pogrom in Gaza

UPON expiry of the 24-hour UN-brokered truce, Israel has resumed its naval, air and ground attack on Gaza since Sunday morning, despite Hamas's announcing a 24-hour ceasefire.

During the short-lived lull in hostilities, what Gaza residents, humanitarian and rescue workers and foreign journalists saw was mind-boggling. It was as if demons were let loose to demolish big buildings and concrete structures literally into dust. Those were mostly civilian structures -- -- residential buildings, schools, hospitals, even UN-shelters -- that came under the savage attack of the Israelis. Trapped in a small strip of land hardly 139 square miles in area, washed by the Mediterranean sea on the West, surrounded by hostile Israel along its 32 miles long border on the East and North and a less than 7 miles long border with not-so-friendly Egypt on the Southwest, the 1.8 million-strong Gazans have practically no escape route to flee or place to hide when attacked. So, whenever Israel  launches its  mission to exterminate with its overwhelming firepower against the population of this densely populated enclave purportedly to chastise what they term 'terrorist Hamas,' it is the  unarmed civilians -- men, women and children -- who pay the ultimate price .

As the corpses of defenceless women, children and men pile up, the Israeli leaders gloat over the carnage as their success in punishing the elusive 'terrorists.'  As if as an irony of history, the Jewish leaders of Israel take a sadistic pleasure in reenacting a new version of 'pogrom' on the Palestinian populations in Gaza, in the West Bank or elsewhere in the Middle East. One may recall that throughout history, the Jewish people themselves were subjected to untold sufferings in their various European ghettoes at the hands of their tormentors in those countries through the extermination campaigns called 'pogroms.' Such pogroms against European Jewish communities continued from the 14th until the 19th centuries. Even as late as in the '30s and early '40s of 20th century (between1933 and the fall of Hitler in Nazi Germany in May 1945), the horror was again revived that saw the deaths of millions of Jewish people. What a strange lesson the Israeli Jewish leaders have learnt from history! The once persecuted have now turned against a people who never meant any harm to the Jewish people. This is a treachery of historic proportions.

But pampered by the US and other Western powers, the Israeli rulers have long been trampling with impunity all international laws and conventions while carrying out their killing missions against the Palestinian people. Unsurprisingly, they thought nothing of shelling two Red Crescent ambulances that killed a medical staff and injured another critically. Even the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the area admitted that such attack on ambulances, hospitals and medical workers constituted a serious violation of the law of war.   But who cares? As long as the Western powers extend their unqualified support to Israel, it will go on trampling all international norms on self-defense grounds.   

A very convenient kind of self-defence, indeed! You enter a civilian settlement of the Palestinians with your planes, drones, tanks, APCs, bombs and missiles, massacre them at will and try to justify it as an act of self-defence! However, the civilised (!) world never hesitates to express their worries at civilian casualties. But nothing more than that. No effective steps to stop them from killing Palestinians and destroying their settlements.

This time the Israeli campaign's explicit target has been to destroy  the 'tunnels' the Hamas militants built and have been using to fire rockets from as well as to sneak into Israeli territory to launch surprise raids against them. The Israelis could have rather blamed the Gaza people, not just the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants, for digging the tunnels. What else can the human beings encaged in that enclave called Gaza do other than dig tunnels to smuggle in food, fuel, medicines, construction materials and other daily necessaries they need to survive when the Israelis have sealed all their (the Gazan's) openings to the outside world through a seven-year-long blockade since Hamas won Gaza election in 2006?  The opening on the southwestern border with Egypt has also been sealed with the ouster of the first-ever elected government in Egypt led by Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. In fact, these tunnels are but the lifelines of the Gaza residents. Small wonder Hamas, as part of its condition for any lasting ceasefire in the ongoing resistance war, has demanded a permanent end to the blockade that Israel has been keeping in force on its borders.  

It is the fourth big Israeli offensive into Gaza since Hamas assumed power in that territory.  In all such campaigns, Israel's losses (in terms of civilian or military casualties) have remained very minimal compared to that suffered by the Palestinians. But in this latest campaign that started since July 8, some 46 Israelis have been killed among whom 43 were soldiers. The number of Palestinian deaths, on the other hand, has crossed 1060. But compared to the past, this is the highest number of casualties that the Israelis have suffered. Evidently, the Israeli ground offensive is facing stiff resistance from Hamas fighters. The massive demonstrations by Palestinians in the West Bank against Israel's atrocities in Gaza have also dealt a blow to Netanyahu's game of using the hostilities between PLO and Hamas to his advantage. If Netanyahu still believes in a two-state solution as a way to lasting Middle East peace, he must immediately stop this war and withdraw his forces from Gaza. Otherwise, he will go down in history as the villain who destroyed that possibility.

may help women live longer

TBT Lifestyle Desk: Late-life mothering increases the chance of a woman living longer than most of her peers, a new study says.

The researchers made a comparison between women who had their last child when they were 29 years old and those who had a child later in life. They realized that a woman who gave birth at the age of 33 was two times likely to outlive 95 percent of her age mates. Those who had their last child between the age of 33 and 37 had the best chance of surviving longest; they were about 2.08 times likely to live to an unusual old age. Those who had a child after they were 37 years old were 1.92 times to live that long.

The study involved a research on motherhood and survival and involved about 4,800 participants from 551 families in Denmark and the United States. The study aimed at finding out the factors that could predict long life. All the women in the study had given birth to at least one child. They made comparisons in child bearing histories of two groups of women. Group one had 311 women from Long Life Family Study. The women had lived longer than 95 percent of their women age mates. The second group had 151 women who were not in the first 5 percent but had lived for more than 70 years.

The team sought to find the link between childbearing years and the chances of becoming the ‘oldest of old ladies’. Is it that what does not kill you makes you strong? The children need a mom to make a sandwich for them or offer one more piece of advice.

This study extended the findings of some previous studies. It suggested that robust women are likely to live long and their potential to live longest could be revealed by their ability to have children at advanced ages.

A TURNING POINT ?

An Israeli tank fires a 155mm shell towards targets in the Gaza Strip from their position near Israel’s border with the Palestinian enclave on July 23. — AFP photo/David Buimovitch

WHEN the current round of fighting began in Gaza, it appeared to be another episode of a saga that began when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005, and then imposed a blockade in 2007, after Hamas took control of the strip.
This is the fourth major conflict between Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza since then. When it began, the Israeli government’s rhetoric suggested that it preferred a small, short-term conflict in which it would cause token damage to Hamas before returning to the status quo.
The Israelis have actually benefitted from Hamas rule in Gaza, in the sense that it has allowed them to play Fatah, which is dominant in the West Bank, against Hamas. The possibility that Hamas and Fatah might reconcile in a unity government seems to have been the main motivation for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch the current round of fighting.
It appears, however, that Israel underestimated Palestinians’ ability and willingness to fight. In Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012, Palestinians only caused six Israeli deaths, of which two were soldiers. Palestinians suffered 158 deaths, two-thirds of them civilians. In the 2008-2009 war, Palestinians suffered more than 1,400 deaths, around 200 of whom were fighters, while Israel suffered 10 deaths, seven of whom were soldiers.
Based on these precedents, the Israelis likely expected that they could carry out a limited operation in Gaza without suffering significant casualties. The fact that the Iron Dome is now fully operational, and seems to be effective, would have further justified that expectation.

A new dynamic
ALTHOUGH Israel continues to enjoy overwhelming firepower and has killed more than 800 Palestinians so far (75 per cent of whom are estimated to be civilians), it is clear that the Palestinian resistance factions have improved their ability to fight on the ground, especially in urban combat.
Furthermore, the political calculus has changed. Increasingly isolated internationally by a hostile government in Egypt and a damaged relationship with Iran as a result of its support for the Syrian opposition, Hamas appears to have made the decision to go for broke. It has not wavered in its demand that a ceasefire include a permanent end to the Israeli blockade.
This position has increased support for Hamas on the Palestinian home front and helped to unite Palestinians behind a common agenda. The open intransigence of the Netanyahu government has left Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas without a leg to stand on, and he has increasingly adopted Hamas’s language and demands in recent days. He must also be concerned by the increased calls within his Fatah movement to renew military action against Israel.
Although the Israeli government has carefully crafted a narrative of major military accomplishments against a terrorist regime, the evidence suggests otherwise. All of Israel’s 35 casualties but three have been military. The use of rockets by the Palestinians puts pressure on the Israeli home front, but has caused few casualties and little material damage.
The most significant accomplishment of the rocket campaign has been to force western airlines to rethink using Ben Gurion International Airport. Since 90 per cent of Israel’s international air travel passes through this airport, any long-term decision by foreign airlines to avoid it would cause Israel significant economic problems. More immediately, the Israeli public finds itself more isolated.

Learning from Hezbollah
WITH regards to the ground combat operations, many Israeli and Arab commentators have compared it to the 2006 Lebanon war. In that war, Hezbollah used underground tunnels, advanced anti-tank weapons, and rockets fired against the Israeli home front to neutralise Israel’s great advantage in fire power and force a stalemate that has held until now.
It is clear that the Palestinian resistance in Gaza has studied that conflict well and learned from Hezbollah’s achievements. Nonetheless, there are certain fundamental differences. Hezbollah could count on Syria to provide strategic depth, which meant that Lebanese civilians had somewhere to flee and Hezbollah could use Syrian territory for logistical and other purposes.
In Gaza, there is no such option, especially since the Egyptian government has all but adopted Israel’s position in this conflict. Egypt is preventing medical and other supplies from reaching Gaza, having already destroyed most of the tunnels that supplied Gaza from Egyptian territory. Most tragically, Palestinian civilians in Gaza have nowhere to seek refuge. Hundreds of thousands have already fled their homes, but there is nowhere in the crowded strip that is safe.
So far, Israel has failed to deliver a decisive blow to the Palestinian resistance. Most of the Palestinian leadership is literally underground and Israel’s network of collaborators appears to have been seriously disrupted. Compared to past conflicts in which Israel has been able to kill significant numbers of Palestinian leaders with the help of human intelligence, this aspect of the operation has been a clear failure.
Increasingly, Netanyahu appears to be adopting more extreme tactics to produce a victory that would justify the loss of more than 30 Israeli soldiers. A return to the status quo may not be viable for either side, and one cannot expect a ceasefire to be reached soon.
It seems that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stands at a crossroads. Israel has the military means to destroy the Palestinian resistance factions, but this would probably require re-occupying the entire strip. Doing so would entail a large number of casualties, and is unlikely that Israel could then withdraw anytime soon.
There has been talk in the Israeli press of turning over control of the strip to the Palestinian Authority, but it is unclear whether this is feasible, or even if the PA would survive the re-occupation of Gaza. For its part, Hamas cannot accept anything less than an end to the blockade without admitting defeat. It remains to be seen what course of action the Netanyahu government will adopt, but the intransigence of Israeli policy has pushed all of the parties into new territory from which there can be no easy exit.
Having left the Palestinians with no alternative but to fight, Netanyahu may have left himself with no choice but to go all the way and end the fiction of a peace process based on two states.
Al Jazeera, July 25. Adam Sabra is a professor of history, University of California, Santa Barbara.

IF ISRAEL insists, as the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo

IF ISRAEL insists, as the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo, on using the weapons of industrial warfare against a helpless civilian population then that population has an inherent right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The international community will have to either act to immediately halt Israeli attacks and lift the blockade of Gaza or acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to use weapons to defend themselves. No nation, including any in the Muslim world, appears willing to intervene to protect the Palestinians. No world body, including the United Nations, appears willing or able to pressure Israel through sanctions to conform to the norms of international law. And the longer we in the world community fail to act, the worse the spiral of violence will become. Israel does not have the right to drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on Gaza. It does not have the right to pound Gaza with heavy artillery and with shells lobbed from gunboats. It does not have the right to send in mechanised ground units or to target hospitals, schools and mosques, along with Gaza’s water and electrical systems. It does not have the right to displace over 100,000 people from their homes. The entire occupation, under which Israel has nearly complete control of the sea, the air and the borders of Gaza, is illegal. Violence, even when employed in self-defence, is a curse. It empowers the ruthless and punishes the innocent. It leaves in its aftermath horrific emotional and physical scars. But, as I learned in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian War, when forces bent on your annihilation attack you relentlessly, and when no one comes to your aid, you must aid yourself. When Sarajevo was being hit with 2,000 shells a day and under heavy sniper fire in the summer of 1995 no one among the suffering Bosnians spoke to me about wanting to mount non-violent resistance. No one among them saw the UN-imposed arms embargo against the Bosnian government as rational, given the rain of sniper fire and the 90-millimetre tank rounds and 155-millimetre howitzer shells that were exploding day and night in the city. The Bosnians were reduced, like the Palestinians in Gaza, to smuggling in light weapons through clandestine tunnels. Their enemies, the Serbs—like the Israelis in the current conflict—were constantly trying to blow up tunnels. The Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, with their meagre weapons, desperately attempted to hold the trench lines that circled the city. And it is much the same in Gaza. It was only repeated NATO airstrikes in the fall of 1995 that prevented the Bosnian-held areas from being overrun by advancing Serbian forces. The Palestinians cannot count on a similar intervention. The number of dead in Gaza resulting from the Israeli assault has topped 650, and about 80 per cent have been civilians. The number of wounded Palestinians is over 4,000 and a substantial fraction of these victims are children. At what point do the numbers of dead and wounded justify self-defence? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? At what point do Palestinians have the elemental right to protect their families and their homes? Article 51 does not answer these specific questions, but the International Court of Justice does in the case of Nicaragua v. United States. The court ruled in that case that a state must endure an armed attack before it can resort to self-defence. The definition of an armed attack, in addition to being ‘action by regular armed forces across an international border’, includes sending or sponsoring armed bands, mercenaries or irregulars that commit acts of force against another state. The court held that any state under attack must first request outside assistance before undertaking armed self-defence. According to UN Charter Article 51, a state’s right to self-defence ends when the Security Council meets the terms of the article by ‘tak[ing] the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.’ The failure of the international community to respond has left the Palestinians with no choice. The United States, since Israel’s establishment in 1948, has vetoed in the UN Security Council more than 40 resolutions that sought to curb Israel’s lust for occupation and violence against the Palestinians. And it has ignored the few successful resolutions aimed at safeguarding Palestinian rights, such as Security Council Resolution 465, passed in 1980. Resolution 465 stated that the ‘Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem.’ The resolution went on to warn Israel that ‘all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.’ Israel, as an occupying power, is in direct violation of Article III of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. This convention lays out the minimum standards for the protection of civilians in a conflict that is not international in scope. Article 3(1) states that those who take no active role in hostilities must be treated humanely, without discrimination, regardless of racial, social, religious or economic distinctions. The article prohibits certain acts commonly carried out against non-combatants in regions of armed conflict, including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It prohibits the taking of hostages as well as sentences given without adequate due process of law. Article 3(2) mandates care for the sick and wounded. Israel has not only violated the tenets of Article III but has amply fulfilled the conditions of an aggressor state as defined by Article 51. But for Israel, as for the United States, international law holds little importance. The US ignored the verdict of the international court in Nicaragua v. United States and, along with Israel, does not accept the jurisdiction of the tribunal. It does not matter how many Palestinians are killed or wounded, how many Palestinian homes are demolished, how dire the poverty becomes in Gaza or the West Bank, how many years Gaza is under a blockade or how many settlements go up on Palestinian territory. Israel, with our protection, can act with impunity. The unanimous US Senate vote in support of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the media’s slavish parroting of Israeli propaganda and the Obama administration’s mindless repetition of pro-Israeli clichés have turned us into cheerleaders for Israeli war crimes. We fund and abet these crimes with $3.1 billion a year in military aid to Israel. We are responsible for the slaughter. No one in the establishment, including our most liberal senator, Bernie Sanders, dares defy the Israel lobby. And since we refuse to act to make peace and justice possible we should not wonder why the Palestinians carry out armed resistance. The Palestinians will reject, as long as possible, any ceasefire that does not include a lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. They have lost hope that foreign governments will save them. They know their fate rests in their own hands. The revolt in Gaza is an act of solidarity with the world outside its walls. It is an attempt to assert in the face of overwhelming odds and barbaric conditions the humanity and agency of the Palestinian people. There is little in life that Palestinians can choose, but they can choose how to die. And many Palestinians, especially young men trapped in overcrowded hovels where they have no work and little dignity, will risk immediate death to defy the slow, humiliating death of occupation. I cannot blame them. truthdig.com, July 23. Chris Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. - See more at: http://newagebd.net/35002/palestinians-right-to-self-defence/#sthash.Ddzx98Qt.dpuf