za3tar

… this will really brighten your day (at least it did for me).

The video picture quality is not good, but that is not important.

Figaro … Figaro … Figaro …

During the last crisis in Gaza, Israeli spokespeople and pro-Israeli pundits argued that the high amount of civilian death and casualties is not because of Israel’s use of excessive fire power and disregard of Palestinian civilian human life, but because the Hamas fighters were hiding between civilians. On the scene eye witness accounts, however, have often denied that Hamas fighters or rockets were located in the bombed areas.

Even if we chose to believe that Israel is only surgically targeting militants and not infrastructure, civil services facilities, or just bombing anything that moves; That still does not justify Israel’s actual actions on the ground.

For example, Israel already had complete knowledge of GPS locations of hospitals, UN schools and facilities, and even residential towers. Israel also has complete knowledge that civilians fled to these locations for shelter and treatment. So, if Israel was really trying to minimize civilian casualties in the densely populated Gaza Strip, and even if a sniper or a rocket was fired from a hospital or a school’s vicinity, is the surgically targeted response to bomb the entire area ? Does that really minimize civilian casualties ? What benefit would Israel get from bombing a hospital ??

In the following video, Kenneth Roth, an executive director at the Human Rights Watch describes how Israel used 155 millimeter caliber weapons in a densely populated civilian area. A single fire from this weapon can cause casualties within a 300 meeter radius of its impact location. So, would an army seeking to minimize civilian casualties use such a weapon in a dense urban setting ? The answer is of course not.

The following interview is only 3 minutes long and is really worth the viewing. Unfortunately, it only aired on CNN International which is rarely viewed inside America.

Now that Israel has finally started to allow international journalists to go into the Gaza Strip, some reports of the scale of death and destruction inflicted on that tiny strip are starting to come out.

During the 22 day war only Arabic news networks had reporters embedded in the strip. Aljazeera English was the only international news network with reporters. Hopefully now

The following are a couple of reports filed by CNN’s Ben Wedeman. Unfortunately it seems that these reports were only aired on CNN international which does not really watched in America.

Kudos to Wedeman and all other journalists in Gaza for following the truth and reporting what is happening on the ground.

CNN had an interview with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian legislator, in the early days of the violence in Gaza. Dr. Barghouti was trying to explain to his interviewer Rick Sanchez of CNN’s newsroom that contrary to what Israel’s PR has been broadcasting on the American airwaves, it was them who broke the ceasefire first.

In a rare deviation from their pro-Israel stance, CNN (not CNN International, but the CNN that airs in the USA) did a little investigation of this (i.e. a Google search) and found out that indeed Israel broke the truce in early November by carrying out an attack inside Gaza.

In order to protect himself from a possible flood of Israeli and pro-Israeli complaints, Rick Sanchez had to have the camera man actually film the news articles while he read them on air just to prove that many credible news sources reported on this incident early on.

Here is a video of this event.

Kudos and Thank you Rick Sanchez for your courage and taking an honest journalistic stance. Also thank you to Dr. Barghouti for his continuous interviews trying to give a moderate Palestinian perspective on the Gaza issue to anyone willing to listen.

[also reported here.]

Israel claims it is not targeting civilians. The USA agrees. But the images tell a different story. The United Nations reports more than 250 children were killed by Israel in its current bombardment and onslaught. Which humanity is this ? Are we not human beings ?

New York’s mayor had the audacity to compare this to a madman knocking on your door. Other senators asked wouldn’t the USA have to interfere if rockets fell on Southern California from Mexico or Seattle from Vancouver. I wonder how would that mayor and those senators react to 250+ children dead in New York, Seattle, or Southern California. Are we not as much human as they are ? How would they react if they lost every single member of their families ? This is pretty horrific. Yet this is just a glimpse of what is taking place in Gaza with their approval and the implicit approval of the U.S. government. So how can they have humanity and sympathy towards some group people, and none towards another group ?

If you still need further evidence of the horrible, cold-blooded, and inhumane death that Israel has brought to the people of Gaza and the children of Gaza, I give you this 2 minute news report.