Free Gaza, Free Palestine, Free Palestinians

Today 27th December marks the 2nd Anniversary of the massacre of around 1,400 old men, women and children at GAZA in 2008. This war crime was committed by the powerful army of an occupying power equipped with American weapons’ and financed by £1.1 Bn dollars per annum of American military aid.

At 11:30am on December 27, 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of suppressing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. Israel opened the attack with a surprise air strike against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008. Israeli forces attacked civilians, police stations, schools, universities, mosques, and governmental buildings. Israeli forces attacked civilians and used white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas.



Israel claims that it was targeting Hamas armed fighters and infrastructure, ostensibly in response to the firing of homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel. However, field investigations by the Gaza-based human rights organization Al Mezan show that United Nations-administered schools, mosques, universities, emergency medical crews, private homes and other civilian objects have all been in Israel's sights.

Among those killed on the first day of bombing, when more than 100 tons of bombs were dropped on the tiny coastal enclave, included police officers who were attending a graduation ceremony, school children heading home after a day of study, and other Gazans killed without warning as they were conducting their normal business.



Entire families have been wiped out during the air strikes and shelling, including that of Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan who was extra judicially executed along with his family in their home in a Gaza refugee camp. More than 40 were killed on 6 January when Israeli forces shelled the United Nations-administered Fakhoura School in the Jabalia refugee camp, where families who had been displaced by the bombing were seeking shelter. The UN has demanded an independent investigation and its spokespersons assert that GPS coordinates of all UN locations were given to Israel to prevent such an atrocity. Israel recanted its claim that resistance fighters released fire on Israeli soldiers from the school, which has been categorically denied by UN officials.



The bloody operation in Gaza came after the expiration of a six-month-long ceasefire between Israel and resistance groups in Gaza, including Hamas. Israel had broken the ceasefire on 4 November, when it extra judicially executed six Palestinians in Gaza whom it said was digging tunnels to Israel. During the five previous months of the ceasefire, Hamas had refrained from firing rockets and prevented other groups from doing so. However, Israel failed to ease the nearly two-year-long embargo on the Gaza Strip that has crippled economic life and brought the area to the brink of a humanitarian crisis — one of Israel's obligations under the ceasefire.

On January 18, 2009, the war ended in a ceasefire, Israel completed its withdrawal on January 21. Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and other 5500 were injured while 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, were killed.



As I have pointed out before the democratically elected Hamas administration in Gaza has had a brilliant master stroke in appointing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as its recruiting sergeant. Rarely has an organisation had a more effective recruiter in a territory which has been systematically destroyed by Israel (The Airport, Port, Hospitals, Factories, Government offices, power generators, etc ;) in flagrant breach of International Law including the Geneva Conventions on administration of occupied territories, protection of non-combatants and two UN Resolutions.

Let us not forget in our PC world why Gaza exists is two words never used in Israel; Ethnic Cleansing. Gaza exists because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.





The Wikileaks cables show the complete lack of concern by American diplomats for the people of Palestine, they confirm that America is acting in this region with no moral purpose when it come to the Palestinian people and that it is utterly uninterested in the so called “Two States Solution” allowing Israel to set 100% of the agenda to stop a Palestinian State being a reality. Better to withdraw its 1.1 Bn Dollar military aid to Israel which is totally contrary to the US’s strategic interests. Better to withdraw its 1. 0 Bn a year aid to Egypt which allows the Pharaoh Murbarak and the military elite to run a repressive farce pretending to be a democracy. Why, America will really be surprised when Egypt implodes and the US loses another great ally? Far better to cut both these payments by America’s hard pressed taxpayer and divert the resources to addressing the results and righting the wrongs of the 1948 ethnic cleansing and making the “Two Nation” solution a reality.





The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). The mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of willful killings and willfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility…

It [the UN mission] also finds that the direct targeting and arbitrary killing of Palestinian civilians is a violation of the right to life.

(source: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, UNO, Sept. 15, 2009)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

The opening lines of the United States Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776




We must never forget what happened to GAZA two years ago or to the people of Palestine in 1948.

For the background to Nakba - The ethnic cleansing of Palestine see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/05/nakba.html

Free Gaza, Free Palestine, Free the Palestinian People.


See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/06/free-gaza.html

Free Gaza

The democratically elected Hamas administration in Gaza has had a brilliant master stroke in appointing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as its recruiting sergeant. Rarely has an organisation had a more effective recruiter in a territory which has been systematically destroyed by Israel (The Airport, Port, Hospitals, Factories, Government offices, power generators, etc ;) in flagrant breach of International Law including the Geneva Conventions on administration of occupied territories, protection of non-combatants and two UN Resolutions. The United Nations (unlike Israeli Spokesmen engaged in truth distortion) has no doubt what is happening in Gaza stating in the Security Council resolution adopted last Wednesday;

“Stressing that the situation in Gaza was not sustainable, the Council re‑emphasized the importance of the full implementation of resolutions 1850 (2008) and 1860 (2009). In that context, it reiterated its grave concern at the humanitarian situation in Gaza and stressed the need for the sustained and regular flow of goods and people to Gaza, as well as unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout the enclave. The Council also expressed support for the proximity talks.”



Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said he was distraught by the incident, which was a grave breach of international law and constituted banditry and piracy — it was “murder” conducted by a State, without justification. A nation that followed that path lost its legitimacy as a respectable member of the international community. The children of Gaza, meanwhile, did not know where their next meal was coming from; they had received no education and had no future. Today, many humanitarian workers returned home in body bags. Israel had “blood on its hands”.
High-seas freedom, he said, freedom of navigation, was one of the oldest forms of international law; no vessel could be stopped or boarded without the consent of the captain or flag State. Any suspected violation of the law did not absolve the intervening State under international law. To treat humanitarian delivery as a hostile act and to treat aid workers as combatants could not be deemed legal or legitimate. Any attempt to legitimize the attack was futile.

The strangely entitled Israeli Defence Forces commandeered the Irish flagged ship Rachel Corrie & Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched! Israel engaged in a fresh act of piracy on the high seas at the weekend taking over an Irish-flagged aid ship bearing desperately needed supplies for the Gaza Strip. The crew of the Rachel Corrie included Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mairead Maguire and former UN assistant secretary-general Dennis Halliday. As planned they put up no resistance when the ship was seized in international waters during an early-morning raid by Israeli soldiers. The ship, named after a US activist killed by Israeli forces, was taken at gunpoint to the Israeli port of Ashdod where its cargo of essential supplies to 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned in the Gaza Strip was seized and its crew imprisoned pending deportation. Dublin had demanded safe passage for its vessel. Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign reacted angrily to news of this latest breach of international law. "For the second time in less then a week, Israeli forces stormed and hijacked an unarmed aid ship, kidnapping its passengers and forcing the ship toward Ashdod port," it said. Its fury was reflected at a demonstration on the streets of the Irish capital in scenes repeated across the world involving tens of thousands of people.


MV Rachel Corrie

In Palestine protesters marching towards Gaza's border scattered as Israeli forces opened fire with live rounds. And in a show of international solidarity following Israel's deadly assault on a Gaza aid convoy last week Swedish dockworkers will begin a week-long blockade on Saturday of Israeli ships and goods. The Swedish Port Workers Union was among the groups which backed the Ship to Gaza campaign involved in the flotilla. "The reason for the blockade is the unprecedented criminal attack on the peaceful ship convoy," the union said. Elsewhere, veteran alt-rockers The Pixies have become the latest musicians to cancel a planned gig in Israel. The band did not issue a statement but a local promoter linked the pullout with the attack on the Gaza flotilla. Israeli human rights activists from Boycott! urged the band three months ago to cancel the gig, saying: "As much as some of us are huge fans and would love to hear your show, we won't cross the international picket line that is growing in numbers steadily nowadays to come and see you." A flotilla activist who had a gun pointed at her head by Israeli commandos has said that the "horrendous" ordeal made her "more determined to get back out there." At a demonstration against the flotilla raid in Edinburgh, Scottish postal worker Theresa McDermott said to the crowd of 5,000: "If we sit back and don't go, that allows their intimidatory and aggressive tactics to work.”Our governments might not be doing anything but it won't stop the normal people from these countries from going back and trying to get the aid in because we could see the suffering in Gaza. "The people of Palestine need to know that they have not been forgotten by the outside world. We are standing with them and we're going to do our best to get the next flotilla in."



Demonstrators marched through the city centre to the US consulate and ended outside Bute House, First Minister Alex Salmond's official residence. Ms McDermott was on board the Challenger when it was taken over during the fatal attack on the flotilla by Israeli soldiers last Monday. She told a Scottish tabloid after returning to the Scottish capital following her release from Israeli prison: "It was needless brutality. "We were telling them they had an obligation to the people of Gaza to let us in. But they wouldn't listen and I even had a cocked gun pointed at my head." Scottish activists who were on the flotilla will hold a press conference on Monday about the raid of the three different ships they were on. They will also speak about their own experience of beatings, torture and detention in Israel. Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through cities around the world on Saturday over the Israeli killing of nine Turkish activists last week aboard an aid ship bound for Gaza. Rallies took place in London, Sheffield, Edinburgh and other British cities as part of an international day of action which also saw demonstrations in Turkey, Lebanon, Spain, Ireland and Gaza itself.



In London, 20,000 protesters marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy to express outrage at the killings on the Mavi Marmara aid vessel and the seizure of the MV Rachel Corrie, another aid ship trying to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, by Israeli forces on Saturday morning. As demonstrators left Downing Street they waved Palestinian flags and placards saying: "End The Siege" and "For Freedom We Sail." Others chanted: "Stop Israeli piracy." Among the protesters was Sarah Colborne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who was aboard the Mavi Marmara and was in Israeli custody for almost two days before being deported to Britain. "Israel cannot be allowed to continue to commit these crimes without being brought to justice," said Ms Colborne. "It cannot board boats in international waters which have nothing but humanitarian aid and peace activists, to murder nine people and to hold us hostage, to kidnap us effectively. "What we need to happen is for humanitarian aid to freely go into Gaza, for the siege to be lifted, for an independent investigation to take place into the events of the last few days and for Israel to end its violation of international laws." Green MP Caroline Lucas, who joined the demonstration, also called for an independent inquiry into Israel's "murder and piracy."

Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said the event showed that victims' "deaths have not been in vain - what it has done is bring the world's attention to the terrible crime of the blockade of Gaza." Protester Ali Seylan, who said his brother had been aboard the flotilla, told the rally: "Israel made a big mistake. Israel's government managed to make all Turkish people the enemy of Israel." Former Respect MP George Galloway told the London rally that new Viva Palestina land and sea convoys to break the siege of Gaze would soon set off. He said after "extensive discussions in Istanbul I can announce that a land convoy will leave Britain in September.”At exactly the same time a flotilla of boats will be leaving to tour the countries of the Mediterranean before heading for Gaza." Around 5,000 Scottish protesters marched through central Edinburgh, ending in a rally where SNP MSP Sandra White read out a message on behalf of the Scottish government. She declared: "We have added Scotland's voice to that of the wider international community in condemning" the Israeli attack. The statement also demanded "the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza." International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell announced on Sunday that Britain would award £19 million in aid for refugees in Gaza to be spent on health care, education and other services.

This is Rachel Corrie a 23 year old peace activist who was killed on March 16, 2003 when she was crushed by a bulldozer on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Army, while trying to prevent the demolition of the house of a Palestinian doctor. This is her 5th grade speech at school. The Irish ship intercepted trying to break the illegal Gaza Blockade (UN Resolution and Geneva Conventions) was named after her.



Malnourished children, restrictions on Gaza-fisherman, lacklustre sewage and water systems, and the confiscation of $4.5 billion in international aid will not improve Israel’s security in the long run. It will only increase the popularity of the Hamas Movement, decrease the effects of counterterrorism throughout the globe, and create the next generation of dangerous faith-based ideologues. As Cynthia McKinney, Mairead Maguire, and Betty Williams argue, it may be time for the state of Israel to start abiding by the concept of universal human rights. Not only would such activities have the symbolic effect of furthering international unity towards tolerance and respect (despite religion, ethnicity, or background), but may strengthen Israel’s right to exist by severely diminishing Arab hostility towards the Jewish people.

The solution is rather straightforward: allowing food and medicine into the Strip will help the PEOPLE escape the poverty that has dominated their lives thus far. Who knows, perhaps lifting the embargo and easing the life of the Palestinian people will save the world from the next wave of suicide bombers. Over to you recruiting Sergeant Benjamin Netanyahu? O one more point, during the past week has anybody anywhere heard a single word from the Special Middle East Peace Envoy, Tony Blair? Obviously nothing too much was happening to interest him?

We will fight them @ Selfridges

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,”

Sir Winston Churchill
June 4th 1940

“We shall stop them shopping at Selfridges.”

David Cameron
Tbilisi, Georgia, August 16th, 2008


Mikheil Saakashvili and David Cameron

Well David Cameron knows how to show solidarity with the Georgian Prime Minister and inept military adventurer, Mikheil Saakashvili, with his blood curdling threat to stop Russian Oligarchs shopping in the West End of London. He also agreed to support Georgia’s application to join NATO, you know the anti-Soviet Bloc looking for a new meaning in life and stationing missiles in Poland to fly over Russia on the way to Iran or other “rogue states.” This is not; you will be surprised to hear the Middle Eastern “rogue state” which has attacked each and every one of its neighbours including destroying the EU funded infrastructure of Gaza, dismembering Lebanon, occupying the sovereign territory of Syria, occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank which it is settling and applying collective punishment to the civilian population (in defiance of the “quaint” Geneva Conventions), which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and which has developed nuclear weapons. And did I mention that its previous Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had personally led a terrorist massacre of women and children? During the raid on Qibya in 1953, 69 Palestinians were killed and forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were blown-up. The act was condemned by the US State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. And the current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s father was Quartermaster of the Irgun terrorist organisation (you know the guys who killed both the British and UN Peace Envoys and hanged three British soldiers including a Jewish lad from the East End) and Foreign Minister’s Tzipi Livni’s father was the leader of the Irgun group which carried out the King David Hotel massacre which killed 91 people including 17 Jews. And did I mention that a previous Israeli Prime Minister, Menachim Begin was the Irgun leader who gave the order? But less of rogue states with terrorist links, lets get back to the successor of Churchill as leader of the Conservatives.

But whilst PR Dave may not often be compared to Winston Churchill he does know about “fighting them on the beaches” for “Bucket and spade” Dave has shown his true 'blue' colours by holidaying on a £21,000 a week yacht, surrounded by an armada of seven boats of 74 mates and family and banqueting in the finest restaurants on the holiday he would prefer that you didn't see.



Mr Cameron and his family joined 74 friends on seven traditional gulet boats for a week-long tour of the Turkish Riviera which last Friday. Each of the double-masted wooden vessels with 20ft high white sails has its own personal chef, captain and two crew hands. It was Mr Cameron's second holiday within a month, but, unlike the first, he didn't invite the Press along. Three weeks ago the Tory leader and wife Samantha posed for official pictures as he holidayed with his family on a humble bucket-and-spade beach in Cornwall.

With the credit crunch biting, he portrayed himself as a stay-at-home politician in touch with the British electorate. His photo-calls and interviews led even the most loyal Tory newspapers to mock his opportunism. But there was no fanfare at all for his sybaritic week-long tour off Turkey's south-west coast where the former PR executive took advantage of its closeness to the conflict in Georgia and used a private plane for a quick photocall with the Georgian president in Tbilisi.

But by Sunday morning he, Samantha, 37, and their children had joined the sailing party off the Fethiye peninsula to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother-in-law Viscountess Astor. The total cost of hiring the seven gulets was an estimated £150,000. As the armada organised by Samantha's stepdad, Tory peer Viscount Astor sailed majestically out of Gocek Harbour it looked like a scene from 1970s BBC drama The Onedin Line. Margaret Churcher, 62, on holiday from Leicester with her daughter and son-in-law, said: "They were really impressive they took up the whole bay as they sailed out.”Those are beautiful boats but I'll have to keep dreaming. We were in just a tiny sailing boat that would probably fit in one of their cabins." Mr Cameron, his family and in-laws, were in a traditional gulet yacht called the Sema Tuana which sleeps 10.



By day, they swam in the clear blue sea, laughed with pals and drank bottle after bottle of wine served by the dutiful staff. At night, the Camerons dined at rustic seafront restaurants. The large group of pals ate fresh seafood, Turkish mezes and drank local wines at little restaurants dotted along the rugged Aegean coastline. On Wednesday, they relaxed on plush sofas as the MP for Witney read John Milton's epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost in the 38C (102F) heat. (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/08/surly-republican.html )

After showering and changing on board, scores of diners were ferried to land by inflatable dinghies. That night the party took over the Indigo Terrace restaurant in the pretty Turkish port of Kalkan until 2am before being taxied back to sea on their boats. A total of 76 guests racked up a bill of more than £2,000. Waiter Huseyin Aslan, 32, said: "They were all very wealthy and looked like they were here for a lot of fun. They were well behaved but there was a lot of laughing and drinking and some dancing.

Well as Tony Blair once remarked “If we can’t take that lot apart, we don’t deserve to be in government!” Unfortunately Tony is no longer around to take them apart; he is now a full time “Peace” envoy to rogue states in the Middle East, indeed he even has an office in one, in Jerusalem, and he may even visit Gaza one day or indeed enjoy the typical fish meal by the banks of the Euphrates in Baghdad surrounded by grateful Iraqi’s enjoying the restoration of peace he helped bring about there. Makes sense to me! (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html )

But there is a serious point to all this. Relations with Russia and Middle East Peace must start on the basis of Realpolitik, not comic book characterisations of Brutish Russians, plucky Georgians, Arab Terrorists, Holier than thou Israel. America and Europe’s overriding strategic interests lie in peace and co-operation with Russia based on mutual respect and understanding and a genuine and enduring Middle East Peace based on justice, not military adventurism subsidized by the U.S. of A. Let us say it loud and let us say it clear, whatever about any other considerations Europe and Europe have no great strategic interests in Israel or Georgia, indeed the opposite case could be made for both.

So let’s get back to reality not the sound bites of the Boy Wonder David’s *, Milliband in Kiev who is more interested in plotting coups at home than preventing them abroad and Cameron whose exercise of publicity without responsibility in Tbilisi gives opportunism a bad name. I’m sure David Cameron has many qualities but like his “holiday” in Devon being REAL is not one of them!

* Note; this is not meant to indicate a prejudice against all Davids.