Madison Rafah Journal

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

Our friends in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza report massive casualties due to the Israeli air strikes. Hospitals are overflowing with more than 200 dead and over 500 wounded (so far). So-called “Hamas compounds” included a civil police training school where scores of young men desperate for a salary to support families were assembled for a graduation ceremony. Bombs hit at school let-out time so children were in the streets in large numbers.

Many expected that no Israeli attack would be launched just hours after Israel, as widely reported in the western media, had finally allowed the delivery of a small amount of humanitarian aid to the starving population of Gaza. Widespread property damage is making life in the cold and dark of Gaza even more miserable than it was, if such a thing can even be imagined. And as I write this, it is reported that new missile attacks are targeting a mosque and various social welfare agencies located in densely crowded neighborhoods.

And the U.S. media continues to promote the myth of Israeli “retaliation” when in reality it was Israel that broke the truce several weeks ago.

If you need more information on today’s events in Gaza, click here: Gaza City hospital a gruesome scene; families pick through body parts to identify loved ones

(27 Dec) Death shrouds the hallways of Gaza City’s Ash-Shefa medical compound Saturday, its smell creeping in from all corners. Amputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead. In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him. Another man stands dazed, in shock after watching his son Mohammed killed during his graduation ceremony at the de facto police headquarters. The father of one of Mohammed’s classmates stood next to his son as he was decapitated. The man is still screaming. (Read on …)

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, December 27, 2008

As of this writing, Israeli Air Force attacks today on the occupied Gaza Strip killed an estimated 200 or more people and injured hundreds more. These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life.

While the scope of civilian casualties in today’s attacks is not yet clear, it is unmistakable that Israel carried out these attacks with F16 fighter jets and missiles provided by the taxpayers of this country. From 2001-2006, the United States transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts to fly its fleet of F16’s. In July 2008, the United States gave Israel 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel. Last year, the United States signed a $1.3 billion contract with Raytheon to transfer to Israel thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and “bunker buster” missiles.

In short, Israel’s lethal attack today on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military and political support of the United States. Therefore, we need to take action to protest this attack and demand an immediate cease-fire.

TAKE ACTION

1. Contact the White House to protest the attack and demand an immediate cease-fire. Call 202-456-1111 or send an email to comments@whitehouse.gov. (Read on …)

ETHAN BRONNER, The New York Times, December 20, 2008

he said that Israel should not be a Jewish state, that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be radically altered, that Israeli Arabs were like German Jews during the Second Reich and that the entire society felt eerily like Germany just before the rise of Hitler

JERUSALEM — THERE was a time not so long ago when Avraham Burg was viewed by many Israelis as proof that the inherent tensions of Zionism — religious versus secular, insular versus worldly, Jewish state versus state of all its citizens — could be reconciled with grace. Here was a religiously observant Jew with a cosmopolitan outlook, a decorated paratrooper who believed deeply in peace with the Arabs, an eloquent, fast-rising public figure accessible to a broad range of citizens.

Widely known by his nickname, Avrum, Mr. Burg, a happily married father of six and the son of one of Israel’s most admired and longest-serving government ministers, was talked about as a candidate for prime minister. Long before his 50th birthday, he led the World Zionist Organization and served as speaker in Parliament.

But four years ago Mr. Burg not only walked away from politics, but also basically walked away from Zionism. In a book that came out last year and has just been translated and released in the United States, he said that Israel should not be a Jewish state, that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be radically altered, that Israeli Arabs were like German Jews during the Second Reich and that the entire society felt eerily like Germany just before the rise of Hitler. (Read on …)

Illustration by Peter Schrank

The Economist, Dec 18th 2008 | CAIRO

Egypt’s government takes the heat as the Gazans’ lot gets even worse

THE president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, is coming under growing criticism, abroad and at home, for failing to ease the plight of Gaza’s 1.5m people, whose misery is increasing as Israel’s siege of the tiny coastal strip grinds on. The blockade has enjoyed the quiet backing of America and its allies as well as Egypt’s practical co-operation in closing Gaza’s only border not directly controlled by Israel.

The blockade was meant to force Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that conquered Gaza in mid-2007 after winning a general election in the Palestinian territories the year before, to renounce violence, recognise Israel, and accept previous peace deals with Israel made by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority; the PA, dominated by the secular-minded Fatah group, is accepted by most countries as the Palestinian government. So far, however, after 18 months, the squeeze has hurt ordinary Gazans far more than it has harmed Hamas. The Israelis say they will open the crossings to people and goods (apart from a trickle of humanitarian supplies) only when Palestinian fighters stop firing rockets into Israel. A shaky truce between Hamas and Israel comes to an end on December 19th. It is unclear what will happen if a cycle of violence resumes on a larger scale.

While Israel receives growing international opprobrium, the PA, presided over from the West Bank by Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, has seen its flimsy legitimacy eroded by charges of colluding with the Israeli oppressors. A chorus of opinion within the region, fanned by Hamas’s ideological ally, Iran, and spread by like-minded Islamists elsewhere, is beginning to embarrass other pro-Western Arab regimes that have tacitly acquiesced in isolating Hamas. (Read on …)

The Economist, Dec 18th 2008

The best way to weaken the rejectionists of Hamas is to restore the Palestinians’ belief in diplomacy

CONTRARY to the absurd claim of the rapporteur of the UN’s Human Rights Council, to whom Israel refused entry this week, the Gaza Strip is not facing a Nazi-like “Holocaust” at Israel’s hands. But the lot of the 1.5m Palestinians cooped up in this miserable scrap of desert is undeniably awful. Locked in on one side by Israel and on the other by Egypt, the Palestinians of Gaza have been subjected to an ever-tightening economic siege since the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, booted the secular Fatah movement out of the strip in June 2007. The possible end this week of a truce between Hamas and Israel can only make things worse. As the truce has frayed, Israel has responded to the Palestinian rockets flying over the border by closing the crossings for long periods, depriving Gaza’s residents of many necessities of life (see article).

A house divided

If the lot of Gaza is awful, the condition of the Palestinians as a whole is not much better. Unlike Hamas, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank stands by the decision the Palestine Liberation Organisation made a decade and a half ago to recognise Israel. Since the summit George Bush held last year in Annapolis, the PA’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, has been talking to Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, about how to form a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But they have not closed the gap on crucial issues such as borders, Jerusalem or refugees. And even if they had, it is not clear what such an agreement would be worth. Mr Olmert is a lame duck who will leave office after Israel’s election in February. Hamas calls Mr Abbas a lame duck too: his four-year term expires in January. Though he will probably stay on anyway, a Palestinian president who speaks only for the West Bank and not for Gaza is in no position to deliver peace. (Read on …)

Commissioner for Human Rights Policy Günter Nooke congratulates human rights defender Issam Younis on winning the Weimar Human Rights Award

Federal Foreign Office, 10 Dec 2008

Today, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Weimar Human Rights Award was conferred on Palestinian human rights defender Issam Younis. At the ceremony in Weimar Günter Nooke, the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid at the Federal Foreign Office, said in his citation:

“I congratulate the City of Weimar on this choice! Issam Younis and his organization Al Mezan work day in, day out, with complete impartiality and heedless of anyone’s position or status, to protect human dignity and defend human rights. Under circumstances such as those prevailing in Gaza, this calls for extraordinary courage. All members of his organization know they are taking a great personal risk. With unflagging energy and commitment, Al Mezan offers the victims of human rights abuses practical help and support – given the desperate situation in the Gaza Strip a real ray of hope.

Human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and in Israel – this whole issue is of course closely linked with the Middle East peace process. Ultimately only a credible peace settlement will end the violence and human rights abuses. That is why the German Government is working actively to help bring about such a settlement.”

Since 1995 the City of Weimar has conferred a yearly Human Rights Award in memory of the unnamed victims of dictatorships and tyrannies. The United Nations has proclaimed 10 December Human Rights Day. The Award is endowed with 2,500 euro. (Read on …)