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Iran claims the IDF deliberately attacked their Gaza broadcasting station with rockets.
"Israeli forces have targeted Press TV and al-Alam television stations in the Gaza Strip," the English-language satellite station said. Al-Alam is Iran’s Arab-language television station.
Israeli Defense Forces stated the building was not targeted, admitting it may have sustained "collateral damage." Two people were injured.
Israel has accused Iran of supplying arms to Hamas. Tehran, which does not recognize Israel, says it gives moral, financial and humanitarian support to its Palestinian ally.
According to the broadcast [above], GPS coordinates were given to the IDF to prevent such a tragedy.
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Israel does not want the real news to get out. Can we send Joe the Reporter to the news station in Gaza?
Friday, 09 January 2009 20:14 Written by Sameh A. Habeeb
http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
More civilians killed: Death toll 810, wounded 3400
Breaking News: Step 3 of Israeli Military operation starts in Gaza. It aims at invading the densely populated areas.
Breaking News: One of the Journalists buildings hit by drones. Journalists evacuate their offices now!
Breaking News: In Gaza: No water, No beans, No fruits, No chicken, No rice, No bread, No Markets, No shops, No Medicines, No medical Machines, No enough Doctors, No enough ambulances, No fuel, No gas, no beans, no candlelight, No power, No Internet, No commutation, No aspects of …What’s available is few amounts for domestic use inside houses
http://www.freegaza.org/
The United Nations is claiming Israeli military officers have admitted there was no Palestinian gunfire emanating from inside an UNRWA school in Gaza which was shelled by an IDF tank.
Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the shelling.
In addition, UNRWA Thursday announced it will cease activities in the Strip due to the death of an UNRWA staffer in an IDF shelling during Thursday morning’s humanitarian hiatus.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told Haaretz yesterday that the army had conceded wrongdoing.
He noted that all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054009.html
UN human rights chief accuses Israel of war crimes
Official calls for investigation into Zeitoun shelling that killed up to 30 in one house as Israelis dismiss ‘unworkable’ ceasefire
The United Nations’ most senior human rights official said last night that the Israeli military may have committed war crimes in Gaza. The warning came as Israeli troops pressed on with the deadly offensive in defiance of a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire.
Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for “credible, independent and transparent” investigations into possible violations of humanitarian law, and singled out an incident this week in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, where up to 30 Palestinians in one house were killed by Israeli shelling.
Pillay, a former international criminal court judge from South Africa, told the BBC the incident “appears to have all the elements of war crimes”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..za-zeitoun
Israel drops leaflets over Gaza warning of ‘escalation’ in violence
Military jets drop flyers as a ‘general warning’ to Palestinians that attacks will rise in intensity
The Israeli air force today dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it plans to escalate its military offensive, now in its second week.
The Palestinian Authority president today said Israel must accept an Egyptian-brokered plan to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip or it would bear responsibility for the war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..rael-truce
Throughout the two-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip most journalists have been kept out by the Israeli government on the pretext of security. And the Israelis are pleased with the results.
Foreign journalists have been forced to report without getting to the detail of what is going on. That meant, at least in the early days of the bombardment, that reporters who would have been in Gaza were instead reporting from Israeli towns and cities under fire from Hamas, and Israeli officials found it easier to get themselves in front of a television camera.
An Israeli official told me they were delighted at a BBC TV correspondent broadcasting from Ashkelon in a flak jacket, reinforcing the impression that the Israeli city is a war zone when there is more chance of being hit by a car than a rocket. The notable exception is al-Jazeera TV, which has a bureau in Gaza City and has been broadcasting live from there.
Danny Seaman, head of the Israeli government’s press office, who has described foreign journalists as a “figleaf” for Hamas, says the exclusion of reporters from Gaza has worked in Israel’s favour as it has forced a greater focus on Israel’s side of the story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..ournalists
It is clear to me that Israel’s big deception is assuring the UN facilities and the TV stations in Gaza that if they report their co-ordinates each day they will not be targeted. It seems obvious that Israel is using those very coordinates to aim their missiles and smart bombs at them.
It is clear to me, also, that there is definitely a War Against Truth by targeting journalists – perhaps all over the world. It is reported that in Iraq in 2008 eleven journalists were killed, though overall deaths declined. It is also reported that U.S. paid newspapers in Iraq to print U.S. prepared news columns which disseminated propaganda. We all know how the MSM in America slants their news to whatever the Bush clan wants printed or broadcast.
I found a June 29, 2007 article by Jonathan Cook published in CounterPunch and also online at Alternet, entitled: ‘Palestine No More: Here Comes Hamastan and Fatahlnd’. In light of Israel’s current assault on Gaza, it seems J. Cook had it about right. Link below.
http://www.alternet.org/story/…..nd/?page=1
The article you linked to, combined with John Bolton’s ‘three -state option’ in the Washington Post, is the US/Israel game plan revealed.
Let’s start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection. Instead, we should look to a “three-state” approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty. Among many anomalies, today’s conflict lies within the boundaries of three states nominally at peace. Having the two Arab states re-extend their prior political authority is an authentic way to extend the zone of peace and, more important, build on governments that are providing peace and stability in their own countries. “International observers” or the like cannot come close to what is necessary; we need real states with real security forces.
This idea would be decidedly unpopular in Egypt and Jordan, which have long sought to wash their hands of the Palestinian problem. Accordingly, they should not have to reassume this responsibility alone. They should receive financial and political support from the Arab League and the West, as they both have for years from the United States. Israel should accept political and administrative roles by Jordan and Egypt, unless it intends to perform such roles itself (which it manifestly does not).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01434.html
Here it is…the plan in action..
A plan to create a new foothold in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority and to bring in international monitors was being drawn up by diplomats yesterday as a UN ceasefire call was dismissed by both sides.
The plan would allow a return of the authority, led by the secular Fatah faction, to the territory 18 months after it was expelled by the Islamist Hamas. Diplomats are considering taking a triangle at the southern end of Gaza, including the Rafah crossing to Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing to Israel, to be policed by Turkish and French military monitors to stop arms smuggling into Gaza.
The zone would nominally be controlled by the authority, the internationally recognised Government. Such a plan would allow the crossings to reopen for the first time since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007.
The plan is being negotiated as part of the Egyptian peace initiative, announced by President Mubarak after talks with President Sarkozy of France, which calls for an immediate ceasefire to be followed by talks on securing the Gaza-Egypt border and reopening the crossings.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…..485188.ece
Well, bb, you sure gave me a lot to read and contemplate. I’ll study it, follow your links, and see if I can sort it out.
I am 100% against Israel’s unspeakable conduct of their war. The more of their lies that surface, the more I suspect them of very duplicitous acts (which they blame on Hamas). i.e. false flag ops.
Don’t you think it strange that Israel claims the continuous rain of rockets into Israel fired by Hamas, yet little damage and few wounded or hurt; and the air raid warnings go off in time to allow Israelis to gain the bomb shelters?? It’s either that Hamas just NEVER can hit a target, or the Israeli’s are REALLY good at aiming them….
Over at Glenn Greenwald’s a commenter today wrote that 2 merchant ships left U.S. today loaded with ammo bound for Israel. I haven’t had time to check that out. Guess the war profiteering Carlyle Group is overjoyed.
Another report out of Gaza by a hospital spokesman stated that the doctors had found depleted uranium shrapnel in the wounded of Gaza. That’s killing a bunch now and a lot later by slow death.
I’m too angry right now to continue.
It gets worse. Journalists are now being targeted in their homes. Yes, confirmation of uranium and white phosphorus burns. More US taxpayer funded weapons for Israel:
In the tender documents, the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as “ammunition” on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
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Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said he would not comment on shipping routes for security reasons but confirmed a shipment of ammunition to Israel was planned.
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Ala Mortaji, a radio journalist in Gaza, has died on Friday from wounds sustained when Israeli tanks fired at his home in Zaitoun district of Gaza City,
Mortaji is the third journalist to be killed in the Israeli violence in Gaza, he worked as a radio broadcast personality in Gaza on a local radio show. Medical sources confirmed Ala’s death, and said his mother had her arms amputated after the attack. link
Mortaji becomes the fifth media fatality since the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip began some two weeks ago. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the attack on the al-Johara Tower, an eight-story building in Gaza City which houses more than 20 international news organizations,
“The Israeli military knows the location of TV facilities houses and news bureaus in Gaza. It is simply unacceptable that working journalists and their offices should come under fire in this way,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “Journalists enjoy protections under international law in military campaigns such as the one in Gaza. Israel must cease its attacks on the media immediately.”
http://atheonews.blogspot.com/…..za-as.html
DIGG is open. Sorry, my copy/paste function fails to work.
A fine article, Elliott. I DUGG, commented there and recommended above.
pup34
Israel’s war on Gaza was the first time we saw the “hasbara” directive in action. A body set up to spin (or “explain”, if you like) the country’s justifications for the war, it tightly coordinated key messages and worked on so many levels – mainstream media as well as diplomatic channels, friendship leagues, YouTube, Twitter and the blogosphere – that the effect was epidemic. It got world media repeating the Israeli government’s core messages practically verbatim. Those messages boil down to, and I’m paraphrasing here: “Hamas is a vile terrorist group; they started it, and you must support Israel’s defensive war because we’re civilised, just like you.” For just one glimmer of the success rate, check how many of the US media talking heads collated by the Daily Show use the Israeli government’s own analogy to explain the assaults on Gaza.
Palestinians didn’t stand a chance against such coordination. Media monitors chastised the disproportionate use of Israel spokespeople over Palestinian ones in coverage of the assault. Campaigners gloomily forwarded emails with the message: “What we’re up against.” One email comprised a “language guide” issued by the Israel Project, advising supporters of how best to describe Hamas’s “Iran-backed war on Israel”. Another came from (or was forwarded by) an Israeli overseas mission, urging supporters to vote in a German newspaper’s online poll on Gaza. The email warned that the longer the conflict continued, “more people here will be overwhelmed with mercy for poor Hamasnikkim”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm…..rael-media
With Israel’s foreign ministry organising volunteers to flood news websites with pro-Israeli comments, Propaganda 2.0 is here.
The hasbara brigade strikes again! You always hear about Israeli attempts at media manipulation. Everyone knows it’s going on but usually the process happens through cyber insurgents like those involved with Giyus (and its media monitoring software, Megaphone). Now, we know that the Israeli foreign ministry itself is orchestrating propaganda efforts designed to flood news websites with pro-Israel arguments and information.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm…..stry-media
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate – and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.
Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054158.html