Israel over-reacts again, worst kill since 1980s

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2868601720080302

GAZA (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using "excessive" force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.

Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called on Gaza's Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.

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Areas from which Hamas has launched rockets that have killed three Israelis in the past year saw heavy clashes on the ground on Saturday and air strikes continued to pound buildings and homes that Israel said were used by militants. In some of these attacks, children as young as six months have been killed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/02/wmid102.xml

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At least three women and nine children, ranging in age from 13 months to 17 years, were reported to be among the dead. In Gaza's main Shifa hospital, a toddler screamed as doctors tried to treat her for burns. "Uncle, I don't want to die. I want my dad," she cried. The girl was injured after Israel attacked a house which the army claimed had been used to store and make weapons.

A mother preparing breakfast for her children was killed when she was hit by gunfire, relatives and medical workers said. Four more civilians died when a missile struck a crowd of Palestinians. Hospital officials said that two dead children remain unidentified in hospital.

Among those killed were a 16-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother, who died after artillery attacks on Jabaliya camp. Another 16-year-old girl was killed and her baby brother was seriously injured while watching television, and two sisters died when their kitchen roof collapsed.

Abu Alaa, 40, a resident of Jabaliya, said: "We are in the middle of a total war. We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere. We cannot leave our homes. They're shooting at everything that moves."

Sami Ali Oush, 25, a student who lives in Jabaliya, said: "We have many injured, but the ambulances cannot reach them because the Israeli soldiers are everywhere."

http://www.jordantimes.com/

[with photo of wounded toddler being carried into hospital]

Jordan demands immediate halt to Israeli aggression
HIS MAJESTY KING Abdullah on Saturday condemned the Israeli aggression and massacres committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. In a telephone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah described Israeli military escalations as “dangerous and a violation to all international covenants”.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=107394&d=2&m=3&y=2008

[This will test if the reader can truly be open minded on the subject of Israel]

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Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels
Steve Hutcheson, Arab News

I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father’s face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy’s name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza.

There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them.
It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine.

The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine.

The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving. So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which has 360 people per sq. km.

The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies. So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle.

The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day. So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements.

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For years now Israel has become like some crazed berserker killer bees. Their reaction to every provocation is berserker mentality. When will Washington tire of it? Instead of throwing Rice at it?