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Netanyahoo Is Giving Up
Without taking many more military casualties Israel can not reach any of its declared objectives in Gaza. Netanyahoo is giving up for now and has ordered the retreat of all Israeli forces. He rejects any negotiated cease fire as he politically would win nothing but possibly loose a lot through it. Hamas is thereby free to do whatever it decides to do.
As soon as the fighting dies somewhat down the censorship over the Israeli press will have to be lifted. The reports then will show that the political decision making over the attack on Gaza was crude and panicked. It will also show that the IDF’s operations were hapless and with only few successes. The army lost at least 64 soldiers to enemy fire while in its last incursion into Gaza only 6 were killed by the opposition. There will be many questions asked to the high command and heads will roll.
Some commission may even ask why Netanyahoo decided to start this unsuccessful campaign at all. I also expect that Obama and Kerry will be looking for some revenge for the insults Netanyahoo publicly threw at them. His career as politician will be damaged and possibly even over.
Meanwhile the ordeal of Gaza and its peoples will continue.
“Concentrate” and “exterminate”: Israel parliament deputy speaker’s Gaza genocide plan
Moshe Feiglin, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has published a plan for the total destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
His detailed plan, which calls for the use of concentration camps, amounts to direct and public incitement to genocide – a punishable crime under the Genocide Convention.
In a 1 August posting on his Facebook page, Feiglin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, calls for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”
“This is our country – our country exclusively,” he writes, “including Gaza.”
Feiglin’s posting is the text of a letter he addressed to Netanyahu.
Citizens and public authorities around the world should attempt to have Feiglin arrested and prosecuted under the Genocide Convention for his statements, should he set foot in their territories.
His abominable plan comes as the death toll from Israel’s ongoing slaughter in Gaza reaches 1,752 people, including ten persons killed on Sunday morning when Israel once again bombed a United Nations-run school being used as a shelter, this time in the southern town of Rafah.moshe-feiglin-sq.jpg
Moshe Feiglin (David Rabkin/Wikimedia Commons)
Feiglin, like his Knesset colleague Ayelet Shaked, has previously made genocidal statements, but these are perhaps his most specific and explicit.
Calling for mass extermination and ethnic cleansing, Feiglin now urges Netanyahu to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.”
Jaffa is a major Palestinian coastal city that was ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in 1948 and incorporated into present-day Israel. The few thousand Palestinians who remain in the city face ongoing attempts to force them out.
As of this writing, Feiglin’s Facebook post had more than eight thousand “Likes” and had been shared almost two thousand times.
Posted by: crone | Aug 3 2014 17:51 utc | 54
Palestine pushing for Hague Court probe into Israeli ‘war crimes’ in Gaza
Israeli army summarily executed fleeing civilians in southern Gaza
Even before a short-lived ceasefire allowed journalists to enter the besieged southern Gaza Strip town of Khuzaa on 1 August, desperate reports of an Israeli massacre — including execution-style shootings — had emerged from survivors who had escaped to nearby Khan Younis.
Once journalists were able to enter the choked-off village, they found slain bodies and the stench of decay. Journalist Jesse Rosenfeld described one scene, among several, that appeared to be the site of a summary execution: “Blood and blackened remnants are caked on the bathroom floor. The walls have been drenched in blood and they are pocked with scores of bullet holes that look as if they were fired from an automatic weapon at waist level.”
Fifty-one bodies were recovered on 1 August.
Deliberately firing on civilans
On Saturday, Ali Abunimah reported on a video apparently made by Israeli soldiers from the Givati brigade on 30 July, recording their dedication of the destruction of a mosque in Khuzaa to fallen Israeli soldiers.
Now, after conducting its own investigations into the events between 23 and 25 July, Human Rights Watch has accused the Israeli army of deliberately firing on and killing civilians in the southern Gaza town of Khuzaa, violating several laws of war.
After interviewing surviving witnesses in Khan Younis, Human Rights Watch was able to chronicle the war crimes committed by the Israeli army. Such crimes include firing on civilians carrying white flags in an attempt to flee the village; shooting at medical workers attending to a mortally wounded Red Crescent paramedic volunteer; denying medical care to Palestinians in Israeli custody; and shooting at civilians after they were ordered to exit their homes.
This is not the first time such crimes have been committed in Khuzaa. As both Human Rights Watch and the Goldstone report documented, during Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive on Gaza Israeli soldiers shot at several Palestinians in Khuzaa carrying white flags, killing at least one and injuring more.
Continue
Posted by: crone | Aug 5 2014 20:43 utc | 81
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