be just

Murder and Destruction in 2008 going on in 2009 too. In the past 5 days, Israel, the only officially racist country in the world, is going for the “Kill” after starving Gaza by imposing sanction on the people. Ever since I have followed the Palestine occupation, I have never witnessed such destruction in ferocity. One can only imagine Groznyy’s destruction by Russian forces dislodged the Chechens after ruining the City on February 2000 and the obliteration of Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 on November. The similarity of the destruction, the reason for the destruction, the amount of weapon and indiscriminate usage are all proximal. Why Chechens, Iraqis, and Palestinians resisted knowing at the end of it all lies ruin and stench of death? What is that mean to lose freedom? To be humiliated by invading forces? To be killed on the streets? To be bombed from the air, land and sea? To ask the occupiers permission to go to work or where to live? To lose land and properties to be given to someone el...

Tariq Ali: In the face of Israel's latest onslaught against Hamas in Gaza, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk : "Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the 'international community' in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run. Even the timing of the election was set by the determination to rig the outcome. Scheduled for the summer of 2005, it was delayed till January 2006 to give Abbas time to distribute assets in Gaza – in the words of an Egyptian intelligence officer, 'the public wil...

ei: New birth pangs for the Middle East : "US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously celebrated Israel's 2006 aggression against Lebanon as 'the birth pangs of a new Middle East.' She could say the same thing about Gaza today, but it will not be the birth of the Middle East she wanted. Israel's savage attacks on Gaza come after months and weeks of repeated threats and secret planning. The shockwaves are rumbling all over the Arab world, as much because of the official Arab silence and international cowardice and complicity as because of Israel's barbarity."

ei: Is the UN complicit in Israel's massacre in Gaza? A friend forwarded to me the most original greeting for the New Year: "I wish in 2009 a horrible year for all war criminals and their accomplices." I could not but think of whether some United Nations officials can be counted among such "accomplices." Over the last two days, various UN officials stated that the percentage of civilians among those Palestinians killed in the current Israeli war of aggression on Gaza is about "25 percent" and is "likely to increase." Assuming the best of intentions, stating such a painfully low figure reflects shabby research or scandalous incompetence. At worst, it reveals intentional deception and misinformation that can only benefit the already massive and well-oiled Israeli public relations machine.