Gaza: The War On Children

War is traumatizing for anybody, but it's especially devastating to children caught in the crossfire. They are the ones who bear absolutely no responsibility for all the violence, yet they are the ones left with some of the worst physical and psychological scars -- scars they'll carry for life.

As the Israeli army continues its attack on Gaza for the 17th consecutive day, the number of Palestinian civilian deaths continues to rise amidst massive destruction of buildings and property. Israel has employed its full-fledged arsenal to bombard Palestinian residential areas. The latest numbers stand at more than 900 dead and 4,000 injured. More than 280 children have died and approximately 1,480 have been injured since Israel began its offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27, 2008. According to U.N. sources, close to a third of the dead and one fourth of the injured are children. Israel has accused Hamas of intentionally attacking from civilian-populated areas, driving up casualties among non-combatants to provoke anger against Israel. Regardless of this claim, do children have to pay the price?

Below is a chronology of just three days of fighting and its effect on Gaza's children:

On Jan. 6, Israeli soldiers fired mortar shells at a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Forty-two people were killed, and Palestinian medical officials said many were children. Israel says Hamas militants had been firing mortar shells from the school, something the U.N. denies.

On Jan. 7, emergency personnel were allowed to enter the Zaytoun neighborhood; previously the Israeli military had kept the International Committee of the Red Cross from entering for four days. Among at least 12 bodies found in one house were four weakened but living children lying next to their mothers' bodies.

On January 8, three brothers were killed from the Hamdoun family: Sami 12, Ali 10, and Mohsen 9. Their televised images have caused outrage in Europe and the Arab world.

In the American media, images from Gaza have been sanitized and when partially shown, they are portrayed as incidental casualties of war. This past Sunday, CNN tried to show "balance" between Palestinian children suffering in Gaza and Israeli families bidding farewell to their sons heading to the front. I'm sorry, but I could not see the balance between the maimed children in Gaza and those shooting at them.

Meanwhile, mounting evidence is emerging that Israel is experimenting with new non-conventional weapons on the civilian population in Gaza. "It is happening again, what we saw in Lebanon two years ago", says Paola Manduca, a genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa and member of New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), "where Israel used white phosphorus, dense inert metal explosive (DIME), thermobaric bombs, cluster bombs and uranium ammunitions, and experimented with novel weapons and delivery modalities." If this is true, more children are destined to die and to suffer under the watchful eye of the entire world.

For those who care, Jamila al Hayash was playing with her friends on her roof when an Israeli missile struck. Her story is in this video:

Jamal Dajani produces the Mosaic Intelligence Report on Link TV

Comments

[4MARLA]

EVERYONE WHO TOOK THE TIME TO COMMENT...TAKE ANOTHER 5 MINUTES TO CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE TO LET THEM KNOW....WE DEMAND.. NO MORE TAX DOLLARS... NO MORE BOMBS..F16...APACHE AND OTHER MEANS OF WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. NO MORE SUPPORT FOR ILLEGAL WALLS, SETTLEMENTS (WHICH GUARANTEED THE ISRAELI'S ...."NO PALESTINIAN STATE", WHILE TALKING ABOUT A PEACE PROCESS) WHAT A JOKE..AND THE JOKE IS ON US. OUR KATRINA VICTIMS WERE DYING ON AMERICAN STREETS WHILE THE CONGRESS WAS DOLING OUT 2.5 BILLION TAX DOLLARS TO ISRAEL. WE NEED OUR TAX DOLLARS NOW MORE THAN EVER...MAKE SURE IT IS SPENT ON AMERICANS. IF ISRAEL HAS IT'S WAY...WE WILL BE AT WAR SOON WITH IRAN.....WAKE UP AMERICA...WE HAVE NOTHING AGAINST ARABS...PERSIANS OR ANYONE ELSE...EXCEPT THE ENEMIES ISRAEL HAVE MADE AND DEVIOUSLY MADE OUR ENEMIES...ENOUGH! GET SMART! END THE (SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP)

[newsjunkie5]

What is happening to the children of gaza is tragic and heart breaking.

What will it take for the world to wake from its slumber and react?

These children need our help!

[jad114]

This will not happen until we become less U.S-centric. We are a schizophrenic society. The US media gets obsessed with one missing child or one murder case but when it comes to children dying out of hunger in Africa, or of illness in Bangladesh or wars in the Middle East we’d rather watch Monday night football.

[joz22]

Bush told Condi not to vote....what a coinsidence

[avicenna]

If the American news media actually reported the root of the terror, mayhap there would be a different take on the matter. The seeds that planted Hamas can be placed in the fertile grounds of Israel's self-serving action. In fact, Hamas has been called a child of Israel as it was initially funded to counter the popularity of the PLO. As quoted from UPI's terrorism correspondant:
"...Israel aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.
The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. ... Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence source said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO.. "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place...Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with."
http://web.archive.org/web/20021112131048/http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=18062002-051845-8272r

[averygard]

Hamas: Putting Palestinian AND Israeli children directly in the line of fire. As policy.

[FairTalk]

I hope you all take time to read this, for, you see, Nakba is the root of the problem.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/scenes-from-the-new-nakba.html
Of the three paramedics I asked, all of their replies were the same. ‘We saw none’. ‘It was like a ghost town’. Despite being finding bodies over the past week, including one baby which had been half eaten by dogs – photos, film and witnesses at Kamal Odwan confirm it – and bodies which had been run over by tanks, when they went yesterday, they found nobody, and came back to base empty handed.

Be sure to read the comments following the blog post.

Here is a link that includes the attitude of the settlers, that Israel should take all the land. In fact, they almost do have it all. Please watch, you should hear this for yourself, the attitude dripping from her lips, as she stands on her newly stolen land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6bt1bhhH_8

[SiberianRat]

Thanks, FT. Horrifying and inexcusable--all of it.

[LillianB]

Meanwhile, there are still people that keeps denying that war crimes are happening during this invasion. There are still people denying that civilians are being targeted (as is, I remind you, illegal according to the Geneva Convention). And there are people claiming that these children are not "really" civilians, that they are indeed guerilla warriors and hence targetable, because there have been incidents where children/teenagers have become suicide bombers. The fanatism one can mobilize... Minors should be off-limits. Women and men not being soldiers - in other words, civilians - should be off-limits. If Israel and Hamas can't keep them off-limits, the world should get involved and punish both regimes for their war crimes. Instead, this bloodbath is continuing for the third week in a row. And the world is standing idly by, watching.

[JacksonJones]

No one denies that civilians are being targeted or that war crimes are occuring. Hamas is shooting rockets at Israeli civilians daily, which is a war crime.

[chaos4700]

"No one denies that civilians are being targeted or that war crimes are occuring." You routinely deny that Israel is guilty of the same crimes. Even if you discount the murder of innocent Palestinians by the IDF (which is appalling but still) Israel is still culpable for its attacks on UN missions and personnel.

[SiberianRat]

You're right, Lillian--I'm sure JacksonJones will be along any minute to tell you you're wrong. He's a nice little clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWvhXPmWjQo&eurl=http://newsone.blackplanet.com/world/gallery-casualties-of-the-gaza-war/

[JacksonJones]

The problem with your position is that you seem to think that if Hamas hides among civilians, then Israel can't strike them, unless they can figure out how not to hurt any civilians in the process. That is not what the law says, nor is it how any war has ever worked.

[JacksonJones]

The problem with your argument is that you think that if Hamas hides among civilians, then Israel can't strike them unless it can do so without harming the civilians. That is contrary to what the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute say about the law of war.

[Americafirst2008]

Zionism is is not Judaism, it's racism.

I'm guessing the Media offensive from Israel to blind Americans is at work here. Well take a look at this video, notice how he keeps saying no pictures?

It's a given that they know what they are doing is horribly wrong but want to suppress this to keep their gravy train (US Taxpayers $8 billion) going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVhFyIns81Q

[JacksonJones]

Zionism isn't Judaism, it is human rights. It is the surprisingly controversial idea that the Jewish people, like all others, has human rights, too.

[SiberianRat]

Zionism gives Jews privileged rights over others and condones oppression--even many Jews admit that.

[chaos4700]

Zionism is human rights?! What? How does running Palestinians out of their villages and then flattening those villages to build Jewish-exclusive settlements constitute human rights?

[AntiSocialite]

Wow, this speaks volumes on where JacksonJones is coming from here. I believe it's more than a Freudian slip when you actually write it down.

Peace

[arvay]

Zionism is a 19th century concept that links Jews -- seen as a "people" rather than a religion -- to a specific piece of land. It's hand-in-glove similar to the German "Blut und Boden" )Blood and Soil) idea. In other words, it's a race-specific, primitive, tribal idea that has been discredited for some time now.

RE: Jews as a "people' -- whatever that means -- it's scientific nonsense -- many Eastern European Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe that converted to Judaism to distinguish themselves from their Christian and Muslim neighbors. They are the core of Israeli leadership. (My Hungarian ancestors were allied with them, they used to kidnap Europeans and sell them to the Arabs as slaves.)

The Zionist cabal that runs Israel constantly subjects the population to the hysterical idea that the Arabs are the new Nazis, and so keeps them in a constant state of fear in which they can rule a mostly unquestioning populace. The whole world to them is an anti-Semitic plot, and every outrage that israel perpetrates reenforces global outrage, making the Israelis ever more paranoid.

[AntiSocialite]

Well put arvay.

[OkieMon]

there are three options for the middle east....the palestinians can continue to hate and terrorize israel for taking their land and continue to suffer in a 1000 year war as israel retaliates­....israel can pack their bags and leave for another location (a remote section of greenland maybe?)....or palestians can give up their hatred and land and collaborate with the israelis for a 1000 years of prosperity for all.....

[chaos4700]

Excuse me, but Israel is the only one who is not at the negotiation table right now.
The 2002 Arab Peace Initiave:
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/league/peace02.htm
Even Hamas and Iran are on board now -- Israel is the only party who rejects it.

[JacksonJones]

Hamas and Iran aren't on board, they have refused to bqck the plan, and have only said that they will not oppose it for now. They both remain ideologically committed to Israel's destruction (as they say themselves), and the oher Arab parties have refused to sit down with Israel to discuss the plan.

[DenverJJ]

War is this way. If Hamas and the more radical Palestinians continue to say "we at war" then what in hell do they expect. They are captives to anger. They are chained pride. As an America, our tradition is to make our enemies into our friends. Japan, Germany and Viet Nam as grave an costly as these conflicts were, they are over we have all moved on to better things. Smart people move on and forget. Hamas keeps children captive by not seeking peace. Palestine could have grown up as a nation, in peace, long ago as other defeated nations have done. Squandering energy and resources toward hating Israelis and the West for a defeat (simply because they are mired with older tribal conflicts) is not a solution. Human survival is about adapting to change. Those who do not know how to adapt don't survive. It's not about a God or prophets or any sort - it's just math.

[chaos4700]

You want to talk about the math?
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

[JacksonJones]

Its not a math problem, its an attitude problem, kimosabe.

[Whinger]

Name a war where children and innocent civillians didn't suffer, or were maimed or killed.

The Israeli Hamas war is not the only horror story, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and historically the North of Ireland, Russia, Georgia, the list goes on.

Yet it seems the UN is selective in where it intervenes and now it intervenes.
I believe the UN had prior knowledge of Israel's intention to invade, and when Hamas has been softened up enough, step in to diplomatically secure a ceasefire and a permanent end to rocket attacks upon Israeli civillians, but at what a terrible price.

[chaos4700]

Israelis have been the exception to international law for far too long. If you ask me, we shouldn't have waited this long to confront Israel in its crimes.

[JacksonJones]

You like to say things like that, but never seem bothered to discuss the law. One wonders why...(one also supposes one knows why, but one is hesitant to say that you don't know what you're talking about because it might sound as rude as your comments).

[Fein]

We are all complicit in these crimes.

We have the blood of innocents on our hands.

[JacksonJones]

I'm not complicit. I don't support Hamas or the Palestinians' war to destroy Israel. I favor the 2 state solution, which was originally accepted by Israel in 1948.

[chaos4700]

No it wasn't! Israel overran land that was supposed to be set aside for Palestine, claimed what they wanted and then sold off the rest to Egypt and Jordan in an armistice agreement. Israel has /never/ recognized the Palestinian nation and it's hypocritical for Israel to demand that of the Palestinians.

[SiberianRat]

You also seem to support Israel's current offensive, which means you're complicit for sure.

[SiberianRat]

It's not really possible to discuss this with you because you clearly come from a POV in which Israeli or Jewish lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives. Rational discussion can not go forth with someone who believes in more/less valuable lives.

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

To say that Israel accepted the partition plan of 1947 is to stretch the truth to the breaking point. Israel gave lip service to accepting the partition but as Ben Gurion said "the borders of Israel will be determined by force and not by the partition resolution". He also told his Defence Commitee in Oct. of 47 that dispite UN resolutions "ther are no territorial boundaries for the future Jewish state." Thus showing that Israel from the beginning had no intention to abide by the UN partition plan.
The partition plan called for all the Arabs inside the new Jewish state to be citizens of that state, and for all the Jews in the new Palestinian state to be citizens of that state. The resolution was adapted in Nov. of 47, it was to go into effect in Apr. of 48, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the Jews began in Dec. of 47, thus showing that although they said they were in favor of the partition plan the Jews did in fact have no intention of abiding by it.

[maddogbitesback]

Jackson - I support the right of the Palestinians to return, That is what intternational law calls for but Israel refuses to allow.

[Americafirst2008]

This Israeli settller is certainly enjoying America's $8 billion a year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVhFyIns81Q

While there is no doubt that there is hatred taught on both sides, it's clear that killing innocent women and children and destroying the infrastructure and schools of Gaza are truly heinous crimes. The rocket attacks must stop too but that requires a population to be given a chance, not penned up and treated like second class citizens in a ghetto reminiscent of Germany in the 30's

[JacksonJones]

The rockets were first fired when Israel left Gaza to give the population a chance. Getting "penned up" was a response to rocket attacks, not the cause of them.

[chaos4700]

Israel never "gave Gaza a chance." The result was unilateral -- Israel did not coordinate with the Palestinian Authority for an orderly withdrawal. Nor did they surrender control of the Gaza side of the border, the air space or the coastal waters. All Israel did was pull up its settlements in Gaza -- and used that impetus to accelerate colonization of the West Bank.

[TerrapinCB]

FAIL! you watch to much MSM. Try again.

Look at the picture at this link, and tell us what you would do if you were the Pals.

http://www.rense.com/general84/0836.jpg

[SiberianRat]

That's completely inaccurate.

[SiberianRat]

You know, I've been to Palestinian refugee camps in 2 different countries--they were depressing and the conditions were awful. However, they were Club Med in comparison to Gaza--you have no idea what they're like. Judging by your comments, you'd have no compassion anyway.

[JacksonJones]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

It would be nice to say that the behavior of the Jewish man in the vidio is not indicative of the Jews of Israel as a whole, but sadly it is. Over 80% of Israeli Jews say they would not live next to and Israeli Arab, and the large majority of them favor the removal of their fellow citizens of Arab descent from the country. Most of the top Israeli leaders now speak openly about cleansing Israel of its Arab citizens, as Foriegn Minister Tzipi Livni said in Dec. of 08, " the Arabs in Israel will not have any place in the Jewish state after a Palestinian state is established." Of course these kinds of statements never get published in the western media, particularly the US media where anything that throws a bad light on Israel is not reported; such as when the NY Times scrubbed Thomas Freidmans stories about the conflict in Lebanon of his mention that the Israeli military was targeting schools, hospitals, and refugee camps with their artilary fire.

[mulegino]

Pavlov's Political Conditioning:

The context: Israeli mass murder against the Palestinians

The venue: AIPAC Convention or Pro-Israel fund raiser

The subject: Cowardly money hungry congressperson

The stimuli: Campaign contributions and warm endorsements

The response: "Israel has a right to defend herself against terrorist attacks on her own people. We have an unshakable moral committment to support Israel as the only democracy in the middle east, and that is a committment that we shall stand by unconditionally. We must stand with Israel in her struggle against those who seek her annihilation."

The reward: Cash register ka-ching, money flowing to campaign,and warm effusive praise as "friend of Israel."

[SiberianRat]

Go to www.change-congress.org to help stop AIPAC and other special interest money.

[quetafortruth]

please post links to help with $ to stop the
massacre.

[quetafortruth]

wAr against kids has to stop.

Please post links to donate to stop the killing.

Words are useless unless backed up by lobbiests for peace.

US policy is being run by Isr. lobbing and $$$$.

[SiberianRat]

"US policy is being run by Isr. lobbing and $$$$." - TRUE! Call/write to them and object! Go to www.change-congress.org to check out a campaign to stop it.

[JacksonJones]

As much as I hear this claim, I have yet to see anyone discuss how in fact this happens. It seems that people who disagree with US policy simply assume that it must be the product of some nefarious plot.