Israel is not justified

Please read this article and make note of the father bringing in the wounded and bloodied baby hit by Israeli attack.

I join the UN in condemning the attitude of "collective punishment" whereby Israel punishes 1.5 million people, cutting off even their food, in an "attempt" to stop the rocket attacks by militants.

Regimes that punish civilians, even if they can argue that they are "under siege by terrorists and need to respond forcefully" inevitably lose their morality and justification, as Israel has in this case, in what they did in Lebanon, and throughout these recent years. When will they regain their sanity and morality? Of course these are the same people who walled up Bethlehem saying they "had to for security." God notices and weighs in the balance all the misery in this blighted country.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/israel-flattens-hamas-ministry/2008/01/19/1200620260867.html

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A Palestinian father carries his injured son into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after he was wounded in an Israeli raid.Photo: AFP

January 19, 2008 - 12:33PM

Israel has bombed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza and closed border crossings with the coastal strip in an intensified campaign to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

The four-storey ministry complex in Gaza City was empty at the time but one woman was killed and at least 30 others nearby were wounded in the air strike yesterday, medical officials said.

"It felt like an earthquake," said Umm Fahmi, a woman who lives across from the blast site.
"My house did not only shake, it jumped from its foundations and back down. How could they drop such a bomb in a residential area on top of people's heads?" she said, peering through the dust at the concrete and steel remains of the security complex.

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Earlier in the day, the Israeli Defence Ministry closed all Israel's border crossings with Gaza and prevented the delivery of a UN aid shipment. Only so-called "humanitarian cases" given Defence Minister Ehud Barak's personal approval would be allowed through, the ministry said.
"If milk is low in Gaza, the minister will be asked to approve a milk shipment, and it will enter," a Defence Ministry spokesman said.

The United Nations condemned the closure and warned Israel against imposing illegal "collective punishment" against Gaza's 1.5 million residents, most of whom depend on foreign aid.

"The Israeli reaction is not justified by those rocket attacks, even though it's caused by those rocket attacks," said John Holmes, undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs.

At the behest of Arab and Muslim countries, the UN Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session next Wednesday to examine Israel's new measures in Gaza, a UN source said.