Stand with Gaza! Protest Saturday!

Stand up to Israel's occupation of Palestine and seige of Gaza!
12 noon, Copley Square. Rally and march!

• End the Israeli aggressive war on Gaza!
• End the Genocide!
• End the 60 Year occupation of Palestine!
• End the siege!
• We support the right of Palestinians to resist!

Video of the Dec. 30 protest

This shows the beginning and middle of the rally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5RcfmxfMr0

This one shows the march:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexS5umQgK4

Boston: Gaza Rally Outside Israeli Consulate

by Patrick Keaney

On the fourth day of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, hundreds of Bostonians turned out to a rally to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinian people. The rally, which was organized by a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups, took place in front of the office building that houses the Israeli Consulate’s office in Boston’s Back Bay. The spirited rally was followed by a boisterous march from the Israeli Consulate to Copley Square, where preparations for Boston’s First Night were underway.

The Boston area has seen several highly visible demonstrations since the bombing began, including Sunday outside Park St. station, and Monday evening at Roxbury Crossing and Harvard Square in Cambridge. There was also a rally outside Sen. John Kerry’s downtown office Monday afternoon. But the demonstration Tuesday at the consulate was the largest yet, with approximately 200 people in attendance, and there appeared to be a broad cross-section of the activist community there.

With strong winds blowing several large Palestinian flags into the cold night sky, a picket line formed across the street from the consulate’s office. As dozens pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators gathered in front of the door to the consulate, the pro-Palestinian group started chanting “Occupation is a crime, from Iraq to Palestine!” and “Not another nickel, not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!” A large police presence was visible from the outset, separating the two groups.

On a day when the death toll in Gaza neared 400, and with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declaring, “We are currently at the first stage of the operation,” it’s clear that a sustained campaign of resistance against Israel’s crimes is needed. Anyone interested in learning more about the issues and getting involved can visit http://bostonstandswithgaza.blogspot.com//.

The world stands with Gaza!

I'm not sure of the name of the person who emailed this stuff to me, but it's a round-up of protests around the world, from NYC, to London, to Karachi, to Phoenix, to the Free Gaza Movement. Thanks for sending!

New York Demonstration:
"Yes! We Can Save Gaza. Boycott Israel Now!"


December 30, 2008On the Web at:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j-uta_l4FyVRi5LQC2nRgWLY-u4Q

________________________________________________________

New York: Marchers demand boycott against Israel

"NYC Marches Again to Demand End of Massacres in Gaza and Boycott of Israel:
"For the second day in a row, over a thousand New Yorkers marched through midtown Manhattan."
December 30, 2008

On Indymedia at:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/102590.shtml

By Adalah-NY For the second day in a row, over a thousand New Yorkers marched through midtown Manhattan, chanting and carrying signs and Palestinian flags, to voice opposition and demand an end to Israel's assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the last three days, Israel's bombing of Gaza has killed over 360 Palestinians. Reports indicate that at least 60 of those killed were women and children.

The Monday evening protest, which drew a diverse and noisy crowd of more than a thousand and substantial media, began at 5 PM with leafletting and chanting at Union Square and Herald Square.

The energy grew during a symbolic funeral procession for Gaza's dead from Herald Square to Bryant Park, as marchers carried aloft two stretchers covered in black shrouds and flags, similar to those used in Palestinian funeral processions. The march culminated with loud chanting at the Israeli Consulate at 8:30 PM. It comes on the heels of a Sunday afternoon Manhattan march that drew over two thousand protesters, and will be followed by a Tuesday evening protest at the Israeli Consulate beginning at 5 PM.

Rush-hour pedestrians were handed thousands of flyers calling for an end to the massacre in Gaz and a boycott of Israel, and were greeted with chants, including:
"Obama. No more aid.Stop the funds for deadly raids;" and
"While you are shopping, bombs are dropping."

Riham Barghouti from Adalah-NY explained, "New Yorkers are out in the street because they're angry that the US government is providing Israel with the planes as well as the hundreds of tons of bombs that Israel is dropping on 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians who are packed together in the world's largest open-air prison. Silence in the face of such crimes is complicity. That's why people worldwide are stepping up the non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to halt its human rights violations. With our government here in the US refusing to act, it's up to us as citizens to mobilize to hold Israel accountable."

The assault follows nearly three years of a tightening Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip which began, with US support, after Hamas emerged victorious in democratic Palestinian elections in January, 2006. More recently, Israel has almost totally sealed off Gaza to the outside world, preventing shipments of food, fuel and medical supplies from reaching Gaza's civilian population, resulting in skyrocketing levels of unemployment, poverty and hunger. Israel has also conducted frequent assassinations and aerial attacks on Gaza, killing approximately 1500 Gazans since 2006 alone. Israel's siege of Gaza's civilian population and assaults against Gaza's residents constitute grave breaches of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Some observers believe Israel's attacks were timed to coincide with the holiday season, when most people turn their attention away from world events.

The flyers distributed to passersby provided information on Israel's attacks and called for support for the growing international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel - similar to the worldwide campaign that helped end Apartheid in South Africa - in order to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.

Over the last year, Adalah-NY has carried out a successful boycott campaign against Israeli diamond mogul, settlement-builder and New York real estate developer Lev Leviev.
For photos of the protest: http://adalahny.org/index.php/photo-galleries/272-gaza-funeral-procession
By Adalah-NY info@adalahny.org http://www.adalahny.org

________________________________________________________

Dearborn Demonstration:
"Stop the Holocaust in Gaza"

"Protesters rally against Israeli airstrikes with human chain in Dearborn"

by Karen Bouffard / The Detroit News (Detroit, Michigan)

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
On the Web at:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081230/METRO/812300436/1020/NATION

DEARBORN -- Hundreds of people lined Warren Avenue for about a mile in a human chain Tuesday afternoon to protest Israel's bombings of Gaza and what they consider inhuman treatment of Palestinians who live in the region.

The mostly Arab-American demonstrators were joined by religious leaders from other faiths, as well as members of the Green Party and other political groups in protesting the Bush Administration's handling of the Middle East conflict and support of the state of Israel.

The protest, which ran from Chase Street to beyond Scaefer, was put on by the Congress of Arab American Organizations-Michigan. While local police say about 1,000 people attended the event, organizers pegged the turnout at about 5,000.

Many of the protesters waved the red, black, green and white flag of Palestine while holding large signs showing photographs of burned and maimed Palestinians injured in the air strikes against Hamas that have gone on for the last four days.

Iman Jafin, 48, of Dearborn, helped hold a sign saying "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza" and led the crowd in a chant of "Down, down, Israel. How many children you killed today."

"I have two daughters in Palestine, one of them has three children -- two girls and one boy -- and all of them are there," Jafin said. There is no medicine. I reached them on on the Internet two days ago. I'm crying every night. I don't know what happened to them now.

________________________________________________________

Zionist beasts ram into Gaza relief boat, collapsing part of its roof:

"Gaza relief boat damaged in encounter with Israeli vessel"
December 30, 2008
On CNN at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/?iref=hpmostpop

(CNN) -- An Israeli patrol boat struck a boat carrying medical volunteers and supplies to Gaza early Tuesday as it attempted to intercept the vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, witnesses and Israeli officials said.


The Dignity arrives in Tyre, Lebanon, after it was reportedly rammed by an Israeli military vessel Tuesday.
1 of 3 CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul was aboard the 60-foot, Gibraltar-registered pleasure boat Dignity when the contact occurred. When the boat later docked in the Lebanese port city of Tyre, severe damage was visible to the forward port side of the boat, and the front left window and part of the roof had collapsed.

The Dignity was carrying crew and 16 passengers -- physicians from Britain, Germany and Cyprus and human rights activists, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney -- who were trying to reach Gaza through an Israeli blockade of the territory.

The captain of the Dignity said the Israelis broadcast a radio message accusing the vessel of being involved in terrorist activity. But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor denied that and said the radio message simply warned the vessel not to proceed to Gaza because it is a closed military area.

Palmor said there was no response to the radio message, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision. Watch Penhaul describe the boat damage »
Penhaul said at least two Israeli patrol boats had shadowed the Dignity for about half an hour before the collision, moving around the vessel on all sides. One of the patrol boats then shined its spotlight on the Dignity while the other, with its lights off, "very severely rammed" the boat.

The captain of the Dignity told Penhaul he received no prior warning. Only after the collision did the Israelis come on the radio to say they struck the boat because they believed it was involved in terrorist activities. Watch the chaos in Gaza and Israel »

The captain and crew said their vessel was struck intentionally, Penhaul said, but Palmor called those allegations "absurd."

"There is no intention on the part of the Israeli navy to ram anybody," Palmor said.
"I would call it ramming. Let's just call it as it is," McKinney said. "Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side. Watch Cynthia McKinney discuss the collision »
"Our mission was a peaceful mission to deliver medical supplies and our mission was thwarted by the Israelis -- the aggressiveness of the Israeli military," she said.

The incident occurred in international waters about 90 miles off Gaza. Israel controls the waters off Gaza's coast and routinely blocks ships from coming into the Palestinian territory as part of an ongoing blockade that also applies to the Israel-Gaza border. Human rights groups have expressed concern about the blockade on Gaza, which has restricted the delivery of emergency aid and fuel supplies.

The collision was so severe, Penhaul said, that the passengers were ordered to put on their life vests and be ready to get in lifeboats. The Dignity began taking on water, but the crew managed to pump it out of the hull long enough for the boat to reach shore.
Palmor said the vessel refused assistance after the incident.

The boat was carrying boxes of relief supplies, volunteers and journalists to Gaza, the Palestinian territory now subject to an intense Israeli bombing campaign.

Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza on Saturday in what Defense Minister Ehud Barak called an "all-out war" against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007.
The Palestinian death toll has topped 375, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday. At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said....


________________________________________________________

Worldwide Protests against Israeli Massacre of Gaza:
"I can recognise fascism when I see it and this is really what Israel is doing. "


"Protest demos slam Israeli aggression"
DAILY TIMES (Lahore, Pakistan)Monday, December 29, 2008
On the Web at:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\12\29\story_29-12-2008_pg7_23

KARACHI: Separate protest demonstrations were held in the city on Sunday to condemn the Israeli military operation in Gaza Strip that killed around 271 Palestinians.
Hundreds of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) activists staged a protest demonstration outside Jamia Mosque Binoria Town.
The protesters carried banners and placards inscribed with slogans against Israel, the US and India, and chanted slogans. JI Central Secretary General Syed Munawar Hussain, JI Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mehnti, JI Karachi Secretary General Hafiz Naeemur Rehman and other JI office-bearers addressed the protesters. Addressing the participants of the protest demonstration, JI leader Munawar Hassan condemned the air strikes by the Israel and criticised Muslim rulers for not raising any strong voice against the killing of innocent Palestinians.

He maintained that Palestine is surrounded by the Muslims states but despite this, Israel is committing its atrocities.
JI Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mehnti lamented that Israel has besieged Gaza and halted water supply besides stopping medicines and other treatment facilities to the people while the UN is playing a role of silent spectator. He maintained that world community, which raised voice over the Mumbai attacks, should also raise its voice against the Israeli atrocities. Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Foundation Pakistan (PLF) staged a protest against Israeli aggression in front of the local press club. Hundreds of protesters chanted slogans and torched flags.
ppi/staff report.
_____________________________

"Gaza protests planned for weekend across UK"
31 December 2008


British demonstrations against Israeli bomb attacks in Gaza will gather momentum on Saturday with thousands of people expected to attend a rally in London and smaller protests planned in cities across the UK, say organisers.

Yesterday, in the third consecutive day of protest within shouting distance of the Israeli embassy in Palace Green, London, numbers had diminished to around 200 and there were no arrests. The protests are planned to continue tomorrow and on New Year's Day. A rally will be held at the Egyptian embassy in London on Friday to demand that the country's border with Gaza be opened, while the capital's larger rally will assemble on the Embankment at 12.30pm on Saturday.

Sarah Colborne, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: "Thousands will be demonstrating all across the country. People are very angry, some of them are making spontaneous demonstrations. Everyone is building up for the Saturday protests now."

Around 100 police officers watched yesterday's protesters, who had been cordoned off in a section of Kensington High Street. Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of public order policing for the Met, said: "We are very mindful of the deeply passionate response this conflict causes for some people.
"There will be further demonstrations this week. The Met is committed to and will always facilitate lawful, legitimate protest. We are working closely with the organiser of the demonstrations being held until New Year's Day to ensure they can make their point safely, whilst we minimise any disruption in that area."
He added: "I would urge anyone else planning to hold a demonstration to come and work with us. What the Met will do is support lawful protest, but ensure all steps are taken to deal with those who break the law, or attempt to disrupt legitimate demonstrations."

On Monday, seven protesters were arrested and mounted police moved in to disperse the crowds. Yesterday, as temperatures fell, the mood was quieter and attendance more sparse.

Violetta Thomson, 73, from London, said it was the first day that she had attended. She said she could not watch anymore on television without doing something. "I was brought up in fascist Spain and came here 30 years ago. I can recognise fascism when I see it and this is really what Israel is doing. The Israeli people are not fascists, I don't think they really see the carnage their government is responsible for," she said.
Beside her, Vicky Scarlett, 75, said: "Human instincts say you must do something about this, it shouldn't be going on. In the most moderate of terms it is unjust. It's an abomination for the world to stand and watch this happening.".

Protests have also been organised for Saturday in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Portsmouth and Hull.

________________________________________________________

Arizona Demonstration against the Israeli Massacre of Gaza--


CARAMA Coalition of Arabs and Muslims in America

CARAMA movement in coordination with other local and student Arab/Muslims organizations has organized a mass protest today December 28, 2008, at the busy intersection of Camelback and Central St, in Downtown Phoenix. This protest, according to local senior members in the Arab/Muslims community was the largest Arab/Muslims protest ever in Arizona. More than 350 protesters continuously for two hours chanted slogans like "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea", "free free Palestine" and "free free Gaza" قامت حركة تحالف العرب والمسلمين في امريكا (كرامة) وبالتعاون مع عدد من المنظمات المحلية والطلابية العربية والمسلمة بتنظيم مظاهرة هي الاكبر من نوعها في تاريخ الجالية العربية والمسلمة الصغيرة نسبياًَ في أريزونا والتي لا يتجاوز عدد أفرادها بضعة ألاف. حيث تجمع أكثر من ثلاثمائة وخمسين متظاهراًَ على تقاطع طرق كامل باك مع سنتر ستريت المزدحم في وسط مدينة فينكس عاصمة الولاية للتنديد بالعدوان الإسرائيلي الغاشم على قطاع غزة، وقد رفع المتظاهرون لافتات تدين الدعم الامريكي للكيان الصهيوني وأخرى تتهم "إسرائيل" بشن حرب إبادة شاملة ضد أهلنا في قطاع غزة، كذلك ردد المتظاهرون طوال ساعتين كاملتين شعارات وطنية مثل "فلسطين حرة من البحر إلى النهر" و"عاشت فلسطين" و"الحرية لغزة"
________________________________________________________

Protest Israeli terror! Stand with Gaza! Protest Tuesday at the Israeli Consulate!

Out of the action in Brookline yesterday, we decided to build a unified, big protest at the Israeli Consulate to complement the neighborhood ones Monday. Spread the word!!
Protest at the Israeli Consulate (20 Park Plaza, near Arlington in Back Bay; Green Line to Arlington, Organge Line to Back Bay)
Tuesday, 12/30 at 4:30
To be followed by a march to Copley Sq.
If you want to co-sponsor or build this, please contact me. More info to come!!

Blood and tears in the streets of Gaza

http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/29/blood-and-tears-in-gaza

Eric Ruder reports on Israel's latest escalation of its barbaric war on the Palestinian people.December 29, 2008

Israeli air strikes have killed nearly 300 Palestinians in two days of bombing (Fady Adwan propaimages)

GAZA IS under attack by one of the most deadly military machines on the planet--with even worse to come as Israel masses troops for a threatened ground invasion.Starting at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Israel's F-16 jet fighters and Apache helicopters, supplied by the U.S., unleashed a punishing assault on targets of every kind--police stations, mosques, hospitals, media outlets, community centers and buildings owned by the Hamas party.Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world, so the "precision strikes" supposedly aimed at "Hamas militants" were bound to take a toll on the civilian population.

By late Sunday night, the official death toll after 36 hours of killing stood at nearly 300.Meanwhile, Israeli ground forces and tanks were stationed at the border, and the military announced it was calling up its reserves, an ominous sign that the scale of the atrocities could grow worse.Israel's all-out offensive caused fury across the Middle East. Thousands took to the streets to protest Israel's assault and the silence of many Arab regimes as the slaughter of Palestinians was broadcast on television news stations. In several places, anger was directed at the Egyptian government for its unwillingness to open its border with Gaza to relieve the pressure from Israel's crippling siege of the last 18 months.

In the U.S., antiwar coalitions, human rights groups and others organized emergency-response actions, drawing hundreds to demonstrations in cities across the U.S. More protests will take place this week; a national day of action has been called for Tuesday.

Israel's attack began with simultaneous air raids on more than 30 targets. Within the first nine hours, the Israeli military reported it had dropped more than 100 tons of bombs. Not since the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel began its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, have Palestinians in Gaza been subjected to such an outburst of destruction.

In an interview, Dr. Haider Eid relayed the horror as he talked about conditions in Gaza:

"I live in Gaza City itself, where most of the air strikes took place. The attacks came just as schoolchildren were returning home from school. It was absolutely horrible. The timing was chosen to cause a massacre.I rushed to the Shifa hospital--along with ambulances, cars and trucks that were also streaming to the hospital with the wounded. I stood in front of the gate. I don't like to see the mangled bodies, but this was especially horrible. Cars carried dismembered bodies, detached legs and arms and heads.The part of this that I'm still trying to cope with are the bodies of the children. This is something you don't wish on your worst enemies, to tell you the truth. The morgue at the hospital is the largest in Gaza City, but it ran out of space to keep the bodies."

As he talked, a thunderous noise drowned out Haider's voice.

"Oh my God! A huge explosion just took place as I'm speaking with you," said Haider. "That was very close. Oh my God! Another one! I'm sorry. I must go."

Haider hung up to check on his relatives, and subsequent attempts to reach him have so far been unsuccessful.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

ISRAEL CLAIMED that it launched its offensive on Gaza to defend itself from Palestinian rocket attacks aimed at towns in southern Israel. Predictably, the U.S. backed up this assertion. "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel, and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The ceasefire Rice referred to began six months ago, but the terms of it were never honored by Israel, and in fact, it expired days before the assault began.Under the truce, Palestinian militants agreed to end their rocket attacks against Israel, while Israel was supposed to lift its suffocating siege of Gaza, which has led to critical shortages of all manner of necessities, from flour to electricity to medical supplies.But the Israeli government didn't end the siege. The blockade is designed to punish the people of Gaza for the "crime" of voting Hamas into the majority in the Palestinian Legislative Assembly in January 2006 elections. Backed by the U.S., and with the collaboration of rival Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, Israel continued to hope that the population of Gaza would turn against Hamas.

Only a tiny number of voices dissented from the claim--thoroughly dominant in the mainstream Israeli and U.S. media--that Israel was acting in self-defense against Hamas' aggression. Days before the Israeli offensive began, Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote:

"We don't want to see how people in Gaza are living, we block it out of our minds--which, I suppose, is natural for a society at war, but which also keeps that war going longer than it might if we would recognize that Gaza is getting so much the worst of it.

"The [Palestinian] Kassam [rockets] have terrorized the 25,000 people in Sderot and its environs, but have caused very, very few deaths or serious wounds. By contrast, Israel has terrorized 1.5 million Gazans, locked them inside their awfully narrow borders, throttled their economy, and killed and seriously wounded thousands of them...

"This is crazy. Israel is the superpower of the Middle East, but because we still think we're the Jews of Europe in the 1930s, or the Israelites under Pharaoh, we spend a lot more time fighting our enemies than we might if we looked at the whole picture, not just our half of it.There may be a way out of this war, and if Israel does not take it--if it does not accept Hamas' offer of a ceasefire, which it should have offered Hamas from the beginning--then the principal blame for the war will lie with us. Our arrogance and blindness will get a lot of innocent people killed. And no one has a clue about when, or where, or how it will end.This comment makes it obvious that the death toll from Israel's air strikes only count for part of the casualties in the latest phase of the war. Those Palestinians who died as a consequence of Israel's blockade--a clear violation of international laws prohibiting the use of collective punishment and attempts to physically destroy a people and their society--have to be included.

As Palestinian author and activist Ali Abunimah said in an interview:

"The idea that this is about Israel's "self-defense" is a very partial and one-sided claim. The reality is that Israel asked for a ceasefire with Hamas and got it, during which there were no rockets fired by the Palestinians.During this so-called ceasefire, Israel continued to maintain a punishing blockade on Gaza, starving people, depriving them of food and medicine. Many people were dying in Gaza, not because of bombs, but because they couldn't get cancer treatments, insulin and other basic medications. They weren't even allowed to travel to get medical treatment.Hundreds of Palestinians have died because of the Israeli blockade. Ehud Barak's orders to prevent medicine from reaching Gaza were just as lethal and just as intended to kill as his orders to send bombers into Gaza.Israel's harsh treatment of Palestinians living in the West Bank further underscores the hypocrisy of Israel's claim to be defending itself. "

As Abunimah points out:

"There has never been a single rocket fired at Israel from the West Bank. And yet during the period of the so-called truce in the West Bank, Israel continued extrajudicial executions, continued to confiscate Palestinian land, continued to demolish Palestinians homes, continued to kidnap Palestinians and imprison them. Israeli settlers engaged in regular pogroms and rampages, attacking Palestinians and destroying their property.What was the excuse for that? Israel never needed the excuse of rockets to continue its systematic violence against Palestinians."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

BECAUSE OF Israel's debilitating siege, the residents of Gaza are particularly ill-equipped to deal with physical, medical, humanitarian and psychological consequences of this new offensive.The statistical measures of Gaza's desperation are truly awful. Malnutrition in Gaza is comparable to the dire situation of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, affecting some 75 percent of the population--46 percent of children in Gaza suffer from acute anemia. The majority of children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and thousands of kids require hearing aids because of repeated exposure to the earsplitting sonic booms of low-altitude flyovers by Israeli fighter jets.Blood supplies are running critically low. There are chronic shortages of electricity, drinking water, flour, bread and more. Unemployment is well over 50 percent. The economy is in total freefall.This is all by design. According to the logic of Israeli officials, the pressure is necessary to force Gaza's residents to turn against Hamas. Such measures have always failed in the past--on the contrary, they have lead to ever more intense and desperate anger at Israel's brutality.But according to Abunimah, the latest offensive has also exposed a new development--the outright surrender of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah wing of the Palestinian national movement that he leads:

"For a long time, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has been colluding with Israel and the U.S. against Hamas. Since the election in January 2006, the PA has been determined to overturn the election result and to maintain itself in power, and it has done that with guns provided by the U.S. and Israel.Many Palestinians were not willing to confront this directly because it's a very painful truth. But the situation in Gaza has pulled the mask off, and Palestinians everywhere are now openly pointing to Ramallah as having colluded directly with the Israelis--and indeed the comments of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo that Hamas is to blame for this have sickened and revolted Palestinians.This has laid bare the reality that Abbas is working for the Israelis and is more loyal to them than to the Palestinian people that he claims to lead.As for the U.S., it has long presented itself to the world as an 'honest broker,' as Palestinians struggled to establish an independent state in their homeland.Yet U.S. economic, military and diplomatic support has been the essential ingredient that allowed Israel to continue its occupation of Palestinian land and its immunity to diplomatic sanctions or international pressure to grant even the basic Palestinian right to the necessities of life.For activists in the U.S., it's our responsibility to expose the complicity of the U.S. in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. This means building public demonstrations and protests, as well as ongoing campaigns to pressure the U.S. to end its support for Israel. And it means exposing the lie that Israel is acting in self-defense when it carries out massacres in Gaza.

"What can we fairly ask of Palestinians when 1.5 million people are blockaded, besieged, imprisoned in a giant ghetto, when they cannot eat due to lack of food while living under a so-called truce?" asks Abunimah.

"Israel's idea of a truce is that Palestinians have a right to remain silent while they starve to death."

Palestinians also have a right to defend themselves. That self-defense may take many forms, but Israel has never respected Palestinians' right to defend themselves, whether they do so through armed struggle or peaceful means. The Israeli response is always bombs and bullets. That's the full picture that's not being exposed anywhere."

Roundup of Boston Actions for Gaza

Thanks to Nancy Murray, from Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights

Call for actions of solidarity with the people of Gaza.

TODAY, Sunday Dec. 28, 3-5. Protest in Coolidge Corner at Harvard and Beacon Sts. Bring signs and flags.

TODAY, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2-4pm. Vigil for Gaza: Park Street Station, Boston Common. Please bring candles and signs

Monday, Dec. 29, 12:30pm. One Bowdoin Square, Boston. The ADC-MA and the Arab American community will request an emergency meeting with Senator Kerry at his offices. Supporters are urged to stand vigil outside. Please come with protest signs.

Monday, Dec. 29, 4-7pm. Stand in solidarity at Harvard Sq (in front of Holyoke Center), Watertown Sq, Roxbury Crossing, Coolidge Corner, Arlington Center, or go out with friends and signs (see suggested messages below) at busy intersections in your community.

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 1-7pm. First Night Peace Fair (First Night Against the Wars), Copley Sq.

SUGGESTED MESSAGES:: Our Hearts Are With You Gaza: Gaza On My MindStop Israel’s War Crimes in GazaIsrael: Stop the Massacres in GazaNO MORE US tax $ for bombs on Gaza Please let us know if you are participating in this action. Send us the details and we will help spread the word!
Contact: gazaonmymindboston@gmail.com <mailto:gazaonmymindboston@googlegroups.com>

Abunimah on the Israeli Assault

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008

Palestinians carry the body of a victim of an Israeli air strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 27 December 2008. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.
The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: “there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.”

That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks — whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel’s attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel’s demands, even assembling “security forces” to fight the resistance on Israel’s behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel’s relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.

Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably, it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The images that stick are of Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the pictures of Livni and Egypt’s foreign minister smiling and slapping their palms together.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last wednesday the Israeli “cabinet authorized the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister to determine the timing and the method” of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza’s streets red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a year.

On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel’s renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.

But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?

Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it “called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.”

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do not wake up to “another Gaza” ever again.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

Civilian houses and medical centres targeted by Israeli air-strikes

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/12/28/civilian-houses-and-medical-centres-targeted-by-israeli-air-strikes/

December 28th, 2008 Posted in Press Releases, Gaza Region Edit

Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have been ongoing through the night, with civilian houses and medical centres being targeted by Israeli air-strikes.

International Human Rights Workers are continuing to witness and document the escalating devastation. Two houses that internationals were staying in last night (night of 27th December), suffered almost direct hits from Israeli missiles, one in Rafah and one in Jabaliya.

“I was woken by an incredibly loud explosion that felt like it was on top of us. We ran for the door, but the blast had welded it shut. The windows had been blown in so we crawled out through them. As we came on to the street, everyone was out. The medical centre next-door had been hit. Medical equipment was strewn over the road. Equipment here is so low anyway due to the Israeli siege, to see it wasted on the street was heartbreaking” Jenny Linnel (Britain) International Solidarity Movement speaking from Rafah.

“At the house where I am staying, the neigbours have just received a call to evacuate their house immediately. That it is being targeted. People do not know what to do”. Jenny Linnel (ISM)

Last night thousands of Palestinian residents of Gaza were subjected to calls from the Israeli Ministry of Defence saying that “any house that has guns or weapons will be targeted next without further warning or any announcement”

Two international Human Rights Workers stayed with the family of Sara Aid Hawajereh, the 55 year old mother killed yesterday by an Israeli missile in Jabaliya.

“We were in the basement with the rest of the family. We heard an extremely loud explosion and the house began to shake. Each mother grabbed their children to them. The missile had landed just outside in the garden. We were lucky” - Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement speaking from Jabaliya

Several medical and pharmaceutical centres treating civilians were hit by Israeli missiles throughout the night, including Al-Shifa hospital and the pharmacy in Hi Alijnina, Rafah.

A mosque was also hit last night, killing four civilians. The total amount of people now killed by Israel over the last 24 hours now stands at at least 282.

Rally Sunday in Brookline

We will rally Sunday from 3 to 5 in Coolidge Corner in Brookline. Bring your own signs and flags. Thanks to Jonathan Cook for setting this up!

Gaza today: "This is only the beginning"

www.freegaza.org
By Ewa Jasiewicz

As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal
in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the
internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows
nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the
house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.

UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al
Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another
was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.

Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge
the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only
perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their
lifetimes.

Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that
shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and
unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of
humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity,
fuel and freedom of movement.

Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating
theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to
transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had
12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.

There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and
blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.

Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire
hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and
lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the
spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red
Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.

Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had
over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the
operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were
sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital
in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short
space of time.’

And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this
morning, ‘This is only the beginning.’

But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective
punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It
has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread,
revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking:
If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?

11.30am
Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border
village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven
there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief
Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided
villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents
about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves,
family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for
Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks
were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on
the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us
the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would
shoot into his fields.

Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile
attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire
from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by
the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family,
caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.

I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us
off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16
bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas
authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit
Hanoon.

We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to
Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police
station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of
dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere
Bala, Diere Balak – take care.

Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had
soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable
market before impacting on its target.

Civilians Dead
There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead
donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and
splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken
English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead,
many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head
threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this!
Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they
are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are
they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader,
present during the attack.

He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking
them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a
small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his
legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain
and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.

The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of
concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree
split the road.

We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache
helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK ’s
Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares –
a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.

Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force
headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road.
‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.

We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be
target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The
apaches rumbled above.

Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work
smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the
ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around
20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a
motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.

Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under
the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it
everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a
captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3
feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks,
blocks and debris to reach the man.

We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the
men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and
speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without
interruption.

Hospitals on the brink
Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief,
horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed
by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of
shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not
even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who,
because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred,
in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.

The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against
the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds
temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically
injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in
scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel
cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area,
wards and operating theatres.

We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care
unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting
downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk
again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six
months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to
show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was
making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.

A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The
hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground,
Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic
police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying
force.

At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the
hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to
cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah,’ there is not god but Allah.

Who cares?
And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out
for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the
brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in
and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said
to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world?
Where is the action to stop these attacks?’

Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she
had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near
Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s
attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down
her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We
didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the
biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.

The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa
hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one
group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head
injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the
weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a
teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’.
He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of
human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’

It’s true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human
Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva
Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague
Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help
generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity
for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to
as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the
realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied
or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on
’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps
in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate
from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both
here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by
Israel , with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported
this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against
Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on
Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.
In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza ’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into
a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the
morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for
civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and
exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of
a lack of access to essential medicines.

A light
There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At
the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you
consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel
and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running
from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in
the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education,
see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are
reportedly big enough to drive through.

Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel,
there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to
make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring
the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take
on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end
of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of
international governmental complicity and silence?

There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity
in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of
conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn
a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring
injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and
pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and
occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and
for a genuine Just Peace.

Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light
at the end of the Gazan tunnel.
-----

Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer,
and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for
the Free Gaza Movement.

http://www.FreeGaza.org