Palestine

By Norman Solomon

Israelis and Arabs “feel that only force can assure justice,” I. F. Stone noted soon after the Six Day War in 1967. And he wrote: “A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and thus their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous that it is right to destroy them.”

The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government’s stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described.

Obama-Biden Transition Project - 451 6th St. NW at 4:30 pm Monday, December 29th

What's the death count now? 300? How many injured? 1,000?

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, defended Israel's attack. "Israel has the right to self defense," he said. The Washington Post's lead editorial today said the same thing. Meanwhile, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Gabriela Shalev, said her country is only defending itself from Hamas. They're all reading the same script.

Israel's attacks are continuing.

Is there any way you could join us on the streets in DC tomorrow at 4:30 pm for an emergency action? The world would be happy to see you on the street. The demonstration will take place from 4:30 pm to 8:00 pm at the Obama Transition Headquarters located at 451 6th St., NW, (on 6th, between D & E) a two-block walk from either the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro on the Green Line or Judiciary Square on the Red Line: Obama-Biden Transition Project

By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. The carnage is everywhere - city streets, a mosque, hospitals, police stations, a jail, a university bus stop, a plastics factory, a television station. It seems impossible, unacceptable, to step back to analyze the situation while bodies remain buried under the rubble, while parents continue to search for their missing children, while doctors continue to labor to stitch burned and broken bodies back together without sufficient medicine or equipment. The hospitals are running short even of electricity-the Israeli blockade has denied them fuel to run the generators. It is an ironic twist on the legacy of Israel's involvement in an earlier massacre - in the Sabra and Shatila camps, in Lebanon back in 1982, it was the Israeli soldiers who lit the flairs, lighting the night sky so their Lebanese allies could continue to kill.

Tell Congress to enforce the law.

Gaza --The Israeli Air Force attacked the occupied Gaza Strip killing an estimated 200 or more people and injuring hundreds more, yesterday. (See video)These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life. A virtually unarmed and starving people, the Palestinians of Gaza have been living under an illegal blockade and lock down for the past six months.

As Bill Fletcher warned on this site less than two weeks ago, silence toward human rights abuses against the Palestinian people means the removal or elimination of a people, a stated objective of a segment of the Israeli ruling class.

Scores dead in Israeli raid on Gaza | alJazeera.com

Israel has launched air strikes on Hamas installations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 155 people and causing heavy damage, according to officials and witnesses.

At least 30 missiles were fired at targets on Saturday, with the head of emergency services in Gaza saying that at least 200 people were also wounded.

Hours after the Israeli strikes Gaza fighters fired rockets into southern Israel, heeding to calls by Hamas and other affiliated Palestinian groups to avenge the attacks, unprecedented in their scale.

At least one Israeli was killed in the rocket fire, Israeli medics said.

Among those killed in Israel's massive offensive was Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza police chief.

Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman, said the missiles hit a police graduation ceremony in Gaza City.

by Linda Milazzo

For years since the United States invaded Iraq, I've witnessed countless photo and video images of innocent civilians - men, women, teens and children - being rudely and aggressively threatened by hired uniformed militants (mostly men), wielding guns. I've seen these images from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Palestine, and more. Whether they be armed American military threatening Iraqis, armed Israeli soldiers threatening Palestinians, or armed Ethiopian troops threatening Somalis, the images have always disturbed me. There's an inherent injustice to such blatant imbalance of power. An injustice I suffered recently myself.

The oddity here is that unlike those less fortunate innocents in war zones who faced the guns of hired aggressors, I was not in a war zone when I faced mine. I wasn't even in a high crime zone. I was in a gentle middle class suburb, where my aggressor, an armed Brinks, Inc. security guard, was in full combat-mode performing his non war-zone duty. My aggressor more typified the machismo of a Blackwater guard than the demeanor of community-minded Brinks, when he flailed his loaded gun at me, as though he'd done it often before. My armed Brinks aggressor was not merely disrespectful. He was downright hostile and dangerous. He treated me as his enemy and freely showed me his force.

Here's how it happened:

Obama v. Richard Falk on Israel and Occupied Palestine
by Stephen Lendman

Obama leaves no ambiguity where he stands. From public statements, campaign pledges, policy advisors, and war cabinet selections, his positions affirm:

• one-sided pro-Israeli zealotry;
• continued Palestinian oppression;
• no end to the Iraq war and occupation;
• possibly attacking Iran and/or allying with Israel to do it;
• pursuing an imperial agenda; targeting Pakistan, Russia and other countries;
• expanding the size of the military; increasing expenditures for it; and
• providing Israel annually with billions of dollars; the latest weapons and technology; the same zero interest rate loans Wall Street gets; liberal debt forgiveness; virtually anything Israel requests on the pretext of security, to wage aggressive war, or expand its illegal settlements; and
• acquiescing and remaining silent after Israel insulted a high UN official by harassing and detaining him, then expelling him from the country.

Edumacation Secdatary Arne Duncan Wants Military Schools
By Bruce K. Gagnon | Organizing Notes.com

Chicago teacher Jesse Sharkey writes, "In the past couple years, Arne Duncan [Obama's pick for Secretary of Education who hails from Chicago] has been turning public schools over to private operators--mainly in the form of charter and contract schools -- at a rate of about 20 per year. Duncan has also resuscitated some of the worst 'school reform' ideas of the 1990s, like firing all the teachers in low-performing schools (called 'turnarounds'). At the same time, he's eliminated many Local School Councils and made crucial decisions without public input."

"To me, the thing that made Duncan's role clear came after three months of organizing at Senn High School, the community school where I teach, against the Chicago Board of Education's proposal to install a Naval Academy."

Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border
Marie Colvin | TimesOnLine.com

AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

“We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”

Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.