacity of a building. The idea was to destroy a building and its inhabitants - and what I'm telling is not the story we were told in the unit - it was a story that was exposed by journalists in Israel years later.
D: In 2003 [during the second intifada] there was this general routine for the IDF to bomb buildings at night as a response to terrorist attacks or to pass a message or "¦ whatever you like. After an especially bad terrorist attack in south Tel Aviv by the old bus station there was a decision that the response had to be more harsh this time.
The action that was decided upon was to destroy from the air a building belonging to Fatah, which wasn't the organisation that was responsible for the terrorist attack. And the building wasn't related in any way to military activity. It was some kind of welfare centre where they were giving out pay cheques.
Unlike previous times, an essential part [of the operation] was that building wouldn't be empty and there would be people there, no matter who. Someone had to be there in order to die. The role of our unit was to give the green light for this attack. To say when the building isn't empty. So this lieutenant - whose name wasn't published - refused.
At first he tried to get the action cancelled. And then he spoke with his commanders but still found himself in real time being asked for that information. And even when he knew that now the building is not empty and was supposed to give the green light he said: "I'm refusing, I'm not doing it." He got the operation cancelled.
The response of all the senior commanders - in the unit and in the military - was to be shocked by him daring to refuse a direct order that he had received. That was the only kind of inquiry that was taken into the matter. There were some reports - just days after the incident, in the Israeli media - but they were wrong. They changed the goal of the operation and said the goal was a targeted killing of "¦
A: I remember that it was the talk of the unit because it was in the news and we all had briefings about it. We were told he was "confused". He didn't understand what was asked of him. And the general message was there's no such thing as a manifestly illegal order in the unit.
D: What's important is that it wasn't only the interpretation "¦ the media and soldiers inside the unit were told a lie about what was the target of the operation. "¦ The [fact that] the ultimate goal was to kill innocent people was hidden. I joined the unit several months after. The response was to kick [the lieutenant] out of his job - not the unit - until he finished his military service.
I received a lesson in the course where we discussed this [case]. As a person who spent many years in the unit, who took my job there very seriously, I was very motivated to be a part of this unit and to do our job and I feel very betrayed by this lie. I feel the worst thing about it is, it isn't the momentary decision of a completely illegal, immoral operation, but the fact that for more than a decade later the unit still prefers not to deal with it "¦
N: To deny what really happened "¦
D: "¦ to say that according to senior officers this operation was looked into before the order was given. Legal officers checked the order to make sure it was an OK operation to carry out. So according to these senior officers this was all OK. There was no problem. When they were asked in [this article] in 2011 they could not even understand what was the issue. They say "Leave us alone" to the reporter.
A: But you talked to the people who were there "¦
D: I did speak with people who were there. I don't want to say exactly who. People who were in the room "¦
A: The reason I brought up the whole Lieutenant Alif case was to emphasise that on the one hand the pilots are not responsible and on the other hand we - who are providing the information - are not responsible. The feeling is that it's never possible to point any fingers. There is no one who is responsible.
N: And when you look at what happened this summer when building after building was destroyed on the inhabitants and hundreds of innocent people were killed. No one raised an eyebrow as opposed to just one decade ago when a killing of a family of a commander of Hamas [Salah Shahade] - then people were shocked. It was a huge story in Israel.
D: The story [of Lieutenant Alif] is very important and representative of the response of senior commanders of the unit to this incident I was referring to. [The fact] that the incident is used to give soldiers in the unit the message: "You're not responsible." There's no such thing as a definite illegal order.
And we think this message has been well understood in the unit, which we think is a part of the fact that in the recent decade we've seen a decline in how much the soldiers and the Israeli public cares that innocent people are dying.
A: It's important to say, the reason I decided to refuse. I decided to refuse long before the recent [Gaza] operation. It was when I realised that what I was doing was the same job that the intelligence services of every undemocratic regime are doing. That I'm part of this large mechanism that is trying to defend or perpetuate its presence in the [occupied territories] "¦
N: "¦ it is part of the effort to save the status quo.
A: To preserve and hold and deepen our hold on the Palestinian population. And I think for most of us this was the main reason for doing this. And of course the operations and the wars - the ongoing periodic wars are part of this.
How did the letter come about?
D: At first it was just a small group of people meeting and discussing both our political opinions and also going through a process of realising what we've been involved with. You have to understand that being in the unit is very, very secret. It is not only that we keep secrets from the outside but we keep secrets from each other. The whole culture is very secretive. It is very difficult to just be in a situation where you meet with each other to reach a position of productive discussion. So for all of us just coming out with our thoughts was in itself very difficult.
Slowly we discussed it with more friends - with friends from the unit we thought would be interested - and just expanded it.
A: You sort of feel around to see how people feel about doing reserve service.
D: First when we approached people we didn't say: "Look this is our plan, what's your opinion?"
A: I should say there are a lot of people who, when they leave the military service they start seeing Palestinians as people not just as sources of information, and getting a bigger picture of what's happening and a lot of people "¦ there's very different levels of commitment and enthusiasm in doing the reserve service and a lot of people taper off.
D: It was clear from the beginning we wanted to do everything legally. We went to a lawyer and said we don't want to commit an offence or say anything not allowed to can you help us figure out what we would be allowed to say.
N: We're not telling secrets about what we did or the way the unit works. We don't want to do that. We don't want to hurt national security, we just want to say what is wrong with the things we did and the unit does.
We want people to know that being in intelligence is not clean, and to control a population of millions you can't just do counter-terrorism and hurt the people who want to hurt you.
D: I think another aspect is the personal aspect. Our decision as individuals that we morally can't continue to participate in these actions in military service. In theory there is the option of just avoiding the service, not going public but that brings me to - if I had to answer the question what are we doing this for - for me, it is to take responsibility.
I am very acutely aware that I was a part of the cycle of violence, in perpetuating it. I feel like in many moments in this long process I felt maybe just drop it. Maybe just forget about it. You can be leftist, you can go to demonstrations if you want. But I realised that is running away from responsibility because I am already a part. I've been a part for almost eight years of these actions that I disagree with.
What at the personal level influenced each of you?
D: During my military service, especially during my last years, I advanced through the ranks and I understood more about what is happening. About the unit's role in the occupied territories. That was one stage. After I left in 2011 it the summer of the famous social protests, and I think that was a moment of political awakening for a lot of people despite quite a lot of cynicism in Israel about the impact of that. I felt it put me in a more responsible and involved mindset.
I had questions from my military service I couldn't really deal with. But it was my whole life. My friends, my daily job. I wasn't in a position where I could question then properly "¦ Then I went back to things I was involved in. Thought about it. That was a bit of a Pandora's box to open because I felt the moment I asked myself these questions I couldn't run away from responsibility.
Another important realisation for me was that our unit was the intelligence side of an oppressive military regime [in the occupied territories]. Realising it in those terms also brought it much closer to me because my dad was Argentinian, and he was imprisoned by the military dictatorship in 1977.
I think this comparison - and that's not at all to say the actions of this Argentinian dictatorship is at all similar [to Israel] - but it's this realisation that we were imagining Palestinians as just plain enemies.
We didn't realise there was a difference between [the Palestinians we rule over] and citizens of any other country that is the enemy of Israel. My hard realisation was when I realised our function is both to be the regime and also to gather this intelligence "¦ It isn't like a military issue where you need to know how many airplanes the enemy has. The targets of this intelligence are specific people and the consequences that this intelligence have are very, very serious and encompass many different areas of their life, because it is also [gathered] by the same regime that controls their lives.
And in this aspect it is the same thing as the dictatorship in Argentina that imprisoned my dad.
A: I identify with a lot of what D said. We are told, and we like to think about Palestinians as enemies in a symmetrical conflict. I started going on tours in Hebron and around Jerusalem and I started to see the reality of the people living there. And you are basically providing them with water and electricity. And you give them job permits. On the one hand, you decide whether they can work their land or not. And on the other hand, they don't want you there.
And in this complicated situation you are bound to be drawn to do the all-encompassing surveillance that D has talked about. I'm the person who is doing it "¦ [and I came to] see myself in the light of other oppressive regimes and the role that intelligence plays in these regimes was the turning point.
N: I have to say I was very proud when I first enlisted. I thought it was a very important unit. I am still proud of some things that I did there. I'm not saying that everything done is wrong. The thing that led me to take this decision is that during my service I started realising that we don't only do things meant to ensure the security of Israel in the sense that these people want to hurt us, but more and more to do with innocent people.
There were times when I raised the question with my fellow soldiers in the unit, with the commanders, that maybe some things were wrong. The answer I was given all the time was: "No, it's OK." These questions kept arising in my head. Now as the years go by, and I see it from the outside, I realise that there are some things that are really problematic.
Intelligence can be gathered about everyone.
A: It's not just a procedural objection that we have. It is the deeper issue that we are part of a regime that is denying Palestinians their rights. It's been going on for almost 50 years.
D: The problem is that we realised what the actual role of the unit is, that's what we are bothered about. We don't think fixing the legal procedures a bit or caring a bit more about Palestinians would be a solution. We think it is a cause of the unit of the job.
A: I think we have said that some of the things that the IDF does really does deserve the title defence forces, but there is a significant proportion of what it is doing that does not deserve this title. It's in the interests of perpetuating a regime that is oppressive. That is not democratic. It is these things we are trying to bring to the attention of Israeli public first and foremost. To create a discussion and think critically about it.
So you won't serve across the Green Line in the occupied territories?
D: That is the exact parallel. It's important to us, if it was up to us, our full names would be on the [published] letter. We are not allowed to reveal it because of secrecy laws.
When you look at [things] in terms of intelligence you can broadly say that there are two types of intelligence in the world. One is gathered - say in a democracy - that a regime collects against its citizens. For example, as an Israeli the government might collect intelligence on me but it has severe limitations on how to do that, and the way that it can use it against me is very limited. Even if it is taken to court in the end if there is a punishment it is only a punishment directly related to the offence I committed. So that you can, if you like, call civil intelligence.
Then there is military intelligence, which a country collects on another country. Then there's no laws governing that, only diplomacy and international relations. That's intelligence. It's pretty dirty. But that's the inherent rules of the game. The other country can defend itself to some extent. In most cases this kind of intelligence won't have direct consequences for the actual civilian citizens in the other country that might be the target of this intelligence.
[But] in this situation, what's common to the Palestinian situation - and the situation in Argentina [under the military dictatorship] - is that people get the worst of the two types of intelligence. On the one hand, there are no rules about collecting the intelligence, but at the same time this intelligence might have severe consequences regarding all areas of their life.
You realise that this might have consequences for you - socially and for future employment? You might pay a price for this?
N: This is a price I'm willing to pay. This is very important. You can't run from responsibility.
D: It's a serious dilemma for a lot of people I know who decided not to sign the letter. One of the main reasons was this: everyone of us sees the risk a bit differently. I think we are all worried about it but I feel like there is no other choice.
Israeli refuseniks will be treated as criminals, says defence minister
Moshe Ya'alon joins political and military leadership in attack on reservists who refuse to serve in Palestinian territories
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
theguardian.com, Monday 15 September 2014 10.43 BST
Forty-three Israeli military intelligence reservists who signed a letter refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories have been denounced as "criminal" by defence minister Moshe Ya'alon, as the country's political and military leadership turned its fire on the refuseniks.
The ferocity of the response was not unexpected by those involved. One signatory told the Guardian before publication that he feared being portrayed as an enemy of the state after the letter was made public.
Among those who have criticised the reservists' actions are Israel's prime minister, the president, opposition leaders and a former intelligence head. In addition, the Israeli military revealed that 200 other members of the unit had signed a counter-letter defending its work.
The reservists' letter had alleged the unit undertook "all encompassing" surveillance of the Palestinians - whether involved in terrorism or not - and used information, including of sexual orientation, to blackmail individuals into becoming informants.
The threat of criminal sanctions would break the pattern of the treatment of reservists, including pilots, who signed previous refusenik letters who have tended to be discharged.
It is not clear, however, what charges the men and women could face. The 43 took legal advice from a prominent lawyer to ensure their letter and testimonies did not break the law, including by revealing their identities.
The text of the letter and most serious allegations were also submitted to the Israeli authorities before publication on Friday.
The letter, published with testimonies from reservists of Unit 8200, claimed much of its electronic interception work was being used to support the "political persecution" of Palestinians and the continued occupation.
As a deluge of criticism of the protesters poured from senior Israeli politicians and officials, it was disclosed that the current commander of 8200 had sent a letter to members of the unit - that does interception work analogous with the US NSA or the UK's GCHQ - warning them against rising complaints with the media, saying that any ethical concerns could be dealt with adequately by commanders within the unit.
Leading the charge against the refusniks on Sunday was the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. Speaking at a cyber-security conference in Tel Aviv, he accused the soldiers of "baseless slander" adding: "This is an act that should be condemned "¦ and that constitutes political exploitation of the Israel Defence Forces [IDF].
"The IDF is the most moral army in the world and it carries out the missions that we give it to safeguard our security. From my long years of acquaintance with the members of Unit 8200, the baseless slander levelled against them will not harm the vitally important work they do for the nation's security. And I say to them - continue."
Netanyahu's comments came as an IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Motti Almoz, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday that the refuseniks would face "the disciplinary treatment [that] would be sharp and clear". He added: "There is no place for refusal in the IDF. There are arguments and there are political stances. Celebration of democracy. ... What happened here, in my eyes? Exploitation of military service to express a political stance."
The most furious condemnation, came from Ya'alon, who described the letter as a "foolish and obscene attempt to support the international false delegitimisation campaign against the State of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF."
By Monday, Ya'alon, speaking at the same cyber-security conference as Netanyahu, was also hinting that the reserve soldiers could face criminal prosecution. "Their refusal is politically, not morally, motivated. Soldiers should go to their commanders when they have a problem. Our officers and soldiers are doing sacred work which saves many lives and they deserve our gratitude. I will not allow a political abuse of this and those who signed this [refusal document] will be treated as criminals," he said.
Other political figures who have joined criticism of the letter include several prominent members of Israel's opposition.
Lost Homes and Dreams at Tower Israel Leveled
By JODI RUDOREN and FARES AKRAM
SEPT. 14, 2014
IHT
GAZA CITY - The men of Zafer Tower No. 4 sit in the shade across the street from the wreckage.
Somewhere in there is Dr. Mohammad Abu Rayya's stethoscope. Buried, too, is a hard drive filled with 15 years of articles, photos and notes by Hisham Saqalla, a journalist and blogger. And a three-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower that Faraj Shorafa, a 72-year-old lawyer, brought from Paris in 1999.
Nobody was killed in Israel's destruction of the tower, the first of three high-rises felled in the finale of this summer's fighting with Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement that dominates the Gaza Strip. But about 500 people lost more than their homes. "They have destroyed our dreams," said Dr. Abu Rayya, 38.
Zafer 4 was erased by two powerful explosions around 7 p.m. on Aug. 23, 17 years to the day after it opened with two penthouses and 40 three-bedroom apartments of 1,615 square feet that originally sold for $60,000. Filled by high-ranking government officials and private-sector professionals, the 11-story tower was an alternative to the Gaza way of extended families living in compounds. It was part of a construction empire whose founder quit school after ninth grade to pick tomatoes in Israel and now lives in a four-story villa with its own elevator and a mosaic-tiled pool in the basement, where Zafer 4's evacuees waited out the attack.
The Israeli military said the building was "a command and control center" where "multiple floors" were "used regularly by Hamas for operational activities" throughout the seven-week battle. Military officials refused to say what types of activities, why the entire tower was targeted or what type of bombs were used.
In interviews, more than half the tower's occupants said that Hamas had taken over one of the penthouse apartments in 2007 for what several said was a "media office" filled with computers and communications equipment. Residents said the unit was abandoned during the war, and that teenagers passed many nights on that floor using PlayStation as bombers buzzed overhead.
Atef Adwan, one of 28 Hamas lawmakers elected in 2006, bought a first-floor apartment five years ago for his second wife, and spent much of the summer there with her and their two young sons, fearing the Israelis would target his home in the border town of Beit Hanoun. (They did not.)
"There was concern and people are still concerned" about Hamas presence in the building, said Wael Abu Najja, 47, who lived on the ninth floor, "but they can't talk about this publicly."
Most of the tower was taken by leaders of Hamas's rival, Fatah, men who continued to receive salaries but had not actually worked in the security services or the president's office since 2007, when Hamas routed Fatah from power in Gaza.
So when residents received mobile-phone evacuation orders that Saturday from an Arabic-speaking Israeli soldier named Mousa, they never expected the entire tower to be destroyed. Many fled without the emergency bags that Gazans keep packed with cash, documents and mementos.
"Hamas is everywhere - in every building, they have an apartment," said Mohammed Owda H. Abu Mathkour, the wealthy mogul who runs the Zafer contracting company and lives in the villa across Safed Street from the fallen tower. "Israel has no right to destroy the whole building because of one apartment."
Mr. Mathkour said he could rebuild the tower in eight months for $3 million, a fraction of the $7 billion the Palestinian leadership estimates is required to reconstruct some 11,000 demolished and more than 50,000 damaged structures across Gaza. Besides the money, the massive effort depends on a new arrangement for the import of cement and steel, which Israel has restricted for fear it would be used to manufacture rockets or build tunnels like those militants used to repeatedly penetrate Israeli territory this summer.
First, though, there is the rubble - 2.5 million tons of it. Removal alone could cost $10 million, and the minister of public works said his five bulldozers are not enough to tackle the task.
The pile that was Zafer 4 is perhaps three stories high, topped by a Palestinian flag that Mr. Saqalla's 17-year-old son, Shafiq, planted with pride. Mattresses and bedclothes peek out between the sandwiches of concrete floors - or ceilings?
There is an Angry Birds notebook and papers from an engineering course explaining "probability theory" and "The Normal Distribution." A flower pot. A green suitcase, a mangled bathtub, a cracked microwave. Protruding from the back is a crushed white Kia Sportage that belonged to Mr. Adwan, the Hamas lawmaker.
Zafer was the name of a cousin of Mr. Mathkour's who died of cancer in an Israeli prison in 1993, the year the company was founded.
Mr. Mathkour said three of his 14 Zafer towers were hit by Israel this summer, including the curved glass No. 9, an office building where Gaza's first rooftop restaurant opened June 13 (his wife's birthday). On July 17, he said, a missile hit an interior-ministry antenna on Zafer 9's roof; over the next two weeks, tank shells sprayed the tower three times.
The Israeli military, in an emailed statement, called Zafer 9 "a hub of Hamas terror activity" that had "been "˜on the radar' for years" and housed "several senior Hamas members." The statement said the tower was "struck with precise Air Force fire," though Mr. Mathkour has the tank shells in his office, and walls on several floors were clearly pockmarked by them.
"They broke my heart when they hit the tower, so I'm trying to break them when I am rebuilding," said Mr. Mathkour, who reopened the restaurant Sept. 4.
Zafer 4 was a workmanlike tower of two-toned stucco, whose apartments had L-shaped living/dining areas around ample kitchens and larger-than-usual bathrooms. In the early years, security guards and drivers were often stationed outside; so many Palestinian Authority bigwigs lived there that it was nicknamed "Fatah Tower."
Ghazi al-Jabali, the former Gaza police chief who once challenged Yasir Arafat for the Palestinian presidency, used to own the penthouse where Hamas later set up shop. Abdel Rahman Mustafa Yasin, a major general in the security service, had two linked units on the fourth floor. Mr. Abu Najja's father, the former deputy Parliament speaker, lived on the first.
Ahmad and Rihad Ibrahim, a young couple with a 5-year-old son and an 8-month-old daughter, paid $50,00 for a seventh-floor unit June 25, bought a beige-and-rose sectional sofa and new curtains, and moved in July 5, their sixth wedding anniversary.
"It was the first time it was written under my name for a property," said Mr. Ibrahim, 31, who did marketing for an insurance company whose offices were also hit during the war. "The lifetime dream of the Palestinian is to own a home. Now I'm looking for an apartment to rent."
The summer's fighting brought residents closer, as most spent day after day inside. With potable water scarce, residents ponied up $140 per apartment to dig a 170-foot well during a temporary cease-fire in August. It was two days later that Mousa, the Arabic speaker from Israel, called to tell them to get out.
Dr. Abu Rayya, on crutches, took the elevator up to the ninth floor, where his mother and brother lived in separate apartments, only to learn they had already left. Ms. Ibrahim, 26, said she almost forgot her baby as she shepherded her husband's 75-year-old mother and 80-year-old aunt.
In Mr. Mathkour's beautiful basement, Mousa called again, asking if everyone had evacuated. Residents realized an old woman who could not walk was still inside. Mousa gave them five minutes, and five young men ran back in and carried her out on a plastic chair.
A drone-fired warning missile hit the roof. Mousa called again, and Mr. Mathkour's wife, Aisha, took the phone.
"She asked him which floor or which apartment are you going to hit," recalled Mr. Mathkour, who is known as Abu Rani. "He said we're going to hit the whole building. She said that's haram - forbidden - she was appealing to him. He said yala yala - let's go, let's go - goodbye. She came to me, hey, Abu Rani, they are going to bring down the whole building. I told her he is joking. He wants to terrify you."
Mr. Ibrahim said he needled Mr. Mathkour about how many bombs it would take to topple the tower. The proud builder said 10. Turned out two did the job.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights considers the attack on Zafer 4 a war crime, and has filed complaints with Israel seeking both compensation for residents and a military-police investigation. The site has become a focal point: A group recently adorned it with 101 children's artworks - 101 because that is the number Gazans dial in emergencies.
The men sit across the street, in the shade of the "umbrella" of Zafer 1, which was one of Gaza's first high-rises when it opened in 1994. They are scattered now, at relatives' homes or in apartments rented for up to double the normal rates.
One afternoon, a teenager told Ramadan Helmi El Saqqa, 58, a retired brigadier general, that there was a unit available in Zafer 1. It was on the 10th floor, just like Mr. El Saqqa's old place in Zafer 4, which he shared with 10 relatives from three generations.
The unit had windows broken from the blast across the street, and glass littered the floors. He stood on the balcony overlooking the rubble pile. The rent was $600, up from $400 before the war, but it was furnished. "We're not looking for something to like," he sighed. "We're looking for something to contain us."
Gaza war set to reverse Palestinian economic growth
World Bank says economy expected to shrink by nearly 4% this year but could rebound in 2015 if Gaza reconstruction begins
Reuters in Jerusalem
theguardian.com, Tuesday 16 September 2014 15.26 BST
The recent war in Gaza will result in a reversal of seven years of growth in the Palestinian economy, which is now expected to shrink by nearly 4% this year, the World Bank has said.
It said Gaza would see a contraction of as much as 15%, while a slight recovery in the fourth quarter could push West Bank growth to about 0.5%.
The bank's report said the downturn was a result of the 50-day war between Israeli forces and militants in Gaza, restrictions on the flow of goods into the enclave by Israel and Egypt and a drop in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
"The conflict and humanitarian tragedy in Gaza has made an already struggling Palestinian economy worse and put further stress on the fiscal situation of the Palestinian Authority," the report said.
This month the PA estimated that rebuilding Gaza after the conflict would cost $7.8bn (£4.8bn).
Egypt will host a donors' conference on 12 October with the aim of raising reconstruction funds, and donor nations are due to convene on the sidelines of the UN general assembly next week.
"The lack of a comprehensive peace agreement leads to a vicious cycle of economic decline and conflict," the report said of efforts to clinch a deal on Palestinian statehood, which collapsed in April.
Growth, spurred largely by international donor funds, has been decelerating since 2012 and slowed to less than 2% in 2013, but could rebound strongly in 2015 if Gaza reconstruction gets under way, the bank said.
A strong response to rebuilding needs could help growth top 4% in 2015, with Gaza growing by 11% if goods flow into the territory.
Even without additional spending resulting from the war, the PA would face a financing gap, due in part to a fall in donor aid of about $350m this year, the World Bank said.
It said a sustainable Palestinian economic future depended on international budget support for the PA and "sincere efforts" by Israel "to allow better and faster movement of people of goods", while taking into account its "legitimate security concerns".
While restrictions on Palestinians' mobility in the West Bank had been eased, Israel still effectively blocked exports from Gaza the bank said, and Egypt's destruction of smuggling tunnels under the border that had been a conduit for commercial goods as well as weapons had also hit the enclave hard.
Palestinian leader accuses Israel of "˜genocide' in Gaza
Agence France-Presse
27 Sep 2014
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has accused Israel of a "genocidal crime" in Gaza, telling the United Nations negotiations had failed and the time for Palestinian independence had come, drawing a sharp rebuke from Washington.
Abbas vowed to seek war crimes prosecutions against Israel over what he called the 50-day "war of genocide" in Gaza that killed 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left the enclave in ruins.
The address angered the United States, which slammed it as "offensive," while Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Abbas of waging "diplomatic terrorism" and making "false accusations."
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, a feisty Abbas said: "There is an occupation that must end now. There is a people that must be freed immediately.
"The hour of independence of the state of Palestine has arrived."
He did not set a deadline for fast-tracking to Palestinian statehood, after aides suggested they were eyeing 2017 as a possible date.
Describing Israeli attacks on Gaza as a "genocidal crime," Abbas pledged: "We will not forget and we will not forgive, and we will not allow war criminals to escape punishment."
The war in Gaza was "a series of absolute war crimes carried out before the eyes and ears of the entire world," he said, citing the destruction left behind and the deaths of more than 460 children.
The Palestinians have threatened to join the Hague-based International Criminal Court to allow legal action to be taken against Israel, but Abbas did not specify in his address whether he would resort to the ICC.
In 2012, the Palestinians won the status of observer state in the United Nations, which gives them the ability to become a party to the ICC, where they could sue Israeli officials over alleged war crimes.
Speaking to the 193-nation Assembly, Abbas asserted that it would be "impossible to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question" of statehood.
He accused Israel of forging ahead with settlements and maintaining a blockade of Gaza despite formal pledges of peace.
Israel is offering Palestinians a future either in "isolated ghettos" or "at worst it will be a most abhorrent form of apartheid," he said, referring to the racist regime that ruled South Africa until free elections in 1994.
- US labels speech "˜offensive' -
The US State Department reacted with a tersely worded statement, calling the speech provocative and saying it would undermine peace efforts.
"President Abbas' speech today included offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject," said spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
"Such provocative statements are counterproductive and undermine efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust between the parties," she said.
Abbas said a resolution backed by Arab countries would be presented to the UN Security Council to relaunch talks with a view to reaching a final settlement with Israel on the two-state solution.
It remained unlikely that such a resolution would garner support within the 15-member council, notably from the United States, which has repeatedly vetoed resolutions seen as undermining Israel.
The council has been trying for weeks to unite behind a draft resolution seeking to shore up a ceasefire accord in Gaza.
Abbas spoke after rival Palestinian factions reached a unity deal that will pave the way for the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza and for a massive internationally funded reconstruction effort to begin.
The war in Gaza ended on August 26 when the two sides agreed in Cairo on a ceasefire and to hold future talks on Palestinian demands to end an eight-year blockade of Gaza.