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Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was shot dead by an Israeli tank shell in April of this year. Of course it is internationally illegal and forbidden to shoot at journalists covering conflict zones. An Israeli investigation was opened as to why was Shana shot dead even though he was wearing a “press vest”, and was moving in a car clearly marked as “TV”.

Today, the investigation concluded, and i quote:

The Israeli troops that were responsible for firing a shell at him [Shana], were not responsible for his death nor the death of eight other civilians who also died in the attack.

At first, this may seem illogical to you, but a deeper look reveals that Palestinians in this area have evolved what is now called “Armored Skin Cells” (ASC) that protects them from tank shells and surface missiles. So, it very likely that an Israeli tank can shoot a shell at a reporter or a civilian without them getting hurt. Ridiculous! Just Ridiculous.

Argh, there are countries under the rule of international law, and there are countries that are above the rule of international law. Go figure!

Here is the Reuters report if you are interested

Put this on your social networking profile page (e.g. Facebook and MySpace) to help raise awareness of the massacre in Gaza and notify those who might not have seen/heard of this yet (specially in the West).

Please spread the word; tell your friends, and redistribute this picture.

then i don’t know what will.

… in the news

Traveling thousands of miles to start my graduate education, i was disconnected from the world for about 10 days. With a couple of days driving on the road, and no internet set up at home yet, i had no means to check the news or anything. So, when i was planning to write my next post, i was thinking of talking about my 2-day driving road trip.

However, as soon as i got connected, the stark dark news was hard to escape. The mass punishment of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza is just inhumane. No words can really describe what is going on. It is truly frightening. What would happen if this was done to people in Europe or the USA ? How would the world react ? What description would be given to the country/people applying such mass punishment ? Why is it not done now ? Why is the world turning its blind eye ?

Words escape me trying to come up with something different that what many great bloggers have said about this. I leave you with this nice article by Sabbah.

I found this via this post on Sabbah’s Blog. An upcoming documentary (not sure where it will air, but i am on the look out) features six Israeli female soldiers recalling their experiences in the Israeli army torturing Palestinians. Good to hear that this is finally coming out more vocally.

Anyway, this is originally a Reuters news report that you can read here.