In this case, I'm going to decline choosing a side in this lopsided war, as there is really no lesser of two evils I can discern. I'll just report the facts according to the mainstream media - mostly consisting of foreign news agencies (which tend to do better fact-gathering and analysis on the Israel-Palestine/Islamic conflict than the overtly Likudnik oriented US media.
Covering the horrific humanitarian disaster and violence in the Mid-East region for the Independent (UK), Donald MacIntyre writes that according to a new report from human rights groups like Oxfam and Amnesty International, conditions in Gaza are the worst they have been in forty years. The article notes, among other things, that:
"The agencies, including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children UK, Care International UK and Christian Aid, say that last weekend's "upsurge in violence and human misery" in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military operations against rocket attacks "underlines the urgency of this report". They call for pressure on Israel to reopen the Gaza crossings.
The report says that with 80 per cent of families in Gaza are currently dependent on food aid humanitarian conditions in Gaza are now worse than "at any time since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967".
With unemployment set to rise to 50 per cent, 95 per cent of Gaza's industrial operations have halted because of the closures of Gaza crossings. It says that between 40 million and 50 million litres of untreated sewage continue to pour into the Mediterranean daily because of a lack of fuel for treatment plants and warns of a current "60-70 per cent" shortage of diesel required for hospital power generators.
It quotes World Health Organisation estimates that the proportion of patients given permits to leave Gaza for medical treatment has fallen from 89 per cent in January 2007 to an "unprecedented low" of 64.3 per cent in December 2007 and that 20 per cent of patients, including five children, have died while waiting for permits. Christian Aid's director, Daleep Mukarji, said yesterday: "The UK Government should acknowledge that a new strategy is needed for Gaza. The current policy does not secure vital security for Israeli citizens, and even if it did the blockade policy would still be unacceptable and illegal."
He added: "Humanitarian aid can help stave off total collapse but it will not provide a long-term solution. Gaza cannot become a partner for peace unless Israel, Fatah and the Quartet engage with Hamas and give the people of Gaza a future."
Oxfam International has been covering the violence and reporting on its grim death toll as well. On March 3, they state in an article entitled "Children and Civilian Bystanders In Gaza Death Toll" that
"Many of the Palestinians killed were militants involved in attacks on Israel, but others were unarmed civilians taking no part in the hostilities, including some 25 children. The precise number of civilians killed is unclear and difficult to establish.
The Israeli chief of staff is reported to have claimed that 90 percent of those killed were militants, but the UN and other sources, including those in Gaza, suggest that as many as half of the dead were civilians. More than 250 other people, including scores of unarmed civilians, have been injured.
Israeli forces also destroyed houses and property across the Gaza Strip, including at least two medical facilities, before withdrawing on 3 March.
Amnesty International said on Sunday that the Israeli military air strikes and artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip were being carried out with reckless disregard for civilian life, and called on Israel to put an immediate end to such disproportionate and reckless attacks.
"Israel has a legal obligation to protect the civilian population of Gaza,” said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. “These attacks are disproportionate and go beyond lawful measures which Israeli forces may take in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups."
The US media aren't giving these atrocious allegations of human rights violations by the Israel government against the citizens of the Occupied Territorites the kind of comprehensive and balanced coverage and analysis as it would seem to me to deserve.
Reuters is also providing its readers with some solid coverage of what is going on, again, another example of the British press playing close attention to the story. I think its dispatch is worth a read, even though it only covers the same details as the Independent.
Finally, on the topic of the US's foreign policy toward Hamas and the Palestinians, check out this big story from Vanity Fair on the Bush administration's plot to instigate an civil war among the Palestinians after Hamas unexpectedly won the Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006. Observers are already touting this as being as bad as Iran-Contra was in the 1980s.
1 comments:
This is very interesting. I always wonder if the US press downplays the humanitarian card, and the aid organizations and foreign press ramp up the volume so that we can never get a good sense of what is going on. Can you update us with some coverage from a mainstream (or closest to it) news source from Israel? Or maybe find out if any Israeli soldiers have objected to the attacks?
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